MTG Salvation

This thread will serve as a primer for Elenda, the Dusk Rose at a later date when I can give it the love it deserves. For now, here's a little bit of a quick overview of the deck and the current build


Why Elenda?

I was initially very skeptical about Elenda, the Dusk Rose as a Commander because of needing to send her to the graveyard for her triggered ability. Silly as it is, what inspired me to build her was when I saw a foil of her in the case at my LGS and how gorgeous of a card it was. After a couple weeks of thinking on her after she was spoiled I began to consider how much potential she had for taking a bad situation for opponents and making it worse. She forces opponents to deal with her before she starts dealing lethal damage. When they kill her, she creates an army of tokens that could easily go hand-in-hand with the things Orzhov would want to do to kill creatures and build her up. In the end I realized a build that let her be extremely resilient and hard to deal with.

The Trifecta

After a couple renditions of the approach, what I found to work best was a trifecta of Tokens (Go Big/Wide), Aristocrats and Alpha Strike. With Elenda at the helm and on the battlefield any of the three of this trifecta can explode from out of nowhere and each feeds into the other. If you build Elenda up and she dies (whether by your own hand or another's) and there's a Cathars' Crusade on the battlefield, suddenly you have a gargantuan army of 1/1 Lifelink Vampires. Elspeth, Sun's Champion can pump out sac fodder and tokens for that army, or -4 to clear opponent's boards when Elenda is a 1/1 and grow her and clear the way; or, clear the opponent's board and spawn that army in the process. Meanwhile, those tokens and Elenda's death can fuel effects typical of Aristocrats archetypes. Grave Pact, Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat are fantastic in the deck. In addition, with Carnival of Souls, Elenda's death can cause you to suddenly gain a huge burst of B to fuel a finisher or chain of creatures and effects. Below is a small summary of this trifecta.

1. Play your usual Aristocrat enabling suspects like Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat. Sometimes it's Soul Warden.

2. Get Elenda, the Dusk Rose on the battlefield. Watch her start to grow passively as creatures die here and there in the game.

3. Find cards like Sword of Feast and Famine and start swinging for huge chunks of life, making her hard to block with Shizo, Death's Storehouse or by removing.

4. When they kill her, get a massive army of tokens to sacrifice for mana and other effects for aristocrats triggers, or have Cathars' Crusade out and ready to swarm opponents down. Simply crash into everything opponents have and activate Vizkopa Guildmage and drain them of a ton of life.

This is just a simplified version of how killing Elenda or dealing with her causes a domino effect.

Deck MVP And Tricks

Below are some of the tricks I find really fun and entertaining with the deck.

1. The boardwipe suite has been tailored for Elenda. Casting her then following up with Divine Reckoning or Dusk//Dawn and watching her grow huge while leaving very little in the way to stop her is a fantastic feeling. Or if she's huge and you can't get through to attack because of cards like Maze of Ith, letting her die and having Carnival of Souls on the battlefield to pump a giant Torment of Hailfire out of nowhere.

2. Sacrificing enough creatures in response to Blasphemous Act to put her out of range of it and watching opponent's go "Oh no..." as they see her gain 20 something counters.

3. Ophiomancer + any sac outlet is an MVP. With Soul Warden, Zulaport Cutthroat or Elenda on the battlefield and any sac outlet, you sacrifice the 1/1 Deathtouch Black Snake at the end of each turn when you no longer need it to block for that turn and get a number of valuable triggers.

4. Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder + Avatar of Woe. I legitimately only have Avatar of Woe in the deck because I have a Pro Tour promo version and I wanted to put it in a deck. But casting it for BB when Endrek Sahr is on the battlefield and getting 14 power on the board and 9 bodies (tokens + Avatar itself) is extremely good value.

5. A couple combos from my Ayli deck made sense here and made it over as part of the trifecta. Sun Titan is extremely important in the deck because of how much of the deck is 3CC or less. The average CC is 3.16. But Fiend Hunter joins him and the two make a combo with any sac outlet such as Ashnod's Altar, Blasting Station, etc.

The Decklist

A Note: Whereas my Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim list has been tuned meticulously over the years, this Elenda deck is a deck I've taken more liberties with and allowed myself to make some more casual, fun gameplay choices with. That shouldn't suggest it doesn't work - oh, does it work! The deck has gotten many compliments from players for it's interactivity. But, it's my place to play my promo Avatar of Woe, Magister of Worth and a foil Italian Debtors' Knell because dangit, I always wanted a foil of that card. The goal has been overall to keep the curve of the deck as low as possible while retaining effectiveness. I plan to fleshing this thread out into a Primer for Elenda and discuss my card choices and cuts I've made up until this point. For example, many are confused why I wouldn't run Black Market, where I chose instead to run Carnival of Souls. Lastly, the utility land base in Elenda isn't as robust as my Ayli deck simply because I built this almost entirely from extra stuff I had sitting around!

Below is my current decklist:

I tried Elenda for a while in my Reyhan&Ravos +1/+1 counter themed deck. Something dies, Elenda gets a counter, and ‘inherits’ all +1/+1 counters from it (Reyhan). Elenda dies, leaves alot of tiny critters, and Reyhan recuperates the counters.
Ravos can pull her back to hand from graveyard later.

Quote from tarotplz »

The deck looks awesome!

I might end up building something similar after all.

Also, here are some suggestions that could work:

Blade of the Bloodchief is one of the cards that seem to synergize quite well with Elenda. Perhaps it's overkill tho. It also doesn't really do much without her on the board.

Tragic Arrogance is probably a pretty good option to add to the boardwipes. it will let you keep Elenda and help stack massive amounts of +1/+1 counters on her if the board was big enough. It can also help with problematic artifacts/enchantments, which is always nice in BW.

Another idea could be Delve cards. If Elenda does end up in the graveyard, we can exile her with Delve and put her back in the command zone. Relic of Progenitus or other grave exilers like Scavenger Grounds could do that aswell.

Anyway, thanks a bunch for posting this! As always you're an inspiration

Aw well shucks I'm glad I can be of help.

Blade of the Bloodchief - You more or less hit the nail on the head with why I don't run it. Aside from Sword of Feast and Famine, I don't have any real equipment support, but the Sword stands very well on it's own without Elenda. Blade of the Bloodchief wouldn't be too spectacular if not attached to Elenda, and since I'm not running much of an Equipment theme I wouldn't have a way to go find it. I'm running a few tutor effects but those would usually be for something a lot more important than Blade, in most cases.

Tragic Arrogance - It's a pretty great board wipe! I'd totally run it in this deck and may consider if I have room for it. The current board wipe effects are really good or synergize very well with Elenda. This could replace Austere Command if someone wanted to. Tragic Arrogance can require a bit more setup on your part to make sure you come out better than everyone else in the end. On the other hand, if you need Artifacts or Enchantments or all a bunch of buffed up creatures Austere Command may allow for a bigger blowout at times. Both are good!

On Delve & Elenda in the Graveyard - This is a pretty clever idea. There's a couple considerations for it that come to mind: other than Lands, there's seldom so little else besides Elenda you'd want to exile because of the potential of needing it and being able to get it from the graveyard later; and the other consideration being whether any of the Delve effects are better than other effects available. The two best cards are probably Murderous Cut and Dead Drop, but as far as those effects go, the down side of exiling a lot of stuff seems bigger than the bonus of them. There's definitely plenty of ways to get Elenda back from the graveyard, so I think Delve may not be the best way to go. Too bad she's not Esper! I'd rock that Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise

Quote from Jonas Ukulore »

I tried Elenda for a while in my Reyhan&Ravos +1/+1 counter themed deck. Something dies, Elenda gets a counter, and ‘inherits’ all +1/+1 counters from it (Reyhan). Elenda dies, leaves alot of tiny critters, and Reyhan recuperates the counters.
Ravos can pull her back to hand from graveyard later.

Hey there Jonas!

Reyah/Ravos sounds like a pretty interesting pairing Pretty great strategy with Elenda in your 99! I actually had completely forgot about Ravos, Soultender. I may have to look and see if I want to try him out in the deck somewhere. If he's not helping get Elenda back, it could be some other great Creatures, and he supports the token part of the deck with that static +1/+1 buff!

is it possible to make a budget list (100 $) focused on tribal vampires?