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BMoor's Magic The
Gathering Deck Garage
"Commander Contest Winner #2:
Commander Jenara"
April 17, 2012
The second winner of the Commander
Contest won for an excellent devotion to the
themes most easily supported by his choice
of commander-- or is it his choice of a
commander that easily supports the themes he
was devoted to? In a good Commander deck, it
really should be a chicken-and-egg question
bewteen the general and the strategy.
Greetings! I was planning on waiting till I
saw your followup article, but by this point
I figure I'm better off just sending in my
deck and getting it over with.
First, the contest deck:
Commander Jenara
Commander Card:
Jenara, Asura of War (GWU)
Land (30):
Forest (9)
Plains (6)
Island (6)
Azorius Chancery
Elfhame Palace
Gavony Township
Halimar Depths
Llanowar Reborn
Novijen, Heart of Progress
Prahv, Spires of Order
Seaside Citadel
Sejiri Refuge
Creatures (34):
Alloy Myr
Ant Queen
Aquastrand Spider
Beast of Burden
Bramblewood Paragon
Enclave Elite
Fangren Firstborn
Feral Hydra
Harvester Druid
Kazandu Tuskcaller
Living Hive
Lorescale Coatl
Lumberknot
Jorga Treespeaker
Jade Mage
Pallid Mycoderm
Plaxcaster Frogling
Plaguemaw Beast
Protean Hydra
Scorned Villager
Scute Mob
Selesnya Guildmage
Selesnya Evangel
Soratami Savant
Simic Guildmage
Spinx Ambassador
Sporeback Troll
Sporeoloth Ancient
Stonybrook Schoolmaster
Thallid Germinator
Twilight Drover
Vigean Graftmage
Viral Drake
Winged Coatl
Artifacts (7):
Contagion Clasp
Evolution Vat
Manalith
Obelisk of Bant
Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII
Unbender Tine
Ur-Golem’s Eye
Instants (12):
Discombobulate
Dismal Failure
Dissipate
Fuel for the Cause
Grip of Amnesia
Overrule
Safe Passage
Simic Signet
Sprout Swarm
Steady Progress
Stoic Rebuttal
Syncopate
Enchantments (13):
Armadillo Cloak
Corrupt Conscience
Daily Regimen
Druid’s Call
Live and Limb
Marshal’s Anthem
Molting Skin
Presence of Gond
Quest for Ancient Secrets
Reality Acid
Terra Eternal
Trollhide
Wild Growth
Sorcery (3):
Pulse of the Tangle
Reminisce
Wurmcalling
To paraphrase Day[9], the basic overall
strategy comes down to "Counters and Tokens,
Counters and Tokens".
Strategy 1: Early Game, if I can pull the
right mana, the plan is to get Jenara out
ASAP and take advantage of her quickly
growing
power levels to hopefully fly over the
opponent and hit them for over 21 damage. If
they can't counter and can't block flight,
it's going to be a pain for them to deal
with.
Strategy 2: "Counters and Tokens, Counters
and Tokens" - Building off of Jenara's
counter power, the rest of the deck places
heavy emphasis on creating mass quantities
of critters and then building them up with
mass quantities of +1/+1 counters. Then, to
further hammer the point home, I've stuck as
many cards with Proliferate in the deck as I
could get my hands on. There's also an
emphasis on the control element.
For kicks and giggles, I also threw in a
Sphinx Ambassador. It really has absolutely
nothing to do with the overall theme of the
deck, but the card practically cried out to
me to be played in a Commander Deck. So I
threw it in with the hope of occasionally
seeing it pop up and having fun shifting
through dozens of opponents cards and making
them squirm while I pick one - A bit that's
sure to be a hoot any time it actually comes
up.
---------------------
Jenara makes an excellent general, but her
ability to hit opponents like a truck makes
her a frequent target of kill spells. Many
Jenara players use her as the win condition
in a draw-go style control build, holding a
grip full of protective instants like
Hunter's Guile, Rebuff the Wicked, or Eel
Umbra and then pouring all their end-of-turn
mana into Jenara's ability. There's
definitely an appeal to that kind of deck,
but "Space Java"
here has gone with a different plan-- a very
straightforward swarm deck that piles on
+1/+1 counters and spits out tokens as fast
as possible. In this deck, Jenara is not the
lynchpin but simply the shining example. Her
evasion and self-pumping make her one of the
best creatures in the deck, but she is
merely one of the best at what all the cards
in this deck aim to do, and thus the deck
can win with or without her.
My biggest complaint here is the absence of
Doubling Season, but I can forgive that in
light of what it goes for on the secondary
market. I'm sure we all await the day they
finally reprint it. My second biggest
complaint is the likelihood of the deck to
have to put counters on tokens. Most
playgroups I've seen use glass beads for
both, which makes a token with a +1/+1
counter on it a lamentable game state to
keep track of. That, however, is simply a
matter of my own preferences and pet peeves,
and I don't hold it against the deck's
creator-- if I had, he or she may not have
won. Proliferate is a good addition, though
it is a shame more cards with that
Johnny-on-the-spot ability weren't printed.
It's a bit strange to see Daily Regimen and
Jenara in the same deck, since Jenara seems
to already have her Daily Regimen, but of
course it works just fine on other
creatures. I would've also been more likely
to run a card like Battering Wurm or
Skarrgan Pit-Skulk, and I would've found
room for Flurry of Wings, but the card
choices here all look alright. My only
concern si what the deck does in the event
of a board wipe.
I'm confident that a deck like this would be
a great joy to play, as you build up your
army both bigger and more numerous and swarm
your opponents. it's not the most ruthlessly
efficient deck, I'll admit, but Jenara's
ability to carry the whole show if needed
and the general efficiency of the rest of
the deck should allow for a decent win rate,
if the pilot plays fairly well. If nothing
else, this deck can present a great number
of fearsome threats that an opponent will be
forced to answer, and its army of creature
tokens should hold off the lion's share of
opponents' attackers until it can rally a
solid alpha strike.
So, that's two winners down, and tomorrow
we'll see the third! Come on back for the
next winner of the Commander Contest, and
remember to e-mail me if you see your own
deck so we can talk about getting you your
prizes!
Good luck!
~BMoor
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