Pol Jamaar, Illusionist Commander Deck Tech
Gone Away is the Blue Bird
There are a few words, phrases, and symbols that just get my creative juices going. X spells, asterisks, and the word "each" are the keys to my heart. That, and "return to hand". Factor in that I have a podcast about creature types and run a Theme Deck Throwdown every March, and today's commander is right up my alley.
Pol Jamaar, Illusionist might appear to be a Human Illusionist Wizard, but creature type turns out to be as flexible a concept as reality; it chooses a creature type on entering, then draws cards equal to the amount of those creatures, token or otherwise, that we control.
Core Synergy
So...why Birds? What do Birds offer that other creature types don't? Aside from being a somewhat undersupported type that's based in blue and mostly has built-in evasion, Birds also do some cool blue shenanigans, including having their own Tradewind Rider in Keeper of the Nine Gales, so we can cast and re-play our commander multiple times in a turn, accruing large amounts of damage.
Blue is such a fun color. It allows us several ways to take advantage of our commander: bounce, blink, and cloning; we do it all. There are other solid targets for these abilities, but the objective is to use and abuse our commander.
Win Conditions
Our primary way to win the game is to peck our opponents' eyes out, little by little, with our airborne army. Jhoira's Familiar and Warden of Evos Isle aid in our ability to fill the skies with blue feathers. Murmuring Mystic, on the other hand, is an army in a can. Well, an army of Birds. An Air Force? Let's go with that. Either way, it's a single card that does the job of many.
Mindshrieker is a neat little Spirit Bird, in that it's one of our few ways to go tall instead of wide. It's simultaneously a cheap (cheep) Bird, a mana sink, and a big beater in one card. Doing all of these things at once makes it a flexible and powerful win condition.
Not all of our Birds were born that way. Bloodline Pretender and Adaptive Automaton are kindred support cards that begin life as generic support but somehow turn into flightless Birds. I don't know if they're penguins, ostriches, or something else, but they apparently fool the other Birds, like Bender from Futurama hiding among the penguins with his cute little tuxedo.
Esior, Wardwing Familiar and Meneldor, Swift Savior are both solid ways to protect our commander, which can be important when it has a high converted mana cost. We do want to re-play it, but we don't want the commander tax to get so oppressively high that we don't have the mana to cast it again.
Draw
Card draw is a big focus of the deck, which is why we want it in the command zone. Kindred decks tend to suffer from poor card quality, having to play inferior cards because they are of the type. In order to keep up with deck that are better card-for-card, we want to create massive amounts of advantage, which is where Pol Jamaar, Illusionist comes in, along with a boatload of cards.
Murder of Crows is a very aptly named card. After all, what do you call it when someone kills something? Murder! And what do we do when someone kills our stuff? Heckin' Murder, as content creator Davy F. Jones would say. Murder, in this case, is drawing cards when our stuff dies, which is a great way to come back from a board wipe!
Distant Melody, along with Airborne Aid, functions as additional copies of our commander. These additional sources of burst card draw help us to push from the small fliers phase to large chunks of aerial damage.
Twenty-Toed Toad is a solid hedge for when we can't out-damage an opponent. Sometimes, decks lock the combat step, gain more life than we can deal, or keep the board clear. When that happens, we can use our card draw to facilitate an alternate win con!
Removal
Interaction in an aggressive deck can serve any of a few different jobs: it can remove blockers, protect attackers, reduce crackback attacks, and more. Strix Serenade and Swan Song are particularly cute because they're Bird-themed!
Ravenform is also Bird-themed, but it's not the strongest option. Wash Out and Raise the Palisade, however, are incredibly strong. One-sided board wipes straddle the line between removal and win condition, and mass bounce, in particular, sets opponents way back. In fact, Wash Out even helps with noncreature permanents!
The general plan is to get cheap fliers out, draw cards to offset the lack of card quality, and then continue pushing through damage, using evasion or removal. Removal and alternate win cons exist if something goes wrong, but the primary plans are pretty strong.
