Posted in: Card Games, eSports, Games, Magic: The Gathering, Tabletop, Video Games, Wizards of the Coast | Tagged: Brawl, card games, commander, deck tech, EDH, eSports, magic, Magic: The Gathering, MTG, MTG Arena, MTGELD, Tabletop, wizards of the coast, WotC

"Alela, Artful Provocateur" Deck Tech – "Magic: The Gathering"

Hello to our lovely readers! Somehow my two most recent Magic: The Gathering articles from the past two days are very popular, so I wanted to thank you all for the continued readership. Furthermore, I totally apologize for last Sunday's "surprise" deck tech on The Grand Calcutron. It was topical and fun and raised important points, but I do know my readers are expecting me to write my deck techs on black-bordered commanders. This is all well and good, and I'll get to Alela in a moment because that's who we're covering today, but before I do that, I want to mention ahead of time that I'm planning on doing a silver-bordered deck tech at the end of each month. This month, in celebration of Halloween, I'll be covering Grusilda, Monster Masher. I'm sure it'll be a "graveyard smash".

Okay, okay, Alela.

So first off, I want you to remember that the decks I have built are specifically for Commander, and have little-to-no budgetary restrictions (that means there's a Tundra in here, among other cards of immense luxury…). The deck needs to balance off of the Commander, who is made specifically for the Brawl format (so therefore built around Standard format rotation), so the deck has to be better than a typically focused deck.

This past couple of weeks I've been focusing on deck techs for the commanders not included in traditional "draft" booster packs. So far I have covered Kenrith, The Returned King, Chulane, Teller of Tales, and Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. All of these decks (sans King Kenrith, the Buy-A-Box promo) have been based on commanders familiar to me. King Kenrith was specifically a mash-up of mechanics to make a highly-political deck. Chulane was built with Roon of the Hidden Realm in mind, and Korvold was made with Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire in mind.

The full decklist to be discussed below can be found here.

Alela, Artful Provocateur is going to be a bit different since she is sort of unique in her style. Mostly I want to look at decks built around Zur the Enchanter for inspiration, but Alela does also look at artifacts, making her a bit more easy to exploit. Ironically, Zur's attack trigger doesn't allow Alela to trigger, but he's still a mainstay of the deck.

Notable Inclusions

Bitterblossom – This card is just a staple for any Faerie-based deck in black or any black deck that wants flyers… Or any black deck in general that can get ahold of one. Making a flying 1/1 that will be buffed and poised to swing many times is great even at the cost of one life. That's value!

Sephara, Sky's Blade – This card can be brought out for just one white mana and the tapping of four flyers. That's amazing, not to mention she's a huge bodied-creature herself who protects flying creatures, of which your commander is one. This is paramount to your strategy of overwhelming opponents with your Faeries and other creatures.

Anointed Procession – sadly, we aren't running green in this deck so other, arguably-stronger token doublers aren't available – but of course, we make do. Anointed Procession and other token support cards make sure you get a lot of creature tokens at a surprisingly fast pace, and, more importantly, keep them there.

Conclusion

I haven't managed to try this deck out yet but as always, it looks solid. The mana is balanced by some miracle, color-wise, and the commander is strong, as I learned facing it on Magic: The Gathering: Arena. Here's to hoping that you test this deck out and have a blast piloting it (preferably against the other Brawl-to-Commander decks I'm in the process of writing up). If you've gotten a chance to pilot this Magic deck or one like it against others, let me know how it went! I'd love to hear more.

Till next time, don't stray off the beaten path – you might be stolen by the Fae.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!