Welcome to the Weekly Sale Column! This week, we'll show you some cards on sale to spice up your lists or inspire something completely new. These will usually be Commander lists in Bracket 3, so keep this in mind for your playgroup.
If you want to play in lower pods, just swap out the Game Changers for other choices; if you want to compete with Bracket 4 and 5 pods, add a few more Game Changers and other competitive combos.
Keep in mind that the Game Changers in your deck aren't the only thing that moves you up and down a Bracket. Your intent with your deck; inclusions of other interactions, engines, combos, and your overall playgroup should all be factors in your bracket.
Remember that the weekly sale ends on Sunday night at 11:59 PM EST, so you have until then to get your cards ordered.
Snow in July
For the Beat the Heat sale this week, we've got something that most people who frequent a CoolStuff Games location have probably never seen in their entire life: Snow in July!
We've got a cool deck today led by the Bant ![]()
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Commander, Isu the Abominable. Isu is basically the Abominable Snowman, just in Magic. For ![]()
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, he acts as a Future Sight for Snow cards, letting you essentially have the top card of your deck act as another card in your hand that you can play and cast from, provided that it's a Snow card.
He also has a triggered ability that goes off whenever a Snow permanent enters under your control, letting you pay a mana to make him bigger. Our goal is to play as many Snow permanents as possible while also taking advantage of the fact that we have a potentially never-ending hand from Isu's ability. Let's begin.
Ice, Ice, Baby
We can't have a Snow-themed list without a wide assortment of Snow cards, can we? Starting off on the low end, we have Ascendant Spirit for some early aggression and potential late card draw. Boreal Druid, Rime Tender, and Sculptor of Winter will serve as our early game ramp, along with Into the North searching out Snow Lands or Coldsteel Heart giving us some ramp of our choosing.
In addition to that, the banned-in-three-formats Arcum's Astrolabe will fix our colors and replace itself while Replicating Ring will continually give us extra mana over time. Arcum's Astrolabe is especially good with anything that has a Snow cost, like Diamond Faerie or Rimefeather Owl's activated abilities, since it filters regular mana into Snow mana.
Creatures like Ice-Fang Coatl and Ohran Viper will give us some additional card draw along with efficient bodies, whereas midrange-cost Creatures like Rimewind Cryomancer and Centaur Omenreader give us some extra utility through their abilities.
Snow cards have the benefit of some of Magic's coolest art, with Ohran Frostfang just tapping into your opponents' ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) and Adarkar Valkyrie looking breathtakingly regal. There's just something about Marit Lage living on Dark Depths and Marit Lage's Slumber that just screams "you're-winning-this-game."
Winter is Coming
In addition to the Snow cards, we also want cards that will benefit our strategy of playing cards from the top of our deck. Rimefeather Owl isn't the only owl here, Vega, the Watcher is one of many cards that will benefit us whenever we play cards from our deck, netting us some card draw. Kellan, the Kid will either give us a free spell or ramp a Land into play.
Courtesy of Doctor Who, we have a few cards that also work well when we cast from the top of our deck. The Thirteenth Doctor will make our Creatures bigger, Graham O'Brien will give us Food tokens and Osgood, Operation Double will pay for those along with the Clue tokens she and her copy will be making.
We also play some controlling cards to help keep the board at bay, all with great winter themes that also benefit from Snow permanents. Winter's Chill (an oddly complicated card) is essentially a Blue card that can destroy your opponents' attacking Creatures.
Blessing of Frost will help you make your board bigger and draw cards based on the number of big Creatures you have, Cover of Winter will shut down your opponents that decide to go wide with lots of small Creatures, and On Thin Ice is a great spot removal spell that isn't necessarily easy to get rid of.
Change the Game
As we are a Bracket 3 list, we can play up to three Game Changers. Here we only have two, but that's just down to preference. Always feel free to include more or fewer based on your playgroup and play style.
To start, we've got Crop Rotation. We play a decent amount of Snow Lands, but we also play Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage, which combine to give us a 20/20 Marit Lage token (use the Avatar: the Last Airbender version and thank me later). Being able to tutor that out quickly or even just a Mouth of Ronom for some removal is super useful, so Crop Rotation is great here.
Our other Game Changer is Teferi's Protection, which fits well here because our strategy is a nice slow burn (but a cold burn, obviously!) instead of a combo that kills our opponents fast. We're hoping to just garner constant value from our Commander and take out our opponents with a longer, control-style strategy, so Teferi's Protection will keep us alive on our way to that.
Here's the deck list:
- Commander (1)
- 1 Isu the Abominable
- Creatures (34)
- 1 Abominable Treefolk
- 1 Adarkar Valkyrie
- 1 Ascendant Spirit
- 1 Avalanche Caller
- 1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Blizzard Strix
- 1 Boreal Druid
- 1 Boreal Outrider
- 1 Centaur Omenreader
- 1 Conifer Wurm
- 1 Delighted Halfling
- 1 Diamond Faerie
- 1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
- 1 Frost Augur
- 1 Graham O'Brien
- 1 Heidar, Rimewind Master
- 1 Ice-Fang Coatl
- 1 Iceberg Cancrix
- 1 Icebreaker Kraken
- 1 Kellan, the Kid
- 1 Moritte of the Frost
- 1 Noble Hierarch
- 1 Ohran Frostfang
- 1 Ohran Viper
- 1 Osgood, Operation Double
- 1 Pilfering Hawk
- 1 Rime Tender
- 1 Rimefeather Owl
- 1 Rimewind Cryomancer
- 1 Sculptor of Winter
- 1 Spirit of the Aldergard
- 1 The Thirteenth Doctor
- 1 Vega, the Watcher
- Instants (8)
- 1 Crop Rotation
- 1 Graven Lore
- 1 Growth Spiral
- 1 Heroic Intervention
- 1 Path to Exile
- 1 Swords to Plowshares
- 1 Teferi's Protection
- 1 Winter's Chill
- Sorceries (6)
- 1 Blessing of Frost
- 1 Blizzard Brawl
- 1 Farseek
- 1 Glacial Revelation
- 1 Into the North
- 1 Search for Glory
- Enchantments (7)
- 1 Cover of Winter
- 1 Freyalise's Radiance
- 1 Glittering Frost
- 1 Hardened Scales
- 1 Marit Lage's Slumber
- 1 On Thin Ice
- 1 The Three Seasons
- Artifacts (7)
- 1 Arcane Signet
- 1 Arcum's Astrolabe
- 1 Coldsteel Heart
- 1 Lightning Greaves
- 1 Replicating Ring
- 1 Sol Ring
- 1 Sunstone
- Lands (37)
- 5 Snow-Covered Island
- 5 Snow-Covered Plains
- 6 Snow-Covered Forest
- 1 Arctic Flats
- 1 Arctic Treeline
- 1 Boreal Shelf
- 1 Breeding Pool
- 1 Command Tower
- 1 Dark Depths
- 1 Faceless Haven
- 1 Flooded Strand
- 1 Frostwalk Bastion
- 1 Glacial Floodplain
- 1 Hallowed Fountain
- 1 Misty Rainforest
- 1 Mouth of Ronom
- 1 Rimewood Falls
- 1 Scrying Sheets
- 1 Seaside Citadel
- 1 Shimmerdrift Vale
- 1 Spara's Headquarters
- 1 Temple Garden
- 1 Thespian's Stage
- 1 Windswept Heath
Final Thoughts
If you want to play cards with some of the best art, play this deck. Bant decks have the benefit of having access to strong, control-based cards along with ramp, so adding Snow on that just gives this deck another layer of value. See you all next week!



