Conditions Allow - Arthur, Marigold Knight EDH

Ben Doolittle • August 22, 2024

Deckbuilding
Arthur Marigold Knight
(Arthur, Marigold Knight
 | Art by Steve Belledin)

On An Adventure

Welcome back to Conditions Allow, the article series where I brew decks to turn drawbacks into strengths. I'm continuing my trek through Bloomburrow this week, and, in a series first, building around one of the new legendary creatures from the Commander decks: Arthur, Marigold Knight

.

Whenever Arthur, Marigold Knight

attacks with another creature, you can look at the top six cards of your library and put a creature card from among them into play tapped and attacking. Then, at end of combat, that creature is returned to your hand. Putting creatures into play for free is always powerful, and Arthur does so rather easily. Attacking with multiple creatures isn't difficult in Jeskai. Having those creatures return to your hand isn't ideal, however. Big, impactful creatures will be expensive to replay, and take up whole turns just to redeploy a creature you already had in play.

One approach is to mitigate this downside is to blink your creatures before Arthur, Marigold Knight

sends them to your hand. You already want powerful enter effects to get as much value from your commander, and Ephemerate
 and Cloudshift
 just keep that value coming. Alternately, you can just sneak those big Angels and Dragons back into play with Sneak Attack
 and Ilharg, the Raze-Boar
. All your blink effects even let you dodge the sacrifice and bounce effects from those cards as well. This is an undoubtedly powerful direction to take the deck, when you get all the pieces working together. 

When I sat down to brew Arthur, Marigold Knight

, however, I thought about what creatures it would be good to return to hand and thought of one thing immediately: Adventures!

One Adventurous Mouse

Arthur, Marigold Knight

makes it very easy to get full value out of even the more expensive Adventure creatures by sneaking those creatures directly into play before bouncing them back to hand so you can cast their less expensive spell halves. Sword Coast Serpent
 and Sapphire Dragon
 are just slightly too cumbersome to take full advantage of otherwise. The more efficient Adventure creatures also make for excellent companions to attack alongside your commander, allowing his effect to trigger each turn. Faerie Guidemother
 isn't a good combat trick, but a 1/1 flier is all this deck needs to get started.

Another benefit of building around Adventures is expanding the range of effects Arthur, Marigold Knight

can draw. Young Blue Dragon
 helps dig a few cards deeper, while Threadbind Clique
 and Horned Loch-Whale
 protect against retaliation. Realm-Cloaked Giant
 opens up the ability to draw a board wipe, while Two-Headed Hunter
 lets you hit a little harder on your next turn. 

We can push this idea even further by including a few other double-faced cards. Pinnacle Monk

and Witch Enchanter
 not only have powerful enter effects, but also let your commander find land drops. As long as they survive combat, anyway.

Dangerous Wilds

Surviving combat is also important to keeping Arthur, Marigold Knight

attacking every turn. Five toughness isn't nothing, but it's a dangerous world for a Mouse. Dolmen Gate
 makes combat perfectly safe, though, and Cunning Evasion
 and Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar
 are easy inclusions when you want creatures back in your hand anyway. Just keep in mind that also prevents your creatures from dealing damage, so sometimes its better to let combat happen to keep enemy creatures out of play.

You can also take the opposite approach and ensure your creatures are dealing way more damage in combat. Double strike from Blade Historian

is great for closing games, especially when paired with the +1/+1 counters from Mysterious Pathlighter
. I'm also including Archangel Avacyn
, for the ability to repeatedly make your team indestructible, and staple spells like Boros Charm
 and Akroma's Will
, to be able to reuse creatures enter effects, which is a potent form of inevitability this deck can leverage to win games.

Staying Supplied

More dedicated Adventure support also helps to keep your hand full and threaten life totals. A lot of these Adventure spells are removal, and copying them makes it that much harder for your opponents to block. Chancellor of Tales

also pairs well with Archmage Emeritus
, and is an evasive attacker to help trigger Arthur, Marigold Knight
's ability. If all that removal still isn't enough, Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy
 can start attacking life totals directly, turning Sword Coast Serpent
 and Guardian Naga
 into huge burn spells late in the game. 

Of course, I'm also including a few more traditional spells to hopefully stack the deck in your favor. Brainstorm

is famous for its ability to get cards from your hand to the top of your library, but Mystic Speculation
 is perhaps more valuable in this situation. Your cards are still useful in your hand, so finding the Adventure you need next from your deck helps keep your game running smoothly. 

Arthur's Adventure

View on Archidekt

Creatures (30)

Buy this decklist from Card KingdomBuy this decklist on TCGplayer

Adventures are one of my favorite card types, so I'm always excited for a new commander that can take advantage of them. Arthur, Marigold Knight

makes for a very fun Adventure deck, sort of reversing the usual pattern of spell to creature. It's also much more useful for your opponents to know you have interaction in hand than to use the interaction and give them time to prepare for the big creature that follows.

But what do you think? How would you build Arthur, Marigold Knight

? Are there any cards and synergies I overlooked? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading!

Ben Doolittle

Ben Doolittle

Ben was introduced to Magic during Seventh Edition and has played on and off ever since. A Simic mage at heart, he loves being given a problem to solve. When not shuffling cards, Ben can be found lost in a book or skiing in the mountains of Vermont.