Hope Estheim is a main protagonist of Final Fantasy 13, and one of the many named characters in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering's crossover set with Fin⛎al Fantasy. 🔜Hope is one of the party's main magic users and healers, translating to Hope's lifelink and effect that pairs with lifegain.

As a Commander deck, Hope Estheim has a hybrid theme of mill and lifegain. All lifegain turns into extra mill, with plenty of powerful mill cards available in Azorius (white/blue) colors. The deck has a lot of synergy, including ways to instantly m🍰ill a player out of the game. If y♛ou like lifegain and mill, Hope is the best commander you can be playing.

Decklist

The decklist contains one planeswalker, 23 creatures, six sorceries, 14 instants, five enchantments, and 34 lands​​​​​​. Nearly ever🍎y card i𒁃n the deck either gains life, mills an opponent, or counters a spell.

Key Cards

Hope Estheim

The commander, Hope Estheim is what the entire deck is built around. Hope turns all life gained into opponents milling that much life. Notably, it does not matter if Hope wasn't on the battlefield when you gained life, so long as Hope is on the battlefield at the end 𒅌step, you'll still get the mill trigger.

Hope is a creature you never want to attack or block with so you don't risk it dying in combat. Its effect is much more important than getting a few extra mills out of someone, and there are so many other ways to gain ဣlife, you won't ever need to bother.

Will, Scion Of Peace

Will, Scion of Peace is the easiest way to make your expensive spells cheap. You gain a ton of life in the deck, and easily enough to discount ♑the entire generic mana cost of any spell you want to cast. The deck doesn't have a ton of specific color pips in its spells, so Will makes it much easier to cast multiple spells in one turn.

Will can only discount generic mana costs. The discount cannot be used 🦂to pay for colored mana costs.

Will only costs three mana, so you want to get Will on the battlefield as quickly as possible to start taking advantage of its effect in the early stages of t𒐪he game. Most of your lifegain comes from permanents with low casting costs, so you'll likely have ways to gain life by the🌸 time you cast Will.

Y'shtola Rhul

Y'shtola Rhul is a fantastic utility card for the deck that lets Hope trigger two times, thanks to giving an extra end step. There ar⛄e multiple cards that trigger at the end step, and Y'shtola helps to double up on all these effects.

Y'shtola can blink a creature on both the original end step and the extra one. There are a handful of creatures ꦉwith useful enter the battlefield triggers, and worst case scenario, the blink will c💎ause your lifegain effects to trigger so Hope can mill even more cards.

Riverchurn Monument

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Riverchurn Monument is one of tꦛhe best permanents when it comes to mill. Its exhaust ability lets you completely mill any opponent who had to mill half their library with another mill card. This let🔜s you easily take someone out of the game who is proving to be problemati♕c to your game plan.

You can only use the exhaust ability of Riverchurn Monument once. However, if the card is ever removed and recast, you would be able to use the effect again. Exhaust only applies to the card while it is on th🥂e battlefield.

Even without the exhaust effect, being able to make all opponents mill two cards is nice. While the number is low, Commander has giant decks to go through, so every little bit of mill counts. The first effect can play into the exhaust effect, being ꦡable to take someone out in the late stages of the game.

How To Play The Deck

General Game Plan

A Hope Estheim Commander deck is all about gaining a ton of life and forcing your opponents to mill out their libraries​​​​​​. Mill as a win condition in Commander is a big ask since decks have 99 cards, but Hope combined 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:with all the lifegain support makes it much easier to realistically accomplish the mill ꦆgoal.

Cards such as Maddening Cacophony, Traumatize, and Cut Your Losses all help to mill half of an opponent's library. These are best used as soon as possible, as the early ღthey're used, the more cards they will wind up milling.

The lifegain side of the deck gives🅠 you plenty of options that are easy to trigger. Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, and Auriok Champion all gain you a life when a creature enters, and stack together, so if all of them are on the battlefield, that's three life from just one creature entering. The Wind Crystal gives all your creatures flying and lifelink, which can lead to massive lifegain and mill.

Generally, you are focusing more on the lifegain, as the mill cards are rarer​​​​. Hope's effect𒉰 turns that lifegain into mill, so even though you're not actively playing cards that mill, you're still making progress on draining your ♐opponents of their libraries. And since you gain a ton of life, you won't have to worry about someone taking you out of the game too quickly.

Win Conditions And Flaws

The primary win condition of the deck is winning through mill. There are a lot of ways to mill your opponents quickly, largely combined with lifegain while Hope is on the battlefield. You can also win with the alternate win conditions of Felidar Sovereign or Test of Endurance, which au🅺tomatically win th🀅e game if you have 40 or 50, respectively.

The biggest flaw of the deck is its reliance on synergy. You need both mill and lifegain cards on the battlefield at the same time; otherwise, your deck is going too slow to win the game. Once you establish a flow of lifegain and Hope on the battlefield, you can start running away with the game. However, up until that point, you're likely on low defenses with only lifegain keeping you in the game.