Before the Fall: Glissa Sunseeker

“Nice permanent you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it.”
Glissa, probably

Hello all!! Welcome back to I Need Mana, your weekly source for weird and unique EDH Commanders from Magic’s history. Continuing our exploration of monocolored commanders (and coming in hot off the coat tails of Commander Collection: Green‘s reveal, heh heh heh), we’re turning the clocks back to explore a legend from a set that’s near and dear to my cold-dead-artifact heart: Glissa Sunseeker!

This version of Glissa, before she got infected with Phyrexian oil, and turned into a zombie-elf, and made to do the Praetor‘s bidding as a slave!… but I’m getting in my feelings. THIS version of Glissa, coming to us straight out of OG Mirrodin, is out to get your artifacts. She’s not happy with them for trying to steal her planeswalker spark, and can’t wait to tap herself to pop off any artifact our opponents control… so long as we have the right amount of mana in our pool. This ability alone, while it may seem like a pain, is actually quite achievable given we build a list that achieves 3 goals:

We need to make sure our opponents have artifacts
We need to have control over the amount of mana in our pool
We need to tax our opponents mana to keep them off our backs

Now, our opponents are definitely going to have some artifacts, a signet here, a sol ring there, that cute little zero costed Mana Crypt you’ve got over there, but that’s not near enough for Glissa. In order to really police the board and stick it to our opponents we’re going to need to find ways to turn all our opponent’s permanents into artifacts. Which brings us to our first section, and the section, that I think makes Glissa stand miles apart from most mono green commanders: control.

Deck Breakdown (direct link to list HERE)

Control & Stax: 9

These are the cards that make our deck tick. Without these elements we could easily fall behind all those commanders with built in card advantage. We have 4 powerful tools here to turn permanents that aren’t already artifacts into artifacts: Liquimetal Coating, Mycosynth Lattice, Thran Forge, and Myr Landshaper. Mycosynth is clearly strongest, as it hits everything, and we all know when paired with Karn things are no fun your opponents (buh-bye lands), but I’d say Liquimetal Coating is the most important tool in Glissa’s kit. Liquimetal Coating hits anything and it’s cheap. In the early game when we’re taxing spells with cards like Trinisphere, and Winter Orb, it’s hugely important to have something reliable like Liquimetal Coating that costs nothing to activate. Speaking of cards that cost nothing to activate, Myr Landshaper gives us a free removal spell on any land we want, as lands techinically have a casting cost of 0. Oh yeah, Glissa like. Thran Forge is by far our weakness artifact-er machine because it costs 2 colorless mana, and only hits creatures, however, it does tick a box we’ll talk about later in that it is a useful mana sink for Glissa’s ability. The other, more stax oriented cards, are really strong for us. We’ve mentioned the tax artifacts, making things as difficult for our opponents as possible, but we also get cards like Defense Grid. Defense Grid may seem like a hindrance, but it tends to impact us less as we’re usually activating abilities more than we’re casting instants. We’ve also got a Manglehorn (which maybe should just be Root Maze??) to ensure artifacts that our opponents cast won’t even be used before we pop them off with Glissa.

Protection/Recursion: 8

Next up, keeping our permanents around! Green has lots of ways to protect itself. From cards like Veil of Summer, to Heroic intervention, there’s no shortage when it comes to keeping things around through targeted removal and destroy effects. We also pack some targeted recursion in Eternal Witness and Buried Ruin, either getting back crucial control/stax pieces, or specific pieces of interaction. Seasons Past is also here if things get really bad and we’ve been hit with several board wipes, and because it gets shuffled back into the deck. I generally like Seasons Pasts as card more than cards like Creeping Renaissance, which limit us to specific permanent type. We’re going with Gaea’s Herald over Destiny Spinner and Allosaurus Shepherd due to our high elf count. Destiny Spinner is a fine card if you don’t have a Gaea’s Herald, but I tend to stick with cards that synergize with my deck’s theme more. That being said, Allosaurus Shepherd is definitely the best option for this deck, hands down, but seeing as how it’s currently 1 million dollars, and in small supply, I’ve decided to keep it out of the list.

Removal: 8

Our removal package is pretty straightforward, and really solid. Our commander is basically a removal machine gun on a stick, so we’ve got targeted removal taken care of. Freyalise, Nullmage Shepherd, Bane of Progress, and Reclamation Sage keep us covered where enchantments are concerned. Nullmage being a fantastic repeatable removal effect, that can function as a second Glissa if need be. Beast Within may be our only clean answer to things like Planeswalkers and lands, but with our artifact-er cards we should be able to take care of almost any permanent that’s really bothering us. NOTE ON BANE OF PROGRESS: I have a love hate relationship with this card. Yes casting a Bane of Progress once you’ve turned all your opponents stuff into artifacts is going to feel awesome and terrible all at once, and yes, you may never have friends again, but yes, you absolutely should do it at least once in your life. Word of advice though, if you’re firing this off with a Mysocynth Lattice in play for the love of Glob please have Heroic Intervention in hand for your permanents!

Ramp: 21 (!!!!)

Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard here. Maybe?? But the reality is, we’re playing elves: elves make a ton of mana just by being elves. Seriously, this section practically makes itself, and because we’re running a ton of mana dorks that means we have even more ways to dump mana into our pool for Glissa’s ability. We won’t go over every mana dork on this list, because we’d be here all day, but some highlights are Archdruid, Channeler, and Priest of Titania. These dorks generate massive amounts of mana for us to play with, so as long as we have reliable mana sinks in play we should be able to use it effectively with Glissa. Another key piece of powerful early game plays is Carpet of Flowers. Wooo-weee am I glad this card got reprinted! Carpet allows us to get around our own Winter Orb and Trinisphere effects by generating us early mana advantage that keeps on building as the game goes on. Other cards here like Karametra’s Acolyte, and Nykthos are some of our non-elf ramp, but luckily they don’t care about elves, just that we have green cards in play. Combine these sources with our land count and we end up having around 50+, so I think the deck is right where it needs to be!

Honorable Mentions: 3

These cards while not necessarily “ramp” do work as ramp, and eventually (like Growing Rites of Itlimoc), provide us with access to mana. I don’t need to tell everyone about Seedborn Muse for us to know that with her and Glissa you are pretty much guaranteed to shoot down a lot of your opponents board. Both Seedborn and Wilderness unlock our mana from underneath our stax effects, all while keeping our opponents under check. This is also as good a time as any to address the green elephant in the room: I generally tend to leave cards that are around $100 or more off my lists. There isn’t any reason other than me wanting my lists to be accessible. However, if you do happen to have a Gaea’s Cradle, then I would just run that land and free up a space for something else over Growing Rites.

Card Advantage/Card Selection: 12

There’s a lot to like here. Another thing green is not lacking is access to some of the best card draw spells out there (we’re coming for you, blue mages): Shamanic Revelation to draw 6, please; tutor Regal Force into play, draw 100, please; Sylvan Library to sculpt my hand, please. We have so many consistent ways to fill our hand once we’re done dumping our creatures that. Beast Whisperer isn’t in every “elf-ball” list out there, but I tend to think in a deck that wants to cast creatures more than spells, he quick effective. We also get a bit of hidden gem in the enchantment Viridian Revel. This card is so good in our deck, allowing us to draw whenever an artifact our opponents control hits the graveyard. DISCLAIMER: This card does not work on things we turn into artifacts if they weren’t artifacts already because they stop being artifacts when they change zones. A very important interaction. Any who! If you’ve got this in play you’re hopefully drawing a lot of cards! Nylea, Keen-Eyed and Herald’s Horn act as both card selection and cost reduction tools for our elves/creatures, freeing up that mana we desperately need. I haven’t been 100% sold on Nylea, but it does give us an indestructible mana sink, which we’ve mentioned before is huge for this deck.

Tutor: 8

The tutors, while seemingly abundant, are tough for our deck. Outside of running something like Tamiyo’s Journal, we don’t have a reliable way to grab our artifacts. My issue with Tamiyo’s Journal is it’s far too slow and costly, even with all the mana we’re creating. If you could find a way to guarantee you had the necessary clues to activate it right away, maybe with a Ulvenwald Mysteries or a Tireless Tracker, then I might consider it for the list. But as it stands, I’m not sold. I’ve added the usual suspects where green tutors are concerned, as well as our only reliable artifact tutor in Inventor’s Fair. This card is the only artifact tutor in the deck, and while triggering it isn’t the easiest thing in the world (being that we need to have at least 3 artifacts in play), it does guarantee grab us something like Liquimetal Coating or a Mycosynth Lattice. Sylvan Scrying is kind of our second artifact tutor, because it is here to grab our Inventor’s Fair (along with cards like Nykthos, and Wirewood Lodge). We also get some really solid creature tutors in Elvish Harbinger and Fierce Empath. This deck does not want for ways to get your creatures, that’s for sure!

Mana Sinks/Utility Cards: 11

This is probably the second most important section of the deck. Let’s say we’ve gotten a ton of mana, and we’ve turned our opponents stuff into artifacts, now what? Well now we need to control the mana in our pool. This can get tricky as our dorks tend to generated 5, 6, 10+ mana in a turn. So we need reliable sources to dumb that excess mana. May I introduce you to my friends: Ezuri, Walking Ballista, and Sensei’s Divining Top, who are our top contenders for best mana sinks in the deck. They all cost at least 1 mana to activate (Ezuri the outlier in that he does cost 1 green and not 1 generic), and can be activated multiple times. The second tier of mana sinks involve Umbral Mantle, which for 3 colorless we can untap whatever creature has it equipped (very good if we want multiple activations of Glissa, or a specific mana dork), Imperious Perfect, and Nylea, Keen-Eyed. Imperious only gives us one activation, but at 1 green mana I thought it worth mentioning. Nylea, Keen-Eyed costs 2G, but has no limit on how often we can use her ability to look at the top of our deck, sort of like a more costly sensei’s top. The other cards listed here are utility cards that really make our deck go full speed ahead. Concordant Crossroads and Thousand-Year Elixir giving our elves the ability to tap for mana the turn they come in is B. I.G. game. These cards also let Glissa activate her ability the turn we drop her into play! Huge! Illusionist’s Bracers can grant us multiple instances of Glissa’s ability, and Wirewood Lodge and Thousand-Year Elixir both function similarly, granting us multiple sources of untap in the deck.

Winning the game: 4 (ish)

Mycosynth Lattice + Bane of Progress + Heroic Intervention
Umbral Mantle + any dork that generates 3+ mana (Llanowar Tribe, Marwyn, Wirewood Channeler, etc.) = Huge threat
Walking Ballista + Untap mana source = infinite damage to players
Finale of Devastation + Ezuri = build your own Craterhoof Behemoth

While this deck lacks things like Craterhoof (personal preference here btw, definitely run him if you like and have the big hoofy beast), or true unlimited mana with Wirewood Symbiote lines, we do want to end our opponents misery at some point. My favorite, and probably the hardest to achieve, involves slamming that Mycosynth lattice, putting a Bane of Progress into play, and then with it’s trigger on the stack play heroic intervention. If you have Defense Grid in play, I’ll pretty much guarantee that you win the game. Also, did I say this was a nice deck? No, it’s definitely not. Glissa is here to pick your opponents apart. Other ways of victory involve using a Umbral Mantle and any mana dork that produces 3+ mana, infinitely making that dork massive or generating enough to pump into an Ezuri or Walking Ballista. And finally, Finale of Devastation + Ezuri allows us to tutor up our big old school finisher, and “pretty much” hoof people, given that you’ve got extra mana available after the finale.

I’ve thought about throwing Helix Pinnacle into the list, as it would function as another easy mana sink for our deck, but I ended up cutting it because it didn’t do much otherwise. Plus, we have no reliable way of getting it, similarly to our artifacts. I do think it looks sweet, and highly encourage you give it a try in your list should you build her!

Lands: 31

You’ll notice a much smaller land count than my previous article, which is basically due to all the mana we can make with our elves, and because we want to tax lands with things like Winter Orb. Some good utility lands here that we haven’t mentioned include Castle Garenbrig, just a solid excess mana producer (kind of like an honorary elf), and Dryad Arbor, which acts as an extra free land we can tutor up with Green Sun’s Zenith early in the game. And, because we haven’t really sung it’s song yet, Wirewood Lodge is just insane in this deck. Being able to untap Glissa or a dork for one green is absurd. Yes, we have other untappers, but because this is like a zero mana spell that costs 1 to activate, it’s the best we’re going to get.

End Step!

So that’s the deck! Click the image above to be taken to it’s page on Moxfield for pricing and ratios, and all sorts of other kinds of science! The list as is currently runs a little under $500, a lot of that is tutors and Sylvan Library. Hopefully, with Commander Collection: Green coming out, the price of some of those cards drop, or you can at least get them easier. But just in case, I’ve included some extra cards in the considering pool you could swap out if you don’t have the coin.

Glissa is a character that’s been near and dear to my heart since I first started playing Magic. Her golgari version was one of my first lists I was ever really proud of. She reminds me of some of my earliest days as a commander player. It’s been a real treat brewing with her original version. This deck may seem difficult to pilot, but once you get your sea legs with it I think you’ll have a blast!

Be on the lookout for next week’s article where we continue our exploration of monocolored commanders with a much more aggressive strategy in Mono Red! As always, you can follow me on Twitter @HampTheHuman for all my brewing updates, and weird musings! Thanks for reading!! Cheers!!

The Lion Waits: Mageta the Lion

“So. Who’s got a board wipe?”
Players you’re about to become best friends with

Hello all!! Welcome to I Need Mana, a Magic the Gathering blog about weird, old, and unique EDH Commanders from the bookends of Magic’s history. Are they bad? Maybe! Will these articles shoot them up to #1 on EDHREC? No! Even so, we’re going to do our best to try and breathe some life into them.

Our first couple of entries will be focused on monocolored commanders, one piece of the color pie at a time. And what better way to start then with arguably the hardest color to brew: Mono White! Is there a commander that can be fun that isn’t only based on winning via life gain (I’m looking at you Heliod)? Let’s find out by taking a look at our commander this week, Mageta the Lion!

First printed in Prophecy, Mageta is a super interesting white legend with a board wipe printed on the body (and it even avoids its own board wipe!). This deck is focused on limiting your opponents from going off, controlling the board, and keeping your life total healthy. Lots of taxing effects, lots of board wipes (artifacts, enchantments, creatures), and lots of control help keep us in the early game. We also utilize classic sneaky strategies to save our stuff and win using blink cards like Eerie Interlude. There’s no real traditional win-con in this deck, but that won’t matter much when you wipe your opponents entire board twice, and then they scoop it up. However! We are running Opalescence due to the large number of enchantments we have, as well as an Archon of Sun’s Grace just in case we’re stumbling, and need an alternative way to get there that doesn’t involve Mageta beats and board wipes.

Mageta is the perfect general for our strategy because we don’t really need him until we’re ready to protect him and threaten his ability (i.e. Lightning Greaves the turn we play him). We’re not interested in fighting, we’re more just trying to have players avoid hitting us until we’re well set up with lots of mana.

Let’s take a look at the breakdown of the deck! (You can also find the full decklist HERE)

Board Wipes: 8

That’s right; 8 slots dedicated to mass removal. Our goal with this deck is to stay alive, and the only way we’re going to do that is if we have cheap mass removal (starting with cards like Wrath of God), and other ways to remove huge problems like planeswalkers and pesky artifacts and enchantments (thus the inclusion of cards Planar Cleansing and Akroma’s Vengeance). Only one MLD spell because we need our land, and I only recommend firing Armageddon off if you’re 100% sure you have the win. Fumigate is really nice because it triggers some of our card draw in Dawn of Hope and Well of Lost Dreams. You’ll also note we’re running Inheritance for card advantage, so we have no problem resetting the board.

Control Elements: 13

This is the heaviest section because we really need to survive while our opponents try and kill us. Whether it’s combo or combat, we have things here to keep us safe. From cards like Authority of Councils to Ghostly Prison, we have plenty of ways to stall our opponents from smashing us with their threats. Against combo and graveyard focused decks we have cards like Leonin Arbiter, Hushbringer, and Ashes of the Abhorrent. Hushbringer is a super cool inclusion to this kind of deck, especially with the increased popularity in blink-Yarok like decks. Then we have some silver bullets in Silence, Hushwing Gryff, and Yosei, all good cards to snap off in the upkeep whenever we think an opponent might go off, or in Yosei’s case at the end of our turn.

Protection: 7

Our protection section is devoted to either making our things survive removal, or bringing it back afterwards. Cards like Eerie Interlude and Sudden Disappearance are super useful in a deck like this as they give us ways to survive our own board wipes. The deck could use some more elements like Eerie Interlude, say a Ghostway, but I don’t want to overload the deck with these “trick” cards. A couple indestructible effects to help protect Mageta or control pieces, and lightning greaves pad us further against our opponents removal. We have one copy of Faith’s Reward over Replenish, only because we want to hit all our permanents more than just our enchantments. It’s narrower, but it gives us the potential for some huge swing turns; Plus: instant speed!

Removal: 8

For our more spot based removal, you’ll see that we have plenty of enchantments. Cast Out, Oblivion Ring, and On Thin Ice are all awesome forms of permanent removal that doesn’t let opponents get the benefits of their creatures dying, and trigger our alt win cons like Archon of Sun’s Grace. I went with Heliod’s Intervention in this deck over Return to Dust and Austere Command honestly because I wanted to try it out. It’s not bad. With two modes, both being technically relevant to what our deck wants, I think this card is a slam dunk in the deck. Not to mention, if we can generate enough mana, it’s just so much advantage over our opponents.

Ramp: 9

Ah, Ramp in mono white. Will it ever be easy? Actually, I don’t think this is as difficult as it used to be. Maybe if we were building this deck 5 years ago, but now we have Smothering Tithe, by far one of my favorite cards printed in the last several years for White. I also really like Birth of Meletis in this deck, especially when we have multiple ways of bringing it back and tutoring up lands. Marble Diamond pulls double team in this deck, and Caged Sun is…you know, Caged Sun – kiss your mana troubles goodbye! We’ve still got a way to go on non-artifact based ramp, but this is definitely a good start for this deck.

Card Advantage: 8

To be honest with you, I think 8 sources of card advantage is pretty good here. True a lot of our advantage is based on things happening (i.e. gaining life, creatures dying), but we’re trying to trigger those things often. Inheritance is a really cool old enchantment (for 1 white!) that allows you to pay 3 any time a creature dies and just draw a card. Imagine board wiping and having some extra mana over, now you’ve got a full grip of new cards! Endless Atlas is another great situational draw outlet from the last several years, and, being an artifact that works when you have three lands of the same name, works perfectly for a mono colored deck like white. Mangara is another sweet update to this deck, and really helps us early game to keep up with players ramping and playing tons of cheap spells. Azor’s is a great way of making our incidental life gain pay off without having to rely solely on Dawn of Hope to carry the load.

Recursion/Tutor: 5

A little mixed section here. Only one tutor in Idyllic because we’re not super interested in setting up specific pieces to straight up win. It’s good to grab something as we need it, but no reason to overload this deck with tutors. Our recursion ties into our protection section, but we throw in some classic goodies, Sun Titan, and Mimic Vat (since we’re blowing tons of stuff up anyway). We also get a sweet card in Elspeth Conquers Death; it taxes, it recurs, it removes, and we can return it/trigger our enchantress with it – this card is a slam dunk.

Lifegain: 3

Only a couple sources of easy life gain to trigger cards like our Dawn of Hope and Azor’s Gateway. Gerrard is particularly useful here against any opponent who has a ton of cards, and the fact that we don’t even have to attack to get the trigger is perfect. He combos particularly well with the recent Heliod, Sun-Crowned. Yes, I’d like to get free life from you every turn, yes I’d also like to put these counters on my commander, please and thank you!

Win Cons: 4

Okay, so we’ve been playing lots of taxing enchantments, and we’ve blown up the board a couple of times, and we’ve kept everyone at bay/from comboing off. Now what? Well, we can either make Mageta a big boy with Armored Ascension and go swinging for the fences, or we could bring back all our enchantments and trigger Archon a million times, or we could just swing with all our enchantments creatures due to Opalescence. This is really sweet when it happens, but for the most part, we’re just biding our time until we can sneak a victory out.

Lands: 36

We’ve gone with snow-covered basics because, to quote a specific content creator, “they’re strictly better”; plus! They allow us to cast On Thin Ice. We got a nice bit of enchantment removal in Hall of Heliod’s Generosity, one of my favorite lands white has gotten in a while. I’ve also included land control in Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruin. Nykthos is in here, though we aren’t always at the highest devotion because we like to blow things up often, still a must in a deck that’s mono-colored. And we have Scavenger Grounds, in case our other graveyard hate just isn’t cutting it.

End Step!

So that’s the deck! A couple notable exclusions: I didn’t include Rest In Peace in this build solely because we do want to recur things we blow up, so it felt a bit counter-intuitive. I also refrained from easy classic easy win cons like Felidar Guardian, Walking Ballista (Heliod combo), and Test of Endurance just because they felt out of spirit of this deck. I could be persuaded to include Approach of the Second Sun, but not 100% it’s where the deck wants to be. We wanna blow stuff up, and bring it back!

I really hope you all enjoyed this break down of a commander that I’m pretty fond of, though I doubt your opponents will be if you bring this to your local LGS (whenever we’re back in those). At least you can tell them there’s a lack of Cataclysm, which should be something!

Be on the lookout for the next article where we continue our exploration of mono colored with a one of a kind Mono Green commander! Cheers!!