Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds by John Constable (1825). Emmara, Soul of the Accord by Mark Winters.

I've built a lot of decks and I've thrown together literally hundreds of decklists over the years, but like most Commander players, I have blind spots in my deckbuilding process. As an example, I habitually avoid running planeswalkers in decks where I won't be able to defend them from flying attackers. There are a lot of reasons to love and to utilize planeswalkers to squeeze more value out of your 99 even if you aren't going to be playing out a bunch of flying or reach blockers, but old habits die hard. There are a few planeswalkers I lean on in certain colors and for certain builds, but I mostly avoid that particular card type. I know I should probably run them more, but I still don't.

Today's build isn't about planeswalkers but it is about a very specific subtype of Enchantments that I also haven't played with very much. Today I'll be building around Sagas.

The effects that happen when you add a lore counter to a Saga vary from Saga to Saga, but are generally positive and also generally underwhelming. This makes sense, as you're spreading out the impact of the enchantment over multiple turns. A Saga that had multiple huge, game-altering impacts on every turn would have to have a very high mana value just to remain balanced.

Sagas are like planeswalkers in a way, except that you don't choose what effects you get and opponents can't attack them to knock them down or remove them. They are enchantments, so standard enchantment removal will work to get rid of them. Today's commander is uniquely suited to let us see if we can squeeze enough value out of Sagas to make for a decent casual EDH deck. Without further adieu, let me introduce Satsuki, the Living Lore.

Satsuki, the Living Lore's activation can only be done at sorcery speed. When Satsuki dies I can either return target Saga or enchantment creature I control to my hand, or I can return target Saga from the graveyard to my hand. Satsuki is a 1 power, 3 toughness creature with no other abilities, so the most likely plan for this deck is absolutely going to revolve around getting as much value as possible out of repeated Saga activations.

Sorting Through Sagas

You might wonder which Sagas would be best in a deck like Satsuki, the Living Lore. From what I've been able to see, there aren't any that might play into some crazy combo wincon. Given that Satsuki will put counters on all of my Sagas, my first draft of this deck will simply play a ton of them. Fortunately, we're going to get such a variety of effects out of these Enchantments that I'm going to try to play the value game with Satsuki.

Some of these Sagas will pump out creatures for us.

A 1/1 Warrior isn't that bad, and Battle for Bretagard will give me two over the course of two turns, or one turn if I manage to activate Satsuki. History of Benalia is a little better, giving me 2/2 White Knights. Jugan Defends the Temple will give me a 1/1 Human Monk mana dork. There are a few others, like Teachings of the Kirin and The First Iroan Games, that can spit out token creatures. I threw in Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives and Rhys the Redeemed to help with the token strategy, but I'm still a bit unsure that there are enough in the deck to warrant those extra pieces.

There are also a few Sagas that help with getting lands into my hand.

Putting lands in your hand isn't the same as ramp, but I'm not sure I've played many games where I hit my land drops every turn until the game was over. This isn't great but it isn't terrible either. I'm not sure I'd run these in many other decks, but for the first draft of Satsuki I think these are playable.

A lot of the other Sagas put +1/+1 counters on creatures, give an ability until end of turn, give you graveyard recursion of some sort or even exiles a creature. It's hard to overstate how many different things these Sagas do. That versatility is going to put this deck into a more casual power range because we'll be hoping to out-value our opponents rather than aiming for a specific wincon.

Enchantment Support

Just running a bunch of Sagas isn't enough to make a casual deck with an unfocused plan actually play well. Since I'm so loaded up on Enchantments it makes sense to tighten that focus a bit and run a lot of the classic Selesnya enchantress support cards.

Argothian Enchantress, Mesa Enchantress, Satyr Enchanter and Verduran Enchantress will all give me card draw when I cast an enchantment. Jukai Naturalist, Starnheim Courser, Starfield Mystic and Herald of the Pantheon will each cut the cost of my enchantments by 1 mana. Mystic will also get +1/+1 counters when I cast an enchantment and Herald will gain me a life. Ajani's Chosen will spit out a 2/2 white Cat creature token and Archon of Sun's Grace will pop out a 2/2 white Pegasus creature token. There is plenty of support in green and white for enchantments and it makes sense to run a lot of it.

Sun Titan used to be a staple for EDH decks in white, and while it may have fallen out of favor, it will fit in nicely in today's list. Auramancer, Monk Idealist and Tragic Poet give us additional recursion and Open the Vaults will serve as a budget replacement for Replenish, a much higher priced reserve list card. A lot of our Sagas will end up in the graveyard, though many of the newer ones will turn into creatures.

Hoping For The Best

The more I look over this first draft, the more I really like it - but... I like it for games where you know you're in a casual meta and you're not going to be dealing with the kind of combo wincons that high-powered and fringe cEDH decks love to throw around. If you wanted to try to tune this up, I would play the deck enough times to get a good feel for which Sagas were underperforming and then swap those out for more removal and boardwipes.

You might also want to load up with a few combos of your own, but this current build isn't that deck. This is one of those builds where you'll be tapping mana, playing spells, activating Sagas and hoping for the best. Some EDH players hate to play decks that don't have a clear, concise, and efficient path to victory. I'll be the first to admit that I enjoy those higher powered, streamlined decks, but at the right table I bet this could be a lot of fun. That "right table" might be around precon level, or just a little higher, and that's really OK. Just know what you're getting into when you shuffle up to play and you'll be fine.

Satsuki Sagas | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Satsuki, the Living Lore

• Creatures (19)
• 1 Ajani's Chosen
• 1 Archon of Sun's Grace
• 1 Argothian Enchantress
• 1 Auramancer
• 1 Celestial Ancient
• 1 Dawnhart Geist
• 1 Herald of the Pantheon
• 1 Jukai Naturalist
• 1 Mesa Enchantress
• 1 Monk Idealist
• 1 Nessian Wanderer
• 1 Rhys the Redeemed
• 1 Satyr Enchanter
• 1 Setessan Champion
• 1 Starfield Mystic
• 1 Starnheim Courser
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Tragic Poet
• 1 Verduran Enchantress

• Instants (6)
• 1 Argivian Find
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Rite of Harmony
• 1 Second Sunrise
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Fumigate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Open the Vaults
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Search for Glory
• 1 Vanquish the Horde

• Enchantments (24)
• 1 All That Glitters
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Azusa's Many Journeys
• 1 Battle for Bretagard
• 1 Befriending the Moths
• 1 Boseiju Reaches Skyward
• 1 Elspeth Conquers Death
• 1 Era of Enlightenment
• 1 Fall of the Impostor
• 1 History of Benalia
• 1 Jugan Defends the Temple
• 1 Michiko's Reign of Truth
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Song of Freyalise
• 1 Tales of Master Seshiro
• 1 Teachings of the Kirin
• 1 The Binding of the Titans
• 1 The Birth of Meletis
• 1 The Dragon-Kami Reborn
• 1 The Fall of Lord Konda
• 1 The First Iroan Games
• 1 The Mending of Dominaria
• 1 The Restoration of Eiganjo
• 1 Triumph of Gerrard

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Mirage Mirror
• 1 Selesnya Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Vedalken Orrery

• Planeswalker (1)
• 1 Calix, Destiny's Hand

• Lands (37)
• 13 Forest
• 13 Plains
• 1 Bountiful Promenade
• 1 Branchloft Pathway
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fortified Village
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Overgrown Farmland
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Urza's Saga
• 1 Windbrisk Heights

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I suspect a few games might result in revisions that put a focus on tokens. Curious Herd could play nicely in a deck like this, but the more token generators and token support cards you throw in, the more your focus will drift away from our Saga theme.

This all begs the question of whether Satsuki belongs in the 99 of a deck rather than at its helm. If you were expanding your deck to cover more colors and you were going to run the best of the best from all of the Sagas Wizards has printed, I might see Satsuki being a pretty strong card, but I actually like this deck's plan (or lack of a plan) a lot. It's an unfocused, casual build that's likely not going to be crushing many tables but squeezing value out of an underappreciated card type can be a lot of fun.

Final Thoughts

You might wonder why I didn't load this deck up with additional untap dorks or artifacts so I could get yet another saga activation out of each turn.

I think the bottom line is that I wasn't completely sold on the idea that an extra activation would end up making that big a difference. Playing and running through an entire saga in one turn is probably something I'd try to do eventually if I were to build this deck and play it in paper. There are plenty of ways to untap a creature and I'm sure I'd eventually try to pull that off. I think it would be fun to try to do, but I have no illusions that I'd be winning games any faster with those extra activations even if I had a bunch of the deck's best sagas on the field.

As a side note, I'm happy to report that I've opened up a box of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and I'll soon be building Light-Paws in paper. I didn't open enough of the death-trigger Dragons to start building my O-Kagachi Nim Deathmantle deck from a few weeks ago, but I might still circle back to the idea eventually. I still think it'd be a fun deck and I do love playing Dragons in Commander. I've been getting mixed results out of my Morophon double-strike Dragons that I now have sleeved up. The deck is a more casual build, but I've come close to winning with it.

I expect to be writing about Kamigawa for a few more weeks, but once we have a break from new legendary creatures, I'm going to take a crack at exploring what kind of deck I can brew up around Norin the Wary. Many thanks to Jon Birch for the suggestion - it might be a few weeks, but I'm already looking forward to it.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!