Top 5 Underrated Alesha Budget Creatures
I fell in love with Alesha, Who Smiles at Death back in Khans block when I pulled her from a pack at the sealed draft during Fate Reforged. She was unfortunately fairly weak in the Standard Constructed of the time (we all remember the year of Siege Rhino). It wasn’t until I built an Alesha, Who Smiles at Death commander deck in late 2019 that it finally clicked for me. At the time, I wanted her to be as aggressive and oppressive as possible; I tore the rest of my decks apart for rares fodder and got set to infinitely recur some creatures with Karmic Guide and Reveillark. I played this deck for a few months, until we entered this ongoing period of unpleasantness, and it fell off of my regular rotation when I was able to return to in-person gaming.
Now, on the cusp of 2022, I have regressed back to Alesha in an attempt to give her a different spin. Most Alesha decks center around a few main themes; Aristocrats, Sacrifice, Hatebears, and then a victory through some infinitely recurring combo. These are all valid tactics, and very powerful directions to take Alesha, but I wanted to build her in a what I consider a more “classic” style of play; using anthem effects and combat tricks to turn my 2/2 creatures into real threats.
This Alesha deck is a beater. It capitalizes on the easy recursion available via Alesha’s attack trigger, and tries to turn those pesky 2/2 creatures into veritable threats with anthems and other effects to sneak their power level up. My current playgroup's power level is a bit diverse, so I've avoided the more abusive effects like such as Thalia, Grand Abolisher, Ragavan, etc.
Ebonblade Reaper
Ebonblade Reaper rocks. If you don’t want to spend $10-$15 on a Master of Cruelties to act as your wincon, drop the $0.35 for Ebonblade. Whenever he connects with an opponent, they’ll lose half their life (!). Remember that, all of your creatures will deal combat damage simultaneously, before Ebonblade's trigger goes off. To maximize life loss, you may be better off just sneaking in Ebonblade and Alesha and no one else. Alesha lets you play around his drawback, losing half of your life on his attack trigger, but that’ll be mitigated by skipping the attack trigger by reanimating him directly into the “tapped and attacking” state. Just keep a Viscera Seer (or Ashnod’s Altar, or Phyrexian Altar, or Dimir House Guard… I could go on) on hand and recur him every turn for a nasty threat.
Ambuscade Shaman
An A+ Gold Star card in this deck. Ambuscade Shaman gives any creature that just entered the battlefield +2/+2 until the end of the turn. Usually, this requires a significant mana investment to make valuable (think Fervor or flashing in blockers), but here, Ambuscade puts in work by buffing the creatures Alesha reanimates, making them a less enticing choice for blocking. While playtesting, I’ve found a few other nasty uses for him outside of just the reanimated creatures. For example; Mardu Ascendancy gives you a tapped and attacking 1/1 Goblin for each attacking creature you control. With the Shaman out, you suddenly have 3/3s entering the battlefield and coming at your opponents’ faces. Will you lose out on value when they shrink back down to 1/1s? Sure! Just turn them into fodder for blocks or sacrifices and keep turning the rest of your cards sideways.
Lim-Dul’s Paladin
Earlier this week, a friend pointed out at our pod; “Jeff’s always playing stuff that’s like, ‘I found this one little neat card no-one’s heard about or ever played,’” and dammit if that doesn’t fill my heart with pride. Anyways, along comes Lim-Dul’s Paladin, a funky little guy from all the way back in 1996’s Alliances set. Lim-Dul’s Paladin is a 0/3 with trample for 4 with the “drawback” of sacrificing him and drawing a card if you don’t discard a card during your upkeep. Remember that you can play this to your advantage in an Alesha deck: use the discard to fill your graveyard with the creature you need to reanimate this turn, or sacrifice the Paladin to draw an extra card and reanimate him again during your combat.
Now, for the funky part: When Lim-Dul’s Paladin is blocked, he becomes a 6/6 trampler, and when he gets through unimpeded, he simply causes your opponent to lose 4 life. This creates a confusing and needlessly complex Declare Blockers step as your opponent weighs the costs of blocking the Paladin. A neat and unique creature, I’m a staunch fan of this old weirdo.
Skirge Familiar
Ramping mana in Mardu is typically reduced to mana rocks and rituals, but Skirge Familiar occupies a unique space. At 5 mana, he’s a little too late game to be aggressively ramping your manabase. Frequently, I’ll find myself dropping Familiar in the mid-late game while I flounder for an extra turn or two to set up my graveyard, and he has delivered. Sadly, as a three-power creature, we can’t reainmate the Skirge with Alesha, but we can use him to effectively “sneak attack” a creature into play by discarding it (plus one other card! Be sure to fill your grave with another good target), adding 2 black to our pool and reanimating said creature. Don’t have the four Boros mana available to cast Blade Historian? Can’t quite get both the Boros Charm and a creature into play? Skirge is here to help.
Mindclaw Shaman
Mindclaw Shaman may not be “underrated” but he is definitely a sleeper in this deck. The contemporary commander deck includes a pile of big, flashy spells to play to end games then and there. Players often hoard these in their opening hands, tempted by the chance to make their big play in the mid game and end their opponents. Mindclaw is here to punish them for that. Been hanging onto that Triumph of the Hordes? Oops! Mine. Board state too nasty for all your little creatures? That Cyclonic Rift is looking pretty tasty. Or, maybe you need to steal an enemy’s Boros Charm this turn to save Alesha! While not consistently powerful, Mindclaw’s biggest advantage is you’ll never pay the full 5 mana for him! Even if you can only grab targeted removal, like a Doom Blade, you’ll net advantage in almost any situation.
The second key to this deck's success is it's anthems, turning these 2/2s in the late game into terrifying 4/4s or better. I'll cover those next time.
