MTG Salvation

Tinder Wall as a Commander gives me a fantastic Turn 1-2-3-4 rhythm. Turn 1, I play Tinder Wall. Turn 2, I play a land and sacrifice Tinder Wall and now have 4 mana available. 4 mana on Turn 2, every time. On Turn 3 I play a land and recast Tinder Wall. On turn 4, I now have 5 or 6 mana depending on if I have drawn a 4th land.

So I have a very reliable 4 mana on Turn 2 and 5 mana on Turn 4. Even better, the Tinder Wall mana is always double red, so I can run a lot of red cards even with a heavy-forest manabase! After Turn 4, Tinder Wall has done its job as I now have the 4-5 lands I need to play most of my cards the old-fashioned way. Tinder Wall also gives me a reliable blocker on Turn 3, which is about the only time a 0/3 wall is ever going to be a reliable blocker.

In effect, Tinder Wall as a Commander takes up no deck space, but gives me the kind of mana ramp I'd typically need to dedicate a quarter of my deck space to achieving. Instead of wasting slots on mana dorks or mana rocks, I can now fill it with 4 and 5 cost spells. This is a capability no other format has access to.

I see two big ways to build the deck around Tinder Wall. The first way is to stuff it with around 50 4-5 cost beaters and go to town.

The second way is what I've done here; shove in most every land destruction spell available, because not many decks stay on point after having one land blown up on turn 2 and another blown up on turn 4. For land destruction to work, you must commit to it heavily; 25 land destruction affects with the Tinder Wall ramp makes things incredibly consistent. Then I've fleshed out the deck with reliable 4 and 5 mana beaters (including werewolves, because they synergize well with mana denial), heavy burn spells capable of taking care of any weenies they can slip through with their 1-2 mana, and a treefolk subtheme.




Now where does Orcish Lumberjack come in? Thankfully his Oracle text has put G and R mana symbols in his text box, so he's an alternate general very similar to Tinder Wall. A turn 1 Lumberjack yields a reliable 5 mana on turn 2 of every game, and another 5 mana for every turn afterwards that you can play a Forest. The most important downside is that he takes a red mana to play, but then sacrifices Forests, so a deck needs to have a more balanced ratio between Forests and Mountains, and then can choke on the mountains while looking for forests; he'll want to run things like Ranger's Path and Skyshroud Claim to counteract that. So he's a tad bit more potentially powerful, but less consistent; the turn that you do run out of Forests, you're stuck with nothing. He's also more fragile.


How does this stack up with the top archetypes of the Pauper format? I think I'm onto something here.

Any suggestions?

I've always loved this card. I feel like it'd be similar to Radha, Heir to Keld's consistent turn 3 LD. I think once your opponent passes a certain point, they might be able to outdo you because of how fragile the deck is. But I hope this works out.

How do you cast T3 tinder wall with only 2 lands?

Gaea's touch seems like a MUST have!

The turn three Tinder Wall re-cast is assuming that I don't miss a land drop over the first three turns. Three lands out of the first 10 cards is pretty reliable. The fourth-turn drop is sketchy.

The first four turns are virtually scripted. "Wall, 4 drop, Wall, 4/5 drop." The beauty is that you have no need for any other 1-3 cmc mana accelerators when you're guaranteed to have one of the best in the game in your starting hand every single time.

Gaea's Touch would be okay on turn three if I was stuck on two lands and they were both forests... But I'd much rather have another basic land in that situation, so I wouldn't miss that turn 3 Tinder Wall Again. And after turn four, I don't have the card draw to ever play more than one land anyways. In any case, my turn-two four-cost card better be a darn good one to ever have a chance of winning when I do get stuck on two mana.




I think what the deck really needs is some way to not run out of gas around turn 5 or 6. (But that seems to be what every deck in Pauper EDH needs?) I definitely see the power of buyback in this format after playtesting a little bit. Elvish Fury and Sprout Swarm are great, and I'm thinking I want to add Constant Mists and maybe even Monstrify as well.

Oh, just looked at your list and found out you were not playing any ramp.

So I was underimpressed with the land destruction theme. When it works it's too griefer, when it doesn't I have 20+ dead cards and against some low-curve decks it's just sub-optimal.

The "fill full of the best 4 and 5 drop beaters available" strategy seems a more natural approach anyways.

http://playtest.tappedout.net/tinder-wall-beatdown-pedh/

Super fun concept. It's definitely warps the rules of deck construction, in a way that isn't available in any other format.

I'm so far underimpressed with Dragon Fangs and Dragon Breath.

Stand-out cards are Festerhide Boar (turn 2 5/5 trampler!), Thundering Tanadon (Turn 2 5/4 Trampler!), Wildheart Invoker (game-ender), all of the 4-cost ramp spells (I sure wish I had a better Reap and Sow target.), the old red creature destruction spells, and the plethora of X-damage spells.

Looks like festerhide boar only comes in as 5/5 if you actually let your general go to the graveyard.

Reap and sow into gruul turf is decent. It's kinda like a 4-mana cultivate with a kicker.

The otherwise janky Sissay's Ring and Ur-Golem's Eye could serve here as additional copies of Skyshroud Claim. Ramping for your turn two play gives up some explosiveness, but you get to be two turns ahead of the table starting early.

The card-drawing cards you picked are all very good, but I'd want to add as much as possible so that spot removal doesn't shut you down. Some options:

• Citanul Woodreaders
  
• Haunted Fengraf
  
• Krosan Tusker
  
• Darksteel Pendant