Basri, Tomorrow's Champion Commander Deck Tech

Unsummoned Skull • February 21, 2025

Deckbuilding
Basri, Tomorrow's Champion
 by Kai Carpenter

Making Tomorrow Happen Today

Aetherdrift is a tremendous set for getting the brewing engines running. It's been the driving force behind a variety of intriguing brews and unique directions for colors and commanders. The first Aetherdrift commander to catch my eye, however, is an unassuming addition to the feline pantheon: Basri, Tomorrow's Champion

.

The latest de-sparked planeswalker to survive the process with lives to spare, Basri also continues the long history of Egyptians and revering Cats. He's got an interesting suite of abilities that combine to form a best hits of Amonkhet.

Basri has exert, which enables him to tap and remain tapped for a turn to make a Cat token; cycling, to discard it from the hand to draw a card; and an additional ability that grants Cats a Heroic Intervention

when he's cycled. Only... how do we get him into our hand to cycle? And how do we get these pieces to work together?

Cats

The first part to solving the equation that is unlocking Basri's hidden potential is to build around Cats. Since Basri makes Cat tokens and protects Cats, it makes sense to start with loading up on cards of that type. King of the Pride

is a powerful lord that essentially adds a Savannah Lions
 to every Cat we have. Since the tokens Basri creates have lifelink, the extra point of power is particularly impactful.


Ocelot Pride

is carving up Modern; even with the bans, it's still one of the top decks. While we're not doing energy shenanigans, a Cat that makes more Cats and creates tokens of Cats is exactly the kind of cool Cat we're looking to adopt in a deck like this. Cheap, potent, aggressive, and a source of incremental advantage, this is a one-drop that gets better and better as time goes by.


How do we win when we go wide with tiny kitties? Jazal Goldmane

is a solid win condition! We can pour extra mana into Jazal's ability, making our army of Cats big to push a lot of damage through. Since we can activate its ability when we want to, we can attack, wait to see how the opponents line up blocks, and then pump to maximize the unblocked damage. This does involve a new rule as of Magic Foundations that affects how blocking works with pump spells.


Lion Sash

is a solid card for creating incidental interaction while still being an aggressive Cat card. Scavenging Ooze
 is a potent midrange card, so moving it to white, making it a Cat, and giving it reconfigure and the ability to turn other creatures into Scavenging Ooze
s adds another degree of midrange card advantage and power to a supported creature type.


Sacred Cat

and Basri's Acolyte
 highlight the shared connection between Amonkhet, Basri, and Cats. Sacred Cat
 is an efficient lifelinking beater that gives some resilience to board wipes, while Basri's Acolyte
 adds permanent buffs to two creatures we control. The Acolyte also shows how Basri has been tied to the creature type since his introduction in Magic 2021.


People harp on Commander players for not including enough removal in their decks, and kindred decks are among the primary offenders. Felidar Cub

, however, is an example of how to do it right. It's a cheap Cat that acts as a Naturalize
 on a stick in a pinch, but it also works with our gameplan and doesn't require committing non-Cat spell slots.


Bounce Spells

So...we've got Basri, who makes Cats. We've got Cats for Basri to protect. Basri protects Cats when he's cycled. But how do we cycle Basri? It's a tricky situation, given that we don't cast him from hand, but from the command zone. Luckily, I just so happen to know a few ways to put things in hand. I am the Unsummoned Skull, after all!

The coolest way to get Basri in hand is to use Cloudstone Curio

to turn creatures into pancake flippers, especially those with ETB abilities, like Basri's Acolyte
.


Decoction Module

is one of my favorite under-the-radar cards, acting as an additional Erratic Portal
 and enabling repeated ETBs. I know I said we wouldn't be working with energy, and we're not, but the Module does make energy, and the Module combo is another of several challenges to try to piece together, like meld and the Tron lands. We might not have all the pieces in here, but it would be a fun trick to try sometime!


Card Draw/Advantage

With Basri making a token a turn, Idol of Oblivion

draws us an extra card a turn. The tricky part is getting around the lack of untapping exert requires. Thankfully, Basri is a cheap commander, and, if we bounce him and re-cast him, he'll be considered a new creature. We could also use untappers, but Twiddle
 is a different strategy. If you did want to build around that, though, it would involve a lot of these effects, but the exertions would all go away the next turn.


Halo Fountain

is another fun EDH challenge, one that actually wins the game. It works particularly well with a deck that wants to go wide, like ours. We can use it to untap Basri, tap summoning sick creatures and draw cards, or tap 15 creatures to win the game!


Ramp

Oketra's Monument

and Pearl Medallion are the two most explosive cards in the deck, enabling us to cast multiple spells in a turn and reducing the commander tax on our cheap-as-dirt commander, who will likely die early and often, just to come right back. The Monument, in particular, makes Cat tokens when we cast creature spells, of which we have quite a bit. It even works well with our bouncing!


When we use limited ramp spells, we want them to provide repeated advantage. Oath of Lieges is the kind of ramp that helps decks missing land drops or behind land-based ramp like what green decks do. Catch-up ramp is my favorite kind, because it scales to the speed of the table and rewards those going later in turn order, which reduces non-games.


The general plan is to make Cats early and often. We have bounce spells to re-use ETBs and interact with our commander, helping us move from early aggro to late-game synergies, with a few haymakers.
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Basri, Tomorrow's Champion Commander Deck Tech

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Lands (40)

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Unsummoned Skull

Unsummoned Skull

Teacher, judge, DM, & Twitch Affiliate. Lover of all things Unsummon. Streams EDH, Oathbreaker, D & D, & Pokemon. Even made it to a Pro Tour!