A few weeks ago, Wizards announced the return of scene bundles to coincide with a holiday release of Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy, giving us a bunch of new cards tailor-made for eternal formats like EDH. One of those cards is Amarant Coral, a legendary creature available in the Final Fantasy IX scene bundle. This Gruul legend craves violence, being a four-mana 5/4 with trample that attacks each combat if able and, whenever it deals combat damage to an opponent, deals that much damage to each other opponent. Amarant is an extremely aggressive commander, negating the downside of voltron decks by dishing out damage to everyone in combat and dealing a ton of damage very quickly.

Our deck's game plan revolves around Amarant, so we want to play him as early as possible each game. To do this, we're playing a ton of one- and two-mana ramp, including mana dorks like Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic and Ruby, Daring Tracker and low-cost land ramp like Rampant Growth, Nature's Lore, Glimpse the Core and Three Visits. Goblin Anarchomancer will also give us a one-mana discount on nearly every card in our deck and, because two-mana ramp is so important, we're going to run options I normally wouldn't include in many decks, like Gruul Signet, Talisman of Impulse and Into the North with some snow lands.

Normally, aggressive decks don't aim to draw many additional cards, but this is EDH so we still want some sources of card advantage. Amarant's high power means we can run cards like Soul's Majesty, Rishkar's Expertise and Lifestream Blessing to get big bursts of card draw and some upsides like life gain or free spells. Snake Umbra is a great option due to how often Amarant will be dealing damage, drawing at least three cards every combat and providing some protection against removal thanks to Umbra Armor. Finally, Colossal Majesty and Neyith of the Dire Hunt can provide some incremental card advantage if Amarant sticks around and inevitably gets blocked.

The bulk of our deck is pushing through as much damage as possible, usually by growing Amarant's power and granting it evasive keywords. To grow Amarant, we have a bunch of cards that put +1/+1 counters on it, like Halana and Alena, Partners, Maester Seymour, Ornery Tumbelwagg and Fight Rigging. We also run a bunch of ways to double Amarant's power in one fell swoop, like Bulk Up, Unleash Fury and Xenagos, God of Revels. As for aggressive keywords, Samut, the Tested and Genji Glove can give Amarant double strike and Invigorating Hot Spring, Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves can give Amarant haste.

We may be an aggro deck, but we still want to run a good amount of removal to deal with early blockers or any permanents that disrupt our game plan. Abrade and Suplex can both kill a small creature or artifact, Stump Stomp and Khalni Ambush can both deal with creatures via fighting while doubling as lands and Chaos Warp and Beast Within can both deal with any permanent. Because we're playing a voltron-style deck, we are also susceptible to blow-outs by removal or fogs, so we're also going to run some protection and anti-fog tech. Our protection spells all aim to keep Amarant on the board for one or two mana, with a few examples being Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Defend the Rider and Tyvar's Stand. We also have three answers to fogs: Insult // Injury, which can stop damage from being prevented and doubles damage dealt that turn, Bonecrusher Giant, which can kill a small creature and stops damage prevention with its Stomp adventure and Questing Beast, which hides the line saying "damage can't be prevented" among its wall of text.

Because Amarant deals regular combat damage and subsequently deals damage to each other opponent separately, it works very well with damage doublers like Dictate of the Twin Gods, Angrath's Marauders, The Sound of Drums and Gratuitous Violence. With just one of these cards in play, we theoretically only need to deal eleven damage to one player to win, as they'll take 22 and die to commander damage and the rest of the table will take 44 damage with Amarant's ability when THAT damage is doubled. Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar also essentially doubles the damage dealt to our opponents and, if all else fails, we can pump up Amaranth's power from our mana base using Kessig Wolf Run.

And that'll do it for now! Click here if you want to check out my full list (which happens to be under $100), and if you want to read about another Final Fantasy commander that'll kick your opponents' teeth in before turn 6, check out this article on Tifa Lockheart.