Caelorna, Coral Tyrant Commander Deck Tech
Caelorna, Coral Tyrant by Deruchenko Alexander
Adding Lore to Caelorna
One of the cool things Aetherdrift did was return to planes that had been teased previously, including one that perplexed many way back in Future Sight, Muraganda. Muraganda Petroglyphs was a card that, when printed, raised eyebrows as to what the plane was all about and how it was going to function.
In a paradigm of three-block sets, how much space would there be for creatures that had no abilities? Would it be designed around tokens? Vanilla creatures? And how would the central figures be shown? It turns out that reducing to a one-set-per-block structure made it so a world designed around vanilla creatures could exist while only being featured for a fraction of the set.
Those central figures would be shown somewhat similarly to the Legends block, with vanilla legends with pushed stats. What I love about them is that, with vanilla legends, you can take them in any direction, which I look forward to doing over the next few weeks!
Walls
Caelorna, Coral Tyrant is a much more intimidating name than the card would suggest, which is funny because it's usually the other way around. So, how do we make the deck more terrifying?
Focusing on high-toughness creatures, making a nightmarish defense to push through, helps. We don't have to use Walls exclusively, so Thing in the Ice is a cool inclusion to hold off attackers while building up counters incidentally to eventually clear the board and leave our giant threat.
Drift of Phantasms is a neat way to sneak a thematic tutor into the deck. While tutors would usually up a deck's consistency and power level, we can get away with this one by disguising it as a card the deck would use anyways. We can even deploy it as a blocker and then bounce it, say with the Thing in the Ice, and transmute it later!
Fog Bank is a nasty little blocker, fogging down a creature a turn, no matter how big or powerful the creature is. We do need to get lucky with avoiding menace and trample, but time has still been rather kind to this classic defensive body.
Similar to Drift of Phantasms, Mnemonic Wall helps to give a late-game push and overcome parity while still being on-theme. In fact, also like the Drift, the Wall responds well to being bounced, giving extra advantage.
Coral Colony is one of the better win conditions in the deck, milling cards equal to the amount of defenders we have. We do have to be careful, as the shuffle Eldrazi can mess with the timing of a strategy like this, and milling is a strategy that certain tables dislike. As a result, if you run this deck, it would be wise to disclose the propensity for milling to the table beforehand. At least, unlike other mill decks, we're looking to use it as an aggressive tool for winning by milling large bursts of cards.
Junktroller is an intricately powerful card with some neat corner-case scenarios. It puts a card from a grave on the bottom of a library, which can combine with Drift of Phantasms to put a card back to search up. It can also put a card on "top" of an empty deck, in case an opponent is going for a Laboratory Maniac win or a player has an ability to draw a card at instant speed but the table needs them to draw a particular card to prevent a win (or if you just want to keep them alive for whatever reason).
Toughness Payoffs
The defining feature of Caelorna is its toughness: one point per tentacle, perfect for an Octopus. Imperious Mindbreaker is perfect for a creature that has high toughness but isn't a defender. It gives itself and its soulbonded partner an attack trigger to mill cards equal to its toughness. It also has a handy mana value of three, which allows Drift of Phantasms to tutor for it.
There's a theme among our better win conditions: many of them cost three mana and can be found with the Drift. Reverse the Polarity swaps power and toughness, but you need to be careful not to kill your own stuff with state-based effects. Geralf, Visionary Stitcher turns our Walls into giant flying Zombies, and Simic Manipulator evolves with each new Wall and then steals our opponents'... actually good creatures.
Profaner of the Dead is an interesting board wipe in a high-toughness deck. It cares about the toughness of the exploited creature, which helps clear small creatures while leaving our board state largely unaffected. This is a kind of board wipe that can keep the game moving, or we can just... add to the board without exploiting. Some people forget that exploit is an optional ability, so this is never a truly dead card.
Doorkeeper is effectively a second copy of Coral Colony. This effect is powerful enough to warrant a second copy. It is worth noting, however, that milling is not the only way for us to win. We can win by swapping power and toughness with non-defenders as well, especially with cards that add even more toughness, like Slagwurm Armor. In fact, commander damaging an opponent with Caelorna seems like a fun challenge!
Ramp
Because we are trying to develop a board state quickly, some number of mana rocks is key. Adding power to enable our power/toughness flipping is an added benefit of Patchwork Banner and Heraldic Banner, which gives us an aggressive out and an alternative to milling opponents.
Kefnet's Monument and Sapphire Medallion are cost-reducers that enable us to cast multiple spells and develop our board quickly. The Monument, in particular, helps us generate tempo and slow down more aggressive decks with more powerful cards.
The general plan is to make high-toughness creatures and either leverage that into aggression by swapping power and toughness or mill opponents. The ability to win multiple ways makes it so the deck doesn't get brick walled easily, although the deck is reliant on its win conditions because the majority of its cards do not win the game on their own. Still, it's a fun and silly low-power deck!
