Commander Overview
Strixhaven week is here! This whole week, we are going to be featuring some of our favorite commanders and decklists from the new Strixhaven set. We start strong with Abigale, Poet Laureate, a great commander that already has a ton of support in the format. At the same time, it’s not as supported as Selesnya counters; having access to cards like Hagra Constrictor can be very helpful to our overall game plan. Abigale is a pretty strong commander and a good showcase of the prepared mechanic. While they aren’t super helpful in the early game, where the mana is quite tight, they can be used a lot in the mid-late game, and they can be re-prepared quite a few times. Abigale promotes a game plan of making our creatures big and turning them sideways. This deck is extremely easy to play. I hope you all enjoy our first article for Strixhaven week.
How to Play the Deck
Playing this deck is extremely easy, and a player of any skill level can pilot it. The most complicated part of this deck is the prepared mechanic, and that’s really only because it’s new. Overall, this deck is all about buffing creatures and turning them sideways; there are no other interactions or anything crazy. For this reason, I think this deck is perfectly fine for any player.
Synergy’s in the deck
We have two main synergy packages within the deck. The primary one is our +1/+1 counters, and in that synergy package we have some pretty awesome options like Celebrity Fencer which is a beast in this deck and can get huge so quickly. We also have Ainok Bond-Kin and Hagra Constrictor which gives us first strike and menace on the majority of our creatures which makes us a true nightmare for our opponents to deal with. Our whole deck is synergized around +1/+1 counters.
We have an additional mini-synergy package with a few heroic cards that work great and directly with Abigale. Cards like Akroan Skyguard and Lagonna-Band Trailblazer can scale quickly and make us great at attacking/blocking. While Abigale’s prepared spell is the main way we trigger these cards, we do have cards like Spectacular Tactics and Unexpected Fangs, which can be easy ways to trigger heroic as well. This is a small part of the deck, but it works very well with Abigale.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: Getting Abigale out is the main priority of our early-game, but establishing strong creatures and, more importantly, mana rocks can help the overall game plan. Abigale is always priority number one, and casting them on turn three is something we do pretty much every time. Abigale is firmly in a support role in this deck, so we don’t need them, but they can be quite helpful. Spending the early game establishing us for the mid-late game is the best thing we can do.
Mid-Game: This is when we start to become a lot more aggressive and get some great usage out of Abigale as an attacker and buff source with their prepared spell, their condition to re-prepare is crazy easy but it is a support ability, I typically don’t wait to cast it before i play another creature, we have a high creature count so just continuing with the overall gameplan and swinging hard is great. The mid-game is a great time to attack and put some pressure on our opponents.
Late-Game: We are perfectly okay with getting to the late-game; by this point, our creatures are typically pretty big, and we can easily compete with our opponents in combat. A lot of the time, we are even bigger than they are.
The core game plan doesn’t change here, buff up as many of our creatures as we can and turn them sideways, since we are often bigger than our opponents in combat. Always be mindful of our opponents swinging back.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
Being in Orzhov can make ramping a little tough but having a cheap overall cost and mana rocks like Orzhov Signet and Arcane Signet and well as Marble Diamond and Charcoal Diamond allows us to get our gameplan out quicker and more importantly have mana so we can regularly cast Abigale’s prepared. I do want to highlight Orzhov Locket, which is a great mana rock for our deck, but in the late-game, when we have a lot of mana floating around, we can “cash it in” for some card draw, which is great. While we certainly aren’t ramping as much as a green strategy, we can accelerate our game plan and cast our prepared spell a bunch with the help of our ramp.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
While white always struggles with card draw we are carried by having black in our deck and having access to cards like Read the Bones, Sign in Blood and Night's Whisper, all three are great cheap draw spells with extremely minimal drawbacks, the couple life we may lose is nothing compared to the card advantage that we gain. Fetid Gargantua is another extremely easy source of card draw and is basically a repeatable version of Night's Whisper and a very good creature as well, truly a home run for this deck. I want to highlight Spirited Companion and Kindly Customer, which are great, cheap sources of easy draw, and with cards like Unearth in the deck, we can get them back to retrigger them. I had no trouble and didn’t feel like I was running out of cards in the deck during testing.
Removal
Removal is another strong aspect of our deck. While we aren’t a control deck, we can address major threats at the table with ease with cards like Breathe your Last and Murder. While not removing, our big creatures do allow us to deal with a lot of creature-based threats in combat if our opponents attack us, depending on the deck we are facing, this can be a little or a lot. Removal is a good part of our deck and something we can do to address the biggest threats our opponents put out.
Protection
Protection is a ok aspect of our deck. We have a few sources in our deck like Shelter and Loran's Escape, which are very cheap ways to keep Abigale on the field mostly, but any of our big creatures are great targets for our protection spells. While not directly protection, since the creature will still die, Supernatural Stamina and Not Dead After All are great ways to re-ETB a creature or ensure we bring them back. While we have a small protection package, it is helpful for the deck. Although we do have to accept that our creatures will likely get targeted and possibly die as they get bigger, many opponents don’t appreciate our hugely buffed-up creatures.
Utility / Support
Let’s highlight some of my favorite cards in the deck. While this is more of a few cards in the deck cards like Parish-Blade Trainee and Dockworker Drone and Enduring Bondwarden, all of these effectively do the same thing but if they die for any reason being able to transfer the counters that we have to our other creatures is a great “insurance policy” for the deck and allow us to keep the power of our board. Since Abigale helps to buff up our board and we often have our counters spread across many of our creatures, we can get a lot of great usage out of some cheap proliferate effects like Unbounded Potential, which is a great card for the deck, and Whisper of the Dross and Grim Affliction. In contrast, the other effects that they have are pretty awesome. We primarily want the proliferate effect as it allows us to grow our entire board.
Mana Base
I like our manabase a lot and think that thirty-five is a good number for the deck. While we don’t have super high-cost stuff in the deck, we do want to use Abigale’s prepared spell a ton, so having the extra mana is great for us. Overall, our mana base is pretty simple, some cheap on-color duals, cards like Command Tower, and some supplemental card draw in The Fair Basilica and The Dross Pits allow us to have a mana base that I had no trouble with.
Win Conditions
Our only win condition is combat, which is made much easier by the fact that our creatures can get huge pretty quickly with our commander and all of our +1/+1 counter stuff.
Strengths of the Deck
We are hard to deal with in combat since we get bigger and scale a lot.
When it gets to the late-game, we can easily one-shot opponents.
Weaknesses of the Deck
Our deck is a lot slower without Abigale; opponents will realize this after a couple of games. Sadly, we have no way to stop them from countering it.
Super aggressive decks like Zada can run us over pretty easily.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Dina, Soul Steeper. Matchup Record: 3-1
Overall, this is a good matchup for our deck. Dina can gain a decent amount of life, but with our creatures that continue to get big, we don’t have much issue with this. Try to kill Dina to remove a lot of their gas and just swing hard.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Breathe your last, Murder and Dockworker Drone.
Game 2: Vs Rona, Sheoldred's Faithful. Matchup Record: 1-2
Rona is a great commander and pretty good against us. They love spellslinging, which sadly means they have quite a bit of removal and countermagic. To get a win, we really need to focus them down and be as aggressive as possible. If we let it go late, they can ruin our day.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Unearth, Wanderer's Strike and Shelter.
Game 3: Vs Murderous Redcap. Matchup Record: 3-1
I didn’t have a lot of trouble with this matchup. Redcap can be scary, and they are quite annoying, but for the most part, our creatures are bigger than them, and outside of dodging their removal, they haven’t. Since they are in Rakdos, there isn’t much we have to do besides follow our game plan. We really don’t care what they do.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Murder, Hagra Constrictor and Luxknight Breacher.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed our first article for Strixhaven week. We have so many awesome articles ready to go for this set, which is going to add a ton of cards to the format. Abigale is a card that has intrigued me since spoiler season first started, and after playing a bunch of games, this is the real deal and can absolutely compete with the Selesnya versions of +1/+1 counter strategies.
