I use the following ten parameters to determine the strength of the deck. For each, I allocate a score of 5 (very good), 4 (good), 3 (mediocre), 2 (bad) or 1 (very bad); when totalized this score represents the power rating of the deck (maximum score is 50 points).
- Mana: indicates the availability of mana sources within the deck.
- Ramp: indicates the speed at which mana sources within the deck can be made available.
- Card Advantage: indicates availability of filter- and draw resources represented within the deck.
- Overall speed: indicates the deck’s potential for pace, based on resource availability and mana curve.
- Combo: indicates the measure of combo-orientation of the deck.
- Army: indicates the deck’s creature-army strength.
- Commander: indicates how much the deck is commander-oriented/dependent (less dependency is better).
- Interaction: indicates how much this deck can mess with opponents’ board states and turn-phases.
- Resilience: indicates whether the deck can prevent and take punches.
- Spellpower: indicates the availability and strength of high-impact spells.
Mana: 3
Though the average CMC of this deck is pretty low, I thought it would be still be good to add a decent amount of mana resources in here. Reason for this, is if this deck can make a lot of moves early on in the game, it will be very hard for opposing decks to maintain pace. Hence I decided to include six cheap-to-cast rocks, a cheapener and an enchantment that taxes others treasure-tokens for drawing.
Ramp: 1
Chose not to include actual ramp, as white’s ramping options are usually one-shot deals without any other uses and I didn’t want to waste slots on this. What I did include are two land-fetching mechanisms, which is not ramping perse but I include land-availability-enhancers in this category too.
Card Advantage: 5
Light-Paws herself is a tutoring enabler. There’s some back-up tutoring options available as well. Since I’ll be casting lots of enchantments, I figured draw triggered by enchantment-ETB would probably work wonders; so I’ve included three of those. To that I added more regular draw engines as well as a couple of one-shot draw deals that help out in a pinch. Last but not least, two heavy-duty recursion spells ensure that I can come back strong should someone manage to knock me down.
Overall speed: 5
This deck gains traction fast; mostly due to its very low average CMC, but also due to enough mana, ramp and draw resources available to kick off quickly. It’s perfectly feasible to have an enchanted fox available doing some considerable harm as early as turn 3. Due to the kind of auras Light-Paws can tutor for, it’s also easy to have her penetrate defenses and put my opponents on the defensive; thereby also gaining an advantage in terms of completing my objectives.
Combo: 1
This deck is one of the few EDH decks I’ve built without any (infinite) combos.
Combat: 4
Foxy-Voltron is able to adapt in great detail to her environment while also gaining strength in the process. This allows her to smash some serious face during combat and in some ways become almost unstoppable. Token generators (based on enchantments (-ETB’ing)) provide her with some backup.
Commander: 1
Not gonna lie; without Light-Paws this deck’s strategy is doomed. This is why it is filled to the brim with methods to keep her from harm as much as possible. Aside from aura’s she can tutor to keep herself safe, support-creatures and equipment have been added to help in this regard as well. Fortunately, Light-Paws’ casting cost is not high, so recasting her (especially the first few times) will not prove difficult.
Interaction: 3
The deck’s toolbox contains four options to disable opposing creatures/permanents, as well as four options to outright remove them. There’s also a few ways included to benefit from actions made by opponents, such as them tutoring or drawing cards
Resilience: 5
Though most of the deck is focused on its commander, its staying-power should not be underestimated. A lot of measures have been included to protect Foxy from harm, including but not limited to seven mechanisms to significantly increase her power/toughness, four cards that make her (temporarily) indestructible, five cards that grant her protection from colors and/or creatures and a few options that allow me to flash or phase her when she’s in trouble. Against opponents that go wide against me, I’ll be taxing attackers and life-loss can be compensated for through the use of four lifelink options. Also, let’s not forget the three solid options to recur permanents/enchantments to the field.
Spellpower: 4
The deck features some very powerful protection- and recursion spells/auras; some of which allow me to survive full blown wipes unscathed. Some of the auras meant for Light-Paws give her such an edge that under most circumstances they are enough to disable opponents (or their armies) completely.
Total power score: 32
I love white. I love Voltron-themed decks. This beauty came into being very recently but I managed to test it out a few times and it performed very well. Overall, it’s very fast and Light-Paws has a lot of staying-power, which helps me out in needing few resources to re-cast her all the time.