Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Ensign Pavel Chekov!

Ensign Chekov is a four mana 1/5 with a Strange new worlds ability of when he enters, each opponent exiles the top X cards of their library, where X is the number of differently named lands you control. For each opponent, choose a land card that player owns exiled this way, and you may play the chosen cards for as long as they remain exiled.

Game Plan

Unfortunately the news of Sir Patrick Stewarts passing took over another Star Trek alumni’s passing and that was the passing of Walter Koenig. It would be a disservice of me to acknowledge the passing of one Star Trek alumni and not the other, especially with how close the two deaths unfortunately were.

Ensign Chekov is an interesting Commander in that he wants us to have a number of differently named lands in order to get more lands from our opponents. In a way he plays in the space of theft decks, but in a way that is not normally explored, which is to say not casting your opponent’s spells but rather using their lands to benefit you.

Since Ensign Chekov’s ability is an enters trigger, that means we can make use of some blink strategies in order to get multiple triggers, which can also serve as a pseudo mill strategy.

Support

The first thing we need are a good number of differently named lands that can help us get more than just one or two cards from our opponent’s libraries.

We can start simple with something like Seat of the Synod, which is just an artifact land that enters untapped and can tap for blue, Castle Vantress which enters tapped unless we control an Island and can also scry 2, oe even Agna Qel’a which enters tapped unless we control a basic land and can let us draw a card or discard a card.

There are also lands that can provide some interesting utility, like Otawara, Soaring City which we can Channel to bounce an artifact, creature, enchantment, or Planeswalker to its owner’s hand that gets one mana cheaper to use for each legendary creature we control.

If we want to go for the long game, Hall of the Storm Giants is a solid pick because it enters tapped if we control two or more lands but more importantly for six mana can become a 7/7 Giant creature with ward 3 that is still a land, which is pretty big for land creatures.

Mistrise Village is also a great card for us because while it does enter tapped unless we control a Mountain or Forest, we can tap it and pay a blue in order to make the next spell we cast unable to be countered, which will be incredibly useful for our purposes.

Since we want to blink Ensign Chekov, any instant speed blink spell or ability will be perfect for us. Test of Priorities is a modal blink cared where we can either surveil 2 then draw a card or exile a creature we control and return it to the battlefield at the beginning of the next end step.

Spaceshift and Planar Incision are both two mana instant spells that allow us to exile a creature or artifact we control and return it to the battlefield under it’s owners control with a +1/+1 counter on it, which is great to have redundancy on that effect.

If we really want to make a ton of use out of Ensign Chekov’s effect, then we can use cards like Panharmonicon or Starfield Vocalist, which will double Ensign Chekov’s enters trigger so we can get even more cards out of our opponent’s library and more unique lands onto our very own battlefield.

Setbacks

The biggest issue that Ensign Chekov faces is that we are still constrained by being able to only play one land each turn.

Blue is not a ramp color nor is it a color that will allow us to play an additional land, with our only options in that regard being Vedalken Orrery which is symmetrical, Storm Cauldron which is also symmetrical and bounces a land when it is tapped for mana, and Sword of Forge and Frontier which will let us play an additional land, but we need to Equip it to a creature and have that creature deal combat damage.

Walking Atlas and PuPu UFO let us get lands from our hands onto the battlefield, which can be a great way for us to offload our own lands, but if we have no lands to offload then we can’t use their abilities to get our opponent’s lands into play.

Needless to say, it can be pretty difficult to gain additional land drops in our colors.

We also have to consider that while we have access to a lot of mana, we may not have the best access to using that mana if it is mana of a different color. We can include the odd Sunburst or Domain card here and there as a payoff, but otherwise we are pretty stuck with whatever lands our opponents are using.

There is also the matter of how does the deck win? Ideally the idea is that we blink Ensign Chekov a bunch in order to incrementally mill our opponents because we have a lot of unique land names and get more and more as time goes on.

However the issue comes with making sure that Ensign Chekov stays in play. We have more access to protection in the form of counter spells and the blink cards that can help against spot removal, but there are some blink spells that don’t come back at the end of the turn which is a major issue against board wipes.

Bracket Rating: High 1, Low 2

While I do think that Ensign Chekov is an interesting Commander to play around with, I don’t think that the power is there.

Sure, you can juice the deck in a variety of ways where you can find some infinite way to blink Ensign Chekov to mill your opponent, but that will be a lot of work for not as much gain. However I do think that the deck can provide an interesting deck building challenge or can very much be a solid support piece in a deck that can play a lot of different lands.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Rest easy, Walter Koening,

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual