A friend of mine recently asked me how I decide on commanders for this column. I’ve looked through all of the game’s legendary creatures and made a list of the ones I thought it would be interesting to build around, but if those were my only options, I’d run out in a couple of months. A lot of these decks don’t start with a commander at all—they start with an interaction. Take for example the Atogatog deck I wrote about last month; the deck was born of an attempt to keep a game suspenseful once you’ve stacked your deck.

But once in a while, a deck comes from somewhere else, from a card so wacky, so exciting, that I can’t help building around it, even in a singleton format.

I’ve had Spellweaver Volute on my list for quite a while, but I never actually figured out what to do with it. Until now, that is. The card has bunch of requirements we need to meet:

• The ability to find your one copy in the first place
• A graveyard full of instants
• A bunch of sorceries to cast
• A way to recur Volute when it’s inevitably disrupted

Luckily, there’s a cohesive game plan that covers all of these requirements:

• Mill yourself
• Return Volute from your graveyard to your hand
• Flash back sorceries
• ???
• Profit!

Given this setup, one option would be to play a commander like Ambassador Laquatus to take care of the milling and find a few ways to recur Spellweaver Volute. However, seeing as there aren’t very many cards that you can mill and then use for such recursion, the better plan is to play a lot of self-mill and let your commander handle the other end.

Hanna, Ship's Navigator by Terese Nielsen

The numbers get kind of tricky trying to fit in enough instants to cast with Volute, sorceries to trigger it, artifacts and enchantments to return with Hanna, creatures to actually kill somebody with, and lands to cast them all, but here’s what the finished product looks like:

"Spellweaving, 101, er . . . 99"

• Commander (0)

• Whirlpools (4)
• 1 Spellweaver Volute
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 1 Long-Term Plans
• 1 Tunnel Vision

• Riptides (12)
• 1 Banishing Stroke
• 1 Return to Dust
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Dismantling Blow
• 1 Spin into Myth
• 1 Cryptic Command
• 1 Seal of Cleansing
• 1 Duplicant
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Scrabbling Claws
• 1 Ancestral Tribute

• Sirensongs (3)
• 1 Reins of Power
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Stolen Identity

• Undertows (13)
• 1 Traumatize
• 1 Increasing Confusion
• 1 Chill of Foreboding
• 1 Brain Freeze
• 1 Jace, Memory Adept
• 1 Keening Stone
• 1 Mesmeric Orb
• 1 Sands of Delirium
• 1 Selhoff Occultist
• 1 Murder of Crows
• 1 Mirror-Mad Phantasm
• 1 Dreamborn Muse
• 1 Psychic Spiral

• Tides (13)
• 1 Mystic Speculation
• 1 Secrets of the Dead
• 1 Gitaxian Probe
• 1 Preordain
• 1 Careful Study
• 1 Recurring Insight
• 1 Deep Analysis
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Vanish into Memory
• 1 Careful Consideration
• 1 Jace's Ingenuity
• 1 Mysteries of the Deep
• 1 Opportunity

• Shipwrecks (4)
• 1 Twincast
• 1 Pull from Eternity
• 1 Spelltwine
• 1 Recall

• Crew (4)
• 1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
• 1 Triskelavus
• 1 Cenn's Enlistment
• 1 Increasing Devotion

• Canons (3)
• 1 Runechanter's Pike
• 1 Bonehoard
• 1 Mirrorweave

• Gangplanks (8)
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble
• 1 Armillary Sphere
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Austere Command

• Shorelines (35)
• 1 Cephalid Coliseum
• 1 Mistveil Plains
• 1 Academy Ruins
• 1 Kor Haven
• 1 Tolaria West
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Windbrisk Heights
• 1 Shelldock Isle
• 1 Celestial Colonnade
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 1 Skycloud Expanse
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Coastal Tower
• 1 Boreal Shelf
• 1 Sejiri Refuge
• 1 Azorius Chancery
• 1 Azorius Guildgate
• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 1 Calciform Pools
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 5 Plains
• 9 Island

Buy This Deck

Disclaimer: Yes, I know the Weatherlight is an airship. A volute is not only a spiral, but also a type of mollusk, hence the nautical theme.

Routes to Victory

Generating a bunch of card advantage by casting Fact or Fiction for free is great, but at some point, you need to actually go about killing your opponents. How does this deck do that?

Plan A

Suit Hanna up with Runechanter's Pike or Bonehoard and go to town. Normally, I try to avoid commander-damage kills, but these two are just too sweet to pass up.

Plan B

You’re playing an awful lot of mill, some of which affects all players. It’s not unreasonable to deck someone naturally, and if the game goes long enough, Psychic Spiral can knock out another. Since I’ve mentioned it, I’ll also note that Psychic Spiral is useful even if you’re not decking someone or about to deck yourself. If you’re running out of instants to recast, you can target yourself with Psychic Spiral to replace your graveyard with a fresh batch of cards. State-based effects won’t put the Spellweaver Volute into your graveyard until Spiral’s done resolving, so you can just bring it back with Hanna again.

Plan C

Cenn's Enlistment, Increasing Devotion, Triskelavus (with help from Hanna), and Talrand, Sky Summoner are each capable of generating a lot of tokens. Those can kill people on their own, but adding a Mirrorweave to the mix isn’t likely to lead you astray.

Plans D–Z

Commander games are full of unreasonably powerful creatures, meaning a well-timed Stolen Identity or Reins of Power may be enough to lock things up on its own.

Setting Sail

But like all plans, these need to adapt to the game in which you’re trying to implement them. How’d that go?

I won the die roll and played a land before passing to Ob Nixilis, the Fallen. He promptly began a Bloodchief Ascension. I ramped up with Mind Stone and Solemn Simulacrum while Ob used Terrain Generator, and Animar entered the fray herself.

Not wanting to wait for Bloodchief Ascension to become active, I spent my fourth turn being Traumatized and hitting all sorts of useful spells and artifacts along with Spellweaver Volute. The Fallen proceeded to cast Liliana of the Dark Realms, and Animar used Imperial Recruiter to find Phyrexian Metamorph and copy Jens Thorén before attacking me with her commander. Something about Animar’s play gave me the impression she was running a high-powered deck, so I decided to nip that problem in the bud.

One Solemn Simulacrum token and one Animar copy later, and the game came to a standstill with no good attacks for anyone. I took the opportunity to cast Hanna, and Ob Nixilis followed up with a thrice-kicked Everflowing Chalice into Lashwrithe. Animar didn’t like the look of that living weapon and used Draining Whelk to counter it and knock Liliana off a potential ultimate activation. I proceeded to miracle Banishing Stroke on Ob Nixilis and use Hanna to recur and cast Spellweaver Volute, enchanting Spin into Myth.

Solemn Simulacrum hit, deciphering the plans for another copy of itself and triggering the Volute to send Animar to the library’s bottom and enchant Opportunity. At that pointm Ob decided that enough was enough and chained Caged Sun into Life's Finale and Korlash, Heir to Blackblade. Animar rebuilt with Eternal Witness for Phyrexian Metamorph and another, far less meta, morph.

Seeing as I was getting dangerously low on life and Ob unkillably high on the stuff, I decided it was time for Bloodchief Ascension and Caged Sun to Return to Dust. I followed that play up by flashing back Deep Analysis and taking the Opportunity that Spellweaver Volute offered before tapping out to lay down Keening Stone and Windbrisk Heights.

Ob Nixilis made sure to remind me that tapping out isn’t a good idea:

The Avatar brought Solemn Simulacrum back for another go around, but more relevantly, it unearthed the Consecrated Sphinx that Life's Finale had put into Animar’s graveyard. Ob tried to pass the turn, and things went crazy. That morph from before?

Vesuvan Shapeshifter.

Warring Consecrated Sphinxes lead to a lot of cards being drawn, but despite them, Animar came to the conclusion that Spellweaver Volute was dangerous (not that I could blame her). She used Time Spiral to shuffle away the graveyards while leaving both Sphinx players with huge grips and then cast a freshly drawn Sylvan Primordial to take out Keening Stone and Everflowing Chalice.

A land off the top allowed me to cast and flash back Increasing Devotion with Windbrisk Heights ready to Mirrorweave them if nobody Wrathed. It turned out that nobody needed to.

Ob Nixilis untapped.

Cabal Coffers . . . 

Nirkana Revenant . . . 

Crypt Ghast . . . 

Don’t try this at home kids; there are more fun things to do with 30 black mana.

On the Horizon

The number of lines of play that this deck offers can be daunting, but if you don’t mind sorting through your graveyard, it feels awesome to chain a bunch of spells together with Spellweaver Volute. Smooth sailing!