With dice rolling now a genuine thing in legitimate Magic instead of just being confined to the realms of the Un-sets, it seems like a good time to build a deck around it.
The entire set for Adventures in the Forgotten Realms has now been spoiled, and if you’re looking to take advantage of some of the fun synergies that’ll really push your luck, then rolling a d20 seems like the best way to do it. To give you an advantage (that means you get to roll two dice and ignore the lowest result), we’ve decided to help you out.
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The commander
From the main set, there are only two Legendary Creatures that talk about rolling a d20. As one of those is mono-colored, that means the only real option here is Farideh, Devil’s Chosen. Farideh is a Blue and Red 3/3 with the devil’s own luck.
What that means, is that “Whenever you roll one or more dice, Farideh, Devil’s Chosen gains flying and menace until end of turn. If any of those results was 10 or higher, draw a card.” While this isn’t the most overtly powerful ability, a lot of the aim here will be to roll a lot of dice, rather than win with your Commander. They’re just there because they’re the right colors, and have the words “roll one or more dice” on them, although the card draw is a nice bonus.
Given that that’s the case, you’re going to need a few cards in your deck to actually make it worth building.
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The high rollers
You have three main cards that you’re going to get great things from when rolling a d20. First up is Delina, Wild Mage, who is the other Legendary Creature with dice rolling on them. Well, Delina lets you choose a Creature when they attack, then you roll a d20. If you get 1-14, you get to create a copy of that Creature that’s tapped and attacking, but you exile it at the end of combat. If you get 15-20, you get to make the same copy, but then roll again. Delina is a powerhouse and is going to let you attack regularly with whichever scary Creature you have out at the time.
The Deck of Many Things is the next big deal. For five mana, this Artifact lets you pay two mana and tap it to roll a dice, then you have to subtract the number of cards in your hand from the result, and if the result of that is 0, you have to discard your hand. Then, the dice roll, 1-9 has you returning a card at random from your graveyard to your hand. 10-19 lets you draw two cards. Finally, 20 allows you to put a Creature card from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. When that Creature dies, its owner loses the game.
Our final big hitter is Wizard’s Spellbook. This is a seven mana Blue Artifact that you can tap to exile an Instant or Sorcery from a graveyard, and then you get to roll a d20. If the result is 1-9, you get to copy that card, and you can then pay the mana required to cast it. If the result is 10-19, you can copy that card, but instead of paying the cost, you can just pay one mana. Finally, if you hit 20, you get to copy each card exiled with Wizard’s Spellbook and then cast any number of the copies without paying their mana costs. Those are the three main cards that make the deck worth building, but dice rolls are unreliable…
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The key dice roll support pieces
Well, there are two cards that can massively improve your odds when rolling a dice. The first of these is Pixie Guide. Pixie Guide is a two mana Blue 1/3 with flying and the “grant an advantage” skill. This means that if you would roll one or more dice, you roll that many dice plus one and ignore the lowest roll. This gives us a chance to improve our luck, and you can even copy them if you want to, to try and shift the odds in your favor even more.
The other card is Barbarian Class. This is a one-mana Enchantment that has the same ability as Pixie Guide. However, you can also pay two mana to level it up to grant a Creature +2/+0 and menace whenever you roll one or more dice. You can even pay three mana after that to level it up again, which grants all of your Creatures haste.
These are the two cards you need to help you out with the dice rolling, but there are other great choices to help your strategy in general. Of course, it depends on how you want to take the deck itself, but these should fit in no matter what.
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The non-dice roll support pieces
There are two Artifacts we think are essential for this deck. The first of those is Helm of the Host, which is a four mana Equipment that costs five to equip. It reads, “At the beginning of combat on your turn, create a token that’s a copy of equipped creature, except the token isn’t legendary if equipped creature is legendary. That token gains haste.” Now, you can use this to copy whatever you like, but we recommend Delina, Wild Mage when possible.
On the Instant and Sorcery side of support, we’ve got Chaos Wand, which is a three mana Artifact. For four mana, you can tap it to, “Target opponent exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile an instant or sorcery card. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost. Then put the exiled cards that weren’t cast this way on the bottom of that library in a random order.” This serves two purposes: first of all it lets you steal everyone’s spells, and that’s great. The other benefit is that it gets Instant and Sorcery spells into your opponent’s graveyards to then use with Wizard’s Spellbook.
Aside from those, how you take the deck is up to you, although we’d obviously recommend using the other d20-based cards from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. You’ll probably want to focus a little more on either Creature strategies or the spell-slinging side of things, but a little bit of both can go a long way too. Just have fun with it.
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