Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate is one of the many legendary creatures found in Magic: The Gathering’s Foundations set that can be used as your commander. Formerly the head of the Mardu (black/white/red) clan, she dissolved the Mardu in favor of following the black/red dragon Kolaghan.
Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate is a creature that you always want to be attacking with to grow her stats. This later turns into the ability to reanimate creatures from the graveyard to cheat out powerful creatures without ever needing to actually pay their mana cost.
Decklist
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Commander: Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate |
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Anger |
Archfiend of Depravity |
Archfiend of Despair |
Archo nof Cruelty |
Artisan of Kozilek |
Bloodthirster |
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Chainer, Nightmare Adept |
Combustible Gearhulk |
Drana, Liberator of Malakir |
Etali, Primal Storm |
Feldon of the Third Path |
Flayer of the Hatebound |
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It That Betrays |
Jaxis, the Troublemaker |
Junju, the Midnight Sky |
Kaervek the Merciless |
Knollspine Dragon |
Kroxa, Titan of Nature’s Wrath |
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Magus of the Wheel |
Metamorphosis Fanatic |
Necropolis Regent |
Pathrazer of Ulamog |
Rakdos, Patron of Chaos |
Sheoldred, Whispering One |
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Solemn Simulacrum |
Syr Konrad, the Grim |
Terror of the Peaks |
The Infamous Cruelclaw |
Vilis, Broker of Blood |
Blasphemous Act |
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Breach the Multiverse |
Buried Alive |
Faithless Looting |
Feed the Swarm |
Living Death |
Persist |
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Reanimate |
Rise of the Dark Realms |
Stich Together |
Unmarked Grave |
Victimize |
Wheel of Misfortune |
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Big Score |
Chaos Warp |
Demand Answers |
Entomb |
Thrill of Possibility |
Unexpected Windfall |
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Arcane Signet |
Cursed Mirror |
Fellwar Stone |
Key to the City |
Lightning Greaves |
Mind Stone |
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Rakdos Signet |
Sol Ring |
Swiftfoot Boots |
Talisman of Indulgence |
Wayfarer’s Bauble |
Animate Dead |
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Feast on the Fallen |
Rakdos Joins Up |
Sneak Attack |
Uncivil Unrest |
Warstorm Surge |
Blackcleave Cliffs |
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Castle Loctchwain |
Command Tower |
Dragonskull Summit |
Exotic Orchard |
Geier Reach Sanitarium |
Graven Cairns |
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Haunted Ridge |
x10 Mountain |
Rakdos Carnarium |
Rogue’s Passage |
Smoldering Marsh |
Sulfurous Springs |
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x9 Swamp |
Tainted Peak |
Temple of the False God |
Tomb Fortress |
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The decklist contains 29 creatures, 13 sorceries, six instants, 11 artifacts, six enchantments, and 34 lands. Since the deck is focused on reanimation, most creatures have high casting costs with the noncreature spell lineup built around getting those creatures into the graveyard.
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Key Cards
Alesha, Who Laughs At Fate
Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate is the most important card in the deck. You want to start attacking with Alesha as early as possible so you can start growing its stats. You want Alesha to have a high power, as this will help the raid ability to bring back creatures with high mana value from the graveyard.
Alesha’s raid ability does not require Alesha to attack. So long as you attacked with any creature, raid will trigger at the end step and let you bring a creature back to the battlefield from the graveyard.
Alesha is a great creature in combat in general. Thanks to having first strike, it can win most combats. This is especially true with Alesha’s growing statline that happens every time it attacks. It is best to swing Alesha at an opponent with little or no defenses to make sure Alesha sticks around for as long as possible.
Sneak Attack
Sneak Attack is a great card on its own, letting you swing in with a powerful creature for just one red mana once it’s on the battlefield. The effect isn’t once per turn either, so if you have a hand full of creatures, you can dump them all down and attack with them right away. They are sacrificed at the end step, so you will be losing those creatures once your turn is over.
What makes Sneak Attack so good in Alesha is the creatures being sacrificed isn’t much of a downside. Once they leave, Alesha can revive them afterward to keep them permanently on the battlefield. The creatures you attack with using Sneak Attack will always trigger Alesha’s raid ability if its stats are already high enough to revive whatever is in your graveyard.
The Infamous Cruelclaw
The name of the game with Alesha is cheating out creatures without paying their mana cost. The Infamous Cruelclaw helps you to cast spells for free from the top of your library while also setting up your graveyard since it serves as a discard outlet.
The majority of the deck are creatures or spells that can reanimate creatures, so you are very likely to not whiff with a weak spell when you trigger The Infamous Cruelclaw’s ability. It does require you to deal damage with Cruelclaw to trigger, but with menace you can attack an opponent with little to no creatures to make sure it connects for damage.
Necropolis Regent
Necropolis Regent is one of the best support cards for Alesha. Alesha needs high stats to reanimate your high mana value creatures, so Necropolis Regent putting +1/+1 counters on it equal to the damage it deals is fantastic.
The +1/+1 counters that are given make Alesha even more of a threat in combat and help to accelerate its explosiveness. You want Necropolis Regent to hit the battlefield as early as possible to ensure you can grow Alesha quickly to start reanimating all the creatures you’ll have in your graveyard.
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How To Play The Deck
An Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate deck is all about setting up the graveyard with creatures and attack with Alesha to quickly ramp up its stats to start bringing those creatures back. Since Alesha only costs three mana, it’s very possible to cast it as early as turn two before most of your opponents will have defenses, giving you an easy, safe way to attack and grow Alesha.
While Alesha can give itself +1/+1 counters, cards like Feast on the Fallen and Necropolis Regent can get extra counters on it in order to make the stats bigger quickly.
You can’t only rely on Alesha to reaniamte, so there are multiple cards that can reanimate creatures on a more unconditional basis. Reanimate, Animate Dead, and Rakdos Joins Up can all bring a creature back while Breach the Multiverse, Living Death, and Rise of the Dark Realms can bring multiple creatures out at once.
There are many different cards that can get creatures into the graveyard. Thrill of Possibility, Faithless Looting, and Big Score all discard cards while drawing you cards, and Chainer, Nightmare Adept and The Infamous Cruelclaw both help to get creatures into the graveyard by discarding while also letting you play big creatures as a trade-off.
The primary win condition is winning through damage and battlefield control. Many creatures you’ll want to reanimate include Eldrazi with annihilator that’ll force your opponents to sacrifice permanents and Archfiend of Depravity and Archfiend of Despair that force more sacrifice and double all life lost and cuts off lifegain respectively.
The biggest flaw of the deck is the reliance on creatures with high casting costs. You’ll be cheating around the mana cost with reanimation, but if you don’t draw into ways to reanimate them, you’ll be left wide open early in the game. The deck can win the late-game with ease, but can struggle to get there if the hands aren’t right.
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