Syr Alin, The Lion’s Claw Commander Deck Guide – Best Cards, How To Play

Syr Alin, the Lion’s Claw is one of the legendary creatures included in Magic: The Gathering’s Foundations set. The card isn’t new to Foundations, and was originally released in 2019’s Throne of Eldraine set, but was included in Foundations’ Starter Collection. With Foundations being a set aimed at beginners, Sy Alin, the Lion’s Claw is a great first commander for those who want to dip their toes into the Commander format.

Syr Alin, the Lion’s Claw is a very simple mono white commander. There’s no flashy or complicated effect on Syr Alin, making it easy to understand how it works. Despite its simplicity, you can do a lot of damage with a Syr Alin deck.

Decklist

The decklist contains 24 creatures, eight sorceries, seven instants, 11 artifacts, 14 enchantments, and 34 lands. Most of the deck consists of cards that create tokens, or raise the stats of your creatures.

Key Cards

Syr Alin, The Lion’s Claw

Syr Alin, the Lion’s Claw is the commander of the deck and one that’ll give your creatures a minor stat boost whenever it attacks. You do have to put it in harm’s way for the effect to go off, but its first strike will help it win most combat thanks to its decent statline.

You don’t need Syr Alin on the battlefield for your deck to function. The card is great, but your commander not being on the battlefield won’t make or break the deck. Syr Alin will be one of the ways you push for endgame damage.

Divine Visitation

The deck generates a ton of tokens, and Divine Visitation turns those tokens into much better ones. As opposed to (usually) 1/1 tokens, they become 4/4 tokens flying. The creature token is replaced by the Angel token, so you won’t get to keep the same creature type as the original token.

Divine Visitation replaces
all
tokens that are generate under your control. So if you make multiple tokens in one turn, they will all enter as a 4/4 Angel.

The strength of Divine Visitation comes from cards that can generate creature tokens consistently so you are always making a 4/4 Angel every turn (if not more). The token Divine Visitation makes is better than most of the token generators in the deck, making it something you want on the battlefield as quickly as possible.

Pearl Medallion

Although the effect isn’t exciting, Pearl Medallion is one of the most useful cards in the deck. Pearl Medallion discounts all your white spells by one mana, which makes it easier to cast any spell in your deck since nearly all the cards are white.

Mono white can struggle with ramping, so it can be hard to cast your spells with higher mana values. There aren’t really ways to easily get lands onto your battlefield, so Pearl Medallion is your primary way to get around the ramp issue.

Prava Of The Steel Legion

Prava of the Steel Legion is one of the best token support cards, and keeps them safer during your turn. The +1/+4 stat boost is fantastic, as it makes them much harder to remove in combat, especially if you have other stat-boosting cards as well to stack the effects.

In addition to the stat boost, Prava of the Steel Legion can make tokens itself if you have mana to dump into its effect. The creation of a 1/1 Soldier token can be done at instant speed, so if you don’t need to hold mana up at the end step before your turn, you can turn that unused mana into tokens.

Moonshaker Cavalry

Moonshaker Cavalry is the primary way you will be closing out your games. You will be generating a ton of creature tokens over the course of a game, which will let Moonshaker Cavalry give your creatures more of a stat boost when it enters.

Moonshaker Cavalry gives all your creatures flying on top of the stat boost, making them much harder for most of your opponents to block. While Moonshaker Cavalry can’t attack the turn it enters since it doesn’t have haste, this hardly matters when the game is likely to end the turn it enters anyway.

How To Play The Deck

A Syr Alin, the Lion’s Claw Commander deck is all about amassing a battlefield of tokens and boosting their stats with various permanents to make them threats in combat. The deck is a very combat-centric one, though you’re often waiting for the best times to strike rather than attacking every turn.

There are a ton of token generators in the deck, the best being ones that stick to the battlefield. Felidar Retreat either creates a token or gives your creatures +1/+1 counters whenever a land enters, Court of Grace creates a token but gives you a better token if you’re the monarch every upkeep, and Jacked Rabbit creates tokens equal to its power when it attacks.

While your commander can provide a stat boost, so can a lot of other cards to really pump up your creatures.
Flowering of the White Tree
gives a +1/+1 boost to your nonlegendary creatures and a slightly better one to legendary creatures,
Dictate of Heliod
gives your creatures +2/+2, and
Inspiring Virtue
grants your tokens +1/+1 and vigilance.

The primary win condition of the deck is winning through combat. This is done by slowly dwindling down your opponents’ life totals, or in giant outbursts of damage. Alternatively, you can win the came with Halo Fountain by untapping fifteen tapped creatures you control to automatically win the game. Even if you aren’t using Halo Fountain’s win condition, it can still generate tokens for you and draw you cards.

The biggest flaw of the deck is its reliance on stat boosts. Many of the tokens the deck makes are only 1/1, and while you can make a lot of them, they’re still weak. This is why anthems cards that gain passive stat boosts) are so important in the deck – including on Syr Alin itself. Anthems are how these 1/1 creatures are turned into threats on the battlefield to easily take your opponents out of the game.