This post is dedicated to my friend, Cigi, who wants to become a cat girl uwu princess in that exact order. I won’t judge him since I am an invisible pink pony after all.
For those who are not in the know, Y’shtola is a Miqo’te, a species of humanoid beings that reside in the fantasy world of Final Fantasy XIV. She is a spectacular mage who joins the ranks of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, an order in which the player of the game becomes a part of to battle against the many foes and injustices of the fantasy world around them. I also stopped playing the game after college and the burst of information from the Wiki is making my head swirl.
Source: Ysh’tola
Anyways, Y’shtola is a girl boss and knows what she wants. In the game of Magic, she is represented as an Esper Cat Warlock which seems to take place somewhat later in her storyline (plot spoilers end here). Cat mommy loves to sling spells and drains your opponent while she does so. And if any player (including yourself) takes enough pain, you’ll be rewarded with a sweet draw at the end of that turn.
So how do we build around cat girl boss mommy warlock queen? Y’shtola does not like creatures. We do not play creatures. That isn’t to say we won’t have creatures on our battlefield besides Y’shtola, but we will not be featuring any creature cards in our deck outside of Y’shtola.
Y’shtola is not only a cat girl boss mommy warlock queen; she is a cat girl boss mommy warlock queen artificer and full G-licensed driver in our deck. We do not have creatures, but that doesn’t mean we cannot have creatures. As long as the card we cast isn’t a “creature” spell, Y’shtola will be proud and happy. When cat girl boss mommy warlock queen artificer vehicle driver is happy, we are happy.
I want us all to think of Y’shtola as a sort of weird composite and mixed Voltron commander with access to artifacts and spell-slinging. We don’t want to limit our threats to only one threat type. Diversity makes it difficult to predict and harder to react to. The most important line of text to note with Y’shtola is that she herself is essentially the wincon of the deck. As long as we are casting spells, players will continuously get drained and lose life. Simply to put it: as long as we do things, players will lose.
So there is one additional rule to our deck. Every spell has to be at least three or more mana in its converted mana cost. Y’shtola cares heavily about the amount of mana that is indicated in the top right corner of our cards (not that we have to actually spend that mana). And that’s the key thing here: we don’t actually have to pay the costs of our cards. We just have to cast them. Cost reducers, free alternative cast costs, Y’shtola doesn’t care as long as the CMC [converted mana cost] is three or greater.
Here’s the bitter reality. Our neighbours and the guy across the table rubbing his anime sleeves are all jealous of our powerful cat girl. The moment she exits that Commander Zone, all manners of spells will be flung her way looking to lock her back in commander prison. To get around that, we have cards like the above that makes sure that Y’shtola sticks around. Y’shtola, afterall, is our main primary win condition.
That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be making additional threats on board. Other cards can draw the ire out of our opponents, making it less likely for our opponents to focus her down.
I said earlier that we can’t play creatures but that doesn’t mean we won’t have creatures. Y’shtola still needs to be the commander of her own army to protect her and knock down her opponents. We’ll be “generating” creatures of our own through an assortment of means.
We may be in Esper, but that doesn’t mean we can’t ramp. We can’t really be using too many of the common low cost mana rocks, but we still need to get that mana flowing. I especially love White Auracite in particular. It does the double duty of being a mana rock which also removes a threat temporarily from the board as well. It embodies the spirit of the deck: an insult to injury.
Removal and counteraction should be swift and nimble as Y’shtola herself while also generating absurd amounts of value or minions to do her bidding, just like her fans.
In conclusion, Y’shtola is quite simple and easily gets the job done. Just cast spells and keep her alive on the battlefield. Y’shtola doesn’t care how you win. Steal your opponent’s creatures. Blow up their artifacts. Sweep their enchantments. Y’shtola just cares that you had fun along the way, making sure to cause mass chaos as you slowly leech away at your opponent’s health, all the while proving to everyone that you have the truly superior cat girl waifu commander.