Dealing Massive Damage with Lightning, Army of One in Commander

Lightning, Army of One is sure to be a popular Commander. She’s the star of Final Fantasy XIII, she’s Boros, she enables damage doubling… but how can you get the most out of her? What set up do you need? Let’s dive in.

LIGHTNING, ARMY OF ONE

So, let’s get down to business. Lightning is a 3/2 with good keywords, and when she hits an opponent in combat, she’ll set up double damage from any source to the damaged player or a permanent under their control until your next turn.

What’s neat about Lightning is that she enables this not only through opponents attacking that player, but also through spells and abilities used in your second main phase (or an opponent’s turn), but also – and this is key – on regular damage after first strike damage. This means that you can get that double damage payoff during combat on units that don’t have First Strike.

To ratchet that damage up even more, you can have her deal damage additional times. This can be achieved through Double Strike (meaning Lightning herself can deal double damage in the regular damage step), and through extra combat steps. The more times you hit, the more of a damage multiplier you’re going to accrue. 

In practice, this means a Lightning Bolt can deal three, six, or even twelve damage when you’ve connected with Double Strike or an extra combat step. And if you combine Double Strike and an extra combat? Well, you’re doubling the damage four times, meaning that twelve damage Bolt becomes forty eight damage. 

CONNECTING WITH LIGHTNING

Before you get excited and start sawing boats in half, you’ve gotta take a step back for a second and realize that as soon as your opponents realize you can do this, well… they’re going to remove Lightning with extreme prejudice. In many ways, she’s going to be a glass cannon, and this will be magical Christmas land. You’re unlikely to get your Double Strike and extra combats, and at that point, you might even be annihilating players with Commander damage regardless. Still, the prospect of turning low mana plays into big damage is enticing. 

And you’re definitely going to catch people out before they get wise to it. 

So, in order to enact the gameplan, we need to achieve two things: avoid removal, and avoid blockers. 

Generally speaking, prioritizing cards that combine both effects is going to lead to the most resilient Lightning deck, so make sure to take effects like Celestial Armor and Bilbo’s Ring highly. Brave the Elements is another neat one that can help us with getting through and avoiding removal. 

Avoiding blockers is key to dealing as much damage with Lightning herself as possible, especially when she has Double Strike. This is because of a little rules rub regarding Trample and lethal damage.

TRAMPLE & REPLACEMENT EFFECTS

When you’re benefitting from a replacement effect involving damage amplification, and you have Trample,  you need to be aware that the damage doubling occurs after you have assigned lethal damage. So, if you’re dealing three damage with Lightning and it’s being doubled to six, you will still need to assign three damage to a three toughness blocker; you can’t assign two damage and trample the rest over, because two wouldn’t satisfy needing to assign lethal damage before calculating Trample damage. That’s a little annoying, and you can read about it more here. 

The long and short of it is that damage isn’t doubled as it is assigned, but only when it is dealt. 

So, as you can see – getting Lightning through unblocked is a massive priority. 

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO ELIMINATE A PLAYER WITH LIGHTNING

There are a great many options when it comes to building this deck, but aside from going the Voltron Equipment route and focusing solely on Lightning damage – and employing extra combat steps to ramp things up – there’s a lot of opportunity to be had with damage dealing effects. 

In order to help us pick the ones worth running, we need to consider a number of points:

• How much damage will it take, on average, to kill a player, at the point in the game when we can successfully launch and connect with Lightning to enable double or quadruple damage
  
• What conditions do we need to achieve that damage
  
• What effects can give us what we need to kill a player

So, first: what’s our “fair weather” condition?

We can reasonably assume it will take us until turn six to set up Lightning with a way to connect twice (through double strike or an extra combat), be deployed with Haste or with Protection, and for us to have a way to deal damage in hand. 

At that point, assuming the average game of Magic, life totals should be – on some players – between 20 and 30 life, after chip damage. 

So, if we assume that we’re dealing 3-5 damage with Lightning, and then a potential extra 6-10 in our second hit (through extra combats or Double Strike) that will put a player down anywhere between 10 and 25 life. In the best case scenario, we’d be putting them at 10, but in the worst case scenario, they’d still be in the high twenties. 

This is super useful information for us, because it helps us pick the best effects to finish people off

THE BREAKDOWN

I decided to get nerdy for this one and break out the ol’ spreadsheet. I evaluated the most common extra damage effects that are likely to be considered for a Lightning, Army of One deck, and did the math. I considered mana values, mana investment, board investment, average board-state, and any other special conditions where applicable. The result is this rather handy breakdown.

• Bold indicates the effects I am taking highest, based on overall efficiency and consistency of damage
• Bold effects not in darker red indicate needing some level of buildaround to achieve the best use case
• Italics means the effect is not reliable and needs gameplay considerations

It is very hard to predict the average amount of damage you’ll need to deal after connecting with Lightning, and so the cards have been evaluated against the floor being dealing 10-12 damage, and the ceiling being in the 20s. If your opponents are gaining life, you might have a harder time.

As you can see, we have some real standout cards. A quick note: you may notice that the Metalcraft cards (Galvanic Blast, Molten Psyche – and by association Dragonspark Reactor) aren’t hampered by needing advanced synergy. This is because of the assumption that by running artifact lands, equipment, and generating treasures, you’ll be able to hit their conditions naturally through gameplay.

MOST EFFICIENT & POWERFUL INCLUDES

Jeska, Thrice Reborn shoots to the top of our rankings, because she can allow Lightning to deal a ridiculous amount of damage. Triple is enough to kill someone who has already taken a hit from Lightning most of the time, so getting double that in an extra combat just ends people. Heartless Hidetsugu is excellent too, but just keep in mind that unless you’re stacking multiple Lightning triggers, you’re going to be putting someone to 1 life if they start on odd life. That’s what Abraded Bluffs is for, though 😉

Price of Progress remains the best bang for your buck, offering uncapped potential for just two mana. Likewise, for one mana, Galvanic Blast is the cheapest option by far.

You already want to be dealing damage and blowing up artifacts – Fiery Confluence gives you both effects on one card, and with damage doubling, turns the first mode into way more of a wrath, and the second into a player-killer. Similarly, the modality of Boros Charm means that, though dealing 8 doesn’t help us clear that first gate, the indestructible board or ability to give Lightning Double Strike make it a highly useful card.

Sword of War and Peace is really good in this deck, considering it also has uncapped damage potential. If you’re ever attacking a player with Reliquary Tower with this, you’re ending them. The life-gain is also sorely needed in a deck where people will likely be throwing way more creatures at you than you can realistically deal with.

Just bear in mind that giving Lightning pro-red and pro-white can work detrimentally just as it can work in your favor.

Much like Sword of War and Peace, Molten Psyche is high variance – and can also deal big damage. If you’re concerned with enabling either, consider running Secret Rendevous or Your Temple is Under Attack, or other communal draw, to keep opponents topped-up. 

Leveraging goad and aikido in this deck will give you some amount of wins. These effects are powerful, but I wouldn’t go too deep on them, as they are entirely depending on opponents doing what is best for you, which… they won’t. If you force people to attack someone with double damage, they’ll find a way not to. Similarly, Mana Barbs is a bit of a do-nothing unless you’re building a prison deck. I like Taunt and Deflecting Palm the most here.

A NOTE ON EXTRA COMBATS

Cheap and reusable are the word of the day here, so unless you’re going for Infinite Combats as a wincon (which I feel is beside the point of this build, but might still be something you want at a higher bracket) then instead of Aggravated Assault and Waves of Aggression, I’d be opting for Seize the Day, Bloodthirster, Aurelia the Warleader, and Full Throttle. Flying creatures help you get that bonus damage.

END STEP

Lightning, Army of One is a super fun twist on the damage doubling archetype, and if you can pull the pieces together, you’ll annihilate the opposition. Be sure to run enough card draw, and try recursion like Reconstruct History, as the deck’s gameplan is spread amongst many card types. Elspeth Knight-Errant might even be a good pick, to jump Lightning and give her +3/+3 until end of turn.

I hope the damage chart proves a useful resource – and if you think I missed anything, let me know on BlueSky.