Ashling, the Limitless Elementals

Commander Overview

Ashling is by far one of the coolest commanders to come out of Lorywn Eclipsed, who knew how much fun could be had when you evoke a Titan of Industry on turn four! All jokes aside, Ashling is an extremely powerful commander and one of the coolest we’ve seen in the format in a while. Elementals love to ETB, and because of that, we can use Ashling’s ability to our advantage. Ashling being five-color also gives us access to so many amazing support cards for the deck and a ton of amazing elementals. Ashling is not in a support role in this deck; they are the main way that our deck does stuff and enable us to be quite explosive. Because of this, Ashling is often a target of our opponents, but we do have counterspells to protect, and even if they do die, luckily, they are quite cheap and can come back a couple of times before it gets out of hand. This deck has been a blast to pilot, and I’m excited to showcase this one!

How to Play the Deck

Because of Ashling’s ability playing this deck is a lot different compared to many other decks in the format, we spend a large majority of our game simply evoking our best elementals, some of them have absolutely monster ETB’s like Titan of Industry or Shriekmaw which can be very good at any stage of the game and help us get ahead. That’s what this deck is really all about, leveraging our ETBs when we evoke our elementals, and the fact that we get a copy from the evoke is extremely strong. This deck is perfect for an intermediate player but this is not something i would give to a novice player, it has a lot of complicated interactions and with cards like Risen Reef on the field there can be a ton of triggers at once, it can get quite complicated so an intermediate to expert player is who is best suited for this deck.

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck is one big synergy, Ashling basically makes us play it that way, and since our graveyard is full of our evoke’d elementals, we can have really big turns if we drop Living Death, Patriarch’s Bidding or Bloodline Bidding and bring everything back at once! Ashling is by far the biggest synergy we have in our deck since they interact so well with the rest of our deck.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: Like a lot of decks, this is our establishment phase, we get our lands out, try to establish our colors as much as we can, and more importantly, drop Ashling as soon as we possibly can. We don’t need to do too much at this stage of the game.

Mid-Game: This is the best part of the game for us, while opponents are slowly building their board and doing whatever they do, we are able to evoke our biggest and best elementals and more importantly with Ashling’s ability we can ETB them twice and have them around until our next end step, getting value out of cards like Mulldrifter and Nulldrifter as well as cards like Eclipsed Flamekin can be very strong. We tend to be quite aggressive at this stage of the game; our hasty token can attack, and we absolutely revel in the fact that they will die eventually, so why not attack?

Late-Game: The late-game is where things can truly start to get out of hand for us. We are able to use mass reanimation spells like Patriarch’s Bidding or Bloodline Bidding to make all of our elementals come back at once! We also have a pretty strong board presence since, by this point, we are able to pay for Ashling’s ability to keep our token copies around. Cards like Maelstrom Wanderer put in work at this stage of the game, and we can cascade into so many elementals and amazing support cards.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

We are firmly ok at ramping, mostly with ramping into our elementals with cards like Smokebraider allowing us to speed out our best elementals, and they can pay the evoke cost as it is an ability of Ashling, which is a great option as well. We also have Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach, which is a great way to get our colors fixed and get some basics out. While we don’t have a ton of basics in the deck, getting some of our most important colors, like green and blue, can be quite helpful. We don’t have a ton of ramp in the deck, but we have more than enough to get by.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

We have a good amount of card draw. One of my favorites is Harmonized Crescendo, which is extremely easy for our deck to cast and can be an amazing source of mass card draw, and allows us to evoke even more with all of our new cards. While not primarily a source of card draw, Ashling’s Command does have an option to draw cards and can be a great extra option if we need to fill up our hand. We also have some great creatures that help draw cards like Mulldrifter and Nulldrifter. Both are great to use with Ashling, and having them ETB twice can leave our hand very full. I love all of the card draw in our deck, and we rarely run out of cards.

Removal

Being in WUBRG certainly gives us access to everything! While we aren’t super heavy on removal, we have enough to get things done. We aren’t a control deck by any means, so we don’t have a ton, but we can address the crazy stuff that our opponents do. Cards like Crib Swap, Swords to Plowshares, and Path to Exile are cheap and easy removal that allow us to address things even if we spent our whole turn evoking and using a lot of our mana. We also have a heap of counterspells to stop our opponents like An Offer you Can’t Refuse and Fierce Guardianship, and if things start to really get hazy, we have Cyclonic Rift, which is a truly a catch-all in stopping all of the crazy stuff our opponents are attempting.

Protection

While our counterspells can also be sources of removal they are also great sources of protection as well, its truly situational if we decide to use them offensively or defensively but they are pretty strong either way. While not strictly a source of protection they can be quite helpful to return all of our creatures we have Patriarch’s Bidding, Haunted Voyage and Living Death. These work with the gameplan really well since we often have a ton of elementals in the graveyard from Ashling and they can be great ways for us to protect ourselves and come back strong after a big board wipe.

Utility / Support

Let’s focus on some of the best creature cards in our deck, Twinflame Travelers is an amazing card for our deck and allows us to double trigger our evoke elementals, you truly haven’t lived until you’ve drawn four cards off of a Mulldrifter and then another four cards, its truly a magical experience, our used a Titan of Industry a ton of times in one turn, it truly feels amazing. Endurance is a true counter against a mill-focused deck, but after a big boardwipe and if we don’t have any of our mass recursion, we can bring everything back to the deck and live to fight another day. While its primary usage is against mill, it can be helpful to stop our graveyard from being exiled. Jegantha, The Wellspring is an amazing piece of synergy with Ashling and allows us to keep the token elementals we have very easily, just a great piece of utility for the deck to take advantage of. When we start going to combat cards like Mass of Mysteries, it allows us to output a ton of damage and hit even harder.

Mana Base

Being in five-color means we have a manabase filled to the brim with non-basics, while we have the typical bond, fetch, and shock lands. We have some non-basics that support the game plan very well. I especially like Three Tree City since it can be a humongous mana producer for our deck and is easy to get big. I also like Cascading Cataracts since we are able to filter our mana and use it to save an Ashling token, which can be pretty handy to have access to. Lastly, I want to highlight Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth, which is just mass mana fixing for our deck, which can be very strong at pretty much any stage of the game.

Win Conditions

Our only win condition is combat; we can be quite aggressive with the tokens that Ashling makes, especially if we aren’t interested in keeping them around for long. While we aren’t super fast, we can be quite consistent with our combat damage.

Strengths of the Deck

Ashling’s ability allows us to get the ETB benefits from some of our creatures easily and early in the game; this can swing the game in our favor easily.

Because of Ashling having a hand full of huge cards does not require a mulligan, it can be very helpful for early advantage.

Weaknesses of the Deck

We are entirely reliant on our commander to be explosive and have a lot of “punch” without them, the game plan can be considerably slower, hand.

We are quite weak to graveyard hate as they not only hurt us in the short term, they make our graveyard recursion like Living Death obsolete

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Gishath, Sun’s Avatar. Matchup Record: 3-2

This was an ok matchup for our deck, we counter and remove their commander as much as we can because that is where a lot of their explosive growth comes from, they can be quite fast and aggressive, and often faster and more aggressive than us, so ensuring we keep a very removal-heavy hand is key to this one.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
An Offer You Can’t Refuse, Cyclonic Rift and Smokebraider.

Game 2: Vs Niv-Mizzet, Parun. Matchup Record: 0-3

This was a tough matchup for us. Niv-Mizzet doesn’t care at all about what we do, and they are mostly a combo deck. Keep your counterspells ready, but they have so many ways to combo off that it often doesn’t matter.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Collective Inferno, Forgotten Ancient and Descendants’ Fury.

Game 3: Vs Zurgo Stormrender. Matchup Record: 4-2

This was another good matchup for our deck. As long as we can survive the early onslaught, we can stabilize pretty well as we hit the mid-late game. Beware of some big buff enchantments and multiple ways to hit us harder than we can expect.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Fury, Solitude and Riveteers Ascendancy.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! Ashling is such a fun commander, and I see why they are one of the most popular cards from Lorwyn Eclipsed and becoming more and more popular in the format. Elementals are a blast to play, and being able to Evoke them a ton is so satisfying to do.