{"ops":[{"insert":"The goal of this deck is to cheat in birds with your commander and make them big. The commander is draw, pump, cheating and graveyard recursion all in one.\n\nEarly game plan is to play a piece of ramp and a bird or two and to drop your commander on turn 4. From there on you want to swing at opponet's who can't defend against the flyers. You want to spread out the attacks at all three opponents if possible. Use the commander to play most of your birds and keep the mana for utility pieces and interaction. You're also fine with doing trades with the birds as long as you get something out of it. If you can remove a blocker by letting a bird die, as long as it didn't have a finality counter on it, you can always get it back from the graveyard on your next turn.\n\nWhich leads us to the first, albeit smaller, card package in this deck: ways to get rid of finality counters. When the commander puts a bird into play it enters with a finality counter. It is by no means necessary to remove them and the deck would probably work fine without trying to so, but if you can do something good at the same time as removing them, why not? The two main ones are Scholar of New Horizons, which lets you tap to remove a counter from a permanent you control to fetch a plains to your hand or battlefield, and O'aka Traveling Merchant, which taps to remove a counter from a creature to draw a card. There's also a couple of flicker effects that will make the creatures come back without any counters and the combo of Skycoach Conductor and Yorion, Sky Nomad can save you from a board wipe for a single blue mana, but you will lose all the +1/+1 counters. \n\nTo increase the number of triggers, the deck includes birds with double strike and a few cards that grants double strike, with True Conviction probably being one of the best cards in the deck, giving double strike and lifelink to all your creatures. Duelist's Heritage is another good double strike enabler, that can be used politically, as it can give double strike to any attacking creature, not just your own. Instead of the usual cap at 3 triggers per turn, double strike brings this up to a maximum of 6. \n\nCreatures that benefits extra from double strike are cards like Thrummingbird for an extra proliferate, Thieving Magpie for extra card draw or just any beefy bird with lifelink. Depending on what your hand looks like, using the first damage for draw could give you more birds to play when the second round of damage hits. Another plan idea is to use the early attack to potentially giving all your attacking birds another +3/+3 for the second swing.\n\nWhat makes this deck fun to play for me personally is the handling of triggers and what I choose to put on the stack when. Do I need to draw first? Do I need to buff my creatures? Especially when it comes down to double strike. \n\nThe deck is meant to be played quite aggressively, being an evasive deck. To compensate for swinging with a lot of the creatures, the deck includes a few sources of lifelink, both birds themselves and cards like Abzan Battle Priest and Envoy of the Ancestors which gives lifelink to anything with a +1/+1 counter on it, which should be all of the birds. The deck also has a few sources that grants vigilance to all birds and some birds have it inherently, allowing them to be used both offensively and defensively.\n\nWhile the deck mostly focuses on nontoken birds, it has a few token generators too. Gwaihi, Greatest of the Eagles, which can create 3/3 birds at each end step if you gained 3 or more life. There's also Murmuration, which in addition to give all your birds +1/+1 and vigilance, also creates a 1/2 bird at your end step for each spell you cast this turn. Skycat Sovereign is not a bird per se, but scales from flyers and has a mana sink to create 1/1 cat birds. If you're holding up mana for interaction, you can spend this mana at the end step of the opponent before you. Finally Wingmate Roc can give you a token when it enters if you attacked with a creature this turn, making it a prime target for the flicker effects if they aren't already used to remove finality counters.\n\nFor a draw package, the commander is of course a big part of it, but just because of that, there's no reason to skimp on the rest of it. Bident of Thassa and Coastal Piracy leans into what the deck wants to do anyway, and is not limited to the once per player trigger, and with a few birds and double strike, you could easily draw 10 cards per turn. If either of these are in play you should be able to use the commander only to play more birds and to buff them. Given that our commander can help us get our birds back from the graveyard, when you discard down to hand size you can just put your birds in the graveyard and use it as an extra hand. If you're in a tough spot, cards like Harrier Strix and Rhet-Tomb Mystic can let you draw a few cards at the cost of putting a few birds into the graveyard. Instead, while you're ahead, Distant Melody or Airborne Aid could give you massive draws. Errant and Giada can act as maybe half a draw, as it lets you look at the top card of the library and play flyers from there, or to get some information before you decide how to sequence your commander triggers.\n\nFor ramp, it's a mix of the common mana rocks in Azorius, together with two land cycling birds that you can later get back with the commander, two birds that discounts flyers and two land catch-up ramp pieces, Scholar of the New Horizons already mentioned.\n\nFinally for interaction the deck has the common white staples, such as Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares and Generous Gift to handle problematic creatures and permanents, but also bird themes ones, like Lieutenant Kirtar, which can be sacced to exile target creature, and then get back with our commander. Wave Goodbye returns each creature without a +1/+1, which goes very well with our theme, and Time Wipe returns a creature you control to its owner's hand, typically the commander to avoid command tax, and then destroys all creatures. The destroyed birds can then hopefully be brought back with the commander. The deck does have some ways to avoid destruction too, such as Duty Beyond Death, which can make our creatures indestructible until end of turn, Eagle of Deliverance, which puts out indestructible counters on target creature on entering, making it an excellent flicker target. Sephara, Sky's Blade that gives other creatures with flying indestructible. And, as already mentioned, Yourion, Sky Nomad can be blinked just before Time Wipe to dodge the removal. Also, a deck can't have blue without some counterspells. To keep the budget low, cards like Negate is there to handle non-creature threats. There are also bird/flyer themed counters like Dazzling Denial, which forces the controller to pay an additional 2, or 4 if you control a bird. Similar with Lofty Denial but for flyers and 1 and 4 mana respectively. Forbid can be a really great counter with buyback, discard two cards. You can just discard your birds and play them from your graveyard. Finally, some stax, in the shape of Magus of the Moat, which makes it so that creatures without flying can't attack. If you can make it indestructible your opponents are going to be miserable.\n\nI have two cards in the side board. If your pod is heavy on flyers, Atomic Microsizer and Blitzball Stadium can make creatures unblockable until your birds are big enough that you don't care. Blitzball Stadium can even benefit from keeping the finality counter on a bird drawing an extra card. If so I would swap out Magus of the Moat, as its usefulness dwindles and whatever you feel like you need the least.\n\nSome cards I excluded due to budget reasons. Roaming Throne costs almost as much as the entire deck, but could double the commander triggers to a whopping total of 12 per turn. Raise the Palisades and Damning Verdict are probably better board wipes. If you want to go into GC territory, Cyclonic Rift is even better. Cathars' Crusade would probably be my first upgrade and with that in play, together with Bident of Thassa or Coastal Piracy, you could probably only care about playing more birds with the commander.\n"}]}