Commander is an interesting beast. There are lots of funny rules, and selecting cards from 20 years of printing can be daunting for a player new to the format. Add to that group politics and individual social contracts and suddenly it can feel impossible to get involved.

So Wizards stepped in with preconstructed Commander decks. These decks have been great! We’ve gotten brand new cards, including new, otherwise unavailable legendary creatures which would never have been printed for the Standard environment, and piles of cards which, with a bit of luck, can be competitive against much more tuned decks.

This series has been (mostly) about using a fairly modest budget wisely to build decks which appeal to all different kinds of players: theme decks, combo decks, powerful decks, funny decks. Upping our budget to $100 gives us a bit more wiggle room to play with strong or rare cards, but the precons allow us to start with 100 cards for very little money. As an example, Wade Into Battle, which is the Giant tribal deck led by Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas, is currently $25 at Cool Stuff Inc. We get a bunch of great cards to work with, including a solid mana base and a bunch of mana rocks, and we have an additional $75 to punch it up. But because it does such a good job on its own as Giant tribal, I say we set the Giants aside and shift direction. What better start than to change to another new commander from that box?

This lady wants our opponents to suffer, but is kind of demanding before she flexes her power. If we can knock them down some life points, she gets bigger, but, more importantly, she becomes indestructible. This is good in a commander, and it’s great that she scales based on how many opponents we’ve been able to debilitate. My first thought was to build a goodstuff deck, but then my editor made a really good point.

This guy can make our general real big real fast, and we’ve already got a Lightning Greaves in the deck. A turn four hasty Heartless curving into a turn five 13/13 indestructible hasty Anya seems like a strong play. So let’s go Voltron a bit, and play around with how to make a brutal commander even more so.

The deck out of the box comes with 39 lands. We’ve bumped that number up to 40 and, due to changes in the balance of colors, have changed around the basic land count. The extra land slot is Buried Ruin, which can buy us back a piece of equipment. We’ve also switched out Ancient Amphitheater, which will almost never enter untapped, for the more powerful Temple of Triumph. We already have a great suite of mana rocks, including a couple of Boros ones and the ever-powerful Sol Ring. We dropped the Coldsteel Heart for Hedron Archive, which ramps us a bit more and cashes in for cards later. We should not have mana problems as long as we mulligan responsibly. The trick is to mull anything with two or fewer lands, but keep even an all-land hand. This is good, because it’s not going to be unusual to want to cast a creature, play a spell, and equip something all in one turn.

These colors suffer in card draw; they are the weakest two for sure. We’ve got a few ways around that, and fortunately we’ve got a bunch of artifacts which do good work for us, but it’s still a bit rough. Seer's Sundial and Staff of Nin are already in the box, and to that we’re going to add the wonderful Mind's Eye and the strangely color-pie breaking Inheritance, which is expensive to activate but useful. An early Mind's Eye can make it so we never suffer for cards again, but plan mana usage correctly. It’s a bummer to tap Worn Powerstone for a single card. Oreskos Explorer serves as card advantage by getting us Plains; cast it before playing a land for turn to maximize the number of Plains we get.

Ultimately we want to beat people up with Anya, but that doesn’t mean we lack other threats. Gisela, Blade of Goldnight is pricey but hits hard, and makes everything else we’ve got hit harder. Herald of the Host also remains from the original box, and Myriad makes her pretty strong. Imagine that with Gisela on board. Sun Titan’s the only giant we keep, but it’s all value here, getting back a bunch of our stuff, including almost all of our equipment and a whole bunch of our creatures. Don’t forget, if there’s nothing to get, we can pop a Mind Stone for the card and get it back with the Titan. Sandstone Oracle isn’t that big, but it flies, carries equipment, and draws us a full grip, which can be huge. Rite of the Raging Storm was too much fun to cut, plus it helps whittle down on our opponents’ life totals. Watch out if someone is playing Omnath, Locus of Rage, though. It gives them a free dude plus a free Lightning Bolt every turn.

Our answer suite improves with some new additions, although there are some killer cards already in the deck, like Crib Swap or Fall of the Hammer. Orim's Thunder, too, is a nice answer to problems. And we have a couple of Earthquake variations. Breath of Darigaaz and Earthquake itself. Fiery Confluence gives us options, and Meteor Blast can wipe the board of tokens or other small nasties. We add in a Swords to Plowshares for some solid point removal, and Fated Retribution, Nevinyrral's Disk, and Mass Calcify to wipe the board. Banishing Light and Faith's Fetters do good work, and adding Oblivion Ring to that gives us even more options.

We really have fun with the Voltron pieces, thought. Because we want to get people below 20 life, we get to run two specific pieces of equipment to support that: Scytheclaw and Quietus Spike. Both knock off half of the defender’s life total if they connect while equipped. We want to hurry this along, so we need ways to find those pieces of equipment and early ways to get through. The nice thing is, White and Red both have a few creatures with Shadow or Horsemanship. Most people don’t run Shadow or Horsemanship creatures, so they’re basically unblockable. Soltari Visionary works as enchantment removal, and some of the others have some ability, but mostly they’re just deliverers of doom.

Then we search for equipment. The new Relic Seeker joins with classics like Steelshaper's Gift, Taj-Nar Swordsmith, Stonehewer Giant, and Steelshaper Apprentice. Tack on to that something our budget doesn’t normally allow, Stoneforge Mystic, and we’ve got a heck of a batch of cards which get us the equipment we need right when we need it. Most often we’ll go to Quietus Spike, but sometimes Lightning Greaves is the right choice, and sometimes it’s Loxodon Warhammer. Stick an unblockable creature, grab a life-divider, get one hit in, and Anya is online. Because Quietus Spike and Scytheclaw are so dangerous, opponents are likely to gun for them, so we run Remember the Fallen and Buried Ruin to get an artifact back. That said, the first success with either equipment is the most important.

We’ve also got a few choice auras, mostly designed to make sure Anya can get through unfettered once she’s indestructible. Pentarch Ward gives us an extra card, Spirit Mantle gives protection from creatures, and Unquestioned Authority does both.

Our final little combo is with Heartless Hidetsugu. He goes boom and suddenly our Anya is really scary. What’s really fun is to use Basilisk Collar or Loxodon Warhammer with Heartless. He does the damage himself when he does his thing, so after he does all that damage (including what he does to us), we gain all that life back. Gaining 80 life from draining 20 from 4 players seems pretty good.

Anya, Merciless Angel ? EDH | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Anya, Merciless Angel

• Creatures (19)
• 1 Augur il-Vec
• 1 Dawnglare Invoker
• 1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
• 1 Heartless Hidetsugu
• 1 Herald of the Host
• 1 Oreskos Explorer
• 1 Relic Seeker
• 1 Sandstone Oracle
• 1 Soltari Champion
• 1 Soltari Foot Soldier
• 1 Soltari Guerrillas
• 1 Soltari Lancer
• 1 Soltari Visionary
• 1 Steelshaper Apprentice
• 1 Stoneforge Mystic
• 1 Stonehewer Giant
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Taj-Nar Swordsmith
• 1 Yellow Scarves Cavalry

• Spells (40)
• 1 Argivian Find
• 1 Fall of the Hammer
• 1 Fated Retribution
• 1 Fiery Confluence
• 1 Orim's Thunder
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Crib Swap
• 1 Breath of Darigaaz
• 1 Earthquake
• 1 Mass Calcify
• 1 Meteor Blast
• 1 Remember the Fallen
• 1 Steelshaper's Gift
• 1 Banishing Light
• 1 Faith's Fetters
• 1 Inheritance
• 1 Oblivion Ring
• 1 Pentarch Ward
• 1 Rite of the Raging Storm
• 1 Spirit Mantle
• 1 Unquestioned Authority
• 1 Basilisk Collar
• 1 Boros Cluestone
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Loxodon Warhammer
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mind's Eye
• 1 Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1 Quietus Spike
• 1 Scytheclaw
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Staff of Nin
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Worn Powerstone

• Lands (40)
• 11 Mountain
• 14 Plains
• 1 Blasted Landscape
• 1 Boros Garrison
• 1 Boros Guildgate
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Drifting Meadow
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 1 Secluded Steppe
• 1 Smoldering Crater
• 1 Temple of Triumph
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Vivid Crag
• 1 Vivid Meadow
• 1 Wind-Scarred Crag

Buy This Deck

We’ve cut almost all of the giants and the giant synergy from the deck. One of the best ways to make the preconstructed decks stronger is to tighten up on a theme or idea, and the giants didn’t really do much for us when trying to turn Anya on. We’ve also dropped Basalt Monolith, which can be a heck of a mana rock but isn’t worth the work to me unless it’s going to be abused. Finally, a reasonable card to run would be Blade of Selves. It doesn’t work with Anya, because the tokens just kill themselves, and because the deck is primarily focused on her, I felt other equipment was better. That said, it’s awesome on Sun Titan, and could be great on one of the smaller shadow creatures.

This deck is pretty solid, and the “half of life totals” angle will surprise opponents when it happens, especially early. That said, either Nahiri, the Lithomancer or Nahiri, the Harbinger would be great in this deck. Just don’t cut a single mana source. As long as we’re running an equipment tutor package, some expensive equipment wouldn’t be bad, Batterskull is always bonkers, Sword of Fire and Ice is great in decks that suffer from lack of card draw, and any of the other Swords of X and Y which happen to be sitting unused in your collection would be useful here.

How would you build around Anya? Any other precon rebuilds you’ve done? Please share in the comments!

One of the nice things about a deck like this is the plan doesn’t exist until the cards are in hand. Sometimes it plays out like a combo deck, living the dream with an early Heartless and a souped-up Anya. Sometimes it plays a slower game, building crazy amounts of mana while searching for exactly the piece of equipment needed to start knocking opponents’ life totals down. And sometimes, it’ll just go pure Voltron, sticking an aura on a Herald of the Host and walloping our opponents with flying 4/4 after flying 4/4.

Boros may be the most maligned color pair in all of commander. Flip Anya over and no one will expect you to be the threat. They’ll re-think, though, when on turn seven they’re all sitting at 18 life, staring down a giant invincible angel wearing Lightning Greaves. So get out there and show them what can do.

Total cost: $97.29 (including the precon!)