Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be talking about Errant and Giada!

Errant and Giada are a three mana 2/3 with flash, flying, let’s you look at the top card of your library at any time and you may cast spells with flash or flying from the top of your library.

Game Plan

Being able to cast spells from the top of our library is a massive upside, even though it is restricted to spells that have flash or flying. There are plenty of solid creatures that we can cast that have flying that can work really well as blockers or attackers and while flash is less often seen on spells, it does open us up to some interesting considerations.

The idea is to play sort of a control strategy, where we have access to counter magic and removal spells in the hand that we can hold up, all the while keeping spells that have flash or flying on the top of our deck to cast if we don’t happen to spend our mana for interaction.

Support

Let’s consider the cards that have flash first, mostly because there are a lot more options that are available that have flying.

Eaten by Piranhas is an excellent option to consider because for only two mana, we can enchant a creature at instant speed in order to make the enchanted creature lose all abilities and become a 1/1 black Skeleton. This can blank an opposing Commander or a problematic creature, and it is especially good among Commanders because it makes them harder to reset or recast to get value from.

Mystic Subdual works in a similar vein, being an Aura that gives the enchanted creature -2/-0 and makes them lose all abilities, Seal Away works as a way to exile a creature while it stays on the battlefield, and Noggle the Mind has the enchanted creature lose all abilities and become a 1/1 colorless Noggle.

Deep Gnome Terramancer is an solid choice for a creature with flash because whenever a land enters under the opponents control without being played, then we can search our library for a Plains card and out it into play tapped once each turn, which if we play during the beginning steps of the game can help us keep pace with our opponents or even surpass them in lands depending on what you’re playing against.

In that vein there is also Archivist of Oghma, which makes it so that whenever an opponent searches their library we gain 1 life and draw a card, which again in the early game can net us some solid card advantage and keep us ahead on life for a bit.

As we move onto cards that have flying, we have a lot more options to choose from. For example, we can use Warden of the Evos Isle to give creature spells with flying we cast a one mana discount. Watcher of the Spheres also gives creature spells with flying we cast a one mana discount a one mana discount but also gets +1/+1 whenever another creature with flying enters under our control.

What would also help us a bit to make sure that we can cast our non-flash creatures that happen to have flying, we can also make use of Leyline of Anticipation which can enter the battlefield if it’s in our starting hand and let’s us cast spells as though they had flash. It doesn’t give all of our spells flash, but it does make it so we can cast our flying creatures from the top of our library as though they had flash.

Vega, the Watcher has it so that whenever we cast a spell from anywhere other than our hand we can draw a card, which can provide a good amount of card advantage in the best of times. Windshaper Planetar can be a solid surprise because when it enters the battlefield during the declare attackers step, for each attacking creature we can reselect which players and Planeswalkers they are attacking.

We can accumulate our board of flying creatures and have creature lords like Empyrean Eagle and Thunderclap Wyvern to give other creatures we control +1/+1 while or Sephara’s Sky Blade to give other creatures we control with flying indestructible to give a beat down over time while we maintain a steady position.

Setbacks

There are a lot of moving pieces in the deck, and that can mean that a lot of things can go wrong.

It is important to remember that while Errant and Giada can let you cast spells with flash and flying from the top of your library, your spells with flying do not gain flash to do so. I had to keep reminding myself that was the case as I was writing this, so it is possible to slip your mind as well.

Errant and Giada are an interesting design space for this sort of Commander where normally you would also get access to instants and sorceries, but the fact that we are limited to spells with flash an flying can add more decision points than one would like to deal with.

We also need to have Errant and Giada in play to get that advantage, and while that is a solid amount of advantage, they really don’t do much else. They can help us gain an advantage during our opponent’s turns, which works well with spells with flash, less so with spells that have flying, but not flash.

That also means that without our Commander, our deck is essentially a flying creatures matter deck with some cards that have flash that we can use on our turn, so making sure that we can protect Errant and Giada is paramount to our success.

While they are pretty rare to see, there are some times when you are working against cards that prevent you from attacking with your flying creatures like Sandwurm Convergence, which does get a decent amount of play which can blank a majority of your deck.

Bracket Rating: High 2, Low 3

Errant and Giada can be a solid deck to play, if a bit one note.

Having to make sure Errant and Giada in play isn’t going to be difficult in our colors, but it is a consideration to make because they are the lynch pin of our ability to have essentially an extra card in hand that we can cast and gain incremental advantages as the game goes on.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual