MTG Salvation

After a long time I finally bought this fine-ass, close-to-NM, looking The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale Superstoked to finally put it in the deck and crush my opponents with it. Sorry for the humble brag, I'm just freaking happy ^^

When there was a return to Zendikar announced, I was thrilled, as I would imagine most lands-players.
Now that spoilers are completed, I have to say.... I'm dissapointed. It was probably due to my high expectations, I was expecting at least one withTatyova, Benthic Druid power level. Instead we got... Well, here's the list of cards that I found interesting enough to mention, and why I won't be running them:

1. Ancient Greenwarden 6 Mana for a Crucible effect is just too much, it's that simple, even if you also have a landharmonicon at the same time. We don't play nearly enough cards that could trigger the seccond part, and the first is pretty lackluster. I run Ad Nauseum and also, we are actively trying to play the least amount of non-land permanents as possible. This doesn't fit the bill. Might work for some decks, but it's a no for me.

2. Nahiri's Lithoforming If it weren't for that last clause (lands etb tapped) this could've been possibly playable.
I think we have enough of this kind of effect already in Scapeshift, Manabond+Ad Nauseum,World shaper and Splendid Reclamation.

3. Malakir Rebirth Some of us were doing this kind of thing already, with Gift of Immortality. This is ofcourse a one time deal, but has the added benefit of being a land as well, which seems useful. Overall, I'm not even running Journey to Eternity, so I don't see how this should get a pass.

4. Jwari Disruption This is really neat! If it were a hard counter (albeit costing a little more), I might've considered it, floating mana is very much a thing in our format.

5. Phylath, World Sculptor This is just a worse Avenger of Zendikar, which I janked out of my deck a long time ago. I guess if you are already running Avenger, this might not be the worst thing ever.

6. Moraug, fury of Akoum If only it had haste and wasn't a big beefy 6/6, hurting us both on our Child plan and our Ad Naus plan. Would probably fit great in the decks that run the two Avengers.

7. Valakut Exploration This card is so misleading, it has no links to either Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, nor has it anything to do with Exploration! All joking aside, we really don't want to play from the top of our deck, we want the cards in our hands. It' especially bad if there are multiple lands on top, and you have no Exploration effect in play. Doesn't work with Manabond, also don't like to exile my cards, since we run quite a few graveyard interaction cards.

8. Valakut Awakening We don't very often go into the lategame with no gas in hand, in the early game we try to drop our hand on the table as fast as possible. I don't see this being very good in our deck.

9. Nissa of Shadowed Boughs YES! A planeswalker with Landfall!... Oh. Yeah, I don't think she fits our deck good. The fact that those 3/3 dissapear EOT makes it a big turn off, since she has no way of protecting herself. Sure, you could play this on t5, play a fetch, crack and ult her. Our gameplan is not to cheat big dumb things into play, so I'm going to pass on her.

10. Pathway Cycle Cragcrown Pathway Cool cycle, love the design, is going to see plenty of play in EDH, I'm sure. Unless you're playing a budget version, I don't see any reason running these over shocks+Fetches+a couple of OG duals.

Now, after all the whining, the top 3 cards that I'm considering trying out:

3. Bala Ged Recovery Call me crazy, but I'm considering cutting Eternal Witness for this one. Yes, Witness is more easily tutorable, this can up your landcount, while retaining that effect. Taplands are disguting though. We'll see I guess.

2. Omnath, Locus of Creation A decent card that replaces himself, heals you a bit, ramps you when you need it, and can also dome people to the face.

1. Scute Swarm This feels similar to Field of the Dead, the only key, important difference is that it's a non-land permanent, and so easily disruptable. However, if you can land this, and then make a couple land drops, they grow exponentially. Let's say you have 6 lands, you have an Azusa, 3 lands in hand, one of which is a fetchland. You end up with 16 tokens. That's a ton.

Hello folks, I discovered commander and got back into MTG about a 2 years ago after a long break. The formats casualness is what drew me back in. With my work schedule being able to randomly drop by a LGS and get a few games in is perfect. My first commander deck was based loosely on this primer and a couple other lists I found that all had Maze’s End as a win con. I’d always been known as a lands guy so this seemed perfect. I showed up my first night with high hopes, rusty skills, and a deck that was a clunky mess. I lost, a lot. I did meet some cool people and had fun. I also learned a lot that night and have been working to get better every game. With the world gone mad in 2020 I didn’t get to play much, but I really set down and tinkered on a couple decks. Starting with this one. I originally thought that Child would look really threatening in the command zone so I tried a couple different commanders. What I didn’t realize was just having the old-school dual-lands would elevate my threat in peoples’ eyes (I didn’t realize that some of the old cards had gotten so ridiculous). So fast forward a bit and I’m looking at the deck and thinking about if having Child as the commander is a good idea. Then I played myself against a couple other decks after making a couple tweaks. It seemed promising and then I got a few real games in. This thing is nuts fun now. Big thanks to the Primer guys and everybody that tossed ideas around in this tread.

My list is below. I still want to make a couple tweaks, but I think things are pretty solid right now.
I’d like to add:
Gift of Immortality to replace Journey to Eternity so it can go back to another deck that can’t run gift.
Ad Nauseam and possibly Manabond. Bob’s performance tells me that Ad Nauseam should be good. Manabond should be great with that as well, but I hate mass discarding. I think I would pull Ulvenwald Hydra for the Ad Nauseam. If I did Manabond as well, maybe Beseech the Queen?
Last Stand is an old pet card from long ago that I really think I’d like to get in here as well since there are 2 cards that give lands all basic land types in this deck. Don’t know what I’d cut, but I’m going to make this one happen.
There are 2 cards I want to mention my thoughts on that are newer and haven’t been covered in here.
The World Tree this one comes into play taped, but if you have 6+ lands they all now tap for any color. Seems really good in the deck. If your <5 it taps for a green so that’s not too bad since this is a mostly green deck.
Dread Presence this one has been mentioned, but nobody posted experiences. I’ve got 3 ways to make things swamps so he’s pretty easy to get going. Doing 2 damage to things is handy, but the draw is also really good. You’ll lose it to Child, but it has nice versatility.

Quote from FTWRabbit »

2. Nahiri's Lithoforming If it weren't for that last clause (lands etb tapped) this could've been possibly playable.
I think we have enough of this kind of effect already in Scapeshift, Manabond+Ad Nauseum,World shaper and Splendid Reclamation.

Amulet of Vigor fixes the last clause on Nahiri's Lithoforming especially If you have a way to draw or tutor into it like transmuting Dizzy Spell however you'd probably be more on board with Animist's Awakening due to it's Spell mastery ability.

Looping Otawara with Loam pretty much kept me in a game last night against someone with Magus of the Moon until I could permanently answer it.