The year was 1999. I had just started playing Magic: The Gathering earlier that year thanks to the popularity of the Pokemon Trading Card Game. I'd been taken out to do something my mother wanted to introduce me to, which was yoga. I was admittedly bored as a nine year-old kid, but it was worth it for the opportunity to go to the mall on the way home and check out one of my favorite stores: Waldenbooks. I loved going and reading the newest copies of Goosebumps and Garfield comics the way kids just would in the nineties, but that year, going to this particular store started yielding a different interest.

You see, Magic didn't have quite the omnipresent appearance it has these days. It's not very difficult nowadays to go find some booster packs at a big box store. I've even seen them in gas stations and crappy hole-in-the-wall places you'd never normally set foot in but need to visit because your moving van is there. But then, I could only usually find them at an actual LGS or by going to a dedicated media store, and that made Waldenbooks so great because it was one of those few places I could buy Magic as a kid. And it was on this chilly fall day in Buffalo, NY that I bought my very first pack of the classic set Exodus and out of that pack popped one of the coolest cards I'd ever seen:

Everything about this card just struck me as so cool. The art is gorgeous, as Randy Gallegos kills it in about everything he does. Then there's the lifegain aspect on such a cheap card. As a more experienced player, it's not terribly exciting, but when you're newer, chaining tons of lifegain off of the many creatures you play is mind-blowing. It was a truly striking card and it's no surprise that it's become such a fan favorite over time. It even spawned these cards, which were obviously similar versions of this iconic card:

There's such a density of these kinds of effects that it's even been attempted to make a deck surrounding them called Soul Sisters. In Modern, this evolved into varying forms of lifegain decks that, while not always the best deck, are usually quite playable. You even see it every so often in Pauper. But there was one place where it always felt difficult to make a deck around this theme: Commander.

Commander's no stranger to lifegain strategies. After all, cards like Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, and Oloro, Ageless Ascetic quickly come to mind. With most of them, I just never really feel the whole Soul Sisters kind of vibe. Heliod is maybe the closest you get, but I think it's missing a lot of the value the Green side of the ability brings to the table as well. Then Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realm came out and brought with it this card:

Now, as I mentioned in my last article talking about the fiendish dragon queen Tiamat, I know virtually nothing about the world of Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, I only just started playing in a campaign for the very first time about a week and a half ago, with our second session coming up this Saturday. But even without that knowledge, I still saw this card as a golden opportunity to make a really cool looking Soul Sisters style deck. I quickly got to work, and here's what I came up with:

Trelasarra Soul Sisters | Commander | Kendra Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Trelasarra, Moon Dancer

• Creatures (34)
• 1 Abzan Battle Priest
• 1 Abzan Falconer
• 1 Ajani's Pridemate
• 1 Archangel of Thune
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Conclave Mentor
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Crested Sunmare
• 1 Daxos, Blessed by the Sun
• 1 Essence Warden
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Felidar Sovereign
• 1 Gilded Goose
• 1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Knight of Autumn
• 1 Nykthos Paragon
• 1 Prosperous Innkeeper
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Resplendent Angel
• 1 Rhox Faithmender
• 1 Righteous Valkyrie
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Selvala, Explorer Returned
• 1 Serene Steward
• 1 Soul Warden
• 1 Soul's Attendant
• 1 Spike Feeder
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Suture Priest
• 1 Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
• 1 Tuskguard Captain
• 1 Walking Ballista

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Ajani Goldmane
• 1 Ajani, Strength of the Pride
• 1 Elspeth Tirel

• Instants (6)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Pulse of Murasa
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (2)
• 1 Austere Command
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (7)
• 1 Angelic Accord
• 1 Authority of the Consuls
• 1 Banishing Light
• 1 Blind Obedience
• 1 Cleric Class
• 1 Dawn of Hope
• 1 Shield of the Oversoul

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Cosmos Elixir
• 1 Elixir of Immortality
• 1 Pristine Talisman
• 1 Selesnya Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow
• 1 Well of Lost Dreams

• Lands (37)
• 6 Forest
• 7 Plains
• 1 Blossoming Sands
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Bountiful Promenade
• 1 Branchloft Pathway // Boulderloft Pathway
• 1 Brushland
• 1 Castle Ardenvale
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Gingerbread Cabin
• 1 Graypelt Refuge
• 1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 1 Kabira Crossroads
• 1 Prismatic Vista
• 1 Radiant Fountain
• 1 Razorverge Thicket
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sapseep Forest
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 War Room
• 1 Witch's Clinic
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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This deck is simply, in short, exactly what you'd expect in a Soul Sisters style deck. You gain a ton of life and get a ton of effects as a result - often in the form of +1/+1 counters. This is where having the additional Green shines, as it gives us play with cards like Conclave Mentor, Tuskguard Captain, and even Kitchen Finks because of the counters negating the persist ability. There's also a lot of other sweet value cards in Green such as Beast Whisperer, Reclamation Sage, Eternal Witness, and the especially wonderful in this deck Shield of the Oversoul.

There're tons of great ways to close out the game when all the lifegain value we're generating - even outside the main commander. Cards like these can easily end games fast if not dealt with quickly by your opponents:

There's no real shortage of ways to gain life, either, so these can get out of hand super fast. You can draw more cards using the likes of Beast Whisperer, Cosmos Elixir, and Well of Lost Dreams to keep your engine going as well. The various outlast cards help to ensure your damage gets through easily. And if you've got something like a Heliod down, you can rapidly close out the game using Abzan Battle Priest without much problem.

And speaking of Heliod, we even slip in a couple quick kill combos in case we need an easy out to end the game fast. First there's this combo:

Pioneer and Modern players will recognize this one. By using this combo, you can deal infinite damage to all opponents by granting your Walking Ballista lifelink. When you deal a point of damage to an opponent by removing a counter, you also gain a life yourself, causing you to put another counter and go infinite, thereby wiping out all of your opponents.

There's also this other classic Modern strategy:

By using Spike Feeder's last ability to gain life with Archangel of Thune on the battlefield, you in turn trigger the Archangel's ability. Much like with Walking Ballista, this puts another counter on the Spike Feeder. As a result, you not only gain infinite life, but infinite +1/+1 counters to all your creatures. This isn't always an in-the-bag win, but more often than not it should end the game on the spot. And while it might not give all of your creatures buffs the way the Archangel would, you can also combo the Spike Feeder with Heliod to ensure you gain infinite life.

The deck is by and large quite simple and straightforward, so I don't think there's too much worth covering beyond this. Maybe the fact that Gilded Goose doubles as lifegain and ramp is the only other slight note I can think of, or that War Room is super effective in a deck like this where life hardly matters. But you know, sometimes being straightforward and easy-going with a deck is exactly what Commander needs, and I think this allows for a really cool deck based off a super nostalgic theme. I love it for what it is, and it brings me great joy in reliving those old memories, if only for a moment. I hope you enjoy them just the same at your next Commander pod.

Kendra Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

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