5-color good stuff the deck, and it's actually good. Niv's delight is a deck built around playing guild paired cards in a control shell using Niv as a way to refill and stabilize with a big beater on board. This deck has major game against nearly all creature matchups, while being able to play a better midrange game against midrange. Control matchups are favored as long as they aren't on mono counterspell.deck, and with the unbanning of stoneforge mystic more control decks are playing fewer counterspells. This deck has game against nearly the whole field with its main weaknesses being fast non-creature based decks, like burn, prowess, and some combo based deck. The bad matchups are still winnable only slightly unfavored. The worse matchups were hogaak and phoenix before the banning, and now both of those decks aren't a thing. Now that the meta is so wide open the deck is able to perform extraordinarily well due to the fact that it is very flexible in play, but also flexible in deckbuilding. One of the most satisfying things about this deck is it is a tuner's joy to tinker around with the many card slots that are available. So far, the deck has been alive for around 3 months, and there is no real concensus on a real core for the deck. The core of the deck functions around niv, bring to light, and removal such as kaya's guile, lightning helix, assassin's trophy, etc. The lists vary from creature heavier decks that play more midrange, to lists that resemble more of a superfriends build for all the value. You can play the predominately more popular snow version of the deck, or play non snow and have a more consistent, but greedier mana base. You can play nearly all multicolored spells in your deck, or stray away from the niv hit nuts to shore up some matchups or to improve the decks consistency. There are a near endless amount of possibilities to tune this deck to make it your own individual dragon dropping, tutor-tastic, value amassing masterpiece.
The Mana
The most important thing about why this deck is able to work is the fact that we can make 5 color work. This is due to a multitude of cards that the deck is able to employ. The first and probably most contested card for the deck is birds of paradise. Birds is still played in many decks because of the ability it has too fix the decks mana, while accelerating the deck making three drops on t2 a possibility and double casting on t3 reliable, and having bring to light live on t4.
Perhaps the most important card for this decks mana, and the whole reason this deck plays snow is for Arcum's Astrolabe. Since this card requires snow mana the decks that play it also play at least one of each snow basic, 4 prismatic vista, and 4-6 fetches. The reason to devote so much to just this one card is because when it is in play any card in the deck can be played within reason. The card has near no downside other than having to play snow. The fact that it cantrips means that at any point in the game as long as there is access to snow mana the worst it does is fix mana further and give another shot at any one of this decks amazing top decks. Early game playing this t1 will fulfill half of the colored mana required for the rest of the game, and through the multitude of fetches being able to pick and choose what is needed for the time, and then filtering it later with the astrolabe is what gives snow the edge compared to non snow.
Now for an actual land that the deck plays and is integral to how some Niv decks are able to function. Pillar of the Paruns is a land that can create one mana of any color, but can only be used on multicolored spells. Since most Niv decks will only have Astrolabe and Birds as their non multicolor cards it ends up fulfilling the same role as astrolabe as making the required colored mana easier to accomplish. Some decks prefer to play more mono colored cards and thus lowering the amount of pillars the decks run down to 2 or cutting it all together.
I just recently started playing the deck and one idea I had was playing a 1 of shadow of doubt in sideboard the deck seems fine against control and and creature decks, but combo has been an issue. The three decks that have been giving me issues are scapeshift, amulet titan, and storm. The real issue for me is that against all of those decks the midrange plan just hasn't been working. In every game I'm able to answer their threats and go one for one, but once they have either landed a titan, start pacting, scapeshift, or gifts I've been buried alive. With the one of Ashiok in sideboard it's been a bit hard to consistently get it going. The way I see it playing out is that I would be able to BTLNiv to play and maybe hit ashiok . The ashiok is nice and all, but a bit more redundancy at instant speed can be nice, and them having the knowledge of SOD being in hand causes them to play much tighter, which makes the combo run that much harder. The combo of glittering wish and Shadow of doubt also can stop some decks in their tracks, and make them too afraid of the known counter in hand.
So I have made myself a commander cube as well and have been making changes to it for the last 3 months, and want to share some feedback on what I've been doing/trying with my friends whenever we play (which has been hard to get the necessary people to play). So I have shared a lot of concerns over will people be able to make decks from drafting 6 packs of 15 cards, and while browsing the internet looking for anything of relevancy to an EDH cube I found someone saying that they cut deck sizes down to 80 cards per deck. The first time I tried out my cube it was its first draft and was a bit of a mess and a friend's kid (barely knows magic) wanted to cube with us and reluctantly I said sure. Everyone except the kid was able to make semi functional 100 card decks, mine being probably the best since I was mardu and who wants to be in mardu colors. The problem was the time that it took to get the draft done. I was having each person draft 9 packs of 12 cards, 108 cards total, and it took a little more than an hour to get through the draft. After the hour draft the game took about 2.5 hours, mainly because the cube had quite a few clunky parts and wasn't too concise on what options were out there and it wasn't as strong as it is now. Since that first time I had been toying with the cube changing many cards out getting each color equal, figuring out what to do with the drafting process, what archetypes I could engineer to be competitive and consistent to draft, how to fix the time issue, and finding out what cards were good for cube and what was bad.
For me I wanted to get my card count down to somewhere below 900. I originally decided I would do 100 each color, 500, 15 per guild, 150, max of 5 for each wedge, 50, use all the 4 color commanders, 5, 100 cards for colorless cards, 100 non-basic lands, and a few wubrg cards. So far it has worked well for these combinations except in a few fronts. I have trouble getting boros to 15 cards, currently sitting at 8, so I have decided you know what boros is ***** and there aren't many good boros cards for a commander cube that would stand up to any other card in the cube so I just don't worry about it. Other than that I also have trouble with wanting the colors to feel equal on power level. I constantly feel that white and red and black are just worse than blue and green. In commander the power of ramp from green, and the card draw and devastating efficiency of blue just outclasses the other colors, and to that I have said it is fine. This cube allows people to be three color, four color, or even wubrg quite easily. With the inclusion of all 15 of the partner commanders it allows players to be very flexible in drafting since they can almost assuredly see 2 partners during the draft.
The drafting process I always thought to be the main part away from playing the game. I don't believe this to be true for all players, but players who are entrenched in commander, build tons of decks, and are always tinkering, changing, and playing their many decks I feel side with me and love seeing your deck come together as you make it. One thing with that mindset is that people want to start out with a template or an idea to follow through with, so starting the draft with no commander locked in can be a problem, so originally I decided to make all the packs for the players, and then pull out all the legendaries from the rest of the cube and then randomly give each person a pack of 4 commanders to draft, to have a baseline of what direction they could take their deck. The problem with this is probably 1 in 4 of the people would get packs with crap legendaries that are meant to be in the 99 and/or mono colored commanders that don't give a good direction. To remedy this issue after my friend suggested to a pack before the 6 packs that would be a face up draft with legendaries that way there could be a more immediate direction of where you want to take your deck be it colors and archetype. I decided to actually spice it up a bit and go by a binary point system of cards that could be in this face up pack of 24. The points were assigned as any commander eligible card were worth 1, banned cards were worth 1, some of the best cards in the format were worth 1, eg sol ring, cyclonic rift, mana crypt, mana vault, etc, any extra turn cards were worth 1, that way some of the more competitive cards for commander would see more light, and give drafters more freedom to make decisions, do I first pick the mana crypt or take muldrotha and go sultai value town.
The archetypes are still kinda in the testing phase, but I have found that aristocrats, storm, and big mana value town are all very flexible and have a lot of interchanging pieces. The main thing that I made sure was that no matter what you could win a game in a flashy way, whether it be with a good combo, or through assembling an oppressively large board state.
The time issue has been remedied through adding more infinite combos, with redundant pieces, making the cube more concise, lowering the deck size to 80, and trying to make sure people don't take too long drafting.
For the mono red deck why not a few copies of evolving wilds. Since that deck isn't using the extra lands dino then why not play a few of these to early game thin your deck of lands, and late game be a shuffle effect for basically free. I feel like the land entering tapped wouldn't be too much of a downside as the only real one drop you have is ghitu lavarunner, and late game its just a shuffle effect in exchange for an untapped land. It seems like it would also just be a better land to play when you have Runaway Steam-kin out as your getting your mana from that rather than from lands.
I have thought about Rhys the redeemed. The thing is I am not really looking for an elfball/overrun deck mainly because there are 3 in my meta. I am looking for something that just generates ridiculous amounts of value, that also doesn't need to go to combat to win.
Everyone knows the feeling when you go out and buy a box of a new set with the hopes of getting some of the sweet commander cards for that set. Well I bought a Battlebond box, and it went pretty well. I got a lot of cards that I liked, and immediately slotted into decks. My problem though is that I got a lot of cards that I wanted to slot into decks that I don't have, I got out of 2 battlebond boxes 3 Seedborn Muse, and 2 Land Tax.
My problem is that I only have 2 decks to slot the muse into and I only have 2 decks that have white in them, my oloro and atraxa decks. My atraxa deck is chock full of nonbasics so I can't really slot land tax there. So since I have a seedborn and a land tax just sitting on the side, I really want to make a selesnya/ G/W/x deck, which I haven't made either before.
Part of the reason I haven't made a G/W deck is because my playstyle is very against turning my creatures sideways. I prefer assembling a machine that requires multiple pieces to generate a ridiculous amount of consistent value, eg. Marchesa, the Black Rose, Glissa, the Traitor, The Gitrog Monster, etc.
So With all that in mind I've been wanting to make a more casual deck for my commander playgroup in G/W or G/W/x. I don't quite know where to start for even the commander, I've looked at a few other forums, and Trostani, Selesnya's Voice and Sigarda, Heron's Grace seemed interesting, but i'm not sure on what else I might really want to build.
This is my take on Kumena for edh. It is supposed to be a good stuff deck that has good synergy through being tribal and has some combo built into the deck to abuse being able to tap out the whole board of merfolk multiple times. Any suggestions are welcome, one of the improvements I want to make to this deck is adding in some good enchantment/artifact hate. After getting a good chunk of the merfolk I wanted in I filled in the ramp and protection categories, and fit in a few answers, but I want to find room for a bit more interaction.
I personally have been trying to take this deck in a slight graveyard interaction direction. Since we get access to a few ways to get instants and sorceries back from our grave with Archaeomancer, Izzet Chronarch, and Snapcaster Mage, I have been trying to add in more cards that let me draw and fill up my graveyard like Fact or Fiction, Faithless Looting, Windfall, etc. If you are able to cast any of these cards multiple times it ends up being super strong because it lets you find your combo pieces quicker or just gives you enough matching pieces to out value your opponents.
cuts are as listed:
1x Ramunap Excavator
1x Grasp of Darkness
1x Torment of Hailfire
1x Westvale Abbey
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Forest
Adds are as listed:
1x Splendid Reclamation
2x Blossoming Defense
1x Hissing Quagmire
1x Hashep Oasis
1x Ifnir Deadlands
SB changes:
- Bontu's Last Reckoning
+ Yahenni's Expertise
I feel that having a full playset of Excavator can sometimes be a pain when you get multiples in hand because in those moments you aren't really ramping you're just consistently hitting land drops which is good but having a one of reclamation I feel can help you launch yourself into the mid game really well. On Blossoming Defense, I was thinking about putting that in as a way of doing silly combat tricks and also protecting my key cards once they land but I thought that my cards would be immediately answered and it would make playing on curve hard since I want to leave one more up in reserve. But after playing a good number of games(a lot against control) I realized that I was leaving an addition mana up and playing my spells off curve to avoid Censor and also playing my Excavator off curve so that it could grab me my t4 land drop from grave. So all in all I think it could take the spot of a grasp and torment. Went and changed the lands up to get desert count higher, I did notice sometimes I just couldn't/didn't want to grab 2 deserts with hour so now I can more consistently just grab 1-2 and still get the zombies. I just wanted to test out Reckoning and see if it was worth it over yahennis I don't really think so.
So back in Kaladesh I had a jund gitrog deck that did okay it would often go 3-2, 4-1 in tournaments and My deck relied a lot on Crawling Sensation, Splendid Reclamation, and Noose Constrictor. I think that you could use Ramunap Excavator in place of reclamation, but when I previously played my gitrog deck I had my primary finishers as World Breaker, Westvale Abbey, and whatever other creatures I had. I think that this deck has found the perfect finisher with Torment of Hailfire. The way that I played my deck previously was I would just grind out value with tokens and get big creatures out that my opponent couldnt answer until I went in for the kill, and hailfire provides the perfect 1 shot for this deck I feel, because you either destroy their board, destroy their hand, or destroy their life.
With hour of promise you can get some really nasty stacks with this deck. If your on the crawling sensation plan of getting tokens you can get a westvale abbey and dunes of the dead if you have either a desert sac card or gitrog, or you can get 2 deserts and get the 2 zombies if you already have westvale out or you can go full removal with blighted fen and ifnir deadlands. This card just lets you do so much.
I Think this would be a fine starting point for a control sideboard I put the liliana's defeat in their because why not was thinking of either that or Hour of Glory.
So with Mirage Mirror if you attempt to copy a Caged Sun it wouldn't do anything for you because that card already entered the battlefield and never choose a color. This was the ruling that the judge at my LGS gave to that interaction. So my question is what happens if you have Mirage Mirror, Oona, Queen of the Fae, and Caged Sun out in play and you activate mirage mirror to copy caged sun and while maintaining priority you copy Oona, and then you let the oona copy resolve activate her ability to choose a color and then let it become caged sun. The only reason I could see this working is because that card itself did choose a color and might retain that throughout copying I highly doubt it but was curious as to what would happen.
So when I went to the GP Las Vegas a few weeks ago I got enough tix to get a foil Sensei's Divining Top. This was my first top and I have around 8 commander decks that aren't retired. So I told everyone in my playgroup that I would be putting the Slobberin Miledriver SCG token in each of my decks and that would represent the top in each deck. So in my opinion proxying staples that you don't have many copies of is fine, proxying a few cards that you want to try out/buy that are cheap is fine, even proxying a few expensive cards that you just can't find and don't want to buy online is fine, but if someone proxies a whole deck then that is pretty ***** especially if they are using top tier cards. Also in Vegas my friend played a commander game with a few people. These other people were all the same playgroup and they had one friend that had a fully proxied top tier animar deck. While my friend was playing whenever the animar deck did anything he just kept thinking to himself no that doesn't work that's a fake card so it doesn't resolve or that's a fake card therefore I take a fake 20 damage.
So during prerelease I had gotten Fraying Sanities as my promo and throughout the night me and my friends were discussing if it could have a place in standard. I thought what if we went into energy and ran Dynavolt Tower, Glassblower's puzzleknot, Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. Since we want to run mill cards in our deck it doesn't answer our opponents threats but if we have a tower then we can mill and answer our opponents threats at the same time. With the puzzleknot and glint-sleeve it makes it so that we can find our fraying sanities/mill quicker. So I put this a quick list together and this is what i came up with.
So Shadow of the Grave seems like an interesting card that could be broken quite easily. I thought that this card could fit well into the haunted deck reanimation deck.
After goldfishing this deck about 10 times I would say that the proof of concept is there. The deck can quite consistently land a threat turn 2 or start to set up grave with Cathartic Reunion, Noose Constrictor, or Collective Brutality. Now Shadow of the Grave starts to really kick in around t3 with noose constrictor or t4 with the rest of the deck. And just some side notes, the deck can work pretty well with aftermath cards. Mouth//Feed was really good and could allow the deck to refill its hand for like 2-4 cards since most of our creatures are power 3 or can get up to there.
There are of course removal cards that should be in there like Fatal Push and friends, but I want to try to get the main deck idea thought through first.
Perhaps the most important card for this decks mana, and the whole reason this deck plays snow is for Arcum's Astrolabe. Since this card requires snow mana the decks that play it also play at least one of each snow basic, 4 prismatic vista, and 4-6 fetches. The reason to devote so much to just this one card is because when it is in play any card in the deck can be played within reason. The card has near no downside other than having to play snow. The fact that it cantrips means that at any point in the game as long as there is access to snow mana the worst it does is fix mana further and give another shot at any one of this decks amazing top decks. Early game playing this t1 will fulfill half of the colored mana required for the rest of the game, and through the multitude of fetches being able to pick and choose what is needed for the time, and then filtering it later with the astrolabe is what gives snow the edge compared to non snow.
Now for an actual land that the deck plays and is integral to how some Niv decks are able to function. Pillar of the Paruns is a land that can create one mana of any color, but can only be used on multicolored spells. Since most Niv decks will only have Astrolabe and Birds as their non multicolor cards it ends up fulfilling the same role as astrolabe as making the required colored mana easier to accomplish. Some decks prefer to play more mono colored cards and thus lowering the amount of pillars the decks run down to 2 or cutting it all together.
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Wrenn and Six
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
Creature (8)
3 Niv-Mizzet Reborn
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Seasoned Pyromancer
Instant (11)
3 Lightning Helix
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Kaya's Guile
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Izzet Charm
1 Kolaghan's Command
Sorcery (6)
1 Thought Erasure
4 Bring to Light
1 Supreme Verdict
Artifact (4)
4 Arcum's Astrolabe
Land (23)
1 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
3 Windswept Heath
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Breeding Pool
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Flooded Strand
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Unmoored Ego
1 Kess, Dissident Mage
1 Deafening Clarion
1 Fracturing Gust
1 Lightning Helix
2 Chalice of the Void
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
1 Ashiok, Dream Render
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Wrenn and Six
Creature (7)
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Ice-Fang Coatl
1 Kess, Dissident Mage
3 Niv-Mizzet Reborn
1 Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves
Sorcery (9)
3 Bring to Light
1 Dreadbore
2 Safewright Quest
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Thought Erasure
1 Unmoored Ego
Instant (12)
3 Assassin's Trophy
1 Izzet Charm
2 Kaya's Guile
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Helix
4 Arcum's Astrolabe
Land (23)
1 Breeding Pool
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Overgrown Tomb
3 Pillar of the Paruns
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Unmoored Ego
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Ashiok, Dream Render
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Deafening Clarion
1 Fracturing Gust
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Hostage Taker
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Weather the Storm
For me I wanted to get my card count down to somewhere below 900. I originally decided I would do 100 each color, 500, 15 per guild, 150, max of 5 for each wedge, 50, use all the 4 color commanders, 5, 100 cards for colorless cards, 100 non-basic lands, and a few wubrg cards. So far it has worked well for these combinations except in a few fronts. I have trouble getting boros to 15 cards, currently sitting at 8, so I have decided you know what boros is ***** and there aren't many good boros cards for a commander cube that would stand up to any other card in the cube so I just don't worry about it. Other than that I also have trouble with wanting the colors to feel equal on power level. I constantly feel that white and red and black are just worse than blue and green. In commander the power of ramp from green, and the card draw and devastating efficiency of blue just outclasses the other colors, and to that I have said it is fine. This cube allows people to be three color, four color, or even wubrg quite easily. With the inclusion of all 15 of the partner commanders it allows players to be very flexible in drafting since they can almost assuredly see 2 partners during the draft.
The drafting process I always thought to be the main part away from playing the game. I don't believe this to be true for all players, but players who are entrenched in commander, build tons of decks, and are always tinkering, changing, and playing their many decks I feel side with me and love seeing your deck come together as you make it. One thing with that mindset is that people want to start out with a template or an idea to follow through with, so starting the draft with no commander locked in can be a problem, so originally I decided to make all the packs for the players, and then pull out all the legendaries from the rest of the cube and then randomly give each person a pack of 4 commanders to draft, to have a baseline of what direction they could take their deck. The problem with this is probably 1 in 4 of the people would get packs with crap legendaries that are meant to be in the 99 and/or mono colored commanders that don't give a good direction. To remedy this issue after my friend suggested to a pack before the 6 packs that would be a face up draft with legendaries that way there could be a more immediate direction of where you want to take your deck be it colors and archetype. I decided to actually spice it up a bit and go by a binary point system of cards that could be in this face up pack of 24. The points were assigned as any commander eligible card were worth 1, banned cards were worth 1, some of the best cards in the format were worth 1, eg sol ring, cyclonic rift, mana crypt, mana vault, etc, any extra turn cards were worth 1, that way some of the more competitive cards for commander would see more light, and give drafters more freedom to make decisions, do I first pick the mana crypt or take muldrotha and go sultai value town.
The archetypes are still kinda in the testing phase, but I have found that aristocrats, storm, and big mana value town are all very flexible and have a lot of interchanging pieces. The main thing that I made sure was that no matter what you could win a game in a flashy way, whether it be with a good combo, or through assembling an oppressively large board state.
The time issue has been remedied through adding more infinite combos, with redundant pieces, making the cube more concise, lowering the deck size to 80, and trying to make sure people don't take too long drafting.
If you want to take a look at my cube here's a link: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/132966
My problem is that I only have 2 decks to slot the muse into and I only have 2 decks that have white in them, my oloro and atraxa decks. My atraxa deck is chock full of nonbasics so I can't really slot land tax there. So since I have a seedborn and a land tax just sitting on the side, I really want to make a selesnya/ G/W/x deck, which I haven't made either before.
Part of the reason I haven't made a G/W deck is because my playstyle is very against turning my creatures sideways. I prefer assembling a machine that requires multiple pieces to generate a ridiculous amount of consistent value, eg. Marchesa, the Black Rose, Glissa, the Traitor, The Gitrog Monster, etc.
So With all that in mind I've been wanting to make a more casual deck for my commander playgroup in G/W or G/W/x. I don't quite know where to start for even the commander, I've looked at a few other forums, and Trostani, Selesnya's Voice and Sigarda, Heron's Grace seemed interesting, but i'm not sure on what else I might really want to build.
1 Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca
// 32 Creature
1 Merrow Reejerey
1 Merrow Harbinger
1 Cold-Eyed Selkie
1 Dakra Mystic
1 Harbinger of the Tides
1 Herald of Secret Streams
1 Kiora's Follower
1 Kopala, Warden of Waves
1 Lord of Atlantis
1 Lullmage Mentor
1 Master of the Pearl Trident
1 Merfolk Branchwalker
1 Sage of Fables
1 Sigil Tracer
1 Silvergill Adept
1 Stonybrook Banneret
1 Surgespanner
1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
1 Thrasios, Triton Hero
1 Tidal Courier
1 Wanderwine Prophets
1 Wistful Selkie
1 Prime Speaker Zegana
1 Tishana, Voice of Thunder
1 Shapesharer
1 Vizier of the Menagerie
1 Stunt Double
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Murkfiend Liege
1 Seafloor Oracle
1 Forerunner of the Heralds
1 Swift Warden
1 Merrow Commerce
1 Deeproot Waters
1 Kindred Discovery
1 Descendants' Path
1 Wild Pair
1 Cryptolith Rite
1 Intruder Alarm
// 5 Instant
1 Heroic Intervention
1 Counterspell
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Negate
1 Swan Song
// 40 Land
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Unclaimed Territory
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Command Tower
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Breeding Pool
1 Temple of the False God
1 Temple of Mystery
1 Mutavault
1 Flooded Strand
1 Windswept Heath
1 Yavimaya Coast
1 Polluted Delta
5 Forest
18 Island
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Nissa, Steward of Elements
1 Kiora, Master of the Depths
// 4 Sorcery
1 Rampant Growth
1 Farseek
1 Cultivate
1 Sylvan Scrying
// 9 Artifact
1 Paradox Engine
1 Sol Ring
1 Simic Signet
1 Pillar of Origins
1 Expedition Map
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Caged Sun
1 Thought Vessel
This is my take on Kumena for edh. It is supposed to be a good stuff deck that has good synergy through being tribal and has some combo built into the deck to abuse being able to tap out the whole board of merfolk multiple times. Any suggestions are welcome, one of the improvements I want to make to this deck is adding in some good enchantment/artifact hate. After getting a good chunk of the merfolk I wanted in I filled in the ramp and protection categories, and fit in a few answers, but I want to find room for a bit more interaction.
Also Filling up your graveyard makes your Bloodline Necromancer, Apprentice Necromancer, and Cauldron Dance have targets more consistently and exponentially increases their value.
3x The Gitrog Monster
2x Tireless Tracker
3x Noose Constrictor
3x Ramunap Excavator
3x Jaddi Offshoot
Enchantments (4)
4x Crawling Sensation
Artifacts (1)
1x Ghirapur Orrery
Sorceries (10)
2x Harsh Scrutiny
2x Lay Bare the Heart
2x Never // Return
2x Yahenni's Expertise
1x Splendid Reclamation
1x Torment of Hailfire
2x Liliana, the Last Hope
Instants (3)
3x Fatal Push
Lands (26)
1x Hostile Desert
4x Evolving Wilds
3x Hissing Quagmire
4x Blooming Marsh
3x Drownyard Temple
1x Grasping Dunes
1x Westvale Abbey
5x Forest
4x Swamp
2x Scavenger Grounds
2x Natural State
2x Appetite for the Unnatural
2x Lost Legacy
2x Grasp of Darkness
3x Collective Brutality
1x Fatal Push
1x Ob Nixilis Reignited
Will update thread after FMN tonight.
3x The Gitrog Monster
3x Ramunap Excavator
4x Channeler Initiate
2x Mina and Denn, Wildborn
2x Noose Constrictor
Enchantments
4x Crawling Sensation
2x Cryptolith Rite
Instants
3x Fatal Push
2x Grasp of Darkness
1x Never // Return
2x Blossoming Defense
Sorceries
2x Hour of Promise
1x Torment of Hailfire
3x Cathartic Reunion
1x Splendid Reclamation
Lands
1x Westvale Abbey
4x Evolving Wilds
2x Blooming Marsh
2x Hissing Quagmire
2x Sheltered Thicket
2x Dunes of the dead
4x Forest
1x Swamp
1x Mountain
3x Hashep Oasis
2x Ifnir Deadlands
1x Blighted Fen
2x Yahenni's Expertise
1x Hour of Devastation
3x Transgress the mind
1x Fatal Push
1x Grasp of Darkness
2x Liliana, the Last Hope
2x Appetite for the Unnatural
1x Liliana's Defeat
cuts are as listed:
1x Ramunap Excavator
1x Grasp of Darkness
1x Torment of Hailfire
1x Westvale Abbey
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Forest
Adds are as listed:
1x Splendid Reclamation
2x Blossoming Defense
1x Hissing Quagmire
1x Hashep Oasis
1x Ifnir Deadlands
SB changes:
- Bontu's Last Reckoning
+ Yahenni's Expertise
I feel that having a full playset of Excavator can sometimes be a pain when you get multiples in hand because in those moments you aren't really ramping you're just consistently hitting land drops which is good but having a one of reclamation I feel can help you launch yourself into the mid game really well. On Blossoming Defense, I was thinking about putting that in as a way of doing silly combat tricks and also protecting my key cards once they land but I thought that my cards would be immediately answered and it would make playing on curve hard since I want to leave one more up in reserve. But after playing a good number of games(a lot against control) I realized that I was leaving an addition mana up and playing my spells off curve to avoid Censor and also playing my Excavator off curve so that it could grab me my t4 land drop from grave. So all in all I think it could take the spot of a grasp and torment. Went and changed the lands up to get desert count higher, I did notice sometimes I just couldn't/didn't want to grab 2 deserts with hour so now I can more consistently just grab 1-2 and still get the zombies. I just wanted to test out Reckoning and see if it was worth it over yahennis I don't really think so.
3x The Gitrog Monster
4x Ramunap Excavator
4x Channeler Initiate
2x Mina and Denn, Wildborn
2x Noose Constrictor
Enchantments
4x Crawling Sensation
2x Cryptolith Rite
Instants
3x Fatal Push
3x Grasp of Darkness
1x Never // Return
2x Hour of Promise
2x Torment of Hailfire
3x Cathartic Reunion
Lands
2x Westvale Abbey
4x Evolving Wilds
3x Blooming Marsh
1x Hissing Quagmire
2x Sheltered Thicket
2x Dunes of the dead
5x Forest
1x Swamp
1x Mountain
2x Hashep Oasis
1x Ifnir Deadlands
1x Blighted Fen
With hour of promise you can get some really nasty stacks with this deck. If your on the crawling sensation plan of getting tokens you can get a westvale abbey and dunes of the dead if you have either a desert sac card or gitrog, or you can get 2 deserts and get the 2 zombies if you already have westvale out or you can go full removal with blighted fen and ifnir deadlands. This card just lets you do so much.
As for sideboard I don't really know much of what we should do. We could go aggro-ish with grim flayer and Rhonas the Indomitable, or for aggro matchups we can play more control with Hour of Devastation, Yahenni's Expertise, or Bontu's Last Reckoning with Liliana, the Last Hope, and more spot removal, but I don't think our colors can handle that to well since we want to play more colorless lands. We also then would probably need some artifact hate like Dispossess, and Appetite for the Unnatural.
So for a sideboard I think the Aggro SB could look something like this
2x Rhonas the Indomitable
2x Dispossess
2x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3x Transgress the mind
2x Ramunap Hydra
And a more controlly SB could look something like this
2x Bontu's Last Reckoning
1x Hour of Devastation
3x Transgress the mind
1x Fatal Push
1x Grasp of Darkness
2x Liliana, the Last Hope
2x Appetite for the Unnatural
1x Liliana's Defeat
I Think this would be a fine starting point for a control sideboard I put the liliana's defeat in their because why not was thinking of either that or Hour of Glory.
4x Minister of Inquiries
4x Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
Enchantments
4x Fraying Sanity
Artifacts
3x Glassblower's Puzzleknot
3x Dynavolt Tower
Instants
3x Censor
3x Harnessed Lightning
3x Glimmer of Genius
3x Fatal Push
4x Startled Awake
4x Compelling Argument
Lands
4x Aether Hub
4x Spirebluff Canal
4x Ipnu Rivulet
3x Choked Estuary
2x Swamp
3x Island
2x Mountain
4x Bloodrage Brawler
4x Haunted Dead
4x Noose Constrictor
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Scrapheap Scrounger
Instants (4)
4x Shadow of the Grave
4x Cathartic Reunion
4x Collective Brutality
2x Feed
2x Injury
Lands (24)
4x Blooming Marsh
4x Canyon Slough
4x Foreboding Ruins
1x Forest
4x Game Trail
1x Mountain
4x Sheltered Thicket
2x Swamp
After goldfishing this deck about 10 times I would say that the proof of concept is there. The deck can quite consistently land a threat turn 2 or start to set up grave with Cathartic Reunion, Noose Constrictor, or Collective Brutality. Now Shadow of the Grave starts to really kick in around t3 with noose constrictor or t4 with the rest of the deck. And just some side notes, the deck can work pretty well with aftermath cards. Mouth//Feed was really good and could allow the deck to refill its hand for like 2-4 cards since most of our creatures are power 3 or can get up to there.
As for some cards I think could go in the deck:
Flameblade Adept, Hazoret the Fervent, Archfiend of Ifnir, Dread Wanderer, Embalmer's Tools, Tormenting Voice are just a few to help the deck's strategy.
There are of course removal cards that should be in there like Fatal Push and friends, but I want to try to get the main deck idea thought through first.