There is a lot of fun to be had in this set. While the Kindred stuff is there - you can absolutely build a bonkers Kindred deck from cards from this set - I'm loving how they've seeded other directions.

Take today's Commander, for example.

Who is she?

A 4/4 Giant Warrior in ? That sounds like a Giant deck to me. We have Ancient Amphitheater, good ol' Brion Stoutarm, even Realm-Cloaked Giant and its non-Giant-affecting Wrath effect. There's 100% a rockin' Giant Kindred deck here.

But, in case you missed it, Bre's pseudo-Cascade effect doesn't care about Giants. It cares about how much life you gain. Anything like Cascade is worth exploring, and I think we can make this work.

Bre of Clan Stoutarm | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Bre of Clan Stoutarm

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Aerith Gainsborough
• 1 Aurelia, the Law Above
• 1 Balefire Liege
• 1 Curious Colossus
• 1 Elenda's Hierophant
• 1 Exemplar of Light
• 1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
• 1 Goliath Daydreamer
• 1 Guide of Souls
• 1 Haliya, Guided by Light
• 1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1 Hovel Hurler
• 1 Kirol, Attentive First-Year
• 1 Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1 Nykthos Paragon
• 1 Odric, Lunarch Marshal
• 1 Resplendent Angel
• 1 Rhox Faithmender
• 1 Serra Ascendant
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Suture Priest
• 1 The Gaffer
• 1 Voice of the Blessed
• 1 Wall of Reverence
• 1 Wild-Magic Sorcerer

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Quintorius Kand

• Instants (12)
• 1 Boros Charm
• 1 Deflecting Palm
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Heliod's Intervention
• 1 Legion Leadership
• 1 Lightning Helix
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Restoration Magic
• 1 Ride Down
• 1 Stroke of Midnight
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Wear // Tear

• Sorceries (4)
• 1 Austere Command
• 1 Fumigate
• 1 Realm-Cloaked Giant
• 1 Thrilling Discovery

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Authority of the Consuls
• 1 Cleric Class
• 1 Dawn of Hope
• 1 Leyline of Hope
• 1 True Conviction

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Cosmos Elixir
• 1 Cursed Mirror
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Pristine Talisman
• 1 Talisman of Conviction
• 1 The Wind Crystal
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Well of Lost Dreams

• Lands (40)
• 7 Mountain
• 10 Plains
• 1 Adventurer's Inn
• 1 Ancient Amphitheater
• 1 Battlefield Forge
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Furycalm Snarl
• 1 Glittering Massif
• 1 Kabira Crossroads
• 1 Minas Tirith
• 1 Radiant Fountain
• 1 Radiant Summit
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Rugged Prairie
• 1 Sacred Peaks
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Slayers' Stronghold
• 1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
• 1 Sunscorched Divide
• 1 Temple of Triumph
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 War Room
• 1 Wind-Scarred Crag

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Break It Down

Not going to lie, here - this deck is a hoot if you're looking for fun.

The basic gist is we're going to play out Bre and give something Flying and Lifelink, then we're going to start getting extra cards out of it. At the beginning, we'll likely just stick them in our Hand, but who cares? That's fine. One of the great things about Bre's ability is we don't have to cast the spell. We can just put it in our Hand. (That's great when you flip over a removal spell you don't want to cast right away!)

We're going to flood the board with tons of Creatures, many of which care about all the life we'll be gaining, and eventually we're going to bury people under an absurd board state. But first, the mana.

Mana

The Lands make sense for a deck like this. A good amount of fixing our colors, some Basics, and a few utility Lands like Rogue's Passage and Slayers' Stronghold should do the trick. The one thing to note is we have basically every Land we can which gains life when it enters, because that adds to our total when we hit our End Step. Every point matters, so these are worth the price of admission - which typically means they enter tapped.

One thing I don't like about four-mana Commanders is they really scream for two-mana ramp, and I much prefer three-mana ramp (three-mana ramp spells aren't "optimized" for speed, but they tend to be more valuable throughout the game because they have different abilities. Over the course of a game, I'd much rather have a Boros Locket than a Boros Signet).

But alas, here what we really want is to get Bre on turn three if possible, so we're loaded down with two-mana rocks. The three-mana ones we have are Commander's Sphere, Cursed Mirror, and Pristine Talisman, which is old-school but adds to our life gain total every turn so it's 100% worth it.

Draw

Bre does a good amount of the heavy lifting in terms of card advantage for us; we'll flip past Lands to something almost every turn because we have so much life gain, and we can always use her ability to send a Creature in and gain some life. That adds up to a free card every turn, which is quite something in a deck.

But! We also have Well of Lost Dreams and Dawn of Hope, which let us draw when we gain life. How great is The Gaffer here? Almost as good as Haliya, Guided by Light. Mangara, the Diplomat and Aurelia, the Law Above both give us good opportunities to draw some extra.

Exemplar of Light will get both huge and draw us an extra card every turn we gain life. We even have Thrilling Discovery, which sometimes will be a perfectly reasonable "gain 2", but sometimes will be a draw three!

Then we have our other ways. Quintorius Kand can -3 to Discover 4, though honestly the static ability is why we have this 'walker. Same reason we have Wild-Magic Sorcerer; if we cast a spell off of Bre's ability, we've cast it from Exile, and now it has Cascade! Awesome.

Threats

In play-testing, the way I won was with one of the Creatures that gets bigger when I gain life. An early Voice of the Blessed can get out of hand rather quickly. I had one game where I got Wall of Reverence out and was going into my end step having gained 14 life on turn eight.

I actually never got it out, but I imagine Nykthos Paragon will cause quite the chaotic board state for us, because we can gain a decent amount of life. Seven +1/+1 counters on every Creature we've got should be able to do some damage.

Answers

We get to run my favorite card of all time, too - Ride Down! I just adore the flavor of that one. Deflecting Palm is super fun as well, along with Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares and Generous Gift and the like. Fumigate seems good here, and Realm-Cloaked Giant will leave behind Bre and often another Creature or two.

Synergy

We have a little bit of a Soul Sisters mini-theme here, even though we're not running them all. Authority of the Consuls and Cleric Class, along with Suture Priest, seemed like the best choices, and we really don't need a million of these. I'd rather have space for True Conviction (which, by the way, is another way to win the game, I'd think).

Goliath Daydreamer is a bit strange but great fun. It's only 16 total cards for us, but we can then cast that removal spell every time we attack with the Daydreamer, so even if we only get a single extra cast of Stroke of Midnight, that seems worth it.

Final Thoughts

I left out Celestine, the Living Saint mostly for budgetary reasons, but the truth is it would be quite strong. I also left out Test of Endurance, Felidar Sovereign, and Aetherflux Reservoir, because they frankly felt too easy. That said, if you want to punch up this deck a bit, run the Test and a way or two to search for it and you'll have moved this deck from Bracket 2 up to Bracket 3 in a hurry.

I knew going into this one it would be fun, but I'm honestly stunned at just how much fun this deck is to play. It gets out of hand quickly but never feels wildly unfair, and should play nicely at Bracket 2 tables. It won't always win but it will surely make its presence known in every game, and someone will get hit by a huge flying lifelinker and grumble about it while you tick your life total into three digits.

Thanks for reading.