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All My Faves In One Deck!

Find out how Bennie was able to fit a bunch of his favorite cards in his Modern-legal Doran, the Siege Tower Commander deck for a tournament this Saturday.

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A couple weeks back I talked about some deck ideas I had going for our next Commander tournament, which is going to be held this Saturday, April 13th, at Richmond Comix at 1 PM. I’d originally thought about making a green, white, and black deck with Doran, the Siege Tower as my commander, but I eventually walked away from that idea and thought about going green/white with Sigarda, Host of Herons as my commander.

I went ahead and built the other two deck ideas I had (Marrow-Gnawer with Relentless Rats and Sakashima the Imposter), but I just couldn’t get too excited about Sigarda.

Last week I wrote about the work I was doing on my Standard deck, "Vizkopa Cabana," and while it’s definitely a fun deck, it certainly is not a Tier 1 strategy yet. Suddenly, though, I had a revelation. Vizkopa Guildmage’s second ability, which I’ve been using with Tree of Redemption to kill my opponent, works even better the more opponents I have! And then I realized some of the supporting cards I was using—Tree of Redemption and Rhox Faithmender—have giant toughness stats that are perfect alongside Doran, the Siege Tower!

With black now in the mix, I could certainly bring Glissa back and a small sacrificial artifact package—awesome!

As I sketched out the ideas, I realized I’d need to bring in some measure of Tutoring to give me a reasonable shot at assembling the Tree of Redemption and Vizkopa Guildmage combination. Birthing Pod and Fauna Shaman dropped in the mix, which reminded me that I had a Modern tournament deck with Birthing Pod and Fauna Shaman that was a lot of fun—Necrotic Ooze!

Why not toss Necrotic Ooze into the mix? What’s better than peanut butter and chocolate? BACON!

I quickly sketched out cards I wanted for each of the three elements of this deck full of wonderful:

Doran, the Siege Tower

Slagwurm Armor; Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice; Wall of Reverence; Sapling of Colfenor; Silklash Spider

All of these cards take advantage of Doran’s "toughness matters" theme. I really loved how absurd Slagwurm Armor was the last time I had a Doran Commander deck.

Vizkopa Cabana

Tree of Redemption, Vizkopa Guildmage, Rhox Faithmender, Exquisite Blood, Chord of Calling

If you read my column last week, you know how this part works. If you didn’t, here’s the short version: if you are low on life and you exchange your life total for the Tree’s toughness and end up at a higher life total, that’s considered gaining life for Vizkopa Guildmage’s purposes. Here’s the ideal line of play: end of the opponent to my right’s turn, I activate Tree of Redemption, going from (say) 40 life to thirteen life. Untap, activate Vizkopa Guildmage’s second ability twice, then tap the Tree to gain 27 life and drain 54 life from each opponent. Profit! Tree of Redemption and Vizkopa Guildmage both use activated abilities, so if your opponents try to stop your shenanigans, Necrotic Ooze can stand in for either or both.

Necrotic Ooze

Devoted Druid, Quillspike, Grim Poppet, Thornling, Adarkar Valkyrie, Wickerbough Elder, Magus of the Disk, Vhati il-Dal, Order of Whiteclay, Golgari Guildmage, Fauna Shaman, Birthing Pod, Jarad’s Orders, Green Sun’s Zenith

Oh man, did I try to make Necrotic Ooze work in Standard, and I’m still trying to make it work in Modern. It does amazing work in Commander with a whole host of great activated abilities it can borrow from the dead. Here, you basically want to get a Necrotic Ooze on the battlefield and a Devoted Druid in the graveyard as your starting point. Then add a Quillspike in the graveyard and you can make your Ooze infinitely large. Add a Grim Poppet to the graveyard and you can kill every creature on the board that you can target. Add a Wickerbough Elder and you can kill all the pesky enchantments and artifacts.

I’ve also thrown in a bunch of creatures with other nifty activated abilities. My dream is to make the Ooze infinitely large, then use -1/-1 counters to untap him while tapping to target everyone’s creatures with Adarkar Valkyrie’s ability, then borrow Thornling’s ability to make Necrotic Ooze indestructible, then borrow Magus of the Disk’s ability to blow up all creatures, artifacts, and enchantments, untap the Ooze and swing in to kill the biggest threat, and end the turn with everyone’s creatures under my control.

Now that would be an epic story!!!

Glissa, the Traitor

Expedition Map, Dispeller’s Capsule, Nihil Spellbomb, Executioner’s Capsule, Moriok Replica, Wurmcoil Engine, Sun Titan

We can’t forget about my sweet Glissa! I’ve got a bunch of cheap artifacts that will likely get blown off early, and Glissa means that whenever one of my opponents’ creatures dies, I can reuse the effect. Wurmcoil Engine isn’t cheap, but it’s pretty saucy to have out there alongside Glissa.

And Sun Titan? Sun Titan’s got Glissa’s back, of course! He’ll bring her back into play if someone is mean enough to kill her early.

Okay, so taking those ideas, I’ve pulled together this decklist for Saturday:

Doran, the Siege Tower
Bennie Smith
Test deck on 04-14-2013
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (33)

Lands (39)

Spells (28)

Magic Card Back


Surprisingly, I had room for some other goodies:

Stoneforge Mystic

Basilisk Collar, Skullclamp, Nim Deathmantle, Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Batterskull

While I set aside my dreams of assembling Kaldra, I thought I could still have room for Stoneforge Mystic and plenty of decent pieces of equipment. Nim Deathmantle can come down first, and when Stoneforge dies Deathmantle can bring her back. Then I can go fetch more equipment…say, Batterskull?

Save the Creatures!

Saffi Eriksdotter, Dauntless Escort, Eternal Witness, Cauldron of Souls, Reveillark, Treasury Thrull, Deadwood Treefolk

Alright, pretty much everything I’ve got going on in this deck involves creatures, so it makes sense that I’d want to make them as resilient as I can. Luckily, there are plenty of great Commander tools available for this that are also Modern legal. I have to admit that adding Saffi Eriksdotter, Deadwood Treefolk, Reveillark, and Eternal Witness to the mix feels like getting the band back together!

Mana Fixin’

Darksteel Ingot, Chromatic Lantern, Coalition Relic, Scuttlemutt

Doran is pretty color intensive, so I wanted to really max out on the "any color" fixing here. I love that Scuttlemutt is a creature so if it dies it can be used by Necrotic Ooze!

Utility

Path to Exile, Qasali Pridemage, Krosan Grip, Mimic Vat, Sudden Spoiling, Sun Droplet, Otherworld Atlas, Harmonize

As I looked at my piles sorted by casting cost, I tried to pepper in some utility while keeping an eye on my mana curve. I originally thought about putting Greater Good in here, but I realized that I had quite a few Doranesque creatures with little to no power and decided on Otherworld Atlas instead.

The split second heroes, Krosan Grip and Sudden Spoiling, are just such good fail-safe answers when nothing else will work, and Mimic Vat is an all-star!

Sensei’s Divining Top

Jund Panorama, Naya Panorama

I’ve mentioned my reasons for running Panoramas over fetchlands before, but I figured I’d mention it again for newer readers. In a game of Commander, especially if you’re running cards like Sensei’s Divining Top, Sylvan Library, and Scroll Rack, you want to be able to shuffle when you want to and not before. Yes, fetchlands can do that, but they don’t do anything if you hold off sacrificing them and cost you a land drop. The Panoramas are obviously slower and less flexible for mana fixing but still do an adequate job; you can hold off sacrificing them until you want the shuffle and in the meantime still use them for colorless mana.

There are some other cards I’d really like to find room for—Seedborn Muse, Auriok Salvagers, and Stonehewer Giant—but I don’t see equivalent mana-cost elements of the deck that I want to cut for them. Thoughts on the deck in the comments would be great!

If you’re within driving distance of Richmond and have a Commander deck using only Modern-legal cards, come on out! I still have four more Kamigawa Dragon legends awesomely altered by MJ Scott to give away. I talked about the Bennie Smith Spirit of EDH Haymaker Award here (The Hero’s Journey, where you can see pics of the cards as well) and was able to give away the Kokusho, the Evening Star at the last tournament. The rules to win the award are pretty simple: kill one or more opponents in such an epic and awesome way that they enjoyed themselves nearly as much as you did. Your victim must then nominate you and have a majority of the rest of the table confirm it.

What’s considered epic and awesome? Read The Hero’s Journey!

Here’s hoping I get to give away at least one more this Saturday and have an epic story or two to share!

Before I go, I want to give a shout-out to Jeremie De Witt. Last year he held a Magic tournament, Cards Against Cancer, to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He’s doing it again this year in September, so check out his website for this year’s event and either make plans to be there or, if you can, chip in something to help make it even more awesome than last year!!!

Take care,

Bennie

starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com

Make sure to follow my Twitter feed (@blairwitchgreen). I check it often so feel free to send me feedback, ideas, and random thoughts. I’ve also created a Facebook page where I’ll be posting up deck ideas and will happily discuss Magic, life, or anything else you want to talk about!

New to Commander?
If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

My current Commander decks (and links to decklists):

Previous Commander decks currently on hiatus: