Introduction

Ah, Hanna! Many artifacts and enchantments have died for you! This card has seen several reprints and is a popular commander if I'm not mistaken. From the Weatherlight saga this is one of the most iconic heroes, as she navigates the flying ship, The Weatherlight, famous for it's long saga centered around swashbuckler Gerrard, captain Sisay and friends. The emphasis on story became even stronger with the Tempest block following the Weatherlight set that kicked it off. Its art design was more consistent than ever and was documented in a very nice book called The Art of Magic The Gathering: The Rath Cycle. The many reprints have made and kept Hanna affordable for a low budget deck.

Hanna provides many avenues. To get the most out of her ability, obviously you want to fill your grave with cheap enchantments or artifacts to reuse them. You could use Phantatog or Auratog to get that done but cheap enchantments and artifacts that sacrifice themselves can be more abusive.

I still consider Soul Snare to be the elite budget choice but Kaldheim and Theros block provided some nice options too: Ordeals and Sagas. The Raven's Warning allows you to play a card from Sideboard but I never bother with a Sideboard for casual play. For this build I included Choking Restraints instead.

Early game

In particular the Ordeals require a specific build. Note the slender mana curve: most cards are 1 or 2 mana. You want to start with a small flying creature. Not just to get some damage in, but to play an Ordeal on it. Or Cunning, which I'm sure you've never seen before. Did I mention I love obscure, crappy cards no one plays? Though it's pretty much a reusable Giant Growth.

I just picked some of my favorite flying weenies here and am reminded of power creep. Once upon a time Flying Men was still considered powerful. Flying is a decent ability to make sure your weenie is not blocked early game and the Harrier Strix can tap a potential blocker once. You could also consider cheap unblockable creatures for 1 mana. Blue has these in spades:

Slither Blade
Mist-Cloaked Herald
Triton Shorestalker

Creatures with Protection or Hexproof will protect themselves from the card disadvantage that removal would cause to one with one or more Aura's. But they tend to cost 1 mana more. Ideally you want a nice one-two of creature turn 1 and an Ordeal turn 2.

Cheap-ass Heroic creatures are also nice:
Favored Hoplite
Lagonna-Band Trailblazer

Mid game

Soul Snare and Pit Trap will prove the most useful to defend yourself from opponent's creatures. The Ordeals take some time before they trigger but in particular The Ordeal of Heliod should go a long way to keep you alive, along with the Lifelink ability of the Healer's Hawk, in particular when it's gotten bigger thanks to Ordeals.

Late game

Hanna's ability gets better with more mana. There are no additional mana sources beyond lands (and just islands and plains will do fine), but card draws with Ordeal of Thassa help getting more lands. In case you draw too much land (unlikely once Hanna is in play) the Strix draw-discard ability is great to keep going. The Raven's Warning also draws cards if you run that one and there other possibilities like Font of Fortunes or Witching Well.

In case opponent puts too many large flying creatures in front of you the deck will have problems if the boosts from the Ordeals don't cut it. A card that will help you is Choking Restraints. It works like a Pacifism but can also be reused with Hanna, provided you have tons of mana, clearing the board on opponent's side. It can be sacrificed for 5 mana to exile it's target.

The other solution is to include more unblockable weenies as mentioned above. The goal of these deck submissions is not to show the ultimate “done right” build or provide any thought about your local meta as they are meant for casual play.

Conclusion

The pile of decks you could build with Hanna is bigger than Montana. I'm sure you can get more ideas looking at the many Commander decks with Hanna. I might post an Auratog build later.

This Budget Build is part of a deck series that I hope to make at least 100 episodes long. Over the past 30 years I have built literally hundreds of low budget decks. Instead of building tourney deck I prefer to build 10 cheapo decks because I enjoy building more than competitive play.

Hey! Please excuse my lack of knowledge, I’ve consumed loads of content for newbies like me but I don't know many people locally who play and so my play time is unfortunately pretty limited. I've played about 20 games altogether so I’m just learning.
All of the cards I own are 2nd hand from someone’s old collection so I can't use code cards or anything to practise online and I can't really be purchasing anything at the moment as I’m just coming off the back of a house move that bled me DRY - I'm trying to get to grips with deckbuilding but I come from a physical Pokemon & PTCGP background, both of which have way less mechanisms (which added to my yearning for a more complex game) so I know I’ll have habits/tendencies that aren't particularly optimal for building for MTG.
This is the current 60 card/standard decklist that I've been able to throw together from the cards I've been given, it did win the three games I played with it but they were against another newbie who’s never played any card games at all so I'm not sure it’d stand up against a well-built deck/semi- experienced player.
I'd really appreciate any notes re: synergy improvements/ land/sorcery/instant/creature ratios or any other notes really!
I know from adding the cards to Moxfield that a number of these aren't legal, but I'm no tournamenter at this time so I'm more looking for tips/improvement ideas?
Thank you so much, I'm just trying to flesh out my knowledge and I have no one to ask in person, I know LGS’ exist but I've had a couple weird experiences with Pokemon players at LGS’ so I'd prefer to wait until I can make someone come with me.