This week, the headline crazy of Shadows Over Innistrad is on display. There's a lot to unpack with this card. A card's color identity is predicated on both of its faces, so this is a W/R legend. At 5 mana, she's on the more expensive side for a non-green Commander. However, Flash mitigates that by a large amount. The ability to play her at any time means that you don't have to pass with her in play, so she's usually going to be safe. Flying and Vigilance are great keywords for voltron. Not having to tap to attack and having built in evasion makes her excellent to put Swords or Loxodon Warhammer on. Her enter the battlefield trigger is quite impactful. She can stop opposing Wraths, win combat, and lets you land Wraths of your own without losing anything. The transform trigger doesn't go off until the next upkeep, which gives players time to see it coming, but the big interaction is that her enter the battlefield trigger makes it hard to flip her immediately. Unless you build in sacrifice effects, she can take 2-3 turns to transform. The trigger is only for non-angel creatures. You could theoretically have a deck that can't flip her and still have a decent number of creatures. There's some logic to not flipping her as well if you are doing voltron. Losing vigilance hurts if you are committed to the voltron plan. Flipping her once isn't a huge game, but if you can get multiple flips she can do some serious work, especially if you include blink effects to get indestructible triggers with the transform trigger on the stack.
Given this, what are the ways we can build around her? There's the fairly obvious voltron plan. There's plenty of W/R voltron decks though. For this week, I'm focusing on the two triggers, the etb and flip aspects of Avacyn.
Avacyn Blinks: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/avacyn-blinks/
Blink based decks have included Blue in their color identity for as long as I can remember. Blue gives access to Deadeye Navigator, Ghostly Flicker, and Momentary Blink. However, there is now a critical mass of mono-white cards for blink. Eldrazi Displacer fills in for Deadeye, and Avacyn's trigger is a powerful way to protect a full board of creatures. (Note: Running Displacer means running a solid amount of colorless producing lands.) Restoration Angel hilariously can't blink Avacyn, but she's strong enough in the strategy that she warrants an inclusion. To get mileage out the etb creatures, Avacyn adds the following:
White and Red also have access to a number of Pseudo-blink mechanics. White with reanimation mechanics and red with clones. A number of these cards are protected by Avacyn or each other. Many of these ineract with the graveyard. Some sacrifice outlets are provided later on, but the deck might want to have more in practice. To get more milage out of the etb creatures, Avacyn adds the following:
Of course all this blinking doesn't matter if we don't have some good targets. Several of the psuedo-blinks are themselves targets, like Reveillark and Karmic Guide. These targets all have strong card advantage abilities to overcome R/W's inherent lack of card flow. This section is the most customizable. I tried to cover a spread of effects. Removal, card draw, mana, life gain, graveyard hate, etc, while still staying on non-angels with power 2 or less. To get on the board, Avacyn adds the following:
White and Red are traditionally the worst edh pairing since they have so much trouble staying even on cards and mana with the rest of the table. This deck has already addressed this to an extent with powerful and reusable enters the battlefield triggers. To further compensate, Avacyn has included a number of engines. Of course, the most important engines are the creatures. Avacyn makes investing in those creatures safe since she provides protection for them. That said, cards like Skullclamp are still too strong to ignore. Especially important are the Altars. They give an outlet for infinite shenanigans with Reveillark and Karmic Guide, but also give you an out to get cards in your graveyard for reanimation or flipping Avacyn. To get incremental advantage, Avacyn adds the following:
Mana:
Rounding out the list involves some removal, board wipes, and equipment. Board wipes are particularly strong with Avacyn. Boros Charm is included as a back up to Avacyn and also protects your other permanents. There's only a little removal overall since several of the creatures are removal, but sometimes you just need a Swords to Plowshares. There isn't a focus on voltron-able creatures in the list, but Avacyn herself is a solid equip target. To cover her ass, Avacyn adds the following:
Avacyn Burns: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/avacyn-burns/
The second list is going to share a significant amount of the same card pool, however the focus is on the flip trigger. In a Gisela like shell with multiple damage amplifications. In Gisela there are two challenges: getting enough mana to play her and have her stick around, and getting the earthquake effect. For Avacyn Burns, its much simpler. Avacyn has a less intense cost, has flash, and she provides the earthquake effect. So the construction can focus more on the Furnace of Rath type effects and less on mana acceleration and AoE damage.
Damage amps and aoe pain:
While the damage effect is tied to the general, it still requires there to be quite a few creatures in the deck in order to flip Avacyn. While not as heavy as the last deck, they still take up a significant amount of space. I also tried to maintain the spread of effects and used the creatures mostly as spells. I figure Avacyn herself will kill most people. To have triggers, Avacyn adds the following:
Since the general is going to be a larger compomnent of this deck's combat plan, going for a stronger voltron theme was warranted. Focusing on her trigger makes cards like Basilisk Collar very attractive. It was also important to keep some ways to sacrifice/bounce/reset Avacyn for future triggers. Utility and buffs:
Mana:
Some tricks carry over, and board wipe + indestructible is definitely one of them. Removal:
