Readers!

It started with Tatsunari and my obsession grew. Soon I was contriving ways to get a lot of ETB triggers in an Ertai deck. Not satisfied with my experiments in the purely theoretical, I soon began to delve into the real world and built this very rough version of an Ivy deck with the same package. Did it work? I think it went OK.

It's blurry, but I got 6 copies of Croaking Counterpart giving me 14 copies of Ivy that's also a frog, meaning Mirror Gallery gave my commander Ivy +20/+20, which is lethal. The deck is silly and pretty bad if you don't stick Vesuvan Duplimancy and a way to make a non-legendary clone, but there are so many of those these days that you can actually make decks where you plan on making copies of your legendary commander, something I keep wanting to do over and over lately. What if I told you that I plan to do it at least one more time, and the next time I do it, I'm not going to warn you it's coming, I'm going to be sneaky about it. I'll just introduce the commander of the deck like everything is normal and I'll slip the clones package into the decklist and hope you don't notice. It's a good plan and I think it will work.

On an unrelated note, I wanted to do a bit of a different approach this week and build an Enchantress deck. Now I know I build a lot of Enchantress decks and you're probably wondering if I'm going to make good on my promise to run fewer Enchantments and more Instants and Sorceries. I'm not, let's tear that band-aid off right now, shall we? I tried, believe me, I truly did. When it came down to it, faced with the choice of running fewer Enchantments and not doing that, I went with what makes me happy as a deckbuilder and I think the quality of my work reflects my relaxed mental state. I'm building Enchantress and in Azorius no less.

Stenn reduces the cost of a spell of any type you choose (I'm going to choose Enchantments) and you can blink him to reset the mode you chose, making your deck quite versatile. A one-mana reduction isn't that interesting, though - I want to reduce the mana cost by a lot. That will keep my mana free for countering the Farewell every White player has in their decks these days because this deck just scoops to Farewell. A lot of decks do - it was a really, really terrible card for them to have printed and it sometimes feels personal. How was I going to reduce the mana cost of the spells by a lot? I guess I can't, Stenn is Legendary. So much for that idea. Anyway, here is the decklist.

Stenn EDH | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Stenn, Paranoid Partisan

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Ajani's Chosen
• 1 Archon of Sun's Grace
• 1 Aura Thief
• 1 Auratog
• 1 Faith Healer
• 1 Mesa Enchantress
• 1 Moon-Blessed Cleric
• 1 Orvar, the All-Form
• 1 Protean Thaumaturge
• 1 Sakashima the Impostor
• 1 Snapcaster Mage
• 1 Sovereigns of Lost Alara
• 1 Spark Double
• 1 Starfield Mystic
• 1 Starnheim Courser
• 1 Sun Titan

• Instants (4)
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Dovin's Veto
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Dance of the Manse
• 1 Irenicus's Vile Duplication
• 1 Open the Vaults
• 1 Plea for Guidance
• 1 Quasiduplicate
• 1 Replenish
• 1 Resurgent Belief
• 1 Rite of Replication
• 1 Stolen Identity

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Crystal Chimes
• 1 Mirror Box
• 1 Mirror Gallery
• 1 Sol Ring

• Enchantments (27)
• 1 All That Glitters
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Aura of Silence
• 1 Battle Mastery
• 1 Celestial Mantle
• 1 Copy Enchantment
• 1 Corrupted Conscience
• 1 Eldrazi Conscription
• 1 Estrid's Invocation
• 1 Ethereal Armor
• 1 Followed Footsteps
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Grasp of Fate
• 1 Karmic Justice
• 1 Kiora Bests the Sea God
• 1 Luminarch Ascension
• 1 Mirrormade
• 1 Monastery Siege
• 1 Opalescence
• 1 Propaganda
• 1 Seal of Cleansing
• 1 Shark Typhoon
• 1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
• 1 Sphere of Safety
• 1 Starfield of Nyx
• 1 Steel of the Godhead
• 1 Vesuvan Duplimancy

• Lands (37)
• 1 Azorius Chancery
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Irrigated Farmland
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Nimbus Maze
• 1 Port Town
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Serra's Sanctum
• 1 Temple of Enlightenment
• 12 Plains
• 9 Island

Buy This Deck Export text format

So this looks like a ton of fun. I included a bunch of auras to make a creature, I'm assuming your original copy of Stenn, a killing machine. There are ways to make Angel tokens and Pegasi and Cats and every time I have taken a decent creature with Corrupted Conscience it has changed the tilt of the table. The deck does not lack for win conditions, that much should be clear on paper. What is less clear is why I'm bothering to do this, and I'll explain.

I included Starfield of Nyx and Opalescence in here because I want our Enchantments to be creatures so we can more easily clone them. Putting Followed Footsteps on a 5/5 Sphere of Safety will feel weird at first, but you'll soon learn to enjoy it. Making Clones of our Enchantments as well as copying them with Copy Enchantment and Estrid's Invocation makes this deck have a lot of redundancy, ensuring you can get a value engine going no matter what you draw. Animating our Enchantments only makes our clones better and gives us a clock if we can Replenish after a board wipe and be the only player with anything going on.

"Aren't you worried about board wipes?" Why yes, as a matter of fact, and since I don't love how Farewell can cruelly and casually EXILE our Enchantments and people refuse to stop playing spells that make the game take an extra 40 minutes, we want a plan for those sweepers that isn't a counterspell. My solution? Auratog and Faith Healer. First, Auratog can suit up with Enchantments and stir up some trouble and then eat enchantments if it needs to for combat purposes. Secondly, Auratog also lets you sac all of your Enchantments so they don't get exiled by Farewell and you can Replenish them back. Farewell is a stupid card, but not being prepared for a card that can pull your pants down is more stupider.

When this deck really gets cranking, you will be making good use of Mirror Box and/or Vesuvan Duplimancy, one hopes. Targeting Enchantments with auras, creating copies with Orvar and Duplimancy, getting a ton of value - this deck drawing Anointed Procession with any of those other cards will have you scrambling to see if you can overnight an order from Infinitokens. Copying Stenn a whole bunch to make all of our spells cheaper is one way to play, but just doing typical Orvar stuff, copying a Sun Titan or Snapcaster can get you a lot of value easily. The real fun comes wit

Protean Thaumaturge does a lot of work in my Tatsunari deck and I thought I should highlight it here. I did an indentation like this was going to be a whole paragraph but, nope. Just that sentence about how Thaumaturge is good, that second sentence explaining it and this sentence explaining that sentence.

What do we think? Should I not try to jam my Tatsunari "clone Legendary creatures and break the rules" engine in every deck I see or am I having fun my way? Let me know in the comments section. That does it for me this week, thanks for reading. Until next time!