Arabella, Abandoned Doll Commander Deck Guide: Best Cards, How to Play

Those who fear dolls look away, Arabella the Abandoned Doll is one of the legendary creatures featured in Magic: The Gathering's Duskmourn set. This Boros Commander (Red/White) is very aggressive and has a low curve to quickly take the snowball out of play.

There are many advantages to playing with an Arabella deck, and if not kept under control, you can run away with the game. By primarily using tokens to maximize Arabella's effect, you can also build it relatively cheaply. If you like to swing wildly and hold blockers, the Arabella Commander deck is perfect for you.

List of decks

Decklist contains one planeswalker, 20 creatures, ten sorceries, six instants, 17 artifacts, 11 enchantments, and 34 lands. While the total number of creatures is lower, many other card types generate creature tokens that help boost your board state.

Key cards

Arabella, the abandoned doll

deck commander, Arabella, the abandoned doll it's what makes the deck functional. Almost all of your deck consists of creatures with power two or less, or ways to create creature tokens with that stat. It feeds into Arabella's effect allows you to gain a ton of life and deal a ton of burn damage.

The effect is triggered
whenever Arabella attacks
. So if you don't have a way to make sure Arabella can't be blocked, you should
just swing
it's in
opponents without a creature that can kill him
in battle.

Arabella relies on her effect, so at least you will gain one life and burn all others for one damage. It only costs two mana to cast, so even if you remove it, you can easily recast it to continue using the effect.

Intelligence

Intelligence is one of the permanents you'll use the most. There are a few creatures with effects that trigger when they attack with low stats, and scouting helps keep these creatures safe in battle.

Intelligence of Art the effect requires no mana and can be cast any number of times per turn. This allows you to keep burning and gaining life with Arabella, and generating creature tokens with the rest of your creature set without worrying about them losing in combat.

Anim Pakal, Thousand Moons

Anim Pakal, Thousand Moons essentially acting as a second-in-command to the deck. The more you attack, the more 1/1 Gnome creatures you create. This gives you power creatures for Arabella's effect and more to block and attack later.

If both Anim Pakal and Arabella are on the battlefield, you can stack it so that Anim Pakal resolves first, creating additional 1/1 counters for Arabella when its effect expires, since the X burn/health regeneration doesn't resolve until it expires the Arabella effect.

In particular, Anim Pakal does not need to attack itself to trigger the effect. This allows you to keep Anim Pakal from attacking so that he never takes damage and you can continue to take advantage of the growing dwarven army.

Delney, Streetwise Lookout

So most of your creatures have two or less power Delney, Streetwise Lookout this is the perfect support card for them. This makes them unblockable from threatening opposing creatures and doubles all of your triggered abilities.

Once Delny is on the battlefield, he just needs to sit back and support your other cards. The deck has no shortage of cards with triggering abilities like Arabella, Anim Pakal, and Cranko, and Agate the Instigator.

How to play a deck

Arabella, Commander of the Abandoned Doll is everything swinging with Arabella, amassing an army of 1/1 tokens. The deck is very explosive, able to quickly run away with the game, thanks to the low mana curve.

There are many consistent ways to get tokens on the battlefield. Gather the Legion slowly gives you more tokens each turn, Destruction of weapons gives you a 1/1 token for each creature you control that attacks and Krenko, a mob boss creates goblin tokens for each goblin you control when you click on it.

An important factor is that time you want to attack often, you don't necessarily want to engage in combat. I like the cards in this way Dolmen Gate, Iraas, God of Victory and Intelligence help prevent damage to your attacking creatures (and, in the case of Reconnaissance, take it out of combat entirely).

The deck has a many ways to draw cards from creatures with power two or less that enter the battlefieldmaking sure your hand is full so you always have cards to throw. Lasting innocence may even return as a regular enchantment if it ever dies.

Teacher of the gentle requires paying mana to draw a card, but you can continue to use it instead of once. Welcome to the vampire also cats as a solid attacker due to their ability to fly.

The the deck's biggest flaw is its lack of power. All of your creatures have very low stats, so it's hard for them to be threatening. The threat primarily comes from Arabella, the abandoned dollso without him on the battlefield, your opponents likely won't have to worry about you.

You
can be overwhelmed with creature tokens
but it requires a lot of extra setup that might happen too late.

The the primary victory condition is victory through burn, in the first place via Arabella, The Forsaken Doll. Your commander is what will make you close out games quickly, especially since he burns all of your opponents at once, not just one. This is backed up by the additional burn damage boost from cards like The city is on fire and A pit of torture.

Cards that deal burn damage when creatures enter are also important for the win condition. Agate Instigator and Impact Tremors both burn for one damage to incoming creatures, which adds up once you start creating a ton of tokens. These tokens can result in higher burn damage Raid bombing to get a little extra burn damage to close out the game.