Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on April 10, 2024

Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy | Illustrated by Wisnu Tan

There may exist among you, dear readers, some other old dorks with fond memories of 2012’s Gatecrash and the generally-bad Boros mechanic battalion. For years, we’ve brewed and brewed deck lists in an attempt to slam together a battalion-themed deck, to no avail. There just weren’t enough synergies with the effect, and the payoffs just weren’t worth it.

Until now! Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy is a Boros commander from the Fallout Commander Decks with a souped-up battalion ability that can hold its own in any EDH pod.

What are the best new battalion cards? Which old ones make the cut? Find out in this Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy Commander deck!

The Deck

Danitha Capashen, Paragon | Illustration by Chris Rallis

A creature’s battalion ability triggers when it and at least two other creatures attack. For this deck to be most effective, we’ll need to declare at least three attackers each turn, one of which should be our commander, Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy. To that end, we’re running a host of low-to-the-ground creatures with haste to surprise opponents with another attacker, and some cheap token generators to make sure we always have enough allies to back Taggerdy up. Haste enablers will keep our big creatures swinging in alongside our commander, dropping a ton of damage on the board before they can react.

In addition, we need to keep those attacking creatures alive, so we’ll make sparing use of anthems and gratuitous use of equipment to buff up our creatures to keep combat moving.

The Commander

Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy, leader of the Brotherhood of Steel in Appalachia circa 2095, is a 3-drop 3/2 with a battalion ability. Whenever Elizabeth Taggerdy attacks with at least two other creatures, we draw a card, then put a creature with mana value X or less into play, tapped and attacking, with X being our commander's power. Elizabeth isn’t the toughest creature on the block, and doesn’t have any included evasion or protection, so it’ll fall to us to stick it to the battlefield. That means our commander will need to equip a little more protection than the average bear, so expect a barracks full of weaponry and armor perfectly suited for Elizabeth.

Tossing another 3-drop directly into combat might work well during the early turns, but why stop there? We can cheat things like Bloodthirster into play if we can buff up Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy’s power; easy enough with all these equipment and auras.

Three: It’s A Magic Number

First and foremost, this deck does nothing but piddle around without two creatures consistently on the field attacking alongside Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy. There are a couple of strategies for playing, sticking, and attacking with creatures in this deck.

Obviously, we can just come out swinging faster than our opponents can react. The 1-drops Legion Loyalist and Boros Elite are both Gatecrash battalion cards with useful abilities; while Boros Elite’s 3/3 power/toughness on the swing won’t win you games, it’s more than enough for a 1-drop in the early game. Fervent Champion can buff Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy when they attack together, and can also keep any equipment you have lying around warm until your commander is on the field. On that note, Rabbit Battery makes for a great 1-drop when Elizabeth’s already on the field, or it can reconfigure to cast off summoning sickness immediately.

Merry, Esquire of Rohan has a pseudo-legendary-matters battalion effect, and also carries equipment like a champ.

Should our vanguard of cheap hastey creatures fall before Elizabeth can reinforce them, we can always rely on an army of tokens. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is one of the most effective ways to make creature tokens in Commander, and is otherwise guaranteed to be an X/4 with vigilance.

Midnight Haunting and Raise the Alarm both work best when cast on the end step of the player going before us, so we’ll have two creatures ready to flank Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy when we go to combat.

In a similar vein, both Goblin Assault and Assemble the Legion create tokens with haste on our upkeep, giving us a few more creatures to squad up with Elizabeth.

A Knight’s Armory

A knight is only as good as its sword. Or armor. Or magical aura giving it indestructibility, or whatever. Suffice to say we need an army’s worth of equipment and enchantments for Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy to both keep our commander alive in combat and boost its power enough to play some of our really big creatures.

Most of the classic Voltron-focused equipment are here: Blackblade Reforged, Champion's Helm, Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves, and Hammer of Nazahn. These are well-known artifacts that we don’t need to spend a lot of time on. Let’s take a look at some of the newer or less common choices, though.

Pre-War Formalwear is a new Fallout card that can reanimate and auto-equip 13 of our 28 creatures, some of which are fairly important to our strategy (hello again, Adeline, Resplendent Cathar.

Hexplate Wallbreaker, Bladehold War-Whip, and Kemba's Banner are also powerful artifacts to outfit Elizabeth with, and create a creature we can use to trigger battalion. Aegis of the Legion slots into this category as well, since it’ll help keep our battalion alive in combat. Finally, The Reaver Cleaver is just about the best ramp an aggro deck can hope for, and makes blocking our commander a real pain in the ass.

I’ve hinted at it before, but we’re also running the classic Indestructibility to give Elizabeth, well, indestructible. It might seem like overkill in a deck that’s already running so many pieces to keep our commander alive, but I’ve found the 4 mana worth it, especially considering how much we save by putting creatures straight into play.

Reinforcements

Once Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy is safely protected and pumped up, we’ll begin calling reinforcements directly into combat from our hand. These creatures come in a few flavors:

The first is the rest of our battalion-based soldiery. These are cards that’ll either keep our attackers in play, like Frontline Medic, or eke out extra value from our battalion strikes, like Firemane Commando and Tajic, Blade of the Legion. These creatures should hit the field on the first or second turn after we’ve played Elizabeth. Firemane Avenger and Aurelia, the Law Above won’t outright win the game, but they’ll be threats your opponents will have to expend resources on destroying.

As we slap more and more equipment and auras on Elizabeth, we’ll be able to grab stronger and stronger creatures from our hand; sneaking in a Port Razer into a Bloodthirster into Aurelia, the Warleader means a ton of extra combat steps.

If we’re running low on equipment, there are a few options for filling our board back up. Stonehewer Giant is one of the best sword-fetchers in the game behind Stoneforge Mystic and has the added bonus of being 4 power hitting the field running. Harnessed Snubhorn and Danitha, Benalia's Hope are our two best recursion pieces, and luckily hit both auras and equipment.

The Mana Base

Boros decks aren’t traditionally known for their great ramping ability, so we’ve got to be careful when choosing an opening hand. Only 35 lands mean we’re running the risk of missing a drop at some point, so to counteract this we’re running four mana rocks: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Boros Signet, and Boros Locket. In addition, tutoring for The Reaver Cleaver is usually worth it in the early game, especially if we’ve got a 1-drop we can slap it onto. Notably, we’re omitting any of the slow fetches like Evolving Wilds–fixing our mana in a 2-color deck shouldn’t be too hard, and we really want to use all of our mana immediately to stay aggressive.

The Strategy

Our general strategy for this Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy deck is to rush out Elizabeth alongside two attackers, and start sneaking big creatures into play as soon as possible.

Opening hands in decks without a lot of ramp can be tricky, so try to keep a hand with enough mana available to cast our commander on turn 3 or 4. This deck can operate for a while at 3-4 mana, so if we start missing land drops on turn 5 we shouldn’t be completely helpless. Lean into hands with our 1- and 2-drops, and try to find a haste enabler for Elizabeth.

Chances are our first swing with Elizabeth won’t be big enough to drop a Bloodthirster immediately, but those midrange creatures will still pack a punch. Use Bladegriff Prototype to control the board and promote dissension amongst your opponents, and keep a battalion on the board with Midnight Haunting, Goblin Assault, and Assemble the Legion.

Endgame scenarios for this deck differ greatly depending on the board state. Typically, you’ll want to save your Gamble to grab one of your big extra combat creatures like Bloodthirster or Port Razer to double/triple down on Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy’s battalion trigger. But, there are occasions when Balefire Dragon (our only “board wipe”) and Hellkite Tyrant will be more productive. If you’ve already got the Hellkite Tyrant, go for the Ancient Copper Dragon instead. It’s a little swingy, but chances are that these two wrap up the game if they go unanswered.

Besides this, there’s always good ol’ commander damage. Rogue's Passage and Goblin War Drums make Elizabeth hard to block, and the sheer volume of equipment we can attach to it make our commander a real threat in combat. It only takes three hits from a Kaldra Compleat-ed Elizabeth to start knocking opponents out of the water.

Combos and Interactions

As far as infinite combos go, this deck runs none! However, we should call attention to the order of extra combat effects, since it can get confusing when several are triggering all at once.

The most important part is remembering that additional combat triggers will stack all at once; so Port Razer and Bloodthirster connecting in the same damage step will result in two extra combats. But, the “untap” parts of those effects will resolve at the same time, untapping your board once for the first extra combat, but not in the subsequent combat step. This means you’ll have to order your attacks with Aurelia, the Warleader, Bloodthirster, Hexplate Wallbreaker, and Port Razer carefully.

The “correct” priority for your extra combat creatures looks like this: First, attack with Hexplate Wallbreaker, as it can only trigger on the first combat of each turn. Then, send in Port Razer and then Bloodthirster until they can’t attack anymore (one at a time to get three extra combats from one, and three from the other). Then, you can declare attacks with Aurelia, the Warleader to squeeze one more combat in before passing the turn.

Rule 0 Violations Check

There doesn’t seem to be much salt on this Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy deck! As far as Magic decks go, this is incredibly creature-heavy and susceptible to removal and board wipes, so the smallest amount of interaction should be enough to keep it a “fair game.”

Budget Options

This deck clocks in around $220 for the cheapest copies of the singles. That’s a little steep to drop all at once, but there are a few notably more expensive cards that can be cut and replaced to save some skrilla.

The most obvious is the $57 Ancient Copper Dragon. While this powerhouse of a mythic is guaranteed to pull you far ahead in value, it’s also $57. Luckily, its role in this deck is just as a huge scary creature to drop into combat, so feel free to swap it out with Etali, Primal Storm.

After saving nearly $60 on the dragon, you can cut The Reaver Cleaver and save another $15. Something as simple as Goldvein Pick can generate Treasure and pump up our commander just the same.

Other Builds

Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy is begging to be built around a battalion themed deck, but that’s not all it's good for. Instead of focusing on buffing Elizabeth to drop big creatures into combat, we can shift the focus to smaller creatures with valuable ETBs. With notably less artifacts and equipment, we can easily build a combo deck with Elizabeth where we dig for Karmic Guide and Reveillark to combo out with a Warleader's Call.

Wrap Up

Firemane Commando | Illustration by Andrew Mar

The new Fallout Commander decks gave WotC the chance to breathe new life into old mechanics in a new setting. I’m thoroughly pleased with this return of battalion–Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy is the missing link to the Boros-battalion deck we’ve needed for so long.

Are there any other Gatecrash battalion cards worth running? And what are some other mechanics you’d like to see revisited in future Commander products? Let me know in the comments, or over on Draftsim’s Twitter/X.

Thanks for reading! For the Brotherhood!