Legends Legends - Jedit Ojanen
Intro
Welcome back to the final Legends Legends! After 55 creatures, we've finally come to the end of the series! I don't know what possessed me to originally begin this series.
Perhaps it was a knee-jerk reaction to the "new school" of MTG Commander design, where everyone feels powerful and has a clearly defined purpose. Or maybe it was a love for the classic fantasy art styles and tropes we seem to move further and further away from with each new Magic expansion. Or maybe I'm just a masochist and like punishing myself with complex scryfall searches.
For no particular reason, our final Legends Legend is Jedit Ojanen. It's not like I detest him, or have anything against cats (I have two that have written the majority of this series with me from my lap); a seven-mana vanilla Azorius creature just wasn't super high on my list of priorities.
General Thoughts
Jedit Ojanen is a 5/5 legendary Cat Warrior that costs to play. He has no abilities, despite being the mightiest of the Cat Warriors. This is technically false, since the Cat Warrior creature Arctic Nishoba is a 6/6, but who's counting?
Since Jedit Ojanen doesn't pull us in any particular direction, we're splitting the difference between all the things Cat decks do best and building a Cat kindred deck, an Equipment-Voltron deck, and a lifegain deck all in one! Many of our Cats' abilities reward us for gaining life or using Equipment, so the real test of this deck is using these parts in tandem to find victory.
Cats
The basis for our deck is the litter of Cats that make up our creature selection. As a heavily supported creature type, there are tons of great Cat lords to choose from.
Arahbo, the First Fang is one of the best lords for his three mana cost; it's like a Elvish Champion and Lys Alana Huntmaster stapled together and color-shifted into white. While Arahbo's on the field, we'll get a 2/2 creature in addition to whatever else we cast, greatly strengthening our board.
I always liked the design of Modern Horizons' King of the Pride. It's a Savannah Lions that gives the rest of our Cats a Savannah Lions boost.
Regal Caracal is another simple +1/+1 lord that makes additional Cat tokens as it enters. Notably, its Cat tokens have lifelink, an important resource as our deck balances between making lots of tokens and gaining life; Sacred Cat makes for another consistent source of lifegain. On the other end of our Cat-deck spectrum, Raksha Golden Cub grants a huge boost to our field with +2/+2 and double strike across the board once he's equipped.
Skyknight Squire and Skyhunter Strike Force are our two final Cat lords. The Squire acts as a Cathars' Crusade on a body, while the Strike Force turns our aggressive, creature-based deck into a threat for the whole table rather than just one player at a time.
Both Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Leonin Warleader are excellent sources for Cat tokens, with the added bonus of lifelink on the Warleader's tokens. Kemba, Kha Regent and Kemba, Kha Enduring are other sources for token-generation, albeit a bit slower than our attack trigger creations.
Cat Collector and Ocelot Pride both require us to gain life each turn before they'll create any extra tokens for us, but the value the two of them can generate each turn makes fulfilling this condition well worth it.
A number of our Cats fulfill roles we'd otherwise waste on interaction. We want to cast as many Cat creatures as we can, so replacing Generous Gift with a Enlightened Ascetic and hampering our opponents' value engines with Alms Collector just makes sense. We'll also use Spirit of the Hearth to defend against edict effects and any massive Fireballs coming our way. Enduring Curiosity takes the place of a traditional Bident of Thassa (but that doesn't stop us from running Kindred Discovery, too). Highcliff Felidar's removal is narrow, but will usually hit the biggest threats when it enters.
Finally, we're running three versions of everyone's favorite Cat planeswalker, Ajani. Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants and Ajani, Caller of the Pride are both quick and consistent ways to tick up the strength of our Cat creatures before threatening to create a ton of tokens with their final loyalty abilities. Ajani, Strength of the Pride, on the other hand, is our easiest path to gaining life every turn, while threatening the table with a one-sided board wipe.
Equipment
A number of our Cats "come online" once we've attached an Equipment card to them; most notably Raksha Golden Cub, which is our strongest lord once equipped, and Kemba, Kha Regent, who starts pumping out tokens for free every upkeep.
We're running as many Equipment (and some Aura) sources for lifelink as possible. This means the classics, like Basilisk Collar and Loxodon Warhammer, but also legendary Equipment, like Shadowspear and Caduceus, Staff of Hermes.
Pennon Blade, Konda's Banner, and Stoneforge Masterwork are great choices for equipping Jedit Ojanen to see huge buffs from our army of Cats, letting us go tall at the same time we go wide.
Sword of the Animist is a must-have in any nongreen Equipment deck, being the absolute best way to fetch basics from our library with an attacker. We'll use Lion Sash in place of traditional graveyard hate.
On the Auras side of things, we're running Felidar Umbra for the lifelink and extra protection it provides, plus Steel of the Godhead (best for Jedit specifically and not much else) as well as On Serra's Wings, which provides some evasion in a deck without many ways to sneak attackers past blockers.
Finally, we'll keep lots of Cats coming into play with Heirloom Blade and Conjurer's Mantle; each of these will grab one Cat each from the top of our library.
Lifegain
A number of our Cats will grant bonuses whenever we gain life. Ajani's Pridemate (plus the tokens from Ajani, Strength of the Pride and Qala, Ajani's Pridemate[/el]), Cat Collector, Felidar Sovereign, and Ocelot Pride all incentivize us to gain life whenever we can.
Besides our Cat-based sources of lifelink, we're running spells like Absorb, Ojutai's Command, and Overrule to gain life off of our counters. Cleric Class's level two trigger spreads that Ajani's Pridemate effect around our board, making it easier than ever to buff up our Cat army without the use of our lords.
Mana Base
Our mana base might be a bit tight with only 36 lands, but we've got six ways to ramp via our artifact mana rocks and Wayfarer's Bauble, plus Oreskos Explorer to help keep pace with the table. A majority of our spells cost four or less mana, as well, so we're really only stretching for Jedit Ojanen himself and Raksha Golden Cub.
Brackets
Moxfield rates this deck as Bracket 2 - Core. I think that's a fair assessment, given we have zero game changers, zero mass land denial, zero extra turn cards, and zero tutors (whoops!). This deck is inconsistent at times, but there's no doubt you will be casting Cat creatures and attacking with them.
Budget
This Legends Legends Commander deck sits on the cheaper end of the spectrum: at $175 for the cheapest printings, there are only two cards I'd say count as investments.
The first is Ocelot Pride, currently selling for about $40 online. Ocelot Pride is very effective for its mana cost, hence its staple status in Modern. It's not typically used to just duplicate the weenie little 1/1 Cat tokens we'll create, but we welcome its value regardless. We could easily swap this for any other Cat-token generator, or just toss in a Spirit Link for an extra source of lifegain.
The second is Shadowspear, an important source of lifelink that we could, theoretically, replace with Lifelink. Arcane Lighthouse, or Glaring Spotlight could work in a pinch, as well.
Jedit Ojanen Decklist
Wrap Up
This is the final Legends Legends Commander deck. I'm not sure what I was trying to prove when I pitched this originally; was it to prove that you can build a fun EDH deck from any ol' legendary creature, even the six-plus mana vanilla creatures from Legends. Maybe it was a statement about not taking this game so seriously, and just sitting down to have a good time with your homies on Commander night.
Or, maybe, just maybe, I was virtue-signalling to all the other old farts out there who needed a strong weekly dose of "back-in-my-day"-esque Magic. Whatever my original purpose, I hope you enjoyed this series! Look for more retro-MTG content from me here at Commander's Herald in the near future! I hope to see you then!
