TUVASA SUN LIT
By Shay Muscarella
Disney+ got you thinking about The Little Mermaid, but you still want to play commander? How about picking up this Tuvasa deck and using a beefy mermaid to slap down your
Opponents? We're going to take our favorite fish on a magical journey, powering her up with a bunch of enchantments along the way! Once she's made all of her magical GAINZ, we'll take a light swim on over to our enemies and smack them right out of the game!
Ramp Enchantments
Every deck needs to have a good amount of ramp so that we can play the things we want to play and, since this is an enchantment themed deck, we'll be using mainly enchantment based ramp (ramp-chantments). First off, for our one drop, is Wild Growth giving us a little extra green mana from our lands. The two drop slot is Fertile Ground which gives us an extra mana of any color. Fixing and ramp! Three drops are where we get most of our ramp in New Horizons, Overgrowth, and Cultivate. New Horizons and Overgrowth tap the enchanted land for an additional two mana. Also Cultivate is just really good so it's an obvious include. And the four drop slot is filled by Dawn's Reflection giving us more ramp and fixing. Enchantments and lands are a little harder to get rid of than artifacts or creatures that ramp us, so you can bet these will be sticking around for most of the game!
Seven Seas, Seven Enchantresses
Tuvasa's sisters decided to come out to play and they are here to draw us some cards! We'll start our curve off at two with Argothian Enchantress, who happens to even protect herself by having pseudo-hexproof. Our three drop slots are where we keep the bulk of our enchantresses (i.e. card draw engines). Enchantress's Presence is an enchantment, meaning we will be getting all the value off her. Next is Verduran Enchantress, Satyr Enchanter, and Mesa Enchantress, all of which are functionally the same card. And to top our curve, we've got Eidolon of Blossoms at four. All of these will be drawing a card whenever we play an enchantment, and there are a few in this deck. With just one of these out, every enchantment also becomes a cantrip. Each one after that is just raw card advantage.
The Ocean is a Dangerous Place
Time for Tuvasa to start her magical adventure and she's going to need a little protection. Making a Voltron style deck can be VERY fragile and nothing feels worse than having your commander destroyed every time it hits the field. Let's start by making Tuvasa really hard to kill. Shielded by Faith makes our little mermaid indestructible so only things that exile her will be a problem. Gift of Immortality essentially gives her a second life each turn. If she dies, she comes right back and gets her gift returned to her during each end step. Bear Umbra, Hyena Umbra, Spider Umbra, Treefolk Umbra, Snake Umbra, and Eel Umbra all provide her with totem armor meaning we can have our enchantments take the fall for our commander. Each of these provide us with additional benefits, but we really need to have Tuvasa stick around and totem armor works great. If your opponents are sneaky rude people, even if you make Tuvasa indestructible, they can still remove her (having her stolen and then sacrificed after she hits you for 15 does not feel good) so how about we just make it so she can't be targeted? Swiftfoot Boots, while not an enchantment, is an auto include here. Canopy Cover, Alpha Authority, Curator's Ward, Shielding Plax, and Archetype of Endurance provide our creature with hexproof so she is safe from our opponents, but we can still pump her up with our spells. If you're wondering why we don’t include Lightning Greaves, it’s because this would give her shroud meaning we also could not equip enchantments to her. Not something we would find useful.
Making Gainz
Time to turn our little mermaid into a swole underwater beast. First is our Ancestral Mask, which does the same thing as Tuvasa's own ability except she gets +2 for every enchantment on the battlefield. Getting Tuvasa to 21 power with the mask out is a pretty easy task. Next, Battle Mastery gives our commander double strike, so we really only need to get her to 11 power in this case. Ethereal Armor bumps up Tuvasa and gives her first strike to help her survive combat should your opponent try to block. Arcane Flight, other than having some of the coolest art in magic, gives her flying. Evasion is something we very much need in this deck. We'll finish up our magical gym session by giving Tuvasa more evasion by way of protecting her from all other creatures. Spirit Mantle and Unquestionable Authority will pump our commander and make it so she can't be blocked by our opponents’ creatures.
Fish are Friends, Not Food
One of the best things about going on underwater adventures are the friends we make
along the way, and Tuvasa has some of the best friends to help her close out the game. Kesti, the Cultivator can become an enchantment to buff Tuvasa even further and she lets us draw even more cards when we attack. Sun Titan helps us get most of our enchantments or other creatures back every time he attacks. We have a total of 44 nonland cards that can be targeted by his recursion ability so we will likely have many options available to us. Herald of the Pantheon and Starfield Mystic each reduce the amount we will have to pay for our enchantments and provide us with great value synergy with most of our deck.
Value Enchantments
Estrid's Invocation and Mirrormade let us not only copy our best enchantments, but also our opponents’ because we’re the only ones that get to have fun with enchantments in this game. Finest Hour is one of the best cards in our deck giving our commander exalted and we can get a second combat step (so we can kill two opponents in one turn). Sterling Grove protects our enchantments and Sphere of Safety protects us!
Making Sushi
Every deck needs some removal and we have a bunch of enchantment based removal. Oblivion Ring and Prison Realm act as removal to threats and provide us with all that enchantment value. And if your opponent is trying to go wide with a billion tokens, wipe them all out with Detention Sphere. No infinite rat tokens for your opponents this time. Nevermore lets us say NO to any one card an opponent might run that just hoses our deck (i.e. Aura Shards). And our mass removal includes Winds of Rath, hopefully killing our opponents’ fields and leaving our Tuvasa ready to take the game.
Dextras
Rafiq of the Many is another exalted card to pump our commander and will, in most cases, also giver her double strike to help close out a game. Replenish will help prevent us from losing if one of our opponents blows up all of our enchantments. Dovescape can help slow our opponents down enough for us to take them out, and Rhystic Study will help us draw all the cards. Finally, to help us tutor up the best enchantments in our deck, we can add Enlightened Tutor and Academy Rector so our best cards are always at our fin-tips.
Shay has been playing Magic since way back in 8th edition and played mostly Modern for a long time (filthy Tron player). These last few years though he's been all about Commander. Outside of Magic he is a career firefighter who's currently trying to get his whole department in on the addiction...errr game.
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