Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate "Live. Laugh. Reanimate" - Plot Twist #23

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it'll tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense of the types of stories we're looking to tell.

Last time, we built a five-color, mono-black theft deck with Rev, Tithe Extractor that was looking to attack our opponents early and often in order to steal whatever else we needed off the top of their decks. This week, we're continuing to look at one of the exciting new commanders from Foundations with Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate.

I've always adored Alesha's original design, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death since she was in Standard around when I got back into Magic, and I love reanimator decks, as fans of Plot Twist know.

This new version of Alesha similarly rewards us for attacking by reanimating a creature, but she not longer limits our options to creatures with power two or less, so there's plenty of room to do something twisty!

How Does Alesha Work?

Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate's first two abilities are relatively straightforward: first strike and a triggered ability that puts a +1/+1 counter on her whenever she attacks. While you could definitely do something interesting by leaning into mechanics like proliferate or +1/+1 counters with Alesha, that just doesn't pique my interest enough to pursue it for this week's article.

Instead, we're really interested in Alesha's third ability, which reads: "Raid -- At the beginning of your end step, if you attacked this turn, return target creature card with mana value less than or equal to Alesha's power from your graveyard to the battlefield."

There's definitely a lot of mechanical similarity here to Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, but we notably don't have to attack with Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate herself in order to trigger her Raid ability. We also get the creature back for free as long as its mana value is less than or equal to Alesha's power, which should be relatively easy given that Alesha gets a +1/+1 counter whenever she attacks herself.

When we look at Alesha's EDHREC page, we can see players are looking to cast and reanimate a lot of cheap creatures that synergize with Alesha, like Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, Stitcher's Supplier, and Drana, Liberator of Malakir that each appear in about 40% of nearly 500 Alesha decks at the time of writing this article.

It definitely looks like brewers want to play a grindy, controlling, aristocrats-style game, too, with Accursed Marauder, Plaguecrafter, and Ravenous Chupacabra appearing in Alesha's High Synergy section.

While that's certainly one way you could build Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate and try to grind out wins by slowly out-valuing your opponents, that doesn't feel like a Plot Twist deck to me, so we'll be looking to do something a little different with this week.

Doing the Twist

One thing that immediately stuck out to me was that, while Alesha can buff her own power by 1 every time she attacks, we can actually reanimate much larger creatures simply by buffing Alesha's power some other way, so we'll lean on dredge cards, like Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Thug, and Shenanigans, to quickly fill our own graveyard, then a variety of cards that we can take advantage of in the graveyard, like Anger, Bulk Up, Claim // Fame, and Reckless Charge to buff Alesha's power and give her haste.

Of course we've got a suite of big creatures, including Cityscape Leveler, Dreadhound, and Terror of the Peaks, to reanimate, and plenty of discard effects for us to quickly churn through our deck.

Filling Our Graveyard

Since this is a reanimator deck at its core, we'll want to fill up our graveyard as quickly as possible. One of the most reliable ways to do that is to get a dredge card, like Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Thug, Dakmor Salvage, Necroplasm, or Shenanigans, into our graveyard, and then use its dredge ability.

Dredge allows us to return the card with dredge from our graveyard into our hand instead of drawing any card by milling ourselves. So, for example, we can return Stinkweed Imp to our hand instead of drawing our card for turn for the low, low price of milling the top five cards of our library into our graveyard. 

Since our deck is designed around cards being in our graveyard, the 'downside' of dredge milling cards off the top of our library becomes an advantage instead. We're running a handful of 'tutors' that will put cards directly into our graveyard in Corpse Connoisseur, Final Parting, and Vile Entomber that can get us a dredge card, a big creature to reanimate, or just about anything else we need if necessary.

You could certainly remove these cards if you wanted to power the deck down further or add in something like Entomb or Buried Alive if you wanted to speed the deck up further.

I like these three 'tutors' in particular because they're flexible enough to help us win the game or find an answer without being so cheap as to feel oppressive to play against. 

We're also leaning heavily into red's looting card draw effects to help us churn through our deck quickly and fill up our graveyard as we do. Bitter Reunion lets us draw two cards for the price of discarding one and can later be sacrificed for to give all of our creatures haste until end of turn, an effect we're sure to need after a board wipe.

Electric Revelation fits right in because, even if we mill it, we can still cast it for its flashback cost at instant speed. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker can give us card advantage, ramp in the form of Treasures, and even copy a big creature we've reanimated if it sticks around long enough.

Lastly, I want to call specific attention to Sazacap's Brew, which is an instant for that can not only allow us to put a big creature into our graveyard but also give Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate +2 power, allowing us to reanimate a big threat we've just discarded.

Sazacap's Brew is definitely going to allow us to make some splashy, memorable plays that will make our opponents ask, "Wait, what does that card do?"

Alesha Doesn't Skip Leg Day

If we really want this deck to shine, we're going to need to be able to get Alesha's power up to 5 or 6 reliably.

Since Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate gets a +1/+1 counter every time she attacks, giving her haste will certainly help with that goal. In addition to Bitter Reunion, we're running a suite of cards like Anger, Claim // Fame, Inner-Flame Acolyte, Reckless Charge, and Reckless Stormseeker to give Alesha or another creature haste when we need to.

Most of the time, we'll probably want to give Alesha haste with something like Inner-Flame Acolyte if she's the only creature we control when we cast her because then we'll be able to trigger her ability and return the Inner-Flame Acolyte at the very least.

There will definitely be late game situations where we'll want to give haste to Cityscape Leveler or an evasive threat like Terror of the Peaks, too.

We're running some spicy tech to really buff Alesha's power when we need to, either to reanimate a very large creature or potentially deal lethal commander damage. Ghoul's Feast is tailor-made for this deck that runs 45 creatures and plenty of ways to get them into our graveyard, and since it's an instant we can surprise an opponent who thought they might not block "just this one time."

Soulshriek is an identical effect for only , but it does require us to destroy the creature we target at the end of the turn so we may not want to use it on Alesha herself.

Both Ghoul's Feast and Soulshriek are fantastic in combination with Bulk Up, meaning we can essentially one-shot an opponent with Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate provided we have Bulk Up, Ghoul's Feast or Soulshriek, and nine creatures in our graveyard.

If you like this style of hybrid spellslinger/Voltron deck, I'd recommend you check out Plot Twist #9 where we did something really neat with Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot. I have a paper Kalamax, the Stormsire deck in the same style that once won a game by countering its own spell, and that is a truly unforgettable way to win a game.

What Are We Reanimating, Though?

Now for the meat and potatoes: the creatures we'll be reanimating. Bladewing, Deathless Tyrant is going to be a fantastic target in the late game because it creates a 2/2 Zombie for each creature in our graveyard whenever it deals combat damage to a player or planeswalker, leaving behind a massive army.

I love the combination of Bladewing and Terror of the Peaks to let us do two damage to any target for each Zombie we make as well. We're running both Syr Konrad, the Grim and Dreadhound to chip away at our opponents' life totals as creatures go to the graveyard. Keep in mind that both will also trigger if we happen to mill a creature by using the dredge ability.

Possibly my favorite creature to repeatedly reanimate has to be Anathemancer though. I run Anathemancer in my Marchesa the Black Rose Wizard Kindred deck and it's an all-star every time I draw it.

You'd be surprised how quickly some decks can get to 10+ nonbasic lands, and because Anathemancer has a mana value of 3, it'll be really easy for us to recur it repeatedly.

Since Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate will likely have a target on her back, we're running a handful of other ways to reanimate creatures as well.

Apprentice Necromancer, Doomed Necromancer, and Feldon of the Third Path are all cheap enough creatures that we can cast them early or reanimate them with Alesha without much difficulty, and can quickly return a much bigger threat from our graveyard to the battlefield if we untap with them.

Dread Return gives us an option that we can mill over to one of our dredge effects and then trade in three other creatures for something better later in the game.

Chainer, Nightmare Adept lets us discard a card from our hand in order to cast a creature from our graveyard and grants our nontoken creatures haste as long as we didn't cast them from our hand, filling quite a few roles this deck needs at once.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

This week we did a lot of discarding, which revealed a whole lot of new, twisty cards that I wanted to call a little extra attention to. Currency Converter is a sneakily amazing card in decks like this or my Karador Cycling-Reanimator deck. Since Currency Converter triggers whenever we discard a card, we can activate it nearly every turn to get an extra Treasure or 2/2 Rogue while we're going about our normal gameplan.

It's always a fantastic play on turn 1 to quickly get extra Treasures or blockers. Triarch Praetorian will be amazing with Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate because its mana value of two means we can recur it the turn we cast Alesha as long as we attacked this turn and immediately draw two more cards.

Plague Reaver is a weird, political board wipe that we're well-positioned to take advantage of because we want to be discarding cards. I used to run it in my Killian, Ink Duelist Reanimator deck because it would slow our opponents down while filling our graveyard.

I highly recommend casting it and immediately 'donating' it to an opponent to watch the chaos ensue. Final Parting will always be amazing in decks like this because it gets us both a creature to reanimate and a reanimation spell for only five mana, it reminds me a lot of Shared Summons, another criminally underplayed card.

Lastly, I want to find more homes for Enterprising Scallywag because there are so many ways to trigger its descend ability: creatures dying, discard, self-mill, fetch lands, etc. I think being able to get a Treasure on each of our turns is sneakily good ramp for a creature your opponents won't want to spend a Swords to Plowshares on.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction. I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I've been tinkering around with my Signature Ikra/Bruse Secret Commander Wild Pair Deck lately, and really enjoying looking back at the deck now that I've gotten quite a few games under my belt with it. I'm constantly toying with new ideas like this Mono-Green 'Reanimator' Deck and Colorless Combo deck and would love to hear your thoughts on them there.

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.