Odric, Lunarch Marshal Commander Deck Tech

Unsummoned Skull • February 13, 2025

Deckbuilding
Odric, Lunarch Marshal
 by Chase Stone

Delicious Keyword Soup

Finishing off the brief sojourn provided by Innistrad Remastered is a very different take on the resiliency of humans in the face of nightmarish horrors. The Shadows Over Innistrad incarnation of Odric doesn't share counters, like the Torens, Fist of the Angels

deck, he does share another type of power: words.

Words wield quite a lot of power in Magic, and sharing keywords enables the army to power each other up. In a way, Odric's keyword sharing feels a lot like a phalanx formation, with defensive abilities enabling our creatures to protect each other and aggressive abilities helping us create openings.

While each creature brings its own unique abilities, we're stronger together, and that's a beautiful thing for a deck to exemplify in this day and age.

Keyword Creatures

French Vanilla refers to creatures that have keywords but no other abilities. These creatures have that beautiful flavor, along with enough actual game text to show the power a given color has. A good way to measure power creep is to compare a vanilla creature to a French Vanilla one and figure out the power-ability conversion rate. For example, Savannah Lions

trades a point of power to become Healer's Hawk
 with flying and lifelink.


Speaker of the Heavens

is a rare card that can add up to three keywords. It adds vigilance and lifelink by itself, and then, if we have 47+ life, it can tap to make a flying Angel. While it may be an unassuming little guy, the wider our board gets, the more life we can gain. With partners like Skyhunter Skirmisher
 adding double strike and flying, we can balance offense and defense!


Everything might be smaller in Segovia, but value certainly isn't. In this deck, we're looking for French Vanilla cards that each give at least two keywords and that cost 3 or less. We want a body plus two keywords for every three mana spent, and if we can improve on that rate, that's gravy. Segovian Angel

provides flying, vigilance, and a 1/1 for a single mana. That's a ton of value when the whole board gets those abilities!


Hushbringer

is probably the most controversial card in the deck, and one that might be on the chopping block if something new comes out that piques the interest. For now, it's a bit of a non-bo with some of our cards, but it provides flying and lifelink on a two-mana body. It also provides a roadblock for opponents and a lightning rod for removal.


Card Draw/Advantage

Sun Titan

, Mentor of the Meek
, Welcoming Vampire
... all of them reward us for casting small creatures. Incidentally, all of them also non-bo with Hushbringer
, but I promise that's about all of the collateral damage that card does. This is a deck where the individual cards aren't terribly powerful, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As a result, card draw and advantage helps offset the lack of card quality.


Esper Sentinel

is a solid, powerful card that provides a major card advantage engine on a body that Odric can make more versatile. The tricky part is in managing it, and, if you don't want to have to follow opponents' turns and remind them of its existence, you could cut it for something less intensive. We are an aggro deck, after all.


Skeleton Key

is a surprisingly powerful card in an Odric deck. Odric does dole out skulk, and French Vanilla creatures tend to have low printed power as a concession to the keywords. As a result, most of our creatures can sneak bigger boards once this is shared.


Endless Atlas

is a solid card draw engine for mono-colored decks, and, with our cheap creatures, it's a great way to use excess mana and draw into action late in the game. Few things feel worse than overextending into a board wipe, but this can help us slowly dig our way back into the game.


Ramp

Oketra's Monument

is a cost-reducer that provides bodies for creating bodies, which is exactly the kind of card we need. Now, our cheap creatures are even cheaper, and the new bodies get the same bonuses that Odric gives out.


Sword of the Animist

is a potent repeatable Rampant Growth
 that thins our deck and ramps our mana. You do need to be careful with it, however, as Gift of Estates
 and other ramp spells require having fewer lands than an opponent. Then again, if an opponent is a green deck, that's probably not a problem.


Removal

Interestingly enough, Path to Exile

can sneakily give an opponent more lands than us, enabling our Gift of Estates
 to get full value. It's a bit of a silly interaction, but not as silly as giving opponents Elephants with Generous Gift, only to skulk by them with Skeleton Key
!


Valorous Stance

is a stunningly effective card in a deck like this. It can kill a creature, spare a creature... or even spare our whole board! How can it do that? Valorous Stance
 gives a creature indestructible, which Odric then transfers to all creatures we control. As a result, it can prevent a board wipe!


The general plan is to spend the first few turns casting small creatures with abilities for Odric to share once it hits the field. If our early offense is dealt with or peters out, we can recoup that lost advantage. A small amount of ramp helps us re-cast Odric and removal picks apart roadblocks and threats.

Odric, Lunarch Marshal Commander Deck Tech

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Unsummoned Skull

Unsummoned Skull

Teacher, judge, DM, & Twitch Affiliate. Lover of all things Unsummon. Streams EDH, Oathbreaker, D & D, & Pokemon. Even made it to a Pro Tour!