Conditions Allow - Arthur, Marigold Knight EDH
(Arthur, Marigold Knight | Art by Steve Belledin)
On An Adventure
Welcome back to Conditions Allow, the article series where I brew decks to turn drawbacks into strengths. I'm continuing my trek through Bloomburrow this week, and, in a series first, building around one of the new legendary creatures from the Commander decks: Arthur, Marigold Knight.
Whenever Arthur, Marigold Knight attacks with another creature, you can look at the top six cards of your library and put a creature card from among them into play tapped and attacking. Then, at end of combat, that creature is returned to your hand. Putting creatures into play for free is always powerful, and Arthur does so rather easily. Attacking with multiple creatures isn't difficult in Jeskai. Having those creatures return to your hand isn't ideal, however. Big, impactful creatures will be expensive to replay, and take up whole turns just to redeploy a creature you already had in play.
One approach is to mitigate this downside is to blink your creatures before Arthur, Marigold Knight sends them to your hand. You already want powerful enter effects to get as much value from your commander, and Ephemerate and Cloudshift just keep that value coming. Alternately, you can just sneak those big Angels and Dragons back into play with Sneak Attack and Ilharg, the Raze-Boar. All your blink effects even let you dodge the sacrifice and bounce effects from those cards as well. This is an undoubtedly powerful direction to take the deck, when you get all the pieces working together.
When I sat down to brew Arthur, Marigold Knight, however, I thought about what creatures it would be good to return to hand and thought of one thing immediately: Adventures!
One Adventurous Mouse
Arthur, Marigold Knight makes it very easy to get full value out of even the more expensive Adventure creatures by sneaking those creatures directly into play before bouncing them back to hand so you can cast their less expensive spell halves. Sword Coast Serpent and Sapphire Dragon are just slightly too cumbersome to take full advantage of otherwise. The more efficient Adventure creatures also make for excellent companions to attack alongside your commander, allowing his effect to trigger each turn. Faerie Guidemother isn't a good combat trick, but a 1/1 flier is all this deck needs to get started.
Another benefit of building around Adventures is expanding the range of effects Arthur, Marigold Knight can draw. Young Blue Dragon helps dig a few cards deeper, while Threadbind Clique and Horned Loch-Whale protect against retaliation. Realm-Cloaked Giant opens up the ability to draw a board wipe, while Two-Headed Hunter lets you hit a little harder on your next turn.
We can push this idea even further by including a few other double-faced cards. Pinnacle Monk and Witch Enchanter not only have powerful enter effects, but also let your commander find land drops. As long as they survive combat, anyway.
Dangerous Wilds
Surviving combat is also important to keeping Arthur, Marigold Knight attacking every turn. Five toughness isn't nothing, but it's a dangerous world for a Mouse. Dolmen Gate makes combat perfectly safe, though, and Cunning Evasion and Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar are easy inclusions when you want creatures back in your hand anyway. Just keep in mind that also prevents your creatures from dealing damage, so sometimes its better to let combat happen to keep enemy creatures out of play.
You can also take the opposite approach and ensure your creatures are dealing way more damage in combat. Double strike from Blade Historian is great for closing games, especially when paired with the +1/+1 counters from Mysterious Pathlighter. I'm also including Archangel Avacyn, for the ability to repeatedly make your team indestructible, and staple spells like Boros Charm and Akroma's Will, to be able to reuse creatures enter effects, which is a potent form of inevitability this deck can leverage to win games.
Staying Supplied
More dedicated Adventure support also helps to keep your hand full and threaten life totals. A lot of these Adventure spells are removal, and copying them makes it that much harder for your opponents to block. Chancellor of Tales also pairs well with Archmage Emeritus, and is an evasive attacker to help trigger Arthur, Marigold Knight's ability. If all that removal still isn't enough, Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy can start attacking life totals directly, turning Sword Coast Serpent and Guardian Naga into huge burn spells late in the game.
Of course, I'm also including a few more traditional spells to hopefully stack the deck in your favor. Brainstorm is famous for its ability to get cards from your hand to the top of your library, but Mystic Speculation is perhaps more valuable in this situation. Your cards are still useful in your hand, so finding the Adventure you need next from your deck helps keep your game running smoothly.
Adventures are one of my favorite card types, so I'm always excited for a new commander that can take advantage of them. Arthur, Marigold Knight makes for a very fun Adventure deck, sort of reversing the usual pattern of spell to creature. It's also much more useful for your opponents to know you have interaction in hand than to use the interaction and give them time to prepare for the big creature that follows.
But what do you think? How would you build Arthur, Marigold Knight? Are there any cards and synergies I overlooked? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading!
