King T'ChallaKing T'Challa | Art by Aaron J. Riley

What makes a king? Is it a crown? Is it the love and adoration of his people? Is it his personal strength and might above others that makes him strong?

King T'ChallaKing T'Challa answers this question in a way that only Magic: the Gathering can: politics!

With a card that uses the colors of control , T'Challa shows just how aggressive gift-giving can turn into a sudden win for you and your kingdom.

What Does King T'Challa Do?

King T'ChallaKing T'Challa's front side gives you a bonus card every time any player is getting ahead on card draw, ensuring that this advantage is never truly leaving you behind.

King T'ChallaKing T'Challa's flip side — Black Panther, Hope Enduring — is a double-striking commander that gives you a bit more of that advantage you're looking for, while also threatening your opponents' life totals. Alternatively, he can be used as an eternal blocker that prevents all damage towards him.

What Does King T'Challa want?

Kurohitsuki deck builds always ask this important question: what does the Commander want from any deck that it's helming?

The front half is looking for a deck that's ensuring opponents are drawing an additional card on their turns. This diplomatic version of T'Challa wants to wait and watch, to see what his foes can do with all of their resources, while slowly building his own in the background, detecting the true threats to Wakanda.

The back side is looking for unblockable assaults on your opponents' life totals and ways to tank all the damage you'd normally receive to the face. The Black Panther persona has identified who the true threat is and is moving to remove them before they can harm Wakanda.

King T'Challa wants cards like Dictate of KruphixDictate of Kruphix and Howling MineHowling Mine that force additional cards into the hands of both you and your foes. Having cards like these out with your Commander means that you'll begin your next turn with at minimum three additional cards in hand without having to lift a finger.

When you know that a ton of draw is headed your way, your deck will likely want to have a lot of cards that trigger when you draw cards all the time, especially a second card per turn as well, since our Commander triggers whenever any player draws their second card per turn.

Black Panther, Hope Enduring, on the other hand, is looking for something entirely different. Being a six-drop creature with no natural hexproof or evasion, he requires a deck's worth of investment to truly make worth it. He'd love things like Buster SwordBuster Sword and Whispersilk CloakWhispersilk Cloak to get crazy value off of his double strike and also allow him to get in there in the first place.

The most unique thing you can do with him would be to add PariahPariah effects in the deck, like Pariah's ShieldPariah's Shield and the new With Great Power . . .With Great Power . . ., and let him truly block any and all damage to you for the rest of the game, keeping you alive long enough to eventually get there.

There might even be a very fun monarch build, where you keep the crown in perpetuity, while drawing additional cards and countering the removal that can stop you.

However, as you could guess, it's very difficult to actually support both sides of King T'Challa at the same time, without one side receiving inadequate support. The persona that I want to emulate in Magic: the Gathering Commander is going to be the diplomat-king.

Azorius Group-Hug

So we know our Commander is waiting for opponents to draw an additional card, so how do we actually do that?

One of those ways is to simply play Commander, because it can be assumed with a pretty high degree of certainty that your opponents will do what they can to draw at least one more card per turn. You can assume each opponent will have that Rhystic StudyRhystic Study, Y'shtola, Night's BlessedY'shtola, Night's Blessed, or the newest version of Phyrexian ArenaPhyrexian Arena.

Because of this, we won't actually have too many of our own Forced FruitionForced Fruition-esque cards in here, because while we do want to hug the group a little bit, we just want to see that second draw, not the fifth.

That second card is incredibly important though, because if we're not seeing a second card, we're actually just giving too much to our opponents for no value to ourselves.

Cards like Secret RendezvousSecret Rendezvous work for us way more than Cut a DealCut a Deal, because only one opponent draws cards. With one card and our Commander, we'd draw five total cards for the cost of just one. Cards like Cut a DealCut a Deal, Kwain, Itinerant MeddlerKwain, Itinerant Meddler, and The Second DoctorThe Second Doctor all require a second card for us to get the maximum value out of our deck that just one card could.

We want to see cards that force two cards specifically and little else, which means we're running ProsperityProsperity, Folio of FanciesFolio of Fancies, Vision SkeinsVision Skeins and more.

Now that we have our consistent draw engines going, what bonuses are we getting from them beyond just drawing cards? Well, since the plan is to maximize on two cards per turn being drawn, we have a lot of options in .

So many that we'll have too many options — we're only going to be able to pick the upper crust of cards that reward that second draw. The Council of FourThe Council of Four, Emrakul's MessengerEmrakul's Messenger, Prince Imrahil the FairPrince Imrahil the Fair and many, many more are all up for grabs, and are honestly all good. You don't want too many of them however, because they don't necessarily win you the game on their own.

No amount of Mischievous MysticMischievous Mystic and Minn, Wily IllusionistMinn, Wily Illusionist triggers are really going to get you there, but they help.

How about cards that reward every single draw? We're doing a lot of it, since every two draws gives us plus one right?

Iron Man, Armored AvengerIron Man, Armored Avenger, Krang, the All-PowerfulKrang, the All-Powerful, and Psychosis CrawlerPsychosis Crawler each give us value no matter how often we are drawing, and are each win-cons in their own right because of it. Whenever we spend just one card and our Commander to draw six cards, that's six damage to the board with Psychosis CrawlerPsychosis Crawler and a crazy good way to win.

With Lyla, Holographic AssistantLyla, Holographic Assistant and cards like her, not only can we potentially flip King T'ChallaKing T'Challa to get in there on someone open for lethal, but we can also go infinite draw with Pensive ProfessorPensive Professor.

A little bit of control is important here, which we all know wants to do, but there's only so much room in-between draw-force and draw-payoff cards.

So, the counterspells that are employed will also have to be among the best of the best, and ones that can handle opponents who have way more resources than normal (courtesy of us). Render SilentRender Silent and Permission DeniedPermission Denied allow one opponent to reveal themselves as "the threat" and set you up as the hero who saved the game, while Arcane DenialArcane Denial and Long River's PullLong River's Pull trigger T'Challa after we stunt a player's win attempt.

Remember, opponents are getting these cards thanks to King T'ChallaKing T'Challa's entire game plan, so the counterspells have to be used only to not lose the game, instead of slow people down. Countering someone's BrainstormBrainstorm is pointless when we'll be forcing cards into their hand anyway.

How Does the Deck Win?

Now as cool as Psychosis Crawler and Scrawling Crawler are as win conditions, I'm a big fan of every deck having a "break glass in case of insurmountable odds" package. The win con for my rendition of this deck is working your way up to an OmniscienceOmniscience.

Now, this might sound busted and not very friendly, but we reach the appropriate amount of mana for this very honestly, and the entire time the deck is drawing each player additional cards. It's only fair that you let everyone see most of their deck before you turn things around for yourself. It's only diplomacy.

Check out the Combo for King T'Challa // Black Panther, Hope Enduring that we're building to.

Let's take a look at a deck list that I've cooked up that takes everything mentioned above into practice:

The Deck List

Conclusion

This was Kurohitsuki's rundown on King T'Challa! I think that the card has a lot of options and paths for it to go down to fit any version of T'Challa that you want to focus on.

As I mentioned before, while this version of the deck doesn't have much in the way of focusing on the Black Panther side, that doesn't mean its a suboptimal game plan! Group hug is personally a struggle for me to contend with, but when its clear that we are gaining just as much, if not more, value than the opponents we're hugging, it makes the game plan a lot easier to understand.

Comment down below if you have any versions of this deck that you'd build instead, or if this helped you take a deeper look at Azorius Group-Hug!