On Theme - One Drops

There are two tenets of deck building when dealing with Commander that are fairly important to the format. The first is limitation - it is why the color identity was created. And the other is playing big fun splashy spells that you couldn’t in other formats. Building on a theme is one way of increasing the limitations, but today’s theme goes against that second tenet. Today's theme is limiting you card choice by playing only spells with the same converted mana cost. The deck I built is based around 1 drops, about the least likely card to play with in commander.
  

I should explain that I built this deck around a general that I misread. The deck was built with Edric, Spymaster of Trest, which I thought was a two drop, but I liked the way the deck turned out, so why not go with it?

For those that haven’t gone to see what Edric does, he is a 2/2 for 3 Elf Rogue, that lets any one draw a card when they hit one of your opponents.  So hopefully this keeps people from hitting you, since they get goodies for hitting anyone else.

The idea started with cards like Flying Men and Cloud Pirates, cards that were super cheap and had evasion to trigger Edric’s ability.  I started a list of as many creatures that fit that bill.  Anything that might be able to get in and hit for a point or two, and draw some more cheap creatures.
A couple allstars of this category are:


Wingcrafter - He can give some of our ramp creatures evasion or maybe give the ones with some kind of land walk the ability to hit people without those lands.  Caller of the Gales does this as well.


Reef Shaman - This guy helps set up your land walk, and fix your mana, what more can you ask for at one mana?
Delver of Secrets/Jace’s Phantasm - Most of the creatures in this list are 1/1’s, so finding some creatures that can be bigger then that at 1 is really great.


The next group of creatures is ramp creatures. You gotta find all the mana to play all these 1 drops, and they help with the win cons that I will talk about in a moment.
Birds of Paradise, Arbor Elf, Fyndhorn Elves, Heritage Druid, Joraga Treespeaker, Llanowar Elves - These all really do the same thing, tapping to put out more punks to clog up the board.


Skyshroud Ranger, Elvish Pioneer, Sakura-Tribe Scout - These let you drop some extra lands, not much to say about them really.

Burgeoning, Carpet of Flowers, Exploration, Manabond - Some ramp enchantments, which let you do something with all those extra land you will be drawing off Edric.

Ramp is boring, and everyone understands why it is good, so let’s move on to some of the more interesting things.


Hidden Gibbons, Hidden Guerrillas, Hidden Herd, Hidden Predators, Hidden Spider, Veil of Birds, Veiled Sentry - This is a group of cards that let you get some bigger creatures for your one mana investment. 

Scute Mob - Here is one of the guys that loves those extra land drops.  He can get pretty big if people don’t stop him, and he lets us have a bigger beater at one mana.

Protean Hydra - Something to do with all that ramp, this guy can get out of hand for sure, and he is fun to give flying or land walk of some sort.

Abjure, Avoid Fate, Condescend, Dispel, Disrupt, Envelop - With only a few real win conditions you gotta protect them, so some 1 drop counters seemed to be needed.

Well that is a look at some of the more stellar cards in the deck, and here is the rest of the list:


CREATURES

1 Arbor Elf
1 Aven Envoy
1 Birds of Paradise1 Caller of Gales
1 Cloud Pirates
1 Cloud Sprite
1 Copperhorn Scout
1 Defiant Elf
1 Delver of Secrets
1 Elvish Pioneer
1 Flying Men
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Grayscaled Gharial
1 Heritage Druid
1 Jace's Phantasm
1 Joraga Treespeaker
1 Jukai Messenger
1 Llanowar Mentor
1 Manta Riders
1 Marsh Boa
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Mold Adder
1 Mothdust Changeling
1 Protean Hydra
1 Reef Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Scout
1 Scute Mob
1 Shrieking Drake
1 Skyshroud Ranger
1 Taunting Elf
1 Thought Nibbler
1 Tidal Warrior
1 Tideshaper Mystic
1 Treetop Scout
1 Uktabi Drake
1 Veteran Explorer
1 Weatherseed Elf
1 Wingcrafter

 ENCHANTMENTS

1 Awesome Presence
1 Betrayal
1 Burgeoning
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Curiosity
1 Exploration
1 Hidden Gibbons
1 Hidden Guerrillas
1 Hidden Herd
1 Hidden Predators
1 Hidden Spider
1 Keen Sense
1 Manabond
1 Mirri's Guile
1 Rancor
1 Veil of Birds
1 Veiled Sentry

 INSTANTS

1 Abjure
1 Avoid Fate
1 Condescend
1 Dispel
1 Disrupt
1 Envelop
1 Gigadrowse

 LANDS

1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Command Tower
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Slippery Karst
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Wirewood Lodge
18 Forest
8 Island


Thanks for tagging along in the land of One Drops this week people.  If you got any ideas for the deck, or any other strange themes you would like to see built, shoot me an email at jmfelber@gmail.com ,  or hit my twitter @RealFelber.  I am hoping to eventually start taking weekly deck building challenges to write about, so any ideas are welcome.  I am also on the Salvation boards all the time and if you wanna check out my experiment in MTG Trading, check out The One Red Mountain Project.

Next week we will talk about a deck that is still in the works, maybe you can help me finish it.

Jon Felber