Hungry Hungry Spirits: He Who Hungers

I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
Ancient American Proverb

Hello all!! Welcome back to I Need Mana, your source for weird and unique EDH Commanders from Magic’s history. It’s been a bit, but it’s a new year (thank the Kaldheim gods, good riddance 2020), and that means new commander decks need to be made. This week we’re finishing up our exploration of mono-colored commanders with another weird Kamigawa legend: He Who Hungers.

This deck is an aristocrat-style discard deck, that seeks to control your opponent’s resources, all while slowly amassing a board of spirits to either attack or drain your opponents out of the game. While researching “spirit” tribal, I noticed more players tended to go towards commanders like Infernal Kirin, and Tinybones. Our hungry lad may not be as “good” on paper as Tinybones, but the activated ability on He Who Hungers is only one measly colorless mana, so I think we can get there with him! His ability also gives us the power of choice when choosing what we discard. That versatility, combined with some powerful discard synergies, and tons of mana acceleration, will give us the flexibility we need to close out games. Without further ado, let’s jump into the list!

Deck List (full list available HERE!)

Utility Spirits and Aristocrats: 11

You’ll notice that several of our utility spirits (including our honorary changeling) are all rather difficult to block; from skulk, to fear, to unblockable, there’s no shortage of ways our spirits can get in to poke at our opponents. We’re by no means an aggro deck, but we do care about chipping in damage, the reason why we’ll cover in a bit (jump to Discard section!). Besides the lovable Ugin, the Ineffable as a powerful spirit-token generator we have the super efficient Maskwood Nexus and Baku altar. These sources generate He Who Hungers plenty of fodder so we always have something to use to attack our opponent’s hands. It’s worth keeping in mind that He Who Hunger’s ability only triggers off of spirits, so it’s necessary we fill our list with spirits/cards that generate spirit tokens. This also makes the new inclusion of Maskwood Nexus so incredibly powerful, as it not only makes cheap spirit/changelings, but turns all our normally non-spirit creatures into spirit creatures for our commander to chomp! We can even do cool tricks with Maskwood, like using Iname, Death Aspect to dump all our creatures into the graveyard. Our spirits are generally very cheap, so we can later recur them to our hand and cast them easily with little strain on our resources. The aristocrats themselves are pretty standard, Zulaport, Blood Artist, and Konrad are all incredibly powerful effects that turn our commander into a machine gun when it gets going.

Discard: 12

Now that we have our synergies lined up, let’s get into our discard choices: Here we’re running (almost) every Spirit that includes the phrase “opponent discards” when it deals combat damage. The big boost to our specific strategy is Larceny. This is an often under looked (albeit a bit expensive, 5 mana is a chunk of change) discard enchantment that turns all of our unsuspecting little spirits into potential hand nukes – get hit with a few of them, discard your whole hand! Infernal Kirin may not be our commander, but it is still exceptional in the 99. Kirin also makes it pretty easy to choose what kind of spells/removal we’ll include in the list (I’m talking arcane spells here, y’all). Otherwise, we get some insane new cards from Zendikar Rising and Commander Legends in Pelakka Predation/Pelakka Caverns, and Court of Ambition. Court of Ambition is just such a beating in a discard deck like this. We may not always be the monarch, but our deck doesn’t mind attacking with our little 1/1s and 2/2s, so it works better than you might think. Nugging our opponents for 6 damage, plus any damage they take from our discard penalty enchantments is huge. I’d recommend steering clear of the spirits with “exile” effects, as we are our discard pay offs are dependent on discard, or seeing the cards hit the graveyard.

Discard Pay-off: 8

Here’s what it’s all about! Why you’ll want to build He Who Hungers in the first place: Pay-offs! There’s plenty here to go around. 6 enchantments, all of which are pretty cheap, can lead to massive amounts of damage on turns where we’re making our opponent discard a couple times. It’s not unreasonable to get our opponents to take somewhere around 10+ damage from a couple well timed triggers. This means if we do it right, we can kill our opponents without even needing to attack… though, it couldn’t hurt. Tinybones, though not a spirit (YET, Thank you Maskwood), is a must due to it’s innate source of card advantage and a built-in wincon. In fact, the card is so good that if you’re in black and want to discard it’s basically an auto-include (DAMN YOU WIZARDS!!). Also. We gotta talk Tergrid. Now, I know what some of you are saying, Hamp, this is THE card, and to those people I say: you are right. Tergrid, from the new Kaldheim set, is so unbelievably good. It turns all of our commander’s activations into control magics. This card is going in for sure. Frankly, Tergrid is the kind of card I would rather have it in my 99 instead of my commander to avoid things like being Alpha striked by the table just for revealing it. Some notable exclusions here include Pauper’s Cage (a little small ball for us), and The Rack (which only targets one player). I also wouldn’t mind adding a Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage, but I think he’s a little too fragile.

Recursion/Protection: 9

Since we’re in Black, there’s no shortage of recursion. Phyrexian Reclamation can go pretty nuts with our commander, giving us repeatable recursion on our cheap spirits so we can keep eating away at our opponent’s hands. Another legendary our commander can utilize is Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker. There aren’t a ton of amazing mono-black spirits, but we can get around that by running ones that synergize with Shirei. Shirei turns any spirits we have 1 power or less into a recursive discard spell. As long as Shirei doesn’t eat a removal spell (which, it often does :C) our 1 power or less spirits return to us at the end of turn. This ability also triggers at the end of each end step, so we can do this on each other player’s turns so long as we have the mana, and an instant speed sac-outlet (our commander is not, sadly, He Who Hungers can only be activated at sorcery speed). Next up we have a few spirits that we can cast from the graveyard in Nether Traitor and Akuta, Born of Ash. Zendikar Rising also brought us even more incredible recursive spells in Agadeem’s Awakening and Malakir Rebirth. There’s just so many options here. There’s also the new Kaldheim card, Haunting Voyage, if we wanted even more mass recursion.

Ramp: 7

This section is fairly self-explanatory. Like our aristocrats, we have some familiar faces in Pitiless Plunderer and Pawn of Ulamog. These cards are busted, and give us such a strong mana advantage when we’re we sacrificing our spirits. Pitiless Plunderer also helps get us closer to our second wincon: Revel in Riches. I’ve often found this card to be a house in multiplayer. It’s a bit of a personal favorite of mine, and I try to run it in as mana decks that can make it work as possible. We may not be able to get there with combat damage, but we can sure generate enough tokens to win the game. Carnival of Souls is another interesting old enchantment, turning any creature into a ramp spell (though watch out because it doesn’t say may, and it triggers off your opponents creatures as well). Carnival can give us the extra boost a mana hungry deck like this needs, and I’m inclined to run it despite its potential to straight up kill us. Otherwise, Black Market and Crypt Ghast are too strong not run in aristocrat decks. Not to mention, Ghast works with our theme, as it happens to be a spirit (double win for us!).

Removal: 10

Here’s where we get to play a little more with Arcane. Arcane is a spell type that classifies whether or not the instant or sorcery can trigger an ability looking for Arcane. So removal spells like Rend Flesh may be a little more expensive than a good old Doom Blade, but triggering Infernal Kirin is such a bonus for us, that we’re using cards like this instead. The same can be said for cards like Sickening Shoal, Horobi’s Whisper and Hideous Laughter, slightly under the bar as far as removal goes, but we want the bonus. Functioning as both removal and spirit producer, Ugin, the Ineffable is the perfect planeswalker for our deck: destroy a pesky permanent? Check. Create a spirit to be used to discard? Check. Gain card advantage off the spirit? Super check. Card is all around incredible! Kagemaro, First to Suffer acts as our build-your-own Toxic Deluge, and can be repeatable if we need it to be. In fact, a fair amount of our removal is tied to our spirits, and gets around pesky keywords like “indestructible” by dealing in -X/-X. The final card I want to talk about is Grave Pact. This card is a bit of a trap, as it is expensive and often paints a huge target on your head. I wasn’t sure about including it, but killing a ton of our opponent’s stuff for just one mana off a He Who Hungers’ activation seems too good to not. Just make sure you’re ready to get value off the card before you play it.

Card advantage: 8

Got a bunch of 1/1s but no commander yet? Drop a Skullclamp and get to drawing cards. Got a Species Specialist in play as well? Draw ALL THE CARDS. Species Specialist is a “newer” card that I love in tribal black decks. It’s fairly costed, doesn’t just care about your creatures dying, and doesn’t mind if the creatures are tokens. It’s so much advantage for a measly 4 mana. Seizan, Perverter of Truth may seem like a bit of an odd inclusion, as it gives all players card advantage, but we want our opponents to have a couple cards in hand for us to discard. A non-bo with Tinybones, but since it’s not our commander I find it’s justifiable. If our opponents are empty handed all the time how are we gonna get Liliana’s Caress triggers?? How!? Rankle, Master of Pranks is another great advantage/removal/discard engine that slips right into our deck as too much value to pass up. We obviously want to limit the amount of non-spirit creatures, but this card is just too diverse to pass up. Cards like Dark Deal, Bone Miser, and Geth’s Grimoire just straight up kill people out of nowhere. Commander 2019 was massive for the mono-black archetype. Seriously.

Tutor: 3

A slightly smaller tutor section, which, I know, is crazy considering we are all black and it’s the best color for tutoring. I just tend to want to keep this section low since we’re focusing on tribal synergies and discarding. That being said, Iname, Death Aspect tutors an insane amount of cards for us (like potentially all the creature cards with Maskwood out), and barring that we don’t run into graveyard hate, will win us the game if we can reanimate them with something like Rise of the Dark Realms. Another reason we want to try and keep our spirit count high. Diabolic Intent and Demonic Tutor just here to get a silver bullet, Diabolic Intent working particularly well in a deck that wants to sac it’s creatures.

Lands: 36

The lands are great for this deck. Thanks again to Zendikar Rising we have a ton of utility (please no Blood Moons…). I’m including Cabal Coffers even though I know it’s crazy expensive, it’s not necessary, but if you got it, play it! Otherwise, Cabal Stronghold is a great runner up, and you may as well include both of them. Lots of good utility draw lands like Castle Locthwain to make sure our hand is never empty, and a couple recursive creature lands in Mortuary Mire and Agadeem’s Awakening. As is my usual, I’ve included two graveyard hate lands, Bojuka Bog and Scavenger Grounds, which can be super crucial in a deck that’s constantly putting player’s things into their bin. Basically every other deck is a graveyard combo deck these days, so be prepared!

End Step!

Now that our hungry spirit is satisfied, we can take a moment to break this down:

If you want to play aristocrats then you’ll want to play this deck. If you want a deck that doesn’t really need to attack, that’s more defensive and reactive, this is the deck for you. If you’re not into sacing things, recurring things, and being an all-around durdle king, this might not be your deck. Our commander is very unassuming. We’ll get there by focusing on utilizing his cheap activated ability, and maintaining a mana advantage. You’ll want to focus heavily on ramp in the early game, but once we secure the advantage, it’ll be hard for your opponents to keep up with the amount of damage you’ll be doing to their hands. With the amount of ramp we have these days, I’d be surprised if you weren’t able to get this on the board and ready to roll much quicker than turn 5. If our commander keeps getting targeted, because, well, our opponents are going to want to keep their hands, we’ve made sure there are still plenty of other strong pseudo-discard commanders in the deck to take care of our opponents.

And with that we have come to the end of our mono-colored series! Thanks for joining me on this wild ride. It’s been a blast exploring these older mono-colored commanders, and I hope you get a chance to dive back into Magic’s history and find your own mono-colored commander.

In our next series, we’ll be focusing on underplayed commanders from the Guilds! Starting with what is (probably) my favorite guild, House Dimir! Check back soon for a particularly wacky Dimir commander that deserves all the love.

As always, you can follow me on Twitter @HampTheHuman for all my brewing updates, and weird musings. Thanks for reading, Cheers!!

Blue Bicycle: Llawan, Cephalid Empress

“Wait…what color is my permanent?”

Hello all!! Welcome back to I Need Mana, your source for weird and unique EDH Commanders from Magic’s history. This week we’re exploring Mono-Blue with the ultimate cephalid herself, Llawan, Cephalid Empress. Cephalids may have fallen off in popularity (at least in Wizards eyes), the last time they were really powerful was several years ago in Legacy with a deck called Cephalid Breakfast, a deck that used Cephalid Illusionist and en-Kor creatures to infinitely mill itself into it’s combo pieces. But we’re not running Cepahlid Breakfast here! We’re using Llawan and cycling cards to make a deck I’m calling Blue Bicycle.

This deck, wow, I’m excited to talk about this deck. If you’ve never come across Llawan before, she’s a pretty unique commander. She keeps our opponents from casting blue spells, and she bounces blue creatures back to our opponent’s hands. This means if we have a way to control the color of our opponent’s creatures we can bounce all of and prevent them from ever attacking again. This card is historically busted with a certain Painter’s Servant. Painter’s Servant makes all permanents and all cards in all players decks blue. So our opponents essentially just can’t cast creature spells anymore. This two-card combo, while really effective, is a little old school and even a bit too mean-spirited for me. Today we’re looking at an ultra-budget version ($80 bucks at the most!) of the popularized cycling decks that have been floating around lately, usually helmed by Gavi or Golos. What our deck seeks to do is exploit Llawan’s bounce and control ability paired by pairing her with the advantage of cycle cards, in particular the card Escape Protocol. Escape Protocol makes it so that whenever we cycle, we can also flicker Llawan, and whenever we flicker Llawan we get to bounce blue creatures our opponent’s control back to their hands. This means, if we pair Llawan with some sweet color control effects, we should be able to ride this little blue cycle all the way to victory!

Deck Breakdown (You can also find the full decklist HERE)

Cycling Cards: 39

First up, let’s talk about cycling cards, highlighting some specific and valuable ones, as well as discussing the reasoning behind our number. We’re running a LOT of cycling cards (and you thought we were running a lot of ramp in the Glissa deck). We’re going with 39 because it almost guarantees that whenever we cycle a card, we’ll hit another cycle card. Almost half of our deck cycles, or has something to do with cycling, and we also run cards that help us draw even more cards of those cycles. Given that we don’t stumble, or have terrible luck, we almost have a 50/50 chance that every card we draw will cycle. Now, we don’t want to start running too many more because then we won’t ever hit other cards that we need, like tutors, interaction, etc. So 39% is where we landed. Our best cyclers are either One colorless mana, or Two colorless mana. This is because with cards like Fluctuator we can make sure that we’re never spending mana to cycle, and also have some open to flicker our Llawan, or any other threat we may have. These are cards like Miscalculation, Countervailing Winds, and Imaginary Threats. The cyclers that aren’t One or Two colorless generally have an ability, or can, though we usually want to avoid it, be cast as some form of interaction. These are cards like Hieroglyphic Illumination, Censor, and Nimble Obstructionist. You’ll notice, that even though not all of them are great spells, the ones we mentioned could be cast if it came down to it. You generally want to avoid cyclers that are just creatures, because we aren’t playing any kind of reanimation game. We want spells and cheap cyclers, this guarantees we always have a play or a way to flicker our payoffs.

Cycling Payoffs: 9

Speaking of Payoffs! Llawan isn’t the only card we want to flicker with our Escape Protocol cards. We’re also running Sphinx Mindbreaker and Manic Scribe. Both of these cards mill “each” opponent whenever they enter the battlefield(Manic Scribe eventually triggering during each player’s upkeep), and are our primary ways of winning once we’ve gotten our cycling enablers online. Sphinx Mindbreaker hits every opponent for 10 cards when it etbs, so we only need 9 maximum bounces with it to mill our opponents out. If we’re struggling to get there with the mill route, we have Ominous Seas and Drake Haven as alternative ways to amass a threatening board state, all while keeping our opponent’s creatures at bay with Llawan. Eventually, we’ll have enough 8/8s and 2/2s to kill our opponents one by one. Cunning Survivor makes an appearance as well, just as another threat to guarantee some damage gets through on our turn, so long as we’re cycling. Another reason we’ve gone with cycling is it gives us a way to make the new Teferi’s Ageless Insight absolutely insane for us. Once we get Fluctuator and/or New Perspectives going each cycle is free, and each draw is doubled by Ageless Insight. So long as we have one of our payoffs in play we should have no trouble out grinding our opponents with card advantage. Speaking of Fluctuator and New Perspectives, I can’t overstate how important these cards are for the deck. We’ll discuss how we guarantee having these cards a little later, but for now, bear in mind you’re always going to be looking for an opening hand that either has these cards or has a way to get these cards.

Bounce/Flicker: 4

We’ve talked at length about Escape Protocol, but only having one source of flicker isn’t really going to cut it in our deck. Here I’ve included several other options you can use to bounce you Llawan and your mill creatures to get the effects. Thassa, Deep-Dwelling is the runner up for second best, it triggers on your end-step, and it is indestructible, where our Escape Protocol is easily destroyed with any kind of permanent removal. Conjurer’s Closet is a close runner up, and can be grabbed with our artifact tutors if we don’t have Thassa or Escape Protocol. The main drawback to these cards are we can’t control the flicker, so if our opponent goes to kill Llawan, we’re out of luck. A consideration for some flicker spells could be had, but I don’t want to dilute the deck too much. Llawan herself is a mass bounce spell in our command zone, so long as all our opponents control blue creatures (which we’ll cover in a bit).

Color Control: 6

Here’s where things get a lil complex. If we just ran cycling cards, and no way to take advantage of our commander’s abilities, Llawan wouldn’t be our ideal candidate for this style of deck. As it is, we’re running several recurrable spells that either a) change the color of a permanent or spell, or b) changes the text of a specific color permanently. Let’s break down each effect and why we want them. Effects that change the color of a permanent like Shifting Skye, which is all permanents, and Indigo Faerie, which hits one permanent until the end of turn, are useful so we can make more use out of Llawan’s bounce effect. If we play Shifting Sky, name blue, and either play or flicker our Llawan, just like that we’ve created a one sided Evacuation. This same thing can be achieved with Indigo Faerie and Distorting Lens, only a little slower. I like Distorting Lens in this deck because it is a cheap artifact that requires no mana to activate and can be tutored with our various blue artifact tutors. The second category of color control is changing the instances of color words on spells and permanents. The card Swirl the Mists changes every instance of a color word to a different color. This is particularly useful with Llawan because if we use these cards to change her text to read “return all ‘Black’ or ‘Green’ creatures your opponents control to their hands” we’ve effectively locked our opponents out from playing their creature spells, until we so choose to change the color word to something else. While this can get difficult to manage, these cards give us variance and flexibility with where our commander is concerned. And they are especially useful when talking about our next section:

Control: 4

So we can now change the text of permanents to specific colors. What do we do now? Enter Chill and Douse. With any of our color spells we can change Chill to tax whatever color that is most vexing us. If it isn’t red, we simply play Glamerdye during our opponent’s upkeep, and tax whatever color they happen to be on. Glamerdye also has retrace, so as long as we have a land at our disposal we can continuously use this effect. Douse is another enchantment that specifically says counter target “red” spell, but so long as we have color-changing abilities, or we’re getting them back, we can now counter whatever color spell we choose at any time. If we’re ever backed into an awkward position by a permanent we can’t really deal with, or if we need to take the biggest threat on board and make it our own, Crystalline Resonance is here to answer it all. A clone effect that triggers whenever we cycle is a pretty sweet deal, and it hits any permanent! I think this is kind of versatility that makes the cycle theme worth it, and it keeps us protected if our mass bounces keep getting shut off.

Recursion/Non-Cycling Advantage: 5

Since we’re going to be discarding a lot of cards to all our cycling abilities, we’re going to want to run cards that give us access to the spells in our graveyard. Scholar of the Ages (could also be Archaeomancer if you want something cheaper) guarantees us two spells, usually cycling spells, that allow us to keep digging through our deck. Scholar’s ability is on ETB as well, so we can play her, get back cycling cards, cycle, flicker her with Escape Protocol, and keep the chain going. It’s such a sweet synergy and makes it hard for our deck to fizzle once we have her in play. Abandoned Sarcophagus might seem like an absurd card in our deck, but it’s honestly a bit of trap. A lot of our cycling spells aren’t great as cast spells, but there’ no sense in not having access to them if we can. Sometimes you might want to cast a Miscalculation on something, and if it’s in your graveyard with Sarcophagus in play YOU CAN! I think it’s great to have the options available to you, so it gets a spot. Academy Ruins protects our artifacts from being removed permanently–this feels really bad, so we have to find whatever ways to protect ourselves from this that we can. The other two cards, Sol Ring and Brainstorm, are just too good not to play. Brainstorm is cheap and can set up our draws, and while we don’t need a lot of acceleration mana wise, sol ring is cheap enough that we can run it. I don’t like running a lot of mana rocks in a deck like this because it actually pollutes our draws, and keeps us from getting to our cyclers. We have to make choice between mana rocks and color control, and color control effects are better for us.

Tutor: 7

Our deck needs several key pieces to function at 100%: We want our Fluctuator, we want our Escape Protocol, and we want our color changers. This can definitely be a lot of pieces to have to track down. Luckily, mono-blue has plenty of ways to grab whatever tools we need out of our deck. Drift of Phantasms and Muddle the Mixture are great tutors, their transmute ability allows us to grab any card that shares a converted mana cost with them. In Muddle’s case this means Fluctuator, Escape Protocol, Chill, Indigo Faerie, and in Drift’s this means Abandoned Sarcophagus, Shifting Skye, and Douse. In fact, I didn’t even name everything these cards can be exchanged for because it’s honestly quite a lot. Our deck has a toolbox quality to it that I think makes it very versatile, even with it being single colored. With additional artifact-specific tutors like Tribute Mage, Fabricate, and Whir of Invention we shouldn’t have any problem completing the puzzle that is our deck. Once we’ve gotten our blinkers and our cycler enablers, we’re going to need to get ahold of our game ender cards. Long-Term Plans is our only sure-fire way of grabbing cards like Sphinx Mindbreaker or Scholar of Ages, but we’re digging so deep with our cycling that it shouldn’t take long to hit them. Also, cards like Long-Term Plans, with the drawback of placing the card third from the top, just isn’t really a drawback for our deck when we’re drawing a bunch of cards every turn.

Lands: 34

35 mana sources, 5 of which can be cycled. Some utility lands worth mentioning here: Academy Ruins is a key land for this deck. We really need our Fluctuator effect and our bounce effects, so look for Academy Ruins to help you rebuild if they get hit with targeted removal. Castle Vantress allowing us to scry before we start cycling gives us a lot of control over our draws, not to mention if we ever needed to we could manipulate this land with Cloud of Faeries and Vizier of Tumbling Sands to get multiple looks. And, as always, I’m packing Scavenger Grounds as our graveyard hate. This deck used to run even less lands, but I started to feel the tax of our mana hungry abilities, so I decided to up it to 35. You really want to try and mitigate the flood with this deck, as they don’t do you any good when you’re trying to draw through your deck.

End Step!

I really enjoy using Blue in my lists, but rarely have I built Mono-Blue, so this was a bit of a challenge for me. This past week has been crazy with Zendikar Rising spoilers and Mythic Invitational, all of them begging for my attention (I’ve been itching to start brewing with the new commanders all week!). Still, distractions aside, I’m happy with where this deck ended up. I think it’s a great casual deck, at super-budget level, and avoids some of the crazy un-fun synergies of Painter’s Servant+ Llawan = your opponents are deadlocked out of the game. That’s not to say you won’t get some stares for sitting down with Llawan. You’ll just have to assure them Painter’s Servant isn’t in the deck (unless it IS in the deck, in which case Godspeed to you!)

With Mono-Blue taken care of, it means we only have one more color to check off our list! Join me next week where we explore the world of swamps with Mono-Black!

As always, you can follow me on Twitter @HampTheHuman for all my brewing updates, and weird musings!

Thanks for reading!! Cheers!!

Great Ball of Fire: Shimatsu the Bloodcloaked

“Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!”
Jerry Lee Lewis

Hello all!! Welcome back to I Need Mana, your weekly source for weird and unique EDH Commanders from Magic’s history. This week we’re exploring mono-red with a commander that was almost certainty made for the 16-year-old-weeaboo inside us all: Shimatsu the Bloodcloacked! Case and point, he’s a demon, his qualifying adjective is “bloodcloaked”, and he’s got a massive tentacle tongue; anime demon requirements fulfilled. One look at this Dragon Ball Z looking villain and I knew he was the one for us.

His ability, to sacrifice permanents and enter with +1/+1 counters, is actually an early iteration of the Devour mechanic. First showing up in Shards of Alara, Devour works as such:

702.81.Devour

702.81a Devour is a static ability. “Devour N” means “As this object enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice any number of creatures. This permanent enters the battlefield with N +1/+1 counters on it for each creature sacrificed this way.”

The biggest difference between Shimatsu and Devour, is that Devour can only sacrifice creatures, where Shimatsu doesn’t care what we sac. This gives us a huge advantage at what we can use as fodder. He’s actually got quite a lot of synergies to a certain modern Boros commander you may be familiar with: Feather the Redeemed. Both of these commanders want to make themselves bigger by playing smaller seemingly innocuous cards – Feather chains together a bunch of small spells, and Shimatsu chains together a bunch of small permanents. Our end result wants to be the same: make one massive creature that we can use to deal massive amounts of damage by either throwing it at our opponents face, or by slamming in during the attack step.

Since Shimatsu doesn’t have a card advantage engine like Feather’s, we want to build a deck that works with us as we build up a board state big enough to sac. That means running cards that ping our opponents for sacrificing and killing (Warning: this deck can be a bit of a glass cannon, but then, I Need Mana is not here to play a cowards game!). So to get this demon-train moving we’re going to have to start by making a bunch of tokens of any kind, artifact, goblin, etc, to feed to our boy.

Deck Breakdown (You can also find the full decklist HERE)

Token/Treasure Producers: 12

Of the many token producers we have, the most important are Gadrak and Krenko. Gadrak nets us one treasure per nontoken creature that died as long as he’s still around by the end of turn. And this triggers with either our opponent’s or ours! While the mana advantage here is nice, we’re not so much interested in these tokens around for sacrificing. Use the treasure when needed, but remember they’re more like fodder than resource. Krenko is huge game with just a couple goblins on board (and it turns out a fair amount of creatures we want to run are goblins, see Dockside Extortionist and Siege-Gang Commander! Spicy!). We can easily turn out more than enough to make a massive Shimatsu very quickly with a Krenko on board. Some of the other cards worth noting in this list are Surly Badgersaur, Shiny Impetus, and Curse of Opulence. Both (relatively) new cards that net us treasures just by being on the battlefield. Shiny is a steady stream of treasures each turn cycle, and Surly combos with our card advantage sources (most of which are wheels). Myr Battlesphere and Anax can make us some reliable bodies when they etb or dies, a Anax is especially useful at setting up a second Shimatsu (if it comes to that). Mimic Vat is here to help us keep casting Shimatsu if we can’t quite get him to go off the turn we play him. Reducing the cost of our legend to 3 instead of 4+ each time we cast him is definitely where we want to be.

Pingers and Doublers: 7

Once we’ve gotten enough fodder for Shimatsu, we need to make the turn we cast/sacrifice him worth it. So here we have cards like Havoc Jester and Hissing Quagmire to turn the creatures and permanents we, or someone else, sacrifices into direct damage. Throw in recent addition, Terror of the Peaks to deal even more damage as our creatures enter the battlefield (ANY), and you have a recipe for a quick death. Terror plus a massive Shimatsu is crazy deadly for anyone who’s not at a healthy life total, and while it only targets one thing at a time, we want to make try and set up for turns where we send multiple fire balls at our enemies. And of course… the doubler and tripler: Fiery Emancipation and Dictate of the Twin Gods. These cards make all our little pings and sacrifices into real clocks, with Shimatsu sitting in the wings just waiting to come in and finish the job. They also provide us with another way to win the game if our opponents keep preventing us from flinging a Shimastu at them. There is one card on the list you may be tilting your head at, Double Vision. Now, Double Vision makes it so we copy the first instant or sorcery spell we cast each turn. This is particularly important for our next section, where we go over the spells we use to throw Shimatsu’s power at people. It gives us multiple instances of fling effects, and multiple ways to kill players. Finally, we should note Ferocity of the Wilds, because it’s another solid back up plan if we can’t get the utility spells to fire. Giving out creatures, almost all of which are non-human, trample and +1/+0 while attacking is tough to handle in most cases.

Utility Spells: 7

Alright! So we’ve got a big Shimatsu. And maybe we’ve pinged some fools, and thrown some damage at face. Now comes the BIG fireball aspect of our deck. These spells either a) make it so we deal direct damage equal to Shimatsu’s power to players and creatures or b) make it so we have multiple instances of those fling effects. Chandra’s Ignition is our best spell by far. It’s the only spell that specifically says your opponents and their creatures. So if we cast this on a 15/15 Shimatsu, only their creatures and our opponents take the damage. If Fiery Emancipation happens to be on the field, well…they just die. We are also packing Fling, Soul’s Fire, Rupture, and Gravitic Punch to act as slightly worse, yet cheaper, versions of Chandra’s Ignition, the worse being Rupture and Fling because we loose our Shimatsu. All in all, we aren’t lacking in ways to make use of our demon spirit. Bonus Round is here to give us another easy way for to make sure our fling spells land on multiple players, or deal enough damage to kill a player or two. We also are packing a very powerful utility spell, and one of my favorite additions to the deck, in Unleash Fury. This card is sooooo bonkers. It basically reads, cast Shimatsu as a big boy, double that big boy, now you can sac it for practically lethal guaranteed.

Removal: 8

With the addition of Gadrak to our deck we are even more rewarded for killing our opponent’s things! BUT we do want to try and keep some of our stuff around, so I’ve included cards like Comet Storm and Pyrokenisis to give us more controlled ways of picking off threats. We don’t just want to wipe the board if we can avoid it because every creature token we have is valuable to Shimatsu (oh kind, and benevolent demon!). Subterranean Tremors over cards like Blasphemous Act and Earthquake because we are almost guaranteed to net creature tokens with it. Mob Rule is here because it functions like a board wipe with our commander. Now true it’s a half board wipe, only hitting 3 or less or 3 or more costed creatures, but say our opponents have a bunch of tokens in play, we yoink them, then sacrifice them all of them to Shimatsu. Boom, we’ve got a 20/20, or something. I think this card gives us the kind of versatility we want, while not being 8 mana like Insurrection (however, play this is you really want to end friendships and alienate strangers). To help save us from our worst nightmare, which would be casting a Chandra’s Ignition to kill the board, only to have it countered by cheap interaction like Negate or a Counterspell, we’re packing some protection in Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast. We really need our fireball to land on the first try if possible, so these cards are huge. Mogg Salvage is a great free card, but could possibly be swapped out for a token generator like Release the Gremlins. I Just like free interaction where I can get it! And of course, Chaos Warp gives us some insurance on permanents we don’t want to see but don’t have easy answers to (planeswalkers for one).

Card Advantage: 10

The card advantage is really just wheels. Outside of that, cards like Endless Atlas and Bonder’s Ornament now exist, so we don’t have to play ALL wheels, but it is still tough to have to discard some combo piece or another to a wheel (luckily we are packing a fair amount of recursion due to this, which we’ll see in a a bit). Memory Jar is probably our most key source of advantage here, we can sac it, wheel, and then recur it later with a Daretti, or a Goblin Welder for more advantage later. Wheel of Fate is here over Wheel of Fortune because Fortune is around $130 right now (PLEASE WIZARDS REPRINT???), so I haven’t included it. But once again, definitely play it if you got it! Tectonic Reformation is cute, but it adds a bit of built in advantage if we have extra lands we want to discards to our Surly Badgersaur (this nets us mana/tokens, as it generates treasure tokens on discard!). And of course, Runehorn Hellkite is a great unassuming wheel that we can either wheel away, and play later, or sac to Shimatsu, and wheel later.

Ramp: 11

Our ramp section is a little mixed here, seeing as how we also produce a fair amount of mana up in our token section. Of course, we’d rather sacrifice those tokens, so we’ve still included a separate sections for pure ramp. Some solid generic ramp here, Sol Ring, Fire Diamond, Fellwar Stone, etc., just to make sure we have enough mana to go off the turn we play Shimatsu. It’s key that we have enough mana to play, sac, and kill all our opponents, so sometimes we’re gonna need a little help, that’s where Treasure Nabber comes in. This little guy 1) is a goblin, for Krenko, and 2) is also quite useful at stealing your opponent’s ramp for us to use with our Shimatsu. Because we’re not giving them back, we’re gonna sac them all to our hungry lad, and make our opponents sad. Ashnod’s Altar and Treasonous Ogre provide us with cheap effective ways to either generate extra mana for life, or generate extra mana at the cost of one or two of our extra token creatures. We’re a mana hungry deck, so we want to be constantly looking for more ways to gain mana advantage as the game progresses.

Recursion/Protection: 8

Here’s were our more artifact heavy build really shines. We’re running a fair amount of mana rock, artifact token generators, and utility artifacts, so getting blown out by mass artifact removal feels pretty bad. Luckily, red has lots of access to mass artifact recursion. Our best sources of recursion are Scrap Mastery, and Daretti, Scrap Savant. These cards return whatever we need, and at a small price to pay in say a Myr token or a treasure token. Conquerer’s Flail, while having no instant speed equip tricks, is great at shutting our opponents down the turn we want to go off. Interaction is our least favorite thing, so if we can have the flail attached to a creature when we play Shimatsu we should be in the clear to kill our opponents (Boseiju is here for a similiar reason). Underworld Breach, another new card that, helpful for when we wheel away our instants and sorceries needed to throw Shimatsu at people. Since we’re running lots of wheels, and sacrificing so many permanents, the graveyard should be full and ready for us to use whenever we drop Underworld Breach – it’s insurance, and really solid insurance. A previous build of this deck used to run Past in Flames, but it turns out Underworld Breach is just that much better!

Tutor: 4

Being mono-red, we don’t get access to a ton of tutors, so we’re running what we can. Gamble can get us anything we need in a pinch, and discarding it isn’t the end of the world because of all our recursion cards. Imperial Recruiter can grab us mana accelerants like Treasonous Ogre and Dockside Extortionist, but it can also get us Goblin Welder if we need to grab something from discard, or token creators, like Anax, and Captain Lannery. Expedition Map is here for grabbing utility lands like Boseiju, or Hall of the Bandit Lord, etc. One way we can stumble in our deck is if we cast our big fireball but lack a solid way to fling the dang thing. Running Hall of the Bandit Lord makes it so we can start swinging the turn we play him. Sarkhan’s Triumph makes the list, effectively acting as second copies of any of our dragons: Gadrak, Terror, and Runehorn. It may not seem too useful, but Gadrak and Terror are pretty important for us, so we want to guarantee we have access to as many as we can.

Lands: 34

Your key lands here are Boseiju and Hall of the Bandit Lord. Boseiju grants our fling spells uncounterability, and one of the only ways outside of our Pyroblast effects we have at protecting our spells when we go off. Hall of the Bandit Lord, as mentioned previously, let’s us attack immediately with our massive Shimatsu, if it comes to that. I don’t always need the haste on him, but it’s good to have the insurance, just in case. We’re also packing several token producing lands in Kher Keep and Dwareven mine, just to ensure we always have the fodder count high while maintaining low costs; Dwarven is free, and Kher Keep cost 2 mana to activate, and is repeatable. The rest are lands I tend to run in just about any deck, with Scavenger Grounds being our only piece of graveyard hate, so use that Expedition Map wisely!

End Step!

So there we have it! Hot enough for you?? Shimatsu is an explosive commander, with the ability to either go BIG, or go home. I found that the deck was almost aristocrats in style, making lots of small things to ping our opponents, and could easily kill without ever having to throw Shimatsu at people. If you end up building this list I’d love to know how it does for you. Proper resource management, and setting up protection for the turn you go off is key to success! He was a lot of fun to build, and I think they he’s only gotten better as the years have given red more and more support to sacrifice mechanics.

Be on the lookout for next week’s article where we continue our exploration of mono-colored commanders with Mono Blue! As always, you can follow me on Twitter @HampTheHuman for all my brewing updates, and weird musings!

Thanks for reading!! Cheers!!

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!!