Magic: The Gathering — Edward Kenway Commander Deck Guide

Edward Kenway is one of the many new commanders introduced in Magic: The Gathering's Assassin's Creed set as a part of its Universes Beyond product line. Assassin's Creed translated many characters from the titular franchise into Magic cards, with the protagonist of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Edward Kenway getting a chance to shine.

With his game focusing heavily on piracy, Edward Kenway's card is heavily focused on Pirates, Assassins, and Vehicles. He makes for a great Grixis (blue/red/black) commander, a color pairing that has a plethora of support cards for all of those card types to make for a powerful Commander deck.

Sample Decklist

Here is a sample decklist for your Edward Kenway Commander deck.

Key Cards

Edward Kenway

The commander of the deck, everything is built around Edward Kenway. The best commanders are the ones that can benefit from their effects without ever having to put themselves in danger through combat.

Edward Kenway's passive ability gives you more cards to play from your opponents' libraries, so long as Vehicles are the ones that are dealing damage.

Edward Kenway's ability to exile cards from your opponents' libraries triggers each time a Vehicle deals combat damage , meaning if you deal damage with a ton of creatures, you get a ton of extra cards to cast whenever you want.

Since you need to tap creatures to crew Vehicles, this helps to give you a ton of Treasure tokens with Edward Kenway's ability to make a Treasure token for each tapped Pirate, Assassin, and Vehicle.. This makes it trivial to ramp, something Grixis often has problems with.

Adrestia

Vehicles make up the other important half of Edward Kenway decks, with Adrestia being one of the best. Edward Kenway wants your Vehicles to connect for damage, and Adrestia's islandwalk makes it easier to guarantee you connect for damage.

When choosing who to attack, it's best to send Adrestia toward an opponent that controls an Island, as they won't be able to block Adrestia to make sure Edward Kenway's passive ability goes off.

Since a lot of your creatures are Assassins, when Adrestia attacks it'll often be drawing you a card. It only costs one mana to crew Adrestia, meaning almost every creature in your deck will be able to turn it into a creature.

Desynchronization

It's always important to have a few board wipes in your decks in the case of battlefields getting too out of hand. Historic permanents are artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas, something that the majority of your deck is.

Desynchronization bounces all non-historic permanents, and in some cases can act as a one-sided board wipe. It's only going to affect your weakest creatures, while your Vehicles and legendary creatures get to stick around and take advantage of the empty battlefield.

The usefulness of Desynchronization is heavily depending on what your opponents are playing. If they're playing a deck where they play a lot of historic spells, they won't care, but in other decks such as token decks, it can be backbreaking.

Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains

Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains is a fantastic utility card that helps you dig deeper into your deck for more Pirates, Assassins, and Vehicles. While Adéwalé isn't great in combat due to its low toughness, Adéwalé is good for crewing Vehicles with high power.

Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains makes for a useful blocker to trade with threatening creatures, as Adéwalé has a lot of recursion that it dying doesn't matter.

Even if Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains dies, in an Edward Kenway deck, it's easy to bring it back to your hand since you'll be dealing damage with Vehicles very often.

Revel In Riches

Revel in Riches is one of the main win conditions of the deck. With how easily Edward Kenway can make Treasure tokens, you can reach the ten Treasures needed to automatically win the game in just one turn.

The win doesn't trigger until your upkeep, so you do have to survive a turn cycle before you get to win the game. However, with how many creatures and Vehicles Edward Kenway decks have access to, it's easy to hold the line so you can win with Revel in Riches.

How To Play The Deck

Edward Kenway Commander decks are all about knowing how to use your resources for the given gamestate. You need to balance keeping defenses up while also dealing damage with your Vehicles.

You want to be attacking when your opponents are low on creatures or after a board wipe, and making sure there are enough solid blockers if there are too many dangerous threats on the battlefield you can't get rid of.

The deck balances between having an equal number of Assassins and Pirates to Vehicles. You don't want to focus too hard on one of them, as then you aren't taking full advantage of everything Edward Kenway has to offer.

You want to get Vehicles down on the battlefield first early in the game, as creatures that had just entered the battlefield can still crew them despite their summoning sickness to start dealing damage.

Edward Kenway is a bit costly, especially since Grixis doesn't have much built-in ramp in the colors. Once Edward Kenway hits the battlefield, you want him to stick as its effect can help fund the mana needed to recast it if it ever does get removed.

Generating extra creatures is great in Edward Kenway decks to make sure you always have stuff to crew with. This is where a lot of the enchantments come into play, with Rooftop Bypass making Assassin tokens, Black Market Connections giving Shapeshifters, and Double Down giving you extra copies of all your outlaws (Assassins, Mercenaries, Pirates, Rogues, and Warlocks).

With how strong Vehicles tend to be, combat is a very viable route towards winning the game. An Edward Kenway deck can deal large outbursts of damage. The decks also generate a lot of Treasure tokens, making Revel in Riches a handy alternate win condition.