Conditions Allow - Arwen, Mortal Queen EDH
(Arwen, Mortal Queen | Art by Miranda Meeks)
A Reign Indestructible
Hello, and welcome back to Conditions Allow, where I take a legendary creature with a drawback and build a deck to turn it into a strength. After a short break, I'm back and eager to dive into some of the new legends from Tales of Middle-earth, starting off with an under-appreciated commander from the set, Arwen, Mortal Queen.
Arwen, Mortal Queen enters play with an indestructible counter which you can remove to give another creature indestructible until end of turn. In addition, that creature and Arwen both get a +1/+1 counter and a lifelink counter. This ability is a powerful defensive, as well as offensive, tool. Not only does Arwen, Mortal Queen protect another of your creatures, she also makes it and herself stronger. Lifelink is also a relevant keyword that can be the difference between winning and losing. However, Arwen, Mortal Queen can only use this ability once: she can only save one of your creatures from Wrath of God, and a single extra +1/+1 counter doesn't amount to much in a game of Commander.
Reclaiming Immortality
One way to reset Arwen, Mortal Queen's indestructible counter is to blink her. Selesnya has plenty of tools for blinking creatures, from Cloudshift to Teleportation Circle. For this deck, however, I'm more interested in Emiel the Blessed and Eldrazi Displacer. Both are creatures, so Arwen, Mortal Queen can protect them from removal, and then they blink Arwen to repeat the cycle again. They also sit in play, so you don't have to worry about running out of blink spells.
Perhaps stronger than blinking Arwen, Mortal Queen is proliferating her counters instead. By accumulating more and more indestructible counters with Evolution Sage and Norn's Choirmaster, you have the ability to protect multiple creatures at once without your commander leaving play. Subsequence proliferate triggers can then increase the +1/+1 counters that Arwen generates, making your team stronger and stronger as well.
Another advantage to building around proliferate effects is they stack better than blink effects. You can't use spare blink spells until you need them, even if you include other creatures to target. There must always be one held back in case you need it to reset Arwen, Mortal Queen. With proliferate, however, you can always get one more indestructible counter to use later, and extra power on all your creatures helps move the game forward. Staff of Compleation is also a particularly flexible proliferate engine that takes advantage of Arwen, Mortal Queen giving lifelink. It also isn't a creature, leaving Arwen free to protect your other threats.
Growing Threats
In keeping with the proliferate theme, I want to focus this deck around creatures that will naturally accumulate +1/+1 counters. Managorger Hydra can still run away with games if your opponents can't get rid of it, which Arwen, Mortal Queen makes difficult. Territorial Scythecat and Fearless Fledgling won't grow quite as quickly as the Hydra, but with the help of proliferate they easily become threats that have to be respected.
This is also the perfect deck for Botanical Brawler and Aragorn, Company Leader, both of which share the counters they get with another creature. This happens both when you proliferate and when you target them with Arwen, Mortal Queen's ability, quickly growing multiple creatures at once. Treebeard, Gracious Host will also grow quickly as more and more of your creatures gain lifelink counters. Naturally having both trample and ward also makes it evasive and much harder to get rid of than your other threats.
More Than A Big Idiot
Of course, Treebeard, Gracious Host doesn't have to be your only hard-to-target creature. The most popular creature removal exiles instead of destroy, so having Shalai, Voice of Plenty and Saryth, the Viper's Fang around to give your other creatures hexproof is invaluable. Flowering of the White Tree's protection is slightly less powerful, but is still usually enough to keep Arwen, Mortal Queen safe so she can keep everyone else safe.
In addition to protection, we've got several creatures that make your creatures harder to block. Kodama of the West Tree helps fuel Evolution Sage's Landfall trigger, but more importantly gives your creatures with counters trample. Similarly, Abzan Falconer grants flying. I'm also including a few ways to recur creatures in Emeria Shepherd and Sun Titan. In addition to reviving Managorger Hydra, these both offer an additional way to reset Arwen, Mortal Queen after a board wipe if you haven't been able to stockpile indestructible counters yet.
Tying It All Together
An excellent way to stockpile indestructible counters quickly is Seedborn Muse and Karn's Bastion. Activating the Bastion every turn is expensive, but Seedborn Muse and Wilderness Reclamation both make it feasible. By building the deck to maximize Karn's Bastion and Evolution Sage, you can easily have enough mana to use your lands to proliferate and still have mana to activate your commander when necessary. It also lets you utilize utility lands, like Nesting Grounds and Bonders' Enclave easily.
The last few spells help deal with noncreature problems. Exile-based removal is a problem Arwen, Mortal Queen can't help with, so I'm making sure to include a few ways to give creatures hexproof. As for removal of our own, I'm not too worried about opposing creatures, since ours can be indestructible, so I've focused on artifact and enchantment removal. There's also a smattering of different draw engines, from The Gaffer to Colossal Majesty. Dawn of a New Age has a lot of potential in a deck packed with proliferate effects.
Arwen, Mortal Queen
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I wasn't sure what to expect from Arwen, Mortal Queen when I started to build this deck, but I'm very happy with the result. She's resilient, with plenty of tricks that your opponents might not expect, even when all your cards are on the table. Between Arwen's own effect and Emeria Shepherd it's tough to keep this deck down, while proliferating +1/+1 counters means you're always pushing the game forward.
But what do you think? How would you build around Arwen, Mortal Queen? Are there any synergies I've overlooked? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading!
