Throne of Eldraine has left its mark on our favorite format and while the most powerful cards have basically been established, what's not as well understood is how some of the cards themselves being Legendary permanents will affect use after future sets. Being Legendary (or historic) could be a factor later on and it's a factor if you have a Riki, the History of Kamigawa deck, for example. I can't imagine Reki decks don't want to include The Great Henge, for example, and not just because it's a powerful card. Since Throne of Eldraine is a set with larger-than-life characters, equipment, settings and stories, it makes sense that we'd get a lot of Legendary permanents. Do I like gimmicky decks like this as 75% decks? Well, not necessarily. I'll come clean - I picked the commander I did this week because there was a specific card I wanted to highlight and I had to find the right deck for it. Which card, you ask?

The Cauldron of Eternity seems like it's prohibitively expensive at first glance and while I wouldn't recommend including Dark Confidant in a deck with Cauldron, it's deceptively affordable in the right deck. The right deck will already have the cards it wants in its graveyard when it casts Cauldron and will not necessarily want to try and get sacrifice loops going, this works better where you dump a lot in your 'yard, cast this for cheap and cast a bunch of creatures for . If you're going to want to Cauldron later in the game, but consistently, you should have a way to get Cauldron when you want it and hopefully not before and hopefully at all. So how do we do that, knowing I don't care for tutors that are just second copies of a card? Enter my commander of choice for Cauldronaningans.

It's not immediately obvious how a commander that needs to have 13 power can help us with Cauldron, but my plan isn't to tutor for Cauldron. My plan is to tutor for not Cauldron and eventually draw it. You'll be thinning your deck out a ton and if you never draw your Cauldron, that's cool because you got the rest of your plan going. What's your plan? Well, I'm glad you asked. I plan to use Bloom Tender and Faeburrow Elder to crank as many cards out of my deck as I can as fast as possible and late in the game I plan to make sure I can shrug off wraths by bringing as many of them back from the grave as I can with Cauldron. I also plan to find creative ways to boost the power of Sisay and one other creature that I think is very good in a 75% deck and much better in a 75% deck where you can boost creatures' power.

We forgot about Yasova for a little while but this is exactly what I want to be doing. Yasova can be fetched with Sisay easily, can steal important blockers and utility creatures and can attack for a ton of damage. I won't exactly call Yasova a "secret" commander to the deck because we have two other creatures that can swipe their board and can be found using Sisay.

Between these three creatures, we can make combat very difficult for our opponents because our creatures are going to be buffed quite a bit and theirs are going to be on our side of the board. Which I guess makes them our creatures. They won't have creatures. Good luck blocking my creatures with no creatures.

Sisay can find all sorts of creatures for this deck - Gonti, Thada Adel, Daxos - all of those contribute to building our board state at the expense of their board state. If those creatures die, they either wait in the graveyard for us to Cauldron them back or we have Cauldron and we shuffle them in for Sisay to tutor them back out. It's a good plan and we're going to benefit a ton from it.

So if we want to potentially get Sisay's power up to 13 and the highest it gets on its own is 7, what can we add? As a benefit, this buffing helps Yasova and it also helps us just kill them to death, so if it's an equipment rather than an aura, that's better and if it's a Legendary equipment, that's ideal. One card that comes close to fulfilling all of these criteria is Bonehoard.

Bonehoard rewards us for having a lot of creatures in our 'yard, which we likely will and it rewards us for playing Commander, a format where there are a lot of other graveyards to help us out. It isn't always super exciting to suit up a creature with Bonehoard and attack with the equipped creature in games of Commander, but with a few key creatures in our deck scaling off of their power, Bonehoard will do some work. But we also have a card that meets all of our criteria.

We need a mere 6 lands in play to get Sisay big enough to go snag Cauldron or Henge and that is going to be very doable in a deck like this. We can snag Blade with Sisay, equip it for cheap and use it as a finisher on basically any of our creatures.

Since our plan to win the game is going to rely on attacking with creatures, whether ours or pilfered, it's important to make sure our creatures connect. A suite of cards to make our creatures unblockable is going to be very helpful. Since we're running those, Thada Adel and Daxos get a lot better and there are a few other creatures I want to consider.

These aren't legendary but with unblockability, equipment to buff them and the chance to swipe our opponents' spells, there's no case to be made for not playing these.

This deck is going to be quite a pile, but the good news is that if we start with a stock list and make room for the cards we want, it's less intimidating that starting from scratch. There are certain cards that need to be in a Sisay list to make it work at all, but we'll have room for the cards we need to make the deck work the way we want it to. Let's see what I come up with.

Legen- Wait for It | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Sisay, Weatherlight Captain

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Anafenza, the Foremost
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Bloom Tender
• 1 Captain Sisay
• 1 Daxos of Meletis
• 1 Faeburrow Elder
• 1 Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
• 1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
• 1 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
• 1 Joiner Adept
• 1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
• 1 Marchesa, the Black Rose
• 1 Merieke Ri Bereit
• 1 Muldrotha, the Gravetide
• 1 Nightveil Specter
• 1 Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
• 1 Reki, the History of Kamigawa
• 1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
• 1 Rubinia Soulsinger
• 1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
• 1 Shanna, Sisay's Legacy
• 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
• 1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
• 1 Thief of Sanity
• 1 Yasova Dragonclaw

• Planeswalkers (6)
• 1 Ajani, the Greathearted
• 1 Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter
• 1 Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
• 1 Oko, Thief of Crowns
• 1 Tamiyo, Field Researcher
• 1 Teferi, Time Raveler

• Instants (3)
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Assassin's Trophy
• 1 Cyclonic Rift

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Karn's Temporal Sundering
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Praetor's Grasp
• 1 Primevals' Glorious Rebirth
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Urza's Ruinous Blast

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Intruder Alarm
• 1 Journey to Eternity
• 1 Oath of Nissa
• 1 Oath of Teferi
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Wilderness Reclamation

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Bonehoard
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Heroes' Podium
• 1 Hero's Blade
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 The Cauldron of Eternity
• 1 The Great Henge
• 1 Whispersilk Cloak

• Lands (37)
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Forest
• 2 Island
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Cascading Cataracts
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Crystal Quarry
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Frontier Bivouac
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Mystic Monastery
• 1 Nomad Outpost
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Sandsteppe Citadel
• 1 Savage Lands
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Wooded Foothills

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This looks like a lot of fun! Let's review.

Intruder Alarm is going to do a ton of work with mana creatures. With Jiang and Rishkar able to deputive creatures and turn them into mana dorks, you can churn a ton of mana through Sisay and keep your creatures producing steadily. You can even buff creatures you intend to attack with and use them for mana, then untap them with Intruder Alarm before combat and still serve with them. The faster you can fill the board, the better because this deck doesn't care about being wrathed as much as most decks. If you are worried about it, add Teferi's Protection or Heroic Intervention. Get creatures out fast because thinning your deck of Legendary permanents makes your draws better.

Mana will be rough. I tried to include a decent mix of mana rocks and ramp spells, but if you can play an early Thada or specter and snag a rock or two, do it. Praetor's Grasp gets a Chromatic Lantern a lot of the time and that's just fine in a deck like this. You can always sac a creature or two to Phyrexian Altar once it outlives its usefulness because you have Cauldron to bring it back and a few more bodies in the yard can power your Bonehoard. If you find you still have issues, try to keep the fixes as cheap as possible. Think Utopia Sprawl rather than Firemind Vessel, for example.

Even though it seems a little awkward to try and establish a loop with the deck, if you can keep Sisay around, saccing something like Gonti to Phyrexian Altar and shuffling it back in for Sisay to find it and re-buy it can be a satisfying value engine. Keep your mana dorks alive and plentiful and get Intruder Alarm going. Faeburrow Elder was made to go in a deck like this and it's a great budget addition to the pricey but powerful Bloom Tender.

What do we think? Are you excited to use cards like Thief of Sanity and Daxos the Meletis in Commander? Is it too risky to run five colors like this? Too expensive to put the land base together? Leave some comments for me and tell me what you think. Thanks for reading as always. Until next time!

-dary