Zinnia, Valley's Voice "The Power of One" - Plot Twist #15

Zinnia, Valley's Voice by Aldo Domínguez

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it'll tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense of the types of stories we're looking to tell.

In our most recent article, we dove into Bloomburrow and its resident mischief-making Raccoons with a Muerra, Trash Tactician deck that looked to win by storming off. This time, we're continuing with another of Bloomburrow's critters with a truly excellent creature type of 'Bird Bard.' That's right, we're building around Zinnia, Valley's Voice, the face commander of the Family Matters precon.

Zinnia is an interesting commander because it cares about creatures with a base power of 1, can help you create an extra token copy every time you cast another creature, and offers up a wide variety of directions for us to take the deck in.

How Does Zinnia Work?

Zinnia has three abilities in total. The first of which, flying, gives it a form of natural evasion that works well with its second ability that gives Zinnia "+X/+0, where X is the number of other creatures that have base power 1." It's worth noting that, since Zinnia cares about base power, effects like +1/+1 counters or Glorious Anthem that give all creatures you control +1/+1 won't change the base power of your creatures, so they can still count as creatures with base power 1 even if they have a greater total power. That being said, effects like those generated by Archon of the Wild Rose or Dragonshift which do change a creature's base power and toughness will prevent them from counting towards Zinnia's ability.

Zinnia's final ability gives creature spells you control offspring . Offspring is a new mechanic from Bloomburrow that works as an additional cost to the creature's casting cost. As long as you pay the offspring cost, when the creature enters you create an additional 1/1 token copy of it. The Family Matters precon prominently features the offspring mechanic, so it makes sense that Zinnia would have it as well. It's also worth calling out that, since the offspring token is generated when the creature enters, effects like Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines and Torpor Orb will prevent the 1/1 token copy from being created.

Since Zinnia, Valley's Voice is one of the face commanders of a precon, there are already a lot of people brewing around Zinnia. It's got more than 1,000 decklists already on its EDHREC page even though the precon hasn't been officially released as of the time of writing this article. It seems many brewers are leaning into the offspring ability, with cards like Nesting Dovehawk and Curiosity Crafter (which is in the Family Matters precon) each appearing in Zinnia's High Synergy Cards section, while other brewers are leaning into the low-power-matters theme with cards like Delney, Streetwise Lookout and Welcoming Vampire being prominently featured. One thing players are shying away from is legendary creatures: only 8 of the top 50 creatures in Zinnia decks at the time of writing are legendary, given how the legend rule would negate the benefits of creating a token with offspring.

Which is exactly why we're building a legendary-matters deck around Zinnia, Valley's Voice this week...

Doing the Twist

Legendary creatures don't work well with the offspring ability because the token copy retains the legendary supertype, so when it enters we'd immediately have to sacrifice either the original legendary creature or the offspring copy due to the legendary rule, but this is Plot Twist, so we're going to lean into ways we can get around this effect, primarily Cadric, Soul Kindler and Mirror Box, both of which allow us to ignore the legend rule. Cadric does specify that the legend rule doesn't apply to 'tokens you control,' which is a more narrow version of this effect, but won't matter too much because we're not creating nontoken copies of our legendary creatures with this deck.

Once we've been freed from the restrains of the legend rule, we're able to create multiple copies of legends like Ajani, Nacatl Pariah, Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon, and Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin that will help us create a massive board of tokens that help buff Zinnia. We're also leaning heavily on token-doublers, like Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation (both of which we can create offspring token copies of if we're able to ignore the legend rule) to help our board spiral truly out of control before winning with Cathars' Crusade, Heroes' Podium, and Márton Stromgald.

Lots of Legends (In Token Form)

Two cards we'll always be happy to draw are Cadric, Soul Kindler and Mirror Box because both of them allow us to keep the offspring copies of our legendary creatures around. Since we're running 27 legendary creatures in this deck, we'll definitely want to do that to double up on their value. We're also running Gamble as a way to put them directly into our graveyard tutor either of them up as well. We don't want to stop with just one extra copy, right? Of course not! That's why we've got Anointed Procession, Mondrak, Glory Dominus, and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation to double or triple the tokens we make with Zinnia. We can even copy Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation with Zinnia's offspring ability, which allows both the original creatures and their offspring copies to see the tokens entering and make even more tokens. I've done something similar with Doubling Season in my Gandalf, Westward Voyager / Keruga, the Macrosage deck and the number of copies you make spirals out of control FAST. While we'll quickly lose track of how many token copies of our token-doublers we have, the sure joy of watching our deck do the thing will make for a memorable game.

1-Power Legends Matter

Since Zinnia, Valley's Voice 's offspring ability wants us to play cheaper creatures so we can afford to pay the extra to get a 1/1 token copy each time, we're going to aim for creatures that are lower on the mana curve and ideally have 1 power themselves. Gimli of the Glittering Caves and Red Death, Shipwrecker act like mana dorks that come down early to help us ramp while still being versatile enough that we'll be happy to pay to get an extra copy of them later on. There are also plenty of ways for us to gain card advantage with Aradesh, the Founder, Fblthp, Lost on the Range, Fblthp, the Lost, Gregor, Shrewd Magistrate, Kwain, Itinerant Meddler, Nin, the Pain Artist, and Toothy, Imaginary Friend all helping us draw extra cards regularly. Toothy, Imaginary Friend is absolutely busted if you've never had the pleasure of playing against it, and if we find ourselves with two of them in play, one leaving the battlefield will add a bunch of counters to the other. Toothy does force you to draw the cards when it leaves, but if we ever accidentally draw our whole deck with Toothy, then that will absolutely be a story worth retelling.

The Peregrine Dynamo will let us further double up on activated and triggered abilities of our legendary creatures, and having two (or more) of them in play at once seems like it will be too much fun to pass up on. We're running a healthy amount of artifacts, so Urza, Lord High Artificer made the decklist, but I can understand if that's not your cup of tea. Pramikon, Sky Rampart adds a really interesting twist to the dynamics of a game (I used to play a flicker-burn deck with Pramikon at the helm that was a blast to play, but not terribly good at winning the game). A weird interaction with Pramikon happens if you ever manage to get two Pramikons on the battlefield at once naming different directions, because then players can't attack at all.

We've also got a few 1-power legends that can help us close the game out fast in Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon, Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker, Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar, Márton Stromgald, and Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful. I had never heard of Márton Stromgald before a few weeks ago when it was mentioned on the EDHREC podcast, but it was one of the first cards added to the deck and seems like it'll be a red Craterhoof Behemoth in this deck.

Winning with 1/1s

While we can certainly count on winning some of our games with commander damage from Zinnia, Valley's Voice, we probably won't be winning win an army of 1/1 token copies alone, so we'll need to find ways to turn them into lethal threats. Heroes' Podium gives our creatures the benefit of Jodah, the Unifier but without the "legendary cascade" effect that makes Jodah truly busted, and will absolutely win us some games when we start creating token copies of our legendary creatures. We have a few anthems in Day of Destiny, Flowering of the White Tree, Nahiri's Resolve, Rising of the Day, and Warleader's Call. Nahiri's Resolve and Rising of the Day also grant our creatures haste, which creature decks like this one often need to recover after a board wipe. We're also running Impact Tremors in addition to Warleader's Call to help us get those final bits of damage through if we find ourselves unable to attack.

Weirdly, this deck seems like a perfect home for both Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar (which wants us to do a lot of damage with Zinnia) and Cathars' Crusade (which wants us to amass a bunch of creatures). I could be wrong about running both, but they're definitely cards that make for interesting stories and help us close the game out quickly. Since we should have both a lot of creatures and a variety of ways to buff their power, True Conviction made the deck as a way to double our damage and gain a little life back when we need it. Éomer, Marshal of Rohan is a blast to play with because if our opponents decide to block and kill one of our legendary creatures, we'll get another combat step. They could always take extra damage instead...

Interaction

Building decks with restrictions like this on Plot Twist always uncovers some fascinating pieces of interaction that we can play. Let's start with Mangara of Corondor, which can exile itself and ANY permanent simply by tapping. While we have to wait a turn for this effect, since Mangara will have summoning sickness, the fact that it can hit lands like Field of the Dead and Glacial Chasm, and we could potentially create multiple token copies of Mangara feel well worth the downside. We'll be happy to copy Canoptek Scarab Swarm every time we cast it to exile two graveyards and get ourselves a bunch of 1/1s in return, an effect we needed in this deck and the only nonlegendary creature we're running. We've also got quite a few Wrath of God effects that will hurt our opponents but leave us mostly untouched in Austere Command, Dusk // Dawn (which was fantastic in our creatureless Duskana, the Rage Mother deck), Slaughter the Strong, The Battle of Bywater, and most importantly Urza's Ruinous Blast. That might be too many board wipes for us to be running, but this deck is going to take a little time to get set up and a timely Urza's Ruinous Blast will clear the way so our creatures can get through and win the game. Éowyn, Fearless Knight doubles as both a removal spell for our opponents' largest threat and a protection spell for our creatures.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

It's time for the best part of every Plot Twist decklist, the oddball cards that we discovered along the way! Gerrard's Hourglass Pendant is a colorless, five-mana, instant-speed mass reanimation/protection spell (admittedly, with a few we have to walk through along the way), doing a great impression of Heroic Intervention and hosing extra turn spells along the way. Slaughter the Strong is exactly the sort of board wipe we want for a deck like this, hopefully destroying all but one of our opponents' creatures and leaving us with our four best ones still on the board. The Peregrine Dynamo is such an intriguing card that finally we finally found a home for alongside the group of legends in this Zinnia deck and could make for an interesting colorless, legends-matter commander itself. Márton Stromgald presents some intriguing challenges as a commander because you want to have a wide board of creatures, but also plenty of ways to allow Márton to attack and survive combat in mono-red. Last but not least, Nahiri's Resolve gives your creatures haste, a +1 boost to power, and lets you blink them at the end of turn as long as they're nontoken. That's a lot of value in a color pair that cares about both enters effects and combat and will definitely be something we revisit in the future. 

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Zinnia, Valley's Voice. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can find me on Instagram at @girtenjeff and you can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I recently took apart two decks (my Isshin, Two Heavens as One Deck and my Killian, Ink Duelist Reanimator Deck) because they no longer sparked joy and built a Karador, Ghost Chieftan Cycling-Reanimator Deck that has been a complete blast to play. I'm constantly toying with new ideas like this Colorless Combo deck and would love to hear your thoughts on them there.

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.