With Avacyn finally Restored, we get some new toys to play with, and what does a Commander aficionado like more than new toys? Legendary new toys! Avacyn Restored brings us five new commanders: one badass Demon and four new Angels to play around with. Considering the joy and enthusiasm I have for playing around with the new cards, legendary and otherwise, I decided that building two new Commander decks would be an excellent way to spend the week.

Sure, “getting over jetlag” after a weeklong trip to Japan to visit my girlfriend might have been a necessary evil, and there’s this whole Occupy Wall Street thing that’s super-important to me too… But the May 1st General Strike we’ve been building for is tomorrow, not this week, so I got to revel in building decks with new cards I haven’t even gotten to touch yet. I’m hoping I get to open some of them at the Prerelease this weekend so I can turn these new dreams into cold, hard reality.

I could’ve built a Griselbrand deck. Of course, I then realized I already have and took my much-hated “proof of concept” ~~Maralen deck~~ Ad Nauseam Tendrils deck out of the box, swapped out the crappy Commander that basically never actually gets you a Tutored-for Ad Nauseam, and swapped in Yawgmoth’s Bargain. Since I got some more expensive cards since then, I added in Lion’s Eye Diamond over Winding Canyons (I know! Sacrilege! I cut Winding Canyons from a deck of mine!) and Grim Tutor over Snow-Covered Swamp, and called it a ridiculous, ridiculous day.

I wanted to add LED to the deck even before swapping commanders because it’s yet another way to profit with Ad Nauseam and that’s what we’re all about here, but realizing that you can actually use it to cast Griselbrand made me want to vomit all over myself rather messily as I envisioned hands with a Dark Ritual and a Lion’s Eye Diamond that let me cast Griselbrand on turn 3, draw 35 cards, semi “go off” with a small Tendrils or Exsanguinate, then draw the rest of my deck and murder everyone to death.

I’m a terrible human being, I know. But I’ll put it this wayâ€”it’s not Griselbrand’s fault he’s broken, and I wouldn’t even say Griselbrand is the broken card here. (Anticipate Griselbrand nonetheless being “too good” to be a Commanderâ€”Yawgmoth’s Bargain probably neatly fits the definition of “too good to be a Commander”â€”but acknowledge if you will the real unfair / unfun card is Ad Nauseam and ban accordingly.)

I wanted to have fun and stay on the light side of the Force instead of playing with the dark side of the Force. Thankfully, the other four new commanders are all Angels. I picked two based on my desire to build Angel decks around the concept of asymmetrical warfare to see where these pursuits take me.

Let’s look at our two selections for today:

Avacyn’s job is simple: with your commander online your permanents can no longer be destroyed, which as we know from Forge[/author]“]Darksteel [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] based decks is a damnably annoying trap to work your way out of for most decks. She’s also an 8/8 for eight, which is an awful lot of size to go with an efficient Commander, but the concept of “asymmetrical warfare” here is clearly “play Avacyn and play a bunch of destroy effects; cackle as they leave your board untouched.”

I can think of a lot of ways to do this, so it’s time to brew away with a nice Mono-White Control deck full of sweepers, confident in the knowledge that about halfway through the game those sweeper effects are suddenly going to be Falter effects, too, while we’re at it.

Gisela is the one that got my creative juices really flowing. A 5/5 for seven doesn’t sound as attractive until you realize that Gisela has effectively started with double strike, making her a whopping ten-power Commander for seven mana. She passes this double-damage bonus around to everything that hits any opponent ever, which would be good enough to get me running off in her general direction with a box of Godiva chocolates in hand trying to think up some really crappy poetry on the fly; but wait, there’s more!

In addition to making sure your opponents take twice as much damage as they would, you also only ever take half as much damage as you would, meaning that on a level playing field your opponents will be taking four times as much damage as you. Unsurprisingly, this is bonkers enough to inspire me to pursue a new deck to explore this theme, and this has me committed right away to emptying out a deck box and buying new cards I’ve never played in Commander before just because they fit the theme.

Enough teasing; let’s get to the decks!

Avacyn, Angel Of Don’t Touch My Stuff

Mana bases are easy for mono-colored decks, but what flavor of technology to pursue was the first question I wanted to ask. There’s built-in redundancy in mono-white thanks to Emeria, the Sky Ruin, but it comes at a price: you’re strongly limited in the number of fancy bonus lands you can squeeze into a deck because most of your mana base has to either be a Plains or put a Plains directly into play.

Ultimately, Avacyn costing eight mana convinced me that I wanted some help getting to those higher mana costs in an affordable way, which saw me dragging out my old Ob-Nixilis technology and putting a pile of fetchlands into a monochromatic deck just to get the free card a turn out of Crucible of Worlds. With that decision made, most of the rest of the blanks filled themselves in:

Plains:

Fourteen extended art Zendikar plains (I like this one, for the record…), Mistveil Plains, Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, Naya Panorama, Bant Panorama, Esper Panorama, Marsh Flats, Arid Mesa, Windswept Heath, Flooded Strand, Thawing Glaciers

Non-Plains:

Emeria, the Sky Ruin — Every Commander deck that tries to take advantage of a unique effect or property of their commander would be well-served trying to also figure out ways to replicate this effect as best as they are able, because the fact of the matter is that commanders get tucked or taken out of commission at awkward moments. Having a Plan B that is planned for during design is an absolute necessity. Emeria lets you rebuild from board wipesâ€”your own and the opponents’â€”and thus is a pretty darn good way to recoup some advantage when Plan A doesn’t work.

Winding Canyons, Dust Bowl — Readers already know why I’m addicted to putting these two in every deck. I’ll save you the “analysis” and instead just say this: to me these two cards are more cowbell.

Karoo — The Karoo that named them all and a decent small way to get ahead in the mana count without investing another card to do so. Tiny things like this matter in Commander more than you’d think, so I like to remember them whenever I can because it’s not always the big, splashy stuff that wins you the game. Humble effects that let you cast your spells in the first place are literally invisible, but the number of times that little bit of extra mana with no card investment pushes you ahead shouldn’t be.

Temple of the False God — The “better” Karoo for mono-colored decks in this format, it’s also quite good when you want to get to eight but don’t necessarily have a lot of easy ways to get that much mana.

Forbidding Watchtower — I never include this card in any deck, or at least not unless there’s a Doran involved, but this deck looked like it wanted a little bit of extra defense in the middle of the game and this is, in fact, a Turtle on a Plains. When a Horned Turtle is the card you want, getting it for free ain’t bad, though usually I claim Forbidding Watchtower is bad.

Secluded Steppe, Drifting Meadow, Blasted Landscape, New Benalia — Mana self-regulation is important in decks without a lot of card advantage, and frankly that’s something we can anticipate running up against in a mono-white deck. While there will be a few ways to get card advantage, they’re going to be thinner on the ground than they would have been if we’d started with a blue commander, and between Cycling and that wee itty bitty bit of scrying on New Benalia, there’s benefits of midgame draw regulation that come from including these. The small things matter. A lot.

And last but certainly not least, as it was the card that drew me hardest to a tribal Angels theme: Cavern of Souls! Uncounterable commanders are a good thing to have, especially when you’re clearly going to be reliant upon the ability they provide as hard as this “destroy all the things!” strategy will be. Having a way to play around Hinder and Spell Crumple when you’re reliant on Avacyn, Angel of Hope is certainly worth following through on.

Having every creature granted this uncounterabilityâ€”apparently Platinum Angel is now an Angelâ€”is a massive benefit and one that I think we’ll see turning up in Commander a lot soon, especially since this uncounterability benefit fits on a card that’s basically Command Tower but with upsides.

With 36 lands committed and some planned-for help in the other sections of the deck, I wanted to move on to the creatures next. I usually build up the spells in the deck and leave the help to sort itself out since usually creatures just come into play and then die and stuff, but since we’re planning on things not dying I wanted to figure out what this Angel tribe could do before building the rest of the deck’s capabilities around that fact.

Unsurprisingly, I just went down the list of Angels that turned up on Gatherer (especially useful because it includes errataed creature typesâ€”I didn’t know Karmic Guide was now an Angel Spirit, after all) and clicked the ones that fit where we wanted to be. Not every Angel got to be included, and stuff like Adaptive Automaton and Mirror Entity that could be an Angel but didn’t specifically show up in this pass were smiled at and left by the roadside. This bus is for ladies (and gentlemen) with wings only. Yes, I know, Avian Changeling: stop being obnoxious and get out of the deck.

Little Angels:

Serra Avenger – A solid addition on the cost-to-benefit side of things as a low-cost flying body. Mostly, I just wanted an excuse to play Serra Avenger again, and I’m totally okay with that fact as well.

Malach of the Dawn — Ghost Ship is a white card now, and also not all Angels are ladies.

Emeria Angel — We already have as many fetchlands as we can cram into the deck, and Emeria Angel helps turn this into additional forward progress even if we don’t have any equipment or Anthems to make use of the additional tokens.

Exalted Angel — When figuring out the “size” of an Angel, I started with cost…anything that was a four-drop or less was a little angel, fives and sixes medium-sized, and anything more than that big. Mostly this was to avoid too much glut at the top-end, and Exalted Angel is a cheater since you can totally be attacking with it on turn 4, making it “little” despite the six-mana casting cost.

Guardian Seraph — Solid body plus an additional damage-prevention clause that’s surprisingly useful in this format. Token creatures without massive pump effects will have a hard time hitting you, and a little bit of extra savings even on the big hits is still worthwhile as a free addition.

Angel of Jubilation — A bit of an Anthem for that Emeria Angel, and part hoser with its restriction on weird life- and creature-sac costs. Griselbrand is saddened by the Angels that tell him he cannot do this thing that he really likes to do, after all, and anything that makes Griselbrand sad makes Avacyn happy.

Lightkeeper of Emeria — Remember how much I hate life gain? I sure talk about it a lot. Even hating life gain, I’m perfectly down with cards that gain life incidentally; lifelink is one of my favorite abilities in Commander, and the multikicker option on Lightkeeper of Emeria keeps this four-drop relevant when you have fourteen mana instead of four.

Restoration Angel — This actually doesn’t do all that much, seeing as there are no non-Angel creatures in the deck (unless you want to blink a Forbidding Watchtower). It’s still a flying Simian Grunt, and even without any additional text to be taken advantage of, you trade the vigilance on Herald of Seraph for flash and ditch the echo cost.

Linvala, Keeper of Silence — It’s astounding how many good cards Linvala keeps down in this format. Plenty of commanders have activated abilities that are relied upon, like Ezuri, Tariel, Rubinia, or even card draw queen Azami herself. Hosers that limit what one side of the table can do but not the other always get my attention. Here we get a powerful tool on an Angel whose size we’d be willing to run almost without a text box, so you get a lot of bonus disruption effectively for free.

Medium Angels:

Baneslayer Angel, Battlegrace Angel, Victory’s Herald, and Shattered Angel all have a similar role: we’ve included them for strategic life gain purposes. (Way better than strategic sheep purposes!) Some are more efficient than othersâ€”I find it hard to argue with a Baneslayer Angelâ€”but they give “life buffers” as a potential benefit for later in the game, which is especially relevant since Avacyn covers the “not having stuff die” side of things. Other than that you mostly just have to worry about yourself dying instead of them, which life gain can help avoid.

Adarkar Valkyrie, Deathless Angel, Twilight Shepherd — These three cover some of Avacyn’s skillset as well in that they can help ensure your entire board isn’t wiped in one fell swoop leaving you with nothing.

Blinding Angel — An interesting way to lock down individual armies, since any number of Saproling tokens still can’t attack unless they figure out how to fly (and thus block). A little low in the offensive power department for a five-drop, but the defensive side of things is nice enough to make us forget about whether we need to be aggressive for a moment.

Karmic Guide — Apparently this awesome white Commander staple is also an Angel, according to the Grand Creature Type Update. That or someone sneaky at Wizards savored the flavor of Angel decks to come, knowing Avacyn Restored was going to jam the Angel theme as hard as possible…

Radiant, Archangel — I was going to say “just another beater” until I realized it got the bonus for all fliers in play, not just fliers you control, so Radiant can get surprisingly large surprisingly quickly. Not the flashiest or most interesting card out there, but it can do something special once in a while and that’s what keeps games of Commander memorable.

Herald of War — An interesting “Angel tribal” card in that it tries to play an Animar like role in casting Avacyn faster. Animar being something I approve of and consider quite bonkers, even a slow-motion version of the card is worthwhile since Herald of War on turn 5 will lead to Avacyn on turn 7 if you make just one more land drop.

Sunblast Angel — Part Wrath, part beater, all awesome. More than once, I’ve made an entire table of people sad when I played this particular Angel; people seem fine with all the creatures dying because that’ what board sweepers do, but when none of your own creatures are on the casualties list it’s less fun for them apparently.

Admonition Angel — Another beneficial card that goes with the decision to play as many fetchlands as possible, Admonition Angel plays the Oblivion Ring game multiple times and can be quite nasty when left unchallenged for a few turns.

Big Angels:

Platinum Angel — I don’t play Platy often in Commander; the charm wore off when it stopped working easily, and now games with Darksteel Plate and Swiftfoot Boots equipped to a Platinum Angel just run afoul of things like Capsize or Terminus at awkward moments. On-theme, however, Platinum Angel fits just fine and is considerably harder than average to deal with when the indestructibility comes built in automatically.

Angel of Salvation — Part combat trick and part counterspell for damage based removal, Angel of Salvation is a card I keep trying to find a home for and being disappointed when I fail. The convoke ability makes it surprisingly affordable and big fliers with flash always catch my interest, so there’s enough meaty bits here to really compel me. I’m hoping this is the deck that makes it gel finally.

Angelic Arbiter — Another card I often find myself cutting; in this case since we’re on-tribe and on-theme (“big fliers matter!”), the little bit of a tax the Arbiter enforces should keep people on their toes and force them to make tough decisions about what’s more important to them.

Iona, Shield of Emeria — Big mean Angel of doom. Mono-colored commander deck? Hope you have colorless spells. One side of your deck clearly more relevant to disrupt than another (I’m talking about you, three-color blue decks…) and vulnerable to some pointed disruption? Iona is a high-power disruptive effect in a color that actually doesn’t get that much disruption to work with, so this will fill a crucial role: spell control.

Reya Dawnbringer — And the last big fatty to make the deck is the one that best supplements Avacyn’s abilities. After all, if you don’t have your commander to work with but do still find yourself blowing stuff up a lot, Reya can help you by recurring all of the creatures that had previously found their way into your graveyard slowly but surely. An awesome format staple that’s even more awesome in this particular home because it both supplements the commander’s ability and complements itâ€”this card’s hard enough to beat when it isn’t indestructible, after all.

With the creature base settled on, it’s time to work on the spells. We want lots of destroy effects and can probably benefit from some mana acceleration to get our heavy hitters deployed; we lack card advantage and could probably benefit from additional disruption where possible. Essentially, since this deck is slow and grindy without Avacyn and completely asymmetrical once she’s online, we want to build a solid control shell and wipe the board early and often.

Artifacts:

Thran Dynamo, Sol Ring, Expedition Map, Caged Sun, Gauntlet of Power — Bonus mana to supplement the fact that we intentionally play a little bit light on lands. Caged Sun and Gauntlet of Power give minor power boosts (though significant ones, as far as Emeria Angel is concernedâ€”I found a way to sneak in a few Anthem effects after all!) and massive mana bonuses to help with the fact that the commander and all the best spells were in the loftily expensive range.

Sensei’s Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Mind’s Eye, Seer’s Sundial — Three out of four of these take advantage of the fetchlands, either for extra cards (Sundial) or just to see new ones (Top and Rack). The other is a concentrated dose of new cards in your hand because Mind’s Eye is stupidly powerful in a multiplayer format where even without anything weird going on it can give you three additional cards a turn. Seer’s Sundial is one of my pet cards I keep trying to work out, and since I liked it in this role in my Godo deck I’m porting it over here and am just going to run with it.

Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral’s Disk — Board sweepers that catch every relevant permanent. Okay, almost so: Nev’s Disk misses planeswalkers, but those can always be attacked, and especially so if Avacyn turns your sweeper effects into Falter effects that get them through unblocked for damage.

Crucible of Worlds — Alongside all these fetchlands, the Crucible makes sure you hit every land drop for the next ten or so turns, more than enough to cast everything you might desire on a reasonable timetable. Getting your mana for free is especially important when you aren’t the best at drawing cards, and the more ways we have to ensure the land drops are accounted for the happier we are.

Loxodon Warhammer — I despise life gain but am happy with lifelink, so this being the equipment I let sneak into the deck shouldn’t be contradictory to what we’re trying to accomplish. The actually very important side of this is the trample; getting life back is already surprisingly well covered, and the power bonus without trample wouldn’t really be worth investing in the card. Avacyn needs to be able to attack past flying token creatures and stuff like Fog Bank, however, so handing her a hammer will make sure those pesky nails get out of your way.

This section was pretty straightforward, but the interesting utility will all be coming in the spell section. Artifacts are boring. Who knew?

Spells:

Rout, Akroma’s Vengeance, Austere Command, Planar Cleansing, Mass Calcify, Catastrophe — Rout gets the nod for being able to play instant speed Wrath, while Austere Command, Akroma’s Vengeance, and to a lesser degree Planar Cleansing are pretty standard Commander sweepers; they take out multiple types of threats instead of just creatures and fill the role of board control effects that the controlling white deck desires.

Mass Calcify is interesting in that it’s a Wrath that tends to leave your stuff alone, which is part of Avacyn’s forte and something that can help do what you’re trying to do even if your commander is handled at an inopportune moment. Catastrophe is just an over-costed Wrath that sometimes, just sometimes, will play the role of Armageddon when your lands are indestructible. It’s a dirty trick, sure, but once in a while having a dirty trick up your sleeve will keep people honest.

Oblation, Swords to Plowshares — Solid board control pinpoint effects, neither one cares if the opposing permanent is indestructible or otherwise supposed to be hard to handle. So long as you can target it, the darn thing’s going to die.

Decree of Justice, Entreat the Angels, Luminarch Ascension — We’re a tribal Angel deck, and these all happen to make Angel token creatures at a price that’s not to be turned down. Decree and Entreat follow the same mana curve for making a passel of 4/4 fliers with other special tricks: Decree can cycle to make 1/1 critters at instant speed, while sometimes (just sometimes!) Entreat the Angels will do the same at an impressively competitive rate thanks to Mind’s Eye, Sensei’s Divining Top, and even Seer’s Sundial.

Scroll Rack is weird and doesn’t draw cards so you can’t play it as an instant that way, but you can set it up on top of your deck to get a second chance at the miracle cost so that’s not bad either. Luminarch Ascension is just so absurdly powerful that I usually don’t include it under the “don’t play anything that makes me a giant target” principle, but hey, it makes Angels, so mise.

Marshal’s Anthem — Another case where I lied about not playing Anthem effects; in this case it was included because it can supplement Avacyn’s ability to shrug off mass sweepers by returning a pile of dead creatures to play again. Everything besides the multikicker ability is just gravy, but the random power bonus with Emeria Angel’s tokens can add up significantly.

Elspeth, Knight-Errant — Another way to potentially get indestructibility on your side via Elspeth’s emblem. That and Elspeth’s just awesome to begin with.

Curse of Exhaustion — Combo player getting you down? Curse of Exhaustion targets just that one player, so you don’t have to worry about tripping your possible allies with something like Rule of Law, finding those awkward moments where your erstwhile companions are forbidden from interacting with that problem over there because of your stupid “hoser” that was supposed to prevent problems from cropping up uncontrollably.

Abeyance — A solid response to problematic things that crop up unintentionally, Abeyance is just a decent way to break up troublesome turns. Sure, you don’t really have a lot of ways to interact with things on the stack since white isn’t the best “counterspell” color. Abeyance can help play volleyball however: set up the combo breaker that prevents a combo player from continuing their infinite chain, then deal with the troublesome permanents (if you can) or let a blue mage win the war over problems still on the stack.

Angel’s Grace — Another way to break up combos is to simply outlive them. Infinite damage combo got you down? End up at one. Going to lose to getting milled out? Survive the turn and stab the opponent in the eyes. Weird things happen, like Scroll Rack letting you put cards from your hand back on top of the deck without drawing any thus preventing you from losing. The easiest and most practical way to deal with a board of your indestructible Angels is to cut off your head; Angel’s Grace prevents decapitation maneuvers.

Not Of This World — A free counterspell to protect your commander with. It’s as simple as that.

Cho-Manno’s Blessing — A not free counterspell (sort of) to protect your commander with. Cho-Manno’s Blessing prevents those pesky Plows and Submerges or whatever pinpoint removal your opponent may be trying to use that sidesteps the “destroy” question and sticks around to make life more difficult going forward for similar attempts.

Land Tax — Great just for getting your mana; no further explanation is required for that. However, alongside Seer’s Sundial or Scroll Rack, it’s a bunch of free cards while you’re at it so the already awesome can get actually more awesome while we’re at it.

Aura Fracture — Enchantments are notoriously the most troublesome permanents in Commander, and Aura Fracture lets you handle an arbitrarily large number of them without spending additional mana or even really being locked down to the main phase as you otherwise would be.

Nevermore — Name a troublesome commander. Draw a card. You can’t interact with a lot of spells on the stack, but sometimes you can simply prevent them from being played in the first place.

Null Chamber — This one’s a harder one in that it totally requires you to conspire with one opponent as an ally of sorts. It doesn’t scale up for multiplayer gamesâ€”two people get to name stuff, and only two people. So if, for example, you with Avacyn and a pretty innocuous-looking commander like Adun Oakenshield are giving harsh looks to two opponents showing Skitheryx and Jhoira, you can both make the corrupt decision to agree to name those two cards as your choices rather than, say, you name one of the two commanders and your friend Adun over there returns the favor with a knife in your back by naming Avacyn, Angel of Hope, ending your hopes for a while.

And as the last card, I have another goodie for you… Null Chamber isn’t the only odd white enchantment I dredged up from Mirage Block to include in this deck: I found another. After all, back in the dark days of Magic I wasted many a moon trying to make a Sands of Time / Equipoise deck to work and have been looking for a possible home for Equipoise ever since. Equipoise in this case can phase out annoying permanents like Maze of Ith or Ensnaring Bridge to allow you to attack or repeatedly handle token creatures by banishing them from existence forever at no cost turn after turn.

It can even help you win friends and influence people; knowing you’re about to play a sweeper but don’t want to make all the players at the table into your enemies, you can phase out some of the nicest and fanciest permanents an opponent controls that they might want to keep, then sweep the board while those are temporarily held safe in limbo. You can do a lot of interesting things with this weird little enchantment, and I think a white control deck can benefit from its inclusion in a whole variety of ways, some of which will reveal themselves interestingly in-context over the course of a game. Phasing out untapped blue lands that would otherwise cast a counterspell, for example, or clearing a blocker or two so another player can get an attack in edgewise.

Putting this all together, we get the following deck:

Avacyn, Angel of Hope

Sean McKeown

Test deck on 04-29-2012

Commander

Creatures (28)

Planeswalkers (1)

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Lands (36)

Gisela, Angel Of Death From Above

Moving on to more Mountainous pastures, we look Gisela’s way to see what “death from above” would look like. The mana base can be a little more interesting; there are two colors of utility lands we can access, after all, and without the hope of getting Emeria online we have greater flexibility to play with other non-basic lands. Starting to block it out, we’ll pull first the colored lands that will enable us to cast our spells:

5x Plains, 5x Mountain

Dual Lands: Ancient Amphitheater, Boros Garrison, Clifftop Retreat, Command Tower, Plateau, Rugged Prairie, Sacred Foundry

Fetchlands: Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, Scalding Tarn, Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Naya Panorama, Thawing Glaciers

Building in some extra utility, we have home for a few colorless lands:

Dust Bowl, Winding Canyons, Temple of the False God, Kor Haven — All obvious and well-worn paths.

Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion; Slayers’ Stronghold — Red/white utility lands, both particularly nasty with Gisela’s habit of doubling damage in a way that does not, actually, count as double strike. Sunhome, then, can quadruple the damage output, while Slayers’ Stronghold both grants haste on a landâ€”something I for one have been waiting for for some time now out of a land that comes into play untappedâ€”and a +4 bonus to an attack.

Inkmoth Nexus — Eeeeeeeew. But if damage is doubled by Gisela any other way of “doubling damage” is worth paying attention to, and Gisela lets the Nexus swing for two poison at a time. It’s icky and feels wrong, but for a non-dedicated poison theme (and non-Blightsteel Colossus way to do it), I’m comfortable with its inclusion.

Then we just have the colored lands that provide some benefit or utility:

Mistveil Plains– Potentially able to recur cards by pushing them out of your graveyard and back into your deck, there will be at least one way (Sunforger) in which this is very important.

Eiganjo Castle — Damage prevention as a free ability strapped to a legendary Plains. Totally free for a little bit of extra utility, so sure.

Forgotten Cave, Secluded Steppe — Land balance correction in the middle of the game by dint of cycling when you want a spell but counting as a land when that’s what you need. There’s a danger of too many lands coming into play tapped here, so we aren’t going to reach further to the Urza’s Saga cycle of the same lands, and we have heavy color requirements and can’t afford too many colorless lands so Blasted Landscape stays out.

Spinerock Knoll, Windbrisk Heights — Lands that can potentially provide you with free spells later in the game. Both are awesome and the next best in the cycle after the ridiculous Mosswort Bridge (aka the first land Primeval Titan gets in 90% of the games you cast Primeval Titan).

With 37 lands we still want a bit of mana to help out and will find a few ways to get it without reaching too far. Unlike the previous build, we don’t need to see what creatures we’re going to be using to fill out the rest of the theme of the deck; Gisela suggests pretty strongly a few cards we should be playing, and we aren’t going to stick to a single tribe or anything so we can explore the deck’s capabilities and pick from the wide variety of available creatures to fill the missing holes.