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Winota, Joiner of Forces in Commander

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Gillis Van Coninxloo, Landscape with the Judgement of Paris (Early 17th c). Giant Spectacle by Johann Bodin.

I recently came across a deck built around Tana, the Bloodsower and Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa that was one of those "hidden commander" builds. For a long time, I had a "Tana and Sidar," or more correctly put, "Tana and Kondo" list. Sidar is a title, so while it's natural to want to call him "Sidar," his name is really Kondo of Jamuraa. I loved the deck and was interested in reading about a new take on those partners and was intrigued by the plan to take advantage of Winota, Joiner of Forces in the list. You can check that deck tech out here.

The deck is surely an upgrade on the version I used to run. I used to rely heavily on instant-speed interaction but was aiming for a more combat-oriented casual game than the blazing-fast or heavily interactive cEDH decks that tend to win games at a high rate. I didn't have nearly enough interaction and my plan was to swing a bunch of saprolings using Sidar Kondo to let them get past blocks and then to pump them all before damage.

I had been considering trying to brew up my own take on Winota, Joiner of Forces for a while. She's really interesting and seems to beg to be taken in a direction beyond just "heavy control and combo off." Winota is probably best in the 99 of a better deck - possibly the non-cEDH builds of Najeela, the Blade-Blossom - but I wanted to see if I could build an interesting and capable Boros deck with her at the helm.

Winota, Joiner of Forces

Tribal Instincts

My first thought was that I wanted to go tribal with this list and find a tribe that had both Humans and non-Humans in it. That basically means I wanted to go with an "occupation" theme.

Winota is a Warrior. It was tempting to just dial it in and build a Warriors deck, but there's simply no good reason to not just build Najeela. She's better, she can be built as a Boros build if I really want to hamstring myself, and Winota will fit into the 99 perfectly. Najeela's 1/1 White Warrior creature tokens aren't Human, so they'll enable Winota's game plan, but I really didn't want to build a "secret commander" deck. The extra hoops you have to go through to get your secret commander out, protect her and be able to recur her if she gets binned are headaches I didn't want to deal with.

My next thought was to build a soldier deck. There are plenty of soldiers in Red and White and there are lots of them that are non-Human or that simply aren't specified as being Human. My problem with Soldiers, other than not being that into soldiers in the first place, was that I didn't see any interesting synergy in that tribe that would work with Winota and what she was trying to do. I'm pretty sure there's an interesting Boros Soldiers deck to be built with Winota at the helm, but I didn't want to be constantly checking for which tokens were Human soldiers and which were just soldiers. If you're down with soldiers, I recommend digging into this, but it's just not my jam.

Another tribe that's never really been my "jam" before was a tribe that happens to have a pretty strong emphasis on enter-the-battlefield effects: Allies!

Not only are there a lot of interesting Allies that care about entering the battlefield, there also are few enough of them that I won't get a popsicle headache just thinking about how to whittle down the list of cards to a playable 35 or 40 creatures for this deck. There are hundreds of Red and/or White soldiers to pick through. There are just under 50 Allies available to us in Winota's colors.

I really don't know what I'm going to wind up with at the end of this, but today I'm going to explore Boros Ally Tribal with Winota.

Choosing My Allies

I'm not really sure why I'm so stuck on building around enter-the-battlefield effects for this list, but I have a sense that if this deck gets rolling it will be able to hit a critical mass of creatures entering each turn and will generate enough advantage that it will be able to win games, at least at casual and semi-competitive tables.

Looking through our 49 red and white Allies, we've got 27 that have ETB triggers. A quick review of those creatures shows me that an awful lot of them deal with giving keywords to your allies until end of turn. That's not nothing - Slivers get an awful lot of mileage out of sharing abilities. Allies aren't Slivers, but it still makes me think there's potential here.

It's worth mentioning that the more successful Ally decks in EDH happen to be combo decks. They do silly things with making infinitely large armies of wolves with Turntimber Ranger and Arcane Adaptation, but we don't have access to green or blue.

I won't recount every Ally that gives haste, trample, menace, first strike, double strike, lifelink or +1/+1 counters. They're a dime a dozen and while they might not be game-enders on their own, I'm hoping that we can reach a critical mass of keyword Allies if we wind up having to win the old fashioned way.

There are some Allies that have pretty good ETB triggers that are worth calling out.

Hero of Goma Fada
Murasa Pyromancer
Tuktuk Scrapper

One of the issues this deck will encounter is that it needs to attack with a non-Human creature to trigger Winota's ability to go get a Human. That Human will be indestructible until end of turn, but if your non-Humans get killed off in combat you could run out of non-Humans pretty fast. Hero of Goma Fada will make your team indestructible, so they should live through combat and be ready to go on your next turn. If you keep hitting Allies each time you attack, your army should keep growing.

Murasa Pyromancer will let you deal damage to target creature equal to the number of allies you control each time an Ally enters the battlefield under your control. That might not seem like much, but if you're swinging at the person with the fewest blockers and you want those precious non-Human creatures to survive combat, this will eventually make for a reliable way to pick off blockers.

Mana rocks are everywhere. It's hard not to imagine a board with no Sol Rings, Signets or other artifacts that tap to make mana. If your army is getting big, Tuktuk Scrapper can not only put some of your opponents' rocks in the bin, it can also deal out some decent damage. If you've got Tuktuk Scrapper and four other Allies attacking and your Winota triggers give you two Human Allies that hit the field, you'll get to blow up two artifacts (they don't have to be mana rocks) and you'll get to do six and then seven damage to those artifacts' controllers. This is sneaky good and there are always times when you desperately need to pop a Skullclamp, Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves on someone else's side of the field.

Kabira Evangel
Kor Entanglers
Ondu Cleric

Getting our non-Humans past blockers is definitely going to be a priority. This deck will want to attack, so it will be a good one for doing after those combo players that like to sit around, look unassuming, not build up much of a board and then combo off to win. Kabira Evangel and Kor Entanglers will help us get those key non-Humans through to do damage. The former will let us pick a color and our Allies will gain protection from that color until end of turn. The latter will let us tap down blockers. Ondu Cleric will help pad our life total, because attacking a lot will sometimes leave us open to attacks. The ability to add a little life might not seem like much, but it can add up over the course of a game.

Non-Humans

One of the things I realized as I was building this list was that Winota, Joiner of Forces does a great job at letting us squeeze extra value out of creatures that were already pretty good to begin with.

Solemn Simulacrum
Kor Cartographer
Burnished Hart

Both Solemn Simulacrum and Kor Cartographer let you go get a land when they enter the battlefield. Sad Robot also lets you draw a card when it dies, but with Winota on the field, they now also let us trigger her ability when they attack. Burnished Hart might not have an ETB trigger, but you can attack with it and trigger Winota until someone eventually decides to block with something that will kill it. If you've left 3 mana open, you then sacrifice it to get two basic lands before damage is dealt. I'm also running both Iron Myr and Gold Myr as they'll do good service as an early mana dork and then also work to trigger Winota if I choose to attack with them.

There are other non-Humans that made it into my list, and you'll soon see that I again took a left turn at Albequerque and got on board the train to Combotown.

Dockside Extortionist
Metallic Mimic
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

Dockside Extortionist is probably going to become a staple in any deck that runs Red - it's just that good in multiplayer EDH. This list might not be able to go infinite with Temur Sabertooth, but it can still generate needed ramp and attacking with him will trigger Winota. Metallic Mimic might be a Shapeshifter, but it does not have all creature types. I'll likely choose Ally when it enters the battlefield.

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker needs no introduction. This little Goblin was the key to opening up the other side of today's deck. I often build decks that have a Doctor Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde problem. I start with a fairly casual plan, find ways to add combo pieces that synergize with the overall plan of the deck and then build in the full combo because I play at tables where folks aren't shy about edging towards cEDH. Kiki-Jiki combos with a lot of other creatures. Some of them are non-Humans, like Felidar Guardian, Sparring Mummy and Restoration Angel, but the cards I think of when I think of Kiki combo are both Humans.

Humans

Kiki-Jiki loves two Humans in particular, and there's are also Humans I can run in this list that will happily let me go get Kiki-Jiki if he's missing in action.

Combat Celebrant
Zealous Conscripts
Moggcatcher

Combat Celebrant will let me launch an endless series of combat steps. Zealous Conscripts will let me build an arbitrarily large conscript army. Both Moggcatcher and Goblin Matron will let me go get Kiki-Jiki. I've also included Imperial Recruiter, as it can go get Kiki-Jiki, Felidar Guardian and more.

Godo, Bandit Warlord
Helm of the Host

When looking at combo options, it struck me that Godo, Bandit Warlord is also a Human, so it makes sense to run both it and Helm of the Host. Including Helm of the Host means it's a natural fit to run another Boros all-star, Aurelia, the Warleader. These combos are all about infinite combat steps, and Godo / Helm is powerful enough to have a cEDH deck built around it.

The Decklist

This might be the Boros deck I didn't realize I needed in my life. I've built Boros decks before but always found them to be underwhelming. The lack of ramp was frustrating and they never really felt like they could hang with the big boys. My favorite was probably Brion Stoutarm but it just played (or stole) big creatures and let me throw them at my opponents. My love of abilities that let me reveal cards from the top of my deck, like with Narset, Enlightened Master and Mayael the Anima, makes me think I'll probably really love Winota, Joiner of Forces.


The most likely shortcoming with this first draft is probably both draw and ramp, but it's a Boros deck so that comes with the territory. I expect when I build and play this I'll wind up cutting a few underperforming cards and adding more mana rocks and perhaps a Smothering Tithe. Good cards are good, or so I've been told.

A Foot in Both Camps

I love building these types of decks. I've got a casual deck with some really nasty combos built in. I'm not necessarily trying to end the game as quickly as possible, but for me it's really exciting when a deck can come together to do something really powerful.

What this means is that this list isn't truly a casual deck but it's also not truly a cEDH deck. I've got a foot in both camps and that means this list is positioned well to be able to be retooled into a casual Ally tribal list or tuned up into a proper fringe cEDH list.

If your meta is just not up for the occasional Godo / Helm or Kiki-Jiki combo win and you want to play a more casual version of this deck, it's not hard to make that change. Drop out the combo pieces, build in more mana rocks and allies and you should have a fantastic time at casual tables.

The idea of tuning this list up into a fringe cEDH deck might not just be the lunatic ravings of someone obsessed with making Boros great again - it's a very real possibility. You'd likely want to drop your Ally theme, play ways to spam out non-Human creatures and run both more tutors and probably more boardwipes and removal. The key to cEDH is to either out-race your opponents or to stop them from winning until you can land your own combo. The problem with Boros is that you don't have a lot of options for protecting the win, but they are there and if the Mono-Red Godo, Bandit Warlord / Helm of the Host list can be a legitimate cEDH deck, surely Winota can be tuned up to the point where she's a fringe cEDH list.

I'd bet anything that someone has already seen this build path and worked up a very competitive list for Winota. If you're aware of such a list, I'd love to hear about it. I likely won't build her that way myself. Just like I love my Goblin Warrior tribal Najeela deck, I expect I'll wind up building and enjoying my Winota, Joiner of Allies deck. I play with too many folks who don't appreciate super short games, so for me just it makes sense to keep a foot in both camps.

Final Thoughts

I started brainstorming this list with no idea that it would take a turn towards more competitive strategies, but I shouldn't be surprised. I love the casual game, but I also love those occasional surprises where things just come together and you're able to do crazy stuff or simply combo off.

Boros has long been considered one of the weakest color combinations in Commander. I don't know that Winota will change that on her own, but she is definitely a step in the right direction. Winota, Joiner of Forces stays true to her colors, cares about combat, and could lead a wide range of casual Commander decks. Warriors, Soldiers and Allies all seem like good fits and you could probably even take the Ruthless Regiment Commander 2020 deck and use it as a starting point to build Winota if you were willing to drop out all the cards and lands that aren't in Red and White.

I didn't really expect to come out of today's article excited to build this deck in paper, but I am currently missing a Boros deck in my Commander deck library. I think this is going to fill that slot nicely.

I've been playing my Niv-Mizzet Reborn five-color cycling deck and have been pleasantly surprised at how well it has done. It is very good at cycling, but with 55 cards in the list with that keyword that shouldn't come as a surprise. My Niv enter-the-battlefield 10-card flops are almost always disappointing, so that's something I may need to work on. It's been able to fly under the radar, push out damage with cards like Drannith Stinger and win games with cards like Zenith Flare. I still don't think this is more than a casual deck, but it's proven to be able to hang and play well at casual and semi-competitive tables. I'm looking forward to playing and retooling it in the weeks and months to come. I haven't yet landed the Happily Ever After wincon, but that card will stay in the list for a while before I give up on it.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!

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