Today’s article is another Deck Tech, however instead on focusing on the upcoming additions to standard I would like to talk about a new casual format I have picked up on recently. Tiny Leaders.

For those of you unaware, Tiny Leaders is a Commander-like format where players start on 25 life, have a 50 card deck, including a Commander, and all the cards have to have a CMC of 3 and share colur-identity with the Commander. You are also allowed a sideboard of up to 10 cards and Commander damage does not exist. This results in very interest decks being built, utilising a lot of the spells made popular in Legacy, but still having the variety that Commander offers.

Further details can be found about Tiny Leaders from the creator’s blog here. The format also has it’s own ban list (those of you who immediately though about Sol Ring or Counterbalance will be sorely disappointed) which can be found here. As the format is still quite young the list is still evolving so check back with it regularly in case there are any major changes. Most of it is unsurprising though.

Moving onto today’s deck. Prior to Fate Reforged, there were three clans that did not have a legendary creature: Jeskai, Mardu and Sultai. As of this article, Jeskai and Mardu have now had this slot filled, and it is the ancient Jeskai Khan ‘Shu Yun’ that this deck is based around:

Silent Tempest

Mainboard:

Commander (1) Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest Creatures (6) 1x Delver of Secrets

1x Blistercoil Weird

1x Mother of Runes

1x Young Pyromancer

1x Kiln Fiend

1x Monastery Mentor Other Spells (25) 1x Apostle’s Blessing

1x Emerge Unscathed

1x Gods Willing

1x Lightning Greaves

1x Artful Dodge

1x Distortion Strike

1x Teleportal

1x Gut Shot

1x Lightning Bolt

1x Path to Exile

1x Swords to Plowshares

1x Vapor Snag

1x Marrow Shards

1x Pyroclasm

1x Rolling Earthquake

1x Whipflare

1x Force Spike

1x Mana Leak

1x Mental Misstep

1x Spell Pierce

1x Spell Snare

1x Brainstorm

1x Gitaxian Probe

1x Ponder

1x Preordain

Land (18) 1x Adarkar Wastes

1x Arid Mesa

1x Battlefield Forge

1x Clifftop Retreat

1x Command Tower

1x Eiganjo Castle

1x Flooded Strand

1x Glacial Fortress

1x Hallowed Fountain

1x Island

1x Minamo, School at Water’s Edge

1x Mountain

1x Plains

1x Sacred Foundry

1x Scalding Tarn

1x Shivan Reef

1x Steam Vents

1x Sulfur Falls Sideboard: 1x Crawlspace

1x Elixir of Immortality

1x Glaring Spotlight

1x Phyrexian Revoker

1x Pithing Needle

1x Propaganda

1x Relic of Progenitus

1x Rest in Peace

1x Volcanic Fallout

1x Wear / Tear

Deck Breakdown:

Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest is clearly a build-around Commander/Tiny Leader. The Aim of the game is to get him out, protect him and hit for a bunch of damage with prowess trigger and his ability to give double strike. The strategy naturally you want to get him out ASAP, but you’ll rarely want to cast him on turn 3. Usually you want him turn 4 where you can hold up one land for protection mana. If he does die however, casting him for 5 mana isn’t out of the question. Beyond that though is where you might need to switch to other lines of winning the deck can offer.

The rest of the creatures provide early pressure whilst still having synergy with the instants and sorceries in the deck. Delver of Secrets is arguably one of the best 1-drops in any format. With twenty four instant and sorceries – the equivalent of twenty nine in a sixty card deck – flipping him should’t be too difficult.

Blistercoil Weird, while not as outwardly powerful as Delver, does provide some interesting blocking opportunities. Swing with this on your turn and when your opponent swings back, cast an instant, untap and suddenly you have a 2/2 blocker in a format that tops out a 3CMC. Not irrelevant.

Kiln Fiend is interesting little common from Rise of the Eldrazi with a BIG ability. Getting +3/+0 for casting an instant or sorcery is ridiculously powerful. An ideal scenario for this could be to kill their blocker each turn and just keep swinging for 4 damage. That on it’s own could win you the game.

These two are you plan B should attacking with Shu Yun become difficult. Young Pyromancer has proven himself to be a powerful token generator since his release in M14 – making it all the way back to formats like Vintage – and in this deck its no different. When ‘going tall’ doesn’t work out, ‘going wide’ usually does.

Monastery Mentor is a new card from Fate Reforged that is getting a lot of hype as potentially being the best card in the set, and it’s easy to see why. One extra mana for one extra toughness and prowess is alright, but the real power is in the tokens having prowess also. It only takes a couple of games to realise how out of control this can get and in a deck where ‘going wide’ is the plan B, he is a natural inclusion alongside Young Pyromancer.

The protection spells are the main way of keeping Shu Yun safe from spot removal as well as helping him get through for damage by all giving him protection from a colour: Emerge Unscathed’s rebound ability makes it very powerful in this deck, allowing us to cast it – and trigger prowess – for free the following turn; God’s Willing helps smooth the draws; and Mother of Runes, while not triggering prowess, allows us to have a repeatable effect, essentially keeping Shu Yun untouchable and unblockable.

Lightning Greaves is the only exception to this rule. While not running another instant doesn’t help Shu Yun’s prowess, and the shroud is very unsynergistic, the ability to give haste to not only him, but any of our creatures can potentially be game winning. It’s still possible, if this is equipped to Shu Yun, to move it to another creature you have out, cast the protection spell and then move it back as it costs 0 to equip. It’s not the perfect card usually is in this deck, but it’s still good enough to run in my opinion. The other option her is obviously Swiftfoot Boots, but the 1 mana to equip them messes with the curve the deck want to play on. Playing Lightning Greaves on turn 2 and equipping turn 3 goes the deck an extra turn of attacking and protects Shu Yun from before the opponent next turn.

The set of spells that make Shu Yun unblockable act as pseudo-protection, as well as helping them get through extra damage. Artful Dodge’s and Distortion Strike’s abilities allow for multiple casting of the same spell making them very efficient at helping to get through damage. Teleportal is particularly interesting as if the Shu Yun becomes too expensive to recast and the tokens from Young Pyromancer or Monastery Mentor are having trouble getting through, you can overload it to make all of your creatures unblockable – and trigger prowess of the Mentor and monk tokens.

The deck also runs some of the best 1-mana removal available in the format. The deck is a tempo deck at heart and keeping the cost of removal spells as low as possible helps to make the chances of casting two spells in one turn – thus getting ahead – more likely.

The mass removal suit on the other hand naturally has to be more expensive for what it does. While these aren’t cards you want to cast as they kill most of your creatures, sometimes they’ll be necessary in order to get back into the game. It’s also worth noting that Rolling Earthquake can act as a mana-sink for a big burn spell to finish a game if necessary.

As the deck run’s blue we have access to some of the most powerful counterspells ever printed. While it may be strange at first that Force of Will isn’t here, Force of Will actually has a CMC of 5 and can’t be played in Tiny Leaders.

Running Blue, we also have access to some of the best draw spells ever printed. They will help dig for the relevant spells in particular match ups as well as sill triggering prowess on Shu Yun, Monastery Mentor and the abilities on Blistcoil Weird, Kiln Fiend and Young Pyromancer.

The final suit of spells, and arguably the most important, are the phyrexian mana cards. Most of these can be cast for 0 mana, and even then the only exception is essentially a colourless protection spell. That’s huge in this deck! It means you can have situations where your opponent thinks its safe to tap out or attack and you can easily blow them out. It can also mean a ‘free’ prowess trigger when attacking.

The most powerful of these spells has to be Mental Misstep. Having this in hand means that you can cast Shu Yun on curve whilst still having a counter for most of the removal in the format. I would not be surprised to see this card banned in the future, but for the mean time I’ll enjoy ruining my opponents fun!

Sideboard Breakdown:

These cards come in against any aggrieve deck. This format natural starting point – from a deck building perspective – if to be fast and wide with lots of cheap, value creatures. Crawlspace and Propaganda stop them attacking while Volcanic Fallout gives the deck another way to kill them all.

The other way people can go when deck building is by building around a particular Commander. If that Commander has any activated abilities – such as Jaya Ballard, Task Mage – then these cards can come in to hose those decks.

One this I am not sure about at this point is how powerful graveyard strategies can be. Off the top of my head Varolz the Scar-Striped could be a powerful deck, While Alesha, Who Smiles at Death will be popular as the only Mardu aligned Tiny Leader.

On the other hand one thing I have learned is that Mill is a very powerful archetype if built correctly. Elixir of Immortality can help deal with those decks. Phyrexian Revoker and Pithing Needle can help too. I’m look at you Ambassador Laquatus!

This is a very specific hate card. Geist of Saint Traft is disgusting as a Tiny Leader and must be stopped. He is incredibly hard to deal with due to being hexproof and the only way this deck can have a chance at racing him is to keep him from hitting the board or remove his hexproof and kill him with fire!

The final card in the sideboard is fair standard. Just some versatile artifact and enchantment removal for when it might be needed.

Honourable Mentions:

Lets face it, the card is clearly nuts, and in a deck with ‘free’ spells it should be even better. The issue here is being too greedy. Jeskai Ascendancy in this deck feels like a ‘win-more’ card. Shu Yun doesn’t need the extra +1/+1’s to get out of hand, especially when you start on 25 life instead of 40. Perhaps if Mental Misstep gets banned this will find it’s way into the list. For the mean time I’m happy without it, but let me know if you try it in the deck and have any success with it.

The instants and sorceries in this deck have three main functions: protection, counter and removal. While all the charms – Azorius, Izzet, Boros and Jeskai – do this very well, this issue is their mana cost. You want to be able to cast more that one spell a turn to get ahead on tempo whilst leaving up protection for your opponents turn which can be difficult in a deck which ideally want to top out at four lands when the spells cost 2-3 mana.

A few people have talked to me about the inclusion of Nivix Clyclops as another copy of Kiln Fiend. The short answer why he’s not in the deck is I just don’t think he’s very good. Kiln fiend is great because you can cast him on turn 2 and does not have to fight on curve with Shu Yun. Plus, at 3 mana, a card like Monastery Mentor is much more powerful and gives the deck more options as the game goes on.

Conclusion

So this has been the Silent Tempest Deck Tech. This is my own personal Tiny Leaders deck and I’m looking forward to having more chances to play with it and improve it as the format develops. Shu Yun is a very interesting commander. He is similar to Geist of Stint Traft, both in colour and function, however you get access to red (my favourite colour) and you don’t end up having people hate you as much!

What do you think of the format Tiny Leaders? Do you have any decks in mind at the moment, or have you been playing for a while now and have had the chance to play with a few decks? Take to opportunity to discuss the format and deck list in the comment section below.

You can play the deck on Tapped Out here.