Are you ready for another Random Commander? I hope so! It's just so much fun to head over to Gatherer and challenge yourself to an unknown Commander. What will you get randomly? No idea! And that's the fun of it!

Here, I'll show you!

I'm feeling up for another random Commander challenge. As a reminder, for this challenge, I head over to Gatherer and then I hit random button until they give me a legal leader. As long as I haven't already built a deck a round that leader, then I'll do so for you now. No matter how janky it is! Or how commonly abused it is. Ready?

Random gatherer time!

Here's my first card. It's not legal as a leader, but it's a powerful card in many an environment.

Hello Chalice of the Void. Aren't you looking fun? I think so!

What's next?

Does my deck seek an artifact theme? Or a cascade one? This was my next card. The next few include Dromar's Cavern, Ogre Taskmaster, and Harbinger of the Tides. Then we see Whip Silk, Treetop Rangers, and Anointed Procession. And then I spy it! My first legal leader:

It's Bosh! And ironically, it's actually is in an artifact theme! However, bad news, Bosh fans...I have a budget Bosh deck-build for you already! You can check it out here.

I head back to Gatherer and unearth forgotten 1-drop classics such as Phantasmal Bear and Wasteland Viper. There's Sengir Vampire! Here's Concordant Crossroads! Casual all stars like Coat of Arms and Butcher of Malakir head on. And then this awesome reminder of some forgotten art!

I wish that rk post's Archangel was better known - that thing is awesome. It's my 34th card!

Fewer than 10 cards later, Teshar arrives, and there is my build challenge. I'm building a Teshar deck!

So here is how I am going to approach this deck:

1. I'll need enough historic cards to trigger Teshar's cast trigger. Anything from artifacts to legendary dorks will have value to me.
2. I'll need cheap enough dorks to reliably bring them back. They'll need to have a casting cost of three or fewer to work.

Now I have a few ideas already:

Here are a few creatures that jumped into my mind that will count for both!

The first two are strong at sacrificing for lands, so they can both trigger Teshar's reanimation, or go to your graveyard to be reanimated - either way works. As they fetch two lands each time, they will quickly ramp you to the point that you'll be able to cast your deck reliably. Meanwhile, I adore Kirtar. I love that he'll sacrifice to exile an attacking dork, and as long as you sit on two mana, he'll keep folks back from attacking. I love him as a Commander and have played him as a leader on more than one Mono-White build as his cheap cost and flexible sacrifice will help reliably re-cast him with Commander tax. As Teshar is an Aven too, I wanted to bring in a fellow Aven.

Speaking of which, allow me to bring in one of my favorite dorks of all time!

I cannot regale you with how amazing Eesha is. Her protection from dorks makes her an ideal blocker of things in the sky (or on the ground) and she can punch through any defense as well. I adore Eesha.

I began to look for fun cards to toss around my Teshar engine:

Much like many of the cards above, the Gnomes and Secretary are cheap enough to recur, will count as historic when you cast them, and have useful self-sacrifice triggers - especially the Secretary that draws you cards so you can keep on trucking.

Now, before I dig down too deeply, did you notice a card from Modern Horizons that's perfect for my build?

Vesperlark says, "Hello!" three mana to recur itself later? Sure! An easy way to get it to the battlefield via evoke? Yup! And a free recursion of a 1-powered dork like Bottle Gnomes or Wild-Field Scarecrow? Yup! Welcome!

While on a Modern Horizons conversation, there are two other White cards that I'll be adding as well - Giver of Runes and Generous Gift. Each is a strong addition with a powerful established history of value in Commander, and I'll be adding in Mother to go with the Givers as well.

These are all great! All five of these help add in bodies that can self-sacrifice for value triggers, and will love to return to the battlefield with Teshar triggers for more sacrificing fun! In particular, I enjoy the Retainers here as they play into our reanimation and legendary theme quite nicely! Dauntless Bodyguard is here to make Teshar indestructible when needed to keep him alive, by the by.

Next, I look for some historical matters cards to twin with Teshar.

While some, such as Thran Temporal Gateway, are relatively obvious, this is not. But I love it! It's something you can use just as Teshar is, to tap things down as you cast historic stuff. It's also recur-able with your Teshar if you need to bring it back post-death.

I am not running any Sagas, so I have chosen to exclude all enchantments so I can run Nova Cleric. Goodbye enchantments.

What about backup recursion? Obviously in any Mono-White build where you have a big number of smaller bodies, Sun Titan is a must include. But what else slides in?

Because it can attack for a Teshar trigger, Bishop of Rebirth feels very strong in this build. It's also a baby Sun Titan as well. Devoted Crop-Mate can attack and return if you exert it, which may not be as useful, but there are still loads of tasty targets to recur. Emeria can also grab dorks for the battlefield as you rack up enough Plains. Given the amount of reanimation this deck brings to the table...

Isn't this an obvious place to test out Desecrated Tomb? I agree! Let's give it a whirl! Also, while on a token-making conversation with the key component of the deck, let's also toss in Oketra's Monument as well! I have more than 30 White creatures in here to reduce the cost too.

I also have a few tricks in here as well, like Erratic Portal to self-bounce so I can reload my Teshar by self-bouncing a legendary or artifact dork to my hand and then recasting it. Another beneficiary of said trick is the Monument, as is Bygone Bishop. Both of these add some useful treats and tricks into the deck for your consideration.

Now I also have two cards in here that might surprise you, so let's unpack them for you:

At first, you may be wondering why are these two here? The Martyred Rusalka isn't that powerful here, and this deck won't need or use the Altar's mana. Great question! They are not here for their triggers, although that's useful. They are here to protect your creatures from exiling removal. Given how much recursion we need to run to keep up with the Joneses, and the limited size of our dorks, we have to keep them from a sweeping removal spell that will exile our stuff or a Path to Exile pointed at our Sun Titan or another key creature. These sacrifice effects will keep them in the graveyard, safe for recursion. They also add to our sacrifice option, so you can sacrifice something to them to recur it.

There are not many Mono-White planeswalkers that I could run that'd make sense in our deck, but Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants is certainly one of them. Of course, he's mostly here for his -2, so you can recur a dead dork that doesn't cost a full three mana. However, his +1 is good to work with as well. Another useful entrant is Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and his token making, body swinging, and emblem pumping three-shot, all of which work here. I really enjoy the -4 out of the gate here. My final 'walker entrant is the Sun's Champion as she sweeps most of my foe's dorks as well as creates a triad of token terror for your battlefield.

All right, my deck is done. Let's take a look!

Teshar's Circle of Life | Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle

• Creatures (43)
• 1 Auriok Champion
• 1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
• 1 Baird, Steward of Argive
• 1 Bishop of Rebirth
• 1 Bottle Gnomes
• 1 Bounty Agent
• 1 Brass Secretary
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Bygone Bishop
• 1 Commander Eesha
• 1 D'Avenant Trapper
• 1 Daring Archaeologist
• 1 Dauntless Bodyguard
• 1 Devoted Crop-Mate
• 1 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
• 1 Giver of Runes
• 1 God-Eternal Oketra
• 1 Heliod, God of the Sun
• 1 Jhoira's Familiar
• 1 Karmic Guide
• 1 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
• 1 Lieutenant Kirtar
• 1 Loyal Retainers
• 1 Martyred Rusalka
• 1 Masako the Humorless
• 1 Mentor of the Meek
• 1 Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker
• 1 Militia Bugler
• 1 Mother of Runes
• 1 Nova Cleric
• 1 Oketra the True
• 1 Recruiter of the Guard
• 1 Remorseful Cleric
• 1 Reveillark
• 1 Selfless Spirit
• 1 Stoneforge Mystic
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Thalia's Lancers
• 1 Trusty Packbeast
• 1 Vesperlark
• 1 Whitemane Lion
• 1 Wild-Field Scarecrow
• 1 Yosei, the Morning Star

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

• Instants (2)
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Teferi's Protection

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Board the Weatherlight
• 1 Dusk // Dawn
• 1 Fell the Mighty

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Carnage Altar
• 1 Champion's Helm
• 1 Desecrated Tomb
• 1 Erratic Portal
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Marble Diamond
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Smuggler's Copter
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Urza's Tome
• 1 Oketra's Monument
• 1 Thran Temporal Gateway
• 1 Weatherlight

• Lands (34)
• 27 Plains
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
• 1 High Market
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Kor Haven
• 1 Miren, the Moaning Well
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

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And there we are! From my sole enchantment having indestructible (Heliod, God of the Sun) to obvious recursive cards like Reveillark the deck is fleshed out. I also have a number of strong options such as the self-bounce of Whitemane Lion, the enters-the-battlefield triggers of Trusty Packbeat and Recruiter of the Guard, and sacrifice stuff like High Market, I'm sure you can see a deck with a good amount of synergy here for your consideration.

Anything in there that triggered your deck-building radar? Anything I missed? Just let me know!

Random Commander Appendix

Did you like this random challenge? Want to see more? Of course, you do! After all, you've always struck me as a person of taste.