artifact creatures, cute robots, cost reduction ––– a very aggro azorius artifact deck centered around mendie's's ability to copy artifacts when he's at max speed. this started out as a pretty tame creature deck, but i've since added stuff like rhystic study, smothering tithe, and some tutors.

the main goal is to get mendie as big as possible, then swing for commander damage (especially when aided by steel seraph to make him flying!), but having a big board of moderately sized artifact creatures is common. there's control elements like orim's chant, several counterspells, and boardwipes. the addition of big bois like mycosynth golem and reaver titanfor crazy damage and value payoffs. i was able to get the fracture foil salvation engine which brings me so much joy. the cutie pies!!!

landfall, manifest dread, big creatures ––– this started as the jump scare! duskmourn precon, with quite a bit of money put into upgrades. i've also added just about every miku card i can, since i like to imagine she and zimone are friends, strategizing on how to get the biggest, scariest creatures to attack on their behalf.

the plan is simple - get as many landfalls as i can per turn, as the first landfall manifests dread and subsequent landfalls allow me to flip over any face-down card with zimone. cards like yedora, grave gardener who bring back ALL my creatures as face down forests work especially well, as the landfall trigger from that forest entering allows the card to immediately flip. ashaya, soul of the wild and hauntwoods shrieker are more of my favorite enablers. adding burgeoning was huge as now I can manifest AND flip on other player's turns!

artifacts, proliferate, affinity ––– this started as the counter intelligence edge of eternities precon. the commander, kilo, apogee mindproliferates whenever it's tapped, so i run relic of legends, freed from the real, pemmin's aura and other ways to safely tap my precious robot, but i can also enter combat. cards like prologue to phyresis give me the longer-term poison counter wincon, but my favorite (and fastest) wincon is to use all will be one with something like arcbound ravager, arcbound shikari, or another big counter creator. direct burn from all will be one is a lot easier to achieve than i thought. additionally, sunburst/converge artifacts like pentad prism or crystalline crawler give me crazy amounts of mana at will. despite minimal swaps and no game changers, this deck consistently feels like the archenemy and i love playing it so much!

i was initially worried about it feeling too much like mendicant, but this is a far less creature-focused deck and more locked in on combos, tapping/untapping, and direct damage. there is a decent amount of card overlap but each one feels distinct when playing thankfully.

vampires, aristocrat, sacrifice, lifegain/drain ––– this also started as a precon, blood rites from lost caverns of ixalan. most of the additions are cards i pulled in packs (yay enlightened tutor!), but i did buy some as well.

clavileño's game plan is to make a shit ton of vampires, and sacrifice them after applying his mark to draw cards and make more vampires. obviously this is a pretty standard aristocrats strategy, and the addition of enduring tenacity along with bloodthirsty conqueror give me more outlets for comboing with exquisite blood.

i really like the story and art of elenda, so i've included elenda, the dusk rose, elenda's hierophant, and elenda, saint of dusk, even though saint of dusk isn't even that great in this deck. she's just so pretty in the full art!!!

damage prevention, protection ––– i used the very unpopular commander cho-manno, revolutionary to build a protection deck. cho-manno's built in damage prevention, plus additional helpers like pariah's shield or hot soup, make him a formidable threat while also keeping me safe.

my biggest problem to deal with is trample – it will still go through even if cho-manno blocks it, unfortunately, so i need to figure out more ways to make him larger with +1/+1 counters. the recent spider-man card, anti-venom, horrifying healer is just better than cho-manno in every way but i can't bring myself to use him instead of my stupid ass mercadian masques pookie.

he can do commander damage, after a long and grindy game, to finally secure the win. the main goal is just lasting longer than everyone else.

defenders, walls, toughness matters ––– what does it look like when a wall attacks? i'm not sure, but it's fun to imagine. i know now that arcades is actually pretty popular, but the idea for this deck originally came from my boyfriend's desire to make an eye deck. he had the card evil eye of orms-by-gore, which says it can "only be blocked by walls." he then went on to ask everyone at the table, "you don't have any walls, do you?" and why would they? normally, it makes no sense to run walls. but arcades enables them to attack as if they weren't defenders, and to use their toughness for combat damage.

most walls are only 1 to 3 mana, making it extremely easy to build...well... a wall of them. and so long as i can keep arcades protected, i'm able to swing out with 20+ damage per turn, often some of it flying. add a toughness buff and it only gets better. cards like tetsuko, umezawa fugitive make creatures with power 1 or less unblockable. and every wall in this deck has a power of 0! again, it may hard to imagine a bunch of walls somehow attacking you, but the combat damage is very, very real.

elves, token generation, proliferate ––– make ten bajillion elves, put counters on them, make lathril big and strong and unblockable to make ten bajillion more elves, then either kill people with commander damage or tap elves to drain life.!

i ended up taking this deck apart because it wasn't really fun to play. rest in peace dumbass elf