View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields by Jacob Van Ruisdael (1665-70). Pillage by Jesper Ejsing.

Once upon a time... I was a terrible deckbuilder.

I'll be the first to admit that I still have plenty to learn about building and playing Commander decks, but when I first got into the game I had very little understanding about how to really squeeze power and value out of a hundred-card pile of Magic cards.

I once excitedly built Mikaeus, the Unhallowed around a Zombie Animal Zoo theme, with as many weird zombie animals as I could get my hands on. It was a terrible deck. Later when I saw how powerful "Black Mike" can be as a combo commander, I felt a bit silly that I was so pumped to be building a deck that would run cards like Wandering Tombshell, Lurching Rotbeast and Rotting Mastodon. Flavor is great and I do have a place in my cold, black heart for decks that sacrifice a little power in favor of a compelling or even a silly theme.

Today's commander is a new legendary Human Advisor who cares about three odd creature subtypes - Advisors, Artificers and Monks.

Seeing a commander that might be able to lead a Monk tribal build brought back another amusing memory. My first attempt at building a Narset, Enlightened Master deck was as a Monk Tribal build. Narset might be a Monk but she does really want a bunch of Monks in the 99 of her deck. Many Narset builds are almost entirely creatureless, so when I shuffled up Narset Monk Tribal it shouldn't surprise anyone that the deck didn't work very well. I was new to deckbuilding games in general, and I did eventually get Narset right.

I never did get anywhere with that Monk Tribal version of Narset, but I always wanted to revisit the idea. Today's commander is the perfect leader for such a build and I can even run my bae in the 99.

Let's look at today's subject, The Archimandrite, or as I plan to call him: "Archie."

This 0/5 Human Advisor costs 5 mana, has a weird name that is really more of a formal title, and a pretty neat party trick. Let's look at each part separately.

At the beginning of your upkeep you gain X life, where X is the number of cards in your hand minus 4. This seems pretty straightforward - you get a reward for having a full hand. I don't see making this your main focus, but on the other hand drawing cards is always a good idea.

Whenever you gain life, each Advisor, Artificer and Monk you control gains vigilance and gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is the amount of life you gained. I think this is your fastest path to enlightenment with Archie. Explosive lifegain translating into a raw power boost seems like a fantastic way to deal damage and it also helps to enable Archie's last ability.

You can tap three untapped Advisors, Artificers, and/or Monks you control to draw a card. Archie is doing the tapping, so you don't have to worry about haste. Your lifegain ability grants vigilance so if your creatures survive combat you can also use them to draw cards. This is nice and will absolutely get used, but I don't see it being the main thrust of your deck even if you were to run something like Intruder Alarm to let you untap your creatures easily.

I did a little digging and after looking for evasive Advisors and Artificers, I gladly settled on building a Monk tribal deck around The Archimandrite. I didn't even look at Persistent Petitioners, which is a Human Advisor and could represent an really interesting direction for a mill-themed Archie deck.

Monk-ey Business

While I was sorely tempted to build a hidden commander deck with Narset, Enlightened Master as the real focus of my game plan, I decided to instead focus on a genuine, bona fide Monk Tribal list. It's an itch I've had since that first terrible, ill-conceived Narset Monk tribal deck I built years ago. It's about time I scratch that itch.

Evasion is going to be an important part of this deck's game plan and there's no better way to evade blockers than to simply not be able to be blocked. Soltari Monk has protection from Black and shadow - meaning it can only block or be blocked by other creatures with shadow. Not only will it be able to get through against almost anyone - it can block a Dauthi Voidwalker! That's not something that will come up very often, but it's a little perk that amuses me.

Mystic of the Hidden Way can't be blocked and I can break its casting cost into separate turns by casting it as a face down 2/2 creature and then paying to turn it face up. I'll be paying an extra mana, but morph creatures are fun to play with. Elusive Spellfist will get +1/+0 and become unblockable if I cast a noncreature spell. Any turn where I "go off" will probably involve at least one noncreature spell, but there will be times where it will just be a plain old Human Monk.

My second way to get attackers through my opponents' defenses will be with flying Monks. Mantis Rider has flying, vigilance and haste, giving me a surprise threat if I've got the right colors of mana available. Stratus Dancer is my other morph, and it's actually a "megamorph", meaning it gains a +1/+1 counter when I pay to turn it face up. I'll also get to counter target instant or sorcery spell, which could be useful in the right situation. Githzerai Monk has flash, flying and will tap all creatures I don't control when it enters the battlefield. I likely won't be able to attack with it that turn, but being able to open up all my tablemates for a turn cycle is a very powerful ability.

I'm also running Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker and Siani, Eye of the Storm. The former is a legendary Bird Monk with flying who gets a +1/+1 counter whenever an opponent casts a spell. The latter is a Djinn Monk who will have me scry X when I attack where X is the number of attacking creatures with flying. Serra Ascendant is a Human Monk with lifelink who gains flying and +5/+5 if my life total is over 30.

You may remember Serra Ascendant from all those annoying games where the white player got out a turn 1 Serra Ascendant, used it to shoot their life total way up in the early game, played an Aetherflux Reservoir and then looked at everyone like they had no idea why the entire table was annoyed at them. It can be a headache to be sure, but Serra Ascendant absolutely has a place in Archie Monk Tribal.

I've got a decent number of other Monks, but most of them aren't that exciting. Enlightened Ascetic will let me destroy target enchantment when it enters the battlefield. Elsha of the Infinite will let me look at and cast the top card of my library at instant speed if it's a noncreature, nonland card. Monastery Mentor will let me create 1/1 white Monk creature tokens with prowess whenever I cast a noncreature spell. Lots of these guys have prowess and some have other neat party tricks. Rhox Faithmender has lifelink and will double my lifegain. Sage-Eye Avengers will let me bounce a weaker creature when Sage-Eye attacks.

This is a solid enough team, and there may be a few too many Monks in today's list. Monks as a tribe don't have the kind of deep bench that Elves, Goblins, Dragons, Humans and many other tribes have, but there's enough to work with that I think this tribe has genuine potential with a commander like Archie at the helm.

Now that I've got my team together, let's look at how I can use The Archimandrite to really make them a real threat to win games.

Explosive Lifegain

I could have built this list around control, card draw and incremental lifegain. It might even have been a stronger deck, but I can't often resist big splashy cards that give me the chance to make big splashy plays.

So I told you this wasn't a secret Narset deck. That doesn't mean she doesn't have a role to play in today's build. If I'm able to get her out, I can swing and possibly cast a few noncreature, nonland cards for free. With a little topdeck manipulation like Mystical Tutor I could swing, flop into Akroma's Will, and if Archie is on the field, have my creatures gain flying, vigilance, double strike, lifelink, indestructible and protection from all colors until end of turn.

Narset is fun and all, but the fact that she doesn't let me cast sorceries, artifacts and enchantments at instant speed is a little inconvenient. I hate to say it, but she might even get cut from the deck if that timing issue proves to be a problem in actual play. I could run Vedalken Orrery to help with that, but it isn't in this version.

I'll keep her for this first draft, but this really isn't a hidden commander deck. It is a deck that cares very much about first main phase lifegain.

I've got two Ajanis in today's list: Ajani, Strength of the Pride and Ajani, Wise Counselor. The former can gain me life equal to the number of creatures and planeswalkers I control. The latter can gain me life equal to the number of creatures I control. Neither is all that explosive, but even a five-life bump in my first main phase will pump up my Monk army and give them vigilance until end of turn.

Two enchantments that I mentioned in my recent Shanna, Purifying Blade column can play a role in this deck. Illusions of Grandeur will gain me 20 life when it enters the battlefield and Delusions of Mediocrity will gain me 10 life. The former has a cumulative upkeep so it's unlikely to stick around that long. Archie can turn that into +20/+0 or +10/+0 until end of turn for all of my Advisors, Artificers and Monks.

Evra is an odd card for this list. It costs 6 mana and has an activated ability that lets you pay 4 mana to exchange your life total with Evra's power. Evra has 4 power. You'll be outside of lightning bolt range, but it's very risky to just put your life to 4 for no good reason. This ability does not require you to tap, so you can do this on the end step to drop your life to 4, and on your turn do it again to regain all of the life you lost.

If you were at 30, had 8 free mana and activated Evra twice on the same turn, you'd lose 26 life and then gain it right back. Archie wouldn't care about the life loss, but will be happy to see that life gain and give your Monks vigilance and +26/+0 until end of turn.

Resolute Archangel and Arbiter of Knollridge are both in this first draft. They each cost a whopping 7 mana. The former will set my life total to match my starting life total. The latter will set every player's life total equal to the highest player's life total. I'm leaning towards dropping Arbiter in favor of more interaction, but it's still in this first draft.

Eternity Vessel is a big investment at 6 mana, but it will let me turn landfall into a life reset. I'll put X charge counters on it when it enters the battlefield where X is my life total. From then on, when I play a land, I can set my life total to match the number of life counters on Eternity Vessel. Are landfall life resets good? Is this a bad card for this list? I don't know, but I've got a few ideas on how to make it playable in this deck.

One of the keys to this deck will be the ability to drop your life total down to a low number just before triggering one of these life-resetting abilities. If you're at 40 and have a Resolute Archangel in your hand, you can pay 30 life to activate any of the phyrexian (pay life instead of mana) activated abilities of the creatures shown above and then you'll gain 30 life when you get reset back to 40.

Imagine if you were drawing and dropping lands every turn and had a small army of unblockable or flying monks. If you had an Eternity Vessel on the field with 35 charge counters you could pay 30 life into Moltensteel Dragon, drop a land, set your life back to 35 and swing with a very, very scary board of Monks. That Moltensteel Dragon at 19 power isn't bad either, but the ability to do a variation of this pump effect again and again is too good to resist putting into this deck. One way to have unblockable creatures is to simply remove all of your opponents' creatures before combat. A boardwipe like Fumigate will do double duty by clearing the field, gaining you life, and if you were able to protect your Monks with Flawless Maneuver or Unbreakable Formation, you can swing in for a chunk of damage with your monk army.

The Archimandrite

As I work my way through this column, I do find myself wondering if I'm missing anything important. I could be running any number of lifegain combos using Archangel of Thune or Famished Paladin, but I didn't want this to be a combo deck. It's not necessarily that much easier to hit a combo to try to win a game of EDH, but there's something to be said for trying to work with what a commander gives you and not resorting to putting an easy "I win" button in your deck.

I do genuinely wonder if this deck has a few too many hoops to jump through in order to get to where it's going.

I love some of the lifegain options, like Illusions of Grandeur, but others feel like they might have too many moving parts. It's nice to imagine that you'll have your Moltensteel Dragon all ready for you to cast your Resolute Archangel, hold priority, pay a bunch of life, and then swing in with an army of huge Monks. Making that happen in an actual game is a bit harder. People play removal. Someone might have a way to kill you while you're at that low life total at instant speed. Things go wrong. There will be games where my clever plan backfires spectacularly.

Things also go right sometimes. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so I'll often prefer to run my weird interactions in the hope that I'll get to see them happen. Sometimes they will and they'll make for great stories or at least great moments. Sometimes I'll just run up against interaction or power mismatches or I'll even give up on a deck before it gets the chance to do its thing. It's all part of the Commander experience.

Archie EDH | Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 The Archimandrite

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Arbiter of Knollridge
• 1 Elsha of the Infinite
• 1 Elusive Spellfist
• 1 Enlightened Ascetic
• 1 Evra, Halcyon Witness
• 1 Githzerai Monk
• 1 Half-Elf Monk
• 1 Immolating Souleater
• 1 Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker
• 1 Mantis Rider
• 1 Moltensteel Dragon
• 1 Monastery Mentor
• 1 Monastery Swiftspear
• 1 Monk Idealist
• 1 Mystic of the Hidden Way
• 1 Narset, Enlightened Master
• 1 Resolute Archangel
• 1 Rhox Faithmender
• 1 Sage-Eye Avengers
• 1 Serra Ascendant
• 1 Siani, Eye of the Storm
• 1 Soltari Monk
• 1 Stratus Dancer
• 1 Trespassing Souleater

• Instants (14)
• 1 Akroma's Will
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Boros Charm
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cryptic Command
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 1 Fierce Guardianship
• 1 Flawless Maneuver
• 1 Force of Will
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Teferi's Protection
• 1 Unbreakable Formation

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Fumigate
• 1 Invincible Hymn
• 1 Oketra's Last Mercy
• 1 Providence
• 1 Solve the Equation
• 1 Vanquish the Horde
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Delusions of Mediocrity
• 1 Illusions of Grandeur
• 1 Path of Bravery
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 True Conviction

• Artifacts (11)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Eternity Vessel
• 1 Glaring Spotlight
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Urza's Incubator

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Ajani, Strength of the Pride
• 1 Ajani, Wise Counselor

• Lands (35)
• 4 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Plains
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 Azorius Chancery
• 1 Cavern of Souls
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crystal Vein
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Mana Confluence
• 1 Plateau
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Spectator Seating
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sundown Pass
• 1 Training Center
• 1 Tundra
• 1 Volcanic Island

Buy This Deck Export text format

This list is a bit higher than my usual budget and power level. I lifted the land base out of my Narset, Enlightened Master list, in part because I've been mulling the idea of scrapping that deck and building this one. I think it'll be a lot of fun, but I'm not sure there are enough cards in my Narset list that can just slide over into this list. It might make more sense to keep Narset intact. Even if I don't play it that often, it's a delight and a real guilty pleasure. It's a glass cannon to be sure, but when it works, it's a lot of fun to play for me. I don't play it that often because it's simply much, much less fun for my opponents.

I'm not sure how you'd tune this deck up much. It has a clear build path and a lot of neat tricks up its sleeves. I do think a Persistent Petitioners version of The Archimandrite might be a really interesting experiment, but I don't have enough experience with that mill-focused Advisor to know if they would mix well with this deck's lifegain / aggro strategy. It might be a terrible combination.

If you wanted to tune this list down, you'd start with the mana base and probably also drop out Mana Crypt and some of the expensive free counterspells like Force of Will and Fierce Guardianship. I think a monk tribal deck is always going to have a low ceiling in terms of power level, but you could take the core concepts of this deck, drop out a lot of the high-priced cards and still have a fun, explosive, interesting list to play.

Early Results

I was able to play this deck in one game on Tabletop Simulator and the results were interesting. It was a game where another player was also playing The Archimandrite. His list wasn't focused on any one tribe, but ended up having a game that revolved around Monastery Mentor.

In the early game the other Archie player built up a pretty impressive board of token Monk creatures thanks to Monastery Mentor and a ton of artifacts. Another tablemate on Nicol Bolas was having a slower start. I was able to get a few monks out but wasn't doing much. I don't remember what the fourth player was doing beyond the fact that they were playing a deck with a bunch of un-cards (which was OK with us) and seemed to be keeping up with the Monastery Monk Archie player's board state.

The game from my perspective saw two major turning points, both of which went decidedly against me. In fact, it ended up being a very frustrating game to the point that my frustration obscured the fact that my list actually did what it was trying to do. It's been a few days and I can look back on the game a little more clearly, but boy was I annoyed at the time.

The first key moment was a turn where I had Glaring Spotlight on the field and maybe four monks in addition to my commander. I had just used Enlightened Tutor on the end step to go get Illusions of Grandeur and had the mana to both play Illusions and sacrifice Glaring Spotlight to make my team unblockable.

The Nicol Bolas player hadn't been doing much, but we knew he had Cyclonic Rift in hand and also had the mana to use it. The un-cards player had said he wanted a shorter game that night as he had work he had to get back to (grading papers). I played Illusions of Grandeur, shot my life total up 20 points, sacrificed Glaring Spotlight and split my attack between the other Archie player and the dude playing the un-cards. It would have been lethal on those two players, my Glaring Spotlight would be gone to the graveyard and the Nicol Bolas player and I could duke it out for the win.

For some reason the Nicol Bolas player overloaded his rift anyways, thwarting my attempt to kill the two other players.

I wasn't pleased, but I also couldn't stop him. I still don't quite understand his logic - he's not the kind of player that normally trolls his tablemates for fun so maybe he thought it was his only path to try to win the game. He said he just wanted the game to keep going...

The other Archie player replayed Monastery Mentor and proceeded to rebuild at an alarming but entirely predictable pace. I should probably have seen that coming and pointed it out when the rift was being put on the stack, but I don't really think I would have been able to talk my way out of getting rifted.

I wasn't able to rebuild very quickly, but I was able to play out a Githzerai Monk. That 3/2 flying monk taps all creatures you don't control. Rather than use it as a way to keep the other Archie player tapped down on their turn, I decided to get cute. I played it on my turn and basically said it was a gift to them. They would have an open swing with a good sized army of token monks on either of the other two players.

That kind of play is always a gamble. As it turned out, he was able to kill the guy who was playing the un-cards, leaving just the Nicol Bolas player and myself.

On my turn I had a chance to swing for the win. I had drawn into Invincible Hymn and had just enough mana to play it.

Invincible Hymn is about as explosive a lifegain card as you're going to find. It will have me count the number of cards in my library (probably over 60) and my life becomes that number. Whether I gain life or actually lose life has everything to do with the size of my library, but in general I would expect this to gain me anywhere from 20 to 40 life.

In this case I would have been able to get at least one monk through to each of my remaining opponents and it absolutely would have killed them... so of course it got countered by the other Archie player.

I'm in blue. I even had a Force of Will in the deck, but nothing in hand and no way to counter his counterspell. I wasn't able to overcome that setback. I passed turn and got murdered by the other Archie player, who hadn't even realized the impact that explosive lifegain could have on how his deck played. He just got an early Monastery Mentor, had a ton of artifacts and got saved by the Bolas player for no discernable reason. I don't think he played a single spell that could gain him life.

So it was a game. Sometimes you just get beat.

The other Archie player won, and while I should have been pleased to see my deck actually threaten to eliminate players multiple times, at the time I was pretty frustrated. Of course, you can't control how games play out and what other players do, and if you can't stop a spell from resolving, you just have to suck it up and deal with it.

My takeaway from that game is that this list really does have serious potential. It is clearly capable of winning games, even if its first day out didn't exactly go as planned. I don't think I made any serious misplays but I am reconsidering the amount of stack interaction I'm running in the list. A Silence, Grand Abolisher or Conjurer's Flail - or all three - might find their way into this deck if I do build it in paper..

Final Thoughts

I'm not the saltiest of tablemates but I do have my moments. That Tabletop Simulator game definitely pushed all of my buttons. Lots of us get salty when we play Commander, but I have a hard time forgiving myself for my moments of crankiness when things go wrong.

Last week I took a moment to raise a glass to the good folks who gave us years and years of weekly entertainment at the Commandercast podcast.

This week I'd like to take a moment to tell you all about the newest podcast I've grown to listen to every week - The Howling Salt Mine podcast. Every week Sam, Mike and Tony mine the salty discourse of the /r/EDH subreddit to find interesting stories about salty moments and salty players. Not only do they rate the saltiness of the reddit posts, they also talk about the saltiness of cards, decks, commanders and they even explore their own salty moments from past games.

You might wonder if a deep dive into the unhappier moments of EDH games would make for an entertaining hour of podcasting and I can assure you that it does. Much like Mark and Adam from Commandercast (RIP), the real heart of The Howling Salt Mine comes from the clear love for the game that Sam, Mike and Tony exude, and the humility they show through their willingness to talk about their own bad moments. We pretty much all have salto moments and it's honestly a bit therapeutic to hear it talked about so openly.

Was I right to get as salty as I got when my Archie deck got sidelined by a tablemate who essentially decided to play kingmaker? Will the good folks at The Howling Salt Mine read this column and rate my saltiness on a scale of 1 to 10? Will they make it to HSM episode 500 without turning into a sad, hollow mockery of themselves?

These are all questions I hope to see answered, and of course Commandercast did not actually become a sad, hollow mockery of itself. I'm kidding about that, but I will be reaching out to HSM to let them know that I'm giving them a shout out.

You should check out The Howling Salt Mine wherever you get your podcasts. I should try to get a little less salty when I'm playing a deck for the first time, I'm overly invested in seeing it have a good first game, and things go horribly wrong. It happens, but it can be hard not to get a little upset in the moment.

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