Haliya, Guided by Light Commander Deck Tech

Haliya, Guided by Light | Art by Kieran Yanner 

Greetings, mono-color enthusiasts and space explorers. Edge of Eternities (EOE) just warped in from lightspeed, bringing a cosmos of characters, Spacecraft, and mystery. Who doesn't love a good space opera?

Instead of delving deep into EOE's storyline, I would like to shift our focus to one particular character.

EOE introduces several new mono-color legendary creatures. Among them is Haliya, Guided by Light, a Human Soldier with a vibrant polearm. Haliya's polearm blazes like the sun, and their usefulness extends beyond combat.

Let's discuss Haliya's stats, abilities, and role as a commander.

What Does Haliya, Guided by Light Do?

Haliya is a 3/3 for with three abilities. As a commander, Haliya's warp ability is unfortunately irrelevant. What Haliya can do is gain you a life whenever it, another creature, or an artifact enters the battlefield under your control.

Also, Haliya draws you a card at the beginning of your end step if you gained three or more life during your turn.

What's special about Haliya is that it gains you life when it or an artifact enters under your control. Thus, a Treasure token created by Smothering Tithe will trigger Haliya's ability. White predominantly offers cards like Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, and Hinterland Sanctifier that gain you life when creatures enter. Albeit, Leonin Elder gains life only when an artifact enters.

Haliya's variety of lifegain triggers and card draw opens up further deckbuilding possibilities.

When it comes to mono-white lifegain commander options, Haliya has some competition. Giada, Font of Hope is a dual threat for both Lifegain and Angel-themed strategies. Coincidentally, several Angels like Angel of Vitality and Righteous Valkyrie want you to gain extra life. Many of the top instant and sorcery spells for the 99 of Giada also work with Haliya.

If you want to play Lifegain with Angel kindred cards, Giada is your best choice. However, Haliya is an excellent alternative for building creature-centric Lifegain decks without an Angels focus.

Celestine, the Living Saint is another mono-white legendary creature interested in gaining life. Although Haliya requires gaining three life to activate its card draw ability, Celestine may demand more life gain in a turn. Gaining six life to resurrect Sun Titan or Angel of Indemnity is outstanding. Simply dealing combat damage with Celestine will return a creature with a mana value of three or less from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Congregate, Riot Control, and Rhox Faithmender can also increase your life total substantially in a turn.

While Righteous Valkyrie and Congregate may net you an abundance of life, Haliya's gameplay differs from Giada's and Celestine's. You may utilize a wide variety of artifacts, creature tokens, non-Angel creatures, and other cards to achieve victory with Haliya.

Instead of discussing the gamut of approaches for building around Haliya, we'll focus this deck tech on generating tokens to overwhelm opponents.

Key Cards for Haliya, Guided by Light

Soul Sisters

Soul Sisters play a vital role in the 99 of Haliya. Essentially, Soul Sisters are cards that generate life when a creature enters under your control. I mentioned a few Soul Sisters earlier, including Soul Warden and Hinterland Sanctifier. Moreover, there are several Soul Sisters cards with additional abilities.

Suture Priest drains opponents when one of their creatures enters. Guide of Souls turns energy into flying threats. Not to be left out is Lunarch Veteran. If it ends up in your graveyard, you can bring it back transformed with a different ability.

Do you want to ensure a Soul Sister is on your battlefield at all times? Edge of Eternities' Starfield Shepherd can fetch one via its warp ability or hard-casting it for five mana.

Besides creature cards, Soul Sisters take the form of enchantments like Ajani's Welcome and Case of the Uneaten Feast. Excitingly, solving Case of the Uneaten Feast enables you to sacrifice it to cast any creature cards from your graveyard for a turn. That's a fantastic ability to use following an opponent's board wipe.

There's also a lifegain artifact you may not be aware of. Michael, a member of my local MTG Commander playgroup, showed me Profane Memento's potential. This unassuming artifact gains you one life whenever a creature card goes into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere. You can gain incremental life via discard, wheel, looting effects, and board wipes.

Even though lifegain cards are necessary in the 99, you'll want a reasonable balance between them and cards that trigger their abilities.

Token Makers

Creature tokens are great at triggering the abilities of Haliya and Soul Sisters cards. Merely casting Hop to It, Distract the Guards, or Sram's Expertise can net you three life. Although these sorcery spells are efficient at triggering Haliya and friends, they're one-trick ponies. You'll need sources of repeatable token-making to keep your deck running smoothly.

One such card is Oketra's Monument. Not only is Oketra's Monument a token-making machine, but it also reduces the casting cost of white spells. I'm also a fan of Cat Collector. It enters with a Food token and nets you a creature token from the first life gain trigger during your turn. Moreover, using a Food token will earn you a card from Haliya.

I would be remiss if I didn't cover the workhorse, Crested Sunmare. What's wild about Crested Sunmare is that it provides a 5/5 white Horse creature token by gaining one or more life during anyone's turn. Did I mention Crested Sunmare makes Horses indestructible?

Card Draw

White's card-drawing abilities are typically conditional. Nevertheless, you'll have a constant flow of cards thanks to enchantments like Caretaker's Talent and Tocasia's Welcome. Both enchantments earn you a card when you produce a creature token. You also have access to creatures like Welcoming Vampire and Enduring Innocence with similar card-drawing capability. Yet, their abilities don't trigger when Haliya enters.

There are two additional card draw sources I want to highlight. Exemplar of Light can give itself +1/+1 counters and draw you a card once per turn. Moreover, Exemplar becomes a card-drawing threat over time.

Complementing Exemplar of Light and Haliya's card draw abilities is The Gaffer. With Haliya and The Gaffer under your control, you can draw two cards per turn after gaining three or more life! More card draw leads to further opportunities to cast spells, gain life, and win the game.

How Does Haliya, Guided by Light Win?

You Win the Game

You do want to win, right? Well, you're in luck because this deck list includes three "you win the game" cards.

Probably the most straightforward way to win is to keep Felidar Sovereign alive. Fortunately, you can sneak Felidar Soverign into play with Emergence Zone on your battlefield. Yes, Emergence Zone is specifically in the deck list to cast "you win the game" cards.

Another prime candidate for Emergence Zone is Test of Endurance. You have to put in some effort to reach and maintain a life of 50, but it's quite achievable.

Last but not least, there's the renowned Approach of the Second Sun. Slow and predictable, Approach of the Second Sun can earn you a win if everything goes well.

Growing Tall and Wide

When your "win the game cards" can't clinch a victory, you'll need to find a new path. Thankfully, you can go tall by dealing lethal combat damage with sizable creatures. Going tall requires placing many +1/+1 counters on Voice of the Blessed, Elenda's Hierophant, and Exemplar of Light. While these creatures are prime targets for removal, Elenda's Hierophant provides a consolation prize when it's destroyed.

Alternatively, you can go wide with creature tokens. Finale of Glory, Call the Coppercoats, and Exalted Sunborn are several cards capable of ramping up creature token production. Finale of Glory and Call the Coppercoats can be explosive plays later in the game. Furthermore, Exalted Sunborn's token-doubling ability makes Finale of Glory and Call the Coppercoats even more potent.

To increase the damage output of creature tokens, you can leverage cards such as Cosmogrand Zenith, Archangel of Thune, and Leyline of Hope. Astoundingly, Cosmogrand Zenith's ability lets you create two creature tokens or place +1/+1 counters on all creatures you control. Archangel of Thune is a fantastic source of +1/+1 counters, too.

If +1/+1 counters don't do the job, Leyline of Hope and Caretaker's Talent provide added support.

You have the tools to win a game, now make your mark with Haliya.

Haliya, Guided by Light Commander Deck List

More Edge: