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Convertible Commander: Saskia the Unyielding

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My buddy Cameron issued me a challenge the other day: “Make a deck with no more than five rares or mythics, not including the commander.”

Challenge accepted.

Saskia the Unyielding ? Commander | Mark Wischkaemper


Saskia the Unyielding
Saskia the Unyielding is one of the four-color commanders from Commander 2016 we don’t see all that often anymore. Her ability is a little strange, and calls for an offensive deck. You’re pretty much guaranteed to make an enemy immediately. However, she has some value. One of the biggest problems for decks which win in the red zone is the pillowfort deck — someone who sits behind a pile of Propaganda effects and doesn’t let us land our attacks. Here, we can name the pillowfort player and attack someone else, taking down the person we’re hitting and the coward at the same time.

Saskia also seems to want to do one of two things: go big or go wide. Going big would probably look something like a Xenagos, God of Revels deck, running that very card and figuring out ways to make a single creature gigantic and evasive. The problem here is, that kind of deck is going to want to be chock-full of rares. Dragons, angels, and beasts most often carry a gold or orange set symbol, and we’d want to do things like slam Dragonlord Atarka or Avacyn, Angel of Hope, give it Double Strike, and turn it sideways.

Going wide, on the other hand, means making a bunch of little tokens and not worrying so much if they die, because they’re replaceable. For us, this is better, because Lingering Souls and Cenn's Enlistment are uncommon. We can make a bunch of tokens and leverage our rares carefully to give us more power.

Kodama's Reach
We’ll run our 40 lands, and it’s nice we’ve got enough common and uncommon lands to fix a four-color mana base without dipping into our rare pool. Plenty of basic lands means Kodama's Reach and Cultivate will help us, and we can run Gatecreeper Vine plus the on-color guildgates to get the colors we need. Sol Ring doesn’t help with Saskia herself, but Commander's Sphere and Darksteel Ingot do, plus Fellwar Stone is pretty certain to give us multiple colors (frankly, if you’re the only one in a pod with nothing but Mono-Blue players, probably don’t play that game!).

We’re mostly going to be off the top when it comes to draw, but Harmonize will give us a few more cards. The thing is, tokens and mana ramp are virtual card advantage, so even though we don’t necessarily draw a bunch, we’re getting extra stuff for our cards — four tokens off a single Lingering Souls means we’ve sort of drawn three extra cards.

So let’s make those tokens go to work. The vast majority of our creatures make us tokens; some like Cloudgoat Ranger and Brood Monitor make three. Sporemound makes one each time we put a land on the battlefield. Kathari Bomber will make four over its lifetime. Sprout Swarm only makes one, but we can buy it back and do it again, which is invaluable. Goblin Offensive is our only x spell, but it’s a doozy if we hit it for a bunch, especially with a Fires of Yavimaya on the battlefield.

Assemble the Legion
Seed Spark is kind of cool. We can Disenchant a thing, but if we pay g as part of the cost, we make a token. Sundering Growth is similar, except it Populates instead of making one out of nowhere. Trostani's Judgment seems like a lot to pay for a kill spell, but we should have plenty of mana and it’s worth it for the extra token. Death Mutation is really expensive, but what happens when we hit someone’s Terastodon? Morbid Bloom can solve a problem while leaving us with even more little dudes, and Oblivion Ring is a catch-all. It doesn’t make us any tokens, but sometimes we just need to get rid of a Karn Liberated, y’know?

Acrobatic Maneuver and Cloudshift are the only two Flicker effects we’ve got, but that’s probably the right number. We don’t want Saskia to have to die and be recast in order to reset her target, so we can flicker her and pick a new player, hopefully because the first one is dead. In a pinch, that can save something important or remake a Ponyback Brigade for three more tokens, which could make the difference.

Our five rares are specific. Assemble the Legion gets out of hand pretty quickly and is worth the slot, as is Mimic Vat. We’ve got so many creatures which drop tokens when they enter the battlefield, the Vat can make sure we’re really cranking them out, plus it helps us when the board inevitably gets blown up. Cathars' Crusade can make our tokens huge; they all get big when we make four creatures at once. Gratuitous Violence works really well with Saskia. If we have a token do one damage to a player, it does two. But then that creature did two, so Saskia has it do equal damage to your chosen opponent, and Gratuitous Violence doubles it to do four damage. That can add up when four or five tokens get through. True Conviction also doubles our damage, plus the lifelink is helpful. Juniper Order Ranger is a mini Cathars' Crusade in an uncommon shell.

If making a deck with minimal rares isn’t for you, it’d be easy to pump this up. Any token-making Planeswalker — Elspeths of all shades, Garruks, Ajanis, even Xenagos, the Reveler — would be excellent. Beastmaster Ascension and Craterhoof Behemoth are always good in token shells. Anthems, too, might be worth it; certainly Marshal's Anthem is worthwhile for the value.

Convertible Commander is pretty specific. We offer a small amount of cards to swap in so we can change the feel and style of the deck. Today we’re breaking that mold; forget a small amount of cards. It’s a whole new deck.

Saskia V2 ? Commander | Mark Wischkaemper


Gratuitous Violence
We change over to a straight-up Infect strategy here. And we’ve changed our restriction: we use more rares and mythics, but these cards all have one focus: get poison damage through. Saskia means we can kill two opponents at once; once we’ve dealt 10 poison total, our chosen player is just dead. We’ve got a bunch of Infect creatures, we’ve got tricks to pump them, we’ve got ways to sneak them through, and we’ve got cards which let us hit them without actually hitting them (Soul's Fire, for example, makes a Vines of Vastwood-charged Shriek Raptor do six poison for 3 mana. That’s a thing, even if it’s not combat damage to trigger Saskia). We reduce the land count by two because of low cost creatures; otherwise the lands mostly port over, though we drop a couple of token makers for Inkmoth Nexus and Kessig Wolf Run. Mimic Vat comes along as well, because Putrefax on Mimic Vat is living the dream. Gratuitous Violence is too sweet to leave behind.

Spinebiter is an all-star here; buff that guy a couple times and two players are just out of the game. Spirit-en-Dal can give Shadow to your creature, if you remember that Forecast must be declared during upkeep, and note that Emerge Unscathed’s Rebound occurs at the beginning of your upkeep. But beware — poison tends to make people grumpy – and with Sasika, maybe twice as grumpy. Play at your own risk.

Restrictions breed creativity. Commander is about demonstrating who you are in deck form. Sometimes that means building something which wins, but other times it’s about doing something else. This deck deliberately eschews some obvious strategies – like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death to resurrect your small Infect critters – so your only attacking creatures will deal Infect damage. Try building a deck with a serious restriction sometime, and see what you can do. It’s fun, and it makes you a better player with more knowledge of the game.

In the meantime, have fun going wide with Saskia – or just spreading the sickness.


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