With so many Commander precons releasing nowadays, it feels like a strong theme and identity is required to make a new deck stand out from the pack. Luckily for the designers putting together the Tarkir: Dragonstorm precons, the plane of Tarkir is home to Magic’s best-developed lore factions this side of the Ravnica guilds.
I’m sure they didn’t have to meditate long on the mountaintop before signing off on this 100 card love letter to the Jeskai clan and its legendary figureheads, past and present. These mountaintop monks didn’t just give this color combination it’s shorthand name. They defined prowess as a flagship mechanic, and even made “storming off” cool again by associating it with mystical martial arts flurries.
And for Commander in particular, there’s one character who embodied the ideal of that Jeskai playstyle like no other.
MEET THE COMMANDERS
The prodigy monk Narset has come full circle: from training in the Jeskai temples, to meeting the clan’s draconic nemesis and sometime mentor Ojutai, to adventures far beyond Tarkir as an enlightened planeswalker. Now desparked in the aftermath of the great Phyrexian invasion, the prodigal daughter has returned to collaborate with her clan’s new spirit dragon: Shiko.
Their combined power level seems to be somewhere above that of Shiko, but still less impressive than Narset in her OG “Enlightened Master” form (though that’s probably a good thing). A great Jeskai Commander should put their pilots through some thrilling mental gymnastics to earn a victory, and Shiko and Narset, Unified offers similar depth to peak Narset without needing to push the envelope of taste in balance terms.
Putting a small yet meaningful restriction on their Flurry ability is just the right touch to get deckbuilders like me out of autopilot and stand them apart from countless other URx spellslingers. Needing your second spell to target a permanent or player to get a copy is a drawback, yes. But it’s one which both underlines Narset’s affinity for noncreature spells, and invites you to find clever ways to broaden its scope.
It’s obviously a fantastic way to multiply the impact of spot removal or draw spells. But even for effects which don’t always target, there are compatible options available to double. Creatures which target things with their abilities may not work, but you can still multiply creature spells with Bestow and Mutate. For multi-modal spells like Cryptic Command, you can double incompatible effects (countering a spell) by combining them with a compatible one (bouncing target permanent).
Yes, these are corner cases and I doubt they are even more powerful compared to the more obvious options you can abuse, like extra turn spells. But I am glad to see a new Narset card encouraging players to get creative, think laterally and try out some unorthodox styles.
This deck’s second commander option is even more distinctively Jeskai in her effects. As one of several new cards which pay homage to the infamous Monastery Mentor, Elsha is a more aggressive and tempo-focused counterpoint to Narset’s measured midrange or control playstyle.
Rather than casting roughly two spells per turn, Elsha’s mass of prowess triggers encourages casting as many as we can manage – and with a bias towards combat tricks or other cheap sources of combat damage.
Extra turn spells – even those with the hefty drawbacks of Warrior’s Oath or Chance for Glory – become tempting finishers, as the horde of monks created with one swing become a table-smashing attack force on the follow-up. Alternatively, you can ignore the usual style of prowess and generate monks more efficiently by permanently buffing Elsha with auras and equipment.
Both these commanders offer strongly thematic designs celebrating famous Jeskai heroes with some lovely art – which you choose to lead your forces is purely a matter of taste, and both work well with the stock decklist.
NEW CARD REVIEW
I always important to consider the new printings which appear in a precon when recommending people buy it; even if the upgrade path I advise you down might not use them all, the others can often become staples of other decks on power level alone.
Adaptive Training Post
A very nice support spell combining our two major themes for the deck: copying spells, and casting lots of them. In our gameplan, it’s like a more open-ended version of Shiko and Narset: you still want a mix of cheap casts and major copy payoffs, but you no longer need to worry about the sequencing or how many turns have passed. You can even bank up the counters on this and copy the same payoff multiple times. Very scary.
Aligned Heart
Another of this deck’s prowess token generators. While not as immediately explosive as Elsha (or the original Mentor), it makes up for that with the innate stickiness of enchantments and a steadily-scaling return. I find that even linear combo decks can appreciate having cards which offer a self-contained “Plan B”, and Aligned Heart is a solid one.
Caldera Pyremaw
Five mana creatures that scream “priority target” as loud as this are a risky investment. At least Pyremaw is strong enough to just win in response to removal by chaining instants – or at least kill the opponent who cast said removal, thus saving your dragon. Even better if you can flash it out and then untap, or combined with any kind of power buff.
Tempest Technique
Needing a creature to carry the auras is a tough restriction for a storm win-con, especially compared to classic finishers like Tendrils of Agony. But the exponential scaling with extra copies (not to mention the upside in an enchantress deck, or with constellation triggers) makes this scary even at fairly low storm counts.
Will of the Jeskai
This is mighty strong even by the standard of the “Will” megacycle. If you have action in your graveyard, it’s Past in Flames – still one of the most valuable and rare effects in Magic. Otherwise, it’s Wheel of Fortune to draw more gas – and if you have your commander, the cards you discard to wheel will still be castable with the flashback effect!
$50 UPGRADE GUIDE
The Jeskai Striker precon is already quite a focused and potent product out of the box, but with a few tweaks and a bit of spare cash, we can make it transcendent.
The first thing to decide on is (as always) what we can afford to cut. There’s a handful of cards which seem low-impact for their mana cost, which well rip out, along with anything which doesn’t seem like it will fit the specific gameplan we’re going for.
That gameplan is the one I most associate with Narset as a character: attempting to chain together extra turns in an extended spell combo until we can win by beating down!
Some players revile extra turns as a win condition because it creates an awkward gap between “effectively ending the game” and actually winning. But to me this is the perfect fit for the commander – and I’m not just saying that because of flavor reasons or my own nostalgia.
Shiko and Narset copy at most one spell each turn, and make us work a bit to unlock that value. Doubling an extra turn spell is the biggest payoff we can realistically build around, in part because it gives us more opportunities to trigger our commander again. We don’t need to take infinite turns, just enough to really take over the board and maybe snipe the strongest-looking opponents before letting somebody else play again.
The first set of includes we need for this plan are the extra turn spells themselves. We specifically need ones which say “target player” so we can double them, which means we end up having to play some very expensive cards to reach the kind of redundancy we need. Even with some treasure generation, I doubt a Jeskai deck can quickly reach the kind of mana needed to cast Time Stretch or Beacon of Tomorrows, let alone as a second spell for turn.
However, we can get a significant discount by using cheaper effects to free-cast these spells from our graveyard, hand or library! I love how perfectly cards like Mizzix’s Mastery and Reenact the Crime dovetail with our commander’s trigger wording. Playing any of these as our first spell for turn means whatever we actually end up casting will be our second spell, so these effectively say “cast something for free, twice”.
Freecasting from the graveyard is easy enough, but since our actual number of turns spells in the deck is pretty low, it’s important that we can reach into our library and freecast from there too. This is where Narset’s Enlightened Master form comes in handy, as does the already-included Velomachus Lorehold.
Throw in Aminatou’s Augury, Portent of Calamity, Keldon Flamesage and Summons of Saruman, and we’re starting to get significantly greater odds of hitting consecutive extra turns spells. We’ll add Long-Term Plans as a niche but powerful instant tutor which can move cards within our library to ensure these effects pay off.
Actually drawing our expensive extra turns spells to hand is a bit of a setback, but one we can overcome by discarding them to graveyard or Brainstorming them back to the top of library just when you’re preparing a freecast trigger. Alternatively, we can try and harness the deck’s considerable token generation ability to try and help cast them: either by convoking with Wand of the Worldsoul, or powering them out with an attack from Epistolary Librarian.
Putting in all the support for this plan took a lot of time and almost all of our $50 budget. But there’s still room for a touch of spice! I’m a huge fan of Kaho, Minamo Historian in this list, as she gives us a lot of control over when and how we trigger Shiko and Narset. She can’t imprint any of the current extra-turns spells, but she can re-use key spells like Long-Term Plans or Narset’s Reversal to enable game-winning turn chains nevertheless.
Check out the full decklist and changes on Moxfield here.
JUST NAR’SET-TING UP MY COMBO
There you go – an already excellent precon is reinforced and re-armed with some nods to the classic Jeskai style.
If you wanted to go a bit further with this build, I would recommend Breath of Fury and Surge to Victory as super-easy ways to win off having a bunch of monk tokens, or cards like Dream Halls which can trivialise our mana issues. You can also look at cost discounters like Magnus the Red and Semblance Anvil, or a mutate/recursion package with Lore Drakkis and Vadrok, Apex of Thunder – remember that mutate spells get doubled by the commander trigger!
But for a first meditation on the riddle of Narset and the Jeskai Strikers deck, I think this list will put you firmly on the good timeline!
Tom’s fate was sealed in 7th grade when his friend lent him a pile of commons to play Magic. He quickly picked up Boros and Orzhov decks in Ravnica block and has remained a staunch white magician ever since. A fan of all Constructed formats, he enjoys studying the history of the tournament meta. He specializes in midrange decks, especially Death & Taxes and Martyr Proc. One day, he swears he will win an MCQ with Evershrike. Ask him how at @AWanderingBard, or watch him stream Magic at twitch.tv/TheWanderingBard.