So far all my deckspotlights have dealt with very exceptional Gentlemen. Momir Vig, Norin, Borborygmos,... well maybe the last one isn't every girl's dreamprince.
How about a strong and emancipated lady this time around? Sounds good? Because that's what you'll get wether you like it or not...
BUT: This isn't your standard Gisela-"I'll beat you down with Angels and Equipment" kind of deck. It's something really special...
If we would sit down at a 4-player table, me being a complete stranger, this is how your thought process will probably look like...
I put Gisela in the command zone: "Ah ok, Gisela, gotta watch out for his beaters."
After I play the first few lands: "Alright, the beaters will start coming, I should prepare."
I continue to play lands and play the occasional utility permanent: "... I guess he had a bad draw or is flooded or something..."
Everyone else is doing crazy thing but I sit there playing draw-go: "What the hell is he doin'?!"
Intro - What is he doin'?!
If we would sit down at a 4-player table, me being a complete stranger, this is how your thought process will probably look like...
I put Gisela in the command zone: "Ah ok, Gisela, gotta watch out for his beaters."
After I play the first few lands: "Alright, the beaters will start coming, I should prepare."
I continue to play lands and play the occasional utility permanent: "... I guess he had a bad draw or is flooded or something..."
Everyone else is doing crazy thing but I sit there playing draw-go: "What the hell is he doin'?!"
And just when it seems that I'll just die to a random attack the next turn without having done anything the whole game this happens:
I play "End of Turn" Gisela using Scout's Warning, untap draw, cast Overmaster, Price of Progress and Reverberate it, dealing enough damage to kill everyone but me thanks to Gisela. And all you're thinking is: "Ahem, what?"
Chapter 1 - The Political Core
A while ago I actually wrote a primer about the archetype that is called "politics/groupslug/grouphug", whatever you may call it, and basically this deck is how I got introduced into the kind of strategy described in there.
Some of these cards I've already mentioned in said primer since they're just the prime examples of what a political card should do: 1) make opponents attack each other and not you and 2) strengthen weaker players so they can attack again (which hopefully makes them even more inclined to not attack you).
Rite of the Raging Storm getting printed in Commander2015 got us yet another really strong card for decks like these. There's just no reason not to attack with your free elemental and - let's be honest - there will always be at least one player who can't block the Elemental profitably.
With all these cards to provide me a weird form of safety from random attacks, I can focus on the real gameplan: Punishing people for doing broken things. And with punishing I mean hopefully killing them with whatever they wanted to pull off.
Each of these cards will kill - coupled with Gisela - if anyone goes "extrem" in any shape or form. Ramping hard with Boundless Realms? Acidic Soil it up. Getting one-shot by a commander? Reflect damage does only redirect so the opponent kills himself with commander damage. Avenger of Zendikar? Incite Rebellion... You get the idea.
This is exactly why this deck tries to be political about the early stages of the game: The more damage from Solemn Simulacrums etc. they take, the more likely I am able to kill them when they try to win the game with something busted.
Sadly, since I've dropped black from the deck, I'm missing out on some sweet punisher cards, but all in all I still believe playing Gisela is worth missing some of them in exchange for the damage boost.
The hardest part of the deck is probably knowing when I'm supposed to start keeping up "kill spells" (referring to spells that will hopefully kill my opponents). This gets easier the more mana I've got available when the time comes around so I always focus on hitting as many landdrops as possible the first turns. If the first landdrop I'm missing is on turn 10, I almost always have a good shot at winning the game. So: Preparation is key!
(Also interesting to note is that ramping makes you seem more dangerous than just having a landdrop each turn... Even if you'll end up with the same amount of mana in the long run.)
Boy oh boy, do I love every single card here. They provide fixing and/or card advantage (with the exception of Tormenting Voice that is just there to filter your draw) while looking so incredibly innocent that noone will even look twice and simply shrug them off. But trust me when I say: Without these cards this deck would suck, but since they exist this deck is awesome!
The thing is that red and white both don't offer great choice when it comes to card draw but even if they did, in an actual game I would use them to find landdrops 90% of the time. So why not simply find lands instead, because that IS something artifacts and white cards can provide.
I have explained all the tools I'm using to win the game now, from staying out of harms way, to game-winning cards and the cards to set me up for them, so let's focus on controlling the pace of the game now...
If you've read my "Politics"-Primer you might remember why I love Inferno or Molten Disaster... While I play them to clear the board most of the time, the fact that it reduces the collective lifetotal makes it easier for me to finish them off later while not making me a target because the cards "happen to have this weird 'each player'-clause..." so if someone is to blame it's WotC for adding that. Of course I don't tell anyone that I wouldn't play them if they didn't have it.
Sadly "If you don't like it, torch it!" can't be applied to every card. For those cases I made sure to also pack some general-purpose removal... you know, just in case.
Rite of the Raging Storm getting printed in Commander2015 got us yet another really strong card for decks like these. There's just no reason not to attack with your free elemental and - let's be honest - there will always be at least one player who can't block the Elemental profitably.
Chapter 2 - The actual gameplan
With all these cards to provide me a weird form of safety from random attacks, I can focus on the real gameplan: Punishing people for doing broken things. And with punishing I mean hopefully killing them with whatever they wanted to pull off.
Each of these cards will kill - coupled with Gisela - if anyone goes "extrem" in any shape or form. Ramping hard with Boundless Realms? Acidic Soil it up. Getting one-shot by a commander? Reflect damage does only redirect so the opponent kills himself with commander damage. Avenger of Zendikar? Incite Rebellion... You get the idea.
This is exactly why this deck tries to be political about the early stages of the game: The more damage from Solemn Simulacrums etc. they take, the more likely I am able to kill them when they try to win the game with something busted.
Sadly, since I've dropped black from the deck, I'm missing out on some sweet punisher cards, but all in all I still believe playing Gisela is worth missing some of them in exchange for the damage boost.
Chapter 3 - Preparing for later
The hardest part of the deck is probably knowing when I'm supposed to start keeping up "kill spells" (referring to spells that will hopefully kill my opponents). This gets easier the more mana I've got available when the time comes around so I always focus on hitting as many landdrops as possible the first turns. If the first landdrop I'm missing is on turn 10, I almost always have a good shot at winning the game. So: Preparation is key!
(Also interesting to note is that ramping makes you seem more dangerous than just having a landdrop each turn... Even if you'll end up with the same amount of mana in the long run.)
Boy oh boy, do I love every single card here. They provide fixing and/or card advantage (with the exception of Tormenting Voice that is just there to filter your draw) while looking so incredibly innocent that noone will even look twice and simply shrug them off. But trust me when I say: Without these cards this deck would suck, but since they exist this deck is awesome!
The thing is that red and white both don't offer great choice when it comes to card draw but even if they did, in an actual game I would use them to find landdrops 90% of the time. So why not simply find lands instead, because that IS something artifacts and white cards can provide.
Chapter 4 - Some Removal won't hurt
I have explained all the tools I'm using to win the game now, from staying out of harms way, to game-winning cards and the cards to set me up for them, so let's focus on controlling the pace of the game now...
If you've read my "Politics"-Primer you might remember why I love Inferno or Molten Disaster... While I play them to clear the board most of the time, the fact that it reduces the collective lifetotal makes it easier for me to finish them off later while not making me a target because the cards "happen to have this weird 'each player'-clause..." so if someone is to blame it's WotC for adding that. Of course I don't tell anyone that I wouldn't play them if they didn't have it.
Sadly "If you don't like it, torch it!" can't be applied to every card. For those cases I made sure to also pack some general-purpose removal... you know, just in case.
Chapter 5 - Enabling your win
Of course an EDH game is no "magical Christmasland" and sometimes opponents are just too healthy to kill them with burnspells on their own. On step in counteracting that was switching to Gisela as a commander rather than any random Mardu-General (in my case Zurgo).
Also people usually try not to die to my burnspells so they might try to disrupt me occasinally...
Who would've thought that Red can counter spells? Yes they're somewhat situational but so far I've never regreted running them. Especially Mages' Contest might look a bit wonky at first, but since usually people can't afford to pay huge amounts of life due to the nature of my deck it more often than not counters the spells like I want it to.
Scout's Warning also acts as a form of protection since playing Gisela "end of turn" right before you untap again makes her less vulnerable to (mass)removal and also adds a nice little element of surprise to the deck.
These cards are basically the icing on the cake for the deck. They turn each burnspell into a huge fireball of doom. End of Turn Dictate of the Twin Gods, untap, play Hostility and cast Inferno... the amounts of damage you can produce with only one of these is just monstrous, but if you draw two of them... no words man, no words.
They are also the reason why sometimes the deck is so mana hungry: I often need the mana to cast a doubler/tripler PLUS my burnspell to get there.
And that's it! That's my Gisela deck. If I had to choose a single deck out of my 30 that will fit into any powerlevel I would definitely choose this one since the more broken the decks get, the more damage this deck can dish out. This also makes it always fun to play since you'll neither stomp nor get stomped.
Of course I have just listed the cornerstones of the deck here. The full decklist is provided here!
Well, I hope you enjoyed this deckspotlight, because there are quite a lot more to come. Or not. Either way I'd love to get some feedback! Until then I'll...
See y'all 'round
Also people usually try not to die to my burnspells so they might try to disrupt me occasinally...
Who would've thought that Red can counter spells? Yes they're somewhat situational but so far I've never regreted running them. Especially Mages' Contest might look a bit wonky at first, but since usually people can't afford to pay huge amounts of life due to the nature of my deck it more often than not counters the spells like I want it to.
Scout's Warning also acts as a form of protection since playing Gisela "end of turn" right before you untap again makes her less vulnerable to (mass)removal and also adds a nice little element of surprise to the deck.
These cards are basically the icing on the cake for the deck. They turn each burnspell into a huge fireball of doom. End of Turn Dictate of the Twin Gods, untap, play Hostility and cast Inferno... the amounts of damage you can produce with only one of these is just monstrous, but if you draw two of them... no words man, no words.
They are also the reason why sometimes the deck is so mana hungry: I often need the mana to cast a doubler/tripler PLUS my burnspell to get there.
Outro
And that's it! That's my Gisela deck. If I had to choose a single deck out of my 30 that will fit into any powerlevel I would definitely choose this one since the more broken the decks get, the more damage this deck can dish out. This also makes it always fun to play since you'll neither stomp nor get stomped.
Of course I have just listed the cornerstones of the deck here. The full decklist is provided here!
Well, I hope you enjoyed this deckspotlight, because there are quite a lot more to come. Or not. Either way I'd love to get some feedback! Until then I'll...
See y'all 'round
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