60 to 100: Caw-Go

Now There's Eight of Them...

Welcome to 60 to 100, the series where we take beloved decks from 60-card formats and convert them to Commander.

I often find myself feeling nostalgic for eras of Magic: The Gathering's history that I wasn't present for. Of the many decks I did not get to play in Standard, Caw-Go is the one I'm saddest to have missed. Most of the Commander decks in my personal collection are attempts at recreating an old 60-card deck that I miss dearly.

For many years, the singleton restriction of Commander prevented me from filling the Squadron Hawk

At long last, a Caw-Go Commander deck is within reach. But before we build the deck, we need to look at our source material.

What is Caw-Go?

In 2010, Magic's Standard format included a lot of powerful cards. Worldwake brought us Jace, the Mind Sculptor

The strategy was elegant: stall your opponent out in the early game with interaction like Condemn

Flying Into the Command Zone

Since I want to maximize my Tempest Hawk

The Birds

I've chosen to include eight copies of Tempest Hawk

Our kettle of 2/2 Tempest Hawk

The "Go" in Caw-Go

"Draw-go" style gameplay is exactly what it sounds like. You draw you card for turn, maybe play a land or attack, then pass and hold up your mana for casting spells on your opponents' turns. Caw-Go was satisfied with casting Squadron Hawk

Caw-Blade

The release of Mirrodin Besieged transformed Caw-Go into Caw-Blade, adding copies of Stoneforge Mystic

Interaction and Removal

This deck needs to keep big creatures off of the battlefield. We're primarily looking to win the game by dealing damage with small creatures, which makes finding asymmetrical board wipes really easy. I'm often very hesitant to use Kastral, the Windcrested

As with any control deck, countermagic is essential for fending off threats that our removal can't answer. Lofty Denial

On the more powerful side of the spectrum, we have Force of Will

Keeping our Tempest Hawk

It acts as both a removal spell and a way to bounce all of your Tempest Hawk

Draw

One of my goals for this deck is to maximize the value of Tempest Hawk

When a player casts a Brainstorm and doesn't have a way to shuffle their library afterword, they are referred to as "Brainstorm Locked." There are three Brainstorm effects that are powerful enough to warrant inclusion: Brainstorm

Jace, the Mind Sculptor

We have a pretty diverse mixture of additional draw effects. Enduring Innocence

Enduring Curiosity

Lands

As always, the core of our manabase is our seven fetch lands, accompanied by a shock land and a surveil land for them to find. Our fetches get further utility as shuffle effects to follow up cards likeBrainstorm

It seems fairly unlikely to me that anyone would dare to counter a Tempest Hawk

One of the fun things about two-color decks is that you can cram an obscene amount of utility lands into them without affecting mana consistency too much. Otawara, Soaring City