by Johnny Cycles, Friday, October 16th, 2026
Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to support my content and see the videos before they make it to this site! For my budget build of Jeskai Spellslinger, click here.
Love both go-wide creature strategies and drawing all the cards? Enjoy complicated boardstates that involve multiple triggers? Want to show off your token collection? Then give Narset, Enlightened Exile and this Jeskai Spellslinger deck a shot!
Spellslinger decks want to chain together a critical mass of instants and sorceries, then either storm off, make a bunch of mana and resolve a giant X mana spell, loop extra turns, or gain additional value from those instants and sorceries in the form of creatures or damage.
This deck is firmly in the final category. We play a bunch of token Lords (creatures that generate tokens…yeah, I just made that up) that trigger when we cast noncreature spells. Our commander, meanwhile, gives all of our creatures prowess, which means each noncreature spell we cast will grow our team of token creatures to massive proportions. We have a few other ways to win games, but before I get further into the deck, here’s the list:
Decklist – Jeskai Spellslinger with Narset, Enlightened Exile
| Narset, Enlightened Exile |
Creatures (22)
| Esper Sentinel | $60 |
| Guide of Souls | $3.65 |
| Ocelot Pride | $43 |
| Aziza, Mage Tower Captain | .30 cents |
| Balmor, Battlemage Captain | .32 cents |
| Belladonna Took | $2.95 |
| Dreadhorde Arcanist | .42 cents |
| Emeritus of Conflict | $1.90 |
| Slickshot Show-Off | $6.03 |
| Sprite Dragon | .40 cents |
| Third Path Iconoclast | .40 cents |
| Young Pyromancer | .33 cents |
| Cosmogrand Zenith | $8.07 |
| Monastery Mentor | $1.47 |
| Archmage Emeritus | .82 cents |
| Kykar, Zephyr Awakener | .39 cents |
| Purphoros, God of the Forge | $29 |
| Smellerbee, Rebel Fighter | .46 cents |
| Sokka, Tenacious Tactician | .54 cents |
| Emeritus of Ideation | $7.25 |
| Quantum Riddler | $46 |
| The Locust God | $7.86 |
Overall Cost: $221.56
Artifacts (4)
| Mishra’s Bauble | $2.46 |
| Mox Amber | $93 |
| Tormod’s Crypt | .47 cents |
| Cori-Steel Cutter | $5.49 |
Overall Cost: $101.42
Enchantments (8)
| Stormchaser’s Talent | $3.87 |
| Goblin Bombardment | $3.30 |
| Sorcerer Class | $2.32 |
| Caretaker’s Talent | $11.54 |
| Frostcliff Siege | $2.68 |
| Jeskai Ascendancy | $2.14 |
| Whirlwind of Thought | .35 cents |
| Leyline Binding | .65 cents |
Overall Cost: $26.85
Instants (16) (1 mdfc)
| Consider | .37 cents |
| Crimson Wisps | $1.06 |
| Erode | $7.63 |
| Enlightened Tutor | $33 |
| Expedite | .33 cents |
| Flashback | $3.94 |
| Leap | .61 cents |
| Lightning Bolt | .84 cents |
| Might of the Meek | .29 cents |
| Opt | .25 cents |
| Peek | .50 cents |
| Shadow Rift | $1.69 |
| Swords to Plowshares | $1.05 |
| Counterspell | $2.68 |
| Untimely Malfunction | $8.85 |
| Valakut Awakening (mdfc) | $17 |
Overall Cost: $80.09
Sorceries (12) (1 mdfc)
| Cloak of Feathers | .30 cents |
| Enter the Enigma | .35 cents |
| Gitaxian Probe | $3.99 |
| Meltdown | .32 cents |
| Ponder | $2.48 |
| Preordain | .85 cents |
| Renegade Tactics | .21 cents |
| Serum Visions | .75 cents |
| Warlord’s Fury | .30 cents |
| Expressive Iteration | .34 cents |
| Shatterskull Smashing (mdfc) | $8.65 |
| Supreme Verdict | $2.48 |
Overall Cost: $21.02
Lands (39) (2 mdfcs)
Arid Mesa $35
Command Tower .30 cents
Elegant Parlor $9.99
Fabled Passage .88 cents
Field of Ruin .30 cents
Fiery Islet $4.63
Fire Nation Palace $1.84
Flooded Strand $16
Floodfarm Verge $9
Glacial Fortress .30 cents
Hallowed Fountain $8
Riverglide Pathway $5
Mana Confluence $35
Meticulous Archive $15
Mistgate Pathway $5.09
Marsh Flats $33
Mystic Sanctuary $1.44
Raugrin Triome $16
Rivendell $1.50
Riverpyre Verge $17
Sacred Foundry $11
Scalding Tarn $39
Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass (mdfc)
Steam Vents $11
Sunbaked Canyon $3.96
Thundering Falls $16
Valakut Stoneforge (mdfc)
Westvale Abbey $3.48
Windbrisk Heights .33 cents
Island (4)
Mountain (3)
Plains (3)
Overall Cost: $300.04
Total Cost: $750.98
Budget-Friendly?
Be sure to check out my Vraska, Soul of Stone deck for a budget-friendly Jeskai Spellslinger deck. That being said, let’s quickly go over ways we can make this deck closer to $100.
Much of the cost of this deck is found in the mana base (nearly half the cost) and in a handful of heavily played Modern cards. If we take out the latter and tweak the former, our price drops to $221.87.
From there, we can take out cards over $10:
Caretaker’s Talent
Purphoros, God of the Forge
Enlightened Tutor
Valakut Awakening
Next, we look at cards over $5:
Slickshot Show-Off
Cori-Steel Cutter
Erode
Untimely Malfunction
Shatterskull Smashing
That’s trimmed the price down $110.19 for a total cost of $111.68.
What should we replace these cards with? We can find cheaper versions of similar cards for some, while for others, we can use the extra space for a bit more ramp.
Why Narset, Enlightened Exile?
I’ve had this deck for a long time and, to be honest, its commander has changed several times. My first build featured Kykar, Wind’s Fury at the helm. I liked the card, but I hadn’t built the deck with any real payoffs for the mana it could generate. I largely used the Spirit tokens to attack and block.
In theory, this should be a fine plan, but in reality it was underwhelming. Without ways to grow our team of Spirits, they could rarely close out games. The deck either needed Glorious Anthem effects or big spells like Banefire to win. I wasn’t really interested in either for this deck. I already had a Mardu Token deck that used anthem effects to help it win, while I had Elves and Hydras that wanted to make a bunch of mana to use in a big spell.
My next commander was Narset, Jeskai Waymaster. I quickly abandoned her, though, as it became obvious that we rarely ended a turn empty-handed, thanks to all of our cantrips and other card-draw engines.
I had originally dismissed Narset, Enlightened Exile due to my experience with Kykar. If an army of Spirits had failed, how would a commander that didn’t even produce an army of tokens win? We needed a commander that made tokens AND grew them with prowess (or some other cheap, efficient way).
However, such a card doesn’t exist, forcing us to choose. Well, between token generation connected to noncreature spells and giving prowess to our team, the former is far more represented in Magic than the latter. In fact, Narset, Enlightened Exile is one of two creatures in all of Magic that give all of our creatures prowess. The other is Bria, Riptide Rogue, by the way.
Meanwhile, there are numerous cards with token generation connected to noncreature spells (or just instants and sorceries). We’re playing seven, in fact, and that’s not even all that are available to us. Furthermore, there are plenty of ways to generate tokens otherwise, should we choose to go that route.
All of this is to say that of the two effects we want to have access to in the Command Zone, giving prowess to all of our creatures is by far the best choice looking at the odds alone. We have a much better chance of drawing a token Lord than Narset, should she be in the 99 instead.
And I haven’t even touched on all of that other text on the card. There are a number of ways to gain value out this attack trigger. First, we can play big mana spells in order to cast them from the graveyard for free. Of course, this requires us to have enough low CMC spells to grow Narset to the necessary power.
Second, we can view this as just one more spell among the many we are trying to chain together on our way to victory. We will obviously choose whichever 1- or 2-mana spell is most useful in the moment, but this free copy would provide incremental advantage, rather than a high-impact big-mana spell.
I’ve chosen the latter. Ideally, the spell we copy for free will draw us into another 1-mana spell we can cast to trigger our token production and prowess at least twice more.
The TL;DR is that growing our entire team with our noncreature spells is a more powerful effect than token generation.
Since I started this article, Vraska, Soul of Stone has been spoiled and released. I made a budget Jeskai Spellslinger deck with her at the helm that you can read about here. The deck is very fun and explosive. Is she a better option than Narset? Prowess to our entire team is still busted, but so is getting mana out of every noncreature spell. The two decks can share a lot of similar cards, if you so choose, but Vraska incentivizes us to play more artifact synergy alongside big mana spells to take advantage of the extra mana she generates.
Primary Game Plan
Our goal is to untap with at least one token Lord and our commander, then chain together cantrips to make and grow our team of token creatures. The cantrips are essential to our game plan because they both trigger our token generation and prowess AND keep our hand full of more instants and sorceries to play. With only a couple of ways to give our team haste (more on this later), we need one turn to generate our army and a follow-up turn to grow it huge and attack.
Our deck can be divided into token generation, cantrips, noncreature spell recursion, non-cantrip card draw, non-prowess creature buffs, and our alternate win conditions. We could consider some support cards as making up a final section of the deck, but most will appear in one of the other sections. It should be noted that each of these aspects of our deck synergizes with noncreature spells, token generation, or both.
Token Lords
These are the creatures we need to make our army of tokens. We play a total of nine, though they are not all created equal. Having made my case for Narset, Enlightened Exile as the best commander for this strategy, it will be difficult for us to win if we don’t get at least one of these creatures online. Our cantrips are great and all, but if the only creature we’re growing is our commander, victory will be unlikely. Therefore, play these wisely (i.e. don’t overcommit these to the board)!
Cori-Steel Cutter – if you haven’t seen this equipment in action, don’t underestimate it. It is very, very powerful. And even though we only get a single token each turn, everything else the card does is amazing. The threat of giving a big finisher both trample and haste should not be overlooked, even if we don’t play a ton of creature bombs. What makes the card so powerful for us is the same reason it’s busted in Modern. The token we get has prowess, which means double prowess with our commander out, and we get to equip it for free to that creature, granting it haste and trample. If we already have a couple of tokens from Cori-Steel Cutter, then the turn we really go off will give us a bunch of really large creatures.
Cosmogrand Zenith – another card that only triggers once a turn and only with our second spell, this time we get two 1/1s or +1/+1 counters on our team. Both options are very powerful for us. Need more dorks? Pick option 1. Need bigger dorks? Option 2.
Kykar, Zephyr Awakener – a new card from Foundations, this Bird Wizard offers us tons of value. As a token Lord, making 1/1 flying Spirit tokens is extremely powerful in conjunction with our commander, or simply to keep us alive long enough to win. And while we aren’t a blink deck, turning each of our instants into protection spells for our commander is legit amazing.
Monastery Mentor – the best at what it does. Sure, Talrand, Sky Summoner makes 2/2 fliers, but that card didn’t even make the cut. Should it have? Let me know in the comments!
Sokka, Tenacious Tactician – remember when I said we needed a commander who both made an army and gave it prowess? Well, technically, Sokka here is that commander. Unfortunately, it’s only Allies who get prowess (and menace). I haven’t tried to build this deck with Allies, but I do know we’d lose all of our other token Lords if we did. Let me know if you have an Ally Tribal deck with Sokka, Tenacious Tactician. I’m sure we could make a very powerful deck.
Stormchaser’s Talent – we will often use this Class to trigger prowess and add a token to our team. Given our commander’s ability to recur instants and sorceries from the graveyard, we aren’t looking to abuse the second level here. We’ll usually have other things to do with our mana. But, given the power of level 3, having Stormchaser’s Talent on the battlefield can help us rebuild after a sweeper or get through a dry-spell of mostly lands.
Ocelot Pride – we are far from a lifegain deck, but we have a couple of ways to trigger this Modern all-star. Even without that support, though, we can grow it large enough to win in combat with Narset and trigger it that way.
The Locust God – speaking of generating fliers…The Locust God is one of our best late-game finishers. Not only will all of our many cantrips trigger it, those tokens get haste. Untapping with this God alongside Narset is usually game over.
Third Path Iconoclast – for a instead of , we get a strictly better Young Pyromancer.
Young Pyromancer – if we stick one of these two creatures on turn 2, we can amass enough of an army by turn 5 to force our opponent to wipe the board, lose most of their creatures in combat, or die.
Cantrips
These cards make up the other essential part of our deck. Without some number of these, it will be difficult to make an army of tokens and grow them to lethal proportions. As to when to deploy these 1-mana spells, I wouldn’t hesitate to cast something like Consider or Preordain on turn 1 to help sculpt our early game. With 16 cantrips and several ways to recast them from the graveyard, we have to trust that we’ll have enough of them when we need them. Since they replace themselves, as well as trigger several other card draw pieces, achieving a critical mass of cantrips in the late-game is doable.
Instants
Great cast before damage, these cards can surprise our opponents and function as combat tricks. However, many will be best deployed prior to combat. Furthermore, if we have a way to give our freshly created tokens haste, then we’ll want to cast these at sorcery speed.
Consider – great at sculpting our hand early or late, we can also dump an instant or sorcery into the graveyard in order to recur it with Narset or Dreadhorde Arcanist if we don’t have the mana to cast it that turn.
Crimson Wisps – haste is definitely something we’ll want to grant before combat most of the time. There is a world where making a threat Red will be relevant.
Expedite – a strictly worse Crimson Wisps.
Leap – giving a creature flying after it is blocked by a creature without reach or flying won’t stop the block from happening. Thus, Leap is another instant we’ll likely cast prior to combat.
Might of the Meek – trample is a great reason to wait until after blocks are declared to cast this instant.
Opt – before Consider, there was Opt.
Peek – before Gitaxian Probe, there was Peek. Instant speed means we can cast this at the end of our opponent’s draw step. We’ll probably still want to cast it prior to combat, though.
Shadow Rift – before there was Slip Through Space, there was Shadow Rift. This is an instant, though we’ll likely want to cast it at sorcery speed more often than not.
Sorceries
Much like some of our instants, we would want to cast these at sorcery speed anyway.
Cloak of Feathers – sorcery-speed Leap.
Enter the Enigma – an alternate to Slip Through Space.
Gitaxian Probe – paying life instead of mana to cast spells is extremely busted. I would recommend never actually paying mana for this spell, unless it would kill you.
Ponder – there is no Brainstorm in our deck. There might should be. We have Ponder, at least.
Preordain – and Preordain. Both of these cards are great on turn 1 or 2.
Renegade Tactics – a great way to make blocks unfavorable for our opponents.
Serum Visions – the final card of the trifecta of sorcery-speed cantrips that help sculpt your draw.
Warlord’s Fury – I’m not sure why Wizards decided this type of effect would be too powerful at instant speed, but it really should be an instant, while Leap should be a sorcery.
Expressive Iteration – not technically a cantrip, since it costs 2 mana, but it plays like one. Ideally on turn 3 or after so that you can play a land from among the three cards.
Noncreature Spell Recursion
Other than our commander, these are the ways we have to recast cards from our graveyard or, in one case, to copy instants and sorceries repeatedly. Having this flexibility can be the difference between fizzling and chaining together cantrips.
Aziza, Mage Tower Captain – with one of our token Lords online, we should be able to use this Djinn Sorcerer’s ability at least once. As the game progresses, we can do it repeatedly. What a card!
Dreadhorde Arcanist – a powerful way to recur our cantrips, this Zombie Wizard, printed in 2019 in War of the Spark, is the first of its kind (as far as my internet search tells me). With our commander out and a few prowess triggers, we can recast any instant or sorcery in our graveyard.
Emeritus of Conflict – casting three spells (at least) a turn is what our deck is built to do. Getting a Lightning Bolt each time we do, which will then go towards our next three count, gives us some powerful recursion. I can’t believe this card is under $2.
Emeritus of Ideation – given our commander’s attack trigger, I’m not sure how often we’ll be able to prepare this Human Wizard. However, even casting Ancestral Recall once is pretty sweet for us, while the evasive body can help us close out games on an otherwise stalled board.
Flashback – another card that has been steadily dropping in price. I used to play Snapcaster Mage, but cut it for more impactful cards. Flashback synergizes with our strategy in that it’s an instant that will trigger prowess itself before we cast the instant or sorcery we’re targeting with it, which will trigger prowess again.
Mystic Sanctuary – a likely tapped land comes with a cost, but I think the potential of fetching this in the late game when we have three Islands is too good to pass up.
Stormchaser’s Talent – level 2 of this Class gets us our best instant or sorcery from the yard.
Noncantrip Card Draw
Similar to our token Lords, these cards are our card draw Lords. Some turn every instant and sorcery into a card, which happens to be really good with our cantrips! Others draw us a card when we make tokens. And some simply draw us cards, while triggering prowess and our token Lords along the way.
Archmage Emeritus – untapping with this Human Wizard out should put us super far ahead on resources…unless we’re empty handed.
Belladonna Took – such a great card for our deck! With a token Lord out, triggering this Halfling Citizen at least twice should be easy. Doing so three times and growing our team shouldn’t be too much harder.
Caretaker’s Talent – similar to Belladonna Took, we get the card the first time we make a token instead of the second.
Esper Sentinel – this Modern all-star is great on turn 1. In the late game, it may be even better! I won’t lie, I consider cutting this 1-drop nearly every time I need to make room for something, but then I remember prowess… We are designed to grow our team, which means we can respond to our opponent’s first noncreature spell with some instants of our own, thereby making it nearly guaranteed that they’ll not pay and we’ll get a card out of it.
Enlightened Tutor – okay, so we don’t actually get the card in our hand, but searching up our best enchantment (still to come!) to the top of our library on our opponent’s end step is like half of a card, right?
Frostcliff Siege – one of the ways we have of giving our team haste, if we choose Jeskai, we get to draw a card anytime we deal combat damage. I think picking Temur, though, is probably the right choice most of the time.
Jeskai Ascendancy – this 3-mana enchantment saw some play in Standard as a key combo piece. For us, it grants a second prowess alongside card filtering.
Mishra’s Bauble – don’t underestimate the power of -mana artifacts in this deck. They trigger prowess, as well as any triggered ability attached to noncreature spells. With no way to make mana outside of our lands, having noncreature spells to cast for free is a big deal.
Quantum Riddler – another Modern all-star, this 5-mana Sphinx will help smooth out our draws in the early game, while serving as a finisher in the late, thanks to its evasion. The way our deck plays, we will hopefully never be down to one or fewer cards, but if we are, it’ll be nice to have this out.
Smellerbee, Rebel Fighter – this card is busted in any go-wide, token strategy. I can’t believe it’s under .50 cents. One of our ways of giving our creatures haste. If we ever get to attack with the Human Rebel Ally with any kind of boardstate, we should pull very far ahead.
Sorcerer Class – okay, so we do have at least one way of making mana without our lands… But it’s the first level that will draw us cards.
Whirlwind of Thought – this is our number one tutor target with Enlightened Tutor. Similar to Archmage Emeritus, untapping with this enchantment and any kind of hand should put us super far ahead of our opponent on resources.
Non-Prowess Creature Buffs
We have a variety of back-up ways to grow our team of tokens if our commander is out of commission or if our draw doesn’t line up well to trigger prowess multiple times in a turn. Not all of these buff our team. I’m including creatures that only grow themselves in conjunction with our overall gameplan of playing a bunch of instants and sorceries.
Balmor, Battlemage Captain – this Bird Wizard is a legitimate alternative to our commander. +1/+0 per instant or sorcery is strictly worse than prowess, of course, but trample more than makes up for it.
Belladonna Took – we have a lot of hoops to jump through to grow our team, but we are well equipped to do so.
Caretaker’s Talent – a great late-game use of our mana that will help close out games for us.
Cosmogrand Zenith – better at growing our team than Belladonna Took.
Frostcliff Siege – similar to Balmor, Battlemage Captain, this enchantment also adds haste when we pick Temur.
Guide of Souls – another Modern all-star, this card can get out of control quickly in conjunction with our token Lords. It can also slowly grow an army of buffed fliers.
Jeskai Ascendancy – another way to give our creatures prowess…without the name.
Slickshot Show-Off – I’m on the fence on this one. It will be rare to one-shot our opponent with this in the early game, which makes me think there are more impactful cards. However, it’s a flier that can grow to lethal proportions in the late-game, which makes me want to keep it. Let me know in the comments what you think!
Sprite Dragon – a +1/+1 counter per noncreature spell makes this creature a potential game-ending bomb.
Alternate Win Conditions
These are the ways of winning outside of combat.
Goblin Bombardment – anyone familiar with Boros Energy in Modern won’t be surprised at this card’s inclusion. On a stalled board, our opponent will have to find an answer or risk being burned out. Otherwise, we can turn our tokens into kill spells and pick off their best creatures.
Purphoros, God of the Forge – who needs to sac tokens to kill opponents? Let’s just make them! Each creature becoming a Shock is the main reason this mythic from Theros is $29, despite multiple reprintings.
Support Cards
From kill spells, to counter spells; from ramp, to protection, these are the cards that shore up weaknesses, help fuel some big turns, or simply keep us alive long enough for us to do our thing.
Enlightened Tutor – there’s something about tutors that runs counter to my approach to Commander. So much of the fun of playing a 99-card deck is that each game will be different (within reason, of course). Tutors reduce variance, particularly when you always get the same card with them…Whirlwind of Thought or Jeskai Ascendancy. Still, playing just one and one that synergizes so well with our strategy is acceptable to me. Furthermore, running out of gas is our kryptonite. Snagging our best card-draw engine to make sure we don’t gives us more resiliency to compete in the late-game.
Emeritus of Conflict – getting a Lightning Bolt every third spell gives us both reach and the ability to kill just about anything.
Erode – is this better than Path to Exile? Depends on your meta.
Kykar, Zephyr Awakener – this Bird Wizard turns each of our instants into protection spells for our best creature. Since we aren’t playing much by way of protection, having this kind of redundancy of this effect is a big deal.
Leyline Binding – this could be Farewell in order to give us another catch-up card, should we fall behind on board. For now, though, I’m playing what should be a 3-mana instant speed exile effect. I originally had Prismatic Ending in this slot, but found it to be underwhelming and more mana intensive.
Lightning Bolt – still the best at what it does.
Counterspell – ditto that.
Meltdown – this could easily be any number of spells that target artifacts. Vandalblast and Abrade come to mind.
Mishra’s Bauble – a great way to trigger prowess and fuel our big turns.
Mox Amber – ditto that, alongside some color fixing.
Tormod’s Crypt – ditto that again, alongside some graveyard hate.
Untimely Malfunction – this uncommon is $9! Flexibility is why, not to mention the protection it offers for just .
Supreme Verdict – Farewell is the more powerful sweeper, but at 6 mana, we will often already be dead. Supreme Verdict is more susceptible to blowouts via Heroic Intervention and such, but that’s a risk we have to take.
Swords to Plowshares – like Lightning Bolt, this OG removal spell is still the best at what it does.
Ideal Hand and Game Play
Just like my budget build of Jeskai Spellslinger, we want at least three lands with all of our colors in our opening hand, alongside a token Lord and some cantrips or cheap interaction. Depending on our draw, we will hold on to those cantrips until after resolving our token Lord in order to get maximum value out of them. However, if you need to find lands or action, pull the trigger on them early and trust that you’ll draw more.
This deck takes some set-up to win games. We need our commander and a token Lord on the battlefield and a hand full of cantrips in order to build a big army. Furthermore, with few ways to grant haste, we also need to untap, then cast more cantrips to grow our team big enough to win in combat.
What this means for game play is that we will typically spend several turns managing the board, sticking some key pieces, and chipping in damage when and where we can. We have plenty of evasive threats that can help with this. Then, once we get a critical mass of tokens and cards, we can go for the kill.
With this in mind, however, I would be careful of overextending and committing as many token Lords to the battlefield as possible. Since these are crucial to our gameplan, I recommend holding on to at least one, should you have redundant effects.
Weaknesses
Disruption and pressure are the key ways of defeating this strategy. If our opponent takes out a key piece, such as a token Lord or card draw engine, then we risk having a hand full of cantrips that do little but draw us cards. Of course, this should find us our next combo piece, but if our opponent is swinging in with ahead-of-curve threats, then it will probably be too late.
Our deck has resiliency, but multiple sweepers will typically end in our death. This nonbudget build has more of a top end and more reach than my budget build, but many of these big bombs still function best with other cards.
Finally, without haste, we are left needing a hand full of cantrips to build an army, then untap with that army, and have enough cantrips to swing in for lethal. This is one area that my budget Jeskai Spellslinger deck convinced me needed addressing here. For more on this, continue reading!
Reality Fracture Update
I was halfway done with this article when Reality Fracture released. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I was dreading making a budget version of this deck. Don’t get me wrong. It’s more than possible, as shown above. I just wasn’t very excited about it. I’ve spent so long tweaking this deck to try and get it just right, that I really didn’t want to attempt a budget list.
Vraska, Soul of Stone, though, is a great budget commander for a Spellslinger deck. The deck plays similarly, but it has artifact synergy, where this one is more interested in token creation and buffing.
That being said, building a Vraska, Soul of Stone Commander deck convinced me of the need for more ways to give our team haste in this deck. It’s a lot to ask to have enough noncreature spells to build an army and grow it on two different turns.
In the past, I’ve grown my army of dorks slowly over a few turns before acquiring enough ways to trigger prowess three to five times. The deck works, but I think giving our creatures haste will only strengthen it.
Cards In:
Samut, Hazoret’s Champion
Roar of Resistance – yes, this isn’t from Reality Fracture, but it does everything we want.
Cards Out:
Slickshot Show-Off – I discussed my reservations above. In the early game, it’s unlikely to kill an opponent. In the late, it will probably be win-more.
Expressive Iteration – we lose a bit of hand-sculpting/card advantage, but we have a ton of ways to draw cards.
Meanwhile, Vraska, Soul of Stone is an extremely powerful token Lord that will only strengthen our deck. How do we find room for it?
Cards In:
Vraska, Soul of Stone
Cards Out:
Stormchaser’s Talent – we are trading a 1/1 Otter with prowess for many, many Sculpture Treasure tokens. Level 3 of this Class is obviously busted, but I’ve never needed to level it up. By the time we have that much mana, we’re usually already in a position to win with what we have on board.
Next, chump blocking our tokens is a way for opponents to stay alive. And while we may win this race more often than not, it never hurts to have ways to get through damage. Ajani’s Anguish is my sleeper pick for best card in the set.
Cards In:
Ajani’s Anguish – it triggers prowess, kills something, and gives our team trample. What a card!
Cards Out:
Erode – we’re keeping the potential of removal with Ajani’s Anguish, so hopefully we won’t miss this card.
Other Directions
Narset, Enlightened Exile isn’t just good in creature strategies! Since she gives herself prowess, we could easily build a deck with big CMC instants and sorceries as finishers, using cantrips that also fill the graveyard (Thought Scour, Consider, Otherworldly Gaze) alongside Red draw spells that do the same (Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Tormenting Voice) to grow her power, while putting finishers in the yard to flashback when she attacks.
Furthermore, we aren’t restricted to just instants or sorceries. Any noncreature, nonland card can be copied. This gives the deck a variety of fun and unique strategies to build around. Omniscience may be a bit out of reach, but there are other powerful spells to consider along this line.
Conclusion
Narset, Enlightened Exile is by far the best commander to helm a Jeskai Spellslinger deck looking to flood the board with creatures, grow them big, and win via combat. The combination of giving all of our creatures prowess and flashing back an instant or sorcery each combat adds both power and redundancy to a deck full of cantrips.
Furthermore, with her ability to flashback any noncreature, nonland card, there are other directions you could build the deck in that wouldn’t be as reliant on creatures.
How would you go about building a deck around Narset, Enlightened Exile? Thanks for reading!
