Legends Legends - Lady Caleria
Welcome, for the 38th time, to Legends Legends! This column explores Magic: The Gathering's best set ever released (1994's Legends) and the original onslaught of 55 legendary creatures that we've all come to know and love.
This week's legend takes a similar form to last week's. Lady Caleria is another legendary Archer with an ability to tap to deal damage to attacking or blocking creatures. With access to green and white, Lady Caleria makes the perfect commander for an all-Archers-all-the-time Commander deck!
General Thoughts
Lady Caleria is a seven-mana 3/6 Elf Archer, despite what her original Oracle text type update states. Like many of the Legends Legends, Lady Caleria's lore is a mess. Two different writers worked her into their novels as two different characters, one as Ohabi Caleria, the Edemian lady who rallied her people against the Empire of Madara, and one as Lady Caleria, a goddess of the hunt. Whether she was named after the huntress goddess or if this was simply an oversight, we may never know.
Lady Caleria's ability is reminiscent of many of the Archers in Magic. She can tap to deal three damage to a target attacking or blocking creature. Whereas our previous Tor Wauki Archer deck focused on souping up just our commander's arrows, this Archers Commander deck looks to field an entire battalion of snipers to unleash a hail of arrows on our foes. What are the key pieces we need to make an army of Archers viable? Let's find out!
Archers
Like all kindred decks, we should start by determining which Archers we actually want to run. To keep this deck thematic, we're focusing Archers that have the same archery ability as Lady Caleria.
We're covering the basics with cards like Crossbow Infantry, D'Avenant Healer, Femeref Archers, and Elite Archers. Each of these fires off a small to midsize bolt, perfect for picking off those weak Spirit and Faerie tokens your opponents keep cooking up.
Archers also tend to have reach, which makes sense, as you can shoot an arrow pretty far up into the sky if you've ever tried. As such, we're running some of the best reach Archers around, including Thornweald Archer, Skyway Sniper, Ezuri's Archers, and Arcus Acolyte.
While pinging attacking creatures and blocking fliers are undeniably the two main "things" Archers are about, there also exists a not-insignificant number of Archers with either +1/+1 counter synergy or a way to generate those counters. This plays well into our deck of entirely Archers as these creatures tend to have a nonthreatening amount of power and toughness individually. Longshot Squad gets reach on anything that didn't already have it, while the aforementioned Arcus Acolyte grants us a consistent source of beef for our Archers. Titania's Chosen and Trophy Hunter are both great and giving themselves counters, as well.
Three other legendary Archers round out our creatures, and if you can believe it, none of them are Legolas! Halana, Kessig Ranger is great for finishing off an opponent's creature that's already had some damage marked on it. Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile is a pseudo-board wipe with the right Equipment, and Lady Caleria's remastered Ohabi Caleria makes an appearance in our 99, too, despite being the obviously better choice as a commander.
Not all of our Archers can actually shoot, sadly, so we're running Archery Training, Hankyu, and Viridian Longbow to give all of our creatures something to tap about.
The Rain of Cardboard
By now you must be asking yourself, "How do all these Archers actually kill anything? In my last Commander game, my opponents only ever stuck 6/6 creatures to the board! None of these creatures can deal enough damage to destroy those with their abilities!" And you'd be right! Luckily, they don't have to operate in a vacuum.
Cards like Basilisk Collar and Gorgon's Head turn any of our Archers' arrows into lethal insta-kills on anything they can target. Saryth, the Viper's Fang works similarly, but applies her deathtouch effect to any tapped Archer.
Neko-Te can lock down those indestructible targets fairly easily, and we can use Predator, Flagship to grant flying to our opponents' creatures so they can be targeted and damaged by our Matsu-Tribe Sniper and Scattershot Archer.
But won't our opponents see our loudly broadcast board state and pretty quickly figure out they shouldn't attack with anything they aren't prepared to turn into a pin cushion? Probably! We won't give them a choice in the matter, though.
Selesnya lacks the high number of goad effects that we could run in our Rakdos Tor Wauki deck but still has access to enough to make it worthwhile. Classics Bloodthirsty Blade and Martial Impetus are our bread and butter, and the newer Laser Screwdriver and Ransom Note are effective and cheap permanents for goading. Note that we're omitting Predatory Impetus: that +3/+3 buff is just too strong to play around and hope for our deathtouch Equipment.
Knock and Loose
We've almost got everything we need to unleash a volley of arrows; all that's left is our utility effects. We need Magewright's Stone and Thousand-Year Elixir to untap Lady Caleria and fire off multiple arrows per turn, and we need Scythe of the Wretched to capture those destroyed creatures and add them to our ranks.
Seedborn Muse and Quest for Renewal give us two different untaps during our opponents' turns, ensuring we always have our bows knocked and ready to fire.
Brave the Sands lets us attack with each of our Archers while holding them untapped in case we want to fire off a shot at any creature that our opponents declare as a blocker.
Cathars' Crusade is our best source for dropping +1/+1s on our board, and we're running Collective Effort and Requisition Raid in lieu of standard interaction for their access to the counters, as well. Stroke of Midnight is better for us than Beast Within or Generous Gift since we'll have a higher chance of being able to destroy the 1/1 Human versus a 3/3 Elephant.
Finally, besides a fairly standard suite of kindred utility spells, we're running the only Archer lord, Greatbow Doyen, who turns all of our pinging arrows into direct damage to our opponents. That'll teach them to run any creatures! Also of note is Caller of the Hunt, who, despite the bow and clearly Archer demeanor in her artwork, is only a Human creature with no class.
Mana Base
In keeping with our theme of as many Archers as possible, we've eschewed the typical base of green and white mana dorks in favor of Silhana Starfletcher. This, plus our Selesnya Signet, Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Rampant Growth, and Arcane Signet + Sol Ring, make up the base of our ramp spells. On top of that we've got 35 lands, which should be more than enough to cast our selection of one- to three-mana creatures, with Lady Caleria perhaps arriving a bit later than everyone else's commanders.
Budget
For the cheapest printings, this deck will run you about $177. That's way below average for our typical Legends Legends decks, but if you want to save a buck, here are some easy cuts.
Thousand-Year Elixir has been slowly creeping up in price, and just barely breaks $10 these days. If you're looking for a cheaper way to untap Lady Caleria each turn, try the less-than-a-dollar Instill Energy. Note that this card does not grant haste to the creature; it only lets them attack the turn they enter, so no tapping to shoot the turn it enters.
Seedborn Muse is another relatively expensive card in this deck, but the consistency it provides by untapping your Archers each turn can't be understated. A copy of Awakening will save you a couple bucks, at the cost of untapping your opponents' permanents as well.
Lady Caleria Decklist
Wrap Up
I know, I know, we just did an Archer legend deck. This one is fundamentally different from Tor Wauki, though, I swear! Instead of making a single bowman the center of our strategy, we're going wide with an army of sharp-eyed Archers and delivering a barrage of arrows just where we need to each turn. Of course, you could build this deck similarly to Tor Wauki, or go all-in on two creature types at once, given than Archers and Elves tend to share space on many creatures' type lines. Let me know how you'd build a Lady Caleria Commander deck in the comments!
Thanks for sticking with me! We're almost through to the end of Legends Legends, and I can guarantee the decks just keep getting better!
