Stella Lee, Wild Card Commander Deck Guide

Stella Lee, Wild Card | Illustration by Fajareka Setiawan

How do you know whether a Commander deck is strong EDH or cEDH? Good question. It’s even harder to answer if your local meta doesn’t give you good, efficient, fast decks to try your hand against.

That’s the question for the unproven new Izzet commander, Stella Lee, Wild Card. Its activated ability is extraordinarily powerful and goes infinite with spells that can untap Stella. That means I’m likely going up against the teeth of rule 0 as I build a deck around this commander, but recent cEDH history is littered with kernels of broken stuff that just doesn’t cohere into a reliable deck.

Will we get to a good build? And will we do it before my resistance to the bad idea of demonstrating infinite loops by plopping down a GIF of Brando yelling “Stella!!” is completely worn down?

Let’s find out!

The Deck

Archmage Emeritus | Illustration by Caio Monteiro

The Commander: Stella Lee, Wild Card

Stella Lee, Wild Card, the face commander of the Quick Draw precon from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, is an interesting card. Its first triggered ability doesn’t really seem to stack up against even the better strong casual Izzet commanders like Veyran, Voice of Duality, but the second tap ability is a monster.

As long as you lower the curve of your spells, which you need to do in cEDH anyway, if you cast a card that targets Stella and untaps it, you’ve got an infinite loop of tapping, untapping and spell-copying.  As long as the spell provides some kind of extra value for the cycle, you have a potential game win. But the durdly option with no extra value can still work if you have a decent card with magecraft out, which triggers off the spell copies.

There are a variety of ways to win depending on which combo you’re using. Let’s break them down.

Good Infinite Combos

You’ve got 10 decent infinite combos in the deck with Stella.

Twisted Fealty is the best of the lot, in that this red sorcery wins on its own. If it’s your third spell, you target Stella, Stella targets the Fealty, it targets Stella, and onwards until you win. Because you keep adding Wicked roles, that makes the old ones fall off, which pings everybody for damage. Forever.

You’ve got a few that give you infinite card draw, Cerulean Wisps, Refocus, and Twitch. The fact that one of these only costs 1 mana is especially awesome. What do you do with all those cards? There’s enough mana generation in there that you can just get to and cast Fealty, but you can also find your Thassa's Oracle. You knew that was coming, right? So will your opponents.

How about all the mana you could want? Hidden Strings, Toils of Night and Day, Involuntary Employment, and Traitorous Greed do that. The last two cost 4 mana, which is hefty in cEDH, but as I’ve been messing with the deck, these are useful often as intermediaries in a chain. You start the Cerulean Wisps cycle, let’s say, use these to generate a bunch of mana, and then shift back to card draw to find your win.

Dramatic Reversal can do the infinite mana thing if you have enough rocks out. This blue instant is a cEDH staple card because of such mana, and you might just use it for that in this deck, without Stella.

Kari Zev's Expertise gives you all the cheap spells you could want, so this is limited by what you get off your cantrips. I don’t think this is enough to win, as you can easily run out of gas on this plan, but if it’s the card you have, this red sorcery allows you to start the chain and then transition into a better version.

The last, and maybe least effective is Shore Up. This makes Stella huge. That’s not that useful, but it’s a way to protect Stella for 1 mana, which is nice. I can imagine winning with a big Stella, sure, but I can also easily imagine that not working, which is why the deck doesn’t support that plan, really, and why other cards which also do that plan, Malevolent Whispers and Mark of Mutiny are left out. But this is an interaction spell that can do good work and has an outside shot at a Voltron win that also serves as a bad combo. What do I mean, well….

Bad Infinite Combos

Every Threaten effect is, basically, a bad infinite combo for you. They’re bad because they just recur copying the spell and untapping, without accruing any additional value. Because you don’t have anything that you can win with that marks taps or untaps, you’re left with spell copies. And you don’t have a lot of stuff that triggers off that, as MTG hasn’t made all that much, but there are some magecraft cards like Archmage Emeritus that can really pop off with these versions of the combo.

Before you stop me with the perfectly cEDH question of, “Why not just cut these and add more tutors?” just note that all of these cards are interaction spells in other ways and most are cheap, so it makes sense.

Tidal Bore can come down for “free,” which can help start the chain if you’re stuck on mana to get to the third spell precondition if you have a magecraft card on the table. And both it and Twiddle can be used to tap opponent creatures as needed.

Fleeting Reflection is a sweet little card that you can use as protection. I can’t say that the copy ability is going to do a lot of work, but I can imagine a moment when you might want to copy someone’s Atraxa, Grand Unifier. Even without the ETB, a 7/7 lifelinker can get you out of a tight spot.

Claim the Firstborn is here because I think you can get the magecraft online. It’s a Threaten for 1 mana that can start your chain, and it can also reliably yoink something as needed, which is particularly sweet with Borne Upon a Wind.

Magecraft Cards

These are 4-drops, and that’s asking a ton in cEDH, but there are games where this happens, and it really makes it easy. Archmage Emeritus and Storm-Kiln Artist are who I choose. There’s also Veyran, Voice of Duality, which doesn’t do a ton for you except for getting swole and winning more with other cards out, but it’s another wincon.

You could stretch to include even Deekah, Fractal Theorist, but that seems totally impossible, not just mostly impossible, to me. There’s only two here, and you could cut this and the Bad Combos for more interaction spells and to save face if someone at your table will lay into you for thinking you could cast… a 5-drop?!

Tutors

Well, the deck only works if you can get the combos going, and that means tutors! You can see how these will easily just fit your commander’s condition, as they help build your spell count out. So:

• Gamble
• Intuition
• Merchant Scroll
• Muddle the Mixture
• Mystical Tutor
• Personal Tutor
• Solve the Equation

I’ve also got Spellseeker and Micromancer. The latter is basically just as good in this deck, given that Cerulean Wisps can start your combo.

Oh, and Breach

As long as you’re playing this many spells, well, why not the two-card wincon of Underworld Breach and Brain Freeze? You don’t have a great way to flood the graveyard early to pop off with this and mill people out, but as the game goes longer, if it does, this becomes more and more inevitable. You can also use Breach to simply recur an untap effect and do the primary combo again if it was thwarted.

Cantrips

You might look at this list and think you need more cantrips. If that’s what you do, cut the bad combos and add back stuff like Peek and other stuff from the list. But this plus the 0-drop mana rocks should be enough to get you cracking:

• Consider
• Crimson Wisps
• Gitaxian Probe
• Mindbreak Trap
• Opt
• Ponder
• Preordain

Also note that a lot of your other cards cantrip, as well.

You also have The One Ring for card draw, because of course you do. Note that your cards that untap things, even the “Bad Combos” work amazingly with The Ring.

Also, Mystic Remora because it’s awesome.

Interaction

You can’t play cEDH without it, and you also can’t really do a commander-centered combo deck without it, especially so. Most of these can be cost-reduced, and these mostly feel like the standard dozen or so spells you see in Izzet decks:

• An Offer You Can't Refuse
• Cyclonic Rift
• Deflecting Swat
• Fierce Guardianship
• Flusterstorm
• Force of Negation
• Force of Will
• Lightning Bolt
• Mental Misstep
• Pact of Negation
• Pongify
• Snap
• Swan Song

Ramp

In addition to your lands and mana rocks, you’ve got stuff that makes you mana and/or Treasures: Dockside Extortionist, Simian Spirit Guide, Rite of Flame, and Strike It Rich.

The Mana Base

Good lands, including fetch lands, and all the 0- or 1-drop rocks you can pack. You just really need to hit that third spell trigger (these count for Stella’s condition on that, you know).

The Strategy

It’s kind of cEDH 101. Stop your opponents from winning outright if you need to. Once you have what you need to start the chain, get Stella down with some countermagic up so you can untap with your commander. Win.

Even better is if you can use your tutors to pull up Crimson Wisps for the haste.

Or not. This is cEDH. Everyone has a fast plan, and the best decks are maybe a touch faster than you. So read the table, get a sense of how people are utilizing their interaction, and pick your moment.

Combos and Interactions

I’ve already done the basic combos and interactions, as that’s the core of the deck, and all of those are potential rule 0 flags. I don’t think there are a lot of hidden synergies in here beyond what I’ve covered already, though.

Budget Options

Well, look, this is cEDH and you’ve got Intuition and Mana Crypt. I imagine you’re playing this deck in a proxy-friendly place. If not, you can do without a few of the more than $50 things, but the more you drop the more you end up with a high-powered casual deck with broken combos. And that’s okay, but that’s probably not why you’re here.

Other Builds

I don’t think there’s another version of Stella that’s cEDH. The combos are the key.

If you want a powered-down version of this deck for casual tables, you’ll strip out the pitch spell interactions and the combo cards in favor of either Guttersnipe-style pinging wincons, or Young Pyromancer-style tokens decks. I like that Stella Lee, Wild Card rewards you for cheap spells, unlike Izzet builds like Magnus the Red or Mizzix of the Izmagnus which are about discounting expensive spells. And so that makes those wincons viable. The deck is still strong, but no longer top tier.

Round Up

Deekah, Fractal Theorist | Illustration by Donato Giancola

It’s fun to think an Izzet spellslinger commander could crack the cEDH ranks. How likely is that? This deck is likely a turn slower, on average, than the best cEDH decks, although you can do the turn-2 thing with the right draw. My heart says A tier. My head is saying B+ tier. Or B tier. B-? Let’s move on before my brain messes all this up.

I think this deck can sneak up on people, especially if you hit the combo and are working at instant speed with something like Refocus so you can keep going even in response to removal. I’m excited to try it, and I think the fact that pieces for this deck aside from the commander are cheap to pick up and the expensive cards are likely things you have if you play cEDH means it’s an easy one to take a chance on and try out.

Let us know in the comments or on Discord if you give it a whirl and how it goes!

Stay safe and have fun!