(Celestial Kirin | Art by Adam Rex)

Technically Playable - Celestial Kirin

Welcome to Technically Playable, where our mission statement is "Every commander is Technically playable" (the best kind of playable). The way this works is every article will have a commander generated using EDHREC's random button, I'll talk through the card and then write about how we can build around it!

This week's random commander is:

Based on the number of times I've seen this card pop up while randomly hitting the random button on EDHREC (for non-article-related reasons), and based on the number I pulled from Mystery Boosters, I think this article was inevitable. And honestly, I think building this deck in paper will eventually happen too because there is some very cool tech that has been released for this commander in the last few years.

That's the Spirit(s)!

Celestial Kirin is part of a mono-colored cycle from the original Kamigawa block that all trigger and have an effect when you cast a Spirit or an Arcane spell. Luckily for us, there have been a lot of good Spirits printed across the last few years. But there is a caveat to this. Because Celestial Kirin cares about the mana cost of the cards that you play, it's important to make sure that you are loading your deck with cards that hit the most prominent mana values in the format. For this, we can use EDHREC's Top Cards section on the site to see which mana values are the most common.

In the top two rows of EDHREC's top cards (14 cards) there are only three permanents, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet and Dimir Signet. When you expand this to the top four rows (24 cards) you get into a lot more permanents, twelve in total (including the three mentioned previously). Of these twelve permanents, nine of them have a mana value two, two have a mana value one and one of a mana value of three. Based on this, it's clear that mana values of one, two and three are key, and we should have a critical mass of spells with the rest of the cards being spread more evenly across the other values. The mana value we want to avoid the most however should be four as that would result in destroying Celestial Kirin.

Probably the best two mana Spirit is Selfless Spirit not only is it a flier that hits the two mana value that we're after, but it also allows us to sacrifice it when casting another spell to protect our own board - I'll go into more detail about this in a later section. Regarding the other mana values, there are a ton of great options like Nikko-Onna which not only wipes the board of mana value three permanents, but also removes another enchantment, all packaged with the ability to return itself to your hand.

You also have Kami of False Hope a white Spore Frog that will remove any one mana value cards from the board and protect you from combat damage for a turn. Probably the best two cards for to ensure you hit every mana value are Ugin's Conjurant and Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate. These cards have and as their mana costs respectively, giving you flexibility to hit any mana value that has problematic permanents in play.

As well as the cards themselves, there are also some ways to support the Spirit theme and to make sure you have access to any mana value you need. Of course you have Herald's Horn and your typical typal support, but for Spirits and Arcane spells in particular you have Long-Forgotten Gohei which supports both elements of Celestial Kirin's focus. However, the most important card to support Celestial Kirin is the often overlooked Citanul Flute. The reason why most decks don't want this artifact is because it has quite a prohibitive cost ( mana followed by mana just to put a creature into your hand is a lot) but Celestial Kirin's ability benefits from having access to specific mana costs at specific times. Being able to pick and choose what you have access to is incredibly useful for our deck.

Celestial Kirin? More like Celestial Winning!

Horrific pun aside, you do need a win condition in a Commander deck, and that can be tough when your deck is focused around blowing up the entire world every single turn. The way around this is to find win conditions that are either a high mana cost that you likely won't cast very often, a win condition that benefits from removing your own creatures or something very niche like Barren Glory. For Barren Glory, I won't go into more detail because I won't be able to do it justice like this Commander's Herald article did back in 2021.

Moving on though, the main win condition for this deck is probably through amassing a huge army of tokens and attacking. This is because you're unlikely to play and zero mana value Spirits or Arcane spells so they are safe from your own board wipes and the cards you want to play to make tokens are mana values that you don't want to play very often. Oyobi, Who Split the Heavens is a great example of this as it creates a 3/3 every single time you play a Spirit and dodges most of your Spirit's mana values at a whopping seven mana value itself. The weakness of this is obvious however, as it has no built-in protection so playing it on turn seven and nothing else.

Alternatively, you can also use Field of Souls, Court of Grace or even Field of the Dead (depending on your mana base) to create an army of tokens. These are great options because they have a mana value of four, this is important as you'll likely avoid playing too many four cost cards since they will also destroy your commander. Furthermore, Field of the Dead is just incredibly broken since it dodges everything outside of land destruction, and we all know what Commander players thing about that.

Keeping Your Spirits Alive

While there are a ton of good ways to win while destroying your own permanents, one of the best ways to win through board wipes is to keep your stuff alive through them. There are some obvious options like Teferi's Protection or Flawless Maneuver but here at Technically Playable we like to look at some more niche cards.

Emeria Shepherd is one of the most underrated white cards from what I've seen, but it has incredible value potential. Using cards like Wayfarer's Bauble or Evolving Wilds you can turbo out a ton of lands allowing you to even overtake some of a green deck's ramp. This is also important when trying to reanimate creatures that have been destroyed by Celestial Kirin. If you combine the Shepherd with Roaming Throne you can even use the plains from Evolving Wilds to bring back a creature and the Wilds repeatedly to imitate Living Death.

You can also back up your Spirit package with indestructible creatures. Myojin of Cleansing Fire fits this deck really well as it is both indestructible and can be used as a board wipe when you need it. Avacyn, Angel of Hope is also an excellent option and while she is expensive to cast returning her with something like Emeria Shepherd or Late to Dinner can help to get her out much earlier to protect your other creatures. One of my favorite combinations is Avacyn and Cloudsteel Kirin to effectively have an indestructible Platinum Angel.

Finally you have a couple of even more niche options. Since it's a Spirits deck, Kindred Boon is an amazing option as you can choose "Spirit" and make any of them indestructible for the low cost of two mana. This also combos with Myojin of Cleansing Fire to give you a repeatable board wipe. Gideon Blackblade is another, cheaper option allows you to choose your most important creature and keep it alive for one turn.

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a very quick look at Celestial Kirin as a commander, and a few of the cards that can really make a deck with Celestial Kirin as the commander tick. Let me know in the comments below if you play Celestial Kirin, if you want to build a Celestial Kirin deck, or even if you just enjoyed this article!

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Paul Palmer

Hey there, I'm Paul. I've been writing about magic for a really long time. I love to write about obscure commanders (one of my really early articles back in 2015 was about Skeleton Ship) and how you can make decks around them work, no matter how unplayable they are. I love Gruul, I love Mountains and I love casting Lightning Bolt.