Merry Christmas everyone!

Today, I'm going to take a look back at a commander from Strixhaven that is a member of a short list of legendary creatures that will have you regularly giving gifts to your tablemates. Whether you build this Elder Dragon as a "hug" commander or you try to minimize the amount you help other players is up to you, but you could easily play this as a Draconic Father Christmas in Orzhov () colors.

As you'll find out, I'm not all that generous, but I've built this deck and have played it a bunch of times over the past few months. My gift to myself on this holiday is to take a step away from covering new cards and commanders to share my thoughts and my list for Shadrix Silverquill.

This Elder Dragon has a 2/5 body with flying and double strike and a delightful party trick.

At the beginning of combat on my turn, I may choose two of the following modes. I can have target player create a 2/1 White and Black Inkling creature token with flying. I can have target player draw a card and lose a life. Lastly, I can have target player put a +1/+1 counter on each creature they control. Each mode must target a different player.

Your inner Grinch might have you thinking that you should always give yourself whatever makes the most sense, and you should always give your tablemates the gift that helps them the least. That's fairly normal, to be honest. Most EDH players aren't actively trying to help anyone but themselves.

After playing this deck a bunch of times, the thing I enjoy the most is giving card draw (at the cost of 1 life) to whoever is behind on lands. Nobody enjoys being behind on lands, and even a good deck can occasionally get mana screwed. Occasionally that player will be me, but it's not infrequent that some poor tablemate is several lands behind everyone else and is just hoping to survive for long enough to eventually be relevant in the game before it's over.

If I always choose to give card draw to the tablemate who is behind on lands (assuming that's not me), I then get to give someone a 2/1 flying Inkling or +1/+1 counters on all of their creatures. This second gift nearly always goes to me, because in my heart of hearts I am not a hug player. I've had enough losing streaks over the years to know that wins aren't always easy to get. That means if I've already got a bunch of creatures I might give myself +1/+1 counters, but otherwise I'll probably give myself an Inkling token. I never know when I'll need that extra blocker, and they fly so if I build them up for a few turns I can turn them into a legitimate threat with +1/+1 counters.

With a plan in mind, my next step was to figure out if there was a clever... or even an obvious way to make the most out of what Shadrix brings to a game.

Double Strike

The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that this is one of those rare commanders with double strike. Every single thing I do to pump up my commander's power will translate into twice as much damage if I am able to swing unblocked. I'll be starting at a measly 2 power, but all I need to do is add nine to that number to present a lethal threat. Eleven power with double strike means twenty-two commander damage, which will kill a player quite nicely.

I'm running a few fairly Standard pieces of equipment. Hero's Blade gives +3/+2 and equips automatically to a legendary creature when it enters the battlefield. Blackblade Reforged is a staple in Voltron decks and gives +1/+1 for each land I control. Basilisk Collar gives deathtouch and lifeliink, which makes a creature with double strike nearly impossible to block and kill. I've got a Swiftfoot Boots and Mask of Avacyn to give hexproof and Hammer of Nazahn to make Shadrix indestructible. Beyond those familiar pieces of equipment, there are a few that are worth putting in the spotlight.

Inquisitor's Flail is an old card from Innistrad that has equipped creature deal double damage, but with the drawback that if equipped creature were to be dealt damage that damage is also doubled. It doesn't give any pump, but doubling the damage output of a commander with double strike makes it very easy to present a lethal threat.

I'm not running All That Glitters, but I could easily see that aura fitting into this list. That enchantment gives +1/+1 for each equipment and enchantment I control. Auras can be great but they go to the graveyard if the creature the aura is enchanting leaves play. I am running Nettlecyst, which gives the same benefit as All That Glitters, along with Cranial Plating. Even if I don't get my Smothering Tithe into play, there's a very good chance I'll be able to get a half dozen artifacts onto the battlefield.

Nettlecyst is a living weapon, which means it will have me create a 0/0 black Phyrexian Germ token and will attach to that token automatically. Nettlecyst gives +1/+1 for each artifact and/or enchantment I control. Cranial Plating just gives +1/+0 for each artifact I control, but has a really neat trick. For two Black mana I can attach Cranial Plating to target creature I control. I can do that at instant speed, so I can get up to some pretty clever plays if the circumstances are right. Shadrix has double strike so if he was being blocked I could wait until after first strike damage and then move Cranial Plating over to an unblocked Inkling to do a little extra damage to an opponent.

Also worth a mention is Astarion's Thirst. This four-mana Black instant will exile target creature and put X +1/+1 counters on a commander creature I control where X is the power of the creature being exiled this way. In many cases this could immediately turn Shadrix into a lethal threat, and I can cast it after blockers are declared but before first strike damage. It is wholly dependent upon a tablemate having a huge creature that I can target, but Astarion's Thirst is still a great way to turn creature removal into pump for a creature I control.

Protecting my commander is going to be very important. I might be able to curry favor from my tablemates early on, but once Shadrix has enough equipment attached it's going to be obvious that I'm a problem that needs to be dealt with. Hexproof is nice but protection will let me swing unblocked if I've got the right protection and I'm swinging at a tablemate with the right color flying/reach blockers.

The Swords cycle is a series of swords that give protection from two colors and have combat damage triggers that fit each Sword's colors. Sword of Hearth and Home gives protection from Green and White and will let you tutor up a land (for Green) and flicker a creature you control (for white). Sword of Body and Mind will give protection from Green and Blue and will let you create a 2/2 Green Wolf (for Green) and will mill the damaged player 10 cards (for Blue). Sword of Truth and Justice protects equipped creature from White and Blue and will put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control (for White) and proliferate (for Blue).

I won't go into every Sword in this list, but I'm running every Sword of X and Y that I had in my old Kemba, Kha Regent list. The value you can get out of doubling your combat triggers with these swords is pretty amazing. As an example, if you had three 2/1 Inklings on the battlefield and you hit a player with Sword of Truth and Justice equipped, you'd end up putting four +1/+1 counters on each creature you control. On the next turn you could choose to put a +1/+1 counter on your creatures with Shadrix's beginning of combat trigger and you could then swing with three 7/6 flying Inklings. If you throw in Shadrix, you might just kill someone even without relying on commander damage.

Pivoting Play Patterns

I have a soft spot for decks that are simple to play and don't give you a "popsicle headache" with all the decision-making you have to do, but this list has proven to be both fun and fairly simple. I've found myself pivoting my play based upon what my deck gives me.

As an example, if I find myself with an early Ghostly Prison, I might keep Shadrix's card draw for myself and give someone a 2/1 flying Inkling. Ghostly Prison will tax my opponents for attacking me. At a cost of two-mana per attacker, extra bodies will probably be sent at someone else. I like my chances of drawing into a boardwipe before they are able to send their army my way.

If I pull into an early Felidar Retreat and I'm hitting my land drops, I might find myself with a growing army of 2/2 White Cat Beast creature tokens. In that case I'll probably put +1/+1 counters on my creatures when I go to combat.

If I've managed to play the powerful enchantment Cathars' Crusade, I'll definitely want to give myself a 2/1 Inkling creature token as that will result in +1/+1 counters being put on each creature I control.

I've found that I usually end up giving myself Inkling tokens, but I like the fact that Shadrix Silverquill can adapt to what is happening in the game. I can even play politics with my gift giving. If I've got a Fumigate in hand, I might try to strike a deal and give the player with the biggest army some +1/+1 counters if they don't send the army at me for a turn or two. Helping someone else kill my tablemates is risky and might make tablemates salty, but if all goes well my "bad decisions" will make sense in the end.

Santa Shadrix

I'm unlikely to ever just give all my Shadrix gifts away, but I could see a build around this commander that was devoted to playing a dedicated "hug" game. You'd end up playing a lot more defensive cards like Settle the Wreckage, Darkness and a bunch of the White "fog" cards. I've come to appreciate that wins aren't always easy to come by in this game. Some days everything goes well, but you can just as easily go weeks without even sniffing a chance at a win, and I get itchy if I haven't won a game in ages.

This list should be able to compete at mid and some high-powered tables, but isn't going to have an easy time at the highest levels of play. Interaction is hugely important in high powered play and not being able to interact on the stack means playing against tuned and highly interactive Blue decks will probably always be a struggle. The same could be said for nearly any deck not in Blue, but Orzhov's toolset for dealing with counterspells feels particularly limited.

Shadrix Silverquill | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Shadrix Silverquill

• Creatures (13)
• 1 Bennie Bracks, Zoologist
• 1 Brass Squire
• 1 Deep Gnome Terramancer
• 1 Esper Sentinel
• 1 God-Eternal Oketra
• 1 Mentor of the Meek
• 1 Mondrak, Glory Dominus
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Shaile, Dean of Radiance
• 1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1 Skittering Surveyor
• 1 Sram, Senior Edificer
• 1 Stoneforge Mystic

• Instants (12)
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Astarion's Thirst
• 1 Batwing Brume
• 1 Deadly Rollick
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 1 Get Lost
• 1 Inkshield
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Tainted Strike
• 1 Teferi's Protection
• 1 Utter End

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Damn
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Fumigate
• 1 Vanquish the Horde

• Enchantments (10)
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Cathars' Crusade
• 1 Divine Visitation
• 1 Felidar Retreat
• 1 Flowering of the White Tree
• 1 Forge Anew
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 Phyresis
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Spirit Mantle

• Artifact (22)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Basilisk Collar
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Cranial Plating
• 1 Hammer of Nazahn
• 1 Hero's Blade
• 1 Idol of Oblivion
• 1 Inquisitor's Flail
• 1 Mask of Avacyn
• 1 Nettlecyst
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Sword of Body and Mind
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Sword of Hearth and Home
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow
• 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel
• 1 Sword of Truth and Justice
• 1 Sword of the Animist

• Lands (37)
• 13 Plains
• 13 Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Brightclimb Pathway // Grimclimb Pathway
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Shattered Sanctum
• 1 Vault of Champions
• 1 Vault of the Archangel

Buy This Deck Export text

If you wanted to tune this list down or drop the budget, you would probably start by dropping out a bunch of the cards from the Swords cycle. Those combat damage triggers and the protection they offer will be missed, but you can find auras and cheaper equipment that can still help you to present a threat. This list has a very low creature count but you could easily move the list in a number of other directions. A go-wide Shadrix list might lean more heavily on getting those +1/+1 counters and would probably be more budget friendly than the list I am sharing today.

Tuning this list up is going to be a challenge. Fast mana would help you get Shadrix out earlier. This commander's "ceiling" isn't incredibly high, but you might throw in a combo or two and run more tutors. You could add in Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Walking Ballista as a way to reliably end games early, but then you'd be able to reasonably ask why you aren't just running Heliod in the command zone. The real trick with tuning a list up in power is in finding faster wincons that are still thematically appropriate for your commander. Shadrix is many things, but I don't think he is a natural fit to head up a combo or cEDH deck.

Early Results

I've been able to play this deck in a bunch of games so far. It has both won and lost, and I've got a few takeaways to share.

Orzhov is not a great color combination for ramp. Shadrix isn't cheap. In a game where there's a lot of removal flying around, if you're not able to keep getting lands into play, there's a good chance you'll find yourself without your commander and without much to do. Sword of the Animist, Sword of Hearth and Home and Smothering Tithe can go a long way toward helping with that, but there will be games where things just don't go your way. This list doesn't have a robust backup plan to get you back into those games.

Protection is amazing. If you get an early Stoneforge Mystic, the equipment you tutor for is going to be hugely important for how the rest of the game will play out, so choose carefully. Sword of Hearth and Home is nearly always a good option, as you'll be able to flicker Stoneforge Mystic and tutor up a land. The colors you are matched up against should play a big role in determining what Sword you tutor up. Protection means your creature can't be damaged by, targeted by, or blocked by anything in the color you have protection from, so you'll both be protecting Shadrix and setting yourself up to be able to swing at someone unblocked.

One of the best cards in the deck so far has been Idol of Oblivion. Any time I can drop this artifact early in the game, I'm going to be very happy to make an Inkling creature token and then tap it to draw a card. The most recent addition to the deck was Flowering of the White Tree, which will give my commander +2/+1 and ward 2. That +2 power means four extra damage if I can swing unblocked, and will go a long way towards getting to where I can present a two-turn threat.

Voltron can have a funny effect on a table. Some players will beg for another turn. You will probably have moments where it's clear you can kill anyone at the table and you'll have to choose who lives or who dies. If you can't abide having players beg for their lives or you dislike making those kinds of decisions, you might not want to play a deck like this. Sometimes you'll kill the wrong person and the game will go on and on and one of your buddies will be out of the game for way longer than you had planned. Sometimes you'll pick correctly and you'll knock players out turn after turn and win fairly easily.

If this all sounds like familiar advice about playing a deck centered around commander damage, you're not wrong. I found that the decision making that Shadrix gives you at the beginning of combat ends up being a lot of fun. I really enjoyed giving card draw to the player who had the fewest lands. It was impossible for anyone to argue with that logic, and I'm confident there will be a game someday where I'm sitting there handing out Inkling tokens with a boardwipe in my hand just waiting for a chance to turn the tables on my podmates.

I've definitely had games with this deck where I felt outmatched, and I've also had games where I felt like I was probably at too high a power level. If nothing else, this many cards from the Swords cycle can make the deck seem overwhelming at the wrong table. Variance in a 100 card, multiplayer format can also do that, but it's just a part of playing commander. Sometimes the decks you bring to the LGS don't quite match the tables you wind up playing at, and you make the best of it.

Final Thoughts

I'm always brewing up new decks as part of writing columns every week for CoolStuffInc.com, and it's refreshing to stumble upon a list that is as interesting and fun as this one. Shadrix Silverquill can play a voltron game, but can also push out tokens and threaten a win by going wide. I'm probably never going to try to tune this list up to combo with Cathars' Crusade or pivot to an aristocrats strategy, but it's nice to know those could be options if I wanted to mess around with the list and try something different.

I've grown increasingly fond of Dragon decks in Commander over the years. I've messed around with powerhouses like The Ur-Dragon and Myriim, Sentinel Wyrm but those feel a little too try-hard for my tastes. My favorite Dragon deck is my Izzet Dragonstorm deck led by Vadrik, Astral Archmage, but my favorite Dragon commander is probably Lathliss, Dragon Queen. Shadrix Silverquill seems to have planted itself firmly into my deck collection, and I've found myself thinking about other Strixhaven Elder Dragons.

I don't know if I'm going to reach back to Strixhaven again to try out Beledros Witherbloom or any of the other Dragon commanders from that set, but I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't tempted. My general disinterest in Universes Beyond (UB) sets has me thinking about older cards that I may not have built the first time around, and it doesn't look like we're going to see anything but more UB sets in the coming years.

That's all I've got for today and as this is the last Monday of 2023, that wraps up my columns for the year. With every decklist I do my best to give you something to think about, both in terms of Commander gameplay and deck-building.

Next week I'm going to take a break from decklists to ruminate about the past year and about what's to come in 2024. Thanks for reading!