
Greetings gentle readers! For today's column I'm going to take what I expect to be one last dip into Bloomburrow to explore a popular commander that I only just put together this month. Today's legendary creature cares about Otters, instants and sorceries. Otter was a creature type I was ready to fall in love with from the jump, so this deck has to focus on them as much as possible. Before I get to my approach for the rest of the deck, let's look at our furry friend.
Brandon Ashcraft put together a great column last August exploring what an Otters precon might look like. It's led by Alania, Divergent Storm, and is well worth a read. You can check it out here (
https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/brandonashcraft-seo-08082024-the-lost-bloomburrow-precon-you-otter-be-kidding). My list shares Brandon's focus on Otters along with a few other spells, but has its own unique twist.
Alania will let me gift a card to an opponent when I cast my first Otter, Instant and/or Sorcery spell each turn. I'm going to load up on Otters, but my approach to Instants and Sorceries is where today's deck gets interesting.
At five mana, Alania isn't coming out early, so this deck is going to be aimed at mid-to-high powered play. I don't think my build will be able to hang at true high-powered tables, and it certainly won't be cEDH. My willingness to run every Otter I can get my hands on will also tamp down the power a little.
The Plan
Copying both an Instant and a Sorcery spell in the same turn is a powerful ability, and it's hard to overstate the amount of nonsense you can get up to with the right combination. My initial plan was to build this with a combination of high impact sorcery spells and a very specific set of instants.
My first draft had a few sorcery spells that I ended up taking out of the list because I just didn't enjoy how my tablemates felt when I played them. You might not care how anyone feels when you play against them, and it is just a game after all, but I do. I generally don't want to have anyone be too miserable when my deck "goes off", but I had to experiment a little before I got to a list I'd enjoy playing.
Temporal Mastery is in my current list, but I resisted the urge to play a ton of extra turn spells. It always feels a little rude when someone pulls into a bunch of extra turns, and getting copies of those spells could make it very easy to string together a bunch of turns in a row. My old Narset, Enlightened Master deck did that and while it was fun for me, it wasn't much fun for anyone else.
Maddening Cacophony is a spell I was able to play in this deck's first game. When kicked, this sorcery will have each opponent mill half of their library. If you copy it, that happens again. I ended up handing the game to a tablemate who was on a graveyard deck, and another tablemate had a "shuffle Titan" in their list, so they were barely affected at all. It's a feel-bad to suddenly have almost nothing left in your library. While it was fun to try, I didn't keep it in the list.
Tasha's Hideous Laughter is even nastier and punishes decks with a low mana curve particularly well. For three mana you'll have each opponent exile at least 20 mana worth of cards off the top of their library. With an extra copy, that will be 40 mana, which still isn't enough to outright win the game. It's just annoying, though the prospect of hitting combo pieces made me think about keeping it in.
While those three cards represent ideas that are hilarious and kind of nasty, I ended up going in a different direction with spells that would be a little less salt-inducing. It goes without saying that I'm running Mana Geyser and Jeska's Will, but there are a few other spells that work very nicely with Alania.
Stolen by the Fae is a Blue X spell that lets you return target creature with mana value of X to its owner's hand. You then create X 1/1 Blue Faerie creature tokens with flying. This will have you looking for creatures controlled by your opponents that have the same mana value, as you'll need both your original casting and your copy to have valid targets. Bouncing a couple of 4 mana creatures will give you eight 1/1 flyers for a modest six mana. That's not bad for a bounce spell, and there aren't a ton of flyers in this list so those Faerie tokens might come in handy.
Tokens are going to be a theme in this Alania brew, so Kindred Charge fits in nicely. This six-mana Red sorcery will have you choose a creature type and make a token of each creature you control of that type. If you have an assortment of creature types it won't do as much, but in that first game I was able to use Stolen by the Fae to make 8 Faerie tokens and then use Kindred Charge a turn later. The copy, which went on the stack first, gave me another eight tokens. Then the initial Kindred Charge resolved, seeing 16 Faeries and making another sixteen. I don't think they survived very long, but it was a fun play and made me wish I had Impact Tremors and Purphoros, God of the Forge in that first draft.
While I'm not going to want to have to recast Alania, Divergent Storm very often, there may be times where it's worth casting a spell that will have me putting her back in the command zone. Mogg Infestation is one of those spells. This will destroy all of target player's creatures and create two 1/1 Red Goblin creature tokens for each creature that died that way. If I've got eight creatures, I'll wind with sixteen, and if I'm able to copy it, I'll wind up with thirty two! They'll still die to an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or a very modest Toxic Deluge, but there will be times where my tablemates don't have an answer or I do actually have that Impact Tremors on the field.
My plan of playing really nasty sorceries turned into a plan to build an "Otters and Frens" deck with the goal of using token generating sorceries to build up a decent board of creatures. If you've been following my writing in recent years you'll know I've been moving towards lower powered play. I've still got Mana Geyser and Comet Storm in this list, but I haven't shared the wrinkle that takes it to the next level.
Is it Real or is it Memorex?
If Alania wants me to play spells that make copies, why not lean into the bit?
You may have noticed that my focus so far has been on copying sorcery spells. Don't worry - I haven't forgotten about instants. They are in fact an incredibly important part of this deck. You might think I'd want to lean into instants so I could get an Alania copy on my opponent's turns. I might still do that, but my instants are mostly focused on this deck's second theme.
I'm running Flare of Duplication, Fork, Insidious Will, Reiterate, Reverberate and Tempt with Mayhem as instant spells that can copy spells on the stack. Alania will let me make a copy of them if they are the first instant I've cast that turn, so the amount of nonsense this deck can get up to just went way up.
In that aforementioned first game, I did copy and cast Maddening Cacophony, but what I didn't tell you is that I also used Alaina and a Fork to add two more copies of it to the stack. The poor fellow who wasn't on a graveyard deck and didn't have a Shuffle Titan was left with five cards in his library.
This deck's goal isn't to copy a neat Sorcery spell. It wants to make three or more copies of a neat sorcery spell! Strionic Resonator and Twinning Staff both should help with that, and if I'm able to keep an Impact Tremors effect in play I should be able to threaten a win.
With a modest two creatures and an Impact Tremors in play, three extra copies of Mogg Infestation would end up doing 4 plus 8 plus 16 plus 32 for a total 60 damage!
I'm bullish on eventually winning games with Comet Storm and Mana Geyser, and I'm also looking forward to doing some crazy things with a kicked (and then copied) Rite of Replication someday. I'm also excited about seeing what kinds of spells I can copy on my opponents' turns.
There may be more efficient and more effective ways to win games in Izzet, and to win games with Alania, Divergent Storm, but I'm looking forward to seeing what this deck will be able to do.
Otters and Friends
One of the things I think I'm going to enjoy the most about this list is the opportunity to switch up which high impact sorcery spells I'm running. I got a chance to play a Maddening Cacophony kicked and copied three times. At some point I'm going to do the same or worse with Tasha's Hideous Laughter. I can only imagine the fun it will be to keep an eye out for sorcery spells in upcoming sets that might be amazing when copied three or more times. They might be token generating sorcery spells, but anything that deals in doubling or halving anything interesting will probably catch my eye.
I think this list weighs in well below high power. I'm not running key Blue staples like Rhystic Study and I'm very, very light on removal. I'm leaning into what the deck is trying to do, but I could see reworking it to have a ton of removal and a lot more counterspells if it struggles to compete at the tables I play at.
Alania EDH | Commander | Stephen Johnson
- Commander (1)
- 1 Alania, Divergent Storm
- Creatures (26)
- 1 Alania's Pathmaker
- 1 Archmage Emeritus
- 1 Archmage of Runes
- 1 Bria, Riptide Rogue
- 1 Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
- 1 Coruscation Mage
- 1 Daring Waverider
- 1 Eon Frolicker
- 1 Etali, Primal Storm
- 1 Frolicking Familiar
- 1 Goblin Electromancer
- 1 Harnesser of Storms
- 1 Kindlespark Duo
- 1 Lightshell Duo
- 1 Melek, Reforged Researcher
- 1 Mocking Sprite
- 1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
- 1 Rapid Augmenter
- 1 Scrawling Crawler
- 1 Sprite Dragon
- 1 Storm Skreelix
- 1 Stormcatch Mentor
- 1 Stormsplitter
- 1 Tempest Angler
- 1 Thieving Otter
- 1 Thundertrap Trainer
- Instants (9)
- 1 Comet Storm
- 1 Counterspell
- 1 Deflecting Swat
- 1 Flare of Duplication
- 1 Fork
- 1 Insidious Will
- 1 Mystical Tutor
- 1 Reiterate
- 1 Reverberate
- Sorceries (17)
- 1 Baral's Expertise
- 1 Deep Analysis
- 1 Dragon Fodder
- 1 Empty the Warrens
- 1 Expressive Iteration
- 1 Invoke the Firemind
- 1 Jeska's Will
- 1 Kindred Charge
- 1 Mass Mutiny
- 1 Mob Justice
- 1 Mogg Infestation
- 1 Pearl of Wisdom
- 1 Pirate's Pillage
- 1 Stolen by the Fae
- 1 Tasha's Hideous Laughter
- 1 Temporal Mastery
- 1 Ugin's Insight
- Enchantments (1)
- 1 Impact Tremors
If I wanted to make this deck even more casual I'd probably drop out some of the obvious combos like Mana Geyser and Reiterate, but I think this is already a fairly casual list. Dropping out Mystical Tutor would probably make sense, and adding more low mana draw spells would help you pull into all those cute otters.
To push up the power level you'd probably drop a bunch of those otters. I'm looking at you, Eon Frolicker. Extra turns would make sense, and Dramatic Reversal / Isochron Scepter combo would fit in nicely with Archmage Emeritus and Archmage of Runes to draw your deck and win. At 5 mana, Alania will be hard pressed to do enough at a cEDH table but I think you can definitely make her stronger than the list I've put together today.
Final Thoughts
I ended up playing this deck in two games, one in paper and one online, and it was a lot of fun. I didn't win either match, but in the second I was able to put lethal on the stack with an Invoke the Firemind, copied with Alania, and then copied twice with a Fork - gifting my last opponent two cards in the process. I had at some point drawn him into a Seht's Tiger, and he was able to flash it in, get protection from Red, and then kill me with an army of cats on his next turn.
The deck isn't super fast, but in a casual enough meta it should be able to win its fair share of games. If you're in a higher powered meta, there is absolutely room to tune it up. Alania has a higher ceiling than lots of decks I write about, and it's nice to know I'll be able to make upgrades if I feel like it isn't successful enough for my tastes.
This is one of those rare decks that I'm probably not going to be taking apart anytime soon. Most of my new decks don't stay together for all that long. In Alania's case I actually painted an otter themed Sol Ring for it, and I'm happy enough with how it came out that it's probably going to give the deck some staying power in my library.

I should mention that giving my tablemates cards has turned into one of my favorite things to do in EDH. I like helping someone who may have been missing land drops, and everyone has more fun when they are drawing cards at a good clip. I'm well aware that in higher powered games that can be a terrible game plan, but in casual games I like how it plays out. I also like that sometimes (not always) I'll get a little less aggro coming my way for my earlier generosity.
If you like otters, you like Izzet spell-slinger decks, or you just enjoy tracking prowess triggers, I hope today's column gave you a new look at this powerful Bloomburrow legend. That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!