Feature Deck: Xenagos, God of Revels

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Xenagos is a very popular Commander, ranging on EDHRec on 2nd place after Omnath for Commanders with over 1400 Decks counted there. While some Primers will compare other popular Commanders and their strengths and weaknesses, we won’t do that, as we think that each Commander is (quite) unique and so it makes no sense in comparing totally different Decks with different ideas and strategies behind the Deckbuilding with each other. We might sum up some facts which might seem quite obvious for regular players, but we’ll try to explain our thoughts behind the Deckbuilding to New Players here as well – so this Article does include some thoughts on Mana costs etc. as well. This is not a Primer in first place but a Guide on building a Team Commander Deck. The Card choices are not Budget, though! Feel free to exchange pricy cards with your own collection.

So let’s have a look at Xenagos first:

He is Red . He is Green . So we can use (if we like to) the powers of these Colors. Green has good Ramp Spells (cards which will bring lands into play or provide Manasources), good Carddraw (mostly creature based, but nevertheless a fair amount of these Spells) and can handle Enchantments and Artifacts best. Green Creatures are some of the strongest (Power- and Toughnesswise) in the Game, but they lack flying. Green is a straight forward color. Red has great Direct Damage cards (cards which deal Damage to Players, Planeswalkers and Creatures.) Red can also handle Artifacts. Red has some decent Flying Creatures. Both Colors can provide some Landdestruction Cards if needed. Both lack a bit of Creature or Masscreature Removal – they can do the trick, but not as efficient as other colors. So summed up, Red Green is a quite balanced color Combination, and we are lacking just few things like Counterspells we can easily neglect.

As Xenagos is a legendary Enchantment Creature and indestructible and even not a creature on the battlefield as long as your devotion to is below , he is in first place a hard to kill permanent (= just to be exiled or sacrificed or bounced). Okay, Return to Dust-like effects do appear as regular cards in common Decklists, but they are quite rare and the opponent has to draw such a card out of a hundred, too, meaning that as long as your Commander keeps a low profile by not turning into a creature he might even fly under the radar a whole match long and remains „unkillable“ for the opponent. Nevertheless Xenagos is quite costy: a CMC (converted Manacost) of means that he propably won’t be the first nonland card you’d play. Especially as Xenagos‘ special abilities gives your creatures haste and a huge attack Bonus, you’d like to play him before you drop any creatures. So our first goal to accomplish is getting him out fast.

Mana Acceleration in

Playing Xenagos as fast as possible ? As Team Commander has banned the most unbalanced Mana acceleration cards like Sol Ring or Mana Crypt, we have to rely on „basic“ ramp cards. In Green we have plenty of options therefore, though: Starting at as low as , we have Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves and their lookalikes, two mana Spells like Rampant Growth, three mana Spells like Kodama’s Reach and even Creatures who will genereate 2 Mana and even more costy Spells like the 4 CMC Explosive Vegetation. Red offers us little benefit here, just Artifacts have additional mana generating cards like Mind Stone and other 2 CMC Manastones, but Green’s advantage is that the ramped Lands are a much safer option as Artifacts can be removed much more easily than (basic) lands. There are also some other options: one-shot cards like Lotus Petal or Elvish Spirit Guide / Simian Spirit Guide and cards with the drawback of discarding a card like Chrome Mox, but do we really need that much acceleration at such drawbacks ? It’s up to you to decide, depending also on your meta. I personally think that a more constant build is better in most cases, and the drawbacks are too high: e.g. Lotus Petal and the Spirit Guides accelerate Xenagos to be put on the table, but then most big threats for Xenagos are at an even higher CMC, so we will then miss mana, too, by using oneshots.

So, what cards do make sense ? Let’s calculate: if we drop a land and a mana dork in turn 1, we have 3 Mana available in Turn 2 (as you can play your second land there) – still not enough for Xenagos. Best card would be another mana Ramp card – it doesn’t really matter if it costs 1, 2 or 3 Mana, nor if it generates 1 or more mana. In turn 3 you can have 3 lands and 2+ ramped Mana then. No need for a CMC 4 Rampspell. If you aren’t lucky and didn’t draw a second ramp on Turn 2, you’re stuck on 3 Mana. In Turn 3 you can play a land and are on 4 Mana with the one you ramped. Even if you would now play a 4 CMC ramp spell, the result won’t change: In turn 4, by playing a land, you also hit 5 mana without a second ramp spell. (ok, always considering you have lands in hand and noone kills your mana dork.)

Let’s assume you skip the 1CMC cards and play Ramp Spells for 2CMC: Turn 1 one land played, 1 Mana. Turn 2 second land played, 1 ramp spell. Turn 3 third land plus 1 ramped Mana (maybe aonther land, maybe a mana dork) leaves you nevertheless with 4 Mana – 1 short of Xenagos… and the same situation as already described above.

Let’s try out Ramp Spells for 3CMC: Turn 1 one land played, 1 Mana. Turn 2 second land played, 2 Mana total. Turn 3 third land and you play a Ramp Spell, then on Turn 4 you have 4 lands + some additionally ramped Mana = Xenagos.

Last Scenario: Turn 1 land. Turn 2 Land. Turn 3 land and a ramp Spell. Turn 4 land and a generated Mana: Xenagos.

Wow, a long text, but it demonstrates that CMC4 cards are not a benefit in getting Xenagos out, and CMC2 aren’t superior to CMC3 cards as they both speed up just by a single turn, but mostly CMC3 offer more benefits (e.g. a Kodama’s Reach generates a card advantage compared to a Rampant Growth). You can add CMC2 Ramp spells if you are either short on CMC3 Spells or you want to include even more ramp to your Deck.

The best combination therefore are CMC1 and CMC3 ramp spells.

Once Xenagos hits the table… what’s next ?

Attack ! Xenago’s ability will give your creatures haste and +x/+x, where X is the creature’s power. While it might sound obvious, you should play creatures. And therefore your Deck needs to include lots of them, assuring you draw enough to consistantly have a drop after you play Xenagos. What is the best creature you can play ? It doesn’t need to have haste – Xenagos will provide this. It should have a high Power. And it should be able to deliver the damage. Xenagos doesn’t provide trample. A 100/100 attacking creature, which is blocked by a lousy 1/1 token is still blocked and wastes its damage potential. Keywords here are unblockable, trample or evasion like flying.

As Xenagos does boost our creatures, there is no real need for other boosters like Equipments (the in most Commander decks included omnipresent Lightning Greaves does give this Deck little benefit, but may be even a drawback instead as you must target the creature by yourself with Xenagos! – Okay, lesson learned, creatures shouldn’t have shroud or Pretection Red or Green. If we don’t need to include such cards, we can also more easily insert mass artifact or enchantment removal if we like to. Otherwise we can insert some enchants or equipments, too, but should also look out that they are not too clumsy: that’s what is the mana curve. You would ideally draw cards in ascending mana costs, so that you can easily play a card/some cards per turn.

„Wow, now we are even doing maths ?! I came here for playing Magic!“ some of you might say. Actually, Games have a lot to do with Math. While card games have a luck factor what you draw, there is (especially in Magic) the Deck building concept which lets you change the propabilities that you draw a certain card(type), for example the amount of lands in your deck will influence if you draw many lands or few lands. While you can make a lot of calculations, and can overdo this, you should nevertheless be aware of the fundamental principles:

One of these is the „Gaussian Distribution Curve“ – simply implying that you shouldn’t neither include too many very low CC cards nor too many very high CMC cards.

While certain Deck types bypass or alter this principle, you might keep it just in Mind when tuning your Deck. If you just threw in many cheap ramp Spells, you might have always enough Mana, but it could happen that you have Xenagos out, an empty hand, and you do … nothing at all for several turns, as you don’t draw into big, fat, costy creatures. Then your creature count (especially the high CC cards which you want to work with Xenagos) might be a little low.

On the other hand, if you have five cards in hand, all costy and clumsy creatures and not enough mana to cast them for several turns, and you get overrun by your opponents before you can play these precious yet high CC cards, then your mana cost distribution might be too much on the high CC side.

Xeangos might not be the best deck to show this, as theaverage Mana cost is higher than normal, but you might notice that most Creatures are at about 6 Mana (following the concept to lay out Xenagos for 5 Mana, and the next turn play a land and drop a 6 CMC Creature), and just a few are CMC 7 or more.

„Ok, I got it: some ramp, enough lands, enough fatties, but a quite balanced mana curve – so I just add some creatures and I am good to go?“

There are many ways to build a Commander Deck – and actually, this is also part of the fun: there might not even be a „perfet“ build – depending on your playstyle, personal preferences and your meta-game (the decks and cards your opponents use to play) your individual Deck is what is your personal optimum. And there are of course different styles and interpretations of a Commander out there. It’s like a pot of flowers, which should be turned into a piece of Artwork: one Artist may use Graffiti, another one uses comic-like sketches, the next will use surrealistic colors and so on…

So we will present two different kind of XENAGOS Decks here to demonstrate that there are several ways to go for a Deck Build.

Version 1: Gimme more (creatures) !

Xenagos, God of Revels is a toolbox by its own. He provides Haste and a damage boost to your creatures. So basically all you do have is to play him and creatures. There are also creature-based solutions can provide: for enchantments and Artifacts, use Acidic Slime, Bane of Progress,.. for Creatures, Flametongue Kavu or Inferno Titan or Woodfall Primus. For carddraw: Heartwood Storyteller or Beast Whisperer.

So what’s the deal with playing mainly creatures ?

There are some cards we can build around which punish playing non-creature cards, and some other cards will reward you by doing playing creatures. If you build around these cards your concept should be to not hinder or harm yourself then (you may not completely dodge noncreature spells, but at least you can limit their amount. Some cards like Sarkhan’s Unsealing may be too tempting to not include).

How do we find such cards ? Experience is good, sometimes you stumble across them when an opponent plays a rarely seen card (and you think: this would be a good match for my Deck), you might read a decklist (like you do now), get an advice from a friend or from the partner with whom you played a Team Commander match together. But you can also use the Magic Card Search Engines like Scryfall (see our Linklist). Try altering your search in the advanced search and you might find some good cards.

I will go for example for „noncreature“ in our commander colors . While some cards do exactly the opposite (like Firebrand Archer) we stumble on cards like Heartwood Storyteller – wow, this is cool, isn’t it ? Because EVERY opponent draws a card whenever a player plays a noncreature spell. So even when your opponent plays a Terminate to kill your Heartwood Storyteller, your team draws 2 cards, making a gain. And then there is Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, which also fits in perfectly. The real winner however is Primal Surge. If you manage to not include any Instant or Sorcery cards in your Decklist, it means you can put your whole deck onto the Battlefield. And yes, you don’t even cast the Spells, so your own Ruric Thar, the Unbowed won’t harm you. If you give your army Haste (yes, Xenagos does provide haste, but just to a single creature) by including a permanent card like Urabrask the Hidden and Hellraiser Goblin, you can overrun your opponent.

 

Xenagos, God of Revels – Version 1 Decklist – Gimme more (creatures)!

Creatures (56)

Sorceries (1)

Enchantments (6)

Artifacts (0)

  • –

Instants (0)

  • –

Planeswalker (0)

  • –

Lands (36)

Ok, this Deck is not a tournament Style Winner Deck, but it’s definately fun to play. It might not win every game, yet will the Primal Surge combo even come to shine in a dozen of games as this Deck has 0 Tutoring. But if you win with Primal Surge, you’re the man. It’s more a theme / style based Deck like a Tribal Deck than tuned for winning, but that’s also what makes this Version special.

Also, we think that this kind of Decklist can be easily built by beginners – just replace the most expansive cards with substitutes: taiga->forest. Carnage tyrant -> any big creature with trample like Plated Crusher or Pelakka Wurm and you are good to go.

Strength and Weaknesses
Personal and arbitrary rating (On a 1-10 scale) how good this decks can perform the following actions:

  • Acceleration______6/10                               (there are 13 Mana-Source Creatures included)
  • Card Draw________3/10                              (a handful of creature-based draw effects)
  • Tutoring__________0/10                             (nope.)
  • Mass Removal_____0/10                              (none.)
  • Counter__________0/10                               (nah.)
  • Anti-Artifact/Ench__3/10                              (possible, but you shouldn’t rely on)
  • Control_________________1/10       (-)
  • Direct Damage___________1/10       (unlikely)
  • Creature Damage_________10/10    (definately: 56 Creatures – no one will play more)
  • Combo__________________2/10     (minor – shouldn’t occur regularly)
  • Fast Deck     0 <——-4—-8—-> 10 Long Term Deck
  • easy to play 0 <0-1————–> 10 hard to pilot

The Decks isn’t a competitive Deck which consistantly will combo off or perform a winning move in the first couple of turns. It is neither a long term Deck which gathers ressources and wins by card advantage. It’s strength lies in between, ramping to 5 Mana, play Xenagos, and then drop creatures. As this is creature based Deck, it has few too offer next to creatures and is limited to creature-based effects. It is very easy to play, as it simply drops one creature after another – so no secret tech or combos here.

Some nice synergies should nethertheless be mentioned:

Version 2: Overkill

Xenagos, God of Revels will trigger at the beginning of each combat. So what’s better than letting him trigger once ? Correct: multiple combat rounds. If we stack several rounds, we can amass unbelievable high power boosts, even dealing lethal damage within one turn.

We aren’t bound to just creatures as in version 1 of this Decks, so this result might even be more flexible as the first Deck (though you’ll miss your chance for an Epic Win with Primordeal Surge).

 

Xenagos, God of Revels – Version 2 Decklist – Overkill

Creatures (41)

Sorceries (12)

Enchantments (7)

Artifacts (0)

  • –

Instants (3)

Planeswalker (1)

Lands (35)

Still, this Deck is far from being a certain Winner, but it shows quite a consistancy of delivering deadly situation, as Xenagos is hard to handle for most Decks. It’s advantage in comparison to Deck 1 is that the most annoying threats to our Deck like Blind Obedience or Maze of Ith can better be handled as there are more card solutions and a little more tutoring.

Strength and Weaknesses
Personal and arbitrary rating (On a 1-10 scale) how good this decks can perform the following actions:

  • Acceleration______5/10                               (as the mana sources are not purely creature based they are even safer to disruption, but fewer amount)
  • Card Draw________6/10                              (can draw lots of cards)
  • Tutoring__________2/10                             (a few effects for tutoring and regrowth)
  • Mass Removal_____2/10                              (can wipe the board)
  • Counter__________1/10                               (ok, not real counterspells but some defensive effects)
  • Anti-Artifact/Ench__3/10                              (possible, tutorable)
  • Control_________________1/10       (-)
  • Direct Damage___________2/10       (Chandra’s Ignition often wins games)
  • Creature Damage_________9/10    (no doubt that we are still creature based)
  • Combo__________________3/10     (it’s more about synergies, though)
  • Fast Deck 0 <——-4———9-> 10 Long Term Deck
  • easy to play 0 <–1–3———-> 10 hard to pilot

Still being kind of a mid-range deck with being able to deliver deadly blows in a single turn, this version is due to its carddraw even capable of being not burned out in late game matches. As there are some cards tutorable and some combat tricks, you should be a bit familiar to this deck, but nothing serious to worry/think about when piloting this deck.

With a single „additional Combat phase“, a creature like Atarka, World Render can deal Power 6 +6/+6 through Xenagos sums up to 12-> double strike = 24 Damage in the first combat phase. Second combat phase : 12 +12/+12 Xenagos Bonus = 24 double strike 48 Damage = 60 Damage without any other boosts / tricks. Of course, with additional cards even more damage can be accumulated 🙂 – that’s why we call it Overkill.

So, we hope you like our Xenagos decks – which one do you think suits you better ? Leave a comment if you like to. Thanks … and as it is the last day of the Year : a happy 2019 !

 

Your Team Commander Team

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