Readers,

You should know by now that I'm not opposed to shelving like 3/4 of a perfectly good article if an idea I'd like to address more comes along and I am writing this within a few hours of finding out that the Commander Rules Committee announced that your commander dying and going to the command zone is no longer treated like a replacement effect! The announcement is sort of a long one, but the relevant part is here -

What does this mean? This won't affect every commander, but there were quite a few, such as Kokusho, the Evening Star, Elenda, the Dusk Rose, and Child of Alara, that were significantly weakened by the prior ruling. When one of those commanders died, you could only trigger their "when this creature dies" ability if you literally placed the card in the graveyard. If you sent it to the command zone instead, like you're allowed to do with your commander, you didn't get that ability to trigger. Since it works better, now, I'm inspired to brew around it. Specifically, I want to take a second look at Child of Alara because being able to blow up a lot of permanents a lot of times can get annoying, but if it clears the way for you to win, more power to you. However, if blowing up everything sets you up to CHEAT... even better. Here's how I plan to cheat.

If you're a long-time reader of this column, you're well aware that I love Enchantments. They do a thing more than once but you only need to pay the mana cost once. I think that's pretty nifty. Enchantments can help you draw cards, make mana, protect your permanents and even generate creatures to help you win. I initially thought I wouldn't want to run too many enchantments with Child of Alara because Child, you know, blows all of them up, but I soon realized that I should take a look at my favorite Enchantment-laden deck first to see how it would have functioned if I had been allowed to play Child of Alara in it. My Estrid Enbantress deck has a lot of Enchantments and while it has its own win conditions, it much prefers to steal opponents' creatures and use them to win the game. So I don't just scoop to Cleanfall et al, I included lots of ways to get Enchantments back from the Graveyard. Hall of Heliod's Generosity, Starfield of Nyx, and Hanna, Ship's Navigator can all get blown up enchantments back, mitigating the damage Child of Alara does to you. However, I am inpatient and Replenish, Open the Vaults, Second Sunrise, and Dance of the Manse all appeal to me. In my Estrid deck, I try to get Estrid's Ultimate going as quickly as possible to mill myself and bring back everything and get triggers, get new targets for my auras and avoid paying the mana costs on those enchantments. Using Estrid and Replenish effects to cheat a bunch of Enchantments into play is a blast and it got me thinking that jamming the maximum number of Replenishes would mean that I could cheat harder AND mitigate the damage Child of Alara did to me.

With the lessons from my favorite Enchantment-themed deck in the forefront of my mind, I got to thinking about what I'd like to in a Child of Alara shell. Clearly, if stealing some permanents with my Estrid deck is cool, stealing way more is way better. Not only can I Replenish both Control Magic effects I have used and were destroyed but also ones I milled, I can increase the impact of my stealing their creatures because I just wrathed them with my commander in some cases and they have very few creatures. The deck can play Rise of the Dark Realms to maximize the value we get from blowing up their boards, but a Replenish for a raft of Animate Dead effects can be just as effective. When they get too many creatures out, we blow the board up and start again, knowing we can put a large portion of our graveyard into play instantly.

Enchantments aren't a liability in a world with Child of Alara going off 2 or 3 times a game, they're a great asset and we're going to cheat hard and often with a deck designed to help us recover. Adding two more colors to the mix means the deck can do things Estrid can't, like play Animate Dead effects, use creatures like Golos to fetch our Serra's Sanctum and Hall of Heliod's Generosity, and we can attack with our commander if we need to, which isn't that ridiculous given Child's size, the fact that it has Trample and the fact that we don't care if it dies.

This deck is going to have lots of non-Enchantments in it, too, including some creatures - there's no reason to restrict ourselves too much, but it's going to benefit most from a big Replenish so we'll want to minimize the amount of cards that impede us in that goal. Snapcaster to re-buy Replenish is good, and with a few more creatures of our own, we can not only enhance our Enchantment strategies, we can function as a bit of a Reanimator deck early and when the creatures die and the Animate Dead effects fall off, we can re-use them to take bigger, better creatures, or bring back our own that just died to a Child's tantrum. This is going to be a lot of fun so let's get to the deck already.

Sweet Child of MINE! | Commander | Jasont Alt

• Commande (1)
• 1 Child of Alara

• Creatures (14)
• 1 Athreos, Shroud-Veiled
• 1 Dockside Extortionist
• 1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
• 1 Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
• 1 Hanna, Ship's Navigator
• 1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
• 1 Kenrith, the Returned King
• 1 Muldrotha, The Gravetide
• 1 Nylea, Keen-Eyed
• 1 Phenax, God of Deception
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Snapcaster Mage
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 World Shaper

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1 Estrid, The Masked
• 1 Lord Windgrace

• Instants (5)
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Growth Spiral
• 1 Realms Uncharted
• 1 Second Sunrise

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Circuitous Route
• 1 Dance of the Manse
• 1 Explore
• 1 Hour of Promise
• 1 Insurrection
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Open the Vaults
• 1 Replenish
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Splendid Reclamation
• 1 Sylvan Scrying
• 1 Tempt with Discovery

• Enchantments (19)
• 1 Animate Dead
• 1 Burgeoning
• 1 Chamber of Manipulation
• 1 Confiscate
• 1 Control Magic
• 1 Dance of the Dead
• 1 Deadbridge Chant
• 1 Death's Oasis
• 1 Exploration
• 1 Gift of Immortality
• 1 Journey to Eternity
• 1 Mind's Dilation
• 1 Necromancy
• 1 Omniscience
• 1 Pattern of Rebirth
• 1 Starfield of Nyx
• 1 Trade Routes
• 1 Treachery
• 1 Underworld Breach

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (43)
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Island
• 5 Forest
• 1 Azorius Guildgate
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Boros Guildgate
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dimir Guildgate
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Gateway Plaza
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Golgari Guildgate
• 1 Gruul Guildgate
• 1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Indatha Triome
• 1 Izzet Guildgate
• 1 Ketria Triome
• 1 Maze's End
• 1 Orzhov Guildgate
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Raugrin Triome
• 1 Rakdos Guildgate
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Savai Triome
• 1 Selesnya Guildgate
• 1 Serra's Sanctum
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Zagoth Triome

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This is a lot more lands than I'm used to running and I may want a few more cards that interact with lands, but I am happy with how this looks. Let's dive in, shall we?

Maybe it's boring, but I'm running Maze's End. It's a way to win the game, it rewards you for using bad cards and it also encourages me to run good cards to get those lands and also encourages me to use those good cards as toolbox cards rather than second copies of cards. If you need Guildgates for your Maze's End plan, are you getting Serra's Sanctum 100% of the time with Expedition Map? Maybe not. I find if I want to always find the same cards with a tutor, I should not play the tutor since it makes the deck linear to have one card twice as often, but I dig a toolbox card and we have a lot of those here, which is good because Maze's End is tricky to win with.

I could run more and/or different gods. It was really tough to pick the right ones, but I like having Indestructible creatures in a deck like this. Also, you can Replenish them back in which is an added bonus. They're all sick in a deck like this and milling yourself with Phenax can help you dig for good stuff.

This has elements of both Enchantress and Reanimator decks as well as Lord Windgrace type landfall decks. I think it does everything well enough and I think the good cards overlap. If you jam a few games and something is interfering with your ability to do something else in a way that I can't foresee staring at the deck in 2 dimensions, I would err on the side of picking the thing you want to do and focusing on it rather than trying to balance it all. There is a lot going on here but it's all fun, so build what is the most fun to you. Personally, I want to Replenish early and often because paying the full mana amount on Omniscience or Deadbridge Chant is for suckers.

I may need more card draw. I recommend Mystic Remora on top of Rhystic Study. You can bring binned Enchantments back so why not play something with Cumulative Upkeep? People almost never can pay the four and Remora draws a ton of cards every game, and playing it 2 or 3 times is even more impactful.

What do we think? Does this deck bounce back from a Child of Alara wrath or will we hurt ourselves too badly to get established? Is this just Estrid with extra steps? Let me know in the comment section. This change was a good one for Magic and it has me re-considering a card like Child of Alara and how its drawback can work for us. I look forward to more positive changes in the future. Until next time!