(Ishkanah, Grafwidow) | Art by Christine Choi)

Ishkanah's Back (And She Brought Friends)

Welcome back! it's time for Rally the Ancestors #5. I've been inspired by some recently-printed eight-legged friends to explore a creature type that has gotten some love lately: Spiders! We're still going back in time to do so, but a little less further back than usual. And for a twist on the formula, we'll make a budget-friendly deck this time.

Yes, Ishkanah! You might be questioning if I'm really rallying the "ancestors" here, but Eldritch Moon came out seven years ago. To put that in perspective for all the other veterans out there, that's the same as the gap between original Mirrodin and Scars of Mirrodin. Feel old enough now? Seven years is a lifetime in Commander years, too. By estimation, and based on the math I did in my first article, there's a good chance that Ishkanah is in the older 50% of commanders ever printed. Furthermore, Ishkanah is the first legendary Spider (and one of only five), so that lends to her credibility as the mother of the archetype. Good enough for me! Let's dive in.

At the time of writing this writing, Ishkanah is the 27th most popular Golgari commander on EDHREC and 576th overall. In addition, newcomer Shelob, Child of Ungoliant has surpassed Ishkanah in popularity very quickly.

And for good reason; this particular Shelob is an excellent card and will definitely have a home in our 99. That said, as a commander I think Ishkanah still has lots to offer and stacks up pretty well against Shelob. While Shelob is the stronger card in a vacuum, Ishkanah still says "build around me" a little louder. Having a commander that can provide four bodies when they enter the battlefield and has a game-ending ability attached to them is nice to have continuous access to. In addition, there have been a few solid cards printed in the past few years to generate Spider tokens. More on those below!

So, what can we do with this Spider? Obviously we want a few things:

1. Spiders
2. Graveyard synergies
3. A nice spread of card types to enable Delirium

Seems easy enough in Golgari colors. I also think it'll be easy enough to build this deck on a budget. In a past lifetime (or at least it feels like it), I had another column devoted to budget decks, so they've always had a soft spot in my heart. Commander is meant to be a fun, accessible format and price shouldn't be a barrier to having a good time. So, I'm happy to make a reasonably affordable deck without sacrificing too much...not that we won't be sacrificing things! I think $150 is a nice number to work with. We won't feel like we're having to play with a stack of commons, and it leaves plenty of room to grow over time.

Deck Goals

Let's break down the deck's game plan before we get into card choices.

1. Ensure we can have Delirium active before we cast our commander. Ishkanah isn't worth casting without it, so we'll want to get some cards in our graveyard early on. We don't have a lot of other cards that care about Delirium, but we'll find other ways to use our graveyard instead. Taking full advantage of it as a resource will be key to succeeding.
2. Have some ways to take advantage of Spiders' inherent strengths: generally high toughness and ability to create smaller Spiders. This will help us accumulate value and hopefully able grind our opponents out.
3. Play enough Spiders and ways to take advantage of the creature type. There aren't a lot of phenomenal Spiders, but there are enough good ones and ways to make tokens that we can still lean into this theme. I'm not into filling the deck with 30 Spiders just because they're the right creature type, though.
4. Generate lots of mana quickly. We have a lot of big creatures and Ishkanah's activated ability is expensive. We'll play a good amount of ramp to help us get there.

Tips for Building and Playing Ishkanah

Tip #1: Remember: A lot of your creatures have reach. I find that reach is underrated and often forgotten about in Commander. There are a lot of dangerous fliers to worry about, but they're less of a worry for this deck.

Tip #2: Don't sacrifice too many creatures. We still want a healthy number of Spiders out to get a good shot in with Ishkanah's activated ability. At seven mana, it really isn't worth doing for less than six life, unless you've got the mana available. Ideally, we should only be doing it a few times per game.

Tip #3: An ideal opening hand has a way to ramp or a way to get a few cards into your graveyard. These are a few thing key things we can do early, aside from gumming up the board until our big Spiders can drop down. This is one deck where I wouldn't be afraid to mulligan (especially if your playgroup is nice like mine and gives you a free one!).

The Deck

Key components of our deck include:

Big spiders

Still strong: Hatchery Spider, Silklash Spider
New hotness: Shelob, Child of Ungoliant, Sweet-Gum Recluse

Big Shelob is ridiculously strong. You'd expect six mana creatures to be so, and she definitely fits the bill. Sweet-Gum Recluse is a very interesting card; it enters at instant speed as a 3/6 and also has the potential to pump whatever we Cascade into provided we hit a creature (we have a one-in-three chance to do so, on average). Its floor isn't super high, but its ceiling certainly is, especially if you manage to ambush an attacker with it. Hatchery Spider is right on that line of established and new, but I felt it was worth a mention as an excellent payoff for a full graveyard.

Little spiders

Still strong: Nyx Weaver, Rotwidow Pack (really, 2019 isn't that old but compared to the other spiders...)
New hotness: Shelob, Dread Weaver, Llanowar Greenwidow, Skyfisher Spider

Little Shelob may not be the most efficient card, but she does a lot for four mana. Skyfisher Spider and Rotwidow Pack offer plenty of value in their own right. Speaking of value, Nyx Weaver, one of the deck's elder Spiders, still does everything a deck like this could want. It fills your graveyard, slows the early game down, and offers some late-game value.

Spider token generators

Still strong: Spider Spawning, Arachnogenesis
New hotness: Lolth, Spider Queen, Arasta of the Endless Web, Curse of Clinging Webs

We'll benefit from having more ways than Ishkanah to generate Spider tokens. Thankfully, there are no shortage of those. Spider Spawning is the granddaddy of this effect, and really helped *ahem* spawn this archetype to begin with. When I started building this deck, Arachnogenesis was the one card that went against the deck's budget philosophy. But! Commander Masters has changed that, cutting its price tag in more than half for the time being. It's still the second-most expensive card in the deck, but not by much. In addition to these two, we've gotten some other solid Spider generators in the past few years. Now really feels like the right time to build this deck.

Graveyard Recursion

Still strong: Splendid Reclamation, Victimize
New hotness: Rise of the Witch-king, Blood for Bones

Not much needs to be said about Victimize; it's the eleventh-most popular black spell in the format for a reason. I'm counting on Splendid Reclamation to give a pretty big mana boost with all the self-mill we'll be running. Newcomer Rise of the Witch-king seems like it could be very good; removal and recursion on the same card is quite valuable.

Self-mill

Still strong: Hermit Druid, Grisly Salvage
New(ish) hotness: Winding Way, Grist, the Hunger Tide

As a result of Arachnogenesis getting cheaper, I was able to sneak Hermit Druid into this deck and still stay around $150. It's still the gold standard for self-mill in green. If you'd like to run a more budget-friendly option, Mulch or Commune with the Gods are easy additions. That said, Grisly Salvage and Hermit Druid outclass them both. Grist, the Hunger Tide does a lot more than mill (I'm still surprised Grist is three mana; Modern Horizons II really was a game-changer), but we'll be +1'ing it quite a bit.

Answers for Threats

Still strong: To the Slaughter, Putrefy, Beast Within
New hotness: Tear Asunder, Blood Money, Crippling Fear, Sheoldred's Edict

Just when you didn't think removal couldn't get any better, we get versatile tools like Tear Asunder and Sheoldred's Edict. With the array of established options at our disposal as well, single-target removal is not a problem for this color combination. I'm generally not a fan of seven-mana plus board sweepers, but Blood Money has a crazy payoff. It certainly caught my interest; we'll see if it sticks.

Finishers, Etc.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the inclusion of Vorinclex in this deck. My word, this Praetor is a powerhouse. While the other Praetors seem to be getting a little more love in sixty card formats (green just isn't in a great place in Standard at the moment), Vorinclex is built for Commander (even more so for Brawl, for all the Arena players). It's a great finisher and I expect to see a lot of it. I should also mention Skemfar Shadowsage as an alternate to Ishkanah's activated ability, and one that we can bring back from the graveyard as well. Lastly, I mentioned toughness earlier. We have lots of it, so Assault Formation should be a powerful addition. All of a sudden, Doom Weaver got a lot more scary. Last but not least, Return of the Wildspeaker is here because we're playing green and creatures. Like Victimize in black, it's in the top twenty green cards, and the only one that costs five or more mana. It's there for a reason!

A couple of new four-mana artifacts are getting a shot here, too, as budget decks are great places to try out fresh cards. The Golden Throne, which seems like a solid sac outlet and potential game-saver, and Stonespeaker Crystal's combination of ramp and selective graveyard removal seems very good. Time will tell!

And here's our list.

How I Used EDHREC to Build This Deck

EDHREC was a great resource for figuring out which Spiders I wanted to put in the deck. While I decided pretty early I didn't want to cram as many Spiders as possible in just for the sake of it, it was nice to be able to browse which ones others had been including. I always like to check out other recent decks with the same commander as well, and it's easy to do that with the Decks feature. Looking at decks with similar budgets help me find a couple cards I hadn't thought of to finish the deck off, like Runic Armasaur (my build felt a little light on card draw, and the high toughness was on theme as well). Browsing lands was something I wanted to highlight this time too. Building a mana base can be overwhelming; there's no shortage of dual lands. In addition, when one is working on a budget one has to go a bit beyond the staples. I was happy to get land ideas from Ishkanah's page as well as a few other decklists.

Thanks for reading!

Please note: card prices listed in this article are accurate at the time of writing, but prices can vary over time and between locations.

Read more:

• Brew For Your Buck - Spider Senses
• Challenge the Stats - Ishkanah, from Grafwidow to Broodmother
• Rally the Ancestors - Grimgrin's Grim Kin

Dallas Meidinger

Dallas is a communications professional, writer and nearly life-long Magic player from Canada. Commander is his format of choice. When not playing or writing about Magic, you can find him skiing or biking in the mountains he calls home.