Tajic Deckbuilding Contest (historical) (EDH / Commander)

This was my submission to a Commander deckbuilding contest a certain currently malware-infested website was running back during the days of Dragon's Maze. The contest was to build a Commander deck with one of the 10 new "guild champion" Legendary Creatures from that set as the Commander. There were multiple categories to submit your deck for, such as most flavorful or most competitive. The winner and runner-up for each category had their decks featured on the website and had foil copies of the commander they used shipped to them as their prize. This was the runner-up for the competitive play category, which means I was clearly doing something right for the time, even for what effectively amounts to an aggro deck in Commander (though, to be fair, the winner for that category was a Storm deck with the Izzet "guild champion" Legendary, so maybe there's something to be said for the biases of the evaluator).

Anyway, in Commander, card advantage is king, and your opponents have several times the life total of a single constructed opponent combined, so to play an "aggro deck" in Commander, you basically have to unlearn everything you know about constructed aggro and re-consider how you evaluate your cards. Raw power and damage values are nigh-worthless in a format with board-wipes aplenty, so you must instead focus on efficient sources of value, tempo, and card synergy, and you'll find plenty of it in this deck.

Right, so, Tajic himself. He's an indestructible 2/2 Human Soldier for 4 mana, who gets a massive +5/+5 combat boost if he has a couple of friends attacking with him. There's a lot that can be done with any one piece of this information.

Let's start with the mana: it is extremely tight in this deck, with a scant 30 Lands and 13 additional non-Land mana sources (one of which being Palladium Myr). Some of those mana sources aren't even permanent, and instead only exist to provide a brief boost in tempo, such as Remote Farm, Sandstone Needle, and Sphere of the Suns. This is because with this kind of deck, very few cards cost more than Tajic himself--CMC tops out at 6, and only three cards in the entire deck have that CMC, so, in theory, you shouldn't even NEED those mana sources forever--just long enough to get established. This is further capitalized upon with Keldon Firebombers' "soft-Land destruction" effect as well as Worldslayer--more on that next paragraph.

Indestructible. Abusing this keyword will win you a bunch of games with this deck. Sure, there is the obvious "soft-lock by beating your opponents to death with Worldslayer 2 Commander damage at a time," but you can do better than that. Boros Charm grants ALL of your permanents Indestructible for a single turn, giving you the chance to ensure that everybody's world except your own gets blown up, whenever that may come to pass! If done with Worldslayer, you can simply give the WMD to a non-combatant (say, Palladium Myr) until the time may come where you need it again--or where you can get two more Creatures able to repeatedly survive the strike. Darksteel Plate can give anyone Indestructible, Angelic Overseer is Indestructible and Hexproof as long as you control at least Tajic since he is Human, and Frontline Medic can give Indestructible to the entire party! Incidentally, cards like Pyrohemia and Magmaquake also take advantage of Indestructible.

Tajic being a 2/2 also has some small synergies with a couple of cards in this deck. Before the Command Zone rule was revised to include instances where a Commander would be shuffled into one's deck, Imperial Recruiter could get him back out for you. Also, Mentor of the Meek provides a source of an exceedingly rare commodity in Boros colors specifically: raw card draw.

Soldiers get a boatload of tribal support, which always kinda bummed me out because I liked Knights better, but that is turned to this deck's advantage with cards like Cavern of Souls, Daru Warchief, Preeminent Captain, and a smattering of other Soldier cards with valuable or disruptive effects, such as Keldon Firebombers, Leonin Shikari, Loxodon Gatekeeper, Mentor of the Meek, and Soltari Guerillas.

Finally, Battalion. This deck has a few enablers, such as the cards mentioned in the Indestructible section, "mass blink" effects like Ghostway and Legion's Initiative just in case Indestructible isn't enough, Epochrasite, Mutavault, Anger, and, if desperate, Sunhome Guildmage. This deck also has ways to capitalize on an assembled Battalion, such as Windbrisk Heights, Spinerock Knoll (if you can get Tajic through), "extra combat phase" effects, Firemane Avenger, and Soltari Guerillas.

Finally, this deck does indulge in a couple of infinite combo setups if you can connect with a Sword not called Worldslayer. The Swords of Protection from not-Boros are not only an obvious raw value proposition, but each of them are a combo enabler in their own right. Of course, everybody knows the Sword of Feast and Famine + Aggravated Assault/Hellkite Charger combo, but did you know you can do the same thing with Sword of Body and Mind? You need Anger in the graveyard and Breath of Fury for this to work, but essentially, you enchant someone disposable (preferably not someone holding the Sword) with Breath of Fury, connect with both the Sword and the Breath, and resolve Breath's effect last so you can create a 2/2 Wolf (with Haste thanks to Anger) using the Sword first. You will then be enchanting the Wolf with the Breath, and repeat this process until all your opponents who can't block are dead; since this combo requires no mana apart from maybe casting Breath of Fury in the first place, you can potentially use Wave of Indifference to help enable it.

All-in-all, this deck is an example of how to competitively play in an aggressive style in Commander. One cannot simply focus on raw numbers, but instead prioritize disruption, value, and tempo.