" Among her devoted followers, Derevi is called the greatest commander the Shards have ever seen."
I finally started to put together a Bant deck once I decided that what I really wanted to do was to make a deck with Derevi, Empyrial Tactician at the helm without making it into a lockdown deck. I really wanted to focus on two things; A) making creatures with good combat triggered abilities unblockable so as to trigger Derevi as often as possible so I could B) use and reuse cards with cheap tap abilities to do cool things.
This is a work in progress, so I'm looking for any kind of input.
Update:
+1 Pentarch Paladin: Being able to destroy multiple cards of any color I need is a useful ability.
+1 Seedborn Muse: I needed to turbocharge the tapping/untapping
+1 Paradox Engine: More super-charging of the untapping and pure ridiculousness once I start drawing lots of cards.
+1 Key to the City: A better sourse of unblockability plus some card filtering.
+1 Rootwater Hunter: I really like how the pingers play out in this deck, so I wanted more of them.
+1 Samite Archer: Another good pinger
+1 Fledgling Mawcor: Moar pingers! I'm even tempted to try the original Mawcor
-1 Keeper of Keys: I decided this was the least useful of my current options and I wanted to run Key to the City
-1 Mangara of Corondor: This was nice to tutor up with Sisay for a removal spell, but you really can't use it to kill multiple cards without Elixir (unless I add something like Illusionist's Bracers)
-1 Sylvan Library: This deck is always drawing cards so this is unnecessary.
-1 Capsize: There were no good time to really want to play this with buyback and there was a card that was more in-theme that I wanted to add (Paladin).
-1 Skyward Eye Prophets: A little too expensive to be good
-1 Experiment Kraj: Not a bad card, but a little out of place
-1 Elvish Piper: Good effect in a vacuum, but in the context of this deck it turns out to be not so great
2/8/2018:
+1 Basilisk Collar - Thanks to Jusstice for the suggestion, the Deathtouch combos nicely with the pingers in the deck.
+1 Murkfiend Liege - Untapping my creatures is what this deck is all about, so this card goes right in.
+1 Quest for Renewal - Another card that will untap all my creatures over and over.
-1 Umezawa's Jitte - This was part of the equipment package that was searchable with both Stoneforge Mystic and Captain Sisay, but Basilisk Collar is just a better equipment for this deck.
-1 Azor's Gateway - I'm trying this card in a lot of decks, so I'm going to pull it from here to make space.
-1 Open Into Wonder - Great little card that I'm pulling basically to make space because it's a one-shot effect.
The deck breaks down into a few categories: Cards with Tap Abilities
This is the primary class of cards that I wanted to focus on. I included all the free pingers that didn’t have a restriction on when they can be used, as well as plenty of card advantage cards and some cool interactions such as Beguiler of Wills and Kazandu Tuskcaller. There were a lot less options out there than I thought, so I’m wondering if I missed anything.
I didn’t want to go too crazy here, but I wanted to take advantage of creating creatures with unblockability and or protection from the color of the defending player in order to draw more cards, etc.
These seem like the best ways to grant abilities to make my creatures effectively unblockable by my opponent. Combined with the Swords and various bounce/removal, I’m able to connect with my creatures and generate plenty of untap triggers.
The deck has a ton of 3-drops, so dropping a turn 1 mana dork can go a long way here. Plus, they can all carry equipment and get in for early attacks if need be.
A few cards to round out the deck. Exploration will help once the cards start flowing, Sylvan Library is just cheap and good card selection/draw, and Elixir is for doubling-up on tap abilities.
Cards I Want to Avoid Stasis effects – I don’t want this to turn into a “typical” competitive version of Derevi. Intruder Alarm – There would be too many ways to go infinite. Kiora's Follower effect – There is some value for including more untap effects, but I don’t want to add a whole other class of cards to the deck. Seedborn Muse, Murkfiend Liege, Bear Umbra – These may go into the deck eventually, but I want to start without them and see how it goes.
Update:
-1 Keeper of Keys: I decided this was the least useful of my current options and I wanted to run Key to the City
-1 Mangara of Corondor: This was nice to tutor up with Sisay for a removal spell, but you really can't use it to kill multiple cards without Elixir (unless I add something like Illusionist's Bracers)
-1 Sylvan Library: This deck is always drawing cards so this is unnecessary.
-1 Capsize: There were no good time to really want to play this with buyback and there was a card that was more in-theme that I wanted to add (Paladin).
+1 Pentarch Paladin: Being able to destroy multiple cards of any color I need is a useful ability.
+1 Seedborn Muse: I needed to turbocharge the tapping/untapping
+1 Paradox Engine: More super-charging of the untapping and pure ridiculousness once I start drawing lots of cards.
+1 Key to the City: A better sourse of unblockability plus some card filtering.
EDIT:
I'm also changing the following:
+1 Rootwater Hunter: I really like how the pingers play out in this deck, so I wanted more of them.
+1 Samite Archer: Another good pinger
+1 Fledgling Mawcor: Moar pingers! I'm even tempted to try the original Mawcor
-1 Skyward Eye Prophets: A little too expensive to be good
-1 Experiment Kraj: Not a bad card, but a little out of place
-1 Elvish Piper: Good effect in a vacuum, but in the context of this deck it turns out to be not so great
I am very interested in your approach, and I will check it out in detail later. Derevi is just such a cool commander, but tends to bother playgroups and be the archenemy by default if she's built around taxing.
The very big concern I have with your build is how you defend yourself from regular mass removal. Building for the board with that low density of permission looks alarming in my eyes if you don't play in a playgroup where that is not a frequent occurance. How's your experience with that?
It's a problem. It's one of those things that happens with a lot of my decks where there is a somewhat glaring problem that I have to mitigate through gameplay versus deck construction. For this deck, I either have to be generating a ton of cards to justify extending my board presence or I have to hold some back in reserve. The good news is that there are tons of ways to generate card advantage in the deck. I'm considering replacing Bant Charm with a better counterspell (one that can counter a Wrath) so that I can protect a winning position, but I agree that only having 3 other counters (Counterspell, Disallow, and Glen Elendra Archmage) is probably too few.
Hour of Devastation
Sadly, nothing was worth including here. I had high hopes for some of the exert cards, but none of them had abilities worth trying to exploit.
Commander 2017 Curse of Bounty - I really like this card in principle, but giving that much incentive for one player to attack another player is playing a dangerous game from a political standpoint although in some cases, other players would NOT want to attack the cursed player knowing that I would get to untap everything. Galecaster Colossus - Card is ridiculously good at getting blockers out of the way and generally causing havoc with opposing gameplans, it is well worth being one of the few 7-drops in the deck. Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith - So this is likely better than [s]Stonehewer Giant[/c] for tutoring up equipment, but the tapping down of opposing creatures when I swing with equipped creatures is right up this deck's alley.
Ixalan Deadeye Quartermaster - Another good replacement for Equipment tutoring, but otherwise unexciting. Growing Rites of Itmiloc - I'm stuffing this into as many decks as I can, and in a deck with this many creatures it does not disappoint. Herald of Secret Streams - I really like the idea of this one, but I'm not rocking much in the way of +1/+1 counters (Mikaeus, the Unhallowed being the only one who dabbles in such things). I once had Experiment Kraj in the deck, and UG has tons of ways to dole out +1/+1 counters, but I think I'm just going to reserve those shenanigans for my Vorel deck. Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage - Th ultimate is not very good, but both +1 abilities are excellent here.
Rivals of Ixalan Azor's Gateway - This is another card that has seemingly gone into several decks. It's been very good where it makes lots of sense, and in a deck that runs multiple ways to untap it this should be very good here.
Keeper of Keys and Venser, the Sojourner are both good cards I hadn't thought of for my similar Derevi deck I'd been toying with but never quite finishing.
Seaside Haven is a good sac outlet for Derevi herself, and a fantastic mana sink later in the game since Derevi can untap it on ETB.
I never really thought of generating tokens to maximize Derevi triggers that way, but that makes some sense. I like the idea of Squirrel Nest over Myr Turbine due to mana cost, but I would have to take a hard look at the rest of the deck to see if that would fit.
Acorn Catapult is also fun as a dual-purpose token-maker and pinger.
I'm not a fan of Acorn Catapult. I think it's a fun way to trigger Fungusaur or recently printed Enrage cards (Dinosaur/Squirrel Tribal anyone?), but I would have to be going really deep before going there.
I like silly and effective... with that said, I like Lux Cannon. I'm in the process of actually finalizing a Karn or Kozilek colorless deck that will likely feature some charge counter shenanigans (and likely some Myr Tribal stuff, so Myr Turbine might make an appearance there), so Lux Cannon is sorta slated for that deck.
Keeper of Keys and Venser, the Sojourner are both good cards I hadn't thought of for my similar Derevi deck I'd been toying with but never quite finishing.
Keeper of Keys is interesting because it adds a layer to the game (namely, The Monarch) that you often don't normally see. This deck is surprisingly well equipped to being the Monarch and keeping that status barring everyone ganging up on you. Overall, I've found enough other options that this no longer fit in the deck. Venser, the Sojourner is just an awesome card (for Multiplayer EDH at least). The +2 doesn't have a ton of targets in my current configuration (and I just pulled one in Mulldrifter), but it is still a great ability even if you are just blinking Derevi to get another untap. The -1 is the primary usage and the biggest reason I run him. The -8 is also quite nasty, but not totally "I win".
Seaside Haven is a good sac outlet for Derevi herself, and a fantastic mana sink later in the game since Derevi can untap it on ETB.
I like the idea of doing that. Plus I don't think I play that card anywhere, so it would be good to include that here.
Another thing I've been considering (mostly due to how good Paradox Engine has been) is running more potential ways to untap my creatures. Cards like Awakening, Gideon, Martial Paragon, Murkfiend Liege, and Quest for Renewal all seem like good candidates for the deck (with the last three being the better options).
I finally started to put together a Bant deck once I decided that what I really wanted to do was to make a deck with Derevi, Empyrial Tactician at the helm without making it into a lockdown deck. I really wanted to focus on two things; A) making creatures with good combat triggered abilities unblockable so as to trigger Derevi as often as possible so I could B) use and reuse cards with cheap tap abilities to do cool things.
This is a work in progress, so I'm looking for any kind of input.
Update through Rivals of Ixalan - 2/8/2018
1 Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
Creatures - 40
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Joraga Treespeaker
1 Kazandu Tuskcaller
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Augury Adept
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1 Trygon Predator
1 Cephalid Constable
1 Cold-Eyed Selkie
1 Kaseto, Orochi Archmage
1 Spawnwrithe
1 Surrakar Spellblade
1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
1 Ertai, Wizard Adept
1 Rootwater Hunter
1 Prodigal Sorcerer
1 Suq'Ata Firewalker
1 Thornwind Faeries
1 Zuran Spellcaster
1 Samite Archer
1 Captain Sisay
1 Tradewind Rider
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Beguiler of Wills
1 Azami, Lady of Scrolls
1 Pentarch Paladin
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Murkfiend Liege
1 Medomai the Ageless
1 Arcanis the Omnipotent
1 Sunblast Angel
1 Sun Quan, Lord of Wu
1 Archetype of Imagination
1 Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
1 Galecaster Colossus
1 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
1 Exploration
1 Quest for Renewal
1 Growing Rites if Itlimoc
Planeswalkers - 2
1 Venser, the Sojourner
1 Jace, Ingenious Mind-MAge
Instant/Sorcery - 10
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Path to Exile
1 Counterspell
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Council's Judgment
1 Beast Within
1 Disallow
1 Bant Charm
1 Cultivate
1 Kodama's Reach
Artifacts - 9
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Key to the City
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Paradox Engine
Lands – 35
1 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Tropical Island
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Flooded Strand
1 Windswept Heath
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mystic Gate
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Flooded Grove
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Command Tower
1 Temple of the False God
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Krosan Verge
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Plains
5 Island
5 Forest
Update:
+1 Pentarch Paladin: Being able to destroy multiple cards of any color I need is a useful ability.
+1 Seedborn Muse: I needed to turbocharge the tapping/untapping
+1 Paradox Engine: More super-charging of the untapping and pure ridiculousness once I start drawing lots of cards.
+1 Key to the City: A better sourse of unblockability plus some card filtering.
+1 Rootwater Hunter: I really like how the pingers play out in this deck, so I wanted more of them.
+1 Samite Archer: Another good pinger
+1 Fledgling Mawcor: Moar pingers! I'm even tempted to try the original Mawcor
-1 Keeper of Keys: I decided this was the least useful of my current options and I wanted to run Key to the City
-1 Mangara of Corondor: This was nice to tutor up with Sisay for a removal spell, but you really can't use it to kill multiple cards without Elixir (unless I add something like Illusionist's Bracers)
-1 Sylvan Library: This deck is always drawing cards so this is unnecessary.
-1 Capsize: There were no good time to really want to play this with buyback and there was a card that was more in-theme that I wanted to add (Paladin).
-1 Skyward Eye Prophets: A little too expensive to be good
-1 Experiment Kraj: Not a bad card, but a little out of place
-1 Elvish Piper: Good effect in a vacuum, but in the context of this deck it turns out to be not so great
2/4/2018:
+1 Galecaster Colossus
+1 Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
+1 Growing Rites of Itmiloc
+1 Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage
+1 Azor's Gateway
+1 Dissipate - I also wanted to add another counterspell
-1 Surrakar Spellblade - I just don't run enough ways to get charge counters on this.
-1 Stonehewer Giant - This card has always been kinda meh and Nazahn is not a bad replacement
-1 Batterskull - Card just doesn't fit into what the deck is doing
-1 Fledgling Mawcor - I tried pretty much every reasonable pinger I could find, but 4 mana is just too much to pay for this.
-1 Staff of Nin - I needed to cut at least one 6-drop given that I'm adding two 6-drops and a 7-drop.
-1 Dragonlord Ojutai - One of least impressive cards of the ones that I run at 5+ mana.
-1 Reveka, Wizard Savant - I like this card, but I wanted to get the deck down to 99 cards.
2/8/2018:
+1 Basilisk Collar - Thanks to Jusstice for the suggestion, the Deathtouch combos nicely with the pingers in the deck.
+1 Murkfiend Liege - Untapping my creatures is what this deck is all about, so this card goes right in.
+1 Quest for Renewal - Another card that will untap all my creatures over and over.
-1 Umezawa's Jitte - This was part of the equipment package that was searchable with both Stoneforge Mystic and Captain Sisay, but Basilisk Collar is just a better equipment for this deck.
-1 Azor's Gateway - I'm trying this card in a lot of decks, so I'm going to pull it from here to make space.
-1 Open Into Wonder - Great little card that I'm pulling basically to make space because it's a one-shot effect.
The deck breaks down into a few categories:
Cards with Tap Abilities
This is the primary class of cards that I wanted to focus on. I included all the free pingers that didn’t have a restriction on when they can be used, as well as plenty of card advantage cards and some cool interactions such as Beguiler of Wills and Kazandu Tuskcaller. There were a lot less options out there than I thought, so I’m wondering if I missed anything.
Cards with Combat Damage Triggers
I didn’t want to go too crazy here, but I wanted to take advantage of creating creatures with unblockability and or protection from the color of the defending player in order to draw more cards, etc.
Card that Give Unblockability/Evasion
These seem like the best ways to grant abilities to make my creatures effectively unblockable by my opponent. Combined with the Swords and various bounce/removal, I’m able to connect with my creatures and generate plenty of untap triggers.
Ramp
The deck has a ton of 3-drops, so dropping a turn 1 mana dork can go a long way here. Plus, they can all carry equipment and get in for early attacks if need be.
Removal/Counters
Just the basics, but all very necessary for my creatures to be able to connect for combat damage. The pingers also go a long way here.
Equipment Package
I’d like to be able to fit in another Sword (probably War and Peace) and perhaps a Skullclamp, Illusionist's Bracers, or Behemoth Sledge.
Other
A few cards to round out the deck. Exploration will help once the cards start flowing, Sylvan Library is just cheap and good card selection/draw, and Elixir is for doubling-up on tap abilities.
Cards I Want to Avoid
Stasis effects – I don’t want this to turn into a “typical” competitive version of Derevi.
Intruder Alarm – There would be too many ways to go infinite.
Kiora's Follower effect – There is some value for including more untap effects, but I don’t want to add a whole other class of cards to the deck.
Seedborn Muse, Murkfiend Liege, Bear Umbra – These may go into the deck eventually, but I want to start without them and see how it goes.
-1 Keeper of Keys: I decided this was the least useful of my current options and I wanted to run Key to the City
-1 Mangara of Corondor: This was nice to tutor up with Sisay for a removal spell, but you really can't use it to kill multiple cards without Elixir (unless I add something like Illusionist's Bracers)
-1 Sylvan Library: This deck is always drawing cards so this is unnecessary.
-1 Capsize: There were no good time to really want to play this with buyback and there was a card that was more in-theme that I wanted to add (Paladin).
+1 Pentarch Paladin: Being able to destroy multiple cards of any color I need is a useful ability.
+1 Seedborn Muse: I needed to turbocharge the tapping/untapping
+1 Paradox Engine: More super-charging of the untapping and pure ridiculousness once I start drawing lots of cards.
+1 Key to the City: A better sourse of unblockability plus some card filtering.
EDIT:
I'm also changing the following:
+1 Rootwater Hunter: I really like how the pingers play out in this deck, so I wanted more of them.
+1 Samite Archer: Another good pinger
+1 Fledgling Mawcor: Moar pingers! I'm even tempted to try the original Mawcor
-1 Skyward Eye Prophets: A little too expensive to be good
-1 Experiment Kraj: Not a bad card, but a little out of place
-1 Elvish Piper: Good effect in a vacuum, but in the context of this deck it turns out to be not so great
It's a problem. It's one of those things that happens with a lot of my decks where there is a somewhat glaring problem that I have to mitigate through gameplay versus deck construction. For this deck, I either have to be generating a ton of cards to justify extending my board presence or I have to hold some back in reserve. The good news is that there are tons of ways to generate card advantage in the deck. I'm considering replacing Bant Charm with a better counterspell (one that can counter a Wrath) so that I can protect a winning position, but I agree that only having 3 other counters (Counterspell, Disallow, and Glen Elendra Archmage) is probably too few.
Hour of Devastation
Sadly, nothing was worth including here. I had high hopes for some of the exert cards, but none of them had abilities worth trying to exploit.
Commander 2017
Curse of Bounty - I really like this card in principle, but giving that much incentive for one player to attack another player is playing a dangerous game from a political standpoint although in some cases, other players would NOT want to attack the cursed player knowing that I would get to untap everything.
Galecaster Colossus - Card is ridiculously good at getting blockers out of the way and generally causing havoc with opposing gameplans, it is well worth being one of the few 7-drops in the deck.
Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith - So this is likely better than [s]Stonehewer Giant[/c] for tutoring up equipment, but the tapping down of opposing creatures when I swing with equipped creatures is right up this deck's alley.
Ixalan
Deadeye Quartermaster - Another good replacement for Equipment tutoring, but otherwise unexciting.
Growing Rites of Itmiloc - I'm stuffing this into as many decks as I can, and in a deck with this many creatures it does not disappoint.
Herald of Secret Streams - I really like the idea of this one, but I'm not rocking much in the way of +1/+1 counters (Mikaeus, the Unhallowed being the only one who dabbles in such things). I once had Experiment Kraj in the deck, and UG has tons of ways to dole out +1/+1 counters, but I think I'm just going to reserve those shenanigans for my Vorel deck.
Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage - Th ultimate is not very good, but both +1 abilities are excellent here.
Rivals of Ixalan
Azor's Gateway - This is another card that has seemingly gone into several decks. It's been very good where it makes lots of sense, and in a deck that runs multiple ways to untap it this should be very good here.
So with that I decided to go as follows:
+1 Galecaster Colossus
+1 Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
+1 Growing Rites of Itmiloc
+1 Jace, Ingenious Mind-Mage
+1 Azor's Gateway
-1 Stonehewer Giant - This card has always been kinda meh and Nazahn is not a bad replacement
-1 Batterskull - Card just doesn't fit into what the deck is doing
-1 Fledgling Mawcor - I tried pretty much every reasonable pinger I could find, but 4 mana is just too much to pay for this.
-1 Staff of Nin - I needed to cut at least one 6-drop given that I'm adding two 6-drops and a 7-drop.
-1 Dragonlord Ojutai - One of least impressive cards of the ones that I run at 5+ mana.
Acorn Catapult is also fun as a dual-purpose token-maker and pinger.
I also really like Otherworld Atlas and Grimoire of the Dead for tap effects, but those are more silly than effective. Lux Cannon isn't bad, but requires a lot of untaps.
Keeper of Keys and Venser, the Sojourner are both good cards I hadn't thought of for my similar Derevi deck I'd been toying with but never quite finishing.
Seaside Haven is a good sac outlet for Derevi herself, and a fantastic mana sink later in the game since Derevi can untap it on ETB.
- Rabid Wombat
I never really thought of generating tokens to maximize Derevi triggers that way, but that makes some sense. I like the idea of Squirrel Nest over Myr Turbine due to mana cost, but I would have to take a hard look at the rest of the deck to see if that would fit.
I'm not a fan of Acorn Catapult. I think it's a fun way to trigger Fungusaur or recently printed Enrage cards (Dinosaur/Squirrel Tribal anyone?), but I would have to be going really deep before going there.
I like silly and effective... with that said, I like Lux Cannon. I'm in the process of actually finalizing a Karn or Kozilek colorless deck that will likely feature some charge counter shenanigans (and likely some Myr Tribal stuff, so Myr Turbine might make an appearance there), so Lux Cannon is sorta slated for that deck.
Keeper of Keys is interesting because it adds a layer to the game (namely, The Monarch) that you often don't normally see. This deck is surprisingly well equipped to being the Monarch and keeping that status barring everyone ganging up on you. Overall, I've found enough other options that this no longer fit in the deck.
Venser, the Sojourner is just an awesome card (for Multiplayer EDH at least). The +2 doesn't have a ton of targets in my current configuration (and I just pulled one in Mulldrifter), but it is still a great ability even if you are just blinking Derevi to get another untap. The -1 is the primary usage and the biggest reason I run him. The -8 is also quite nasty, but not totally "I win".
I like the idea of doing that. Plus I don't think I play that card anywhere, so it would be good to include that here.
Another thing I've been considering (mostly due to how good Paradox Engine has been) is running more potential ways to untap my creatures. Cards like Awakening, Gideon, Martial Paragon, Murkfiend Liege, and Quest for Renewal all seem like good candidates for the deck (with the last three being the better options).
Maybe a Basilisk Collar for your equipment package to go along with your pingers? Seeing as how you included them anyway, might be worth a shot.
I feel like an idiot for not including that since the beginning.