Random Commander Challenge: Jazal Goldmane Mono-White Elfball (EDH / Commander)

Each week(?) on the Random Commander Challenge, I click the Random Commander button on EDHREC and build a unique and new design for an existing commander. While decks do not have to be built entirely around the commander, they have to be built such that their commander is essential to the identity of the deck; they must be worse if you swapped their commander for another, better one in the same color identity. Finally, each deck must be different at their core than the 'normal' or 'standard' deck that that commander uses; while any commander that isn't in the top 30 is allowed, I am not allowed to build them the way they are normally built.

This time, we're going to be building around Jazal Goldmane, a 4-mana 4/4 with the ability to pay 5 mana and cast Craterhoof Behemoth in mono-white. Despite being literally the sickest card in the history of the format, Goldmane clocks in at only 34 decks on EDHREC, a criminally low number if you ask any sensible person. It is a cosmic injustice that God-Eternal Oketra, a card that is not a mono-white Craterhoof Behemoth (which, by the way, is in your COMMAND ZONE), has over ten times the number of decks that Jazal has.

There are three main draws to Jazal, and all of them are immediately obvious upon reading the card. Firstly, his activated ability does the Craterhoof Behemoth thing of turning a wide board of small creatures into a wide board of huge ones; secondly, unlike Craterhoof Behemoth, Jazal is in white, a color that above all else excels at making huge amounts of creatures; and thirdly, literally nobody at your Commander game is going to know what the fuck this guy does, which means nobody at your Commander game is going to know what they need to worry about.

This deck aims to take full advantage of that fact, because information is power, and nobody else is going to know what the fuck to do when the monowhite player has a Craterhoof Behemoth in the command zone.

------ THE PLAN -------

"The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The plan with Jazal Goldmane is very simple. With Jazal in the command zone and a standard token board, we present a constant and omnipresent threat to our opponents at all times. Our opponents must hold up preemptive and reactive answers to Jazal and our board at all times, because the second they don't, we dome them for 80 damage. However, since literally the only card in our deck that actually cares about being countered or removed is Jazal, our opponents are forced to use removal and counterspells on each other - bolting each others' proverbial birds - while we sit back and generate unlimited token value. Because a lot of our cards provide incremental value, by stalling the game we not only mitigate the single greatest weakness of mono-white, the color's inability to draw any amount of cards, but also create boards that are capable of winning without Jazal. While our resident catboy is still our primary win condition, this prerogative puts us in a favorable position nine times out of ten, as long as we are able to play politics correctly and utilize our own limited control and removal pieces fully. As soon as an opponent overextends, as soon as they underestimate us, we show them their folly and the door.

Serious analysis of Jazal does, however, pose some problems, and we have to employ some specialized deckbuilding solutions to mitigate them. The primary weakness of the card is that you have to untap with your board to go off, and even then, Jazal has to be alive from main step to combat phase in order to activate, making our plan on a surface level weak to counterspells, board wipes, and spot removal. Unlike Craterhoof Behemoth, which pumps your board on ETB and therefore doesn't care if it's removed, casting Jazal in main phase does.

Thankfully, in their infinite wisdom, Wizards of the Coast printed three mechanics in white that we are going to take full advantage of, mechanics that will turn Jazal Goldmane from a 4 mana do-nothing to a force that threatens lethal at any time, one that makes your opponents stay on their toes at all times.

The first of these mechanics, and the one that we utilize the least, is haste.

The most prominent example of haste in white is Akroma, Angel of Wrath, one of the most blatant and inexcusable color pie breaks in MTG history. White, as a rule, should not have haste ever, and this deck is going to show exactly why.

However, as 2019 proved, rules are made to be broken. While we won't be using any of the plentiful equipment available to white to give our creatures haste, from the aforementioned Greaves to Swiftfoot Boots to Ring of Valkas, Strider Harness, and Haunted Cloak, there is one equipment that is worth running in a deck where we have to pay 9 mana to win the game. Obsidian Battle-Axe, a card familiar to anyone who's played with or against Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, makes our Jazal a 6/5 with first strike and haste, which makes playing him on curve entirely worth it. This thing makes our beloved cat boy hit hard and fast, and oftentimes the extra 6/5 and +1/+1 to our team drastically lowers the lethal ceiling on most of our opponents, and makes it a lot easier to lower that ceiling even further by casting Jazal for value.
Unlike most decks, though, we won't be playing a lot of other haste creatures or enablers. The essential problem with haste in Jazal is that he already costs 9+ to play and activate, which is already a steep toll in the only color in Magic to lack large-scale mana ramp. It's very difficult to be able to use Jazal and play a creature in the same turn, and so paying an extra (1) for haste equipment or putting garbage like Crashing Drawbridge in our deck isn't really an option.
Instead, we pay for these cards turns in advance. Since suspend gives suspended creatures haste, Knight of Old Benalia and Ivory Giant represent significant additional damage when suspended, and also provide excellent mindgames besides. Our opponents likely won't expect us to cast Jazal a turn early, and if they hold up their resources to counter or remove Jazal the turn they come off suspend, we can simply use our mana to draw cards instead.

The second mechanic we're going to be taking advantage is flash. From Call the Coppercoats to Secure the Wastes to White Sun's Zenith and Recruit the Worthy, there are plenty of ways to make huge amounts of tokens at instant speed, to say nothing of Omen of the Sun and its ilk. It is, unsurprisingly, very powerful to be able to flash in a huge board, untap, and then Jazal for hundreds of damage, but it's also incredibly potent to Aether Vial in a Grand Abolisher and then do so without the possibility of interaction. However, the standout card here - the reason why this is even a section - is Scout's Warning, which not only lets you flash in Grand Abolishers and Ranger-Captains right before you untap, but lets you flash Jazal in during combat, which removes his main weakness to spot removal. The fact that you have not one but two options for this effect in your land slot, and that your tutor package can easily find Weathered Wayfarer to tutor in turn for these options, makes this a consistently viable option game to game.

The most important mechanic with Jazal, however, is Silence. Both Silence and its ilk allow Jazal to activate without a hitch, and when you have no options for other counterspells, being able to avoid a blowout from removal or counterspells is essential for surviving with Jazal.

To round out the deck, we have a bunch of cards that generate mana, make tokens, and re-use our cards that generate mana. Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar help us leverage our considerable ability to create a massive board to help cast Jazal and our other spells, and inclusions like Karmic Guide and Reveillark not only resurrect our Grand Abolishers but also provide us with a neat way to deal with our opponents' infinite life/board combos. The most important aspect of our deck, however, is using our information advantage over our opponents; to this end, Uba Mask forces our opponents to play each card they draw immediately or not at all, which not only severely punishes our opponents for drawing cards, mitigating our severe disadvantage of playing mono-white, but drains our opponents' resources.

------ FINAL THOUGHTS --------

Jazal Goldmane is the perfect argument for a series like RCC. He approaches a traditional mono-white archetype - tokens - in a drastically different way than other decks do, forcing your opponents to play slowly and conservatively while you jam dude after dude, sit back, and laugh. He forces both you and your opponents to think, not just about what the biggest threat on the table is right now, but on how much damage they're at risk of taking, how many answers they have, what their blocks are going to look like.