Beluna Grandsquall Commander Deck Guide

Beluna Grandsquall | Illustration by Victor Adame Minguez

Commander was created as a casual format. With constant support and Magic’s ever-increasing power levels, the format has been getting more and more competitive.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to play the game or the format. But I’m here to keep pushing janky decks meant for more casual gameplay. It’s no fun if every deck you come across, even at “casual” tables, is some hyper-focused, well-built deck.

That’s why today I bring you: Beluna Grandsquall’s adventure time!

If there’s one thing everyone remembers fondly from Throne of Eldraine Standard, it’s adventure decks, right? Right?

Luckily, Commander isn’t Standard. Adventures aren’t as annoyingly unfun to play against in this format so this deck (even despite some of its better or more expensive cards) sits comfortably in the casual corner.

The Deck

Chancellor of Tales | Illustration by Joshua Raphael

The Commander

Beluna Grandsquall is basically an obvious choice for this deck because it’s the newest in a very short list of legendary creatures with abilities directly related to adventures. Both this card’s adventure and the creature’s ability give some great support for other adventurer cards. And it’s fun and flavorful to have a commander that also has an adventure in your adventures deck.

Keep in mind that the commander tax apply for each time you’ve cast either the creature or the adventure, and it’ll also apply to both.

There’s also a secondary commander in the deck in the form of Riku of Two Reflections just for the sheer silliness of it. Its abilities benefit both parts of creatures with adventures, so it serves as this deck’s alternative commander.

The Adventurers

Since this deck is built all around adventures, there are 21 adventurer creatures, two artifacts, and two enchantments. While Beluna Grandsquall is basically the best commander for adventures, it doesn’t give access to white and its great adventure cards, so you have to work around that a bit.

I tried to keep the utility of the adventurers mostly split. I obviously picked as many adventurers where you’d want to play both the adventure and the creature as I could. But with a more limited pool, I also tried to get a nice split between cards where the adventure is the more rewarding part and cards where you’d rather be playing the creature.

The Payoffs

Something that’s great (and was annoying in Throne of Eldraine Standard) about adventures is that they basically come with tons of support. Cards like Chancellor of Tales, Edgewall Innkeeper, or Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy are all designed to explicitly reward you for playing your adventures and your adventurers.

These cards make playing an adventure-focused strategy actually viable and a bit more focused.

Interactions With Exile

Another thing about adventures (which reminds me I should add some of them to my Prosper, Tome-Bound deck) is that the permanent is played from exile if you chose to cast the adventure first. This means that any cards that care about playing cards from exile have some fun with this.

Sage of the Beyond makes most of your adventure permanents absurdly cheap, especially when combined with Beluna Grandsquall itself.

Nalfeshnee and Mizzix, Replica Rider both allow you to create temporary copies of your adventurers, plus they get haste which ensures you also get a hit or two in.

There are plenty of other cards in the deck like Wild-Magic Sorcerer, Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald, and Keeper of Secrets to give you some nice benefits for your adventurer permanents.

Spellslinging

Adventures are all instants or sorceries, so you might as well get some support for that too. Archmage Emeritus and Storm-Kiln Artist both help get you a bit ahead for each adventure you play (and other instants and sorceries too, after all).

You also have Goblin Electromancer so that you can start casting your adventures faster.

A handful of the adventurer creatures themselves also have effects that care about you spellslinging so there’s even some more value there.

Fun Interactions

Cards that let you return creatures to your hand are great in this deck. Crystal Shard lets you recast your adventures over and over any time you need to. It also allows you to return things like Sentinel of Lost Lore for another ETB effect if you need it.

Probably my favorite interaction in the deck comes from Lier, Disciple of the Drowned. This card’s ability gives flashback to all your adventures, which means it’s also a convoluted but more than useful way to bring your creatures back from the graveyard. Your adventure’s exiling effect (the one that lets you cast the creature) resolves before flashback’s exiling does, which means you can keep bringing your creatures back through their adventures.

Some General Utilities

Eternal Witness, Beast Whisperer, Blasphemous Act, and any other of these cards all serve their more “generic” purpose in the deck. They’re useful but can ultimately be swapped for other cards that work better with your playgroup. Or with your budget, because not everyone wants to spend upwards of 30$ for a Cyclonic Rift.

The Mana Base

Most of the deck’s mana base is simply decent lands: shock lands, triomes, Command Tower, temples, things like that. There’s also a few basic lands for you to fetch with ramp spells like Cultivate.

Same goes for the mana rocks, Arcane Signet and Sol Ring, and for the mana dorks like Rattleclaw Mystic; luckily you have Rosethorn Acolyte and Bramble Familiar which are mana dorks as well as adventurers.

Castle Embereth, Castle Garenbrig, and Castle Vantress all serve mostly as regular lands, but their abilities may prove useful occasionally.

Edgewall Inn is here to help fix your mana while also giving you some recursion for your adventurers in a pinch.

The Strategy

This deck’s strategy is pretty simple and straightforward: play your adventures and get value from them, then play the permanents and get even more value. It’s not a hyper-optimized deck so maybe don’t bring this to a higher power-level pod.

The deck does have a few strong interactions but it mostly aims at winning through sheer combat and spellcasting.

Combos and Interactions

As far as I’m aware, the deck shouldn’t have any infinite combos or rule 0 violations. If I overlooked some interaction that does result in infinite combos, let me know. There are ways of making Vantress Visions go infinite with Lucky Clover, but you need a third card and I chose to leave those out to keep the deck more casual.

Lier, Disciple of the Drowned is possibly the most bizarre interaction in the deck thanks to it working as a sort of reanimation engine. It can make a huge difference after a board wipe or if your opponents are dead set on targeting your silly adventures deck for some reason.

Rule 0 Violations Check

There should be no violations to typical rule 0 agreements in this deck. There are no infinite combos nor any particularly oppressive game pieces that would make it unfun to play against.

Budget Options

Arguably the two cards in the deck that I’d find harder to replace with budget options are Virtue of Knowledge and Virtue of Strength. They’re both extremely powerful, can turn your game around, and since they have adventures they synergize perfectly with the rest of the deck.

Then there’s Lier, Disciple of the Drowned. It’s not a key card for the deck to work but it adds so much value, I’d advise against cutting it if you need to reduce costs. There are other cards that can go before this one.

Cards like Blasphemous Act, Delayed Blast Fireball, or Cyclonic Rift can all be replaced with other board wipes or even other kinds of removal. They’re not key to the deck’s strategy but they can basically allow for a strong finisher to get through.

Monster Manual is strong and fun, but it’s not particularly key to the deck. You can safely replace it if you need to, whether with any card that does something similar or with any other adventurer cards you want.

Beast Whisperer, Heroic Intervention, and Archmage Emeritus all serve very concrete functions, but none of them are particularly fundamental for the deck to work. You can cut them out and replace them with basically anything you like that synergizes well with adventures.

Other Builds

It’s honestly hard to picture any Beluna Grandsquall deck that doesn’t revolve around adventures. You can change up which adventures you choose to play or which utility spells you add, but there isn’t much you can do with this commander beyond adventures.

You could take a look at alternative commanders for adventure strategies.

Gorion, Wise Mentor is the other commander made specifically for adventures. It doesn’t have an adventure itself, but opens up access to white which is a great color for the strategy.

Other fun or flavorful commander for this archetype include Kenrith, the Returned King which gives access to all colors and can fit really well in terms of flavor, and my favorite Chulane, Teller of Tales. This card obviously has a lot of more broken strategies, but it works great with adventurer creatures while also feeling super flavorful. Chulane’s character is a storyteller, so your deck can basically be all the different stories about adventures that Chulane is telling.

Commanding Conclusión

Edgewall Innkeeper | Illustration by Matt Stewart

And so all adventures must come to an end. This was my build for a Beluna Grandsquall adventure typal deck. I personally like this card as a commander and found it really fun to build around. It’s obviously not a super strong deck, but it can hold its weight and have some silly and fun interactions.

But enough about what I think. Would you have built this differently? Would you rather see a Gorion, Wise Mentor deck? Leave a comment letting us know! And while you’re here, be sure to check our Discord server. There you’ll find a wonderful community of other MTG fans and players to share your hobby with!

That’s all from me for now. Have a good one and I’ll see you next time!