COMMANDER! Review: Gisela, Blade of Goldnight

Hello Casual Net! Javier here with a change of pace for the Commander articles, bringing you a brief look at the newest R/W legendary angel, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. Gisela offers a very aggressive ability that can be highly explosive after a bit of set-up. Now, without any further ado, let's get to the details!

Holy art, Batman! (no pun intended). Jason Chan remains my favorite Magic artist and cards like Gisela are the reason why. Between the sunlight breaking through the clouds and the raw determination on this red-headed angel's face, let's just say I wouldn't want to be on the business end of one of her assaults. Everything about this art screams 'Victory!' and Gisela herself does not disappoint. To arms!

Gisela is a 5/5 First Strike flier for 4RWW, which is a fairly lofty cost; however, she has two abilities that make her a force to be reckoned with. Her first ability states that any damage your opponents and their permanents take is doubled (Malignus, anyone?). This not only applies to damage you or your spells do, but also damage opponents do to each other, which is a huge factor when considering the politics behind multiplayer magic and Planechase. Gisela's second ability prevents half of the damage rounded up that you and your permanents take. This combination makes your army both stronger and more resilient, giving you a huge upper-hand in combat.

Taking advantage of Gisela's abilities is fairly intuitive, but has some tricks that you might have to dig to find. The first route we'll look at is combat damage. Double Strike suddenly feels like quadruple strike and trample damage goes even bigger (although you do have to assign enough damage to kill a creature before doubling it). Gisela already has First Strike, so she deals a whopping 10 damage to most creatures blocking her before they even have a chance to fight back for half their own power. Good luck killing her in combat. Other damage is also doubled, so Lightning Bolt becomes a 1 mana Titan-killer, Slagstorm feels like a one-sided board wipe, and Devil's Play is completely devastating. If we delve further down the damage multipliers, Furnace of Rath and Gratuitous Violence double your damage once again and allow Gisela to start dealing 20 damage with every vengeful swing. Gisela's ability also works great with Infect and opposing general damage. Cards like Threaten and Mark of Mutiny can steal opponents' generals and use them to finish off other opponents who have been wounded by them earlier. Grafted Exoskeleton gets a special shout-out for giving Gisela another one-shot combo when equipped or even to one of your measly 3/3 creature while Gisela is on the board. Finally, my favorite interaction with Gisela is Pyrohemia, the timeshifted version of Pestilence. Gisela prevents all of the damage dealt to you and your creatures while dealing 2 damage to your opponents and their creatures for each activation. This interaction also works favorably with Furnace of Rath. The order of replacement effects such as Gisela is chosen by the player being dealt damage, which means you can half the damage from Pyrohemia first, then double it with Furnace of Rath to net you 0 damage!

Gisela has a lot of casual appeal, acting not only as an enormous bomb, but as a pseudo-anthem for your already-existing creatures. For Standard, the most obvious home for Gisela is in Frites, the R/B/W reanimator deck. Attacking for 10 as early as turn 5 off of a Faithless Looting and Unburial Rites is pretty rad, if I do say so myself. Alternatively, Gisela could also serve as a secondary win condition in Naya Pod. The deck generally just plays strong, aggressive creatures and simply gets better if you land a Birthing Pod. Most White Pod decks finish off with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, but having a second 7 CMC card to Pod into is useful if your opponent manages to kill E. Norn (which you're probably only playing 1-of). I'm none too familiar with other formats, but I'd imagine Gisela would fit into other Reanimator strategies if she did have Legacy appeal, although I'm sure they have better targets.

The first immediate hurdle to building a Commander/EDH deck around Gisela runs into is its inability to macro (check out David's article on macro HERE!). Red and White are the two colors that suffer the most from lack of card draw and mana ramp, so early game development and running out of late game steam are two very real problems for the Boros (R/W) color combination. One way of approaching Gisela is a fast aggro deck; playing cheap, efficient creature threats to whittle opponents' life totals down while your opponents spend their removal spells and development turns trying to stay alive. Creatures like Kinsbaile Cavalier and Goblin Guide can create an early aggressive board state that opponents may not have the tools (or immediate desire) to answer that can rapidly take out a good chunk of life. By the time opponents are responding with a Day of Judgment, you've already dealt them 15+ damage or have the means to protect your creatures with Ghostway or Second Sunrise. If this strategy feels like a Gamble, you could alternatively try to macro out Gisela with mana rocks, Solemn Simulacrum, Kor Cartographer, Knight of the White Orchid, Land Tax, and Wheel of Fortune to power out large, flashy spells. Furthermore, Gisela presents an immediate threat to every player, regardless of how much back up you have--which makes protecting her a priority! Hexproof and Protection from cards like Swiftfoot Boots and Brave the Elements, or even evasion tricks like Cloudshift (my favorite card from AVR) can often protect Gisela long enough for you to untap and unleach havoc.

For comparison, I'd say Gisela is most like Razia, Boros Archangel in Commander/EDH. Both are aggressive generals that also protect your team, which allows you to have some combat tricks with smaller creatures against the format's high density of large creatures on the battlefield. If opponents are spending time using removal spells on your smaller creatures, you can bait them out of removal to clear the way for your unanswered R/W angel. A strong onslaught of early game aggression would force opponents to deal with your early Figure of Destiny or Mirran Crusader while you plan to curve out into your 7 or 8 mana general. Both Boros bad-asses complement each other fairly well and potentially serve as lieutenants to each other in their respective decks, even better with both of them on the board simultaneously!

That's more or less Gisela, Blade of Goldnight for you. She has two very strong, relevant abilities that let you be explosively aggressive in the mid-game. There's a few cool ways to build the deck and she is one of the most satisfying generals to get into the red zone with. I know I'll be picking up my own copy soon and maybe even build a rough draft for a deck. Until next time, deck builders!

Can't get enough Commander/EDH content? Check out the Commander Series on the MTG Casual Network Archive!

-Javier Remy

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