Commander Deck Tech - Aveline de Grandpé

Universes Beyond: Assassin's Creed was a great Magic: The Gathering crossover. Multiple famous, world-renowned game franchises have slowly integrated into this beloved TCG's multiverse, and that brings a lot of joy to Commander players, in particular because it gives them more to explore.

In today's article, we have brought you a deck tech with Aveline de Grandpré as the commander of a creature-centered deck with Deathtouch!

Aveline de Grandpré will be our Golgari commander for today, and her mechanic and game style is quite simple: just buff Deathtouch creatures with combat damage.

Let's go straight to the point: with this deck, the idea is to attack multiple times to get more +1/+1 counters and get the most out of the combination of Deathtouch + Trample: all the damage you deal will go through except for 1, which is how much damage you need to deal do destroy a blocker through Deathtouch.

We added the most useful Deathtouch creatures for this build, alongside removals, card draw, and everything we need to never run out of gas as we play - after all, that's what aggro is all about! As usual, we'll show you an alternative, budget version of this deck at the end of this article. Let's go!

We play 30 creatures, and 21 of them have Deathtouch. The others are just utility creatures, like creatures which, for instance, give you even more +1/+1 counters, draw you cards, or have some other useful effect.

Accelerators

As mana rocks, we use the classics: Sol Ring and Arcane Signet. We can cast Aveline pretty quickly because of her Disguise, and, as we want to keep her on the board most of the time, we also use a new card: Viewpoint Synchronization.

It originally costs 5 mana, but, with its Freerunning, we can cast it for 3 mana. It also puts 2 basic lands on our board and adds 1 to our hand, so it's basically a buffed Cultivate! By the way, this list also includes Cultivate and its twin brother, Kodama's Reach.

We also use the most popular, cheap ramp tools: Rampant Growth, Nature's Lore, Farseek, and Three Visits, to look for not only basic lands, but also Woodland Chasm or Overgrown Tomb.

Then, we added some mana dorks with Deathtouch: Leyline Prowler, which also has Lifelink, Nightshade Dryad, and the cute frog, Poison Dart Frog. Even though you do need to activate its ability to give it Deathtouch, its Reach makes it interesting because it makes it a deadly blocker.

Speaking of Reach, Tower Winder fits our list perfectly: it has Deathtouch, Reach (so it's an even safer blocker), and gets us our Command Tower by adding it straight into our hand when it enters the battlefield.

Deathtouch Creatures

Let's start with the most important creatures on our list. Fynn, the Fangbearer is quite popular for the Deathtouch mechanic as a whole, and, until today, was the most popular commander for this mechanic. Much of the reason behind this is that it easily kills opponents because it gives Poison counters to them when your Deathtouch creatures deal combat damage - that's also its job in our build, so don't worry. It's a great card to kill opponents more easily, as well as fast.

As this deck focuses completely on combat damage, even if our creatures have Deathtouch, cards like Fog and similar could be quite problematic. Particularly if your opponent Reanimates a Spore Frog every turn.

So, we added Questing Beast to our list. It does our laundry, our dirty dishes, our taxes, and much more: it has Vigilance, Deathtouch, Haste, and its main ability states that any combat damage our creatures deal can't be prevented. This helps us deal with cards that prevent damage or even protection cards, considering this is a way to prevent damage as well. Furthermore, Questing Beast has evasion on its own and deals damage to the enemy planeswalkers directly when it deals damage to your opponents.

Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire tutors any card we want to the top of our deck with its Boast ability. The best strategy with this card is keeping it alive for as long as possible to take advantage of these tutors, particularly if you use it to tutor the cards we listed above. The fact we can access any card in our deck is great, and the card draw this list plays will easily add the card we just tutored to our hand on that same turn.

And, if we ever struggle to deal combat damage, Hooded Blightfang can be quite disruptive for our opponents - its ability triggers whenever one of our Deathtouch creatures attacks. So, if we attack with 5 of our creatures, we'll gain 5 life and our opponent will lose 5 life. Hooded Blightfang also lets us destroy planeswalkers with Deathtouch creatures as a bonus, and thus makes dealing with this type of permanent very easy.

Now that we went over this deck's powerhouses, let's move on to our lifegain, which will sustain us throughout the match. We added the Vampires Vampire Nighthawk, Gifted Aetherborn, Vampire of the Dire Moon, and Nighthawk Scavenger to our list because of their Lifelink, and, of course, Deathtouch. Vampire Nighthawk and Nighthawk Scavenger also have Flying, so you'll most likely be able to buff them considerably through Aveline. I'll also highlight our little Vampire "goyf", Nighthawk Scavenger, in particular, because he can go into play already quite big early on because of his ability, and will most likely grow even more with our commander in play.

Speaking of Flying creatures, we couldn't forget Hornet Queen: despite costing 7 mana, it creates 4 1/1 Flying Insects with Deathtouch when it enters the battlefield, so it's 7 mana for 5 Deathtouch bodies with evasion. Poison-Tip Archer is also a great blocker because of its Reach, and can be quite problematic because it is an Aristocrat. A global removal with enough creatures on the board can be lethal for your opponents.

Ambush Viper may seem simple, but it will catch your opponents off-guard as a blocker. Archpriest of Shadows lets us Reanimate creatures we lost throughout the game. Its Backup is great to do this as well, because it lets us target a creature regardless of summoning sickness.

Saryth, the Viper's Fang gives Deathtouch to the few creatures in this deck that don't have it, and, at the same time, adds more protection to our untapped creatures because of the Hexproof it gives them. We can also save a creature with her untap ability.

Finally, we added Vraska, the Silencer to steal enemy creatures, which will then become treasure tokens. Our strategy forces our opponents to block at all times, so Vraska could, potentially, steal lots of creatures for us. Then, we can just take advantage of their abilities because they'll be copies of the original creatures, but also treasure tokens.

Interacting with +1/+1 Counters and Evasion

As our strategy relies on keeping our commander on the board at all times to buff our other Deathtouch creatures, of course we added several cards that interact with +1/+1 counters.

For instance, we added Hardened Scales, as well as Ozolith, the Shattered Spire, to get even more counters. Winding Constrictor is another similar card.

To double how many +1/+1 counters we get, we use Corpsejack Menace, Branching Evolution, and Innkeeper's Talent. I'll highlight Innkeeper's Talent because its level 1 gives us counters, its level 2 protects our permanents with Ward 1, and its level 3 doubles the counters we add to our permanents. Please note that, with Fynn, the Fangbearer, this card will give you 4 Poison counters to put on your opponent for each time one of your creatures deals combat damage to them.

Communal Brewing is useful to buff our creatures, and, with it, we won't have to rely on our commander that much. If we let all 3 of our opponents draw a card, for instance, our creatures will get 3 extra +1/+1 counters. If level 3 Innkeeper's Talent is in play, Communal Brewing may get 6 counters when it enters the battlefield, and will give our creatures 12 extra +1/+1 counters.

Finally, we have evasion: like we mentioned before, Deathtouch + Trample means all the damage we deal will go through, except for 1. With this in mind, we added Primal Rage, Duskshell Crawler, and Kodama of the West Tree. I'll highlight Kodama of the West Tree in particular because it puts basic lands on our board whenever one of our modified creatures deals combat damage.

Card Draw

To make sure we'll always have gas, we added a lot of card draw. Considering we also play 30 creatures, as well as the commander, we included Beast Whisperer to draw cards whenever we cast a creature, and Guardian Project to draw cards whenever one of our creatures enters the battlefield.

Then, because this deck also deals combat damage practically every turn, we had to add Toski, Bearer of Secrets and Ohran Frostfang. Ohran Frostfang, as a bonus, also gives Deathtouch to any creature we attack with, so, with this card, the creatures we play that don't have this keyword will also gain value from Aveline's ability.

Garruk's Uprising's Trample is what is important for us, but, with Communal Brewing for instance, this card may draw us other cards practically whenever any creature enters our battlefield. Return of the Wildspeaker is useful both as a finisher and as card draw.

Furthermore, out of our 30 creatures, 24 aren't Human, so Return of the Wildspeaker is a great choice. Rishkar's Expertise follows this same reasoning when it comes to utility - it draws us cards and lets us cast a card for free.

Inspiring Call protects all our creatures with +1/+1 counters and, as a bonus, can also draw us many cards. Stocking the Pantry may seem simple, but is very useful, as it will get counters basically every turn. So, paying 2 mana for one card doesn't seem so bad considering this strategy.

Finally, we included Oakhame Adversary, which draws us cards when he deals combat damage, Glissa Sunslayer, which also lets us destroy an enchantment or remove counters from a permanent, and Chevill, Bane of Monsters, which works with Bounty counters. Like we mentioned before, our deck forces our opponents to block, and that means their creatures will die very easily. This is great for Chevill's counters, as then they'll give us one card and three life.

Answers and Utility

Of course, we also had to add many answers, removals, and recursion. As our utility lands, we play Shizo, Death's Storehouse, and Rogue's Passage for evasion.

Karn's Bastion buffs our creatures thanks to its Proliferate, and Boseiju, Who Endures is a removal land that fits any green Commander deck nowadays.

Eternal Witness and Timeless Witness will help us recover our lost resources. To make sure we can be aggressive and protect our strategy as early as possible, we also play Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves. We don't play the colors that easily give us Haste, so these boots make up for that.

As broad spot removals, we play Assassin's Trophy, Tear Asunder, and Beast Within. They'll deal with any sort of permanent.

Bitter Triumph and Infernal Grasp will make sure anything truly problematic dies at once, even when our opponents don't block our creatures with their important cards.

We also play Viridian Longbow - after all, nearly all creatures in this deck have Deathtouch, so you basically just need to tap one that is equipped with this card to kill another problematic enemy creature.

As our Lifegain, we added Toxic Deluge, which is a great global removal as well, particularly to deal with indestructible creatures.

We then added Damnation to deal with opponents that develop their board faster. To protect our permanents, besides the aforementioned Inspiring Call, we use Heroic Intervention.

Finally, to finish the game as fast as possible, we play Triumph of the Hordes and Overwhelming Stampede. Both give us evasion with Trample and can be aggressive finishers, either through Poison counters or gigantic creatures.

We were able to keep most of the essential cards from the original list, and changed very little. Nonetheless, we added many other options to this budget version to keep our strategy intact and make sure it is consistent.

This is a simple deck, as we mentioned earlier in this article. I've seen a few of my friends play Aveline de Grandpré up close, and I was surprised to see how fun she is! I'm sure piloting this build will be a lot of fun for you, particularly as you'll always make your opponents think twice before doing anything because of your Deathtouch.

Did you enjoy this list? Would you change anything? Did you miss any cards? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!