Good morning everyone, it’s Flavio Neri and today I’m here to talk about Commander and, in detail, about Leviathan.
Leviathan is currently the most played commander paper format in the world, and is a 1v1 format with its own banlist, which differs from Mtgo. This format, born a year ago as a result of an internal division of the old Duel commander commitee, is now passing its moment of greatest diversity thanks to two beautiful products by mum wizard, Commander 2016 and 2017.
In these two expansions have been released respectively the Commander with the “Partner” mechanic and the couple “Edgar / Arahbo, Roar of the World“:
– the former has brought great diversity in the format giving the opportunity to play archetypes up to now obsolete, (midrange, aggro, tollbox, stax and the “nice” land denial) even if it was necessary to pass by the ban of a ” system bug “ called ” Vial Smasher the Fierce “;
– the latter, instead, has helped many new players to appear in this format, (normally difficult to access due to the high costs of many cards), also bringing a fresh gust of aggro deck in a format dominated by control archetypes.
Magic is a game in which adapting to the goal is very important and, especially in a format without sideboard like Leviathan, the choice of deckbuilding is often decisive after a careful observation of the goal of your deck. Precisely for this reason I have chosen to talk to you about a commander who has the means to provide us with twice the resources to counter the opposing decks: “Kess, Dissident Mage“!
No Fat Chicks!
Let’s start from the analysis of the card itself: Kess, Dissident Mage is played at cost 4 (1URB) as a ¾ Flying; by itself it’s not bad, but it also has the following effect: “During each of your turns, you can cast an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. If a card cast this way is going to be put into your graveyard this turn, exile it instead. ”
It would seem a little thing … an instant or a sorcery per turn can not change much of the fate of a game … if it weren’t that playing our turn with all the cards in the graveyard “in our hand” is often decisive to the outcome of the match!
In this way the resources will tend not to run out while we have our dear general on our side and enough cards in the graveyard to support it.
But a Kess, Dissident Mage deck boasts a variety of deckbuikding possibilities (storm / control / combo / burn); this time we will focus on the analysis of its more “controlling” version: Full Decklists !!!
Let’s do the timewarp again!
Ours is almost a “creatureless” control version (except for Snapcaster Mage), where the top
of the curve is represented by 4 “take an extra turn” effects: Time Warp, Capture of Jingzou, Temporal Manipulation and Walk the Eons.
With the aforementioned fantastic 4 friends and thanks to the ability of our commander, we can create a chain in which we play an extra turn from our hand + a tutor effect from the graveyard to pick up a new extra turn from our deck and so on and so forth … while our supplies last ! In the meantime, attacking with Kess, Dissident Mage, we will try ending the game with commander damage or increasing the resources in our hand and decreasing our opponent’s, and putting him in a bad situation if he happens to play his turn ever again!
A Confluence of power!
Going down the curve we find the two “Confluences”:
– Mystic Confluence, staple in the format (possibility to draw 3 or draw and counter or draw and “clean” the board, or shopping and going home, etc …)
– and Fiery Confluence, a card that over time has gained greater value in the format thanks to the ability to stop or at least slow down a widely used general such as Breya, Etherium Shaper or, in our deck, to be used as a 12 damage Fireball! It also gives us the ability to remove any mana dork and / or annoying artifacts in the same turn by combining its effects.
Two other cards worthy of mention, which fall into this range of mana cost, are Cryptic Command(on which I do not think I have to spend words on) and Mystical Teachings, excellent tutor at instant speed that gives us access to any answer we would need.
Ops I killed it again! 
In the mana ranges below the formers we find the “removals and counters” slot, among which the most unique choices are represented by Kolaghan’s Command, an efficient card in all situations, and Fire Covenant, a nice removal spell that, in exchange of a bit of our life total, allows us to clean up the board from problematic creatures or possible mana dorks. Finally, we found space for two Wrath-effects that can also act as a finisher: Earthquake and Rolling Earthquake.
Going even further down the curve, we find:
– the cantrips (still legal in Leviathan), like Preordain Brainstorm and Ponder, which help us to fix the draw and, if casted from the graveyard, refill our hand;
– Thoughtseize or Inquisitions of Kozilek discards,that. if done twice in a row thanks to our commander, can be devastating. Not to mention Hymn to Tourach… discard 4 random card? See u soon, buddy;
– and the “Burns” among which Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning serve as an example. These can be cheap removal spells or can be the last damages we need to win the game.
You will never Walker alone!
But our deck is not just a long list of spells we’re able to reiterate with our general, we also have finishers.
“Who are them?” “Our beloved Planeswalkers, of course!”
“But among all those available in our colors which and how many have we chosen to play?”
To keep the curve of the deck low, our list is limited to play 4 walkers:
– Jace, the Mind Sculptor, a very strong card with lots of utilities: it can get rid of a block or a 
problematic creature on the field, fix our hand or help us understand what our opponent is going to do, neutralizing any topdecks;
– Chandra Torch of Defiance, has already carved out a leading role in other formats. Sometimes it makes us play an extra spell or steal a couple damages, it provides us with some mana for ramping and, when we are close to the end of the game,with the -3 we can solve some problems;
– Liliana of the Veil, discards both precious resources that we can then reuse from the cemetery and occasionally acts as a removal;
– Dack Fayden, does excellent hand quality and can steal one of the many artifacts that populate the format.
In addition, these 4 Walkers have excellent ultimates that represent an alternative way to finish our games and … they are also easier to reach by chaining our beloved extra turns!
Not doing is human, tutoring is diabolical
We close our deck tech with a special mention for the tutors:
Demonic Tutor is not an optional, where there is black be sure to take with you a copy of it!
Also a place in the deck is contested between Tainted Pact and Lim-Dul Vault . The latter, at the low cost of 1 life, allows us to look at the next 5 cards of our deck and if we don’t like them, we can put them to the bottom chosing from the next 5 by paying another 1 life, and so on until we find what we need. The former has the advantage of giving us exactly what we want, but forcing us to renounce to everything that we will exile before it.
Between the two there is not a forced choice and, if desired, one does not exclude the other.
To conclude …
Kess, Dissident Mage is without doubt one of the strongest decks in the Leviathan scene, but, even if many people are requesting the ban, statistically, she doesn’t stand out as dominant in the finals of the tournaments.
This does not mean that having in our hands the opportunity to double the effectiveness of all our resources is a trivial matter and if you choose to play Kess, Dissident Mage as a commander you can quickly report excellent results, even if it is a deck that requires an excellent knowledge of the format and a lot of practice.
Finally, always remember that one of the best thing in the game is the freedom to deckbuild your deck as it best suits you! So, take an inspiration from what you read in this article and do not hesitate to create your own Kess, Dissident Mage!
Author:
Flavio Neri 
Break The Surface 
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