I play casual Commander. I mostly play with a group of people I've been playing with for years. We have enough players that the group isn't always the same, and everyone either plays with each others' decks or adds to their collection, so we don't get bored. Mostly everyone is casual and has a lot of fun. We have a few higher-powered decks, but when someone feels like playing one we all bust out our biggest guns, none of which could compete at a cEDH table.

Why do I tell you this? Because I want to give some perspective to the deck I'm highlighting today.

In my casual games, we play long games. It's uncommon for anyone to have done much before turn five other than Lands and ramp. Sometimes someone does something or lucks into a turn one Sol Ring, but we're setting up for Battlecruising. We tell jokes, we often skip attacks just to keep the game going, and no one worries too much about winning or losing.

We often wind up with a lack of removal (though there is one guy at my table who ALWAYS has Swords to Plowshares), and decks which roll over to a board wipe are common. Lots of our decks suffer from a lack of card draw (it's common the person who draws the most cards ends up winning at my tables).

Today's deck is a deck for those tables. It's a deck where people don't run enough interaction, aren't prepared to recover from a board wipe, and don't draw enough cards. We're going to sit down at that table, we're going to smile and make jokes, we're probably going to start with a Bobblehead. And then we're going to drop Angels all over the table.

Aside from the fact I have a great deal of difficulty pronouncing Shilgengar's name, this guy is amazing. We get a five-mana 6-power Flier with a built-in sacrifice ability and a way to Living Death our entire 'yard back to the Battlefield. This should be fun.

Shilgengar, Sire of Famine | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Shilgengar, Sire of Famine

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Angel of Despair
• 1 Angel of Indemnity
• 1 Angel of Suffering
• 1 Angel of the Ruins
• 1 Archangel of Tithes
• 1 Battle Angels of Tyr
• 1 Bishop of Wings
• 1 Bruna, the Fading Light
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Drana and Linvala
• 1 Firemane Commando
• 1 Firja, Judge of Valor
• 1 Giada, Font of Hope
• 1 Gisela, the Broken Blade
• 1 Liesa, Forgotten Archangel
• 1 Liesa, Shroud of Dusk
• 1 Lyra Dawnbringer
• 1 Mirkwood Bats
• 1 Renegade Reaper
• 1 Resplendent Angel
• 1 Righteous Valkyrie
• 1 Thief of Blood
• 1 Voldaren Bloodcaster
• 1 Youthful Valkyrie

• Instants (12)
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Breathe Your Last
• 1 Costly Plunder
• 1 Deadly Dispute
• 1 Despark
• 1 Eviscerator's Insight
• 1 Fanatical Offering
• 1 Fracture
• 1 Mortify
• 1 Reckoner's Bargain
• 1 Stroke of Midnight
• 1 Village Rites

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Aether Snap
• 1 Buried Alive
• 1 Damn
• 1 Insatiable Avarice
• 1 Merciless Eviction
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Pitiless Carnage
• 1 Pointed Discussion
• 1 Read the Bones
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Vindicate

• Artifacts (11)
• 1 Agility Bobblehead
• 1 Charisma Bobblehead
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Endurance Bobblehead
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Intelligence Bobblehead
• 1 Luck Bobblehead
• 1 Perception Bobblehead
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Strength Bobblehead
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (40)
• 8 Swamp
• 8 Plains
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Brightclimb Pathway
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Concealed Courtyard
• 1 Fetid Heath
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Minas Tirith
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Restless Fortress
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Seraph Sanctuary
• 1 Shadowy Backstreet
• 1 Shambling Vent
• 1 Shattered Sanctum
• 1 Shineshadow Snarl
• 1 Springjack Pasture
• 1 Spymaster's Vault
• 1 Tainted Field
• 1 Temple of Silence
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Vault of Champions
• 1 Vault of the Archangel
• 1 War Room

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A five-mana Commander and several Angels worth more than that means we want mana, and lots of it. As per usual, we have 40 Lands, but we also want to be able to make even more mana - there may be turns where we want to play two Angels, a removal spell, and activate a Bobblehead. The nice thing about five-mana Commanders is 3-mana ramp spells make a lot of sense, so it seemed like a good place to try the Bobbleheads. We have them all, and they are dead useful when you have extra mana laying around. I'm particularly fond of Luck and Intelligence, but all of them have valuable abilities. Perception normally pulls us a card draw spell. Agility will be great if we ever do an Alpha strike with a bunch of Angels that just hit the Battlefield.

We've also got some of the mana-doublers in Black; Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers (Expedition Map is here to find the Coffers, or if you have it, Urborg), of course, but also Crypt Ghast. I have played with Crypt Ghast a lot over the course of my time with Magic, and I'll tell you - a single turn with it out can be devastating to your opponents. More than that is just gravy, and since we're playing a table which doesn't run enough point removal, we're going to be able to make a lot of use of that guy.

Springjack Pasture is a great mana sink to make blockers, Skullclamp fodder, or Shilgengar food. Remember the manlands can also be sacrificed, and Vault of the Archangel does a nice job of making our attacks even more painful for our opponents.

One nice thing about having a bunch of Blood Tokens around is that means we have a bunch of Artifacts. Costly Plunder is just one example of an Instant which draws us two cards for the cost of an Artifact; we have a bunch of these, they're cheap, and they're all just a little different, but ultimately they draw us a couple of cards. Village Rites requires a Creature, and Read the Bones takes some life instead, but mostly we'll be able to use our Blood Tokens to draw us some extra. Intelligence Bobblehead can be quite amazing if we get it up and running; we make so much mana it's a great way to use it. Skullclamp can be stuck on something about to be sacrificed, or just run through small Tokens we wind up with from something. Pitiless Carnage can also make use of excess Blood or other Tokens (Charisma Bobblehead comes to mind) and draw us a fresh grip. Insatiable Avarice seems a solid bigger Sign in Blood, and can always be used to find something should we desperately need it. (My advice is almost certainly Buried Alive.) The Blood Tokens can also be used for their printed use, and discarding our Angels or other Creatures really isn't that bad here since we're likely to get them back pretty soon.

We're really an Angel deck. We're going to play out big fliers and attack with them, hopefully killing our opponents in the process. That's the goal. The difference is rather than leaning into the Kindred aspect, we're going to play them, attack with them, and when they die we'll sacrifice them instead for the Blood Tokens. Then we can sacrifice the Blood Tokens to bring back everything we've got in the 'yard. We can do this at Instant speed, too, so we can attack pretty much right away if we time it right.

We have a number of ways of getting rid of opponents' stuff. I'm a big fan of Despark in this format, and Anguished Unmaking is super solid, as is Fracture and Mortify. I like Toxic Deluge here, because it'll save us mana to replay our Commander or another Angel after wiping. Damn is great for options. I feel like Merciless Eviction belongs in every deck which can handle the colors. That said, I chose the removal spells I chose (Breathe Your Last, Stroke of Midnight), but you should feel free to run whatever you'd like. Murder and Swords to Plowshares will probably function just about the same way.

We have a few things which care when stuff dies. Voldaren Bloodcaster makes us extra Blood Tokens, and Mirkwood Bats likes it when we create and sacrifice Tokens, something we'll do quite a lot. Bishop of Wings likes all our Angels, and leaves us behind yet another Token should any of them die (hint: they're going to die). Then there's my favorite piece of tech from this whole deck, which is Thief of Blood and Aether Snap. In addition to killing all Planeswalkers on the Battlefield and making any Simic players really sad, we'll remove the Finality Counters from our returned Creatures. That means that they just die when they die, rather than Exile the second time around. We want to hold Thief of Blood and Aether Snap until after we've returned everything, because if Thief of Blood is in the 'yard and gets returned, it can't see the counters put on other stuff (or itself) as it enters. Solemnity should also get mentioned, because if that's on the 'field, our Creatures can't get any counters - worth it, because they'll return without the Finality counter. If this is really working, it might be worth it to find space for Hex Parasite, too.

This deck should be a hoot. It's also a good way to get your casual table to up their game, or just surprise them with a bit of tech that's stronger than maybe it looks right away. It's also fun to play Angels Kindred with no Angel at the helm. Even if you're not looking to raise the power level, this is a good reminder we need to run interaction and resilience in our decks to avoid being run over by a single strategy.

Thanks for reading.