Legends Legends - Kei Takahashi
Welcome, once again, to Legends Legends! This column explores the original cycle of legendary creatures from 1994's Legends set and aims to build a Commander deck around each and every single one of them. We're on number 36 out of 55, and if I told you I was starting to lose it, I bet you'd believe me!
Number 36 on our list is Kei Takahashi, a Selesnya Cleric with a passion for preventing damage. Clerics have become a staple of Orzhov decks, and there are an endless number of lifegainy-kindredy Cleric decks in black and white out there. What does trading green for black do to an entirely Clerics deck? Let's find out!
General Thoughts
Kei Takahashi is a green and white 2/2 Human Cleric that costs four mana. Takahashi can tap to prevent the next two damage that would be dealt to a target creature this turn. Back in 1994, this probably saved a countless number of creatures from Lightning Bolts and miscellaneous combat damage, but these days it's not so hot as a four-mana investment that takes a whole turn rotation to come online.
In this Kei Takahashi Commander deck, we'll use Kei to keep our key Clerics alive long enough to execute one of our game-winning by combos, or to just simply gain so much life we'll win by attrition alone. Get ready to use all those extra spin down D20s, it's time to play some lifegain!
Cleric Creatures
Our Clerics form the basis of our deck. We're running 32 total creatures in this deck, with only a handful being non-Clerics.
A collection of Clerics from Onslaught, one of the original creature-type-focused blocks, make up the core of our kindred strategy. Cards like Ancestor's Prophet, Battlefield Medic, Doubtless One, and Whipgrass Entangler were all excellent entries into the Clerical canon, and they can still hold their own today. Whipgrass Entangler especially, since it acts as a way to lock an opponent's commander out of attacking, and thus lock them out of a commander damage victory, the bane of all lifegain decks.
Many of our Cleric creatures replace the typical interaction pieces you'd expect from a Commander deck. Banisher Priest and Fiend Hunter act as targeted removal, while Remorseful Cleric and Apostle of Purifying Light are indispensable in a deck without access to black's Bojuka Bog. Mother of Runes is great for protecting any specific creature we need to stick to the field, like our Felidar Sovereign or any part of our Shaman en-Kor/Daru Spiritualist combo.
Obviously, many Clerics have effects that gain life or trigger whenever we gain life. These range from the very simple, such as Angelic Overseer and Trelasarra, Moon Dancer, to exponentially more valuable creatures like Angel of Destiny or Rhox Faithmender. Of course, we're running every soul sister in the bunch: Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, Suture Priest, and Essence Warden (even though she isn't a Cleric, she's still great value). You could make an argument that the non-Cleric Demigod Daxos, Blessed by the Sun counts as a soul sister, too. I won't mind.
We have one single mono-green Cleric, and it's Ramunap Excavator. It might seem like an odd choice in a deck that doesn't focus entirely on lands, but we'll get to the convoluted combo with it later on.
Clerical Errors
"Man cannot live on Clerics alone," or however the quote goes. Our Clerics' allies take the form of divine warriors and angelic assistants, including Archangel of Thune. Anyone who played in a Standard environment with Bloodthirsty Aerialist knows what a pain this effect is, and spreading it across our entire board turns our collection of low-power Clerics into a fighting force.
Selvala, Explorer Returned is a great source for both card draw and ramp in a deck that desperately needs it, and will trigger our "whenever you gain life..." effects to boot. Herald's Horn also helps us fill our hand with more Clerics each turn.
Serra Ascendant is just one of the best one-drops you can play in a lifegain Commander deck: a turn-one 6/6 with flying and lifelink is guaranteed to set you up for success with Felidar Sovereign or Test of Endurance.
Finally, we've got good ol' Sun Titan for some effective recursion for our low-cost Clerics.
We're building a pillowfort around ourselves with our Clerics and non-Cleric creatures, and we've got a host of noncreature spells to support us in that endeavor, as well.
First off, we're running Fumigate in place of a traditional board wipe. In the event that we need to wipe the board to survive, getting compensated with a handful of life will usually make losing our board of Clerics a fair trade.
Next, since we're running a ton of Clerics, Folk Hero just makes sense for Kei Takahashi: while he's on the field, each of our Cleric spells will be replaced in our hand after we drop them.
Both Darksteel Mutation and Lignify are excellent semi-permanent removal for opponents' commanders. They're probably the best way to keep our foes' commander damage off of us, letting us gain a ton of life without the fear of being one-shotted by an uber-huge Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh.
We'll use Riot Control, Angelsong, and Teferi's Protection to stop those huge swings we just can't block, even with our commander's damage-prevention effect.
Lifegain Combos
Gaining a ton of life is fun and all, but doing so becomes infinitely punishing to play against if we don't have an "out." There are four great combos you should look to assemble when playing this deck to save yourself and your friends from a three hour game where everyone impotently swings in at your 1000 life total.
The first, and most classic, is the interaction between Daru Spiritualist and Shaman en-Kor. Typically executed with an Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, as Selesnya girls, we'll have to make do with Animal Boneyard and Miren, the Moaning Well as our outs.
The next is Spike Feeder's interaction with Archangel of Thune and Cleric Class, both of which result in infinite lifegain and infinite +1/+1 counters on creatures you control.
Finally, Druid Class, Glacial Chasm, and either Ramunap Excavator or Conduit of Worlds can result in a lock-out for our opponents, completely preventing all damage that would be dealt to us, allowing us to rest on our laurels and stall until we hit our Aetherflux Reservoir, Test of Endurance, or Felidar Sovereign.
We'll use our Enlightened Tutor and Shared Summons to assemble these combos whenever possible.
Mana Base
Luckily, most of our Clerics are relatively cheap creatures; our deck averages at about 2.72 mana value when we exclude lands. To that end, we're running just 34 lands. That's a little on the low end, but still a playable amount when we take our eight ramp spells and mana rocks into consideration. We're not overly concerned with a fair split of Forests to Plains, since there are only 18 green mana pips across the entire deck list.
Kei Takahashi Deck List
Budget
Archidekt estimates the total cost of this deck to be around $299. That's not too bad for a fully fleshed-out Commander deck, but let's take a look at some of the most expensive cards and see if we can't replace them with some cheap alternatives.
Archangel of Thune takes the cake for our most expensive card, clocking in at about $30/pop. Instead of going tall with our Clerics, we could opt to go wide and swap the Archangel out for Heliod, God of the Sun, or double up on more soul sisters with Healer of the Pride and Lunarch Veteran.
Besides Archangel of Thune, Teferi's Protection is always on the chopping block when it comes to price. Some decks absolutely need the versatility of protection from everything, unchangeable life total, and everything phasing out, but I've found that a well-timed Fog or Wrap in Vigor can have the same end result on the battlefield in the hands of a skilled player.
Wrap Up
Lifegain is and always will be an oppressive strategy to play against. It's one of the most ubiquitous effects in the game and is an easy strategy for new players to pick up, and a rewarding one for veterans to master. While this Kei Takahashi Commander deck uses lifegain to win, that's not the only possible build for our green-white Legends Cleric. Let me know what weird builds you'd construct around Takahashi in the comments!
Thanks for reading! Until next time!
