At all levels of Commander play, Artifact decks are some of the strongest out there. While the best Commanders for this archetype are all widely known, as always in Commander, there is room for innovation. Fittingly, Jhoira, Ageless Innovator just proved this with an impressive result at a major cEDH tournament.
Abusing Jhoira and Setting Up Combo Lines
As a two-mana Commander, Jhoira easily lets you cheat in a ton of artifacts throughout a game. While the first activation isn’t too threatening, you’ll eventually be able to put haymakers into play for free. The only downside is that this process takes time.
Luckily, this deck features a multitude of untap effects like Aphetto Alcehmist and Cerulean Wisps that help you build up counters faster. There are also plenty of potent artifacts like Machine God’s Effigy and The One Ring lower in the curve to help bridge the gap to your bigger plays. By adding Rings of Brighthearth into the mix to double up each Jhoira activation, you’ll quickly flood the board with trinkets.
Once you get to eight ingenuity counters, every artifact in the deck, including The Ten Rings and The Endstone, is fair game. These value-generating tools should ensure that you’ll never run out of gas. Over time, the card advantage gives you a great shot at assembling one of your game-breaking combos.
Pairing Chromatic Orrery with Filigree Sages, for example, nets you infinite mana and lets you draw your deck. Then, after jamming Lithoform Engine and God-Pharaoh’s Statue, you can infinitely copy Statue’s life drain trigger.
Alternatively, Goblin Welder and Sewer-veillance Cam to repeatedly recur a Mox also nets you infinite colored mana. Funneling it into Wan Shi Tong, Librarian then lets you draw your entire deck to guarantee victory. With lots of redundancy and an array of tutors at your disposal, closing games isn’t difficult.
Powerful but Vulnerable
Overall, what gives this deck legs is its explosiveness. All you have to do is untap with Jhoira and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to flood the board with artifacts in short order. Notably, since artifacts are put directly into play without casting them, Jhoira decks naturally foil countermagic, which is a huge boon.
Where this archetype can run into trouble is when facing down hate pieces. Naturally, as a deck with tons of artifacts, Null Rod is a concern. On top of that, though, this deck’s reliance on its Commander’s activated ability makes Cursed Totem and Pithing Needle effects hugely problematic. This list has counterspells to try to keep hate cards off the table, but very little in the way of other answers.
As such, even with the deck’s weaknesses in mind, there are plenty of positives that make Jhoira a competitive Commander option. There’s no denying that Jhoira is powerful, and it doesn’t take long before things get really out of hand.
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