Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to take a look at Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth

Eloise is a five mana 4/4 that has whenever another creature you control dies, investigate and whenever you sacrifice a token you surveil 1.

Game Plan

Eloise is pretty easy to understand, all things considered. We have our creatures die in order to get a whole bunch of Clue tokens, and it is through those Clue tokens where we will be working on gaining our advantages.

There are a good number of Clue synergies that exist as well as token synergies, and while we are limited to mass amounts of token generation in white an green, we still have a few ways to take advantage of having a lot of Clue tokens.

Support

The first thing we need are additional ways to get Clue tokens to make use of these synergies.

Erdwall Investigator is a great early card to have because it allows us to investigate an additional time the first time we would investigate each turn, meaning any instant speed ways to investigate like Secret of the Key which investigates and if it was cast from the graveyard we can investigate twice instead can net us additional Clue tokens.

Tamiyo’s Journal can be a boon for us as well because it allows us to investigate at the beginning of our upkeep and we can tap it and sacrifice three Clues in order to tutor for a card and put that card into our hand.

Homicide Investigator is a bit of redundancy to Eloise’s ability since it investigates once each turn whenever one or more nontoken creatures we control die, Floodhound can investigate each turn for three mana while also being a Clue themselves, and Forensic Gadgeteer investigates whenever we cast an artifact spell and makes activated abilities of artifacts we control one mana cheaper without getting it less than one mana.

One of the best cards for us that makes use of Clues is Five Hundred Year Diary, which adds blue mana equal to each Clue we control whole also being a Clue itself meaning that we can pay two mana to sacrifice it and draw a card if we have to.

Since we are working to make a bunch of artifact tokens as well, then we can also make use of Uthros, Titanic Godcore which when it is fully stationed at 12+ charge counters then we can pay a blue mana to add a blue mana for each artifact we control.

We can use the Clues to fuel costs like Deadly Dispute which requires us to sacrifice a creature or artifact in order to draw two cards and make a Treasure token, Mirkwood Bats to have each opponent lose 1 life whenever we create or sacrifice a token, Nadier’s Nightblade to have each opponent lose 1 life and we gain 1 life whenever a token we control leaves the battlefield, and Marionette Master which has it so that whenever an artifact we control goes to the graveyard from the battlefield then target opponent loses life equal to its power.

Umbral Collar Zealot can be another great way to enable us to sacrifice our Clues because we can sacrifice a creature or artifact in order to surveil 1, which allows us additional card selection when combined with Eloise who can also surveil.

Tangletrove Kelp can be a way for us to turn our massive number of Clues into 6/6 Plant creature tokens, or we can use something like Blood Artist to have target player lose 1 life and we gain 1 life and combine that with March of the Machines which makes each noncreature artifact into a creature with power and toughness equal to its mana value for a ton of damage.

If we manage to get a lot of tokens into the graveyard, we can do a Summoning Station chain where we can tap it to make a 2/2 Pincher token and whenever an artifact is put into the graveyard from play we can untap it so we can do it again and again.

We can also make use of Mechanized Production as an alternate win condition where we make a token copy of the enchanted artifact we control and if we control eight or more artifacts with the same name as one another we win.

Setbacks

Our deck requires a lot of set up in order to be as effective as we can get it.

We need a good number of Clues, ways to make use of those Clues, and ways to needle our opponents so that we can get into a situation where we can win the game. The main issue is, we are not a deck that can win quickly.

Our deck is slow that wins primarily through attrition, in that we need our cards to stay in play in order for us to use our Clues to our advantage and slowly deal damage throughout the game or set up a turn where we can in fact win after having all the resources ready to go.

This is also a deck that can get punished if we commit too much to the board. If we have all of our Clues and ways to deal damage on the board without a way to protect them, then we can easily get blown out and potentially lose.

The slow game is where this deck can truly shine, where unless we are able to win on the spot which is hard for our deck to do, then we are going slow and steady, filtering our draws through the surveil triggers so we can dig through our deck to get the answers we need.

We also will need to sacrifice Clues in order to draw the cards we need, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what we need in the moment which will always be changing based on the board state.

Our deck relies heavily on Clues, so any mass artifact removal can be pretty devastating, and while we have plenty of ways to get the Clues back in play, that will slow us down even further in our already slow deck.

Bracket Rating: High 2, Low 3

I think that Eloise has more potential than most people would give them credit for.

Clue and artifact synergies can be very strong, and with the amount of ways we can make use of the Clues we have access to a lot of mana, a good chunk of damage, and a deck that plays well enough as a control strategy.

Some of the main issues are making sure that we have enough of a board presence and interaction pieces in order to make sure we can lock in our control based win, so higher level interaction and combos do outpace Eloise pretty significantly.

However in a slower game we do have a good number of ways to not only control the board, but also build up enough resources that we can use to win the game, which is a struggle many control decks have.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual