Lavinia’s Hateful Human

Are you tired of getting your face beat by turn 2 Oko, Thief of Crowns and turn 3 Nissa, Who Shakes the World? Are decks with Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and Fires of Invention sucking the fun out of your Brawl experience? Then look no further! There’s a new sheriff in town, and she’s here to put your opponent’s turn 2 Oko to JAIL (if you’re going first and get it on the board)! So buckle up, ladies and elks, it’s time to force more human tribal jank!

This deck is all about this lady, a hate-bear that has seen absolutely no play in standard and is more playable the more expensive a format gets. But when I saw that beautiful “human” creature tag, I knew it was time to get to work. The deck revolves around sucking the fun out of your opponents game, by tapping their creatures, drawing cards, and making every play they make feel like misery. So now I present to you, the most annoying human ‘tribal’ list ever created!

The haters:

Since our commander is a hate-bear, we must have out gang of haters. Apostle of Purifying Light hates on black Bounty Agent hates on legendary non-planeswalker permanents, Tithe Taker hates on our opponent trying to interact with us, Tomik, Distinguishes Advokist hates on decks that run Nissa and Kiora, and most of our planeswalkers are all haters, making interaction a real pain for our opponents.

The cops:

Elite Arrester, Giant Killer, and Law-Rune Enforcer are all cheap tappers and all humans, making our trio of 1 drops quite good at making attack phases very tricky for your opponent. Passwall Adept allows for a creature of our choice to get in for free damage, Ardenvale Tactician and Queen of Ice both have adventures that synergize well with our deck, and Conclave Tribunal is here to deal with any difficult Okospermanents.

The lifegain:

The other subtheme this deck brings is that of life-gain, with Impassioned Orator, Senate Guildmage, and Linden, the Steadfast Queen as the consistent sources of life. Charming Prince and Elite Guardmage not only go great together, they are both just great value cards.

The card draw:

We are in blue, and what does blue do well? That's right, we draw cards WHILE we beat face. Tome of Legends is here because our commander is a SOLDIER, dammit, and Dovin, Grand Arbiter is here to provide us with more card selection and board presence. Verity Circle is our cheeky card draw synergy with all the tappers, while Gadwick, the Wizened can be great to cash in in the lategame, though if you have no other plays on turn 3 and can cast him, go for it. Inspiring Commander rounds out the card draw with most of our creatures triggering it.

How do we win?

Hero of Precinct One is ambitious, but our commander is a multicolored spell with a low casting cost, and she makes humans. Gideon Blackblade is our big human beater, and Gideon's Company and Twinblade Paladin both get bigger with our lifegain. Syr Elenora, the Discerning, Azorius Knight-Arbiter, and Azorius Skyguard are all obnoxious creatures to deal with, and can get in for a good amount of damage. Agent of Treachery is a human, so he is our biggest bomb (bonus point for his synergy with Teferi, Time Raveler and Charming Prince). And finally we have Icon of Ancestry, set to 'human' except when we play against Oko. In that case we hold onto it, build out our board, and set it to 'elk'.

The mana base:

This deck runs 24 lands, and without green for mana acceleration it'you might want to go up to 25 to make sure, but we have a lot of card selection. You could run another island over a human you don't like much, but apart from that it's all quite basic. Castle Ardenvale makes humans so that clearly goes in, and Castle Vantress can help us out when things are going VERY bad. Arcane Signet goes in because humans like things that are good.