Magic The Gathering Commander Deck Brew: Rally The Troops With Adeline, Resplendent Cathar

Build an army before smashing for massive Commander damage with this week’s deck brew of Adeline, Resplendent Cathar.

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Previous deck: Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth // Next deck: Chief Jim Hopper and Lucas, The Sharpshooter

As we continue our journey through the commanders of Magic the Gathering’s Innistrad: Midnight Hunt set, there is a bit of a theme emerging. Lots of the legendary creatures really, really love tokens. Whether it’s Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth’s clue tokens, or Saryth, the Viper’s Fang encouraging you to print a billion tokens and give them all deathtouch, those disposable creatures get a lot of work in the set.

During Innistrad’s Travails, when the Eldrazi Emrakul corrupted the plane’s protector, Avacyn, Adeline rose up to defend the people… at the cost of her family, who were killed or abducted by vampires in her absence. Now, she wages a war against Vampires, and has raised an army to help find her missing brother. It’s that army that we want, and so we’re building the Commander who loves tokens the most, Adeline, Resplendent Cathar.

Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is a mono-white */4 Human Knight with Vigilance that costs one generic and two white mana. Whenever you attack, you create a 1/1 white Human token that is tapped and attacking for each opponent. The real appeal of Adeline, though, is her first ability: her power is equal to the number of creatures you control. With this deck, we’re going to make lots of tokens to make Adeline super big, before whacking through anybody’s defences to take them out with Commander damage.

Ramp

We’re in a post-Commander 2021 format now, meaning white has a few great ways to ramp out those lands.

Archaeomancer’s Map was a huge boon for white when it was introduced. It lets you search for two basic plains, put them into your hand, and then shuffle. Whenever an opponent puts a land down, if they control more lands than you, can put one down as well. While it does rely on you having the lands in your hand to play, it could mean you’re getting three or four extra lands each turn.

A big player in this deck is Keeper of the Accord, a creature that lets you search your library for a Plains on each end step if that player has more lands than you, and make a 1/1 soldier token if they control more creatures. While white has some good land ramp these days, you’re still probably playing with someone with access to green’s superior tools, making Keeper of the Accord a great way to keep up and make those creatures Adeline so desperately wants.

We’ll be running some of the other white ramp staples, like Gift of Estates, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Nyx Lotus, but also a curious one more commonly seen in black Aristocrats decks: Phyrexian Altar. We’ll be making a lot of tokens, and being able to throw them to the altar for a quick hit of coloured mana is nice. It also fits into one of our infinite combos later on.

Draw

Because, philosophically, white represents ‘fair play’, its biggest weakness is in card draw. Drawing more than one card a turn is seen as ‘greedy’, after all. That means our options for drawing are a bit limited.

Cosmos Elixir and Secret Rendezvous help a little. Cosmos Elixir is a colourless artifact that will either give you one life at the end of the turn or, if your life total is already higher than the starting amount of 40, will let you draw a card. It’s a very white-feeling card, despite being colourless. Secret Rendezvous, on the other hand, lets you and an opponent draw three cards. A lot of people argue that it’s not that good because an opponent will be up three cards and you only two, but it doubles as a nice bargaining chip when making deals with other players.

Mentor of the Meek is also very nice. We’ll be making lots of small, 1/1 creatures, and Mentor of the Meek allows you to pay two generic mana to draw a card whenever one enters the battlefield under your control. It isn’t exactly cost-effective in the long run, but it’s a white draw that doesn’t also benefit somebody else, so we’ll take it.

Of course, we’ll run Esper Sentinel. A good bit of white draw at the best of times, there are ways in this deck to buff him up enough to make it so your opponents don’t keep paying the tax out of spite.

But, again, our biggest trick is coming from black Aristocrats in the form of Skullclamp. If we’re hitting a point where we can comfortably make a dozen or more creatures a turn, killing a few of them with a Skullclamp to draw cards isn’t entirely unreasonable.

Make The Creatures

Adeline gets bigger the more creatures we have, so let’s make a lot of them.

First, a quick detour. This deck actually has a small lifegain theme, with Soul Warden, Anointer Priest; Darien, King of Kjeldor, Ajani’s Welcome, and Daxos, Blessed by the Sun. The reason for this is two cards: Attended Healer, which makes a 1/1 white cat the first time each turn you gain life, and Storm Herd, a potential game-ender that makes as many 1/1 flying Pegasus tokens as your life total. With Adeline in particular, Storm Herd could quickly give her a massive boost that would be enough to one-shot anybody out of the game.

Evangel of Heliod and Reverent Hoplite are fantastic in this deck, as they create 1/1 soldiers equal to your devotion to white (the total number of white pips in the mana cost of each permanent you control). It’s even better when you can recurse them, be it with Conjurer’s Closet or an Ephemerate, as then the tokens just keep coming in potentially huge numbers.

There are a few smaller token-producers, too. Oketra’s Monument makes a 1/1 warrior whenever you cast a creature spell, and Felidar Retreat makes a 2/2 cast beast whenever you play a land. Harmonious Archon not only makes two 1/1 white Human soldiers, it changes the base power and toughness of all creatures to 3/3 – for your tokens it’ll be a big boost, but for your opponents, it could be devastating.

The best token producers, though, are two infinite combos that use a few of the cards we’ve already included for other reasons. Take Oketra’s Monument and Phyrexian Altar, and add a God-Eternal Oketra and a Whitemane Lion. With God-Eternal Oketra, Phyrexian Altar, and Oketra’s Monument in play, cast Whitemane Lion, then immediately bounce it back to your hand with its enter the battlefield ability. Sacrifice one of the tokens that either Oketra or her Monument produced to the Phyrexian Altar for one white mana, and then re-cast Whitemane Lion to repeat the process… You can do this for an infinite (or, rather, arbitrarily huge) number of tokens, which could also mean infinite lifegain and an infinitely big Adeline.

The second combo uses Restoration Angel, Lumbering Battlement, and Ephemerate to endlessly flicker either Evangel of Heliod or Reverent Hoplite. First, use Lumbering Battlement to exile Evangel or Hoplite and Restoration Angel. Then, Ephemerate the Lumbering Battlement. When it leaves the battlefield, you can then stack the triggers so Restoration Angel exiles Lumbering Battlement after Lumbering Battlefield re-exiles Evangel of Heliod, Reverent Hoplite, and Restoration Angel. The end result is your Hoplite or Evangel keep infinitely re-entering the battlefield and producing obscene amounts of tokens.

Finally, Anointed Procession is a must, as it doubles the number of creature tokens you make. The only thing better than 80 billion creature tokens is 160 billion creature tokens, after all!

Time To Win

With a trillion creature tokens on the board, you could just swing out with all of them and win. But that isn’t what we want to do: we want to have a monstrously big Adeline descend onto a player and hit them into the negative nine digits in one attack.

The problem is, Adeline doesn’t have Trample, and white doesn’t have a lot of ways of giving things Trample. Instead, we’re going to try getting through with Protection, which prevents a creature from being blocked. Akroma’s Will is enough to finish a game, but also consider Commander’s Plate. Commander’s Plate is an equipment that gives the equipped creature protection from any colour not in your Commander’s identity – in this case, blue, black, red, and green. If someone else is playing white you may run into some problems, but white is the least popular colour in Commander, making this a worthwhile inclusion.

If all else fails, we’ve got Odric, Master Tactician. If you attack with Odric and three other creatures, you decide which creatures your opponent blocks with and how instead of them. You can simply choose for your opponent to not block Adeline at all, before whacking them into the past tense.

Of course, if Adeline has been completely shutdown somehow, you can always just go to combat with all your tokens. Cathar’s Crusade is an enchantment that puts a +1/+1 counter on each control you control whenever another enters the battlefield, buffing up all your tokens considerably. With a bit of luck, you might even be able to activate Basri Ket’s ultimate ability, which creates an emblem that makes a 1/1 white soldier and puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control at the start of combat.

Powering The Deck Down

Compared to the other recent decks we’ve built, this one is actually pretty reasonable. The lack of tutors and counterspells and fairly janky infinite combo stop it from being too evil. However, if you want to pull the deck down a bit for your table, there are still a few things you can do.

First is to shut off that infinite combo by taking out either Whitemane Lion or Restoration Angel (Ephemerate, Lumbering Battlement, Eternal-God Oketra and Oketra’s Monument all serve their own roles in the deck, so removing them would push the deck down even further).

You could also scale back on the board wipes this deck runs. Vanquish the Horde is an excellent one that might be too cheap to run in a tokens deck, and Ravnica at War is a highly asymmetrical board wipe when you’re running only mono-coloured permanents.

You could even cut some of the protective spells you have, to give your opponent more of a chance of knocking back your key threats: Teferi’s Protection, Guardian of Faith, and Flawless Maneuver all help you survive a board wipe and might be good cuts for a lower-powered table.

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To see the full deck list for Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, check out the Moxfield page.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-mtg-commander-deck-guide-adeline-resplendent-cathar/