Maralen, Fae Ascendant Commander Deck Guide

Maralen, Fae Ascendant | Illustration by Steve Prescott

Maralen, Fae Ascendant is one of the most powerful and flexible commanders from Lorwyn Eclipsed. It supports two well-established creature types, and its abilities support spell theft and casting spells on your opponents’ turns. That’s a lot of potential variables, so you could tune the deck to your particular playstyle.

This deck mixes faeries and elves, and adds some flash enablers to exile and steal more of your opponents’ spells. Let’s get into it!

The Deck

Elvish Warmaster | Illustration by Alexander Mokhov

This is a fairly middle-of-the-road Maralen, Fae Ascendant Commander deck that mixes faeries and elves with flash enabling. The deck saves its budget for the creatures and the mana base, but you could upgrade it further with Game Changers, tutors, more efficient counterspells, and cards like Faerie Mastermind. As is, you could call this a Bracket 2 or Bracket 3 deck.

The Commander: Maralen, Fae Ascendant

Commanders that support two creature types are incredibly fun to mess around with, especially when both types have good to excellent support themselves. Maralen, Fae Ascendant rewards you for both elves and faeries, which means you could build the deck around either one or both. I went with both.

The enters trigger here exiles two cards from the top of an opponent’s library, and you can cast one of them for free each turn, but only during the turn that you exiled them. Unless you want to “mill” out your opponents without actually milling them (and therefore without helping the graveyard players), there isn’t any incentive to go too nuts on token generation. But it’s also an “every turn”, not “each of your turns” clause, so Maralen encourages you to play at instant speed. Which makes sense, considering that faeries often have payoffs for playing spells during your opponents’ turns.

The Elves

Elves make up a decent chunk of the creature base, and they’re responsible for some of this deck’s mana generation. Naturally, the deck features a suite of mana dork elves: Elves of Deep Shadow, Llanowar Elves, Llanowar Tribe, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, and Priest of Titania.

Elvish Archdruid doubles as a strong mana dork and typal lord. Imperious Perfect is another anthemic lord, and it can pump out tokens fairly steadily.

Beast Whisperer is a staple green draw card in any deck with a high creature count, and it just so happens to have a fitting creature type here. Reclamation Sage is a good budget removal card in a deck like this.

Deathrite Shaman isn’t at its best without discard, edicts, or milling to fill your opponents’ graveyards with exile fodder, but it fits too nicely in the mana curve to pass up.

Formidable Speaker can tutor for any creature in the deck. With its activated ability, it can reset a mana dork or land that taps for more than 1 mana, it can let you reuse another creature’s activated ability, or it can untap a better blocker.

Elvish Warmaster, Wolverine Riders, Galadhrim Brigade, and Lathril, Blade of the Elves are some of your biggest elf token generators in this deck, at least in terms of actual creatures.

Elvish Promenade is a good card to deploy once your board is established. Galadhrim Ambush doubles as a mass token generator and a one-sided fog.

With all the tokens between both creature types, Jaheira, Friend of the Forest felt like a good fit. Tokens can also help to convoke your Selfless Safewright, which is a great typal protection spell that gets better if you focus your build on either faeries or elves even more.

Trystan's Command can copy so many nonlegendary creatures, likely for either more mana or more tokens, while its mass pump mode works even better with your flying faerie tokens. The recursion and removal modes are good to have in the toolbox, too.

The Faeries and the Flash Enablers

Faeries bring along the slight subtheme that cares about casting spells on your opponents’ turns. When you do that, you trigger Maralen, which means you have two cards in exile you can try to play this turn. You’ll want a flash enabler onboard if possible to help you cast those spells during that opponent’s turn.

High Fae Trickster is your faerie flash enabler, but there’s also Vedalken Orrery, Leyline of Anticipation, and Alchemist's Refuge as backup.

Alela, Cunning Conqueror leads the charge among the payoffs as a token generator when you cast spells during your opponents’ turns. The goad text is just a cherry on top. Oona, Queen of the Fae has a repeatable activated ability that also gets rid of your opponents’ library, and it adds tokens while you gamble on colors. You know, because distractable players need a mini-game to keep them occupied sometimes. But hey, Obyra, Dreaming Duelist turns each of those tokens into a bit of life loss.

Speaking of mini-games… Talion, the Kindly Lord. You know the gimmick by now; 2 and 3 are your best bets, sometimes 4 if there’s a lot of beefy decks at the table, maybe 1 or 2 if there’s a few spellslinger builds.

Bitterbloom Bearer and Bitterblossom are both in this deck list. Which you knew before you clicked the link, didn’t you? But it isn’t the only old card/new card pairing in the decklist; there’s also Glen Elendra Archmage and Glen Elendra Guardian. The Guardian would be better in a build that proliferates counters, since it can survive having two or even three -1/-1 counters at a time. Costs more to activate, though, plus it gives your opponent a card.

Hypnotic Sprite and Spellstutter Sprite join the ranks of faerie creatures that are also counterspells, and you can’t play the Sprite without Spell Stutter itself. Glen Elendra's Answer stops the stack dead and gives you more tokens, a perfect way to piggyback off the storm player’s work.

Cloud of Faeries is the perfect typal free spell that you can cycle if your board is fine but you really need a card. Faerie Harbinger tutors for any faerie, including your flash enabler.

Malleable Impostor gets you a second copy of your best creature, or a faerie copy of an opponent’s threat. Maraleaf Pixie is here because the elves can’t have all the mana dork fun.

Scion of Oona is a good typal lord for your faeries, though it’s important to note that shroud also means that you can’t target your faeries with equip abilities or protective spells (if you opt for a single-target indestructible enabler over Heroic Intervention, for example). Tegwyll, Duke of Splendor is the other typal lord, and it also gives you extra card draw.

It’s a little hard to pay Notorious Throng’s prowl cost to get the extra turn in this deck unless you go wide enough with Faerie Rogue tokens before you cast it. But it’s fun and flavorful, so here it is.

The Staples and Typal Support

This deck runs tried and true Commander staples that should be familiar to you by now: ramp spells like Cultivate, counterspells like An Offer You Can't Refuse, removal like Assassin's Trophy. Dark Ritual, Lightning Greaves, and Heroic Intervention make appearances, too.

Distant Melody is a mass draw spell that’ll care about either your elves or your faeries. Skullclamp lets you trade your tokens for card draw, though it’s harder to kill them when they’re buffed by lords.

Black Market Connections gives you mana, cards, or creatures as you need them. Kindred Discovery offers consistent card draw, though you’re forced to choose either elves or faeries.

Springleaf Parade gives you a mass token generator and X-spell mana sink that acts as a backup to Jaheira, Friend of the Forest.

The Mana Base

The core of this mana base it its basic and dual lands. There’s minimal mana rocks; just Arcane Signet and Sol Ring. Most of your mana production comes from lands and elves, especially if you get Jaheira or Springleaf Parade out on the battlefield.

Bojuka Bog is here for its usual graveyard hate. Eclipsed Realms is a color fixer for one of your types; I’d personally choose faerie, because your elves take care of themselves. Besides, if you have Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth out, you’ll hardly ever run out of green.

Faerie Conclave is a thematic creature land and Gilt-Leaf Palace and Secluded Glen are typal show lands. It would have felt just wrong to exclude them. Wirewood Lodge lets you pay to untap an elf, usually but not always a mana dork.

The Strategy

Card advantage and mana are your primary paths to victory. You’ll usually win through combat damage, which means you’ll want to go very wide and use a combination of lords like Elvish Archdruid, a mass pump like Elvish Warmaster’s activated ability or Trystan's Command, or both with a whole squad of Galadhrim Brigade tokens.

You’ll want an opening hand with lots of land, ramp spells, or mana dorks. Ideally, you’d have a card draw effect like Beast Whisperer on turn 4 or earlier so that you can chain it into your 5-mana commander. Once Maralen is on the board, your creature entries start chipping away at your opponents’ libraries. Flash enablers help you to cast your own creatures on your opponents’ turns and cast anything that you exile. There’s only one that you can tutor for, so they’ll likely be a luxury that kicks the deck into high gear rather than something that’s crucial to assemble.

Part of the hope with this deck is that by exiling the top of your opponents’ libraries, you deny them their own crucial resources. Since you can play those spells, you literally turn your opponents’ card disadvantage into advantage for you.

Aside from overwhelming your opponents in combat, Lathril, Blade of the Elves has an ability that can take chunks out of opponents’ life totals. Maskwood Nexus turns all your creatures into changelings, so your lords are effective across both elves and faeries.

Combos and Interactions

This deck doesn’t run any infinite combos, but I want to highlight a few oddities.

First, I want to point out something that’s easy to overlook about Notorious Throng. While it’s often played in faerie decks because of the tokens that it generates, this spell is a rogue, not a faerie. You can only pay this kindred spell’s prowl cost if a rogue deals combat damage to a player. Unless you have Maskwood Nexus out, your options are Alela, Cunning Conqueror, Bitterbloom Bearer, or the Faerie Rogue tokens you get from Alela, Bitterblossom, or Oona, Queen of the Fae. Or I guess whichever shapeshifter tokens you’re pumping out.

Another interaction to clarify: Maskwood Nexus doesn’t act as a trigger doubler for Maralen, Fae Ascendant. Maralen triggers once for each game object, whether it’s an elf, a faerie, or both. Maskwood Nexus is primarily in the deck so that your lords and type-matters effects can cover your whole board. If you wanted to double Maralen’s trigger, you’d need a Panharmonicon or a Yarok, the Desecrated, which aren’t in this build.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Unless you’re facing a player who really doesn’t like it when you play with their cards, this deck shouldn’t have any problems when considering a Rule 0 Conversation. If they’re fine with a mill-and-steal deck, this should also be fine.

Budget Options

The first place to cut in any deck is always the land base. Replace any lands that are out of your price range with ones that match their colors, where possible. Think strategically, too: If you decide that you want to build this as an elf-graveyard deck or as an elf-scry deck, you can use either the surveil lands (expensive) or Theros scrying temples (cheap), respectively. Anything that has land types is fetchable with abilities like Farseek.

Another easy way to tighten the budget is to remove the subtheme that wants you to cast spells on your opponents’ turns. That lets you take out Alela, Cunning Conqueror, Vedalken Orrery, Leyline of Anticipation, and High Fae Trickster. Vedalken Orrery especially is seeing demand because of the Fire Lord Azula deck, too, so it may take a reprint before that drops again.

Black Market Connections for Trading Post is the next swap I’d recommend. Malleable Impostor can become your favorite Clone variant. Chord of Calling is a more affordable tutor than Formidable Speaker, at least as of Lorwyn Eclipsed’s Prerelease weekend. Coastal Piracy’s saboteur card draw can replace Kindred Discovery’s ETB card draw. Heroic Intervention and Glen Elendra Archmage can come out for other protective spells like Tamiyo's Safekeeping and counterspells like Negate.

Galadhrim Brigade and Wolverine Riders are good elf token generators, but they aren’t totally necessary, especially if you turn this into an elf-graveyard deck using creatures from ECL. The worst remaining offenders are Bitterblossom, Bitterbloom Bearer, Talion, the Kindly Lord, Galadhrim Brigade, and Wolverine Riders. Faerie decks have long survived with just Bitterblossom, so you can keep either it or Bitterbloom Bearer. But if you also cut Talion, you may want to focus this deck on elves.

Other Builds

You can build Maralen as a strict elf deck or strict faerie deck, if that’s your preference. In those, you can run more specific typal lords and payoffs. Generic typal support like Realmwalker become more beneficial, too. The faerie build notably has an infinite combo with Archmage of Echoes, Quickling, Cloud of Faeries, and Faerie Impostor that leads to infinite mana and infinite creature tokens, but you also exile your opponents’ decks to oblivion (you can get a similar combo in this deck if you add a Deadeye Navigator to the Cloud of Faeries).

If you want a fun over flavor build, you could build around legendary elves and/or faeries, and you might even be able to build a scrying deck, especially if you lean on elves from Tales of Middle-earth.

You could also build a deck that focuses on token production so that you constantly exile cards from your opponents’ libraries, maybe mixed with some mill abilities or additional spell theft like Tasha, the Witch Queen.

And if I put on my mad scientist hat… what happens if you have Maskwood Nexus on the field with Maralen, Fae Ascendant, Chatterfang, Squirrel General, and Pitiless Plunderer…?

Commanding Conclusion

Oona, Queen of the Fae | Illustration by Adam Rex

While this build takes the center lane and marries elves and faeries together, Maralen, Fae Ascendant is perfect for either creature type in isolation. Its flexibility should make it a fairly popular commander over the next few years, and I’m excited to see the builds people put together.

Around which theme would you build Maralen, Fae Ascendant? Which cards would you run? Let me know in the comments below over on the Draftsim Discord.

Until next time, stay safe.