Things have been progressing nicely with my playgroup. We have all started to up our game and its beginning to show. Two of us started off with prebuilt decks, then splashed in our own flavor, while our third has been endlessly creating new decks from his piles of old cards. Soon though, we were seeing things about playing Standard that we no longer liked. See, I came back to the game when Kaladesh was first released. In that time we’ve seen the release of the 2nd set of the block – Aether Revolt, and the first set of the Amonkhet block. There were some intriguing mechanics present in the Kaladesh block that kept us intrigued with Standard, plus we all had several Standard decks that kept things fresh for a time. The mechanics in Amonkhet are sort of meh. I have seen some decent cards — I was lucky enough to pull one of the super rare Invocations from the 10 pack bundle I picked up the other day — but overall I wasn’t seeing much I wanted to use in terms of tweaking my Standard decks. My friends felt the same way. I did buy some packs, and did pull a few cards that will be used in Commander, including a legendary creature I want to build a future deck around. So with our deteriorating interest in Standard legal play, we’ve basically committed to Commander full time. As such, it seemed that some of my Standard decks had themes I could build on, and from there came my from scratch Zombie Commander deck. I just received the last of the singles needed for that deck, as playtesting resulted in some tweaks needing to be made. I’m calling it done now though, and found myself itching to work on another creation.

I’ve had some pretty good luck pulling some of the better Angels and Demons from recent sets. It was upsetting to not really be using them though, so I decided it was time to build a deck around them. But what commander would I use? I honestly didn’t want to make a mono colored Commander deck, so I decided to do a little research into what sorts of angels were available. The idea really started when I saw some red devil cards, and wanted to make Angels and Devils, but there aren’t enough devils to support the idea, so demons will have to do. Given that most demons are black  and most angels are white, the natural conclusion was to make a white/black deck, but I’ve already got several of those. I ended up finding a very powerful commander that came in a premade deck that was white/red/black, but also cost a ridiculous amount of money. I couldn’t justify that cost, so I decided to find another angel card that would fit the bill, and here’s the commander I chose for the deck:

He’s a beefy angel with a great tap ability, but a hefty price tag. He was cheap at $3, but he costs 7 mana. For a commander that’s a bit rough, but the idea behind the deck is that it’s semi-tribal and you should be able to win without using your commander, rather than the other way around. I feel like he’s a good choice, and I think building a deck around him was fun. Here’s my deck list at this point:

Akroma’s Vengeance
Akroma, Angel of Fury
Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Angel of Despair
Angel of Serenity
Angelic Arbiter
Angelic Skirmisher
Archfiend of Depravity
Assemble the Legion
Authority of the Consuls
Basandra, Battle Seraph
Beacon of Unrest
Bloodgift Demon
Boros Charm
Boros Signet
Bruna, the Fading Light
Conqueror’s Flail
Crackling Doom
Darksteel Ingot
Dawnbreak Reclaimer
Demon of Dark Schemes
Diabolic Tutor
Doom Blade
Dreadbore
Emeria Shepherd
Entreat the Angels
Exquisite Archangel
Fumigate
Ghostly Prison
Gisela, the Broken Blade
Go for the Throat
Grave Upheaval
Harvester of Souls
Hedron Archive
Herald of Anguish
Iroas, God of Victory
Karmic Guide
Magister of Worth
Mardu Banner
Mortify
Murder
Never/Return
Obzedat’s Aid
Orzhov Signet
Planar Cleansing
Rakdos Charm
Rakdos Signet
Ravos, Soultender
Reforge the Soul
Resolute Archangel
Return to Dust
Reya Dawnbringer
Rout
Rune-Scarred Demon
Staff of Nin
Sublime Exhalation
Sunblast Angel
Sunforger
Sword of Body & Mind
Swords to Plowshares
Temple of the False God
Terminate
Unburial Rites
Unlicensed Disintegration
Utter End
Windborn Muse
Worn Powerstone

I was going to put each individual picture up like I usually do but I can’t be assed today. It’s hot and it’s my Sunday, so that’s all I got. I will be making this decklist public on MTG Goldfish though, so I’ll link to that here shortly. Overall the theme of the deck is to keep pumping out power cards that have interesting effects, spot remove big threats, and clear the board if things aren’t going my way. There are some bits and bobs in there for control effects, and a lot of graveyard recursion. I think this deck is going to be a blast to play, I can’t wait to get it all put together. My local card store had most of the cards I needed, unfortunately they didn’t have a copy of Tariel himself, so that one will be in the mail within a week. Perhaps next weekend I can report back on my finished Zombie and Angels & Demons decks.