What Makes a Good Planar Deck?
My local Costco recently began selling some Commander precons from March of the Machine in value packs that include a Play Booster from each of March of the Machine , Bloomburrow, and Phyrexia: All Will Be One , plus two bonus promotional planeswalkers in the form of [ el]Jace, Architect of Thought[/el] and Ajani, Mentor of Heroes. For just $40 each, I figured I'd be stupid not to buy one of each, so I did! Nobody was really dying for these precons when they were released, except to possibly acquire the all new and reprinted Planar Decks that came with each precon. Now I've become the proud owner of 40+ planar cards, and I'm dying to find something to use them for.
In its original incarnation, the Planechase format assumed each player would build their own 10-card planar deck, choosing specific plans that synergize well with the deck they built. These original planar decks predate Commander, but that never stopped us from rolling out the ol' humpheh Planechase Tool and playing a punishingly long game of Commander Planechase with a random assortment of plans.
Nobody's really building their own specific 10-card planar decks, though. Most Planechase games I play, outside of specifically the MOM precon-versus-precon showdown, just end up using a central, shared deck of plans that the pod randomly travels through.
Today, on the off-chance I can convince one of my regular playgroup pods to join me, I wanted to brew up some possible 10-card planar decks for use with my most played decks: what makes a good planar deck when built around a non-Planechase release Commander?
Dakkon Blackblade - Planar Deck
[the]Astral Arena[/the]
[the]Bant[/the]
[the]Mount Keralia[/the]
[the]Naya[/the]
[the]Orochi Colony[/the]
[the]Sokenzan[/the]
[the]Tazeem[/the]
[the]Towashi[/the]
My Dakkon Blackblade deck is basically a Voltron deck: I want to rush out Dakkon, slap as many buffs on him as I can, then swing in for a commander damage kill ASAP. These plans give him that little extra edge.
Astral Arena has an effect that we're already running in the Dakkon deck in the form of Silent Arbiter, but the consistency is important. If we can give Dakkon trample, that army of barely little Vampire creature tokens will be no match for our 11/11 double-striking warrior. Plus, the board wipe it triggers when chaos ensues is barely a scratch on Dakkon Blackblade.
Bant works similarly, performing best in a deck where only one creature should attack each turn, and Tazeem guarantees our buffed-up Dakkon can make contact with our opponents.
Orochi Colony works as a great way to sneak more basics into play, something an Esper deck isn't quite known for, while Naya helps us clear out the lands left in our hand.
The Golden City of Orazca's chaos ensues effect lets us cheat out our more expensive Equipment, like Kaldra Compleat and Elbrus, the Binding Blade, while Sokenzan lets us surprise an opponent with a late-game Dakkon cast-and-attack.
Full Decklist
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Alesha, Who Smiles at Death - Planar Deck
[the]Agyrem[/the]
[the]Astral Arena[/the]
[the]Besieged Viking Village[/the]
[the]Gavony[/the]
[the]Isle of Vesuva[/the]
[the]Lair of the Ashen Idol[/the]
[the]Lake Lethe[/the]
[the]Megaflora Jungle[/the]
[the]Murasa[/the]
[the]Orzhova[/the]
My Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deck works off looping low-power high-value creatures into and out of my graveyard while I search for a game-ending combo: either sneaking Master of Cruelties[ /el] into play and attacking with both it and Alesha, or infinitely looping [el]Reveillark and Karmic Guide with Corpse Knight on the field. Agyrem helps keep those creatures available and threatening on the field, while Orzhova lets me get everything back all at once to recover from the inevitable Blasphemous Act .
Gavony and Megaflora Jungle help turn our relatively small creatures into combat threats, while Murasa lets us double up on any creature we reanimate with Alesha's effect. Lair of the Ashen Idol keeps our opponents' boards under control while filling our graveyard with reanimation targets for Alesha; Lethe Lake works similarly, filling our graveyard quickly with the cards we need to combo off.
Besieged Viking Village also helps buff up any creatures we plan to attack alongside Alesha, and helps keep Alesha on the field as she grows in power from being just a 3/2.
Full Decklist
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Keskit and Armix - Planar Deck
[the]Ridges Enigma[/the]
[the]Hope[/the]
[the]Ghirapur[/the]
[the]Horizon Boughs[/the]
[the]Takenuma[/the]
[the]New Argive[/the]
Keskit, the Flesh Sculptor and Armix, Filigree Thrasher are two of my favorite partners. I built a mono-black artifacts deck based on them way before it was cool to do that with the Warhammer 40K Necrons cards, and to this day I refuse to add any non- Magic IP into the deck. This deck, unsurprisingly, runs a lot of artifacts but needs help drawing and casting them without wasting entire turns to one end or the other. Thus, we've built a planar deck to shore up Keskit and Armix's blind spots.
Cards like The Maelstrom and Enigma Ridges help us generate advantage without wasting our valuable mana. Obviously, an artifacts deck benefits from the inclusion of Esper, and Ghirapur gives our measly little zero-, one-, and two-drops something to do in combat before we sacrifice them to either of our commanders.
While The Dark Barony will still ping us for our artifact creatures' deaths, we'll definitely come out on top as Keskit removes our opponents' nonblack creatures one by one during combat, but Takenuma[ /el] will compensate our sacrificed creatures with drawn cards. We can use [el]Eloren Wilds to catch up on mana in a deck that isn't known for its ramp abilities, and New Argive gets Keskit that little extra pump whenever he attacks.
Full Decklist
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General Marhault Elsdragon - Planar Deck
[the]Turri Island[/the]
[the]Undercity Reaches[/the]
[the]Bloodhill Bastion[/the]
[the]Gavony[/the]
[the]Immersturm[/the]
[the]Ketria[/the]
[the]Llanowar[/the]
[the]Naya[/the]
My General Marhault Elsdragon deck runs off of good ol' combat damage and forcing our opponents to participate in the combat phase. Plans like Turri Island and Feeding Grounds make it easier to cast our creatures, while Grove of the Dreampods just dumps them into play at an accelerated rate . Ketria turns our already violent creature base into keyword-soup monsters, and Immersturm does a Warstorm Surge for us on each of those big baddies.
Full Decklist
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Planeswalk-off
The great risk you take when bringing along your planar deck to your Commander game is, of course, the symmetricality of their effects. That Esper might not pay off against a Breya, Etherium Shaper deck, but it might be well worth the risk if Keskit and Armix absolutely need it to catch up. That The Eon Fog might slow your opponents to a halt, but will it ruin your gameplan as well? There's yet to be enough research on the Planechase Commander format.
Have you played any Planechase Commander games with your own unique planar decks? How did it go, and what Commanders did you use? Were they particularly hard to assemble, either price-wise or mechanically? What would you like to see from Planechase cards in the future? Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
