Trostani was the first commander deck I built and this deck has gone through several revisions. When I started, it was a basic budget selesnya deck with anthems and some token generators. As I learned more about the format and the urge to increase the power level of this deck, I decided to try focusing the deck on a new objective. Eventually I built it with a heavy emphasis on creating large body tokens. It's entertainment value waned as it felt that I could do more. This is my current build:
Looking over your list, I'm seeing a lot of cross similarities to mine. There's a bit of a different take, I left out the "I win cards," but I'd be hardpressed to find something in the list that is 'wrong.' I know that the hardest part of a list is always finding the cuts, so I'm going to go over some of those that I feel to be most questionable:
Ajani Goldmane - First off, I simply want to drop this guy with doubling season out to insta double ult, because that seems fun. The problem is that outside of that combo, he doesn't do very much. Neither of his primary abilities seem strong enough alone, and I wonder if something like Cathar's Crusade or Mirror Entity (for your lark combo) wouldn't be a better threat.
True Conviction - seems win-more. It's expensive to drop, you likely don't need the life - you're probably better off just having more creatures to smash face with?
Nissa, Vastwood Seer - You can't token populate her, You can't Vat/Seance recur her to get a planeswalker, Her card draw is nice - but you can't populate her token. Getting 6, 6/6's off of her Ult is nice, but you still can't populate them, and it hurts into your mana if they get wrathed.
Selesnya Signet - while signets are typically really great ramp, in green decks the 2 mana to get 1 makes it on par with a Rampant Growth in terms of acceleration, which isn't that great. While the conversion of colorless mana can be good, I know that I haven't had any issue with that in may deck. Consider maybe Rings of Brighthearth? It can double up fetchlands to continue the same ramp theme (though slower), and it also serves to double your Commander's ability. Copying Greater Good is also a greater good.
Lark Combo - I tend to find Sun Titan/Saffi to be 'better.'
Tokens - just a few.. Nacatl War-Pride - super silly card with Trostani, Doubling Season, Cathars' Crusade.. pretty much most things.. lol Rhys the Redeemed Angelic Accord - so circular with Trostani
Utility Reconnaissance - lets you attack like a crazy person, and then untap everything Glare of Subdual - tap down big threats/blockers, or whole boards with Reconnaissance or Seedborn Muse Faith's Reward - doesn't help with tokens, but gets back everything else Ghostway - ditto for creatures except helps with mass exile/tuck Rootborn Defenses - like it was made for your deck
Hey bob thanks for posting, much appreciated.
I definitely stole some of your Fog tech hehe. Glacial Chasm and Martyr's Cause specifically.
In the previous version of this deck it had a very difficult time ending games and things would drag on unnecessarily because I had goblets of life, but no ways of beating my opponent. Thats why I run Felidar and Test. However with all of the new things I've added to the deck, they may no longer be necessary.
Ajani Goldmane is honestly just there out of my fondness for the card. He has been in the deck since I started playing EDH and I wanted a use for my avatar token haha. But yes, I agree he should absolutely be cut.
The previous iteration of this deck was much more stompy and large token heavy where True Conviction could pull its weight and it hasn't done so in a while.
I just inserted Nissa about 2 weeks ago to test her strictly as a card draw option. Nothing more. I have no reason to ever use her other abilities. She has been great so far, but perhaps I could use something like Elvish Visionary as I could populate/blade/seance/sun titan/lark combo it.
I just splashed the signet in this week because there is a fair number of players in my meta (4 of about 15+) that run MLD. I recently (painfully) cut cultivate and kodama's reach to play test without them.
And I definitely forgot to add Rings in this decklist! Thank you for pointing that out.
This build is fairly new as I haven't run pieces like the Lark combo before. So I'll post a report after this weekend of how it turned out as I'll be playing a lot of EDH.
Also depending how successful or not this build is with its recursion package, I may also experiment with Gift of Immortality.
If you like Nissa as a card draw machine, then she's likely fine. A kind of green Phyrexian Arena. She can at least also be brought back with sun titan, lark, and guide as well. I wouldn't try to jump hoops with Elvish Visionary (although he'd probably be fun with Blade of Selves).
Likewise, if you like Ajani, you could always leave him in. Decks don't always have to be 100% crazy optimized, you need to leave a little room for fun, =).
I just splashed the signet in this week because there is a fair number of players in my meta (4 of about 15+) that run MLD. I recently (painfully) cut cultivate and kodama's reach to play test without them.
ooph. I'm not playing against much MLD (any) right now, though I've run into it before. If that's the case, I'd actually cut out a lot of the land ramp, switch to mainly artifact ramp and rely on fetches +Rings/land recursion to 'ramp.'
Do you have a Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam? I haven't played my trostani vs MLD, but in past decks those have been shining all stars in recovery when powered by a few rocks. My Trostani also runs Tilling Treefolk and Titania, Protector of Argoth. Of course, I use them to power up some cycling lands and my fetches, but you can easily ignore the cyclers and use them to power up the land ramp, making room to replace the land search spells/dudes for better manarocks. Fellwar stone, Darksteel Ingot, and Coalition Relic are probably all good for those situations.
If you like Nissa as a card draw machine, then she's likely fine. A kind of green Phyrexian Arena. She can at least also be brought back with sun titan, lark, and guide as well. I wouldn't try to jump hoops with Elvish Visionary (although he'd probably be fun with Blade of Selves).
Likewise, if you like Ajani, you could always leave him in. Decks don't always have to be 100% crazy optimized, you need to leave a little room for fun, =).
You make some great points, bob. I've had a lot of success with Nissa so far as a green phyrexian arena, and I do love me some 120/120 avatar tokens.
Do you have a Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam? I haven't played my trostani vs MLD, but in past decks those have been shining all stars in recovery when powered by a few rocks. My Trostani also runs Tilling Treefolk and Titania, Protector of Argoth. Of course, I use them to power up some cycling lands and my fetches, but you can easily ignore the cyclers and use them to power up the land ramp, making room to replace the land search spells/dudes for better manarocks. Fellwar stone, Darksteel Ingot, and Coalition Relic are probably all good for those situations.
Oh man I wish I had a crucible. It would be an auto-include in here.
So I played a lot of games over the last weekend. Most of the games was Trostani, Deretti-stax, Ayli-cleric tribal, and Narset-superfriends. That pod didn't go so well as every game the Narset player ran train and took over every game with things like Omniscience, The Chain Veil into Ral Zarek and Narset Transcendent and other shenanigans like that.
After that player changed out his Narset for Zozu and Krenko, games were a lot more stable. I won 1 game with Spike Feeder + Thune after taking 20 commander damage from a Gisela with Aurelia backing her up. Every other game I drew Test of Endurance and it just kept feeling like a dead card to me. I've realized I've never won a game with it. Felidar not only has a much more lenient win-con, but I can still play it when I'm at less than 40 life to as a beater. I think I'll cut Test, but keep Felidar in a bit longer, but it is still on notice.
Another that has bothered me is my lack of answers. I have several creature tutors, but outside of Slime, I don't really have any valid targets to break my way through a win. I'm thinking of testing Reclamation Sage, Terastodon, Bane of Progress and any other creature with ETB removal traits.
I noticed without any direct replacements for Kodama's and Cultivate I was hurting a bit more in the ramp department. I think I may either put them back in, or find some suitable 2-3 cmc rocks to allow me to ramp while alleviating some of the damage of MLD in my meta.
Another that has bothered me is my lack of answers. I have several creature tutors, but outside of Slime, I don't really have any valid targets to break my way through a win. I'm thinking of testing Reclamation Sage, Terastodon, Bane of Progress and any other creature with ETB removal traits.
I noticed without any direct replacements for Kodama's and Cultivate I was hurting a bit more in the ramp department. I think I may either put them back in, or find some suitable 2-3 cmc rocks to allow me to ramp while alleviating some of the damage of MLD in my meta.
I've listed a few of my favorite rocks already, but otherwise you can always go the creature route as well. Even in green, Burnished Hart does good work.
If MLD is the issue though, I'd definitely look at rocks first. Fellwar Stone for cheapness, Darksteel Ingot for not being collateral, and Coalition Relic since its charge up can help double charge a recovery turn to get that piece of recovery ramp out while still low on lands.
Luckily, there's also a new land-return guy coming out in SoI it looks like. He only returns one land, so won't be making my list over Tilling Treefolk, but if you're lacking a crucible, these effects can help some of it out.
Felidar is definitely a card that belongs in a control build. He's just is not working out. Every time I draw him I wish he was something to develop my board state. That is why I'm dusting off my copy of Rampaging Baloths. I used to run this card during my big token build, but couldn't get much out of him because I had a less than stellar ramp package. Obviously my ramp is nowhere near as strong as Bob's but I think Baloths will still get a lot of mileage with what I'm piloting now.
Saffi has been amazing with Sun Titan, but Karmic guide will be swapping places with her for the sake of deck synergy. Guide can be tokened which is my main motivation for the swap.
Now that I have a lot more draw options, I think it is time to retest Budoka Gardener to help spit my excess lands into play as well as serve as a threatening token generator.
I feel like the deck is starting to come into its own a bit. I’m really digging all the recursion options available to me and I think I may try to adopt more recurrion elements (Emeria Shepherd, Saffi, Gift of the Immortal, etc) and focus the deck towards all of that.
Even with just consistent land drops, Baloths is good value for a 6 drop in here. In my build he's nuts, (this past week, I got 14 tokens off him during a fairly large Gen Wave (which got me a parallel lives, 6 lands, +oracle muldaya for a land off the top of deck), but that's because, hey, lands.
Guide/Saffi is probably more personal preference, tokening a guide is a nice shot (as is interactions with parallel lives token doubling then), but even the copies have echo costs, which can be a bit annoying. Of course, once you pay one (or two for safety), you can keep populating and simply let the excess ones go. The main deciding factor for me was that Guide could recur my boardstate from ground zero, after the fact, while Saffi has to be onboard. Both of them can serve similar roles if you choose to add Lark Combos to the deck too.
Budoka has had his moments for me. He's still in testing (since once my lands are down, he'll only spit out one extra land and flip, but if I have 10 lands, I figure I'm ready for beats. ), but so far he's had a few chances to shine, and has done well for himself.
Emeria Shepherd has been stellar for me, but once again, lands theme makes her crazy. I think one time I regrew half a boardstate off her alone. (Emeria -> plains -> return suntitan -> return crucible -> play oracle mul daya -> sac a ghost quarter onto my own plains, get plains -> return ? -> replay plains as second land -> return ?) It was pretty nuts.
===
That said, we discussed Cradle of Vitality a bit between us, and I have to say, it shined pretty well last night. Admittedly, I had all the mana I needed, but responding to the lifegain triggers, to make more tokens, so that I could chain the Cradle of Vitality triggers onto each creature and boost the total life + counters output. Pretty sweet. I took a 20-30 lifegain play into a 120+ lifegain play. With corresponding +1 counters spread across the newly created army.
1 Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
//Threats
1 Voice of Resurgence
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Archangel of Thune
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Trostani's Summoner
1 Serra Ascendant
1 Pathbreaker Ibex
1 Phyrexian Processor
//Tutors
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Academy Rector
//Recursion
1 Rhys the Redeemed
1 Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
1 Blade of Selves
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Eternal Witness
1 Mimic Vat
1 Séance
1 Doubling Season
1 Reveillark
1 Sun Titan
//Removal
1 Stonecloaker
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Path to Exile
1 Beast Within
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Council's Judgment
1 Aura Shards
1 Tragic Arrogance
1 Acidic Slime
1 Austere Command
1 Terminus
1 Martyr's Bond
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Skullclamp
1 Scroll Rack
1 Sylvan Library
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Harmonize
1 Greater Good
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Alhammarret's Archive
//Utility
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Spike Feeder
1 Ajani Goldmane
//Ramp
1 Sol Ring
1 Land Tax
1 Exploration
1 Budoka Gardener
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Nature's Lore
1 Wood Elves
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Tempt with Discovery
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Mirari's Wake
//Land
10 Plains
10 Forest
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Temple Garden
1 Canopy Vista
1 Windswept Heath
1 Krosan Verge
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Mosswort Bridge
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Rogue's Passage
1 High Market
1 Strip Mine
1 Temple of the False God
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Grove of the Guardian
1 Gargoyle Castle
1 Mirrorpool
1 Glacial Chasm
Any suggestions and criticisms are appreciated.
More details coming soon!
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StaffLooking over your list, I'm seeing a lot of cross similarities to mine. There's a bit of a different take, I left out the "I win cards," but I'd be hardpressed to find something in the list that is 'wrong.' I know that the hardest part of a list is always finding the cuts, so I'm going to go over some of those that I feel to be most questionable:
Ajani Goldmane - First off, I simply want to drop this guy with doubling season out to insta double ult, because that seems fun. The problem is that outside of that combo, he doesn't do very much. Neither of his primary abilities seem strong enough alone, and I wonder if something like Cathar's Crusade or Mirror Entity (for your lark combo) wouldn't be a better threat.
True Conviction - seems win-more. It's expensive to drop, you likely don't need the life - you're probably better off just having more creatures to smash face with?
Nissa, Vastwood Seer - You can't token populate her, You can't Vat/Seance recur her to get a planeswalker, Her card draw is nice - but you can't populate her token. Getting 6, 6/6's off of her Ult is nice, but you still can't populate them, and it hurts into your mana if they get wrathed.
Selesnya Signet - while signets are typically really great ramp, in green decks the 2 mana to get 1 makes it on par with a Rampant Growth in terms of acceleration, which isn't that great. While the conversion of colorless mana can be good, I know that I haven't had any issue with that in may deck. Consider maybe Rings of Brighthearth? It can double up fetchlands to continue the same ramp theme (though slower), and it also serves to double your Commander's ability. Copying Greater Good is also a greater good.
Lark Combo - I tend to find Sun Titan/Saffi to be 'better.'
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
Ramp - you are very land-heavy, so I would work on as many ways to dump extra lands as possible
Burgeoning
Terrain Generator
Exploration
Budoka Gardener - bonus that it makes VERY big tokens
Tokens - just a few..
Nacatl War-Pride - super silly card with Trostani, Doubling Season, Cathars' Crusade.. pretty much most things.. lol
Rhys the Redeemed
Angelic Accord - so circular with Trostani
Utility
Reconnaissance - lets you attack like a crazy person, and then untap everything
Glare of Subdual - tap down big threats/blockers, or whole boards with Reconnaissance or Seedborn Muse
Faith's Reward - doesn't help with tokens, but gets back everything else
Ghostway - ditto for creatures except helps with mass exile/tuck
Rootborn Defenses - like it was made for your deck
I definitely stole some of your Fog tech hehe. Glacial Chasm and Martyr's Cause specifically.
In the previous version of this deck it had a very difficult time ending games and things would drag on unnecessarily because I had goblets of life, but no ways of beating my opponent. Thats why I run Felidar and Test. However with all of the new things I've added to the deck, they may no longer be necessary.
Ajani Goldmane is honestly just there out of my fondness for the card. He has been in the deck since I started playing EDH and I wanted a use for my avatar token haha. But yes, I agree he should absolutely be cut.
The previous iteration of this deck was much more stompy and large token heavy where True Conviction could pull its weight and it hasn't done so in a while.
I just inserted Nissa about 2 weeks ago to test her strictly as a card draw option. Nothing more. I have no reason to ever use her other abilities. She has been great so far, but perhaps I could use something like Elvish Visionary as I could populate/blade/seance/sun titan/lark combo it.
I just splashed the signet in this week because there is a fair number of players in my meta (4 of about 15+) that run MLD. I recently (painfully) cut cultivate and kodama's reach to play test without them.
And I definitely forgot to add Rings in this decklist! Thank you for pointing that out.
Also I probably should run Saffi in here.
1 True Conviction
1 Ajani Goldmane
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Plains
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Dryad Arbor (Forgot to put her in the list)
This build is fairly new as I haven't run pieces like the Lark combo before. So I'll post a report after this weekend of how it turned out as I'll be playing a lot of EDH.
Also depending how successful or not this build is with its recursion package, I may also experiment with Gift of Immortality.
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StaffLikewise, if you like Ajani, you could always leave him in. Decks don't always have to be 100% crazy optimized, you need to leave a little room for fun, =).
ooph. I'm not playing against much MLD (any) right now, though I've run into it before. If that's the case, I'd actually cut out a lot of the land ramp, switch to mainly artifact ramp and rely on fetches +Rings/land recursion to 'ramp.'
Do you have a Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam? I haven't played my trostani vs MLD, but in past decks those have been shining all stars in recovery when powered by a few rocks. My Trostani also runs Tilling Treefolk and Titania, Protector of Argoth. Of course, I use them to power up some cycling lands and my fetches, but you can easily ignore the cyclers and use them to power up the land ramp, making room to replace the land search spells/dudes for better manarocks. Fellwar stone, Darksteel Ingot, and Coalition Relic are probably all good for those situations.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
You make some great points, bob. I've had a lot of success with Nissa so far as a green phyrexian arena, and I do love me some 120/120 avatar tokens.
Oh man I wish I had a crucible. It would be an auto-include in here.
So I played a lot of games over the last weekend. Most of the games was Trostani, Deretti-stax, Ayli-cleric tribal, and Narset-superfriends. That pod didn't go so well as every game the Narset player ran train and took over every game with things like Omniscience, The Chain Veil into Ral Zarek and Narset Transcendent and other shenanigans like that.
After that player changed out his Narset for Zozu and Krenko, games were a lot more stable. I won 1 game with Spike Feeder + Thune after taking 20 commander damage from a Gisela with Aurelia backing her up. Every other game I drew Test of Endurance and it just kept feeling like a dead card to me. I've realized I've never won a game with it. Felidar not only has a much more lenient win-con, but I can still play it when I'm at less than 40 life to as a beater. I think I'll cut Test, but keep Felidar in a bit longer, but it is still on notice.
Another that has bothered me is my lack of answers. I have several creature tutors, but outside of Slime, I don't really have any valid targets to break my way through a win. I'm thinking of testing Reclamation Sage, Terastodon, Bane of Progress and any other creature with ETB removal traits.
I noticed without any direct replacements for Kodama's and Cultivate I was hurting a bit more in the ramp department. I think I may either put them back in, or find some suitable 2-3 cmc rocks to allow me to ramp while alleviating some of the damage of MLD in my meta.
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StaffI like some diversity in my removal, so that I'm not too reliant on specific interactions. While no one in my group runs Torpor Orb or Humility (yet), I'd consider Caustic Caterpillar, (or better yet, Qasali Pridemage), Return to Dust, and Tragic Arrogance.
I've listed a few of my favorite rocks already, but otherwise you can always go the creature route as well. Even in green, Burnished Hart does good work.
If MLD is the issue though, I'd definitely look at rocks first. Fellwar Stone for cheapness, Darksteel Ingot for not being collateral, and Coalition Relic since its charge up can help double charge a recovery turn to get that piece of recovery ramp out while still low on lands.
Luckily, there's also a new land-return guy coming out in SoI it looks like. He only returns one land, so won't be making my list over Tilling Treefolk, but if you're lacking a crucible, these effects can help some of it out.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Karmic Guide
1 Budoka Gardener
1 Rampaging Baloths
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Felidar Sovereign
1 Elvish Visionary
Felidar is definitely a card that belongs in a control build. He's just is not working out. Every time I draw him I wish he was something to develop my board state. That is why I'm dusting off my copy of Rampaging Baloths. I used to run this card during my big token build, but couldn't get much out of him because I had a less than stellar ramp package. Obviously my ramp is nowhere near as strong as Bob's but I think Baloths will still get a lot of mileage with what I'm piloting now.
Saffi has been amazing with Sun Titan, but Karmic guide will be swapping places with her for the sake of deck synergy. Guide can be tokened which is my main motivation for the swap.
Now that I have a lot more draw options, I think it is time to retest Budoka Gardener to help spit my excess lands into play as well as serve as a threatening token generator.
I feel like the deck is starting to come into its own a bit. I’m really digging all the recursion options available to me and I think I may try to adopt more recurrion elements (Emeria Shepherd, Saffi, Gift of the Immortal, etc) and focus the deck towards all of that.
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StaffGuide/Saffi is probably more personal preference, tokening a guide is a nice shot (as is interactions with parallel lives token doubling then), but even the copies have echo costs, which can be a bit annoying. Of course, once you pay one (or two for safety), you can keep populating and simply let the excess ones go. The main deciding factor for me was that Guide could recur my boardstate from ground zero, after the fact, while Saffi has to be onboard. Both of them can serve similar roles if you choose to add Lark Combos to the deck too.
Budoka has had his moments for me. He's still in testing (since once my lands are down, he'll only spit out one extra land and flip, but if I have 10 lands, I figure I'm ready for beats.
Emeria Shepherd has been stellar for me, but once again, lands theme makes her crazy. I think one time I regrew half a boardstate off her alone. (Emeria -> plains -> return suntitan -> return crucible -> play oracle mul daya -> sac a ghost quarter onto my own plains, get plains -> return ? -> replay plains as second land -> return ?) It was pretty nuts.
===
That said, we discussed Cradle of Vitality a bit between us, and I have to say, it shined pretty well last night. Admittedly, I had all the mana I needed, but responding to the lifegain triggers, to make more tokens, so that I could chain the Cradle of Vitality triggers onto each creature and boost the total life + counters output. Pretty sweet. I took a 20-30 lifegain play into a 120+ lifegain play. With corresponding +1 counters spread across the newly created army.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek