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Hope Estheim is a main protagonist of Final Fantasy 13, and one of the many named characters inMagic: The Gathering’scrossover set with Final 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 mill a player out of the game. If you like lifegain and mill, Hope is the best commander you can be playing.
Rest for the Weary
Authority of the Consuls
x10 Island
x10 Plains
Reliquary Tower
Skycloud Expanse
The decklistcontains one planeswalker, 23 creatures, six sorceries, 14 instants, five enchantments,and34 lands. Nearly every card in 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. Hopeturns 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 step, you’ll still get the mill trigger.
Hope is a creatureyou never want to attack or block withso 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 life, you won’t ever need to bother.
Will, Scion Of Peace
Will, Scion of Peace is the easiest way tomake 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, soyou want to get Will on the battlefield as quickly as possibleto start taking advantage of its effect in the early stages of the 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 letsHope trigger two times, thanks to giving an extra end step. There are multiple cards that trigger at the end step, and Y’shtola helps to double up on all these effects.
Y’shtolacan blink a creature on both the original end step and the extra one. There are a handful of creatures with useful enter the battlefield triggers, and worst case scenario, the blink will cause your lifegain effects to trigger so Hope can mill even more cards.
Riverchurn Monument
Riverchurn Monument is one of the best permanentswhen it comes to mill. Its exhaust ability lets youcompletely mill any opponent who had to mill half their library with another mill card. This lets you easily take someone out of the game who is proving to be problematic 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 the 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 able 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 aboutgaining 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 combinedwith all the lifegain supportmakes it much easier to realistically accomplish the mill goal.
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 they’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 arerarer. Hope’s effect 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
Theprimary 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. Youcan also win with the alternate win conditions of Felidar Sovereign or Test of Endurance, which automatically win the game if you have 40 or 50, respectively.
Thebiggest 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.
