Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed

Final Fantasy Commanders all look like such fun to build around. This one took me a bit longer to figure out than the previous two, because it has a lot of interactions and different ways to build it. 

“Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed” is a “Pillow Fort” and “Pingers” Dream! Built in effects to burn out your opponent, while drawing you cards and while gaining life? DEAL! Now...let’s make her annoying to play against. 

The first way I saw to build this deck, was in fact a “Pillow Fort” deck. A deck that makes it as hard as possible for your opponent to do anything to you. Cards like “Propaganda” become the bane of any aggro deck's existence. 

Slowing aggro strategies down to the pace where you thrive. They can’t attack you, while your burn damage builds up. They have to manage resources, while yours continue your card advantage continues to grow through Y’shtola’s two effects. Add in that you are also have a life gain ability built into Y’shtola’s effect, and fast pace decks looking to end the game through battle will absolutely hate you. 

Throwing in cards like “Authority of the Consuls” lean more into the life gain aspects. Making your opponent’s newest creature have to take the turn off from attacking or activating its tap ability (if haste is a thing), and it gave you a life on top of it. Definitely a pace changing card in a deck like this. 

Continuing to build your board with powerful effects that make it hard for your opponent to attack you is only step one. Add in things like “Norn’s Annex” to pull double duty for you. One, it acts as an attack deterrent because of its effect that makes opponents have to either tap mana and waste their resources to attack you, or it makes them pay life. But, two, it also triggers Y’shtola’s effect to draw a card just by coming into play, because a player (YOU) lost 4 life this turn. 

Now that you made it so hard and so bad for your opponent to attack you, let’s make their creatures work FOR you. “Ophidian Eyes” will draw you a card every time the enchanted creature deals damage to anyone, EXCEPT you. Opponent’s dying from your burn effects and from each other, while you sit back gain life and draw cards? Blue players are salivating at the mere thought. 

Keeping the trend of making Y’shtola annoying, let’s add more burn effects that basically either match her energy, or increase it, to put your opponents on a clock. 

“Kambal, Consul of Allocation” and “Sheoldred, the Apocalypse” both match the burn and heal that Y’shtola brings to the table. Having all three out at once is a dream. Your opponents would be taking 6 damage while you heal for 6. The three play off each other so well. Y’shtola plays either of the other two, which burns each opponent for 2 and you gain 2. Then if your opponent attempts to play something to hurt your board, Kambal will burn them for another 2. Which at the end of the turn, will trigger Y’shtola draw during the end turn, which then burns for another 2 damage from Sheoldred. 6 life swing, and a draw for just playing the game. Easy gains, right? 

More cards that work towards this strategy of burning and drawing are things that like both. Things like “Psychosis Crawler”. Not only does it guarantee that you get to deal at least one damage every time Y’shtola draws you a card, but it becomes more and more massive with every card draw. Making it a formidable threat in the late game. 

Pairing cards like the previously mentioned “Kambal, Consul of Allocation” with another card like “Rug of Smothering”, makes it so you deal damage fast to get that draw at the end phase, while continuously pressuring your opponent’s ever dwindling life. 

The hardest part of triggering Y’shtola’s effect feels like it would be dealing the 4 damage to a player, in order to get the draw at the end phase. But, simple effects like that are secretly very powerful. Refueling your hand going into your opponent’s turn is often times a extremely powerful effect. With that in mind, I want to mention a few other cards that will force the trigger, while giving you even more effects and advantages to make your opponent hate life playing this game versus you. 

The first thought is Unblockable creatures. Small creatures who can gaurantee damage increasing the pressure on your opponent feel like they’d find a good home in this kind of deck. “Changling Outcast” being so low of a mana cost while having Unblockable can mean the difference between drawing and not drawing. While cards like “Dimir Infiltrator” can serve double purpose, being able to get almost free damage in, or by being a tutor for any two-cost card in your deck can be a very strong effect, especially when you can search things like the classic Count Spell. 

I would feel just oh so wrong if i mentioned creatures who can get in for free damage if i didn’t mention things like... “Grafted Exoskeleton”...infect....you know where this goes, I wont say more. 

Now, those are the more aggressive style cards to trigger Y’shtola’s effect, but what if you can’t swing in for damage for some reason? What then? Well, the good thing about Y’shtola is she doesn’t care Which player loses life, it can be anyone at the table, including yourself! Yup, that’s right! You can hurt yourself to trigger Y’shtola. But let’s make sure its worth it, self hurting cards with big pay offs or can cause massive advantage are what we are looking for or cards that just help you play the game while triggering things passively are what we are looking for. 

“Bolas’ Citadel” is an INSANELY strong card. You get pseudo-draw while getting to play cards from your deck, while also triggering Y’shtola’s end phase effects. Keep playing cards off the top of your deck by paying life, all the free draw and hand advantage writes itself. It can also be a blow out card. You now sacrifice all those permanents you played with Citadel to take off the last chunk of your opponent’s life as a late game finisher. 

Not every card needs to advance your field. Some cards can be used to put a hard stop on board your opponents are building. “Toxic Deluge” is an amazing card for this. Allowing you to pay life (tiggering Y’shtola) while clearing your opponent’s boards of all their scary threats. Setting them back to the stone age while you progress with your strategy. 

There are a ton of cards that have massive pay off for a strategy like this, and a ton more that also help trigger many of the awesome effects that Y’shtola has. Way too many to list or to write about. But with all that I’ve said, hopefully this gives you a base to work off from and a few ideas to help make your Y’shtola decks become a hated member of your table.