Commander Deck Tech: Beluna Grandsquall

Every time a new Magic: The Gathering set comes along, eager Commander players try to look for new options for their decks or even to just build a new deck from scratch. In my case, I constantly look for a specific type of deck to build, and we'll be discussing it here.

In today's article, we have a Commander Deck Tech with a commander from the new set, Wilds of Eldraine. Get ready for a deck filled with Adventures!

We have here a Giant Noble commander, in the colors Blue, Red and Green. The interesting part is that it can be cast as an Adventure! In the original Eldraine set, Throne of Eldraine, our dear Mark Rosewater avoided giving this mechanic to legendary creatures, to avoid discussions and annoying rules, but today we know how to deal with that type of interaction well. The commander tax indeed applies to the card's Adventure part, increasing its price when it is cast this way.

As we can observe from its abilities, Beluna Grandsquall is a card focused on the Adventure mechanic, originally from Throne of Eldraine and later on appearing in Commander Legends: Dungeons & Dragons Battle for Baldur’s Gate. Its Adventure side allows you to filter your deck and get more Adventures to use, and its creature side makes permanents with Adventure cheaper, which makes cheap spells, such as your Bonecrusher Giant, or high-cost spells, such as Sword Coast Serpent, easier to play.

With this combination of colors and abilities, it will be possible to build a very fun deck which will be capable of bringing a lot of friction to games, extracting the highest amount of utility possible out of each card.

The best way to build a deck with Beluna Grandsquall as the main character is, obviously, focusing on permanents with Adventures. With Wilds of Eldraine, we finally have access to more permanents which have access to this mechanic, so we won't depend only on creatures while we're on this journey. What has really stood out to me is how this archetype evolved with the new set, opening space for many new plays and situations.

To write this article, I spent a long time researching lists which were trying to use this giant, particularly NiceKronk's list, which stood out to me both for its execution and monetary value. After that, I collected cards used in other builds, adjusted slightly and added some cards used by me in my many years as a Temur Tempo player.

The deck ended up like this:

Thanks to the Adventure mechanic, we have access to many cards with two uses instead of one, such as an instant or spell or as a permanent soon afterward. As long as the spell is cast as an Adventure, it stays exiled waiting to be cast as a permanent again, this way protecting itself from discard engines such as Painful Quandary, which are very common in Tergrid, God of Fright decks.

Adventures usually have smaller effects than instant spells or common spells, but the card makes up for that as it has more than one role. A good example of that are cards such as Grabby Giant, whose Adventure half grants you a simple Treasure, but its other side has a giant with Reach which draws you cards by sacrificing artifacts, such as the small treasure you've just created, for instance. Most of the fun with this deck is in finding the synergy between the cards' two sides and enhancing your plays.

Between notable cards with this mechanic, we can highlight Brazen Borrower, which is capable of returning your opponents' permanents to their hands, sometimes even countering entire turns. This card is very popular in the formats it is legal, and here we can take good advantage of it too. Bonecrusher Giant, another important card with this mechanic, is also present here - its Adventure deals 2 damage to any target, and its creature side protects itself well against anything that is thrown at it, dealing residual damage to whoever targets it.

Moonshae Pixie is an interesting addition for turns in which you have a good amount of mana. Casting it as an Adventure gives you the opportunity to grace up to three creatures of yours with the Flying keyword, which you'd probably use to beat your opponents down. Right afterward, Moonshae Pixie can be cast as a creature, triggering its ability, which checks how many opponents were dealt damage that round and allows you to draw that same number of cards.

The new thing from Wilds of Eldraine when it comes to Adventures are the virtues, an incredibly strong cycle of mythics. Virtue of Courage and Virtue of Strength are great enchantments, which give us small advantages as Adventures, and create a lot of value as permanents.

As we have mentioned before, Adventures weren't meant to be broken on one side with an Ancestral Recall and on the other also give you a powerful monster. This mechanic is here to gradually give you small advantages and create constant value for you. The trait of polarizing matches by gaining rhythm and time against enemy plays is very like Temur decks, the name given to Blue, Red and Green decks.

With that in mind, we know that we can build our deck trying to use the best interactions to transform small card advantages into great snowballs which are impossible to stop, extracting more value out of a simple Adventure, such as Embereth Shieldbreaker, than simply just destroying an artifact.

A great example of that is Edgewall Innkeeper, a creature which provides us card draw with the entry of creatures with Adventure on board. The same card draw engine goes for Storyteller Pixie, but for its Adventure side. With both cards on board, it is possible to always get value when casting an Adventure card. Other cards such as Archmage Emeritus allow us to draw cards alongside Adventures and Extraordinary Journey and Beast Whisperer as creatures.

With Lozhan, Dragon’s Legacy, we have a remarkable synergy. When it is on board and a spell with the Adventure subtype is cast, it deals its value converted into damage to a target which isn't a commander. The same thing happens when we cast a Dragon spell. This way, if we play Adventures with Dragon type creatures, such as Amethyst Dragon, we can sequence a lot of damage and go for a more aggressive strategy. Guttersnipe works similarly, allowing us to deal repeated and sequenced damage each time a spell or instant is cast.

Candlekeep Inspiration and Frantic Firebolt are spells which increase in size and power according to how many exiled creatures are Adventures or instants and to how many spells are in the graveyard, bringing to the game powerful tools for late game, particularly helping you finish the game in case you face a Candlekeep Inspiration.

But, what every Adventure deck wants, no matter if we're discussing decks for a one-on-one duel or a Commander game, is, unquestionably, Lucky Clover, an artifact capable of copying your Adventures. I am extremely happy to announce Wilds of Eldraine has brought us Chancellor of Tales, a creature capable of the same effect, allowing us even more copies of those abilities, this way increasing the quality of our Adventures and making the game even more interesting for them.

If we stop to think about it, Adventures are nothing more than instants and spells on a creature card. This way, effects which affect those instants and spells have a direct effect on Adventures when these are on the stack.

Thanks to that, we can copy even more times the Adventure type spells, not relying only on cards such as Lucky Clover and Chancellor of Tales. This way, a Ral, Storm Conduit and a Swarm Intelligence fit this deck like a glove, allowing you to extract the best of their abilities. Primal Amulet also helps you double your Adventures.

However, there is one other way of reusing your Adventures, and that is through returning these cards to your hand. Temur Sabertooth is great for that, capable of returning as many creatures as your mana allows for, and it even gives itself Indestructible when that happens, which really helps against global removals. Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar offers us another option to return our creatures to our hand to be reused, and still allows us card advantage when our attacks hit.

Flood of Tears is another wonderful spell, capable of returning to your hand all permanents on board which aren't lands, and allowing you to recover your deck's Adventures and delay your opponent's game plan, in the greatest Temur Tempo-style this deck can offer.

Here we have a budget version of this deck. Cards such as Virtue of Strength and Virtue of Courage make this deck very expensive, and swapping them out can help you get this deck earlier and start upgrading it in your own time.

This is the budget version:

Eldraine is one of my favorite planes, and it is full of characters I find charming. They are clearly inspired by classic fairy tales we all grew up hearing about, but the artwork characterization really reminds me of the TV show "Faerie Tale Theatre", which was presented by the actress Shelley Duvall.

The shiny colors in characters' wardrobes and the curious situations presented in Eldraine's artworks really captivate me and fill me with nostalgia, as if I was watching Saturday afternoon TV just as I did when I was little. I really like this plane.

See you next time!