"Tiny Leaders: Anafenza and the Fallen"

"Tiny Leaders: Anafenza and the Fallen"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

This is the first time that I would be writing about a Tiny leaders deck. A cool format that in my mind is a Mini-Commander/Mini-EDH format. I am happy with this particular format because this time it allows you to use your lower costed cards to create a 50 card deck.

My first deck was easy because I already had Varolz and my Relentless Rats with me. So it just took a little tweaking so to speak. Balthor the Defiled isn't really happy with almost all of his army going from his commander deck going to a Tiny Leaders deck but heck the particular oddity of the Relentless Rats was something that I wanted to explore in the new format.

This article however is regarding  my second Tiny Leaders deck because I had to wait for its particular commander to come out.You could say that I waited a thousand years for her to die and then live again so that she could be Anafenza , Kin Tree Spirit.

This is Anafenza and the Fallen. A Dedicated Soldier deck(which also has some other creatures that are not Soldiers but Fall just the same).I once told my friends that I wanted to make a Soldier deck that I would call the fallen , however these soldiers seem like a mighty tough bunch and could take care of opponents with an efficiency that rivals those of White Knights that are the more well known cards in weenie decks. 

Anafenza, Kin Tree Spirit was my chosen commander for this deck because of the Bolster 1(look for the creature with least toughness and put a +1/+1 counter on it.) she gives when another non-token creature lands on your side of the battlefield.

The lands are cheap because they are mainly basic plains and believe me there is nothing fancy about my mana producers. Evolving wilds to just thin out the deck and secluded Steppe for that extra draw when you already have too much land. The Flooded Strand is not to show off , I just happened to have one that wasn't being used in any deck.

17 Plains

1 Evolving Wilds

1 Secluded Steppe

1 Flooded Strand(kasi may extra ako na pakalat kalat)

Tutor:

Enlightened Tutor

Enablers:

Spear of Heliod

Crusade

Honor of the Pure

Glorious Anthem

Intangible Virtue

Adaptive Automaton(choosing Soldiers of course!)

Spot Removal:

Condemn

Path to Exile

Mass Removal:

Martial Coup

Spot removal creature:

Fiend Hunter

Banisher Priest

Court Street Denizen

Token Producer:

Shrine of Loyal Legions

White Sun's Zenith

Raise the Alarm

Herald of Anafenza

One of my all time favorites , Court Street Denizen makes an appearance in this deck to make your one on one opponents life miserable since every creature that you play would mean tapping a creature on the opposite side of the battlefield. Yup and then you get to chip at their life total at will even if you are not using big creatures. I mean a constant stream of weenie damage suddenly amounts to something very big and with just 25 life points every single bit of damage counts.

Glorious Anthem, Crusade , Honor of the Pure and Spear of Heliod all cost 3 mana or less and makes all your 1/1 creatures all the more tougher and meaner. Having all of them in play means that your 1/1 becomes a 5/5. Even just two of them in play will be enough to turn the tide of battle in your favor.

Martial Coup actually feels like cheating in this deck since you get to deal with your opponents army while leaving 5 Soldier tokens on your side of the board coupled with enablers like Spear of Heliod it is decidedly one sided(in your favor of course).

One of the oddities of this deck is the fact that while it has Anafenza , Kin Tree Spirit as its commander this is at its core a token filled deck. Anafenza doesn't look at token decks to bolster but in a setting(Tiny Leaders) where even one aggressive attacker could end the game in an instant it is important to have a lot of bodies clogging up the battlefield. All of these are white creatures mind you and could be a target for Anafenzas bolster ability.The whole deck is really built to attack and defend. 

There are still a lot of things to work through with this deck but I am confident that with the right balance of spot removal(tapping and instant spells) and a whole bunch of tokens this kind of deck could swarm through with its numbers and enablers for a win.