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Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate is one of the many legendary creatures found inMagic: The Gathering’sFoundations 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.
Flayer of the Hatebound
Magus of the Wheel
Terror of the Peaks
Key to the City
Feast on the Fallen
x10 Mountain
x9 Swamp
Temple of the False God
Tomb Fortress
The decklistcontains 29 creatures, 13 sorceries, six instants, 11 artifacts, six enchantments,and34 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.
Key Cards
Alesha, Who Laughs At Fate
Alesha, Who Laughs at Fateis the most important card in the deck. Youwant to start attacking with Alesha as early as possibleso you can start growing its stats. You want Alesha to have a high power, as this willhelp the raid ability to bring back creatures with high mana valuefrom the graveyard.
Alesha’s raid abilitydoes not require Alesha to attack. So long as you attackedwith any creature, raid will trigger at the end step and let you bring a creature back to the battlefield from the graveyard.
Aleshais a great creature in combatin 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 isbest to swing Alesha at an opponent with little or no defensesto verify Alesha sticks around for as long as possible.
Sneak Attack
Sneak Attackis 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 turneither, 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 afterwardto keep them permanently on the battlefield. Thecreatures you attack with using Sneak Attack will always trigger Alesha’s raid abilityif 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 Cruelclawhelps 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.
Themajority 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 doesrequire 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 Regentis 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. Youwant Necropolis Regent to hit the battlefield as early as possibleto ensure you may grow Alesha quickly to start reanimating all the creatures you’ll have in your graveyard.
How To Play The Deck
An Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate deckisall about setting up the graveyardwith 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 likeFeast on the FallenandNecropolis Regentcan get extra counters on it in order to make the stats bigger quickly.
Youcan’t only rely on Alesha to reaniamte, so there are multiple cards that can reanimate creatures on a more unconditional basis.Reanimate, Animate Dead,andRakdos Joins Upcan all bring a creature back whileBreach the Multiverse, Living Death,andRise of the Dark Realmscan bring multiple creatures out at once.
There are many different cards that can get creatures into the graveyard.Thrill of Possibility, Faithless Looting,andBig Scoreall discard cards while drawing you cards, andChainer, Nightmare AdeptandThe Infamous Cruelclawboth help to get creatures into the graveyard by discarding while also letting you play big creatures as a trade-off.
Theprimary win condition is winning through damageand battlefield control. Many creatures you’ll want to reanimate include Eldrazi with annihilator that’ll force your opponents to sacrifice permanents andArchfiend of DepravityandArchfiend of Despairthat force more sacrifice and double all life lostand cuts off lifegainrespectively.
Thebiggest 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.
