Dack Fayden, Helping Hand Commander Deck: Bracket 3, Give Away Giants and Take Them Back

Dack Fayden, Helping Hand costs and does the one thing mono-white is never allowed to do: cheat giant creatures out of the library. The catch is who keeps them. When he enters, you reveal cards from the top of your library until you hit one creature card per opponent (three in a normal pod), put all of them onto the battlefield, and then hand each one to a different opponent, goaded for the rest of the game. This Dack Fayden, Helping Hand commander deck is our bracket 3 build around that trigger: nineteen creatures chosen for what they do on the way in and how little most of them do for whoever ends up holding them, a blink package that makes Dack enter again and again, and the spells that bring the gifts home.

The list is Dack Fayden, Helping Hand Bracket 3 on the house account. The bracket audit puts it at bracket 3 with two Game Changers (the cards the bracket system flags as power outliers) and no two-card combos. It started as the average bracket 3 list and took fifteen swaps, most of them replacing creatures that make terrible presents. Dack is from Reality Fracture Commander: our review of the Reality Fracture precon covers him in the deck he ships in, and the best new commanders in Reality Fracture post ranks the set's other new faces. This post stays on the deck.

Four clauses, and each one changes how the deck is built.

The creatures enter under your control. Dack puts them onto the battlefield, so you are their controller when they arrive, and every enters trigger (an ability that fires when a creature comes into play) belongs to you. Highcliff Felidar destroys the biggest creature at each opponent's seat, Angel of Serenity exiles three creatures, Quarry Colossus tucks one into its owner's library, and Myr Battlesphere makes four Myr tokens that stay with you. All of that resolves after the bodies have changed hands.

They are goaded for the rest of the game. A goaded creature has to attack each combat if it can, and has to attack a player other than the one who goaded it. That player is you. So the Darksteel Colossus you hand to the player on your left spends the rest of the game attacking the other two.

Each one goes to a different opponent, and you choose. The indestructible bodies go to whoever is furthest behind: that player is the least able to turn a free 11/11 into a win and the most likely to point it at the leader. Serra Avatar goes to the opponent with the lowest life total, because its size is its controller's life and you want it small.

Goad sticks to the object, not the card. Blink a gift (exile it and return it to the battlefield) and it comes back as a new object: under its owner's control, which is you, and no longer goaded. It also enters again, so its trigger fires for you a second time. Any blink that can target an opponent's creature is therefore a reclaim spell as well; the ones that say creature you control are not, and the deck has both kinds for different jobs.

Nearly every creature in the deck passes one test: what it does when it enters is for you, and what it does afterward is nothing its new controller can use. That rules out anything with an attack trigger or a static ability that helps whoever controls it, which is why Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Captain Marvel, Shooting Star and Memnarch, the Warden were cut (the swap list below has the details). What is left falls into two groups, plus three exceptions you have to know about.

Enters triggers worth a Dack activation: Highcliff Felidar, Angel of Serenity, Quarry Colossus, Curious Colossus (one opponent's creatures lose all abilities and become 1/1), Angel of the Ruins (exile two artifacts or enchantments), Ob Nixilis, the Ascended (destroy every tapped creature your opponents control), Sunblast Angel (destroy every tapped creature, yours included), Meteor Golem (destroy a nonland permanent), Angel of Sanctions (exile a nonland permanent until the Angel leaves), Evangel of Heliod and Myr Battlesphere. Evangel makes Soldier tokens equal to your devotion to white, the symbols in the mana costs of permanents you control, and its own stops counting the moment it changes hands, so count Dack and your enchantments.

Bodies that hurt whoever they attack and nobody else: Darksteel Colossus, Zetalpa, Primal Dawn, Serra Avatar, Ulamog's Despoiler and Shardless Outlander. Outlander also has basic landcycling (pay and discard it to fetch a basic land). The Colossus never reaches the graveyard and the Avatar shuffles itself back out of it, so a Colossus that gets sacrificed, or discarded from hand, is back in the pile for the next Dack.

The exceptions. Ancient Stone Idol is a 12/12 trampler as a gift, but when it dies its controller gets a 6/12 token that is not goaded, so bring the Idol home before you wipe the board. It earns its slot because it has flash and costs less for each attacking creature, and a table where every gift has to attack every combat is a table with a lot of attacking creatures, so it is the one giant you do want to cast from hand, as a surprise blocker in someone else's combat. Ob Nixilis, the Ascended makes a 4/4 Angel for its controller at the end of any turn that player gained life. While an opponent holds him, aim Swords to Plowshares at other players' creatures, and hold Fall to Earth entirely, since it gives every player 3 life whatever it exiles, unless the creature you are exiling with it is Ob Nixilis himself. And Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd attacks every combat for whoever holds her, blinking something each time. Flickerwisp and Phelia are the two small creatures, and both are meant to be cast from hand as blink engines. If Dack reveals Flickerwisp anyway, its trigger is still yours: exile Dack with it, and at the end step he comes back and deals out three more.

Six mana for three free creatures is a fine rate once. The deck is built to do it every turn, and these are the blinks that say creature you control, the Dack retriggers. Teleportation Circle and Conjurer's Closet blink a creature at the beginning of your end step for free. Quantum Entanglement does it when it enters and at your end step for each time, and it has flash. Ephemerate does it twice for thanks to rebound (you cast it again from exile at your next upkeep without paying). Eerie Interlude blinks any number of your creatures at instant speed, which makes it both the answer to a board wipe and a Dack retrigger. Strionic Resonator copies the trigger itself for : six creatures off one Dack, two per opponent.

Airbender Ascension deserves its own paragraph. It wants four quest counters, one for each creature that enters under your control, before it blinks a creature at your end step. Dack alone supplies all four: himself and the three creatures he reveals, which enter under your control before they leave it. Ascension on turn two and Dack on turn six means he enters twice that turn.

Enlightened Tutor has a trap and a trick. It puts the card on top of your library, and Dack's reveal shuffles away every noncreature card it passes, so never tutor for a noncreature card after your draw step on a turn he will enter, end-step blinks included, and not before an Ephemerate rebound that will blink him in your upkeep. Tutor at the end of the turn before yours, so you draw the card first. The trick is the reverse: cast it in response to Dack's trigger and put an artifact creature on top (Meteor Golem, Myr Battlesphere, Angel of the Ruins or Darksteel Colossus all qualify), and that card is guaranteed to be one of the three.

Command Beacon moves Dack from the command zone to your hand, which skips the commander tax (an extra for every time he has already been cast from the command zone). In a deck that expects him to eat a removal spell or two, that land is worth more than a Plains.

Homeward Path is the blunt version: tap it and every player regains every creature they own, which means all of your gifts at once. They stay goaded, so they have to attack every combat, which is what a Darksteel Colossus is for anyway. The Path also returns anything an opponent has stolen from someone else, so read the table before you tap it.

The blinks that can target any creature are the precise version, because the card returns under its owner's control and fires its enters trigger for you again. Flicker of Fate, Otherworldly Journey, Long Road Home, Parting Gust, Getaway Glamer and the channel mode of Touch the Spirit Realm (discard it for the effect) each cost two mana and bring a 4/8 double striker or an 11/11 back to your side, three of them with a +1/+1 counter attached. Skybind does it whenever another enchantment enters under your control, and the deck runs eleven of those, Urza's Saga included. The +1 on The Eternal Wanderer does it every turn. And because every gift has to attack every combat, Mystifying Maze can pull any one of them out of any opponent's attack for ; it comes back tapped under your control at the end step.

Airbending is a reclaim too, and a cheap recast. Airbending Lesson exiles any nonland permanent and lets its owner cast it for , and you still own the gift. So for you draw a card, take the Colossus off an opponent's board, and then cast an eleven-drop for two mana with its trigger, if it has one, firing for you again. Airbender Ascension does the same to one creature when it enters, and the back face of The Legend of Yangchen, Avatar Yangchen, does it whenever you cast your second spell in a turn.

Morningtide's Light is the reset button. Exile any number of creatures, which can be every gift you own plus Dack himself; they all return tapped under their owners' control at the end step, and no damage can be dealt to you until your next turn. Everything comes home un-goaded, Dack enters again and hands out three new ones, and the table cannot hit you in between.

Angel of Serenity has a quieter line. Her targets are chosen after the handoff, so she can exile the other two gifts you just gave away along with one enemy creature. Blink her home with Flicker of Fate or Otherworldly Journey: when she leaves, the exiled cards return to their owners' hands, so the two gifts come back to yours, and when she re-enters on your side she exiles three more.

Bracket 3 per the audit. The two Game Changers are Smothering Tithe and Enlightened Tutor. The audit lists no two-card combos, and its path down to bracket 2 is simply cutting both. Thirty-five lands is deliberate for a six-mana commander in a deck most of whose creatures cost seven or more and are meant to arrive through Dack. If you change the list, the bracket calculator will tell you where it landed.

Highcliff Felidar's trigger resolves after the handoff, and it has to pick the creature with the greatest power at each opponent's seat. At the seat that just received Darksteel Colossus, that creature is the Colossus, which is indestructible, so nothing dies there. At Felidar's own new seat, the biggest creature is often Felidar, which is not. Felidar only kills where an opponent already controls something bigger than the gift you hand them, so give your smallest gift to the opponent with the biggest threat and let the trigger do its work there.

Curious Colossus has no duration. The opponent you target keeps 1/1 creatures with no abilities until those creatures leave the battlefield, and if that opponent is holding one of your gifts, the gift shrinks too, Curious Colossus included if you point it at its new controller. Aim it at the opponent whose gift you intend to blink home anyway. The blink resets it.

Sunblast Angel is an instant-speed board wipe here. Keep her on your side (cast from hand or reclaimed) and hold Ephemerate. When an opponent declares attackers, blink her, and every tapped creature on the table dies while yours, untapped, survive.

Do not cast the giants from hand, the Idol aside. A seven-drop in hand is a card Dack can no longer find, and hardcasting it is the slow version of the plan. Collector's Vault and Daily Bugle Newspaper are there to loot them away (draw, then discard), and Emeria, the Sky Ruin, once you control seven Plains, and Restoration Seminar put them back onto the battlefield under your control, un-goaded, with no Dack required. Discarding Darksteel Colossus shuffles it back into the library, which is exactly where you want it.

Keep a hand with lands plus a mana rock (a mana-producing artifact) or the Map. Six mana on turn five or six with one blink piece already out is the hand that wins: Teleportation Circle in play before Dack means his first blink is free the turn he lands, and Quantum Entanglement does the same for more.

The decklist above has a Copy to my account button that drops it into your own deck builder. It is a deck that plays very differently against three opponents than against one, so if your pod runs a league, record the games with it: the deck's rating moves on every result, and a few weeks of results will tell you whether the pod has learned to kill Dack on sight.