Legends Legends - Sir Shandlar of Eberyn
Sir Shandlar of Eberyn by Andi Rusu
Well met, traveler! Welcome to Eberyn, another one-off locale somewhere on Dominaria, home of, uhh, Sir Shandlar of Eberyn and not much else. This week Legends Legends takes a look at this green and white Knight from the 90s. Remember Sir Shandlar, and stand firm with this Sir Shandlar of Eberyn Commander deck!
General Thoughts
Sir Shandlar of Eberyn is a vanilla 4/7 that costs to cast. He's a Human Knight hailing from somewhere called Eberyn, and that's just about all we know about him. However, we can infer from his position in his artwork that he's left-handed, wielding his shield in his right hand and sword in the left. This struck me as a great theme for Sir Shandlar. Can we build an entire deck of leftie characters, and will it be any good backing up Eberyn's favored son? This article's existence points to yes!
About 10% of all people on Earth are left-handed. There are about 225 cards tagged "left-handed" on Scryfall, out of about 22,000 individual Magic cards, so the math actually works out! I can't help but wonder what possesses an artist to decide a character is left-handed. Are they, themselves, a southpaw looking to sneak some representation in? Or are they under some directive from the set designers to make a certain percentage of artworks left-handed? Or maybe it's just easier to draw them facing that direction sometimes.
Regardless, this Sir Shandlar of Eberyn deck wants to ramp until it has enough mana to cast Sir Shandlar, then beef him up alongside our other creatures and swing in for combat damage kills.
Lefties
Surprisingly, there are quite a few left-handed characters in Magic: The Gathering. A handful of green and white legendaries appear alongside a number of unnamed characters in the artwork for our nonlegendary creatures and noncreature spells.
Our most famous lefty is everyone's favorite got-possessed-but-he-got-better green planeswalker Garruk. In our Sir Shandlar deck, Garruk, Primal Hunter and Garruk, Unleashed synergize with the high power Sir Shandlar will have by the time we start swinging with him, in addition to being generally valuable cards. Garruk Wildspeaker gives us some much-needed ramp from four mana to six on the following turn, letting us cast both Sir Shandlar of Eberyn and hopefully a one-drop, like Rancor. We shouldn't expect to hit those third loyalty abilities in any of our games, instead balancing the Garruks between their first and second abilities to keep creatures on the field and cards in our hand.
Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist is a left-handed line-slinger from Zendikar. He's here to skip all those expensive equip costs on our artifacts and move any Auras we drop early over to Sir Shandlar once he's on the field.
Halvar, God of Battle provides some consistency for the free-equip effect in addition to being a righteous sword for Sir Shandlar.
Benalia's darling Danitha Capashen makes two appearances here, first as Danitha Capashen, Paragon and then as Danitha, Benalia's Hope to help us cast and recur Equipment and Auras as we are inevitably two-for-oned once we enchant our creatures with them.
Scryfall tells us God-Eternal Rhonas is left-handed, but I can't find any depictions of him where he isn't holding his staff in two hands. I'll take it, though, since Rhonas's ETB effect works just like a Craterhoof Behemoth for all the southpaws out there.
Dosan the Falling Leaf helps keep our sorcery-speed creature-heavy deck from crumbling to counterspells and targeted removal.
Finally, two of the most famous Angels in Magic are both lefties, as it turns out. Both Akroma and Avacyn wield their weapons in their left hands, so we've added Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Akroma, Angel of Wrath, and Akroma, Vision of Ixidor as top-end beaters to end games that go on too long.
Southpaw Superiority
While there are a surprising number of named left-handers in Magic, we're also running a handful of nonlegendary creatures. The Llanowar Elves art from Ninth Edition shows the Elf wielding its scimitar in the left hand, and Knight of the White Orchid also wields his sword and board goofy stance.
Railway Brawler is a newer card from OTJ that's guaranteed to become a staple in green Commander decks. Not only is it a 5/5 with reach and trample that we'll most often cast for free after plotting it, it also effectively doubles the power and toughness of any creature we cast. Making Sir Shandlar of Eberyn an 8/14 when he hits the field is almost on par with a six-drop from today's Magic!
Finally, Angelic Skirmisher can drop a much-needed evergreen keyword down in a pinch when our board has swollen a bit.
Okay, alright, I lied. We're not running entirely left-handed creatures, but that's only because there are some staples we can't afford to omit. Odric, Lunarch Marshal lets us share the keyword soup Shandlar acquires from his arsenal of swords, and Arbor Elf, Avacyn's Pilgrim, and Fyndhorn Elves are absolutely needed if we're going to ramp into our commander anytime soon. Eternal Witness isn't clear on whether its left- or right-handed, so let's just pretend, okay?
Goofy Stances
Sir Shandlar of Eberyn is a Knight, and a Knight is only as good as his sword arm, no matter which arm that is. We've picked and chosen a handful of the best swords around, with a focus on weapons with a left hand in the artwork.
The first and most important cycle is our Swords of X and Y. I had never noticed that some of these swords were wielded by left hands before now. The three we're running are Feast and Famine, Hearth and Home, and Sinew and Steel.
Of course, Avacyn's Moonsilver Spear is shown in her left hand in the Prerelease promo artwork, as is her statue in Avacyn's Memorial (okay, not a sword, but it's going in the artifacts section).
Did you know Kaldra of Kaldra Compleat is left-handed? Or maybe being Compleated does that to you? Either way, this is probably the best Equipment we can slap on Sir Shandlar.
Caduceus, Staff of Hermes has not one, but two left hands in the artwork, so we couldn't possibly pass it up, even if we weren't running a necessarily life-gain-y strategy.
Short Bow just makes sense to include since all real-life all bunnies are left-handed. That's a fact, don't look it up.
Finally, where would Sir Shandlar be without the blade of the most famous southpaw swordsman ever, Dakkon Blackblade? Blackblade Reforged is a surefire way to buff our commander into one-shot kill range.
Buck-fisted
(I've never heard this slang for left-handers before; supposedly it comes from 1950s England. Leave it to the Brits to invent some new and confusing slang.)
Now we come to our lefty noncreatures. I might be taking some liberties here, so bear with me. I've always felt that the original Champions of Kamigawa Kodama's Reach artwork depicted a huge left hand reaching out from the forest. Late to Dinner, our main creature recursion, depicts a Rhox drinking from a cup in its left hand. Map the Frontier shows a left-handed explorer, the Elf in Benefactor's Draught administers a potion via their left hand, and both Stand Together and Betrayal at the Vault's characters have at least one lefty in their art.
Mana Base
36 lands make up our mana base for this Sir Shandlar of Eberyn deck. It's hard to really make our mana base lefty-themed, but there's at least one Arcane Signet from the Warhammer 40k Commander decks being held aloft in a left hand. We've already covered our Kodama's Reach and Map the Frontier, but we're also running good ol' Rampant Growth, Farseek, and Sol Ring.
Strategy
Our Sir Shandlar of Eberyn deck's strategy is simple. Ramp into Sir Shandlar, cast him, and attack!
Ramping in the early game and dropping Sir Shandlar before turn six is incredibly important. Compared to other 4/7 creatures (Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Kruphix, God of Horizons, Tariel, Reckoner of Souls, etc.), Sir Shandlar's lack of any abilities really makes him closer to a four drop by today's standards. So, to keep pace with the table, we'll need to drop him as soon as possible and equip him with as many swords as we can fit.
Obviously, the priority in openings hands is access to ramp. There's no doubt we'll dig up some weapons for Sir Shandlar eventually, especially with Harmonize and Garruk's Uprising.
The top swords for this deck are, to no one's surprise, the Swords of X and Y. We should use Enlightened Tutor to fetch up Sword of Feast and Famine, as it'll ramp us into more weapons and more creatures. We'll use Eladamri's Call almost exclusively to tutor up Railway Brawler, since he makes our vanilla 4/7 into a vanilla 8/11; a much better rate for six mana.
As we continue to ramp and attack with Shandlar, we'll simultaneously cast larger and larger creature threats. Sticking either Akroma or Avacyn to the board makes you a nearly invulnerable threat with a lot of power to throw around the board. These big creatures act as "back-up" commanders, to take up Sir Shandlar's cause should he be destroyed. We'd rather spend that eight mana on Akroma or Avacyn, anyways.
This deck wins by lining up a massive attack from Sir Shandlar and his warriors. We'll use Overwhelming Stampede or God-Eternal Rhonas to buff the entire board at once and obliterate our opponents. Or, we can stick an entire board of huge threats by hitting Last March of the Ents and drawing at least seven cards while Shandlar's on the field.
Budget
This Sir Shandlar of Eberyn Commander deck rounds out to about $250. That's not too bad compared to some other Commander decks, but a majority of our purchase price revolves around a few replaceable cards for the budget-minded Commander players out there.
Avacyn, Angel of Hope is unsurprisingly expensive. Between her and Dosan the Falling Leaf, we can save $60 and just run the lefties Dauntless Escort and Gerrard Capashen.
In addition, the Swords of X and Y are some of the most expensive Equipment pieces you can get your platemailed hands on, with roughly $40 in three swords in this deck. While they definitely aren't as powerful, left-handed Honed Khopesh and no-handed Sword of Vengeance make fine replacements.
Sir Shandlar of Eberyon Deck List
Wrap Up
I hope I've done you southpaws out there some good. Your cause is not forgotten! If Wizards' recent left-handed Secret Lairs are any indication, I'm sure we'll see even more left-handed prints for some of these characters before long.
What are your favorite left-handed magic cards? What's up with Eberyn? How would you build Sir Shandlar of Eberyn? Let me know in the comments, or come send me hate-replies on Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
