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Ajani, Sleeper Agent Art by Matt Stewart

Ajani, Sleeper Agent Historic Brawl Deck Guide

Learn how to play Ajani, Sleeper Agent for Historic Brawl in our detailed guide, with the latest up to date decklist.

Planeswalkers with powerful ultimates aren’t new to Magic The Gathering. However, not many walkers survive to see one resolve. Ajani, Sleeper Agent can be frighteningly fast to reach the -6 ability, especially with the help of proliferation effects.

Initial builds involved many cheap creatures, intended to clog up the board and effectively cantrip into more creature spells once the ultimate resolved. It’s an extremely simple idea, however it tended to fold against any planeswalker interaction and struggled against cheap evasive creatures. Additionally, most of the creatures used weren’t particularly aggressive, making the ‘Plan B’ of winning by attacking extremely weak.

Controlling lists had the opposite problem; failing to close out the game after an ultimate. Even though planeswalkers still add poison counters, they are expensive and slow, giving opposing decks up to three or even four extra turns to close out the game.

About this Guide

Historic Brawl League

MTG Arena Zone is expanding deeper into Historic Brawl content, and we will be supporting the community! We will be working with the Brawl Hub community and sponsoring their weekly leagues and tournaments for competitive Historic Brawl.

Each week, we will invite the player who went 3-0 in the league to guest and showcase the Historic Brawl deck that they used here. Enjoy the experience and refining that each player brings to the deck!

For more information, join the community and secure your spot in the league and tournament. We’ll post the relevant links below:

The current list is born from a happy marriage between the two ideas:

Ajani, Sleeper Agent
by MTG Arena Zone
Buy on TCGplayer $313.25
Historic Brawl
best of 1
14 mythic
34 rare
9 uncommon
43 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Commander
1
Ajani, Sleeper Agent
{G/W/P}
$2.29
Sorceries (5)
1
Into the North
$1.49
1
Smell Fear
$0.35
1
Emeria’s Call
$7.99
1
Dusk // Dawn
$0.49
Enchantments (3)
1
Reprobation
$0.35
100 Cards
$384.11

The combination of powerful planeswalkers with cheap creatures that ramp or generate value creates a potent ‘Plan A’, but also maintaining a strong ‘Plan B’ and even ‘Plan C’.

Plan A:

Leaning on turn one or two mana acceleration, an early Ajani on turn three can lead to an ultimate as early as turn four with the help of proliferation. This is the best way to contest combo and control decks if you can get underneath interaction while they are still setting up.

Plan B:

Similar to Plan A, the aim is to drop Ajani early and if the opponent has interaction for him, dropping any of the other planeswalkers with powerful ultimates can be enough to win a game on the spot. Even short of an ultimate, almost all of the walkers provide a ton of card advantage, not to mention their ability to generate additional creatures for free.

Plan C:

This is the best option against aggressive lists and involves swarming the board with creatures as fast as possible, leaning on Ajani’s -3 ability to turn small creatures into capable blockers and even attackers. God-Eternal Oketra is especially strong for this line of play, pairing every cheap creature with a powerful 4/4 body, as well as its ability to repeatedly come back once removed.

Creatures

Elvish Visionary and Spirited Companion are perfectly fine chump blockers, as well as ideal cards to cast once Ajani’s -6 resolves. Many other creatures that draw either were too expensive to play, or were too defensive and inflexible when Plan C was necessary.

Key Cards

The real powerhouses of the deck, capable of providing the fuel to keep the threats coming. Most of these also being able to threaten opposing life totals provides the flexibility that this deck demands.

Ajani, the Greathearted Is probably the card I’m most excited to see in any opening hand – with multiple proliferation effects as well as making your creatures into growing threats, it’s hard to dislike this card.

Managing to Ultimate any of the other three walkers is usually enough to win on the spot. Providing a diversity of threats alongside Ajani, Sleeper Agent can make life very difficult for the opponent.

Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider and Elspeth Conquers Death are extremely powerful top end threats that amplify the power of superfriends. Even though Vorinclex allows Ajani to Ultimate the same turn it enters play, it’s often even better to go for -3, and add 6 power to the board to crunch through opposing creatures.

Kor Skyfisher, Sigardian Evangel, Dusk are the cards of choice when it comes to winning quickly after an Ajani Ultimate. With Sigardian Evangel adding many bodies to the board, Kor Skyfisher able to gain value from other creatures reentering the battlefield, and Dusk to Dawn an effective one-sided board wipe against popular Jodah decks and other midrange strategies on the front half, these proved to be much more flexible than other options such as [Card=Greenbelt Rampager] which didn’t do much outside of being repeatedly castable.

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Myriad58
Myriad58
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