For the most part, Sagas in Magic: The Gathering are all about the long-term value plan. By staggering their effects over multiple turns, these cards can do more than their single-use peers in the same mana slot. This, unfortunately, means they tend not to play very well in more aggressive lists. That said, Wizards did actually print a Commander for an aggressive Saga strategy this year, it just slipped under most players’ radars. That Commander is Chong and Lily, Nomads, and it’s a textbook example of an MTG sleeper.
This legend came to us via Avatar Jumpstart, which seems to be yielding more and more hidden gems as time goes on. It provides a solid Commander for a Saga-based Aggro deck, as well as the never-before-seen Bard Typal strategy. Despite this, just 66 players have built the deck so far according to EDHREC. This is a unique, innovative card, and one that has been massively overlooked in favor of other, flashier legends from Avatar.
Chong And Lily, Nomads MTG
Chong and Lily, Nomads offers two key abilities, both of which help you play MTG Sagas in a speedier fashion than was previously possible. Once you have a Bard to swing with, which can be your Commander in a pinch, you gain access to two potent abilities.
Firstly, putting extra lore counters on Sagas isn’t something we see a lot of, but it’s a powerful interaction. Each time you do, you immediately trigger the next ability, which breaks the usual structure of Sagas in a big way. Getting multiple Saga abilities per turn like this can easily lead to some big value swings.
Alternatively, if you have enough lore counters already, you can convert them into a big board-wide power boost instead. In a deck like this, where you’ll be playing as many Sagas as possible, this can easily be as good as Overrun each turn. The one downside here is that this ability doesn’t provide evasion, so you’ll need something like Archetype of Aggression to get around that.
The biggest problem with Chong and Lily is its color identity. While the card’s abilities are very powerful, being limited to Mono-Red excludes a lot of options from the pool. It’s frustrating to see Wizards limit the archetype this way, but at the same time, restrictions breed creativity.
All-Out Saga Aggro?
If you really dive into things, there are actually plenty of ways you can put a Chong and Lily Commander deck together. Naturally, you’ll want to start with red Sagas. The more of these you have, the more you can leverage your Commander’s ability set. There are a good number of Sagas available to the deck, despite being confined to a single color.
Many of these, handily, support the kind of aggressive gameplan that Chong and Lily clearly encourage. Sagas like Summon: Brynhildr and Book of Mazarbul offer the deck card draw and board presence, which helps it sustain a beatdown plan. Book also provides its own anthem effect on chapter three, which complements that of Chong and Lily. Along with similar Sagas like The Founding of Omashu, you can pile on a lot of extra pressure this way.
Of course, you will want some creatures as well, Bards specifically. There are a lot less options in this area, but a few, like Moku, Meandering Drummer, support the game plan perfectly. You can top up your Bard count with Changelings like Taurean Mauler, too, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting critical mass. It’s worth noting that you can trigger Chong and Lily’s ability whenever any Bard attacks, which means having a Bard out before you drop it is the ideal line. This gives some additional value to Bards with lower mana values.
With your Sagas and Bards assembled, you’ll have most of what you need for a Chong and Lily deck. While your options beyond this are limited due to being in Mono-Red, there are some nice colorless tools that really boost the strategy. Cloud Key helps make all your Sagas less clunky, for example, while Crystal Chimes gives you an easy source of card advantage.
Unexpected Sub-Themes
These are the foundations that every Chong and Lily, Nomads deck in MTG Commander will want to make use of. This may make the deck look boring and linear, but the opposite is actually true. If you look into each of the available Sagas and Bards in red, a few sub-themes emerge, each of which you can leverage to give your Chong and Lily brew a unique spin.
The big one here is instants and sorceries. A lot of the Sagas the deck has access to support a Spellslinger strategy, including Summon: Esper Valigarmanda and Summon: G.F. Cerberus. Spellbinding Soprano, one of the deck’s better Bards, helps you cast them for less, too. Throw in Urabrask, which is a Spellslinger card that flips into a devastating Saga, and you have a serious sub-theme going. In terms of the specific spells you’ll want, burn and draw are likely the best bet to synergize with the deck’s core plan.
There’s also a good bit of incidental artifact synergy in the deck. Crime Novelist is one of the best Bards we have access to by far, and Sagas like Yotia Declares War and The Brothers’ War both create artifacts and reward you for having them. With these cards as a base, you can easily build the deck as an artifact-centric list, leveraging red’s excellent Treasure production capabilities.
However you decide to build it, Chong and Lily are far more complex than they appear at first glance. If you’re looking for a fresh deckbuilding challenge for the new year, you could do far worse than this criminally underplayed Avatar gem.
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