EDH Decks: Xantcha (Patreon)

Sorry for the lack of comics lately. I've been traveling a bunch this month and it's been hard to find the time to sit down and do some drawing. I thought it would be a good time to add to my series of posts highlighting my EDH decks. Just a reminder that you can also read my previous posts on Tasigur, Hazezon, The Locust God, Animar, and Rasputin.

Today I'm going to write about Xantcha, Sleeper Agent. If you don't know what she does, here she is!

I usually avoid foils, but I thought this version looked so sweet (and is only available in foil) that I couldn't resist!

I actually made this deck fairly recently. I was getting ready for MagicCon Vegas, and I wanted a deck that would play well if I got into Commander games with people I did not know. I figured it would be fun to give my opponents stuff, make them attack each other, and just have a lot of interactions with my opponents. Here's the final deck I came up with:

If you know anything from my previous deck posts, an important consideration for me is the choice of basic lands. A black/red deck seemed like a good opportunity to use some of my favorite basic lands: Jon Avon's lands from Unhinged.

All the lands from this series are amazing, but the Swamp and Mountain are especially nice. I also usually try to only play old border artifacts if I can, but Crown of Doom and Bloodthirsty Blade are so fundamental to the deck's strategy that I couldn't resist including them.

For the deck itself, you can see the basic gameplan is to mess with the combat step of my opponents. This means goading my opponents' creatures, incentivizing my opponents to attack each other, or, if they don't have creatures themselves, give them Xantcha to attack with. People forget that Xantcha still counts as Commander damage. This can add up fast, especially if you triple Xantcha's damage with Jeska, Thrice Reborn!

Here's a closer look at all the cards in the deck:

The biggest issue this deck potentially has is closing out the game once there are only two players left. The main strategy here is to give my opponent Xantcha and then activate her a bunch of times using the mana from Cabal Coffers and/or Crypt Ghast when I have Urborg out. I could have included Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith to make infinite mana and kill my opponents more easily. Ring of Brighthearth would also have the synergy of allowing me to activate Xantcha an additional time for only two mana. But in the end I found this to be too boring of a way to win, so I didn't include this infinite combo.

Overall the deck ended up being pretty fun like I was hoping. There was a lot of back and forth talk and consternation as my opponents decided which of my other opponents to attack. It also led to a lot of fun politics when I decided who to give Xantcha to, as well as who to target with some of the enchantments. There were a few people that got a little annoyed because I think they expected to just play solitaire with their Commander deck and didn't appreciate being given a creature that they had to make additional decisions with. But overall I think this deck was a success. I'll definitely be bringing Xantcha along to more game nights, especially when I want a casual game with people outside my usual playgroup.