Quick Links
Maha, Its Feathers Night is one of the many legendary creatures a part ofMagic: The Gathering’sBloomburrow set. Maha played an important role in the story that accompanied Bloomburrow, acting as one of its antagonists. Fans of the character may be drawn to build a Commander deck with them.
Maha, Its Feathers Night is a control deck that makes sure your opponents won’t be able to keep creatures on the battlefield. You might not be making too many friends with a Maha Commander deck, but you will be winning games! There’s a lot of power with Maha, backed up by various support cards.
Wail of the Nim
x25 Swamp
War Room
Witch’s Cottage
The deck consists of 26 creatures, 11 sorceries, seven instants, 11 artifacts, ten enchantments, and 34 lands. While there is a balance across all card types,Maha, Its Feathers Night is what every card choice revolves around.
Key Cards
Maha, Its Feathers Night
The commander of the deck, Maha, Its Feathers Nightis also its most important. Bygiving all your creatures a base toughness of one, this makes it very easy to kill them with cards that give your opponents' creatures -X/-1. If it’s a static effect, this essentiallyprevents your opponents from being able to play creaturesfor as long as Maha is on the battlefield.
If a creatureenters with +1/+1 counters, even if there’s an effect giving all creatures -1/-1, they will not die as they are entering with counters, meaning their toughness never dips below one.
Maha would be good with just this one effect, but for an added bonus, it comes with built-in protection toforce your opponent to discard a cardif they want to remove it with targetted removal. Maha makes it easy to keep the battlefield clear, letting you attack defenseless opponents easily.
Kaervek, The Spiteful
Kaervek, the Spiteful is Maha’s best friend. With these two on the battlefield, you’ll get rid of any creature your opponents control permanently, so long as they don’t have a stat boost from another source.
Kaervekgives all other creatures -1/-1, not just your opponents. Luckily, there are only a very small handful of cards in the deck that would be affected by this ability.
While there are plenty of spells that can give negative stats to your opponents, Kaervek is great since it’s a permanent ability, meaningunless either Maha or Kaervek gets removed, your opponents will be locked out of creatures.
Revel In Riches
Since so many creatures will be dying, Revel in Richesis one of the main win conditions.Killing large swaths of creatures will net you aton of Treasure tokens, and unless your opponents have a way to get rid of it you’ll be winning the game on your upkeep.
Even if you don’t have enough Treasure tokens to win the game,Revel in Riches is also a great ramp tool. Black can struggle with mana generation, especially since a Maha deck has a higher mana curve. The Treasures from Revel in Riches help soothe this downside by giving you extra mana to work with.
Caltrops
Caltropsis normally not a special card, but in a Maha deck,it completely shuts down your opponents' ability to attack. Since with Maha on the battlefield all your opponents' creatures have a base toughness of one, if Caltrops is on the battlefield, that creature will die if it ever attacks.
While Caltrops does deal one damage to creatures when you attack as well, this isn’t much of a downside whenyou hardly need to attack at all. When you do attack, you can just choose to not attack with creatures that naturally have one toughness, focusing only on attacking with your powerful creatures.
Virtue Of Persistence
There are a lot of creatures that will be dying on your opponents' battlefield, sothere’s a sub-reanimation themein the deck that brings those creatures to your side of the battlefield. Virtue of Persistenceis one of the best choices for this.
There are multiple cards that can bring creatures to the battlefield, butVirtue of Persistence is one of the few that are attached to a permanent. Once Virtue of Persistence is on the battlefield, you’ll have a constant source of new creatures for every upkeep.
Black Market
Black struggles a lot with ramp, but Black Markethelps to counteract the downside. Since so many creatures will die with a Maha deck,this will net you a ton of charge counters on Black Market that willgive you black mana later.
It’s not impossible for Black Market togive you enough mana to cast all the cards in your hand. Although it has a higher-than-average casting cost, it’s worth the price of admission as once Maha gets going, you’ll never struggle with mana again (assuming Black Market never gets removed).
How To Play The Deck
A Maha, Its Feathers NightCommander deck is aboutcutting your opponents off from their creatures and bringing them to your own battlefield. With Maha’s passive ability to give all creatures one toughness, it makes them very weak blockers and easy to get rid of with many cards.
There are plenty of cardsthat canbring creatures out from the graveyardto your side of the battlefield such as Virtue of Persistence, The Cruelty of Gix (which can also act as a tutor), Grave Betrayal, and Ashen Powder.
The decklist also hasa ton of ways to give your opponents' creatures negative stats, with Night of Souls' Betrayal, Kaervek the Spiteful, and a plethora of sorceries and instants that do the same.
While playing the deck, you want to make sureyour opponents never have a battlefield of creatures. Removal is the name of the game, followed by attacking with your own creatures to slowly dwindle your opponent’s life totals down to zero. Alternate win condition Revel in Richescan shortcut your victory by giving you an instant win once you have ten Treasure tokens.
An important thing to note is when the pod sees you bring out Maha in your command zone,you are instantly going to become a public enemy. Maha, if left unchecked, can run away with the game, so your opponents will try to take you out before your engine gets going.
As such, it’s better to wait to cast Maha until all the cards you need to start consistently wiping the board are in your possession.
