MTG Salvation

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Damia, Sage of Stone is one of those cards that is an absolute smashing if it resolves and sticks around for any amount of time, but I feel that its high casting cost and the success of other Commanders that have infinite combo potential in the same set leave Damia with a bit of an inferiority complex. It's not like Damia can help any of these things (casting cost or the quality of the commanders that were released in the same se), but comparisons will be made nonetheless. I think that Damia has a lot more going for it than most people realize even if she doesn't have an obvious linear direction to push the deck or cards to infinitely combo with. One of these is the relative certainty that your hand will be full in the mid to late game (if you can survive that long). With this in mind, I went about looking for cards to take advantage of this fact.

The answer was Maro; or more specifically, the class of cards that utilize the ability to raise their power/toughness based on the number of cards in hand. Coupled with Damia and all the other card drawing the deck can do, we can make for some awfully big creatures. Of course, there are some Maro's that are not good enough to include (Sylvan Yeti from Portal and the original Maro), but the other 8 are all very good beaters and they all have great secondary abilities. If there is a "theme" to this deck, it would be Maro.

The other way to take advantage of this was to find a way to keep playing as many cards as possible each turn and emptying my hand of cards so as to maximize my draw from Damia. With cheap ramp spells we can accomplish this, but it also helps a lot to run lots of ways to play excess lands. You can take this theme to an extreme if you want to (by playing lots of cards with Landfall, cards like Horn of Greed, etc.), but I chose to keep it a minor theme and really just focus on creating a deck that can accelerate out mana sources to accomplish other ends.

As far as those other ends are concerned, I chose to work the deck into a control deck. Lots and lots of removal, counters, and ways to generate card advantage. Although I keep the amount of tutoring to a minimum, I use a lot of redundant and/or flexible answers so as to make sure I'm not left overly exposed at any one time. The key is to be picky as to what to use my cards to remove and to make sure that he way is clear for Damia to refill my hand when needed.

Updated through M19 - 7/13/2018

I've gotta say, I kind of hate the Maro theme. Damia decks are interesting in that their commander is a source of draw that will replace lost cards - this means that cards don't need to replace themselves. If I were you, I would build a deck with hyperefficient ramp and other ways to dump your hand quick to be refilled (looking at you, Lion's Eye Diamond). Then use Damia to refill your hand and draw into a few of your truly powerful cards. If you want to go infinite combo from there, it's not hard to port in some number of Deadeye Navigator combos (Eternal Witness + Time Warp, Palinchron, etc) or some convoluted Living Death + Phyrexian Arena combo.

Quote from razzliox »

I've gotta say, I kind of hate the Maro theme.

No problem. I totally see your point. I guess its more a matter of taste and playstyle than anything else. I could easily replace the 6 worst Maros (because Kagemaro and Psychosis Crawler are awesome) with Demonic tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical tutor, Tooth and Nail, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, and Triskelion, and this would be a much deadlier deck. I could tweak some of the other choices to include more fast mana, more tutors, cards like Recycle, Null Profusion, and Cadaverous Bloom, a Cabal Coffers/Exsanguinate plan, and potentially more combo engines. But part of the fascination with this format for me is the deckbuilding process of seeing a theme or group of cards and finding ways to make them fun to play with. This was always a Maro deck first, and a Damia deck second. If there is a way to make this a better Maro deck, I'd like to explore that avenue first.

Some cards have gone into this deck since I last posted:

Fate Reforged
Tasigur, the Golden Fang - This card is pretty bananas and deserved a spot in the deck.

Dragons of Tarkir
Silumgar's Command] - I tried this out for a bit and decided it was too expensive for the added flexibility.

Magic Origins
Alhammarret's Archive - Synergizes nicely with Damia and my Maros grow to epic proportions with this out, but this felt too much like a 'win-more' card here.

Battle for Zendikar
Nada.

Commander 2015
Mystic Confluence - This card is great.

Oath of the Gatewatch
Zip..

Shadows Over Innistrad
Sage of Ancient Lore - This is why its important to go though my notes. I had intended to get a copy of this card and put it in right away, but I apparently never have. That oversight will be rectified immediately as this is exactly the kind of card the deck's theme wants.
The Gitrog Monster - This deck loves extra land drops, but overall I don't think the deck wants to really sacrifice lands.

Eldritch Moon
Zero... although Ishkana, Grafwidow at least made me think for a bit.

Conspiracy: Take the Crown
Leovold, Emissary of Trest - A little bit of disruption never hurt anyone.

Kaladesh
Rashmi, Eternities Crafter - Card is ridiculous.
Torrential Gearhulk - I at least wanted to try it out here. This is probably the best Gearhulk for EDH and this is a solid deck to test it in.

Commander 2016
Thrasios, Triton Hero - The cost is very reasonable and gets you ton of value.

Aether Revolt
Disallow - This is probably a straight-up trade in for Voidslime.

To be continued...

Amonkhet has brought some interesting cards to the mix:

Kefnet the Mindful - Almost strictly better than Soramaro, First to Dream. The two are very similar, but the big draw to both of them is e abilit to +2/+2 all my Maro's for 4 mana.
Rhonas the Indomitable - The ability to grant Trample on-demand seems great here (especially to Damia who has Deathtouch), and I'll almost always have a creature in play to make this a creature (especially given that Damia by herself does the trick).
Cascading Cataracts - My mana requirements are always super-greedy, and thsi deck is no different. In order to cast everything, I need triple-blue, triple-black, and triple-green... There is a lot of mana fixing in the deck to compensate for this, but I'm wondering if something like Cascading Cataracts might be able to help.

Recent cards that have seen some play in the deck:

Amonkhet
Kefnet the Mindful - With all the ways to play land out of my hand, the drawback is hardly a drawback at all. Nice addition to the deck.

Hour of Devastation
Nothing. Ramunap Excavator seemed like a possibility.

Commander 2017
Taigam, Sidisi's Hand - For a deck that already has plans for skipping it's draw step, this card seemed like a natural fit. It was rather underwhelming in action.

Ixalan
Tishana, Voice of Thunder - A little expensive, but it replaces itself and 7 mana is okay to get to in this deck.
Enter the Unknown - This was kinda meh. Needing a creature in play is a big drawnback.

Rivals of Ixalan
Wayward Swordtooth - Getting to 10 or more permanents actually happens a lot more than I thought with this deck as long as I'm ramping out lands. This helps with the latter while taking advantage of the former all at a reasonable cost.

So I've ended up with the following:
+1 Kefnet the Mindful
+1 Wayward Swordtooth
+1 Tishana, Voice of Thunder
-1 Treasure Cruise - If I'm doing things right this is just not really needed by the time I can cast it, and Tishana does something very similar but more on theme.
-1 Divinier's Wand - Fell into the "too cute" category.
-1 Scroll Rack - I didn't need the 3rd way to manipulate the top of my library (with Sensei's Divining Top and Sylvan Library being the other two).

Very nice. I love that you still actively curate this deck after all this time.

I have actually been looking for an interesting Sultai deck for a while now, and never found a theme that really spoke to me. I like this a lot - maybe I will dabble with a similar build one of these days.

Quote from CasualCalamity1 »

Very nice. I love that you still actively curate this deck after all this time.

I have actually been looking for an interesting Sultai deck for a while now, and never found a theme that really spoke to me. I like this a lot - maybe I will dabble with a similar build one of these days.

So many people don’t like the Maro theme as it feels a lot like the deck is just full of big beaters that don’t do anything except eat removal. To a certain extent, they are right; I usually ask more of my cards than that. But I look at it as this is my Maro deck first and that I am building around them versus building around Damia; the two have some synergy together but that synergy supports the Maro theme and not the other way around. It comes across as very “Timmy” of me to take that stance, but in the end I have plenty of other decks that cater to my Johnny and Spike sensibilities. So if that sounds like your style, then I say go for it.

So with this deck, I'm always looking for ways to ether add more Maro-type cards or more ways to support when the deck likes to do. Given that this is a somewhat underpowered deck compares to my others, I'm less concerned with outright power versus cards that help make my Maro's huge and/or take advantage of Damia's ability (although I'm careful not to build too much around Damia as she will eat removal often). With that said, the threshold to make it into the deck is kinda high so I didn't really try some things that I normally would just because I knew that they wouldn't make it long term. So with that, there were plenty of cards that I have tried from the last few sets:

Dominaria
Blackblade Reforged - With 10 other Legendary creatures other than Damia, this seemed like a reasonable card to try out. The deck likes to vomit lands onto the table so the bonus is potentially huge, and the number of land drops I hit also helps pay for equipping this to non-Legends. There was a little issue running this in conjunction with the Maro cards and Empyrial Plate where one card was encouraging me to run out lands pre=combat and the others were encouraging me to hold them till after combat, so I decided to pull it. But it's a very playable card here, especially if you run even more legends.
Blink of an Eye - Given that I already run Into the Roil, this seemed worth at least trying out to see if having more of this effect was better. It honestly made me consider running neither more than running both.
Demonlord Belzenlok - This is a great card for any deck that plays enough 4+ drops to hit 2+ cards enough of the time, but honestly it is good enough to see play in pretty much any deck that plays black given that it always replaces itself.
Muldrotha, the Gravetide - I really like this card, and even though the deck isn't necessarily set up to take full advantage of its ability (no artifacts or enchantments that sac for value, etc.) the card is very good even when you are just recurring a creature and a land each turn. I run a lot of fetches already to help fix the mana, and the deck runs 34-36 creatures so there are often always things to play.
Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar - So I liked that this can get big, has Trample, and can +3/+3 my Maros if it's in the graveyard, but this ended up having a similar problem to Blackblade Reforged in that the lands in play count was competing with the cards in hand count.
Tatyova, Benthic Druid - This card is really good and it is particularly nuts here where I am playing a ton of extra land drop cards.

Battlebond
Arcane Artisan - I was really high on this card when it was first spoiled, but I've since cooled on it dramatically.
Bramble Sovereign - This is an excellent way to generate card advantage without mucking up what you are doing with Damia and a way to get multiple threats on the board while keeping card in hand. The only issue is that this is essentially an added cost to each subsequent creature, so the creatures worth copying must be reasonably costed. The good news is that most of the stuff that gets copied costs 5 or less, as almost all the 6+ drops are Legendary so this ends up being a good way to create a larger board presence without otherwise over-committing.
Toothy, Imaginary Friend - This plays out a lot like Chasm Skulker and Lorescale Coatl and is an excellent addition to the deck.
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma - So the power/toughness of a Maro is the same in all zones, so this will lower the cost of any of them as long as I have 4 other cards in hand. Furthermore, it will give them Trample and +1/+1 as well. I liked the abilities but was not impressed with the 4/3 body that came with it.

M19
Sadly, it doesn't look there is anything that this deck would be interested in running.

So in the end, I ended up with the following:
+1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid, -1 Damnation - I needed the Damnation for another deck I was building and I was never wanting to cast it when I drew it as this deck wants to create a board presence and force others to Wrath.
+1 Bramble Sovereign, -1 Sensei's Divining Top - I've been wanting to pull Top for a while.
+1 Toothy, Imaginary Friend, -1 Burgeoning - So Burgeoning is fine for the most part, but it would often be either a dead card or a win-more card enough for me to consider pulling it for a while now.