(Derevi, Empyrial Tactician | Art by Michael Komarck)

Technically Playable - Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

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

If you read my Phenax article, you'll know that Derevi holds a special place in my heart as it was the deck that got me into Commander. I used to only play Limited and Standard until our old LGS introduced my brother and me to the format and we decided to give it a try. This was swiftly followed by me buying both the Oloro, Ageless Ascetic and Marath, Will of the Wild precons, thus starting my degenerate commander arc. Below is the original precon's decklist:

Evasive Maneuvers

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Commander (1) Derevi, Empyrial Tactician Creatures (29) Acidic Slime Aerie Mystics Angel of Finality Azami, Lady of Scrolls Bane of Progress Deceiver Exarch Diviner Spirit Djinn of Infinite Deceits Dungeon Geists Farhaven Elf Fiend Hunter Flickerwisp Hada Spy Patrol Karmic Guide Kazandu Tuskcaller Lu Xun, Scholar General Mirror Entity Mistmeadow Witch Murkfiend Liege Phantom Nantuko Pilgrim's Eye Roon of the Hidden Realm Rubinia Soulsinger Selesnya Guildmage Skyward Eye Prophets Stonecloaker Thornwind Faeries Winged Coatl Wonder Instants (6) Aethermage's Touch Arcane Denial Blue Sun's Zenith Krosan Grip Selesnya Charm Unexpectedly Absent Sorceries (5) Borrowing 100,000 Arrows Kirtar's Wrath Restore Tempt with Glory Wash Out Artifacts (13) Azorius Keyrune Basalt Monolith Conjurer's Cloest Darksteel Ingot Leonin Bladetrap Selesnya Signet Simic Signet Sol Ring Surveryor's Scope Swiftfoot Boots Sword of the Paruns Thousand-Year Elixir Thunderstaff Enchantments (8) Control Magic Curse of Inertia Curse of Predation Curse of the Forsaken Darksteel Mutation Flickerform Leafdrake Roost Presence of Gond Lands (37) Azorius Chancery Azorius Guildgate Bant Panorama Command Tower Faerie Conclave 6 Forest 7 Island Opal Palace 7 Plains Rupture Spire Saltcrusted Steppe Seaside Citadel Secluded Steppe Seijiri Refuge Selesnya Guildgate Selesnya Sanctuary Simic Guildgate Temple of the False God Terramorphic Expanse Transguild Promenade

Looking at this, it's clear to see the issues with the deck straight from the box. Without even touching on the landbase, the deck is not very focused and lacks a clear way of closing out the game.

I'll be looking at some more focused strategies, but if you've managed to get your hands on this precon then don't forget you can check the EDHREC precon upgrade pages, including Derevi's upgrade guide.

Birds!

With Bloomburrow having come out so recently, I thought I'd look at a Derevi deck focused around Birds to start with. I'm going to avoid going over the typical cards that go in every typal deck like Roaming Throne since this section would be full of them. We'll instead focus on Bird-specific cards.

Fliers are typically very good in magic, especially in formats that can be very focused on the creatures on the board like Limited and Commander. Birds in Magic, just like real life, are very good at flying. This is significant because a lot of typal decks require you to ensure you have a way to get your damage through, such as trample, menace, or some way of making your creatures unblockable. Our creatures having flying gives us a lot more room for additional damage buffs in this deck. You, of course, have your typical Coat of Arms and Vanquisher's Banner but Birds also get Soulcatchers' Aerie, a kind of reverse Door of Destinies that cares about each Bird that dies. By running the two together, you can get double duty from each Bird that you play. Bloomburrow has also given us a kind of Bird lord in Kastral, the Windcrested that not only has the ability to permanently buff your Birds with +1/+1 counters but can also draw cards or even reanimate Birds from your graveyard.

While Kastral does draw some cards, it's very incremental and means nothing if it dies before dealing damage. Because of that, having some spells that will draw en-masse is always useful. Onslaught gave us Airborne Aid which allows you to draw a card for each Bird, but for four mana it does require committing most of a turn. Instead, you can use Winged Portent which does a similar thing to Airborne Aid but for all fliers instead of just Birds (in case you want to run something like Selfless Spirit to protect your board). While we're looking at card draw, Crookclaw Elder gives you a fantastic way to utilize Derevi's combat triggers to fill your hand up.

Gwaihir the Windlord is another powerful Bird that gives all of your creatures vigilance, meaning you can use your untap triggers from Derevi to untap your lands and still be able to block. You can also run a reanimation package by running Jackdaw Savior alongside Kastral, the Windcrested, Celestial Gatekeeper and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle.

In terms of non-Bird creatures that support the archetype, we've got those too. Radagast, Wizard of Wilds is a source of protection from targeted removal that also creates tokens when playing your higher mana payoffs. Tawnos, the Toymaker and Donal, Herald of Wings allow you to break the singleton rule of Commander by doubling up on each Bird you play while also being fantastic synergy with Curiosity Crafter. Finally, to protect yourself from combat Magus of the Moat is an amazing way to asymmetrically prevent opponents from attacking while allowing your birds to fly over.

Untap, Upkeep, Draw, Untap, Unt-...

Derevi isn't just a Bird though, she's a tapping machine. Both on entry and when your creatures deal combat damage, Derevi allows you to tap or untap any permanent. This allows you to play around with a couple of different strategies such as getting a bunch of value out of tap abilities or being able to play cards like Winter Orb or Static Orb without keeping your own permanents tapped. I'm going to talk about some cards that are generally good with tapping and untapping so that you can choose which kind of build you want to go down.

The first card I want to talk about is one that's in the public eye at the moment, and that's Nadu, Winged Wisdom. For some reason, Nadu is not very specific when it comes to the things that trigger its ability, meaning that you can attack with Derevi in play and use the untap triggers from the combat damage to untap all of your creatures. This will then trigger Nadu on each creature, ramping you far ahead of all of your opponents, drawing you a ton of cards, and untapping your board allowing you to block anyone wanting to attack you back. It's probably the best card in the deck and is definitely the best new card. When it comes to untapping, one of the most powerful things you can do is untap mana-generating permanents to effectively be able to use them twice. You can use these triggers to untap your lands but Circle of Dreams Druid is a great card to use to generate a ton of mana. You can stack all of the untap triggers at once all targeting Circle of Dreams Druid and tap it in response each time to generate a huge amount of mana, then you just need to find an instant speed way to use it before it leaves your mana pool.

You can also use a card that's running rampant across multiple formats (no I'm not talking about Nadu again), The One Ring. The idea here is similar to Circle of Dreams Druid: Attack, target The One Ring with a bunch of triggers and then tap it in response to each one. This will draw you a huge number of cards but can also be risky as it leaves a lot of burden counters on The One Ring so you will need some kind of way to remove it. I'd recommend Sculpting Steel or Phyrexian Metamorph to get the protection again while sacrificing it to the legend rule. The benefit of Phyrexian Metamorph here is that it also allows you an additional copy of any creature or artifact you control, meaning you could have two copies of Door of Destinies, Vanquisher's Banner or even something like Watcher of the Spheres to make all of your Birds cheaper and bigger.

In terms of winning the game, there are a couple of cards that can help you there. The first is The Millennium Calendar. You can really quickly build up a huge number of counters on the calendar by untapping all of your creatures each turn with Derevi's triggers. You can also use Seedborn Muse to quadruple the number of untap triggers while also giving you access to mana to activate Derevi's ability in any player's turn should she be removed. You can also build a board with Hylda of the Icy Crown. This works on two levels by both creating creatures whenever you tap and an opponent's creature. This in turn allows you to create more tapping triggers with Derevi while also allowing you to pump the creatures already in play, so you can attack more indiscriminately and close out games quicker before other decks are able to get online. Hylda of course isn't the only card that benefits from tapping down your opponents' creatures. You also have Sharae of Numbing Depths and Verity Circle that both allow you to draw cards whenever you tap a creature your opponent controls.

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a very quick look at Derevi, Empyrial Tactician as a commander, and a few of the cards that can really make a deck with Derevi as the commander tick. Let me know in the comments below if you play Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, if you want to build a Derevi, Empyrial Tactician 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.