Commander Deck Tech - The Goose Mother

Welcome to another Deck Tech! This time, let's develop a deck with a fascinating Legendary creature from Eldraine, which is a bit bizarre and definitely comical - we're talking about The Goose Mother!

A hydra is usually an already complex, incredible creature due to its whole mythology, but a goose hydra is, certainly, dangerously surprising. Let's venture into its possible strategies, creating a deck full of interactions that will bring us to victory.

The Goose Mother's ability set shows great potential, starting with its flexible cost, which will enable us to assess what is the best time to cast it, always considering the amount of mana and resources available. This mana cost factor, which boosts this commander's strength, is a strong point we should consider, because the more mana we have, the more power we have - which will allow us to potentially reach 21 commander damage.

Our strong suits are the great synergies with accelerations and card draw, besides interactions with tokens, artifacts and counters, which will also have their strategic value, and are the main choices for this deck's build.

Let's develop our strategy, making clear that this type of deck can vary a lot regarding its build options because of how many synergies we can bring. This is an excellent trait, because having as much strategic variety as we do will allow us to expand our experience and explore different building styles, creating different decks with the same shell and consistency.

It is like having many different decks in just one; just change some key cards, varying strategy and also boosting your fun. To create such possibilities, I suggest you take a look at the maybeboard, because we've left there a varied list if you want to build other versions which are viable too.

Accelerators

Like any Simic archetype deck, one of its qualities is that it can extract a lot from mana generators, and therefore we'll use creatures with these abilities, adding cards that look for lands and complementing our list with mana rocks.

In this deck, we concentrated on adding low-cost mana curve accelerators, so we can cast them early and even connect them on that same turn. That will allow us, on the following turns, to access more actions, but we also use a few high-cost mana curve accelerators to impact the game with a few specific play patterns.

Synergy: Tokens

Let's approach the synergies we can create with the deck's tokens, particularly the Food tokens created by the commander and other usual cards.

An interesting fact is that Food tokens are connected to various cards in this deck for different reasons, which actually amplifies your choices. One of the values we'll focus on this deck tech is how to increase the number of our tokens on board - because the more, the better!

By doubling down on actively trying to widen our battlefield, we can assign different roles for these tokens, besides their actual abilities.

Synergy: Artifacts

Our deck's tokens are essentially artifacts, and, if we go back to how we want to widen our battlefield, we can take advantage of this trait for our strategy.

Let's separate different card options, paying close attention to resourceful and support cards first:

Further on, we can see the options we've selected as ways of boosting and buffing the power of our battlefield, and therefore create alternative win conditions.

Support and Resources

We have cards that aren't connected to this list's main goal, but that create the basis of the deck utility-wise. If you'd like to change this deck's strategy, these cards can be kept as this deck's shell, because they set down a good foundation base for various available styles.

The options below can be good answers, protection spells and also control cards, which, when used with precision, can guarantee your deck will work as well as it possibly can.

Observing the list above, we can see that our deck is characterized as a Midrange Aggro deck in the strategy we've chosen. We have cards that build a solid battlefield, allow us access to good resources and stable answers, and develop our strategy as we look for victory through massive attacks or the Voltron potential our commander represents.

As we can bring a reasonably powerful one-hit attack, and because our commander has the Flying ability, which implies a good evasion, we can defeat opponents by using the "21 commander damage" rule.

Putting the Strategy to the Test

I described below a few promising play lines I recommend you use during matches, considering the best way to pilot our deck, avoiding mistakes and guaranteeing you'll thoroughly extract as much as you can out of this deck and its resources.

As our deck brings , let's consider an early game with friendly and non-aggressive actions, avoiding conflict and building our battlefield with lands, mana rocks and options such as Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Gilded Goose, Jaheira, Friend of the Forest, Elanor Gardner and Peregrin Took, to speed up our plays. After we've built a horizontal battlefield, we can risk a few plays which are more consistent and aggressive.

We also have , which is here to protect, support, and even strengthen our strategy, because we use responsive cards, such as counters: An Offer You Can't Refuse, Negate, Simic Charm, Swan Song and Voidslime, but they aren't here to prevent your opponents' plays, but rather prevent specific lines of play that can harm our strategy. This way, we can't waste this type of protection. Besides those, we have options such as Universal Surveillance, Clan Crafter, Shimmer Dragon and Junk Winder, which bring strategies that are focused on resourcefulness and support.

The combination of the colors and is very powerful and allows us access to incredible cards for our deck, such as Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, which has great synergy with our accelerators, and Adrix and Nev, Twincasters and Esix, Fractal Bloom, which have synergy with tokens. I'll highlight Esix's ability, as it can create decisive play patterns connected to the commander and other token generators as it copies useful creatures as soon as tokens are created on board.

Finally, as pointed out before, you can reach victory through the commander or with Kappa Cannoneer, Nettlecyst and Hydroid Krasis in a Voltron line, or with massive Aggro plays, such as Finale of Devastation, Overwhelming Stampede, Cyberdrive Awakener, Rise and Shine and Night of the Sweets' Revenge.

However, we have one particular card that can guarantee an alternative win condition in this strategy:

In a simple context, it has direct synergy with the commander and the other counter cards present in the deck, because, when we play these strategies, we'll trigger this enchantment's ability, which can potentially grant us victory during the next upkeep if we have stacked 20 counters with this ability.

Online Version - MTGA

Here is a revised list with viable and optimized replacements for our Magic Arena players! We use the same tech presented in this article, but in its online mode, in Historic Brawl and with a few significant changes to the build in comparison to its IRL version.

Budget Version

And last, but not least, we have the optimized Budget version, dedicated to friends that are interested in our deck tech and want to enjoy this sensational strategy, but with a limited budget.

Any time new sets are released, I pay close attention to commanders with this color combination, as more deck options open up to us players. These decks, even if they are similar to other existing decks, can potentially be innovative in some aspects - even more so when we can be flexible with our build, such as the shell presented in this article, which we can change a part of and create a different deck.

Now, it's up to you readers! Did you like this article? What is your favorite play pattern for this build? Would you do something different and more innovative? Don't forget to leave your comments, feedback, suggestions and opinions in the comment section, so we can grow and learn together.

Cheers, and see you next time!