Cut #7 - 2 Cuts to Midnight

Midnight Guard

by Jason Engle

During the week leading up to this article, one of the deck builders asked me a question I never really considered before: "What if someone else chooses the same commander as me?" When I make these challenges I usually try to make any challenges related to the commander as broad as possible so that doesn't happen, but there might come a day where there is an overwhelming favorite that everyone wants to build. It could also be that the other challenges lend themselves to being more suited towards that commander and their abilities. If the situation ever arose where two people built the same commander, I would still accept both of the decks, because odds are they are different enough. We, as deck builders, each have our own biases and particular ways of constructing our decks, so even if the challenge was to use the same commander, I am sure the decks would be different enough to still be "unique". An interesting thought experiment for sure, and as with what I said last week about Planeswalkers, a challenge that may appear in a future article.

Last week we had Cody and his Shanna, Sisay's Legacy

That we tied!

Regardless of who won, I believe it would be unfair for me to win the prize (conflict of interest and all that) so congratulations Cody, you have won your deck! Hopefully this deck turns into a staple deck for you, and take good care of it! Thank you so much for participating and I hope to see you again on Cut!

Today's article is a special one indeed, we are featuring writers from EDHREC and Commanders Herald. For those of you who need a little reminder of what the challenges were:

•  Commander has to be from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt or the MID Commander Decks

• The 99 has to be Modern-legal

• Each of the following Card types must be represented at least 12 times (Creature, Artifact, Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment)

First up is Lenny, you may recognize him from his "Power Sink" articles on EDHREC!

For my midnight challenge I went with Dennick Pious Apprentice/Pious Apparition

Dennick's apparition side was more compelling and really speaks to the cards Fleeting Memories

Unfortunately, Dennick's front side directly works against our strategy so getting him to the graveyard is priority one. Casting him early and running him headlong into bad attacks isn't the worst proposition thanks to his lifelink, but I really don't want to rely on that. To put Dennick in the ground I'm running a few sacrifice outlets. There are precious few of these in Azorius, especially when restricted to the Modern legal card pool. Thankfully Altar of Dementia

Once the graveyard is stacked, cards like Karmic Guide

I'm also using a few cards to get some more utility out of the clue tokens we are making. Nettlecyst

Great stuff Lenny, hopefully Dennick can lift the readers spirits and vote you to the next round!

Next we have Jake FitzSimons, you can catch Jake's "Revising the Rules" articles here on Commander's Herald!

The Frontline With Adeline

When Travis told me what the conditions for this week's deckbuilding challenge were, I decided to add two of my own - make it mono-white and make it powerful. Those two conditions sometimes feel mutually exclusive, but the printing of Adeline, Resplendent Cathar

One of the things I love so much about Adeline is that she doesn't need to attack herself to trigger. As long as you have something you can swing with, you're going to get all the tokens you need. As a result, we have plenty of itsy-bitsy beaters that ensure we get a trigger the same turn we land Adeline.

Are they going to die in combat? Yes. Does it matter? No. All that matters is that we start our token generation as early as possible. Any keepable hand is going to have three mana sources, and a creature we can put into play before Adeline. Not a big ask!

A hybrid between going wide and going tall, Adeline is an army in a can. Putting tokens into play tapped and attacking every single turn is akin to Najeela, the Blade Blossom

These creatures aren't just powerful by themselves, they help with combat triggers and they'll become genuine threats as our board develops. Having a dummy thicc Adeline is crucial for putting the pressure on your opponents, so every creature counts!

It's also important that we have anthem effects to keep our tokens strong and big enough to live through most combat steps. To do this, we've got the usual suite of white anthems to work with, including the most hilariously underpowered card from Modern Horizons, Force of Virtue

Speaking of bigger humans, are you familiar with Champion of the Parish

What's better than making three 1/1's every turn? Making six 1/1's. Making three 4/4's with flying. Making... whatever Cathar's Crusade

Speaking of which, you'll see that this deck has a criminally low land count. Thirty lands might seem like madness, but we have three different MDFC's to rely on as well as the easily flippable Legion's Landing

Usually, these cards lose efficacy unless our opponents are ahead of us, but worst-case scenario, they can be played before Adeline to guarantee triggers and turn into beaters once we've got the ball rolling.

The rest of the deck is made up of some of the best mono-white has to offer (albeit just the modern legal ones) with a good spread of removal, protection, and even board wipes for games that get completely out of control.

So in the words of Madeline, that's all there is, there isn't anymore.

Thanks for the great deck Jake! If you decide to build this deck, I'm sure it'll be a fine time with good ol' Adeline!

Finally we have Jevin! Jevin is another writer at EDHREC, go and check out his "Challenge the Stats" articles if you haven't already!

This deck's goal is to form an engine with Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor

In addition, we'll generate a lot of enchantment ETBs, which will allow us to do damage with things like Grim Guardian

I've also included many things that feel like curses, but aren't, like Captive Audience

We want to protect Lynde, who is key to our strategy, but in the event of a board wipe that hits enchantments, all of those enchantments will come back to curse ourselves, so we really want Lynde to come back right away to start doling them out to our opponents. For that reason, I've included a few ways to protect her like Feign Death

Thanks Jevin! Curses are one way to get ahead, hopefully it's enough to get you to the next round.

The Innistrad theme continues! As we start our crawl into October, and thus Halloween, let's all remember to have a (safe) Ghoul's Night Out

If you or someone you know would like to be in a future Cut article, please send an email to the.only.travis.stanley@gmail.com.

Poll Closes October 25, 2021