MTG Salvation

Aryel, Knight of Windgrace
2WB
Legendary Creature - Human Knight
Vigilance
2W, T: Create a 2/2 white Knight creature token with vigilance.
B, T, Tap X untapped Knights you control: Destroy target creature with power X or less.

Ayrel might be my favorite commander spoiled from the new set. At the least, it's the one I'm most interested in building - while a lot of the commanders look fun to play, a lot of them have fairly linear builds.

Ayrel looks pretty linear because, y'know, tribal, but I think he offers a lot more flexibility that you'd expect. His abilities actually work quite decently with no support, since he makes knights on his own, and they don't pay you off excessively for having a plethora of knights around, usually just a few is plenty to be able to snipe most targets (I mean, you're probably never killing ghalta with him, tribal or no). As a BW option he also has access to all the best tutors, so it's easier to synergize even with a fairly thin number of cards for certain options.

BW is one of my favorite color combinations and there's already quite a few fun options, but Ayrel does offer some fun new directions to take it in. So I wanted to spend some time brainstorming a bit with him.

Synergy possibilities:

knights - Obviously his ability has some synergy with knights, even if it's not a ton. Knights don't have a lot of tribal support but they do have some pretty powerful individual cards - vona, butcher of magan, knight of the white orchid, mirran crusader, hero of bladehold, etc - as well as a few really powerful tribal synergies in haakon, stromgald scourge (a personal favorite card), kinsbaile cavalier, and knight exemplar. Going for a lot of knights is plausible, but I think running just a few or none is totally reasonable. So it's only as tribal as you want it to be.

vampires - a handful of knights branch into this type - champion of dusk, deathless ancient, forerunner of the legion, legion lieutenant, and sanctum seeker, although there are quite a few other passable knights that happen to be vampires.

allies - a handful of knights also branch into ally synergies - namely hero of goma fada, munda's vanguard, and talus paladin.

graveyard shenanigans - thanks to haakon, it's very possible to set up a sweet package with buried alive. There's also potential for self-mill to pay off with him, which then enables flashback, reanimator, etc. Stacking the deck with tutors for buried alive and building a plan around that could be cool.

general control - his ability to make tokens eot makes it easy to keep up mana for control spells, plus he's a decent removal spell on his own. and ofc BW has excellent removal options.

board wipes - knight exemplar and/or haakon make board wipes very asymmetrical, and BW is obviously stocked with them.

planeswalkers - I love BW planeswalkers and playing a lot of board wipes can help protect them. Although now we're 3 synergy levels deep. Yikes.

Equipment - many knights have double strike, which enables powerful turns off sword/jitte triggers and the like. Some knights also have explicit synergy with equipment. Ayrel himself wields a weapon quite handily as a decent beater with vigilance. Plus who doesn't want to suit their knights up with swords and shields? I mean seriously.

All these avenues look like a lot of fun to me. I may just end up doing a bit of a smorgasbord of synergies and seeing what sticks - the best knights, best equipment, a few of the vamp and maybe ally synergies, tutors for the graveyard package and a few of the better board wipes with a few of the better pws behind them. I'll throw up a list in a minute but I wanted to get my thoughts down first.

Edit: OK, here's my initial decklist.

Sun Titan get so many of them back in the event that they get your knights in the yard. With Exemplar out, Elspeth becomes an ever greater house. You also get Debtors' Knell at your disposal, this card has potential in EDH.

Definitely agree that knight tribal is not *the* route to go with him. In Orzhov, it'd be pretty cruel to be in a situation where you had Arcance Lighthouse on the field, a Uril swinging at you with a bunch of auras on him, but then not be able to do anything about it because you didn't have thirty goddamn dudes on your board. Stick with the standard methods of Orzhov removal. Still, more than an average number of knights in the deck will make his ability more useful more often.

My plan is equipment cause this is white and really fits the knightly aesthetic. There will also be a minor emphasis on keywords using Odric, Lunarch Marshal cause nearly every knight has at least one already, even Aryel.

Dowsing Dagger is pretty good, Aryel doesn't have to tap any other knights to destroy the 0/2 plants, and if you've got just a couple of other knights your opponent would need better than just a chump blocker to prevent the damage from getting through.

I think I'll probably be running few or none non-knight creatures in the deck. I tend to shy away from goodstuff cards like sun titan unless I have a particularly good reason to run them (at least in initial builds - I'd rather try cards that don't get much play but fill into the niche synergies of the deck. That said it'll probably only be about 20-30 creatures with a bunch of control, equipment, and planeswalkers. Not sure I actually like theros elspeth funny enough (although I love her generally), just because 4 power kills the commander. There's not much synergy with token production either. but idk we'll see.

I'd say the initial rough build for mine is going to look something like:

25 knights
40 lands
5 tutors
5 pws
5 equipment
10 board wipes
10 targeted removal

I think curve is pretty low so ramp isn't super necessary.

updated with decklist in the OP. Followed pretty closely to my proposed structure - basically a control deck with knights to be tenacious small beaters with equipment. Made a point to include no non-knights, which is obviously a lower-powered option. If I was including any, I'd at least include SFM.

Crusading Knight and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth may be something to consider. Even without getting U,ToY on to the field, most games will have an opponent with swamps. Doesn't offer much utility besides being a huge beat stick, but the potential hugeness for a 4 drop could be pretty fun.

Quote from sgtgig »

Crusading Knight and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth may be something to consider. Even without getting U,ToY on to the field, most games will have an opponent with swamps. Doesn't offer much utility besides being a huge beat stick, but the potential hugeness for a 4 drop could be pretty fun.

Damn! You beat me to it! Crusading Knight + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is one of my favorite secret techs!

I would consider having some hexproof/shroud enablers like leyline of sanctity, etc. for you. Otherwise, your graveyard is going to get picked apart pretty easily. I understand this doesn't stop rest in peace, etc. but at least it will keep a lot of exile abilities from ruining your haakon's day (and haakon is crazy good even if you only have a few cards with him)

Played 2 games with Aryel tonight and won both pretty handily. Game 1 was all about haakon and exemplar off buried alive. got the package with crib swap and killed anything that looked at me funny, and eventually beat down ftw. Second game was all about planeswalkers that my opponents didn't have good answers for. Ulted lili the last hope and got 2 sorin emblems from lord of innistrad...that ended the game pretty quickly. Aryel and exemplar were still clutch in holding off some early aggression and removing some stuff, but mostly it was the planeswalker show.

Deck feels pretty sweet. Haakon is my favorite piece, as expected, so I might kick up the tutor effects to hit buried alive more often.

Very dubious about leyline. Sure it stops bog and spellbomb and stuff but it doesn't stop anything that targets cards in graves or global enchants. Overall seems super niche and I'm really unlikely to have it in play when I need it anyway, and if I don't have it at the right time it'll be too late to matter. Haakon is a clutch tool for the deck but he's not the only tool, the deck can also win via equipment (weird I never drew a single one) or planeswalkers or just good old-fashioned beatdown. Maybe if I was committing more to the grave and was in a grave-hate heavy meta but neither of those things is particularly true. Really I think the bigger risk is haakon eating a stray STP or whatever, which requires a whole other set of things to protect from. Better to diversify the threats a little I think, than hinge everything around haakon. If I was going to protect him it'd be with pull from eternity anyway, not leyline. I'd rather be reactive than proactive.

Kinda forgot about crusading knight since it's not in my box. I did notice it in knight searches. It's pretty lulzy but at the end of the day it's just a big beater, so idk that it's actually very good. Worth some memes though, I'd say.