Duskana, the Rage Mother "Oops, No Creatures!" - Plot Twist #2

Duskana, the Rage Mother by Samuel Perin

Welcome to another edition of Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that starts out telling one kind of story only to throw out a plot twist mid-game. Today we're looking at Duskana, the Rage Mother, the new commander from Murders at Karlov Manor. Duskana seems primed to be a "Hate Bears" commander leading a deck of mean 2/2s, but this is Plot Twist, so instead we're building a deck with ZERO creatures in the 99 today.

How Does Duskana Work?

Duskana does two things that often make for a powerful commander: draw cards and threaten to end the game. When Duskana, the Rage Mother enters the battlefield, we draw a card "for each creature you control with base power and toughness 2/2." The key phrase for our purposes being "base power and toughness", which means we can still draw cards for our 2/2s even if our creatures are buffed by +1/+1 counters, anthems, Equipment or any other effect. Duskana's second ability is phrased very similarly, so our creatures will still receive +3/+3 when they attack as long as their base power and toughness is 2/2. These powerful, but niche, effects make the sort of interesting deckbuilding restriction that we love to brew around.

Doing the Twist

When we sit down across from our opponents, they'll likely expect to see a deck filled with "Hate Bears", like Archivist of Oghma, Manglehorn, and Grand Abolisher, that fill up Duskana's EDHREC page. Perhaps they'll expect us to build out a board with staxy effects and hold back their removal to destroy a key creature at the right moment. 

And that's when we hit our opponents with the plot twist: this deck has ZERO actual creatures in the 99. That's right, it's an "Oops, no creatures!" deck.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Why No Creatures for the "Hate Bear" Commander?

When Duskana was first spoiled, I immediately started tinkering around with a deck filled with "Hate Bears" because I love grindy, creature-centric games. Before I could even start trimming the decklist down, though, I was already losing steam with the concept. What the deck was doing felt obvious, and, like many stax decks, it depended on having the right creature at the right time to counteract what our opponents were doing. An unfortunate bonus being that those creatures could always be killed by a timely Lightning Bolt.

Then I thought: what if we flipped the script. Instead of a critical mass of creatures that would each limit what our opponents could do through stax effects, we had no creatures and instead focused on 2/2 tokens that would still work with Duskana's effects while being completely expendable.

You Get a 2/2 Token, You Get a 2/2 Token and...

The biggest advantage to using tokens in a Duskana deck is that tokens can be cheap and plentiful. Token-makers, like Defenders of Humanity, Esika's Chariot, Forth Eorlingas!, White Sun's Zenith, and Zendikar's Roil, all do some heavy lifting by giving us multiple 2/2s for the price of one card. Two cards that I had never heard of before building this deck but look poised to do serious work for us are Gideon's Phalanx and Grizzly Fate.

Flexible cards, like Arlinn Kord, Felidar Retreat, and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, allow us to pivot between making tokens and pumping our team depending on what we need in the moment.

We've got a suite of token-doublers, like Anointed Procession, Doubling Season, and Parallel Lives, to help our board state truly spiral out of control. Song of the Worldsoul is a fantastic card for token archetypes that we can use to copy specific tokens, like the Goblin Shaman that Fable of the Mirror-Breaker makes, or the 2/2, double-striking Samurai tokens The Eternal Wanderer creates.

Turning Bears into Scares

Since we're going wide with tokens as our primary strategy for this deck, we stand to benefit a lot from anthems that buff our tokens to make them each into lethal threats. Since Duskana only cares about their base power and toughness, we'll still reap both the card draw and pump effect of our commander even with these added anthem effects.

Akroma's Memorial and Akroma's Will each give our team all sorts of keywords, while Roar of Resistance gives all of our tokens haste to make sure they can get in for damage right away. We'll use effects like Ferocity of the Wilds and Gruul War Chant to give our team pseudo-evasion since most of our tokens don't have any native way to get through and Duskana's triggered ability doesn't give them any way to punch through chump blockers.

Once we've built up a few tokens, cards like Andúril, Narsil Reforged, Inspiring Leader, Intangible Virtue, and Virtue of Loyalty will turn each of them into massive threats.

Removal, Tokens-Style

Decks that lean heavily into a particular theme or archetype always offer us the chance to use some synergistic removal spells. Hour of Reckoning looks to be an all-star since it will leave all our creatures alive and destroy most of our opponents' stuff and our tokens can even help pay for it with convoke! Druid's Deliverance (okay, so that's a fog), Release the Gremlins, Rootborn Defenses, Selesnya Charm, Sundering Growth, and The Eternal Wanderer all give us interaction effects while furthering our gameplan of making tokens.

Crackdown, Dusk // Dawn, and Meekstone all help keep our opponents' big creatures in check while still allowing our tokens to attack, gain +3/+3 from Duskana's trigger, and then still untap on our next turn. We have to be careful with those three cards, though, because they can create a non-bo with some of our anthem effects if we're not careful.

A Few Extra Twists for Good Measure

As always, this deck is running a few oddballs that don't see much play in Commander but will help us make interesting stories when we cast them. Ayula's Influence, Chivalric Alliance, and Currency Converter can turn dead draws into extra tokens while helping us filter through the deck. Titania's Command does it all in this deck by making tokens, buffing our team, exiling our opponents' graveyards, or letting us tutor up important lands, like Field of the Dead or Argoth, Sanctum of Nature, that help advance our gameplan. It'll be interesting to see if Howling Moon and Wolfcaller's Howl trigger reliably or if we should swap those repeatable effects out for token-makers that we have more direct control over.

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading my twisty story featuring Duskana, the Rage Mother. 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 find me on Instagram at @girtenjeff and you can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. 

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