commander · Zedruu the Greathearted
Political Puppets (CMD).
A Jeskai politics deck from the original Commander set, led by Zedruu the Greathearted, give your opponents your worst permanents and get paid in cards and life for every one they take.
The Commander
Political Puppets is one of the five original 2011 Commander precons, and the only one built around giving your things away. At the start of your upkeep, Zedruu draws you a card and gains you a life for each permanent you own that somebody else controls.
Zedruu the Greathearted makes your worst cards useful. Hand an opponent a Howling Mine and you have bought yourself a card and a life every turn, while they got a card they were going to draw anyway. The deck ships three legends in the ninety-nine (Ruhan of the Fomori, Numot, the Devastator and Zedruu herself), so the Jeskai mana base earns its keep whichever one you sit down with.
Zedruu is slow and fragile, though, and the deck has no way to win quickly. It plays a long game behind Propaganda and Ghostly Prison, drawing two or three extra cards a turn while the rest of the table fights.
Key Cards
Crescendo of War
A rage counter goes on it every upkeep, and attacking creatures get +1/+0 for each one, for every player. That really is a gift to the table, which is the point: it makes attacking somebody else more appealing than attacking you, and behind Propaganda and Ghostly Prison you are the expensive target anyway. The counters never come off, so the longer the game runs the harder your opponents hit each other.
Reins of Power
Untap both boards and swap armies with one opponent until end of turn. They get your walls, you get their creatures, and you decide where the attack goes. Everything goes home at cleanup, so the value is in the swing rather than the theft: cast it on their turn, use their board to break a stalemate, and hand back whatever survives.
Insurrection
Take every creature on the battlefield, untap them and give them haste. Eight mana is a lot, but this deck stalls long enough to get there. Against a developed table it usually ends the game on the spot, and the precon needs it, because nothing else in the ninety-nine closes.
How It Plays
Ramp into Zedruu, protect her, then start handing things out. The three Vows (Duty, Flight and Lightning) are the cleanest gifts in the deck: each one pumps a creature you gave away and stops it attacking you. Vedalken Plotter and Dominus of Fealty move permanents the other way when somebody else has something worth taking.
Speed is the problem. There is no fast mana past Sol Ring, a lot of four and five drops, and a top end at eight. Against a table that goes off on turn six you will still be setting up. If you want to upgrade it, cut the Gomazoas and the weaker walls for cheap interaction, and add something that turns all those Zedruu cards into a win.
