MTG Salvation

It's that time of the year when I have a weird desire to build a voltron deck. Or maybe it's just because of the new swords getting released. Either way, in this case, I wanted something to prey upon the durdly ramp/combo decks I keep playing against - controlly enough to break combo, but fast enough to kill them before they get the chance to assemble something harder to answer.

I made a lazav deck ages ago (OG lazav, before he got too combo-tastic for my tastes), and it was one of my favorite decks at the time. I've been meaning to go back to it for a while and give it a bit of an update. I've also added Wydwen as an optional switch-in commander, for games where Lazav is unlikely to have good things to transform into (or especially nasty games where tapping out turn 3-4 is likely to get you killed).

Anyway, it's a pretty straightforward voltron control deck - play a hard to answer threat, suit it up with sweet equipment, and bash face while suppressing other shenanigans with removal and counters. Ramping to 4 is obviously the primary concern - beyond that, it's not super important. CA is generally generated via the commander + equipment, so there's not a lot of general-purpose goodstuff.

Ran 3 games with it tonight and managed to win all three, although there were some close ones. Wydwen twice and Lazav once. Most games someone else was scary enough to attract attention, and by the time I was archenemy it was too late to do anything about it because I'd just killed the previous threat and was rounding second base. Y'know, the usual.

Not a ton of interesting info - it's a voltron control deck, so it stopped some nonsense and delivered a hard-to-interact-with kill. Equipment-wise, sword of steel and sinew ended up being an all-star, and ate a ton of powerful artifacts in the games it appeared in, plus a planeswalker (ugin!) once. The mages ended up being quite nice to have as backup sword-holders. Didn't really get to abuse Lazav's ability much - when stuff dies, it tends to die all at once in a board wipe. Which is why the indestructible equipment is there, but I really only became another creature once (though I could have a second time and just forgot, whoops).

I'm pretty interested in running Wydwen as a voltron-control commander with a bit of a draw-go feel. This deck looks pretty solid.
One question I have is whether any of the swords have fallen flat for you? Are there any swords that just went above and beyond expectations (sounds like Steel and Sinew might be one)?
I currently don't own any, but I'm considering taking the plunge and trading in for some.

Hmm, good question.

So I didn't actually have truth/justice when I last played the deck, but I knew going in that it was unlikely to be very good since I have very few cards to proliferate onto. So it's basically just a pseudo citadel siege that requires connecting. But I haven't actually played with it yet (I've since acquired one).

fire and ice is a classic. This deck is probably too light on CA, so fire and ice really shines.

war and peace I haven't drawn yet, but for an all-in voltron deck that doesn't plan to win except via commander damage it's obviously not very exciting. Pro white is nice, though, it blocks a lot of removal (for wydwen, obviously lazav doesn't care).

light and shadow was surprisingly relevant. I like the card generally, but with such a low percentage of creatures I didn't think it would work well. Turns out recurring tutor creatures like the mages is pretty sweet. Obviously it's better if you have more creatures in the deck. And the lifegain was nice - comparable to war/peace but with a more useful secondary effect, and a more useful set of protections (probably the 2 best protections, actually).

body/mind is pretty un-amazing for wydwen but obviously great for lazav specifically. Getting a token can be useful if you're worried your commander will die and you'll need someone else to pick up his weapons to get your value. Wydwen doesn't have this problem, usually, since she's not really killable. And Lazav is unlikely to die too often thanks to hexproof either, but he gets the value off the mill. But if I was voltron, say, rafiq of the many I can see it being important to generate some incidental tokens.

feast and famine is generally considered the best. It doesn't really shine here, imo, since we don't have THAT much stuff we want to play after untapping lands. Usually we want to play/equip our equipment in main 1, and then main 2...not much. nice to keep up answers, but you usually want to be prepared in case you don't connect with it, so you don't really want to tap out in main 1 anyway. Still good but not amazing here in particular.

and yeah, I really liked sinew and steel. It's between F&I and S&S for best in deck.

Probably the rankings for this deck are:
fire/ice
sinew/steel
body/mind(lazav)
light/shadow
truth/justice
feast/famine
war/peace
body/mind(wydwen)

Given what the prices look like, I'd jump on S&S before it goes up!