Magic Monday: Cavalry Charge Deck Review

The Cavalry Charge preconstructed deck, released as part of the March of the Machine Commander series, is a thematic and synergistic take on the Knight tribal archetype. With its focus on aggressive gameplay, graveyard recursion, and card advantage, this deck offers a really fun playstyle in the Esper (whute, blue, and black) colour combo.

The deck is led by Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir, a 4/3 Human Knight with flying and first strike. His abilities are the heart of the deck:

• Eminence: Whenever you attack with one or more Knights, you loot (draw a card, then discard a card), even if Sidar is in the command zone. This ensures consistent card filtering and graveyard setup.
• Combat Damage Trigger: When Sidar deals combat damage to a player, you can return a Knight from your graveyard to the battlefield. This provides powerful recursion and keeps your board state resilient.

The backup commander, Elenda and Azor, offers some card draw and token generation, making it a versatile alternative. I don’t like as much as the face commander, though. Assume for the rest of this review that I’m using Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir as the commander. He’s bloody great.

With Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir as the commander, this deck has some really solid strengths going for it. Here are the key 3 ones, as I see it:

1. Synergy and Theme: The deck is packed with Knights that work well together, creating a cohesive tribal experience. This is one of the most focused tribal decks that WotC has put out, and I’m here for that.
2. Eminence Advantage: Sidar’s Eminence ability ensures value from the very first attack, smoothing out your draws and setting up your graveyard for recursion.
3. Resilience: With multiple ways to bring back Knights from the graveyard, the deck can recover quickly from board wipes or removal-heavy opponents. In addition to our commander, cards like Haakon, Stromgald Scourge and Knights’ Charge enhance the recursion and aggression, respectively.

Whilst the strengths are definitely there, this is still a precon, and is therefore not really optimised. There are therefore a few weaknesses or drawbacks in this deck. Namely, there are:

1. Planechase Cards: The inclusion of Planechase cards do add an extra layer of unpredictability and excitement to this, and other decks from this cycle, making games feel fresh and dynamic. However, they don’t seem to be widely used. Generally, these will need to be swapped out.
2. Mana Base: Like many preconstructed decks, the mana base could use improvement. Adding more dual lands or fetch lands would enhance consistency.
3. Limited Interaction: While the deck has some removal and counterplay options, it can struggle against combo-heavy or control decks that outpace its aggression. Personally, I swapped out the Planechase-based cards for removal and counters.
4. Reliance on Combat: The deck’s only real win condition revolves around combat damage or commander damage, which can be challenging against decks with strong defenses or pillow-fort strategies.

All of these weaknesses can be easily built around with a few upgrades. Well, the reliance on combat would take a lot to overcome, but you could certainly makes it easier to achieve such a victory. Ultimately, this deck is a great base upon which to build a fantastic knightly tribal deck. To take Cavalry Charge to the next level, consider these upgrades as a starting point:

• Mana Base: Add lands like Godless Shrine, Hallowed Fountain, and Watery Grave for better fixing.
• Card Draw: Include cards like Esper Sentinel and Phyrexian Arena to supplement Sidar’s looting ability.
• Additional Knights: Upgrade the creature base with powerful Knights like Kinsbaile Cavalier and cards that enhance your knights, like Invasion of New Phyrexia and its reverse side, Teferi Akosa of Zhalfir.
• Interaction: Add versatile spells like Crippling Fear and Cyclonic Rift to handle problematic threats.

Cavalry Charge is a blast to play, especially for fans of tribal decks. The synergy between Knights and the recursion provided by Sidar creates a satisfying gameplay loop. The deck rewards aggressive playstyles while offering enough resilience to stay in the game even after setbacks.

For casual Commander games, this deck is a solid choice that balances fun and competitiveness. It’s actually my wife’s favourite deck, and one I often hand to new players to try out for their first games of Commander. With a few upgrades, it can hold its own against higher-powered decks while maintaining its thematic charm. As an example of one interesting direction in which the deck can be taken, I really like the Nazgul-focused changes made to it over at Scent of a Gamer. That’s not a direction I’d have thought to take, but it’s really, really cool.