Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Silverquill, the Disputant!

Silverquill is a four mana 4/4 with flying and vigilance and each instant and sorcery you cast has casualty 1, which means that as you cast that spell, you may sacrifice a creature with power 1 or greater and when you do you copy that spell and you may choose new target for the copy.

Game Plan

Now that the hype has settled from Secrets of Strixhaven, I was surprised to that the prices of the Elder Dragon cycle of the set has settled to be pretty affordable, despite them having fairly strong effects.

The main concern with all of them is that they are highly costed, and even with Witherbloom able to be cast comparatively cheaply, the cheapest to cast and the one that had the least amount of hype was the one I liked the most.

Silverquill’s game plan is simple; get small creatures into play so you can sacrifice them to copy powerful instants and sorceries. A bit straightforward, but this has a lot of options to play around with.

Support

Since the game plan of Silverquill is to get value from small creatures dying in order to fuel the copied instants and sorceries, so it would be ideal for us to play into some aristocrat strategies to get even more value.

One of my favorite creatures that falls into perfect sacrifice fodder is Greedy Freebooter, which when it dies we get to make a Treasure token and we can scry 1, which is helpful in plenty of ways, even if they die in the early game to help us ramp a bit. While they are two mana, Dire Fleet Hoarder and Common Crook also gain us a Treasure token when they die.

Serrated Scorpion is great because when it dies it deals 2 damage to each opponent and we gain 2 life, Elvish Doomsayer has each opponent discard a card when it dies, and Hallowed Spiritkeeper which when it dies we make X 1/1 flying Spirit tokens where X is the number of creatures in our graveyard.

Of course we can play the usual aristocrat payoffs like Blood Artist and Cruel Celebrant, but since we are ideally using creature with power or toughness of 1 or less, Arnyn, Deathbloom Botanist works pretty well because it has target opponent lose 2 life and we gain 2 life. On the top end there is also Vein Ripper which has it so whenever any creature dies, target opponent loses 2 life and we gain 2 life.

Now for the instants and sorceries that we want to copy, this is where the deck can have a toolbox aspect to it. Do you want to get a lot of mana to cast a bigger spell? Then Culling the Weak can give us eight mana at the cost of one mana and two creatures.

Is there a lot of creatures that need to be removed but can’t be destroyed? Deadly Rollick can exile target creature for free if we control our Commander which means for just one creature we can exile two target creatures.

Raise the Alarm to get even more sacrifice fodder by making four tokens, Mana Tithe to get two surprise counter spells, Tragic Slip to get rid of two huge creatures because we get the Morbid trigger, Sram’s Expertise to get six 1/1 Servo tokens and a free cast of spell of mana value 3 or less which becomes a double free cast, any tutor to get a double tutor, or even a double Torment of Hailfire to win the game.

Setbacks

Where the deck will struggle is making sure that we have things on the board to sacrifice in order to use casualty in the first place.

With Silverquill’s plan being out in the open, if your opponents have any sense they will try and keep your board clear as often as possible. Board wipes galore, removal spells on your aristocrat creatures and Silverquill, preventing you from gaining benefits from your creatures hitting the graveyard by preventing your creatures from hitting the graveyard.

Fairly standard issues that we can expect and prepare for, again being able to become a toolbox deck as needed. That becomes a problem when we do eventually run out of creatures to sacrifice and gain benefits from.

Another issue is the common issue of making sure that we have enough mana in order to cast the spells that we want to cast. We are leaning more into a midrange style of deck, which means that even once we get to four mana, we may not want to cast Silverquill immediately or if we do we have the mana to protect them when they hit the field.

We also can’t be shooting our removal at any problematic creature we see. While we can copy that removal as needed, we need to make sure that we are removing the creatures that need to be removed and not just bolting every Birds of Paradise that we see.

There are also cards that can’t be targeted by our removal. Hexproof, ward, shroud and the like are going to be the banes of our existence, and while we can use a board wipe, that just defeats the purpose of what our deck is trying to do. I would still always keep one or two board wipes on hand, just in case.

Bracket Rating: High 2 to Mid 3

I think SIlverquill is a neat axis for black and white to play in insofar as being a spell slinger archetype with some aristocrat flair added to the mix.

While the Game Changers that we will get the best value from are the cheap tutors, that can become incredibly powerful as the game goes on and we go on a spell casting spree.

The deck will struggle in the higher brackets of play, but there is a solid enough game plan for the deck to hang at least in bracket 3, and could actually do pretty well in that bracket if built correctly.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual