Commander Spotlight: Jetmir, Nexus of Revels
Author’s note: If you’re looking for a full decklist, you can find it at the end of the article!
In today’s Commander Spotlight, we’re going to look at Jetmir, Nexus of Revels. He’s the big boss of the Cabaretti from Streets of New Capenna and he just wants to party and have a good time. No get-together is complete without friends, so Jetmir is looking to fill the board with creatures while providing buffs that will make our go-wide strategy hard for our opponents to handle!
Rather than offering a full deck tech, this article aims to highlight some great options for this commander. After all, there are plenty of ways to build any deck and Commander has plenty of room for self-expression. I’ve still taken the liberty of creating a sample decklist for this commander, which you’ll find at the end of the article. This deck has been checked for PlayEDH Mid Power, so you can play it there without any changes!
Why should you play Jetmir, Nexus of Revels?
There are plenty of go-wide commanders to choose from, including many in Naya colors. Marisi, Breaker of the Coil allows us to control the flow of combat by goading enemy creatures and preventing combat tricks and Jinnie Fay, Jetmir’s Second can quickly flood the board with tokens and take over the game. Jetmir sets himself apart from both of these commanders by offering us the ability to give our creatures combat buffs and powerful keyword abilities. This can be incredibly powerful, because it means that we’ll almost always be able to hit your opponents for big damage.
It’s not uncommon to see decks that focus on going wide with attacking creatures include cards like Craterhoof Behemoth and Moonshaker Cavalry. These powerful finishers scale very well in Commander and often allow us to punch through enemy creatures and take out our opponents in a single decisive combat phase. Jetmir’s ability to buff up creatures and provide them with vigilance, trample, and double strike almost makes these cards feel excessive. We’ll rarely have any issue finishing off opponents once we’ve amassed a decent team of creatures.
Enablers
We probably can’t go wide if we can’t keep our hand stocked up with cards. As long as we keep attacking, creatures like Ohran Frostfang can make that a trivial effort. This Snake gives our creatures deathtouch to clear out blockers, while also allowing Jetmir’s trample and double strike to make sure that we’re consistently able to connect. While Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar can’t draw quite as many cards, the ability to prevent opponents from casting spells during our turn is too good to pass up.
Jetmir cares about the number of creatures that we have on the battlefield, which means that creatures that make tokens can come in handy. Charismatic Conqueror can make it seem trivial to hit the full nine creatures that Jetmir wants to see if our opponents aren’t careful about flooding the board with artifacts and creatures of their own. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar quickly becomes a massive threat with trample and double strike by creating tokens to up the numbers whenever we attack.
Green offers some of the best burst draw spells in Commander, which can come in handy if our value engine creatures get hit with targeted removal. Shamanic Revelation can easily draw us ten cards in the late game, which should be enough to push the game in our favor while also helping to stabilize our life total if we’ve faced heavy aggro. Return of the Wildspeaker can be cast at instant speed to draw tons of cards when Jetmir is on board or to provide enough extra damage to finish off our opponents.
In a three-color deck, we also need plenty of mana fixing. Mana dorks not only provide Jetmir with extra creatures on board to enable his buffs faster, but they also allow us to cast more creatures earlier and snowball out of control. Delighted Halfling is one of the best, letting us make legendary creatures—including Jetmir himself—uncounterable. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds can create tons of mana and also provide a reliable source of card draw as we cast those big creatures.
Answers
While there aren’t many reliable counterspells in Naya colors, Red Elemental Blast is a card that can stop enemy counterspells, destroy our opponent’s Rhystic Study or Consecrated Sphinx, or even take care of something catastrophic such as Cyclonic Rift or Expropriate for a single red mana. Deflecting Swat remains one of the most flexible instants in the format, allowing us to protect your board from targeted removal or even redirecting counterspells to render them ineffective.
This deck really only works well when creatures are able to stick to the battlefield, which makes a card like Heroic Intervention into an all-star. This spell protects our permanents from being destroyed and prevents us from losing key pieces to targeted removal of all stripes, so it will do a lot more than just stop a board wipe. Boromir, Warden of the Tower passively stops our opponents from casting spells for free while also acting as an emergency board wipe protection piece.
Of course, we’ll also want some sweepers of our own because we can’t always guarantee that we’re the immediate threat. Blasphemous Act and Vanquish the Horde are two of the best, because we’ll usually only wind up spending one or two mana to cast them to take care of the problems. We’re also running enough protection that we might even be able to make them asymmetrical and come out swinging with our army of creatures while our opponents’ shields are down.
Threats
This deck loves the combat phase, so it stands to reason that we’d like to take a few more of them when we can. Savage Beating can get us an extra combat phase as a surprise combat trick while also giving our team double strike for an additional two mana if we haven’t hit the threshold for Jetmir to do it himself. Moraug, Fury of Akoum can get us extra combats as long as we have ways to make lands enter the battlefield. Even without landfall synergies, we should be able to end games.
The commander can obviate the need for too many other finishers, but having a few around in case Jetmir gets removed repeatedly can be very helpful. My personal favorites are Triumph of the Hordes and Akroma’s Will. While these cards can definitely end the game even without Jetmir’s help, they’re all but guaranteed to end it if he’s on the battlefield with a decent handful of creature that can attack. Akroma’s Will can also be used to protect your creatures or as a surprise combat trick against enemy aggro.
If you like to include a reliable combo finisher, Aggravated Assault has great synergy with this deck’s overall goals and can often end games even without going infinite. There’s a variety of cards that can be used to enable you to take as many combats as you like, but my personal favorite for this deck is Old Gnawbone. I’m always a big fan of combos where none of the cards feel like dead weight outside of the combo, which is definitely the case here with these two being incredibly useful just as value cards.
I hope that this article has helped you see Jetmir in a new light. I’m a huge fan of his design because I love combat and creature-based decks and I think that he’s easily become my favorite commander in Naya colors. There are plenty of different ways that you could build around him depending on your preferences and the intended power level of your deck, so I’m certain that you’ll find something to love if you put together your own Commander deck with Jetmir at the helm.
You can find this deck and plenty more on the PlayEDH Mid Power Hub that’s hosted by our good friends at Moxfield. All of these decks are ready to play right away in our curated power levels, but you can also use them for inspiration when brewing new decks of your own. We’re always on the lookout for new decks to feature in this collection with credit to the original brewers, so your deck might even be the next addition!
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