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Convertible Commander: Athreos, God of Passage

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So last week, my buddy James (who made that awesome poster below) wrote me. “I have an idea for your next Convertible Commander,” he said.

“Check it out!”

Athreos, God of Passage ? Commander| Mark Wischkaemper


Athreos, God of Passage
It’s a tricky deck style, and not one I would ever design — James is very creative, and his decks are reliably synergistic in ways I don’t normally use. However, I’ve changed a few cards from his decklist. Most of them were for price; Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is really expensive. One nice thing about this deck is the pieces are malleable. If finding a specific card is challenging, there are plenty of options to replace it.

At its heart, this deck is a clever control deck. The various pieces come together to create a board state difficult to manage while giving opponents a series of hard choices. With Athreos, our indestructible commander, on the battlefield, every creature of ours which dies gets returned to our hand . . .  unless one of our opponents pays three life. That may not seem like much, but having played against this deck several times, I can attest it can add up quickly.

We’re going to play several Wrath of God style effects. Crux of Fate, Phyrexian Rebirth, Tragic Arrogance, they all destroy all the creatures. Using them is great fun, because we then get to look at our opponents and ask “do you want to pay three life . . .  for each of my creatures?” Do keep in mind that Merciless Eviction, Descend upon the Sinful, and Black Sun's Zenith will all get rid of an online Athreos, so it might be worth it to try to get devotion below seven before firing off one of those.

Westvale Abbey
We also use creatures to help us. Look at High Priest of Penance. He can make it awfully threatening to attack us. An opponent can attack, sure, but it’ll cost them a permanent and three life, or we’ll just replay our dude. With Edgewalker out too, the High Priest is free! Rotlung Reanimator is fun too, since most of our creatures are clerics. We get attacked, we block with our guys, they die, we get free zombies and they have to pay three life for each or we get them all back.

We’ve got a few ways to win, but we have to stay alive for a while to get there. Westvale Abbey is definitely flipable (along with getting our creatures back or costing our opponents 15 life). Dark Supplicant (and a couple of friends) can search for Scion of Darkness, who does a pretty good Sun Titan imitation while beating people up. Skirsdag High Priest can get out of hand pretty quickly, and combined with Soul of New Phyrexia, it’ll really get nasty.

This deck is subtle and takes a lot of thought, and maybe some diplomacy, to make it work. The key to play is looking at the pieces drawn and figuring out how to survive with them. There are a number of fun interactions in this deck, and the cards drawn will dictate how they work out. Play out Athreos and go to town.

Then we’ve got our optionboard. We’re going to take our cheeky, challenging control deck and turn it into a cleric tribal build.

This is a larger board than normal, but we’ve got a number of changes to make. We can take out all of the wrath effects. Additionally, we can pull Magister of Worth, Matter Reshaper, Underworld Coinsmith, Fanatical Devotion, Dictate of Erebos, Butcher of Malakir, Field of Souls, Fallen Ideal, Ashnod's Altar, and a Plains (for Windbrisk Heights. As James puts it, we’ll actually be attacking!).

We’re also going to switch commanders. In fact, we’ll move Athreos into the 98 and promote Ravos, Soultender and Tymna the Weaver to serve as our partner commanders.

Ravos, Soultender
Tymna the Weaver

We drop in some targeted removal to deal with specific problems, rather than the mass removal we had before. We won’t be able to get our stuff back quite as easily as with Athreos, but Ravos will get them back slowly. We can also use Treasury Thrull or Sun Titan to get most of our stuff back. Coat of Arms will buff up our clerics to huge levels with just a few of them on the ‘field. Cathars' Crusade, also, can buff them up pretty fast. Faith's Reward is a nice response to someone else’s wrath effect. Profane Prayers is even a nifty, cleric-specific kill spell!

Archangel of Thune
There are some additional cards worth considering here. Elesh Norn, from James’s build, would be bonkers good in both versions. Archangel of Thune would probably be worth running. Transcendent Master is a good card here. Weathered Wayfarer is a solid inclusion almost whenever it can be run, but especially good here because it can hunt down that Westvale Abbey. Grave Pact is the classic and worth having in the build. Deathbringer Liege would be wonderful in the optionboard.

This article is a bit different from how I normally do things. I tend to go through card by card and talk about specific inclusions. In this case, though, I’m leaving a lot more to your analysis of the deck. What did you think of this? I try to accommodate newer players with my columns, who might be helped by a better discussion of mana, answers and threats and might get lost with an article like this. I assume experienced players will just skip over the parts they don’t really need. Do you prefer a “deck list and get out of the way” approach, or do you prefer when I get into a deeper analysis? Please let me know in the comments! This is a good opportunity to let me know what you like, because it can help guide these columns.

This deck is a player’s deck. It’s challenging and clever, requiring a nimble approach to the game, because each hand will be different but can probably be used to leverage an advantage. When you want to take it down a notch, switch to the cleric build and suddenly it’s much more straightforward to play. It’s also nicely updateable; as new clerics become available in new sets, they can swap in just to try new things.

Now get out there and try something new.

Cost of main deck: $98.46

Cost of optionboard: $21.22

Total cost of both: $119.68


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