MTG Salvation

This thread is to record changes to my beloved Doran, the Siege Tower Commander deck. It also exists to collect feedback from others as to what they've been successful with and potentially provide suggestions to other curious players as well. Please don't hesitate to comment on any of my deckbuilding choices. Feedback is always appreciated unless it's "Noob, play this. *Doesn't give any reasons*".

Played with the deck a lot since putting it up here. Trusted Forcemage and Wolfir Silverheart are out. The Forcemage I didn't see making it for very long, but every time I had the Silverheart out I was wondering why I wasn't playing any other card. It didn't help Doran get anywhere and it didn't offer me any kind of utility unless I was in a state where "Bash your face every turn" was my best option.

I added Druid's Repository and Swords to Plowshares. The Repository is more of a test to see if it's worth anything. Free mana seems nice, but it might get hated out right away. Swords was an obvious addition. It had been in the deck in prior incarnations but was removed for one reason or another over time. It will probably see plenty of play in the deck and have a more permanent home now.

EDIT: In this same iteration, Vow of Malice was removed in favor of Praetor's Grasp.

Thornling is a champ in Doran I would think about finding a spot for it. It can use the bottom ability infinite times (no rule in the game says a creature cannot have negative power) plus he has a ton of other goodies

I would remove the Fellwar stone, a land would fit in its place better if you need the mana

Quote from l.odenbaugh

Thornling is a champ in Doran I would think about finding a spot for it. It can use the bottom ability infinite times (no rule in the game says a creature cannot have negative power) plus he has a ton of other goodies

I would remove the Fellwar stone, a land would fit in its place better if you need the mana

Ooh. Thornling is a great idea. I'll work on getting one of those right away. The synergy with Doran is perfect, and the activation that's relevant is colorless, so I can dump all of my mana into it if I need to.

As for Fellwar Stone, it's another mana rock that lets me ramp up to churn stuff out faster. Granted it won't always produce any color I want until someone lays down a prismatic land, but it pretty much functions as a colorless Rampant Growth. I'll take a cruise through the Gatherer and see if there's anything interesting that I could put in its place.

I always enjoyed a treefolk harbinger package with:

• Indomitable Ancients
  
• Rootgrapple
  
• Lignify
  
• Chameleon Colossus

Plus it gets Doran back, people love to tuck that guy.

And if you have it in your opener, you can always put a forest or murmuring bosk on top.

One of :symb::symg::symw:'s greatest strengths, imho, is access to arguably the best removal suite in all of EDH. Mortify, Maelstrom Pulse, and Vindicate would all be great inclusions that give you a lot of flexibility. I understand if they've just not been included due to the cost of the latter two.

EDIT: Path to Exile should almost certainly come in alongside Swords to Plowshares, too.

Quote from sH0opdAwoOp

One of :symb::symg::symw:'s greatest strengths, imho, is access to arguably the best removal suite in all of EDH. Mortify, Maelstrom Pulse, and Vindicate would all be great inclusions that give you a lot of flexibility. I understand if they've just not been included due to the cost of the latter two.

EDIT: Path to Exile should almost certainly come in alongside Swords to Plowshares, too.

This. About a million times, this.

Also, have you given consideration to hand disruption effects, such as Thoughtsieze, Duress, Cabal Therapy? The effects are hardly terrible and (for the cost, at least) are great proactive solutions to many problematic cards.
The lack of Krosan Grip or Nature's Claim is really surprising.

Honestly, this feels less like a Doran list and more like a WGB goodstuff list. Have you considered other generals, like Karador or the WGB dragon?

Quote from Elvish Sniper

I always enjoyed a treefolk harbinger package with:

• Indomitable Ancients
  
• Rootgrapple
  
• Lignify
  
• Chameleon Colossus

Plus it gets Doran back, people love to tuck that guy.

And if you have it in your opener, you can always put a forest or murmuring bosk on top.

It wasn't too long ago that Chameleon Colossus was in the same slot that I had Wolfir Silverheart in. I was sorta playing around with that spot in the deck at the time, but since it's original incarnation it had the Colossus in. I did run Lignify and Rootgrapple in the beginning as well, but that was so long ago that I can't remember why they were removed in the first place. Indomitable Ancients never really crossed my mind, but sounds interesting.

Quote from sH0opdAwoOp

One of :symb::symg::symw:'s greatest strengths, imho, is access to arguably the best removal suite in all of EDH. Mortify, Maelstrom Pulse, and Vindicate would all be great inclusions that give you a lot of flexibility. I understand if they've just not been included due to the cost of the latter two.

EDIT: Path to Exile should almost certainly come in alongside Swords to Plowshares, too.

Mortify is another card that was in, but was taken out for something so long ago that I can't remember what for or why for. The other two hadn't crossed my mind until just recently, simply because our playgroup didn't have them so they weren't ever on my mind. Maelstrom Pulse is one that I played against last week and has been on my radar since then.

Insert some comment about Path here that ends up being an excuse for not playing it. I'm not certain what my reasons are currently for not including the card.

Quote from Jack_from_NC

This. About a million times, this.

Also, have you given consideration to hand disruption effects, such as Thoughtsieze, Duress, Cabal Therapy? The effects are hardly terrible and (for the cost, at least) are great proactive solutions to many problematic cards.
The lack of Krosan Grip or Nature's Claim is really surprising.

Honestly, this feels less like a Doran list and more like a WGB goodstuff list. Have you considered other generals, like Karador or the WGB dragon?

I have not given much thought to hand disruption in the deck, even back when (To answer your last question at the same time) the deck was Teneb, the Harvester. I do posses the Counterpunch deck, so Karador has also crossed my mind once or twice, but I really like the speed that Doran offers, as well as the random off-the-wall synergies with Doran that pop up. There's so many times where I'm looking at cards that everyone in my playgroup evaluates as bad that I'm just like "Wow. This is perfect for Doran."

Nature's Claim was a card I didn't know existed until just now, and Krosan Grip was one that's been on my mind since I included it in a different green deck of mine just recently. I'm looking for another copy of it now. As for the deck feeling like WGB Goodstuff.deck, I had made a whole slew of changes before recording the deck here that changed the focus away from synergy with Doran to Goodstuffaggro.deck. After making those changes I realized that I should be recording all of this so I can go back with 100% accuracy if I feel like I really screwed up.

Unfortunately, I don't get to play as much as I used to, so the deck doesn't evolve as fast as it did before.

Quote from Jack_from_NC

Honestly, this feels less like a Doran list and more like a WGB goodstuff list. Have you considered other generals, like Karador or the WGB dragon?

I feel like Doran makes for a really good :symb::symg::symw: goodstuff control general, since his presence on the board alone jacks up a lot of aggro and/or voltron strategies. I think Karador needs to be built around a lot more than Doran does, and folds to graveyard hate, and Teneb is kinda meh in my opinion.

tl;dr - I think Doran is good even when just played for his colors.

Updates and thoughts with my current build:

Druids' Repository out and Solidarity in. The idea of more mana was cool, but it got hit too often either just because it was there or because my opponents didn't want me to have free mana. Not to mention that in the late game it didn't matter as much while in the early game it didn't pack a big enough punch compared to other things I wanted to play. I replaced it with Solidarity because a white semi-overrun at instant speed seems legit.

I've been toying with the idea of removing Genesis Wave after a couple weeks ago when it failed on me a couple times. I essentially gave my opponents free turns because a wave for 12 hit 3 lands and a mana rock. Genesis Wave can be powerful, but it can also completely miss, and I don't like it when things just completely miss like that.

I've also been thinking about running more basics than I'm running now as well. This would give my fetch spells some better use than shuffling later in the game and stop plays that hate on non-basics.

Another thought was running Dark Impostor for removal and utility. During a game last week I realized that a Dark Impostor can become a Fertilid that puts more counters on itself if I still need fixing and it can take my opponent's creatures with good activated abilities. Given that I have a preference for exile removal, this fits right into my philosophy regarding that.

WHY I'M NOT RUNNING PATH TO EXILE: This deck hates ramping my opponents. I remember now that I was running Path in an early version of the deck (Right after it went from Teneb to Doran) and the land from Path kept coming back to hurt me. Sure, it's removal that doesn't make your opponent hate you as much, but this deck needs to race. Giving my opponent a leg up doesn't help at all.

Updated with changes made since my last update! I've been playing less and less Magic with my normal playgroup, but have found another playgroup recently that might be interested in playing Commander.

The deck is listing back towards Doran synergies now, which I've found make the deck a lot more fun to pilot, sorta bringing me back to the original nature of the deck in the first place.

I cut one of my favorite cards (Fertilid) in favor of some other, more powerful effects, especially for the late game. Fertilid ends up being a 2/2 for 3 that can shrink to shuffle my library in the late game, which isn't that appealing.

Everyone's advice has been taken into account, and I had actually acquired a few of the cards mentioned (Maelstrom Pulse, specifically) but ended up trading most of them away almost as soon as they were gathered in favor of helping out one of my newer decks.

Tower Defense is strictly better than Solidarity.

Is there a reason why you're running mana rocks over green ramp spells?

Also, have you considered looking to black for some draw spells?

CatParty has been a great help to me with my Doran deck and Ive never found his suggestions not useful

Ive been playing Doran a long time and never went good stuff with him, I have tried Tribal....Purely Big Butts, then the concept I currently have. I can say that I do like what you are running with. As said before you will probably benefit greatly from running more removal, which the colors you are in has some of the best.

My experience with playing green is you rarely need Mana Rocks, the ramp tends to be more than enough to get the deck running and running well. The problem running mana rocks over ramp is there is alot of Artifact hate out there, not so much land hate.


The most fun Ive had with Doran is the Huge Power Hate build I am currently running. Doran distrubs so much of the game by being out and you can take it a even step further. But running the same power/toughness creatures also in return makes your deck run with or without doran.

Once you're running all the 2cmc Rampant Growth variants, I would run 2cmc mana rocks before looking at 3cmc ramp. If you're trying to be as aggressive as possible there is only one spell you want to cast on turn three, and that's Doran. By dropping a mana rock on turn 2 you're casting Doran on turn 3 and potentially dropping and equipping a sword on him turn 4 then swinging.

This is less crucial in this build, because it doesn't look like Brushwagg is as worried about getting Doran into play as soon as possible, but worth noting.

To OP:

Summoner's Pact --> Eladmri's Call
Unmake --> Path to Exile
Ambition's Cost or Harmonize --> Read the Bones (IMO Scry 2 is worth one less card)
Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse --> On-color shocks (which I assume you don't own or else you'd be playing them)

I'll also second the use of Thornling that was mentioned earlier. Pet favorites of mine include Skinshifter and Oathsworn Giant.