“Now Cometh The Age Of Stars”
Art:Minthara, Merciless Soul
by Evyn Fong
Table of Contents
Todays Featured Commander Is:
Minthara is a super sweet Orzhov commander that allows us to play a really cool deck that focuses on our permanents leaving the battlefield, with various ways to do this from spells to creatures we do our best to get as many experience counters as possible and swing for the fences! This deck is a ton of fun to play and is just a really cool build-around your commander kind of deck! Without further adieu lets get it!
The Deck:
Minthara, Merciless Soul Bounce!
Why Minthara, Merciless Soul?
Minthara is a very sweet commander that protects herself and buffs our creatures, while we can only get one experience counter a turn, even just 2 or 3 can turn the tide in our favor. Minthara having ward x, with x being our experience counters makes it so after a few turns many decks cant touch her with any spells. Being able to buff all creatures with Minthara is also core to our gameplan this ability is strong in both an offensive and defensive manner!
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck!
Creatures:
We of course have some creatures that allow us to bounce our creatures and trigger Minthara, the best of these being Persistent Specimen
which is a card we can constantly sacrifice/recur and get Minthara triggers. Whitemane Lion
not only triggers Minthara but can be a great way to protect one of our creatures. Aviary Mechanic
is another great way to trigger Minthara or get an ETB again.
The other part of our deck includes cards that make tokens we have card like Icatian Crier
which is a really cheap way to make a couple tokens. Ministrant of Obligation
is great for us since on death we trigger Minthara and get more creatures! We also have Soul of Migration
which we can easily evoke and trigger Minthara and get some creatures.
Instants:
Our instant package has a lot of ways to blink creatures and trigger Minthara like Cloudshift
and Ephemerate
which are both great ways to protect creatures and trigger Minthara. We also have Supernatural Stamina
, Feign Death
and Undying Malice
which are all great ways to trigger Minthara and get all of our creatures back.
We also have some single target removal to stop some of our opponents problematic permanents like Cast Down
and Final Payment
because of Minthara we actually want to have kill spells that require us to sacrifice a creature since we can trigger Minthara using one of our tokens and trigger Minthara.
Sorceries:
Annihilating Glare
and Lash of the Balrog
are two other ways to sacrifice a creature and kill an opponents creature or planeswalker just like our instant speed ones we heavily value being able to trigger Minthara and kill our opponents stuff.
Our sorcery package is also where a lot of our token generation lies with cards like Battle Screech
Which we can easily flashback to make a ton more tokens! We also have Call to the Feast
which is a great way to make some more creatures and we will never say no to lifelink. Settle Beyond Reality
is another sweetr card since we can flicker one of our creatures and exile an opponents creatures it is a little steep at 4W but the effect is very powerful.
Artifacts:
Our artifact package is mostly mana with staples like Marble Diamond
,Charcoal Diamond
, Arcane Signet
and Bonder's Ornament
just to name a few. The only really important artifact we have is Wedding Invitation
since we can use this not only to get a card but we can also easily commander damage kill an opponent with Minthara once we have enough experience counters!
Enchantments:
Oubliette
is a pauper EDH legend that is just a great and efficient removal enchantment, we also have Kaya's Ghostform
which is a great protection card that also triggers Minthara. Omen of the Sun
is a cheap little token generator and we got some life out of it for a really low cost. Our last enchantment is Fanatical Devotion
which is a great way to protect our key creatures and is also a sac outlet.
Land Base:
We don’t have a ton of diversity within our land base but we do have some ways to help when we get flooded including 4 cycling lands in Secluded Steppe
, Barren Moor
, Desert of the Glorified
, Desert of the True
. All of these are great when we get flooded and have no need for that land anymore, in testing I did not get flooded often but this helped a ton when I did. Besides that we mostly have orzhov duals and cards that fetch basics to round out our list.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Easy to get quick dominating combat wins
- Bounce effects not only let us protect creatures, we can trigger Minthara as well
- Ton of token generation and sac outlets to always get triggers
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Deck needs Minthara to function properly
- Weak to creature hate
- No way to interact on the stack (i.e. counters)
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Main Win Conditions:
We do not have any infinite combos or loops within the deck, we do have a commander that allows us to make our small creatures absolutely huge and we can easily overwhelm our opponents and win through our small creatures and our tokens! Our deck relies on Minthara as a win condition and we need her to make us function really well!
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Minthara is a super sweet commander for a really fun Orzhov Token strategy with a little bit of bounce to it! This deck is a ton of fun to pilot and play and can get some easy and quick wins and set up a ton of value through Mintharas ability. If you have any more commander suggestions for PDH,CEDH or EDH please dm us on twitter or let us know in the discord. Share this article with your friends if you like! We appreciate your time and thank you for being here!