Commander Deck Tech: Eivor, Battle-Ready

The Universes Beyond: Assassin's Creed Starter Kits were designed to introduce Magic: The Gathering to new players. Nonetheless, they brought us incredibly interesting cards which anyone can use, even the most experienced players.

In this article, we'll show you two Commander decks with Eivor, Battle-Ready as your commander. The goal is to explore the interaction between this commander and certain equipment pieces to guarantee a victory through combat damage and burn.

Let's dive in!

Let's start by exploring our commander!

If you've never played Assassin's Creed before, here's some background on Eivor: Eivor is the protagonist of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, a game inspired by Nordic myths, culture, and history - it is centered around vikings.

Eivor's gender is customizable, and all versions of this character are canonical in the Assassin's Creed universe. So, if you find different images of them on the internet, don't worry.

In the story, Eivor is a warrior who was trained for combat since very early on. Eivor's MTG version is definitely a great adaptation of the character and is very attractive if you enjoy aggressive decks.

When Eivor attacks, they deal damage equal to the number of Equipment you control to each opponent. Please note that you don't need to attach your equipment to Eivo to use this effect.

So, our main list includes many equipment options and interesting creatures; they'll help Eivor win us many matches.

To deal even more burn damage with our commander, our equipment pieces need to be on the board when we attack with Eivor. So, we added many creatures that interact with equipment in different ways to buff this ability and play even more equipment on the board under our control.

Let's split these cards into sections:

More Equipment on the Board!

After seeing Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith on the board, it became my favorite uncommon legendary creature!

Boros is not known for its ramp, but this Goblin's ability definitely stands out, as it creates equipment tokens for free whenever you play a land. If Sword of the Animist or Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus are attached to one of your attackers, for instance, Toggo's effect will be even stronger.

Furthermore, you can deal damage to any target if you equip Rock equipment tokens on your creatures and tap them.

Another creature from the Assassin's Creed set in this list that deserves a shoutout in is Kassandra, Eagle Bearer.

This Assassin enters the battlefield and searches for The Spear of Leonidas in your deck, hand, or graveyard. Then, she puts it in play.

In turn, you can use one of The Spear of Leonidas' abilities when the creature it is attached to attacks. You can:

- Create Phobos, a legendary creature token;

- Give double strike to the equipped creature until the end of the turn;

- Discard two cards to draw two others.

As this equipment is legendary, it also triggers Kassandra's second ability and thus draws us one extra card when creatures attached with legendary equipment under our control deal combat damage to a player.

Stonehewer Giant is our friendly giant as well as our favorite support for equipment decks. With its activated ability, besides getting us an equipment piece from our deck, we'll be able to attach it for free to a creature under our control. A tutor like this definitely makes a difference in the game!

Lastly, let's give a shoutout to Bloodforged Battle-Axe. This equipment is cheap both to equip and to cast and has an incredibly cool ability: when the creature it is attached to deals combat damage to a player, it creates a copy of Bloodforged Battle-Axe.

The more copies of it we have, the more buffs we can give to our creatures and the more burn damage our commander will deal.

Tutors

Unlike Stonehewer Giant, the other tutors in this list don't put equipment in play, but rather add it to our hand - but that doesn't make them bad in any way!

Kellan, the Fae-Blooded and Fighter Class, both cheap cards, can give us any equipment you want. They also have extra effects.

In Kellan's case, the other creatures under our control will get a +1/+0 buff for each equipment attached to it.

As for Fighter Class, it discounts the cost of our equip abilities and forces a target enemy creature to block one of our attacks.

This means that, with it, you might be able to remove an enemy creature by attacking it and forcing it to block,

Besides these cards, we can also use Axgard Armory to look for an equipment piece in our deck and add it to our hand.

Equipping Cards for Free

We don't need to attach our equipment cards to our creatures to deal burn damage with Eivor. However, we can't ignore that there are many incredibly useful and fun options we can use to buff Eivor's damage significantly and deal the 21 commander damage we want to deal.

So, we decided to add several cards to this list to attach our equipment to our creatures for free in any way we want.

Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist is probably one of the most popular cards for voltron decks, just like Hammer of Nazahn.

Despite the 99 cards in their decks, Commander players always appreciate cards that have more than one ability, and Codsworth, Handy Helper definitely fits this description. Do you need mana to cast equipment? Codsworth is your guy! Do you want Ward 2 to protect your commander? No problem! Do want to equip a card without paying for it? Just tap it!

A few other cards that stand out are Forge Anew, which is useful because it returns equipment from your graveyard and lets you equip them whenever you would be able to cast an instant, and Sigarda's Aid. Sigarda's Aid basically gives Flash to your equipment spells and lets you attach them to a target creature as soon as they enter play.

Halvar, God of Battle is a god Eivor would love to meet! You can cast it as a creature to give double strike to your equipped creatures and equip other creatures for free, or as equipment. Its equipment version is quite useful: it returns to your hand the creature it is equipped to when it dies.

Regardless of which side you pick, Halvar will definitely stand out in your game!

Is your Eivor equipped? Try to deal 21 commander damage! And if Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar is on the board, your commander will certainly ruin your opponent's lives.

As we said before, Boros is not known for its ramp. We might not use that many expensive cards as well, but we still needed to pick our mana rocks and ramp wisely.

After all, you need mana to cast your cool cards.

Weathered Wayfarer might be situational, but you'll still want it, just like Land Tax. It gets you up to three basic lands from your deck and adds them to your hand.

This is great for two reasons:

- First, you'll get a land (obviously)!;

- Secondly, you want to draw more equipment instead of lands.

Sword of the Animist and Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus will get lands from your deck and add them to your battlefield tapped. As for The Reaver Cleaver, it buffs the creature it is attached to, gives it Trample, and creates treasures equal to how much combat damage that creature dealt to a player or planeswalker.

We also prioritized mana rocks that cost 2 or less in our list because they're efficient options considering what we want to play and the fact they won't "brick" our turn by forcing us to cast only one spell.

When a creature has lifelink, you'll gain life according to how much damage it deals - whether in combat or not. So, this means Eivor's burn damage will also heal you if you give it lifelink.

Gaining life might not be a win condition exactly, but it's always nice, isn't it?

With Shadowspear, your creatures will gain buffs as well as interesting keywords. Furthermore, for just one mana, this equipment's ability makes enemy permanents vulnerable if you want to target them with abilities or destroy them with spells.

Basilisk Collar will make your Eivor a very threatening blocker on your board, considering it already naturally has vigilance and grows considerably throughout the game. With deathtouch and lifelink, it will be a true nightmare to deal with.

These are the most important elements in this list; they will all get you closer to victory.

Now, let's discuss our alternative list!

Did you think this equipment deck was a one-creature army? Wrong!

In this list, we'll take advantage of Kamigawa creatures with reconfigure, like Lion Sash and Komainu Battle Armor, as well as equipment that creates creature tokens, like Andúril, Flame of the West, Bladehold War-Whip, Bonehoard, and Kaldra Compleat.

The idea is to fill your board with equipment and equipment creatures to play Eivor and immediately attack with it to deal a lot of damage with its burn. All while you keep your board well-protected with many blockers.

This list also includes Grafted Exoskeleton to give Eivor Infect and make it even more dangerous and lethal.

This version adds great equipment to this voltron-style strategy, but also plays around with tokens and equipment creatures.

Eivor, Battle-Ready is only interested in one thing: interacting with equipment. And it's great at that.

Whether they're attached to it or not, Eivor takes advantage of equipment under your control to attack your opponent's lives and bring you closer to victory.

This commander's mechanic is relatively simple and quite fun, considering it lets you look away from the most obvious "staples" in this archetype and explore cards that are not that popular to completely take advantage of Eivor's effect.

What about you? Did you like this deck? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below, and tell us which commander you would like to see next.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!