Readers!

Last week I alluded to the fact that it was funny to me that Wizards made a (very) playable Unicorn and I'm glad I let my thoughts percolate for a week. Emiel seemed on its face like a very strong card to me right away but it took me some time to do anything at all original with the card. Emiel can generate infinite colorless mana fairly easily with cards like Workhorse and Brood Warden and then turn Acidic Slime into a game-ending Slime Tsunami or bury them in value with other cards like Solemn Simulacrum. Emiel makes players go looking for other Unicorn cards in Scryfall, come across Good-Fortune Unicorn, remember Persist creatures exist and brew that way. Emiel is a value machine and a Selesnya deck will need a lot of value to beat decks that draw a ton of cards, kill a ton of creatures and deal a ton of damage easily. On top of that, I'd ideally like to do something at least somewhat original with Emiel, otherwise why even have a column?

Emiel is easy to build as a slow, mana-hungry, grindy advantage engine that rolls over people by blinking Wood Elves until the opponent concedes and goes to take a nap. Value is great and it helps us get the cards we need to win, but what ARE the cards we need to win in Selesnya? Blinking Avenger of Zendikar a bunch seems cute but it's also easy to see coming, easy to interact with and sort of samey. I have a lot of decks where I do that. To compete with unfair decks, which you'll need to be able to do if you're building a 75% deck, you'll want to do something unfair. My approach was going to be to use cards like Dueling Grounds and Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist to keep the early game from getting away from you if you happen to get focused by a lot of hate. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that would make the game miserable for everyone.

One way to build a 75% deck is to focus on what I am going to call "soft Stax" cards like Blind Obedience. You keep someone who got off to a really fast start a bit in check because everyone has a turn to play blockers for haste creatures, it keeps them from doing an early Splinter Twin type of win and Blind Obedience does a lot of work in a game with multiple opponents if you Extort a few times. Making their permanents come into play tapped is an approach I think I want to take with Emiel, but cards like Dueling Grounds are quite a bit different. Slowing someone down who plays a lot of hasty creatures and is very aggressive to give the table a chance to catch up or to be punished less for playing ramp early rather than creatures is a good thing, grinding the entire game to a screeching halt as everyone is forced to pick one creature to attack with just gums up the board. An approach like that makes our creatures way worse because one way Selesnya can get the upper hand is through generating a lot of tokens and that removes our ability to play to our strengths. If I did decide to basically eliminate combat, I would hurting myself the most.

I ended up circling back around to that original thought, however, after ruminating for about a week. If I had access to a color like Blue, I wanted to do Blink shenanigans with creatures like Master Thief and Sower of Temptation, keeping more and more of their permanents and sacrificing what I wasn't allowed to keep as I blinked my thieving creatures. I didn't have access to those colors, so I did a search for creatures in White that might steal their creatures because I forgot how Preacher was worded and I was inspired by something I found.

I realize the deck has always had the capacity to gain a lot of life (or infinite life) with Kitchen Finks since you can not only blink the Finks, you can do Good-Fortune Unicornanigans with them. Looking at Angelic Chorus made me realize it didn't just have to be Finks and it didn't just have to be a combo deck. If any creature I produce gains me life, I can look at wrapping up the game with a large amount of life I didn't have to get comboing off and I wouldn't have to worry about combat, either. Angelic Chorus opens up a new set of win conditions that I am not seeing Emiel decks approach too often because they're focused on how they're going to get value blinking. I remembered another way I like to win with 75% decks since Preacher isn't going to help me steal their whole board no matter how many times I blink it - I love cards that say "You win the game." on them.

Power creep hasn't progressed to the point where they'll print a card that says "You win the game" with no other text on it, though - generally some conditions need to be met. Luckily, White has all of its clustered around one condition - life total. Having 10 trillion life is fun but if you can die to Commander damage it doesn't make much difference, so it's a good idea to wrap things up once your life total is high enough to end things. White has us covered with several ways to end the game, and since they trigger on your upkeep, the table can interact with it so it doesn't make more casual pods feel cheated but it ends the game when you want to end it so you can catch more competitive pods by surprise. Test of Endurance might as well be called "The Spanish Inquisition" because no one expects it. A 75% approach to Emiel would load up on Lifegain, still preserve a lot of Emiel's core values like "Blink for value" and would contain the capacity for a few infinite combos. After all, if we don't include Brood Warden, why even know Helix Pinnacle exists?

What would a 75% Emiel deck focused on getting a life look like?

75% Emiel | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Emiel the Blessed

• Creatures (34)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Armorcraft Judge
• 1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Brightmare
• 1 Brood Monitor
• 1 Champion of Lambholt
• 1 Charming Prince
• 1 Elvish Visionary
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Felidar Sovereign
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Good-Fortune Unicorn
• 1 Karmic Guide
• 1 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Knight of Autumn
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Loyal Unicorn
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Reveillark
• 1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
• 1 Serra Ascendant
• 1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
• 1 Slippery Bogbonder
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Stonehorn Dignitary
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Suture Priest
• 1 Thragtusk
• 1 Verdant Sun's Avatar
• 1 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Wall of Omens
• 1 Wood Elves
• 1 Workhorse

• Instants (4)
• 1 Eerie Interlude
• 1 Eladamri's Call
• 1 Flawless Maneuver
• 1 Heroic Intervention

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Approach of the Second Sun
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Finale of Devastation
• 1 Kodama's Reach

• Enchantments (12)
• 1 Angelic Chorus
• 1 Aura Shards
• 1 Authority of the Consuls
• 1 Blessed Sanctuary
• 1 Blind Obedience
• 1 Cathars' Crusade
• 1 Guardian Project
• 1 Helix Pinnacle
• 1 Mirari's Wake
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Test of Endurance
• 1 Wilderness Reclamation

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Conjurer's Closet
• 1 Heartstone
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers
• 1 Panharmonicon
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Selesnya Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 The Great Henge

• Lands (35)
• 13 Forest
• 8 Plains
• 1 Bountiful Promenade
• 1 Brushland
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Fortified Village
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Temple of Plenty
• 1 Windswept Heath

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This deck still feels like it has too many creatures, and I also feel like I cut the creatures to the bone. In theory, the number of creatures can be a lot lower since you're getting value by blinking, don't need to win with combat and therefore don't need to outnumber their army and aren't really looking to add too many different effects since you can ride one or two good ones to victory. However, I was hard pressed to find many cuts. Even the +1/+1 counter cards feel cute but they synergize with the commander so well it's tough to cut them. I ended up trimming Instants and Sorceries like I always do and it feels rough.

The deck needs some sac outlets, I think. Kitchen Finks is pretty bad if you don't have one, but you don't need infinite life with Finks, merely a really annoying blocker that Persists forever with your commander out. You're grinding value with the deck until you can win with Sovereign or blast them with Reservoir, so Finks can just be good but not insane in the deck. I like Ashnod's Altar but I like it more when I can steal their creatures, and pumping infinite mana into Evangelize when Helix Pinnacle exists is needlessly cute. However, if you like the idea, cut some of the +1/+1 counter synergy cards and add stuff like Ronom Unicorn and Luminous Broodmoth - they were very late cuts for me. Greater Good is a good sac outlet and you could use it to dig for the exact card you need.

It's possible I need to steer more into lifegain. There are a lot of ways to do that and Selsnya has most of them. Dawn of Hope was a late cut, as was True Conviction. I think with the ability to generate a lot of mana and use it to blink Charming Prince of Knight of Autumn can be good enough. Remember, we don't need to gain an infinite amount of life, we can win the game by getting to 50 life, which should be easy when we start at 40.

The deck will need some tuning and it's possible it was a mistake to cut some of our removal, but this deck will take people by surprise. It will look cute when you go to 60 or 70 life early while everyone else is killing each other, but when you slam a Felidar Sovereign or Test of Endurance, they'll realize you weren't durdling, you were just playing a different game than them and by then, it's too late.

That does it for me this week. I don't make a ton of decks where I focus on gaining life, but I DO love to win with cards that say "You win the game" and we have more than the usual amount in here. We can generate infinite mana, gain infinite life and Acidic Slime infinite permanents, but we can also just grind enough life to win with Felidar Sovereign and laugh. That's very 75%! Join me next week where we will brew with a Jumpstart card you may or may not have access to for a few months. Will we ever get a foil Emiel? Did I miss your favorite Unicorn? Is winning with Test of Endurance lazy (no, it's not, shut up)? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading, everyone. Until next time!