MTG Salvation

Djeru, With Eyes Open 3WW
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior

Vigilance
When Djeru, With Eyes Open enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a planeswalker card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
If a source would deal damage to a planeswalker you control, prevent 1 of that damage.

4/3

Okay, so we've all heard of the rumbling of Gideon tribal finally having its own commander, but I think this analysis of Djeru is rather disingenuous. When I look at Djeru, there is a much more interesting commander than what people are giving credit for. I see him as a non-competitive Mono-W toolbox commander, ala Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero. The key difference being that while Djeru can only tutor once into hand his cards that he pulls are of a much higher power level. The mono-W planeswalker cards give us an idea on what our route to victory is going to be. We can either go for either a Voltron style kill, via cards like Ajani Steadfast and Elspeth Tirel, or a Token Swarm kill with Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar.

Anyways enough rambling,
LET'S BREW!!!

Edit: I've updated the original list to include more cards, and made the categories more clear

I obviously don't have any experience with this deck, but you should be wary of running so many walkers with the same type. I think Ajani Goldmane, Elspeth Tirel, Gideon, Champion of Justice and Gideon, Martial Paragon are subpar compared to their other versions. Given that you can tutor for the better copies anyway, I don't see why you would run them? Looking at the walkers in general, they all buff other creatures or are just good cards to begin with, so i think this is more of a "package" that you can fit into some other creature shell if Djeru is your commander. I think that will make the deck better because you don't need to run so much of the PW protection cards that "normal" superfriends decks require.



Wether you want to run Nahiri, the Lithomancer as well depends on the rest of the deck. One possible direction is Human Tribal, given that Djeru is a Human himself, or some token strategy as you suggest. If you do want to focus more on the PW aspect, Palisade Giant, Leyline of Sanctity and Ivory Mask are good cards to include to protect them better, as would be some fog effects.

Conjurer's Clost and Eldrazi Displacer are good combo's with Djeru, as is Panharmonicon, though the latter only if more cards in the deck are helped by it.

Sorry, I was just listing all of the cards that could interact with him, mainly because the actual subset of cards is so low. This was meant as more of a thought experiment then anything else. Granted, that Palisade Giant is something spicy for a Planeswalker focused deck. On the other hand, I don't think giving oneself shroud or hexproof is nearly as poignant in a 40 life, especially since I often see more "Destroy target permanent" floating opposed to direct damage and that the hexproof/shroud does not protect the Planeswalkers.

Eldrazi Displacer and Panharmonicon are also intriguing ideas. Conjurer's Closest is odd though as I often find it too slow, and would think something with more generic card draw like Staff of Nin would be the better choice. Granted, as I said this is more theory than definitive what goes in the deck list. As long as people keep throwing ideas my way I'll try to update and refine my initial list.

Quote from ChaosNomad »

Sorry, I was just listing all of the cards that could interact with him, mainly because the actual subset of cards is so low. This was meant as more of a thought experiment then anything else. Granted, that Palisade Giant is something spicy for a Planeswalker focused deck. On the other hand, I don't think giving oneself shroud or hexproof is nearly as poignant in a 40 life, especially since I often see more "Destroy target permanent" floating opposed to direct damage and that the hexproof/shroud does not protect the Planeswalkers.

Hey no sorry required, this is what this board is for. As for making yourself untargetable, I do find it neccesary to keep PW's on the board, if only because Saskia the Unyielding is always being played in my meta and you can forget about sticking any PW once you have a Saskia target on your head. Opponents will happily take some damage from the Saskia player to sweep your board clear of walkers. Then again, that's a meta thing I guess.

Quote from ChaosNomad »

Eldrazi Displacer and Panharmonicon are also intriguing ideas. Conjurer's Closest is odd though as I often find it too slow, and would think something with more generic card draw like Staff of Nin would be the better choice. Granted, as I said this is more theory than definitive what goes in the deck list. As long as people keep throwing ideas my way I'll try to update and refine my initial list.

One would not rule out the other, and with faster decks you might be right. But given that the Pw's themselves are all in the 4 - 8 mana range you're not going to play more than one per turn, which is conveniently the pace with which the closet will keep providing them.

Quote from Ertai Planeswalker »

Quote from ChaosNomad »

Sorry, I was just listing all of the cards that could interact with him, mainly because the actual subset of cards is so low. This was meant as more of a thought experiment then anything else. Granted, that Palisade Giant is something spicy for a Planeswalker focused deck. On the other hand, I don't think giving oneself shroud or hexproof is nearly as poignant in a 40 life, especially since I often see more "Destroy target permanent" floating opposed to direct damage and that the hexproof/shroud does not protect the Planeswalkers.

Hey no sorry required, this is what this board is for. As for making yourself untargetable, I do find it neccesary to keep PW's on the board, if only because Saskia the Unyielding is always being played in my meta and you can forget about sticking any PW once you have a Saskia target on your head. Opponents will happily take some damage from the Saskia player to sweep your board clear of walkers. Then again, that's a meta thing I guess.

Saskia doesn't target, so she doesn't care about you having shroud or hexproof.

Maybe he could work as a commander for a sort of Mono-W Hatebears/control deck? Use lots of control elements to drag the game out and win with your PW and use him as a tutor to find your win con.

This seems like a good home for Mistveil Plains with the tutoring general. You already have Tithe listed there. If you're looking for more of those effects, Gift of Estates, Endless Horizons, Knight of the White Orchid, and Oreskos Explorer have always treated me well. You can generally keep up with the green decks over the long term. Mono-W walkers is unlikely to be anything but grindy, so you might as well build for the long game.

My biggest problem is that he's monowhite. He would be awesome in Atraxa superfriends, but forcing you into monowhite causes problems due to the planeswalker rule: Only one Gideon, one Ajani, one Elspeth, one Nahiri, one Karn, and one Ugin can be on the battlefield at once. (Obviously not a problem for some of those, but still...)

That said, look at the proliferate artifacts for a start.

Deploy the Gatewatch?
Call the Gatewatch?

Quote from Weebo »

This seems like a good home for Mistveil Plains with the tutoring general. You already have Tithe listed there. If you're looking for more of those effects, Gift of Estates, Endless Horizons, Knight of the White Orchid, and Oreskos Explorer have always treated me well. You can generally keep up with the green decks over the long term. Mono-W walkers is unlikely to be anything but grindy, so you might as well build for the long game.

Thank you, I've updated added those to the list

Quote from Randomguyism »

I'm really excited to work out a fun toolboxy deck around Djeru with some janky combos. Looking at producing artifact tokens and sacrificing them to Throne of Geth. Trying to work out if there is a good way to loop Gideon, Ally of Zendikar across a couple of turns to get untargetable anthem effects. Not very efficiant to shuffle him into library from graveyard and blink Djeru to tutor him up but it will feel good if I can pull it off.

If you want to do that I would look at Tel-Jilad Stylus.

Quote from Life_Weaver »

Deploy the Gatewatch?
Call the Gatewatch?

Call the Gatewatch is always an idea, and I've added it to my list. Deploy on the other hand is both inconsistent and has a high chance of hitting a Planeswalker we already have out, or hitting two of the same. This is due to the low planeswalker diversity that the deck would run. Something like that I don't see being a problem in a traditional Super Friends deck.

I feel like someone needs to make a Star Trek "Tamarian language" deck with Djeru at the helm.

• Kiteo, his eyes closed
• Mirab, with sails unfurled
• Shaka, when the walls fell
• Sokath, his eyes opened
• The river Temarc in winter
• Chenza at court, the court of silence

etc.

Quote from Randomguyism »

Think I may have found my favourite janky combo for this deck to get Gideon, Ally of Zendikar emblems each turn. Does this work?

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar + Oath of Gideon + Eldrazi Displacer

With Oath out Gideon enters with 5 loyalty so can immediately -4 and survive. On the following turn +1 Gideon to turn him into a creature and Blink with Eldrazi Displacer. Gideon returns to the battlefield with 5 loyalty again and can make another emblem.

I plan to be running ways to protect walkers and prevent people from attacking me so should be able to stack a few which can help turn Knight tokens from Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or Soldiers from Elspeth, Sun's Champion into threats later on.


Wondering also if access to Elspeth Tirel, Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon lessens the need to include many board wipes in the deck

Yes, that will work since the Gideon reentering the battlefield will be seen by the board as a new instance of Gideon, not the same one. Blink tricks work well to reuse PWs.

I would still run the usual Wrath of God since it is efficiently costed, Final Judgment/Descend Upon the Sinful/Hallowed Burial for indestructible, Martial Coup to make blockers (and benefit from emblems), and Austere Command/Akroma's Vengeance for artifacts and enchantments. Maybe not all of them, but a couple of those at least would help out a lot against varied threats.

I just read somewhere else that there's a rumour the PW rules will be changed and PW's will just follow the legendary rule instead (Speculation based on a certain Ixalan leak). If that would indeed happen, a Djeru deck could become a serious thing, as you can then run Gideon Tribal

Quote from Ertai Planeswalker »

I just read somewhere else that there's a rumour the PW rules will be changed and PW's will just follow the legendary rule instead (Speculation based on a certain Ixalan leak). If that would indeed happen, a Djeru deck could become a serious thing, as you can then run Gideon Tribal

If you're referring to the Jace whose ultimate makes token copies of Jace, the created tokens either don't have the Jace subtype or aren't planeswalkers (unclear which due to terrible photo). Both would allow multiple in play without losing them to the PW uniqueness rule.

Not sure if this is valid but I would want a couple of blinking effects to capitalize on misplays or Dejeru's tutor. Things like Restoration Angel. That way you can grab walkers faster so you can have a walker per turn.