***Note***: This primer is to build a very powerful agro / control based bant deck. Jenara is great as she is versatile and there are many ways in which to build her. I try to keep an open mind to others opinions so if you feel strongly for or against a card please voice it and we can discuss. Feel free to ask any questions about card choices as I would love to review any past experience I have had with other options. If you are looking for a deck that combos out on turn 4-6 though this is not the deck for you.
Deck History
I started playing EDH the summer of 2010 with a new meta and it was a ton of fun. My first deck was Captain Sisay. I think in the first few months we all played all of the tutoring commanders to death and sort of as a consensus everyone just got sick of them all. We don't have any combo tutoring commanders in our meta anymore even though there is nothing holding us back from them other than nobody feels like playing them. I moved from there to Korlash, Teferi, and a few other smaller decklists temporarily in there in the months that came after that. I finally picked up on Jenara sometime around January 2011 and have been in love with Bant and Jenara as a commander since then. She has been to date the most versatile commander and set of colors that I have played and I love all of the interaction within the deck. It is currently my oldest deck to date that is still assembled.
When I originally built Jenara she was a bit voltron and I built it with the sole intention of killing opponents with her and due to such it was a lot more protective of her running a lot of equipment and enchantments that would stop opponents from targeting her and such. I have since then realized the power of the rest of the deck and I rely on her a lot less than I used to. My average cost per spell was a lot higher back then as well as I used to run Time Stretch, Genesis Wave, and Rite of Replication.
From there I changed the deck to be all about the interaction of dropping creatures with enters the battlefield (ETB/CIP) triggers. I pushed it to the point where I tried to replace everything that wasn't a creature with a creature. This version turned out to be good against the wrath control heavy decks which we had been rolling for some time but I found it a bit lacking when facing some creature based decks. Uril for one used to roll me every game.
Currently I would consider this deck to be an aggro-control deck. We have a lot of creatures in the list but most of those creatures are about building up card advantage and taking away threats of opponents. As a game goes on our deck is designed to have better resources and win the game through means of our better resources. For a long time I considered this deck an aggro deck but I have since sort of changed my mind a bit to say it is aggro-control with plenty of control elements in it that you probably could get away with calling it a control deck. Regardless the deck has had fantastic performance to date and I am happier with the list than I ever have been.
Why Play Jenara?
Jenara is completely different from every other bant deck. Unlike Rafiq, Jenara's abilities can cover all of the buffing necessary. Jenara's flying helps evade chump blockers as well which are often found in token and utility decks. Using Jenara as your general means that you will not be relying on your deck to boost your general up for a win, likewise you do not require your general to win the game. I often throw my general out into play early on just to throw a few punches. She will die eventually and it is fine as she has a very low starting mana cost.
You should consider running Jenara if you like a powerful commander that your opponents will always fear at every stage of the game while not being bound to using her to win. The colors of Bant allow us a huge variety of builds between being a control player, a combo player, and perhaps an aggro player. It is up to you to determine what sort of build you want to take on your deck. I like to think that most every Jenara deck can be a bit of a combination of the three all at once.
The three colors are very powerful together leaving very little weakness to any one specific tactic.
REASONS YOU SHOULD PLAY JENARA:
- You enjoy having a commander who scales well at every stage of the game. She is just as amazing on turn 3 as she is on turn 15. She comes in early and can make herself scary simply by paying some mana. She needs no other cards to build up.
- Her decklist can run a lot of amazing cards that are truly powerful with or without access to Jenara. I find that due to this interaction you see less people tucking Jenara as it does a lot less to your deck. Plus this deck can do a lot without her as well as having an easy time tutoring her back up if needed.
- You love Bant! Personally it is probably my favorite 3 color combination in EDH as it is so versatile. The colors lend to some strong agro tactics while giving options to control as well in white and blue. Green gives ramp and fatties so it really covers most every outlet.
REASONS YOU SHOULD NOT RUN JENARA:
- You enjoy a synergistic build around commander. Jenara's ability to self buff makes her a bit of a goodstuff commander. The equipment in here are primarily for the utility abilities rather than the buff / evasion.
- You enjoy streamlined commanders that build their deck for you. Jenara has tons of different ways to be built because she is more of a good-stuff Bant approach than a build around sort of commander. Every decklist you see out there could very well be different as every meta is different.
- You want to combo out on turn 4. Jenara has some very powerful interactions and some good solid combos such as the Lark + Survival combos but these colors aren't the best at tutoring noncreatures. There are a few white tutors that still work for this but you are probably better with someone else other than Jenara if you want to dedicated combo.
RUNDOWN ON JENARA HERSELF
Ok, first lets stack up all of the bant options before we go in depth on Jenara herself just to show other options and then I will justify why I chose Jenara to lead this deck.
Angus Mackenzie Mr. turbofog. He is a fun commander and I have piloted him before. He plays well as a control based commander and can potentially play somewhat politically if you would like to. He works generally well against creature and swarm based decks. The downside of playing him though is that you need to have your wincons in your deck. In the games I have played with him personally although very fun have been very long and grindy games. His abilities dont necessarily lend him to being any one particular build so he can be versatile in that respect. In the end though, I would not use him as the commander for a goodstuff ETB creature deck though.
Arcades Sabboth are any of these elder dragons other than Bolas even playable? I would not pay 3 more mana to have this guy over Jenara. He is just fat and clunky, jenara is just better.
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician derevi is an excellent choice in commander. I myself have played with him quite a bit but in my experience with him, he wants to play as either a heavy control, token, and or stasis style of commander. He is a great commander with a really strong set of abilities on him. That being said, he is very much a build around commander and does not lend himself well to ETB creatures or a goodstuff approach. I think he is really solid, but I do not think that the tactics that I utilize here translate well to his own abilities as a commander.
Phelddagrif another group hug / politics commander. He sort of requires a whole different build designed to group hug. If playing a hug strategy is your thing then go for it but the build would be entirely different from what I have.
Rafiq of the Many the major competition. He is very powerful and well known. My big complaint is that he requires you to build around him more. He is often a faster kill as well but requires more cards on the field to kill players. Opponents often assess him as a higher threat than Jenara as well due to his surprise kills.
Ragnar I don't think I really need to give this guy a review. This legend would just make a bad commander.
Roon of the Hidden Realm roon is a value engine of a commander. I know of some people who really enjoy him as their ETB commander but in my experience he has been sort of slow as a commander. He costs 5 mana and needs to tap to utilize his abilities so he generally has a turn opening before he can use his abilities to generate value. His higher initial mana cost as well is troublesome as it means he will come in later and be harder to recast. Oddly enough, a 4/4 vigilant trample creature is really awkward and needs equipment and or buffs generally to connect to opponents. My own experience with Roon was not very productive as most of the time I would cast him, he would get tucked, wrathed, or spot removed before I would untap again. Some people enjoy him but in my experience he is just a little slow and his size as a creature is just awkward overall mostly just increasing his cost to play. Overall, I had a hard time closing out games with him and I often needed additional wincons in the deck because he was my commander. Overall, I felt like I got targeted more often due to him and accomplished less than when I used Jenara. The rest of the deck is built around generating good value and so I often did not find him worth casting because of his low performance when I would cast him.
Rubinia Soulsinger sort of cool in the fact that she is a theft happy commander but I don't like how she gives creatures back when she dies. She reminds me of a bad Merieke Ri Berit to be honest. One of the guys in my playgroup tried bringing her down one time and I just spot killed his commander when he would target or when I wanted my stuff back. She is too slow and fragile.
Treva, the Renewer ehhhh..... definitely not the best of this dragon cycle. Jenara is just so much better than this.
So you can see that there are a few other decent choices in bant. I have seen some of the alternates and played a few of them myself. In my experience, Jenara is the option that plays the best as a goodstuff commander and while many of the alternate options have their merits, I found that many of them required more building around them in general. The utility bant commanders are fun but I personally have really enjoyed the versatility of a cheap wincon as a commander. It also frees up some of the slots in the deck and allows the other 99 to perform a bit more consistently in my experience. Rafiq is sort of the one other solid beater commander but I personally find him requiring more cards to set up and he tends to be more explosive of an early game kill style of commander but I have seen many complain that they run out of gas trying to push early game Rafiq beats.
As for Jenara, I could talk all day about how she can be utilized but honestly I will save all that talk for the strategy section of the primer. Breaking her down quickly she is a 3/3 flyer for GWU which in its own gives her good power for her cost as well as evasion with flying. Add to that the fact that you can pay 1W to give her a +1/+1 counter and she can be an absolute house in the mid to late game. She comes in early and has good power + evasion making her powerful in the early game. Combine this and the fact that she scales her powerful at every stage of the game. She is always a big threat and never easily dismissed. When opponents start running out of removal in the late game you can punish them with her then as she tends to be the biggest beater on board.
Personal Bio
My name is Brian, I am 27 years old, I live out in South Dakota sort of in the middle of nowhere. I have been playing EDH with the same group of people most of my EDH career with some time spent in a few other playgroups but I am back to where I got started on EDH again. We often get together on Tuesday nights and split into 2-3 games of EDH playing for a real fun time. I tend to get targeted quite heavily as a player for having good cards and good decks. While I love perfecting my decks I try not to make them too broken in the ways of combo and mass LD so I tend to stick to synergistic strategies that avoid that when possible. I am a spike player and I love getting my cards worth so I play plenty of card advantage style cards and I love comes into play effects.
I have been playing magic since 1996 or 1997. I have been playing magic since Ice Age, but that was when I was in like 4th grade, so obviously I was not the player then that I am now. I picked up on playing standard FNM back in high school where I played a lot in the Odyssey / Onslaught blocks. I played into Mirrodin and quit around when Kokusho started beating everyone up. I don't hold it against him though, I would love to see him come off of the ban list as I think he is fine in EDH. Perhaps keep him banned as a commander.
I am back to playing magic again and have been playing standard since Zendikar came out. I go back and forth on my thoughts of Standard but regardless I love playing EDH. I am sure that at some point I might give up on standard again but I hope to keep playing EDH for years to come. My EDH play started up sometime early in the summer of 2010 so I guess around the release of Rise of the Eldrazi or somewhere in that time frame. (You can bet we all smashed with all 3 big eldrazi in like every deck early on.)
I have built a whole lot of decks at this point but generally I have stripped away most of the decks I have built. Jenara is my oldest deck at this point and one of my favorite go to commanders. Due to how much play testing I have put into her though I dont play her all that much anymore as there isn't that much more tuning to do I feel like. I don't like replicating how decks feel so I try to have each deck have its own unique style or game plan to it. I was originally a huge aggro player but have really sort of blossomed into a control player the longer I play magic. I tend to dislike playing combo so I never really add cards because of their combo off interactions but if a card belongs in the deck it will make the list regardless of the combo interaction.
The original deck development / alterations can be found here if you are interested to see some of the progressions my deck went through.
You can find other user's lists of Jenara following the primer posts.
BlueRam did an article for CommanderCast that you can find here on this list.
I discussed my list on a Commandercast podcast here.
Strategy
Using Jenara
Ok, so probably one of the biggest questions you should try to answer quickly in a game is how you plan on using Jenara in that particular game. There is no right or wrong answer to how to use Jenara but I suppose I can sort of give you a good idea of how I use her. Keep in mind that this isn't always true but the following is usually a fairly good guide of using Jenara.
Early Game: I used to be less for using her early on but in my more recent builds of the deck I am a lot more willing to cast her early on and beat on people. The following are some of the considerations I often consider when considering to cast her early on:
1) Determine how likely it is that your opponents intend to combo off on you. If there is even a perhaps chance that a player might combo on you smash Jenara hard on them. Forcing opponents to play defensive with tutors and removal will slow them down. Assuming other players also see the combo player as a threat this shouldn't really give you any additional enemies which is a nice way to use her. In fact I have on occasion had people help clear the way and combat the combo player with counterspells allowing me to remove them quickly.
2) What is the size of the game. In smaller games, it is more productive to take an aggressive start and take out your biggest opponent quickly. That will put them on the defensive which always takes away from their own game. In larger games especially 5+ players, it is harder to hone in on players and pissing off opponents early can make multiple enemies. In 4 player games it largely is dictated by your own setup and opponents. Take into consideration the size of the game before utilizing Jenara. Playing her early in larger games is not as good of an idea unless as above you need to kill a combo player. Aggro strategies scale poorly for more opponents so keep that in mind.
3) Assuming you are playing a 4 player game, evaluate your opening hand to determine how effective she will be. If you aren't going to be doing anything else anyways you might as well pull her out and put her to some use. She often does a little bit of work and then takes a wrath / spot removal but there is always the chance that she just mauls someone. I often like to bring her up to a 5/5 early and then go back to my ramp game. Even as a 5/5 though she adds up very quickly considering she can do that on turn 4 without really any assistance. I generally speaking attempt to play Jenara in the early game unless you have a really solid early hand.
I would say that more often than not I do end up bringing Jenara in early for some beats. Occasionally if I have a really solid hand I will pass on her but more importantly she just gives you great options. Thanks to the extra turns in the deck she has enormous finishing power once you get someone halfway or so to dead with her. Don't be afraid to spread out the damage a little in the early game especially in larger games. If you dont think you can actually kill a player its a good option to have a few people down on commander damage giving you options on who dies to her faster later on. I suppose this is sort of seen as a political play and I dont usually do too much of it but it can be very easy for the threat of one player to overtake that of another. If you start in on one player but see someone else exploding then by all means swap targets.
Midgame: Generally speaking once you cast her in the early game I will try to avoid casting her again in the mid game unless you have like literally nothing else going on. The midgame is when a lot of blockers, wraths, and spot removals start being used and I just try to milk some value out of the ETB creatures and let some of it blow over during this time. This tends to be where you see people tutoring into wraths and using spot removal. Hands should still be fairly big at this time as people are using card draw, tutors, and wraths. Due to this I tend to focus a lot less on Jenara at this time unless I am without other things to do or I am just steamrolling.
Late game: This is where Jenara does a lot of the clean up work. In the early game you should likely have gotten a few punches in on someone. Good threat evaluation should hopefully have gotten them where you need them. At this point of the game people's hands should be getting a little smaller as they have been beating each other up. It gets harder to stop Jenara and thanks to our ramp game and the low cost she has recasting her a few times here is often fairly easy. Her ability to give herself counters here is enormous as you should have racked up quite the landbase. It becomes very easy to kill people in just a few attacks thanks to early pokes and big mana dumps for her.
Extra Turn Effects: There are a lot of things that extra turns do in this deck (Ex. Time Warp). Assuming they resolve they always replace them self in hand and allow you to un-tap. This means that anything you do in addition to these two things is extra value. I use them with Jenara for multiple attacks on an opponent. Don't forget that you can use extra mana beyond what it takes to cast the extra turn to pump her up. This means that the damage output will increase significantly especially if you string a few of these together. If for instance you have 10 mana and extra turns, that means you can put two counters on Jenara before taking the extra turn, then attack for damage. When you untap you have the option of pumping her again up to 5 more counters and swinging out again. If you have the capability of taking 3 turns in a row with another extra turn or recuring / flashing back the other extra turn it turns into even more damage output. I generally try to save Extra turns for instances where I really need those extra turns but keep in mind that if you play against wheel effects and or combo players waiting can have bad results as they can go off it will be too late for them.
Deck's Strategy
The War of Attrition: this deck can very easily be considered an attrition based deck. We take small pokes at our opponents resources and life totals. This deck is best defined as an Aggro / Control deck. It is a control deck that utilizes creatures to control the flow of the game. The general idea behind this deck is to control opponent's resources until they run out and then to kill them with our utility creatures and commander.
Quote from Attrition Defined »
at·tri·tion
noun \ə-ˈtri-shən, a-\
The act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack <a war of attrition>
Some of they key elements to this deck:
Enter the Battlefield (often abbreviated ETB): Creatures that have an immediate effect when they hit play are great as they are built in 2 for 1 effects. Since we get some effect off of them coming into play we have already generated value off of them immediately. Anything that they accomplish after coming into play is just extra card advantage.
Creature Abuse (Engine Cards): These cards generate lots of card advantage and are generally speaking repeatable. These effects generally give additional value for each activation or trigger we can get from them or load a lot of value into a single trigger. A few examples would be Sword of Fire and Ice, Birthing Pod, Sun Titan, Ghostway and Skullclamp. Every activation or trigger you manage to get from them increases your war of attrition. By using these we are able to squeeze more value out of the creatures with ETB abilities.
Good Stuff: Well, a good portion of the deck falls into the above two sections. Some cards though are just really good value or removal. Fact or Fiction for example doesn't really need to get better. It does in some ways give us access to graveyard recursion tactics and can be reused using some of our ETB creatures such as Snapcaster Mage and Eternal Witness. But the point of these cards is just to get solid value. Lots of the instant and sorcery removal falls into this category. I wish we could abuse them further but occasionally what you need is just a spot removal or wrath. My opinion of these cards is that they tend to have the least synergy with the rest of the deck however even when things aren't working out well, these cards are still good to see and do good things.
Most of the deck is made up of these above three elements. The ETB creatures and engines have the most synergistic interactions for the deck but even just a solid good stuff card has its place in the list. Things like Swords to Plowshares give you access to cheap spot removal that can be vitally important to remove a threat quickly like Consecrated Sphinx or stop that Deadeye Navigator right away rather than after he pairs up with that broken ETB creature.
Combo Options
My own current list has very little for infinite combos in it. I currently have the infinite turn option which can go off however the primary reason for all of the cards in it being included are not that it turns into infinite turns but because they are good cards. I could focus more on tutoring into them and or include the lark combo again however I in general dont much care for infinite combos but include those cards because I believe they deserve a spot regardless of their combo interactions.
When I first started playing Jenara I fumbled around with using a Reveillark combo by using Saffi Eriksdotter in a traditional GW method of executing it. After playing with the list for some time I realized that by utilizing blue you can shortcut the process, use less cards, and execute it much stronger. To start it out you will need Survival of the Fittest in play. Using Survival of the Fittest, move a creature in your hand to be all of the following creatures. You can throw away all of the creatures except for Reveillark into your graveyard so just save him for last and it will work fine. Tutor up Mirror Entity, Body Double, and Acidic Slime in your graveyard with Reveillark in your hand as the last tutor target. This only requires a single creature in hand to get started. Just chain that one creature between them all.
2) Mirror Entity triggers some large number of times... lets say 100 times for 0 mana while retaining priority. Allow the first trigger to resolve and kill your creatures.
3) Body Double dies and triggers the Reveillark ability. Using Reveillark ability you rez Body Double and Acidic Slime into play with Body Double as Reveillark and the slime into play wrecking a target. From here you have the combo rolling and the Body Double replaces a lot of the complicated parts just rezing itself and Acidic Slime over and over. Once you run out of targets for slime to work with rez something else or just opt to keep cycling Body Double as the only rez target until you are out of Mirror Entity triggers. End the last trigger with Mirror Entity + Body Double as a copy of Reveillark and you can kick back into the combo anytime you would like.
Using this method you can also rez Body Double and Karmic Guide if you want. Using the Karmic Guide you can literally rez anything else into play to execute the combo with any ETB creature.
Infinite Turns
There are a few ways in which this deck can kick into infinite turns. I dont focus a lot on achieving this in my list so much as it existing however if you would like you can focus more on it. There are 3 main parts to this combo to make it work so this is sort of the basics of how it works:
There are lots of alternate ways to achieve this as well. Once you take an extra turn you recover it and cast it again. The blink / bounce option allows you to recur the creature's ability to return a spell to hand and loop the extra turn infinitely. I dont overly focus on this as a win condition however it does exist in my list and I do on occasion utilize it for the win.
Other Combo Options
There are a lot of other combos that could potentially be run in Bant colors. I will do my best to jot the more reasonable ones down here.
- Temple Bell + Mind over Matter = mill opponents to death. Make sure to include an eldrazi to shuffle yourself.
Weaknesses
Combo Decks: As it Stands: We play a lot of attrition based magic with this list. This can be a problem when it comes to the late game because combo decks have more time to assemble counters + combo pieces. The combo decks that use less permanents in comboing out are harder to stop because we only run a select number of counterspells. In our current setup if you suspect someone is playing a combo deck I would try to focus them hard with Jenara putting some pressure on them and forcing some defensive tutors. The more time you let them run free the more chance you run of getting blasted by a spell based combo that will be hard to stop. Later in the game try to keep mana up to bluff counters even if you dont have it because that will put them second guessing if they can go off or not.
How to Improve against it: You have a few options in improving this matchup. I think the personal better option is just to add another few counterspells to your list and bank on being able to disrupt their combo. Keep counters cheap as this deck has tons of stuff to do on average. You could also try to add some hatebear style cards to the list to hinder opponents depending upon what sort of combos are expected.
Mass Land Destruction: As it Stands: This deck loves excess mana so I often find myself playing most of my land out that I draw in a game. If you suspect LD or your meta regularly runs it then I would suggest holding a few lands in hand for emergencies. The low mana cost of the deck will help here as well. Keeping up spot removal can make a world of difference as well because often someone will wrath the lands trying to push a threat through for the win so removing that can keep you in the game. Keep in mind also that keeping a threat on the field also makes them consider what you can do with it while the lands are sealed up.
How to Improve against it: There are tons of options in bant for improving this match up. You could consider something like Life From the Loam, Crucible of Worlds, Land Tax, Mana Stones... Keeping the average mana per card low is also great at improving this match up for you as well.
Hyper-Fast Aggro: As it Stands: I dont run tons of wrath effects in here which can be a problem if someone is moving really really fast. Generally speaking I start off by trying to drop a few bodies and turn them in another direction. Jenara is often one of the first threats that will land in a game and against a hyper aggro the 3/3 evasive body will be great on defense. Don't bother going on offense against this tactic unless it is Edric because generally you just want to stem the problem to someone else until they solve it. These tactics can be a problem if they insist on going after you especially if it is Kaalia or something pushing hard against you. Generally speaking I will see if I cant deter them with blockers and creatures first but if they follow it up with spot removal of their own you will be forced into cloneing commanders / using spot removal back to slow them down. These decks often die from being slowed down so anything to buy time is great here. Most of these commanders suffer a lot from being tucked as well so do what you can to just get rid of them for a while. Even if they tutor back up buying the time is what is needed here.
How to Improve against it: generally speaking a few wraths does the job nicely here. There aren't a ton of decks that really fall into this category of deck but if you find yourself repeatedly having issues with them some spot removal / wrath effects go a long ways here. I find this to usually be manageable due to the fact that we have so many early game creatures and spot removal though. If you need more wraths for this type of deck try to keep them cheap so like 4-5 mana to hit as soon as possible and disrupt their momentum is good.
Shroud Aggro: As it Stands: commanders like Uril, the Miststalker and Sigarda, Host of Herons can be a huge problem. Generally speaking throwing bodies in their way can work and Jenara can pump quickly but the problem is a lot of times they pick us to target first due to our scaling commander being able to block them with time. These commanders on occasion will come out of nowhere and practically one shot people so dont take them lightly. As it stands tuck wraths / counters work the best on them as any time you can spend with them out of the picture is just great. Clones work well at slowing them down and killing them as well. Throw chump creatures at them when you can and blow up anything they attach to their commander as that stuff stacks up to damage on you really fast.
How to Improve against it: more mass tuck effects, more counterspells, more instant speed artifact / enchantment removal. If you are having problems against these commanders continuously remove some of the spot removal for what was mentioned earlier. Cyclonic Rift also could potentially be quite useful as it can strip buffs off of them or be overloaded to really slow them down. If you want to get into some tech you might look at adding Martyr's Cause and or Righteous Aura just because they will give them fits.
Card Options
I will try to give a bit of a breakdown on different cards that can give some good flavor to any build of Jenara. Some of these cards are cards that I have had in my own personal build in the past and for some reason or another I have removed or never used them in my build. Keep in mind that the cards listed here are just cards that have at some point been in or considered for the list. The decklist itself is located further down in this post. I will try to explain within the card's details what I had wrong with the card or the reason it was cut.
I will try to keep what I am currently running in my list updated in bold here.
CREATURES
Serra Ascendant Alright, anyone who has ever tried this in a multiplayer setting knows it has some issues. If you drop it turn one in a FFA you will turn the game into archenemy and probably die first. I would generally speaking not recommend playing this out in a FFA multiplayer game of commander. There are a lot of issues that Serra Ascendant has in FFA which are usually you can only focus fire a single opponent to under half life then people start stabilizing. People get really pissed off when they see this on turn one and it usually leads to the whole table running you over first. Not to mention the issues if people start cloning it. I love that it is a good target for Ranger of Eos but it is just one of those stupid cards that when played in the first few turns really screws with the game.
Coiling Oracle I like this guy as I never really dislike drawing him. He has a lot of ways to be abused and has the chance of ramping you in the early game. Later in the game he comes in and essentially draws you the next card keeping some good card momentum going while leaving you with a body to be abused with sac outlets, carry swords, and whatever really.
Elvish Visionary generally speaking, I would say that Coiling Oracle is stronger than visionary but his effect is still strong. Drawing a card might not seem like much but he does it very cheaply, then provides as a means to abuse him through means like skullclamp, chump blocking, carrying swords, and possibly a bounce target with something like Crystal Shard or Venser, the Sojourner if it came down to it. I consider him better than cards like Wall of Omens / Wall of Blossoms due to the fact that he can attack with swords and he dies to skullclamp which is usually a good thing.
Gilded Drake This guy is a bread and butter type of answer. He is very cheap so its easy to tutor for him and cast him in the same turn or do an X mana tutor for him. Stealing someone's powerful threat / commander is a good way to deal with them as they usually need to kill them to get them back. I was afraid that Homeward Path was going to be like everywhere in every single deck but that is far from the case. Overall I have been pleased with having him in here. He gives us some great utility for our creature tutors as he can be a great solution to a sticky situation and he is a very good abuse target with Venser, the Sojourner (who targets permanents you OWN which menas you can flicker him under someone else's control). He also rezes off of Sun Titan which is just groovy.
Mistmeadow Witch This is another card to abuse enter battlefield creatures. It can also be used to a lot of success in defending your creatures from wraths. Generally speaking though it is too mana intensive for most Jenara builds though as paying 4 mana to flicker is just a bit too much. I love the feel of the card but generally speaking I get the impression that it just costs too much.
Phantasmal Image this guy is the cheapest clone effect you can get. He was absolutely incredible when clones used to kill legends but even now he is a very cheap clone who copies ETB effects and such. Some of the few times I regret him is when there is something in play that I want a copy of that is a robust creature like Avacyn or Ulamog where the target and sac still happens. He is useful though as a solid Sun Titan target though as its super fun to get a Sun Titan and get this guy back as a Sun Titan continuing the chain of fun things.
Qasali Pridemage another option for some creature based removal. If you see people in your group packing some Torpor Orb, this is a great creature to pack to counter them. We have a high density of creature tutors to go get him. He rezes off of like everything as well and even can grab Skullclamp and then pop something off very profitably. He is likely the next place I would go to pick up more artifact / enchantment hate in the deck.
Sakura-Tribe Elder I love this guy for a number of reasons, he comes out on turn 2 and can fix my mana in time for a turn 3 general drop, he can chump block into a land late game. If he isn’t needed he can always be fed into something like a skullclamp for some other fodder. One of the biggest upsides to him is that he gives you some ramp at the 2 mana mark that can be abused in other ways later, or if you draw him later on he can carry a sword in for some card advantage.
Scavenging Ooze I like the ooze for being versatile. I can tutor him up easily when needed, he can strip several targets at instant speed in response to them being abused, he gives a little lifegain and is a huge beater that I can also easily recur. He doesn't do anything on ETB per say but with a good manabase I can generally use him 3+ times by turn 6 or so.
Snapcaster Mage the biggest value from this guy is that you can just keep him back as a wildcard until you are ready to do something. With cards like Archaeomancer or Eternal Witness you need to play them at sorcery speed and pick something back up, this guy flashes in and immediately gives you access to cast that card. This means that you are keeping your options open until the last second. Being a cheap drop 2/1 is also a lot of bonus as there are tons of things you can do with a 2/1 to get additional value and he recurs easily. He gives you access to abuse your spells and the deck can abuse him nicely so its a good tie in to multiple sides for this deck.
Stoneforge Mystic really amazing with an equipment package. The fact that he cheats equipment into hand is really solid. I also like how he can cheat swords out and equip on turn 4 which makes for a great setup with Jenara if you turn 2 stoneforge + fetch a sword. Turn 3 hit Jenara. Turn 4 cheat a sword in and equip it to jenara for a nice hit for 5+ the sword advantage. Really a solid creature at any point in the game and great to abuse with rez and such.
Edric, Spymaster of Trest he gives a good bit of card draw. Personally I don't really like giving opponents cards though so I don't run him. He can result in a lot of card draw for you very quickly though. I think there are some social aspects to him as well. If you like manipulating your opponents with words and such you might like him more than I. He is easy to tutor for, easy to recover, and can draw tons of cards. If you play against a lot of swarm decks or lots of white spot removal he becomes a little less good. I think he actually gets much better if you see more combo decks as they tend to run less creatures.
Eternal Witness Hands down best recursion in the game. Sure there are bigger flashier recursion cards but I never regret getting a witness to hand. Generally speaking I tend to use her to rez spells back to hand for further use due to all of the creature recursion I already have but in a pinch she works fine to rez anything really. Of late I have been using her to rez extra turns back to hand which has been absolutely backbreaking for my opponents. Probably the hands down best graveyard recovery spell ever printed.
Farhaven Elf another low mana critter with some good utility behind him. I like having a higher creature count in this deck as I abuse enter battlefield triggers and this allows me for more ways to abuse stuff. I like the value that the creature based ramp options give me when you start looking at sacrificing them to things and carrying equipment / recovering them with things like Sun Titan and Reveillark.
Fierce Empath so I have known about this guy for a really long time now and just of late he has become like one of my favorite creatures to add to decks. He replaces himself in hand with any big fatty which gives me another sort of toolbox and he can be rezed, bounced, equipped up and punch in for utility sword triggers. He just has so many uses that he has become one of my favorite adds.
Harmonic Sliver This guy gives some great removal. He is really cheap, he can be abused after his ETB trigger, cloning him works fantastically, and he is super easy to rez and tutor into. We don't run a whole ton of artifacts / enchantments either so even when playing against a sliver deck he can be nice. The fact is they MUST destroy a target when a sliver comes in so eventually they will be wrecking their own stuff as well. I have had great luck with him and generally speaking I don't run into sliver decks all that often but even when I do I haven't seen him really be a bad thing for the most part.
Mirror Entity Part of the Reveillark combo. Generally speaking, outside of wanting to run a Reveillark combo I don't really care for this creature. Every now and then you can still stomp people with a bunch of 13/13 creatures but generally speaking he is hard to use outside of the combo.
Silverblade Paladin he has been brought up a few times as another double strike option to push Jenara. Overall, I am not as fond of him as I am Rafiq of the Many. However that being said, he can be rezed off of Sun Titan and Reveillark which Rafiq cannot. Rafiq on the other hand moves his buff a bit more freely, buffs exault as well, and can be tutored for off of Green Sun's Zenith. There are clearly some gives on both sides. Again the Silverblade gives a nice extra buff to sword triggers hitting them twice per combat. Also, the fact that you are not constricted to attacking with one creature alone is nice.
Stonecloaker sort of a cool creature as he hates on graveyards while saving himself or another target from removal. I ended up cutting him as I never really got much use out of him. I found Scavenging Ooze to be a better graveyard removal card due to less mana investment and the fact that the ooze is easily recurred and can hit a handful of targets when he comes in.
Trinket Mage I used to use multiple topdeck manipulation cards such as the Sensei's Divining Top, Sylvan Library, and Scroll Rack. After a while I realized that it is probably better to use one topdeck manipulation card and multiple ways to tutor into it as it really reduces redundant cards. I like how I can tutor into this creature or pass it off to Survival if needed. I can bounce, flicker, persist, and rez the Trinket Mage really allowing me to pick up some card advantage and create an artifact toolbox of utility cards that I can use.
Wood Elves these land ramp critters are great as they can grab a dual land and it comes in untapped. We can abuse land ramp critters in a lot of ways to generate extra value and the ability to rez them again for a bit more value is always good too. Try to generate additional value outside of the ETB abilities is important for this deck. This is usually considered the best of the land ramp critters due to its ability to retrieve dual lands into play untapped.
Ephara, God of the Polis as she is still a relatively new card I cant speak much about her yet but I am looking forward to seeing how she performs. The gods in general are a great cycle of cards for consideration in a creature based deck like this as we can tutor for them much easier and she has synergy with playing creatures which is what we do already anyways. I have very high hopes for her in here. I sort of look at her like an indestructible creature tutorable phyrexian arena that has a downside of the deck needing to play like it already does so... it seems really good to me.
Glen Elendra Archmage Two counterspells ready to rumble. It is a bit annoying when you play her out to be followed by a Duplicant but it still solves a lot of problems. She makes for a good Tooth and Nail target as well if you would like to run it and Avenger of Zendikar. I ended up cutting those other cards however the fact is she is easy to clone, rez, tutor, and equip. Putting a Skullclamp on her and passing is a one way ticket to value town.
Mystic Snake A counterspell with a body. The snake is much better than Draining Whelk in my mind because of the problem that the Whelk sort of suckers you into countering bad things just for the bigger amount of counters on it. It is fun to recur this or slap it into your Mimic Vat given the option for even more fun. The big problem that it seems to have though is that most of the rez in these colors are into play which makes it hard to utilize there. It is great when bouncing and flickering it though.
Oracle of Mul Daya Oracle can generate a lot of card advantage that people really don't seem to notice or mind. Remember that your opponents don’t have an option to kill her when she hits play until your pass priority. Always try clearing lands off the top of the library first before you do anything else. Library manipulation such as Sensei's Divining Top and Sylvan Library are great for setting up your land drops for Oracle use too. Fetchlands can give you a second chance to sculpt your topdeck when she is in play as well.
Phyrexian Metamorph is almost a strict upgrade over Clone. This is the damn best clone avalible so far. I still really like Phantasmal Image for its cheap use and easy rez but as far as power goes the Metamorph is as good as it gets. The fact that you can artifact tutor into it and rez it off of Academy Ruins or creature tutor into it and then copy an artifact. It just has so much versatility.
Rafiq of the Many for anyone looking to push Jenara just a little faster and harder, Rafiq adds a ton of damage to Jenara's output. Generally speaking, Finest Hour is a little bit more robust than Rafiq. The reason though I would recommend you look at running Rafiq over Finest Hour though is that this deck has a lot of ways to tutor into creatures and recur creatures. Due to this you will see more reliable results from Rafiq than you will from Finest Hour. Another big plus to these effects is that they double trigger sword effects. So if you want to push your swords a bit further he is also nice. In the end I stopped using him because in general when he would be useful, I was already doing good. He is nice for a surprise buff in a situation where someone is setting up to answer you next turn though.
Restoration Angel the flicker ability here can be used for a variety of purposes due to the flash ability it has. Re-triggering an ETB ability works well with this or even saving a creature from a spot removal or aura lockdown. The fact that it has flash + well costed + has aggressive stats + flying makes this guy really nice. Keep in mind that you will have better results with her in a spot removal heavy meta and worse results with her in a seeper removal meta. I often wished she was just a counterspell when I would get her and she doesnt work well if you find yourself pushing Jenara for fast kills often either since she is an angel and un-blinkable with restoration angel.
Solemn Simulacrum this creature tends to give a lot of good card advantage throughout the course of a game. Birthing Pod off of him into a Karmic Guide or hook him up with a Skullclamp. He does a lot of good card advantage generating things and can work great on defense or carry swords in. He reanimates easily and is nicely cloned. There are lots of great ways to generate advantage off of him.
Venser, Shaper Savant a very nice control creature. He has so many ways to be used and abused. Anytime you can rez him, he can do something useful. He can be bounced and flickered for great results too. Keep in mind that if you rez him, you can always target him to bounce himself loading up to counter things again. He is just so dang versatile. The only time I don't really like using him is against cheap removal. Even in that situation though, you can always bounce the target of the removal. He is really a nice creature though.
Wickerbough Elder I don't run this guy anymore but if you are looking to run more artifact / enchantment removal I found that he works fine. He works really well with Cauldron of Souls if you are into running it as well. Overall I just found that there were better options available and he left the list to better cards IE Harmonic Sliver. Another side note, he works really well if you face down a lot of Torpor Orb users as he can still break it.
Acidic Slime this guy has gotten me out of many a tight jam. The fact that you can blow up any troubling artifact / enchant / land then have a deathtouch creature for chump blocking is just sooo good. Plus its low power allows you to rez it off lark. Also functions in lark combo.
Body Double this guy actually reads Rise from the Grave for blue. He is a great piece of utility that you just cant get in these colors otherwise. I originally ran clone over him but after some experience with him having a mix of clone effects including him has been fantastic.
Ixidron he gives a tutorable wrathlike effect to the deck. Creatures are much easier to abuse in this deck so anytime we can pick something up on a stick it is going to be great. His ability is very unique in the fact that he disables commanders without killing them. He deals with indestructible and hexproof or shroud creatures. To top him off, he is usually fairly decent sized to beat on people with.
Karametra, God of Harvests it is still a new card so I cant speak much about her yet but I am looking forward to seeing how she performs. The gods in general are a great cycle of cards for consideration in a creature based deck like this as we can tutor for them much easier and she has synergy with playing creatures which is what we do already anyways. The one sort of downside I see so far about this god is that it has sort of a relatively high cost to get into play in the first place. It does great though at just picking up solid value though once it makes its way into play and it should open me up to having easier access to multi tasking in my turns and doing bigger things in general.
Karmic Guide amazing recursion on legs. Also part of the Reveillark combo. There are tons of uses for her between using Birthing Pod off of a Solemn Simulacrum or rezing a good creature then putting a Skullclamp on her to watch her die. Generally speaking she usually only sticks around for part of a turn but the fact that you get a rez effect + get to abuse her and possibly have a spare blocker for a turn is all good stuff. If you pay for her echo cost it is usually because you need a flying attacker / blocker or intend to clone her next turn.
Mulldrifter I go back and forth a lot on my thoughts of this guy. I like that he somewhat cheaply draws me a few cards and gives me an evasive body. He can carry equipment and he can die if need be to things like Birthing Pod or sit back on defense with a clamp on. There are a lot of nice things that he can do for me and in an opening hand evoking him for the cards is usually still really solid.
Prophet of Kruphix I will digress that this is essentially a better Seedborn Muse so I wont bother talking about seedborn since I will address this one. Prophet is a great card if you run it in the right deck. These style of cards give a much larger potential mana availability per turn rotation and prophet allows flashing creatures. I think its best means to be utilized is with mana sinks so if you can spend mana and achieve some sort of value without burning cards in hand it can get really out of hand. I myself have relatively few mana sinks as this deck is built around being an ETB value deck. Prophet can be used to flash in creatures but my problem with that is it usually just leads to burning yourself out too quickly. Dropping and pumping Jenara is probably the biggest thing that I can consistently do in this deck as it stands now. I think it's a great card but I just dont believe that it fits in this deck.
Reveillark mmmm recursion. This deck runs a lot of creatures with power 2 or less so even if you don’t want to run the combo, lark is an amazing creature to include in the deck. Also remember that it triggers its ability when it leaves the battlefield so it still works great even if someone is dropping an exile / tuck effect on you. He can be slow played or evoked and generally speaking he is just huge value regardless of how he is played.
Consecrated Sphinx I am guessing by now it needs no introduction. Sometimes he draws you your deck and sometimes he draws you 0-2 cards. Results may vary but generally speaking that is because he is more of a later game type of creature. If you are playing him on turn 6 then I have to say that generally you are playing him incorrectly. Later in the game when people have used a lot of their removal he can come in and be difficult to answer. If you can time him right you can also draw stupid amounts of cards as well. Flash him in off of the flash lands in response to a wheel effect is also very very stupidly good.
Deadeye Navigator I often am asked why I do not play with this card. I think it is an excellent card but it is not quite what I am shooting for here. Let me explain some of why I dont run it:
It costs 6 mana to drop into play. It's ability to generate value is driven by how much mana you have available beyond this so its extremely expensive to utilize quicly. Personally, I feel like my ramp in this deck is acceptable but this is the style of card you want to be running what I would consider to be a heavy ramp package to take advantage of. It also works well with cards like Seedborn Muse and Prophet of Kruphix to run away with value if you can set up that position and keep it.
Its ability to soulbind utilizes the stack thus making it and its bound target vulnerable to spot removal before you ever have the ability to use its blink effect.
You generally speaking want to be running a heavier counterspell package to be able to protect it after dropping it into play.
It is a card with a lot of power but I feel like it requires a lot of setup and for your opponents to not have answers in hand or foresee ably in the future to take the most advantage of.
Duplicant Nice and easy removal effect on legs. The fact that he can be tutored by so many effects in the deck is very useful. The fact that his removal means is exile is really solid as well as it stops opponents from abusing them. His low power allows him to be rezed off of lark and his artifact status allows him to be rezed off of Academy Ruins. Very solid all in all.
Prime Speaker Zegana she has been an absolute bomb for card draw in this deck. Among the advantages she has, she is green and so can be tutored with green creature only tutors like Green Sun's Zenith. She has low power/toughness on card which means she can be rezed with lark, and she is a huge creature in play with a big draw effect. If you tutor her into play with something like Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling, or Birthing Pod, your opponents cannot respond to her getting her +/+ counters and thus she gets her card draw short of some sort of stifle effect. Overall, she has proven to just draw cards really well and be a solid threat in play. She is also very well costed for what her effect tends to be.
Primeval Titan This is sort of a basic high end ramp effect where it gives a 6/6 creature who immediately fetches any 2 lands including utility lands if I want them then still leaves me with a 6/6 beater that needs to be answered. Generally speaking I dont need a ton of mana beyond 6 to operate my basic cards however every bit of mana I have is more mana I can multi task with or keep mana up for removal or pump jenara with. He is sort of winmore ramp but he gives a great target where opponents need to sink good spot removal on him taking more of their spells away from them. (BANHAMMERED!!! Otherwise I would still be playing him.)
Sun Titan Originally I didn't give Sun Titan as much credit as I do now. Generally speaking he is only a step behind Primeval in broken power in a deck that can properly use him. He doesn't ramp nonbasic lands into play but there are so many amazing cards that he can rez back into play that it feels silly how good he is sometimes. I see a lot of broken plays sort of originate by Sun Titan rezing great cards.
Avenger of Zendikar He is really aggressive however there are also some problems with the avenger due to the fact that he often demands to be answered by all of your opponents. He can be hard to protect but he can also end games very quickly. You have to sort of weigh on fast game enders vs playing the slow grind game here. I found that in situations where he didn't get answered I likely had the game with any threat at that point anyways.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite She doesn't technically have a comes into play ability but it really does. It eats tokens and small commanders on entry without actually triggering an ability, it hinders agro strategies, it strengthens my creatures. She is scary and very powerful. She is sort of situational depending upon what your meta looks like though. If you see a lot of agro and token strategies she is good. If on the other hand your meta is all control and combo then she isnt as good. I have had good results so far from her though.
Sphinx of UthuunFact or Fiction on legs. He draws cards, dumps some in the bin, and usually draws like no threat beyond that. He is a fire and forget card draw that can be cloned, rezed, flickered, whatever for further value after his initial value. I like the guy but I moved to Prime Speaker Zegana who was easier to tutor and rez not to mention it tended to get me a lot more cards when it would hit play and cost me less mana to play her.
Sylvan Primordial another card that got banned. Honestly I didnt abuse him in this deck nearly to the extent of some of the GB lists I had. He was fairly broken overall though with how much he did but yea.... hes gone now.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath Akroma is a really controversial card to be totally honest. I use her because of all of her political uses she has. If I play out Akroma and hit someone for 6, the rest of my opponents have to deal with her on defense. She defends like a champ and doesn't really pull spot removal all that much. She isn't the most aggressive creature out there but she plays politics fairly well and usually just turns attackers around you until the next wrath goes down. She also doesn't usually on her own spawn those wraths unlike Avenger.
Terastodon He kills 3 targets on ETB and the elephants are generally speaking never an issue. He is really abusive when you clone / rez him for another shot as well. It sucks that he doesnt have trample but you can still slap a sword to him or just beat into an open board though. He eats up blockers and makes a great blocker which are all great. I stopped running him because generally I didnt need the level of removal he gives. He isnt bad but he can sit in a hand a long time and usually I am fairly good at removing a lot of the targets he would go for before there gets to be that many.
Woodfall Primus He is a good option for a big finisher / noncreature removal. The downside here though is if someone messes with his persist by means of grave hate / mimic vat / exiling him. Other than that I like his persisting quality. I like him a little more though in a list that has the ability to sacrifice him at will though.
ARTIFACTS
Tormod's Crypt There are a lot of options to deal with graveyard abuse out there. One of the big percs of this card though is that it takes out an entire graveyard without touching my own graveyard. It is tutorable off of Trinket Mage, Wargate, and Tezzeret the Seeker as well making it generally speaking easy to retrieve when needed. It can be recurred off of Sun Titan, Academy Ruins, and Eternal Witness as well making it very nice for re-usability which it's cousin Relic of Progenitus does not have going for it. It is unfortunate to topdeck when you are not facing a graveyard abuse deck but it is one of those tools that I would rather have access to than not have access to it.
Sensei's Divining Top This deck has a ton of ways to shuffle the deck and thus clear out a bad topdeck. I have started seeing this card a bit less as a staple for every deck out there and more of a great tool for decks that do a lot of shuffling. The more shuffling you can manage to do the more chances you can get a crack at a new set of three cards. Card selection is always amazing and the more often you can refresh your selection the better this card becomes.
Skullclamp This card might be the hands down best card draw engine in the deck. All of our x/1 utility guys can be clamped for 2 cards apeace. This thing is bonkers and if your opponents let you keep it then it becomes even crazier. If you haven't ever experienced the power of the clamp this is a great deck to see it in.
Sol Ring Sure it doesn't get me into having my 3 colors sooner but it gets everything other than Jenara going sooner. This is just basic good ramp.
Crystal Shard Very nice for re-triggering ETB abilities. You can force opponents to sort of play around it a bit as well which is fun. Generally speaking I use it to play defensively and pick up extra ETB triggers however it is interesting if you want to control an opponent who just happened to tap down too much mana as well.
Mimic Vat another card that I have stopped using a while back. I love Mimic Vat and it is fantastic when it gets going but my problem was getting it going in the first place. I have very little for means to get it going so sometimes it just sits empty for a time or gets blown up before I can activate it. With more sac outlets I think it would be a great card again but unfortunately a lot of our removal is counters, exile, and tuck effects. I just couldn't easily get it going more often than not.
Oblivion Stone I started running Oblivion Stone as my 3rd wrath in this deck when I realized that it gave me a tutor target wrath effect which I could recover with Sun Titan / Academy Ruins. The fact that I can sit behind this effect and set it off at instant speed is just fantastic as well. It has great synergy with the list and it gives a good wide sweeper effect.
Proteus Staff somehow or another I went a very long time before considering this card in the list. However I have been impressed at how it can go both offensive and defensive very nicely. Our creatures are all about the ETB effects so we can easily polymorph them after that and flip out a new creature. I like how it can tuck opposing commanders and big fatties if necessary as well. The big downside to it being the sorcery only as well as 3 mana at sorcery speed feeling a bit heavy. If I could do it at instant speed I would likely pay 4 for the mechanic but at sorcery speed even 3 mana feels a bit heavy.
Sword of Feast and Famine I didn't like this sword at first due to the lack of CA on it however the land untap is huge and I like it a lot now. It can give you extra mana to dump to Jenara and or give you options to pretend to have counters / answers on opponents turns. Best of all you can drop / equip and untap all your land at 5 mana so it really doesn't slow me down much. It also screws with opponents a little due to the discard on it.
Sword of Fire and Ice The more I use this sword the more I like it. Card draw and control all in one sword activation is probably my favorite of the swords. I like having it at most any time during the game and the results are quite solid.
Sword of Light and Shadow This sword used to be my favorite but then someone pointed out to me how slow it was to go active. Since then I have gone away from using it due to the slow time to get it up and running however the lifegain and recursion were quite solid.
Birthing Pod this deck is all about the CIP triggers and this card is very nice for abusing that. It can only be activated at sorcery speed but it just churns value so amazingly. This deck is great at turning creatures over with this effect.
Tawnos's Coffin a little spendy to drop and use in the same turn however when you do the breakdown on what you would spend to bounce things in and out using the Crystal Shard this is actually probably a cheaper option and it can be used against opponents. It is expensive to cast and use though so it has some issues.
Vedalken Orrery anytime you can play behind flash you open yourself up to control the board better. The downside is that it also extends your board position further to the point where it can be difficult when someone blows everything up. These mass flash effects bring down some hate on themselves. Being 4 mana makes it hard to recur but somewhat optional on tutoring in these colors.
Cauldron of Souls mass persist in an ETB deck can be very crazy. The big problem I had with it though is the lack of a mass sac outlet made it hard to really abuse regularly. I liked it but it seemed like it was really hard to work with when I was testing it in here.
Conjurer's Closet sort of like a Venser planeswalker light card. It allows us to re-trigger an ETB ability at EOT every turn it remains in play. It looks decent on paper however I still think that it is a little bit overpriced in my opinion. It is hard to tutor and hard to recur due to its mana cost. It generates value every turn it remains in play though. It could be worth testing but I also dont know what sort of lifetime to expect from it. It has the advantage of not dying from combat damage like Venser can however artifact removal is easier to come by than planeswalker removal. Also with venser, his ultimate is game winning in itself so I personally like venser due to his ability to flicker more things and end games on his own. Keep in mind as well that this doesnt trigger at all until EOT so any sort of instant speed artifact removal can remove it before it kicks in once where as venser can be used immediately and can steal back things that were stolen from you.
ENCHANTMENTS
Mystic Remora an option for some card draw in Bant. The upside is that it is cheap to cast and generally can draw a bunch of cards / it can be recurred of of Sun Titan which is nice as well. The downside though is that it ties up a lot of mana to keep it rotating. However it is sort of rare for it to just sit in play for an extended amount of time as that just turns into you winning.
Sylvan Library This card is all about card selection. If every turn you pick the best available card and then shuffle your deck you are seeing a lot more of your deck and essentially weeding out the things you do not need. If need be drawing extra cards is also an option off of it as well. This card comes in very quickly and generates great value over the time it sticks to the board. Don't feel like you have to pay much life for this card to be amazing. Even just picking the best card every turn is often amazing on its own.
Survival of the Fittest this is a great creature tutor ability. Expect this card to be blown up almost on sight most of the time. If you want there are some great combos that you can execute off of this which I cover some in the strategy section. The fact that you can rotate any creature into whatever you need it to be for a single green mana is really great. Expect this to die on sight most of the time.
Aura Shards I ran this for a while but my issue with it is still that it draws tons of hate. Generally speaking you want to play it and a creature in the same turn to ensure you generate some value so it puts it sort of slow to come in. I like this card a lot more in a token deck where you might see creatures hitting play right away. You can still run it but I just found that too often it blows up before I kill anything.
Rhystic Study a nice taxing effect that can draw you some cards. My problem was that we didn't have a way to really improve on this effect and later in the game it just never really mattered. It was great to drop on turns 2-5 usually but beyond that I felt like it just didn't matter. Still it can make it difficult for opponents to play multiple cards in a turn as the tax adds up quick.
Coastal Piracy ok, so its hard to tutor for, and hard to recur. Beyond that though, this thing is solid gold. It gives you cards for every creature you can connect with and gives opponents nothing. It is high impact and high profile. I have been really meaning to playtest it some but keep putting it off. Edric, Spymaster of Trest is similar in a lot of ways but easier to go get when you want him. He has more political aspects as he benefits opponents as well and is easier to answer but there are some pros and cons between the two.
Greater Good I ran this early in the deck's creation. I still like it however the problem with it is that we don't have a ton of big fat creatures to run through it. I still think it is solid but with so many small utility creatures it is sort of hard to run it in my mind.
Leyline of Anticipation mass flash for everything and the ability to come in for free in an opening hand. This card is really powerful and really cool. It lets you play behind your opponents sorcery speed effects and respond better to things. Adding more mass flash in these sort of cards really increases your ability to control games. Opponents not knowing what they are attacking into or playing into is a huge advantage.
Mirari's Wake This is the best mana doubler available in bant. My issue with it is that it is a high profile card that when blown up leaves you with really nothing. If you don't find your enchantments being destroyed as much then I think you can go for it however I just have a problem that I want to ramp sooner and I want to have lasting results from my ramp. This card is blown up on sight quite a bit and it is a bit slower than I like ramping.
Lurking Predators Great in a creature heavy build as it is a fire and forget sort of effect. It just does its own work and you can let it roll. Even if someone tries to answer it it will trigger once for you. The downside is that even in a creature heavy deck it will whiff at least 2/3 of the time. Even when you are hitting creatures you often don't have much for control of their triggers.
INSTANT
Pact of Negation this is by far my favorite counterspell of the deck. We can counter opponents when tapped out! You do have to pay for it later but generally speaking that isn't a problem. Be careful using this if you are at low land count or if opponents run large scale land destruction as they can force you to loose the game off of them. Generally speaking though what I counter with this effect is a gamebreaking effect that either forces me to win then or stops an opponent from winning on the spot.
Enlightened Tutor So I go back and forth on this card. If you are running a survival lark combo then you probably want this card to help you tutor into the combo. In my own list I have a hard time including this when there are so many artifact tutors that don't involve card disadvantage. I only run 2 enchantments and honestly I dont find myself really wanting to tutor into them all that much. I still like Tezzeret the Seeker more than this card due to not having card disadvantage plus the chance of tutoring into 2 separate artifacts is quite solid.
Mystical Tutor This gives sort of a versatile tutor into our spells. Unfortunately it is card disadvantage however it toolboxes us into our spells. This opens up the option of grabbing a wrath, bribery, Knowledge Exploitation into an opponent's game ender, extra turns, creature tutors. This card might be card disadvantage but if you use it to fetch an extra turn it totally evens out. I just love how this opens up a whole new toolbox of card options.
Path to Exile not as good as swords but when you need an answer, paying only one to answer any creature is very nice. I dont like using this on commanders as it feels even worse then.
Pongify / Rapid Hybridization this would be my next addition if I were to include more spot removal to the deck. Generally speaking though I would rather add more versatile spot removal if I were to expand my spot removal package though. These cards are solid to be fair but I just dont want to be looking at 3-4 instant speed creature only spot remove effects.
Swords to Plowshares great creature removal that exiles the target. Stopping opponents from abusing creatures later is always a plus. This is the best of the cheap creature removal. The only reason I ever consider passing up on Swords in white would be if the deck already deals with creatures extremely effectively and then I would probably be looking at something with more versatility than just a creature kill effect. It is incredibly efficient and strong.
Arcane Denial I have always found this counter to be useful in a multi colored EDH deck due to its low color intensity and mana cost. The fact that you give an opponent 2 cards in a multiplayer format isn't as big since you get yourself a card too. Remember, that one card you counter off of this is probably going to be rather important to them so giving them 2 replacement cards often wont be as useful to them. Plus it shines a bit of a better light on you and draws less hate your way. You cant count card advantage the same way in multiplayer as heads up. In heads up, this spell is a lot less effective but in multiplayer its actually quite reasonable.
Constant Mists reusable fog. If you find yourself needing a means of blocking off a troublesome general like Uril, the Miststalker for instance, this card can stall him for ages. Often someone with a strong attacking general will swing elsewhere after you buy this back once as they will want to be killing opponents rather than killing one land at a time. Try not to piss off the counterspell.deck player as if you do, expect this to get blown up.
Cyclonic Rift I think its a decent card. I was actually less keen on it when it came out but you should generally speaking consider it a 2 mana removal effect that CAN be overloaded. Don't get it stuck in your head that it has to be overloaded as there are plenty of situations where you cant keep up 7 mana at all times and a bounce will save your bacon. Overall though, this sort of effect is a stall at best or possibly a means to try to tempo through to connect on an opponent. It can be a powerful move to overload this and then chain together some extra turn effects.
Eladamri's Call tutor into any creature and put it into hand at instant speed for only 2 mana…. This is probably the best creature tutor in existence. If you want to step up to something better than this you are looking at black tutors generally speaking. Still this is 2 mana at instant speed for a card into hand with no limitations on what color, creature type, or mana size. It is really really good.
Mana Drain solid counterspell with the potential to ramp you some mana. In the early game this gives you a chance to ramp into a larger play earlier or later in the game you can take this mana and dump it to Jenara. There are a lot of solid things you can do off of this as it sets you up for some big plays. As for the counter... it is a counter for 2 mana which is about where we want our counterspells to fall. Being UU in the cost is a bit rougher on the manabase but assuming you have a solid one its shouldn't be a problem. For anyone out there on a budget, I would recommend you look at: Voidslime, Arcane Denial, or Mystic Snake in place of this. This is probably the last place I would spend the money on this deck. The counter is nice but in my opinion its about the last polished card I would go for.
Bant Charm Versatile tuck spell at 3 mana that can do other things if needed. Don’t forget that it has other options other than tucking creatures. Using it as a counterspell and or an artifact kill can be quite useful as well. This is the best of the charms by far and it is an amazing spell. Generally speaking I use it as a tuck spell but dont forget the other options it has.
Beast Within versatile removal effect and the 3/3 beast generally speaking doesn't matter. It has versatility going for it so generally speaking it can dig you out of a situation in a few ways. Keep in mind that in EDH, a 3/3 is a very small creature with little that it can do. Giving some token decks a free 3/3 can be slightly problematic but overall, I haven't found that the downside really ever matters here.
Chord of Calling instant speed creature tutor that puts it into play. The convoke portion of this spell is nice as well as it lets you keep less mana up to run this than you normally would. Often you end up just paying the cost of the creature with this. The fact that it is instant speed into play and you can cheat on its cost by using creatures in play makes this high up on my list of amazing creature tutors for this deck.
Ghostway This card can be very fun with enters battlefield creatures such as Eternal Witness. This can re-trigger all of your ETB effects all in one shot and dodge a wrath. It is a good effect but it is very dependent on sticking a few good targets in the first place. Of all of the flickering effects you can use, this in my opinion is the best option for if you want to run a bit of a blink package but might not want to go all out. It would be one of the first tools I would add to any deck looking for blink effects for this style of deck.
Hinder I personally don’t run a whole lot of counterspells but being able to tuck a problematic card is amazing. The fact that it stops the spell from being recurred is also nice. If you only have room for one tuck removal use this one because leaving it in the graveyard is better than bottom of the library how Spell Crumple works.
Oblation This sucker can tuck generals or just deal with anything that is giving you problems. I think the big thing that does it for me is the ability to target any permanent with it. Sure your opponent will draw 2 cards but if you were loosing to a specific threat what is two cards really? Also as a side note if you Oblation a permanent stolen from you, you get the two cards.
Spell Crumple Yet another Hinder counterspell. The fact that it tucks itself is actually probably a bad thing here as it is easier for this deck to use a spell in the graveyard than it is to tutor for it again. Still it is essentially another copy of Hinder.
Voidslime another decent counter option. I like that it has the option to be Stifle or Counterspell. Generally speaking I find stifle only effects to be too narrow but in this situation it is a nice optional portion of the counter. Three mana is generally the top of what I want to play for a counter though without some sort of additional incentive. Keep track of how often that stifle option is for you as if you never find yourself using it, there are plenty of other two and three mana counterspells.
Fact or Fiction This is one of my favorite draw effects in commander. It digs deep and you get to decide what stack of cards you want. Drawing 1-4 cards at instant speed while digging 5 cards deep is amazing. If you catch someone who is dying with this effect sometimes they will give you a 0-5 split as well lol. For downsides, often you get the whole table throwing in votes on how to split it and everyone sees what you draw off of it. Still though it is great as it digs deep at instant speed for relatively cheap mana.
Vanish into Memory sort of a tech card for this deck. I used it early in my builds. You can flicker Jenara and turn all of her counters into straight card draw here. It works nicely with equipment as well and it can work against opposing voltron strategies as it returns them without auras / equipment / +/+ counters.
SORCERY
Green Sun's Zenith This is essentially a green wildcard creature. It costs one extra than the creature itself but can be any of the green creatures. Anytime I can toolbox into what I need to keep going it is a good thing for me. I wish I had a few more multicolored creatures in here though to improve this card. Still, it opens itself up to ramp and noncreature removal fairly solid still.
Cultivate / Kodama's Reach both very solid cards to be honest. I stopped running them a long time ago though in this deck because of the fact that I just got more value and synergy out of the creature based ramp critters. When you Birthing Pod, flicker, Skullclamp, swing with swords, the creature options just become much more powerful. These effects are strong but I put a lot of emphasis into creature abuse in here so it just makes more sense to stick with creatures when I can.
Wargate This tutors for any permanent. Originally it was primarily in here to tutor for the Survival combo but I enjoy all of the options I can use it for these days. At 3 mana it can ramp a land into play, at 8 mana it can be Venser who has no other way to be tutored up in this list. It is one of the slower tutors that I still use however its versatility is really nice.
Rite of Replication This is a really big game ending spell when copied but I realized that I had more ways to tutor, recur, and use clone creatures in this deck. Until you actually kick a rite it is almost strictly worse than a clone creature. Even then when you go to kick a rite of rep you run the risk of someone screwing with your target which fizzles the spell. It is big but it is bad in a lot of situations and I just found the clones to work out better generally speaking.
Skyshroud Claim It ramps 2 land into play untapped. It is actually quite good however I was really not happy drawing it later in the game so I ended up cutting it. Keeping the ramp package creature based means you can abuse those creatures in the late game still.
Bribery This card is so stupidly versatile. Just remember that if you are using it early on people usually still have removal. Early on I try to grab some fast value effects. Later on I am more willing to grab slow rolling effects like Consecrated Sphinx or an eldrazi but early on they tend to have more chance of being removed. Just sort of know your meta, if a group is running removal light then go for a game ender early on can be easier done.
Hallowed Burial Tuck generals while essentially wrathing the board. Downside being that you can recur creatures that would be normally dead to this. Upside being we run a ton of tutors and can probably go get a creature that got tucked by this easier than a lot of opponents. I love hitting a graveyard abuse deck with this wrath as it usually jacks them up good.
Rout Instant speed wrath is good to have. This would be one of the next few wraths considered if you wanted to bring your wrath count up above the 3-4 mark though. I like the versatility of the instant speed, however I have found that my other wrath options that I use often give me better results. Again though, if you want to bump the wrath count higher this is a good one to consider.
Time Warp / Temporal Manipulation / Capture of Jingzhou There are a lot of benefits to extra turn cards. They can allow you to ramp from 5 mana to 6 while drawing a card and untapping you land so it can be good tempo in the early game. They can provide an extra attack phase to get an extra swing in with a titan / sword / Jenara. They can allow you to drop a few small critters then untap and draw a card. Overall, these effects have a lot of plus sides to them with little to now downside. For anyone on a budget, I would recommend you go with Time Warp and Walk the Aeons and call it a day at that.
Austere Command So many ways to use it that it is truly an amazing wrath style card. It allows you to selectively wrath what is giving you problems potentially allowing you to keep your own threats on the board and sweep up opponents. Other than the fact that it doesn't have a can't regen clause on it I really like this.
Terminus another wrath very very similar to Hallowed Burial. Generally speaking though, I have a hard time ever wanting to miracle a wrath card though. It can be nice with topdeck manipulation especially Sensei's Divining Top or tutoring for it with Mystical Tutor. Overall though, I have found the cheaper overall mana cost of Hallowed Burial to be a bit more solid than the random situations where you can profitably miracle cast a Terminus.
Tooth and Nail There was a time I felt like this was mandatory in every green deck I ever built. I have since then changed my opinion of the card but it is really powerful still. The downside of it in this deck is that there aren't a lot of creatures to tutor up to end the game on the spot. I ran it with Avenger of Zendikar but still I want to end games upon resolution if I am running this. It was cool but really seemed to be very narrow as to when it would work. Plus Avenger seems like he never really ends games anymore unless its super late game or my opponents aren't doing much of anything.
PLANESWALKERS
Jace, the Mind Sculptor I have to say, I think he is better in 60 card 1v1 but even here he can be a good source of card advantage. He is sort of hard to protect from a table of opponents though for his sort of slow over time advantage though. Still, brainstorming every turn is really powerful thanks to how many shuffle effects we have.
Tezzeret the Seeker Good bit of utility since he can repeat tutor. He has a lot of different targets he can go get and can repeat tutor if you can defend him. In the early game I often try to use him to ramp or grab me a top. In the midgame I will usually consider grabbing the clone or Birthing Pod. Its really all about what is good for the situation though.
Venser, the Sojourner Blinking comes into play effects for tons of fun. Remember that you can blink a Bribery’ed creature to return it to your control. He builds fast and his emblem is totally nuts. Gilded Drake is like his best buddy thanks to how his ability works. Venser is probably my favorite EDH planeswalker.
LAND
I will divide this up between mana fixing and utility lands. If I dont mention a mana fixing land it is probably because I view it to be low on the priorities list.
THE FIX
Starting at the top being the best and going down is how I would prioritize the mana fixing lands. If you cant afford one set you might just keep going down the list until you find some that you can afford.
Original Duals:(Savannah, Tropical Island, Tundra) These will put you back somewhere in the range of $50-100 in most situations for a cheap one. However they are very powerful in this deck. I often try to have all three of my colores fixed by the third land drop and having expensive lands like these help me make that objective. These are the cream of the crop. I would not bother obtaining these first thing for your list but they do finish off the list quite nicely.
Ravnica Shocklands:(Breeding Pool, Hallowed Fountain, Temple Garden) I would highly reccomend obtaining at least the shocklands if you pass on the original duals. Having some sort of fetchland targetable dual land will really strengthen your decks power a lot. Unfortunately Modern Magic just came along and destroyed the pricetags on these lands. I obtained all of mine for $5-10 apeace a year back and now they are in the range of $20-35 per land which sucks but if you are lucky you already have them.
Command Tower I was tempted to put this at the top of the list just because it is so silly good but sadly due to the fact that I cannot easily tutor it out I am placing it here between the dual lands and the fetchlands. Considering how easy to obtain these things are you would be crazy not to run one. It has like no freaking downside.
On Color Fetchlands:(Misty Rainforest, Flooded Strand, Windswept Heath) These fetchlands are really solid especially if you also have some of the above dual lands as the on color fetchlands can solve any mana issue you have in conjunction with set of dual lands.
Off Color Fetchlands:(Wooded Foothills, Polluted Delta, Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, Scalding Tarn, Verdant Catacombs) While these off colored fetchlands aren't as good as the on colored ones, if you have plenty of dual lands in your deck then these are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that all of these can only go get one type of land so when obtaining these I would recommend just obtaining the cheapest ones first and the more expensive ones later. So essentially fill in the Zendikar ones first and the last one you need to obtain is Polluted Delta. I have found 8 fetchlands to be quite powerful and I just left the 9th one off myself. I dont really feel I need the last one. I would strongly reccomend considering at least 5-6 fetchlands if you are trying to max this list out. I went all the way up to 8 of them and I enjoy them but I dont think it is really necessary.
Eventide / Shadowmoor Filter:(Flooded Grove, Mystic Gate, Wooded Bastion) These lands are so good at filtering mana if you tap wrong or have some spells with 3+ colored symbols on them. The one constraint for them is you sort of want to use them first so that you arent stuck with colorless mana open. I have found them to be very useful when trying to activate Jenara's ability a lot in one turn as I can filter other colors to be white mana for this process. Dont forget though that if you save them to use last you will end up with colorless mana.
20XX Core Set Duals: (Glacial Fortress, Sunpetal Grove) These things are really actually great lands assuming you have a good density of dual lands. While they are not fetchable themselves, they have a very high tendancy to come in untapped and provide either of 2 colors of mana with little to no downside.
Mass Fix: (Seaside Citadel, City of Brass, Grand Coliseum) These lands have the ability to tap for any color mana that we need. Unfortunately the come in tapped, ping us for the mana, or both and they are harder to go and find. Grand Coliseum is probably the worst of them so if you dont need these lands cut that one first followed by the City of Brass as it can really add up over the duration of a game.
Pain Duals: (Adarkar Wastes, Brushland, Yavimaya Coast) These lands arent too bad if on a budget. I like how you can choose to use them for colorless mana and not get pinged which sort of pisses me off later in the game with City of Brass. I dont run these just because they are sort of lower on my rung of land fixing.
Worldwake Manland: (Celestial Colonnade, Stirring Wildwood) Personally I hate lands that come in tapped so I try to avoid them when possible. If I have a land come in tapped I want really solid utility or I want it to fix for all of my colors. Even then I hate lands that come in tapped. The big disappointment in these lands is that they just dont scale all that well into commander with the 40 life totals. If you have nothing better to do in a turn than activate a manland then you have some really really bad hand / deck.
I could continue with more examples but the land beyond this point gets sort of really lackluster. If you need help with a landbase beyond these examples leave me a message on this page or send me a PM.
UTILITY ACTION
Utility lands can make or break you in commander. If you run too much utility you could have problems with being the target of 3 LD off of a Terastodon, you could run out of basic lands to fetch with your ramp / fetchlands, or you could be blood mooned to death due to your lack of basic lands. However by using utility lands we can have the ability to strip lands, stop voltron commanders, gain card advatnage, or regain the use of lost cards. The key is balance in your utility. If you find that your utility lands are always being targeted by opposing LD you might cut it back and thus become less of a target in these measures. Sometimes it is better to have a basic land in play then have no land in play. I will try to discuss some of the better options for utility lands in this section. These are by no means in any order though just sort of the list I thought of them in.
Target LD:(Strip Mine, Wasteland, Tectonic Edge, Dust Bowl, Ghost Quarter) These things are great answers to someone having a Cabal Coffers, Emeria, the Sky Ruin, or Gaea's Cradle. On occasion I will use these to destroy random other lands such as maze lands or who knows what. I tend to try to get 1-2 of these lands in every deck I build as someone is going to make you pay for not having them. My favorite 2 of these to run are usually Strip Mine and Tectonic Edge. Sure Wasteland is tecnically better than Tectonic Edge but most any time I would use it in multiplayer the Tectonic Edge does the same thing for a hell of a lot less money. If you find yourself needing to shotgun lands every turn you might consider Dust Bowl. Ohhh also if you run Flagstones of Trokair it can be good.
Maze Effects:(Kor Haven, Mystifying Maze, Maze of Ith) I usually try to reccomend running at least one of these maze effects in a list. In a more control heavy list I might run more than one of them. I tend to like Kor Haven in here as it still taps for mana and has the lowest mana activation of the ones that still tap for mana. Plus you can still gang up on the attacker to kill it whereas Mystifying Maze will retrigger a ETB effect for them. These lands can really screw with voltron commanders though as you can fog their attacks.
Academy Ruins one of my more recent favorite utility lands. It can recur equipment and Oblivion Stones like a champ when needed. I have also used it to recur my Phyrexian Metamorph and Duplicants on occasion. It is a great land and it can really come in handy. Keep in mind it is a legend though.
Flash Lands: (Academy Ruins & Winding Canyons) These lands enable really stupid instant speed responses. They can get you behind the lines of wrath effects later in the game and allow you to respond to all sort of emergency situations. Banking off of flash really opens up how we can play and puts us even further into a control setup than normal.
Sac Outlets: (Miren, the Moaning Well, High Market) These lands are good if you use a lot of theft or want to protect a creature from being stolen itself / tucked. There are a lot of uses to have a land that allows you to sac to out there and if you feel strongly about having one I think they work quite well. I feel like my colored mana really matters a lot early on in this deck though so I limit my colorless options quite a bit. Diamond Valley also belongs in this group but considering I dont see enough reason to run a sac outlet I am sure as hell not paying over $100 for a sac land like the Valley.
Homeward Path this one is sort of a meta call. If you see a lot of theft you might consider running this card. To be honest though this list runs a ton of creatures with ETB abilities that arent nearly as big of a deal if they are stolen after that. Obviously there are still several solid targets in here but I dont feel it is as backbreaking as it can be for other lists.
Yavimaya Hollow regen... hummm it can be good but there are a lot of things you cant regen through in EDH. Of the few effects that you can regen from I can think of are Oblivion Stone and Austere Command. I suppose creature combat also but still I dont see this as a really needed ability.
Vesuva sort of a fun land to steal fixing or utility with. Keep in mind that legendary lands will blow up on you so keep an eye on what you are copying but it can be fun. I dont care much for the fact that it comes in tapped though.
Tower of the Magistrate I have seen this used to prevent people from equiping stuff or to nock an equipment off of a creature before. I suppose this is also sort of a meta call but if you see a lot of equip decks run this as it is really funny and it will piss them off to no end.
Flagstones of Trokair a great land if you combat mass LD regularly or like using your Dust Bowl. Generally though I dont see much of a need for it outside of those though.
Tolaria West It can tutor for another land or Pact of Negation which are both nice options. However I hate tapped lands a lot and if I have to play the damn thing I hate it. I find I have plenty of things to do in a turn and I dont like paying 3 mana to sorcery speed tutor for a land or pact. So I dont run it but if you want to run more utility land you might consider running it.
Hideaway Lands: (Mosswort Bridge, Windbrisk Heights) The blue one is terribad so I didnt even link it. Out of the two I guess either are probably attainable but the deck doesnt really easily and regularly obtain either of them. They are decent for getting card advantage but I found I would get mine striped a lot before I could hit them. Plus they are tapped lands and I dont hit them that often so I dont run them anymore.
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood it can be amusing for abusing people with persist but it is a far cry from perfect. I found the interaction just way too narrow for how annoying the land is. Keep in mind that it only affects Woodfall Primus in here as it specifically says that it does it for green creatures. Novijen, Heart of Progress can give counters to other persisters but there is no way in hell that I would take a colorless land for something so narrow.
Minamo, School at Water's Edge this land could be really fun if you made the deck more control heavy and draw / go based rotating arround Jenara. You could use her to attack and defend using this land and save mana to level her up until end of turns. It could be interesting but I am not going to run it in the forseeable future.
Reliquary Tower cool in the fact that you dont have to ditch your hand but sort of lame in the fact that it is a colorless land. I havent found a max hand size worth the addition of this land yet but it is an option. I do have to discard cards now and then but it doesnt give me enough pain that I care to solve the problem.
Mistveil Plains Personally I dont know how effective this land is for this deck. It gives some good defense to rez tactics that might target our graveyard but it can be tricky to activate. This deck taps out a lot and it requires 2 white permenants to activate. I wouldnt really be worried about using this to defend the graveyard from being exiled as if it does its not the end of the world. We have some graveyard recursion cards but not enough that I feel I need to protect it. This land can be fetched as it is a plains which is handy however it is a nonbasic so it is susceptible to Blood Moon effects and Ruination and the sort. My big dislike for the land is the comes in tapped part. I have to admit though I have not played it in this list so I cannot say for sure on it but I have my doubts.
Deckstats
The deckstats for this list can be found here. (Last updated 9/17/2014)
I try to keep the deckstats info up to date best I can as it provides some fairly good information on mana curve and average costs and what not. If it is a bit behind please don't worry I will do my best to update it regularly.
I used to have sample hands in this section as well but the decklist kept changing and that information might have been a ways off in some places so I am just going to opt to not include that information anymore.
Building on a Budget
The purpose of this section is sort of two fold for users either trying to assemble this deck from the ground up and or users who just never intend to go all of the way on the investment involved here. This deck can easily hit over $1,200 without doing any foiling due to some pricy cards. I will try to cover some of the less essential cards here and or some substitutions here.
Top ways to cut costs here:
Capture Of Jingzhou - the tip top of expense in my list currently. There are three different five mana extra turns and I am running them all in here. This one will put you back something close to $180.00 - $250.00 last I checked. My suggestion for a budget replacement is to use Walk the Aeons which costs more and is unlikely to use its buyback effect however it is a very cheap card to obtain and the drop in performance is very small.
Mana Drain - this is honestly the absolute last place I would put my money into this deck. This is a nice card to finish things off with however a simple Counterspell or Arcane Denial works just fine here. This is the absolute last thing I would spend money on in this deck. I just happened to have one sitting around and it works nicely.
Tropical Island / Tundra / Savannah - even to get white bordered versions are extremely expensive on these lands. They are really nice to have but I remember not having them not so long ago and they are not a mandatory card to play the deck. Getting some shock lands (Breeding Pool, Hallowed Fountain, and Temple Garden) and getting fetchlands (Arid Mesa, Flooded Strand, Misty Rainforest, etc) to back them up is what I would suggest for anyone with sort of a medium budget they can allocate to a landbase. That being said, if you are going to penny pinch while building an EDH deck whatever landbase you can afford might be what you get to run.
Temporal Manipulation - Cutting this will save you another $50.00. If you already added Walk the Aeons in place of Capture Of Jingzhou then I would probably suggest adding Temporal Mastery in place of this card to save yet again, a lot of money. It will end up being less powerful but it also saves another good portion of money when it comes to building this deck. If you fill out the rest of the deck, replacing Temporal Mastery with Temporal Manipulation is a decent move but as a finishing touch after you finish the other parts of the deck.
Pact of Negation / Sphinx's Revelation / Survival of the Fittest these are just three cards from the deck where I feel like their value comes after you have most of the rest of the deck assembled. These are all good solid cards but I don't believe that their price tags are worth obtaining until you have the deck mostly assembled.
Just cutting the above cards however will save you something like $800 - $900 on the overall cost of the entire deck. These few cards really do make up over half of the cost of the deck. Making adjustments here is how I would still get the biggest bang for your buck in assembling the deck.
Moving on to how I would personally suggest to build this deck from the ground up. This deck costs a lot of money and I outlined a number of cards above that avoiding as you build the deck will help you money wise. I am playing a little bit with how I personally suggest to build the deck and I think my current advise is along these lines:
Step 1: Equipment especially early on, you will be pushing Jenara extra hard as a wincon until you can piece more of the deck together. So to get started expect you might be playing sort of almost a voltron build of Jenara. I suggest starting with an equipment package to help pull this off.
Sword of Feast and Famine Jenara turns mana into pump so this sword increases how much she can pump. It also gives her evasion in protections and pump too. Its a really effective and versatile piece of equipment. It also allows you to multi task your mana for the turn and do more things if you want or keep up answers easier.
Sword of Fire and Ice this gives you draw and removal. The two damage from this sword can answer a lot of utility guys and since Jenara already flies, its got a good chance of triggering often. This is sort of a bread and butter value engine that can generate a lot of value over time.
Skullclamp this deck runs a lot of small utility creatures. Dont be afraid to kill off a 1/1 for some cards. This thing is a huge value engine. You can technically wait until you get your creatures in the deck for this as until then its not as useful but I put that as the next priority so I would pick this up early on too.
Stoneforge Mystic versatile creature that allows you to tutor into other really good equipment. Make sure to get the equipment before you bother with him though as obviously having him without the equipment wont really pay off correctly.
Step 2: Creatures This is a creature value deck so I would suggest trying to get a lot of the creatures early on as well. Keep in mind that until your creatures are mostly filled in, the creature tutoring wont be as good so I suggest mostly filling in the creatures before going for tutors as without a full arsenal of creatures your options will be limited making the tutors less effective.
When it comes to money though, I would suggest that Gilded Drake, Scavenging Ooze, Snapcaster Mage, and Glen Elendra Archmage be lower in your priorities as they are more expensive to obtain. You might wait until it comes to time to obtain the tutors and come back to these guys then potentially. They are good solid creatures but I don't think they need to be early priorities. There is a lot of their power comes from being able to tutor and recur them which isn't something that a half built deck will be able to do efficiently.
Step 3: Extra Turns Extra turns serve a lot of different functions for this type of deck. It turns into more combat damage, another card for the turn, and any sort of value over time engine will generate additional value meaning that there is potential for a lot of value out of a single extra turn. At worst case they will replace themselves in hand and draw another card assuming they aren't countered obviously. Extra turns will help you run Jenara extra hard with will be important early on before the entire deck is together. She will be a primary wincon early on and even once you get the deck together.
For budget reasons, I would suggest going with Time Warp, Walk the Aeons, and Temporal Mastery in place of what I run. I run very expensive ($$$) extra turns which are not needed for someone approaching this from a budget approach. While mine will be cheaper (mana wise) and more consistent, these three will still give you a very good punch and cost a LOT less ($$$) than the ones I run.
Step 4: Tutors By now, you will have a lot of the creatures filled in. Tutors help consistency and allow you to toolbox into the cards you need for the situation at hand. I usually suggest tutors to come essentially last because until you have good targets for them, they aren't that productive. This deck is a toolbox deck and putting in the tutors should allow you to go and get the correct answer for the situation at hand.
Stragglers I didnt cover literally everything from my list in the 4 steps above. You can sort of grab anything left at this point either before or after you go for the tutors. I attempted to sort of outline a priority way to get the deck where you will get good value from the cards in the order you buy / trade for them.
Change Log
4/6/11:
Grand Coliseum -> Oran-Rief, the Vastwood (I had been reluctant to add more tapped lands to the deck. I suppose one in for one out is decent enough. I like the utility oran gives for the persist critters.)(I might also swap a forest out for an island as this pushes my green mana only producing lands one higher)
4/27/11:
So I had swapped out Mystic Snake for Rhystic Study quite some time ago and just never really noticed it still on the decklist. The problem I had with the snake was it required me to have a large amount of mana untapped to utilize it. I have found the Rhystic Study to be extremely effective in the early game as I can often draw several extra cards every turn. Later in the game it doesn't do a whole lot for me unless people forget about it. Seeing how I have to ask people about it every time something is cast though most people dont forget about it. Still it has panned out very well several times where I dropped it in the first 2-3 turns.
4/28/11:
Farseek -> Farhaven Elf Farseek was somewhat of a relic of the past before I got all of my fetchlands in a row for this deck. I cant say that all of my tests are going to be final yet but this one is an easy update. I am no longer having any issues hitting my land base as of currently (turns 1-3 strip mine effects aside). There is no reason for me to be using Farseek anymore. The addition of another creature to my count helps me with several strategies. His small size allows for a Lark rez, Sun Titan can rez him for another land accel, he is bouncable and can be persisted through several other tactics or cycled off to Survival of the Fittest for something better. I feel safe saying that the Elf has earned a spot in the deck finally.
Sylvan Library -> Trinket Mage I dont know yet on Tezzeret for sure but I can say that the Trinket Mage has earned his stay. He removes the problem I had of drawing multiple topdeck manipulation effects before while giving me a toolbox effect for several other effects I may enjoy. he is easily recurred and or bounced / persisted. In the worst case scenario he tutors into a skullclamp and equips it to himself ready to chump into 2 cards drawn. I cannot say for sure which of the other topdeck manipulation cards would come back if Tezzeret were to not make the final cut but the mage has made it in for one of the slots for sure.
Night Soil -> Tormod's Crypt due to the additon of extra artifact tutor effects such as Trinket Mage I think this change will probably stay. Night Soil had some limitations that were tough to get over such as the fact that I could not remove a sole creature from a graveyard or hit noncreatures that might be used in graveyard rez schemes. The crypt is a good bit of tech that works with my artifact tutoring tactics and was selected due to its ability to remove other players graveyards without hitting my own. While I like a bit wider selection when it comes to someone playing Geth or Chainer I think it is acceptable to use this card.
5/12/11:
Time Stretch -> Greater Good I cannot for sure say with 100% certainty that Greater Good has a position for sure in here but to be honest it feels a lot better than Time Stretch did. The stretch just bogged down my hand for ages and it was a huge hassle. Greater Good gives me something to do with scrap creatures that were on their way out anyways and can give me card draws if I am in a pinch. Plus I can protect from tuck effects or save creatures from being exiled giving me a chance to rez them later.
Cultivate -> Yavimaya Elder So far it hasnt been an entirely seamless transition but I have to admit that the Elder is a very good creature with good options to him. He is one of the few low mana ramp creatures that I would actually consider for some of my better rez. The downside obviously being that I cannot as easily abuse him due to him needing to die to get anything.
Trygon Predator -> Wickerbough Elder I haven't looked back yet on replacing the Predator. When something really needs to die I hate relying on him connecting. I have to admit though he is a useful little guy to just toss out and let him run rampant. I had one of them running me down the other day when I was playing Teferi and I just couldn't stop the damn little monster. However I would rather have a single removal when I need it than a variable guy who just deturs use of artifacts / enchantments.
6/1/11:
Scroll Rack -> Tezzeret the Seeker I have had some time now to test Tezzeret. My only complaint to this day is how slow he is to go get my top. I will say though that he has often gone to get me 2-3 good utility artifacts before dying though so he is great for those utility tutors.
Desertion -> Chancellor of the Spires Desertion was just costing me wayyy too much mana open to use. I am running more of an agro deck than a responsive counter deck. I love countering and stealing creatures but Desertion wasn't the way to do it. I enjoy being able to pick up some utility cards off my opponents using the Chancellor though.
6/24/11:
Wickerbough Elder -> Brutalizer Exarch I like the versatility that the Exarch gives me. The ability to hit planeswalkers and land is nice to have as well.
Archon of Justice -> Akroma, Angel of Wrath Archon is extremely outdated. He was essentially cut from the deck like 2 months back but for some reason I just couldnt glue down a replacement for him. I think Akroma is the best replacement I have found for him so far.
Sunblast Angel -> Fierce Empath Sunblast was just turning out to be underwhelming. I had far too few good uses from her. I dont like taking a ton of damage and annihilate triggers before I can answer them.
Rampaging Baloths -> Lurking Predators The baloths had started showing themselves to not be worth it in the deck. They are slow rolling and have no CIP trigger which I am trying to rely on in this deck. Sadly he is just inferior to Avenger in like every way. Lurking Predators is nice as it is a fire and forget enchantment. Even if the next spell destroys it, it will trigger at least once for me. It also can dig its way from threat to threat for me.
Lightning Greaves -> Birthing Pod The greaves are nice but I found myself not being able to take as much advantage from haste and shroud in this deck as I had hoped to get. It is being cut for Birthing Pod which is a CIP trigger machine. I look forward to some good games with this monster.
Equilibrium -> Sword of Light and Shadow Equilibrum was no good at protecting my creatures. It was also extremely slow to try to abuse. Instead I will run the sword which can get me dead creatures back for extra uses of them. It also gives great spot removal protection, slight pumping, and a small bit of lifegain to the deck.
Faith's Fetters -> Phyrexian Ingester swapping a noncreature removal card for a creature version. This is a process I have been working to increase. The fetters was nice as it could hit noncreatures but locking them in play was sometimes problematic as it would get blown off somewhat often.
Rite of Replication -> Phyrexian Metamorph another attempt to increase my creature count in the deck. The versatility to have him come in as a copy of an artifact is very nice to have.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant -> Mulldrifter Elsepeth hadnt been working out for some time. Unfortunately she is better in a control or token deck. I had a hard time protecting her from some of the green noncreature removal. Eventually I decided she wasnt worth it if she wasnt going to hit her ultimate which she never did. Mulldrifter is a great draw engine which I have a few ways to try to abuse.
7/6/11:
Genesis Wave -> Spell Crumple I have had some problems with Gen wave of late as it is a card that sits in my hand all game then I drop and check to see who has a wrath. While I still get all of those CIP triggers and probably ramp land and whatnot... That late in the game when I want to drop it I need a way to win. Dropping all those guys into play is overkill and if someone has a wrath it is mostly wasted. I guess it is a combination of how long the card is usually dead and how it rarely seals the deal for me as I tend to get wrathed when I do it. The crumple saves me from people who were banking on their commander or a single card resolving. I used this the other night to stop a Praetor's Counsel which was very solid.
Mystical Tutor -> Condemn I found myself less and less excited to draw this tutor of late. I dont have that many options to go get off of it and it is card disadvantage. I think I can just replace it with another target removal and call it good. I usually don't like condemn as removal but it is super cheap to cast and it is another tuck effect to stop opponents who rely too much on their commanders.
Lurking Predators -> Sword of Fire and Ice I cut back on my creature count a bit and I decided that this would get cut as well. I like the sword as it can make a threat out of my utility guys and give me card advantage / control. I generally like the Sword of Light and Shadow more than this one but draw / utility kill are still extremely solid.
Birthing Pod -> Umezawa's Jitte I love the utility and options built into the Jitte. I used it the other night to give Jenara +10/+10 and kill an opponent. I used it to lock Animar out of the game as I could just -1 counter to kill him on entry. The lifegain option is good as well as I dont have much for options to gain life when needed.
Tormod's Crypt -> Scavenging Ooze I had the problem where several times I would topdeck the Crypt and find it to be a dead card. The ooze is easier to tutor up as I have tons of creature tutors and even if there is nothing I have to remove, I can strip creatures to make him a really big bear.
Chancellor of the Spires currently he is out. I found him to be a bit too situational. I cant say for sure what will be in as his spot is being tested by Kamahl, Fist of Krosa but I also intend to give Sphinx of Uthuun a shot before I say for sure what will replace him. The chancellor can be truely amazing in the right meta but I dont see enough control in my opinion to have him really see amazing play. Kamahl could prove formidable due to his overruns on a stick and wrath deturrance but time will tell.
Knight of the Reliquary -> Stoneforge Mystic Sadly I found that the Knight ended up being a strict beater too often. He is cool but I run too little utility land. I can still use Primeval Titan to go get those utility lands anyways. Stoneforge has proven to be really solid with the new equipment setup.
Mirror Entity -> Gaddock Teeg My meta requested that we strip our combos out of our decks and without the sac outlet I cannot go infinite in my land strip. I could in a roundabout way try to do it still if I landed my Greater Good but I would be milling as well every time I saced them for it. Teeg is nice to try to turn off wrath spells for a bit and it can screw some of the decks that run too large of noncreature wincons.
Saffi Eriksdotter hummm this card came out and without looking at my deck I cannot recall what came in offhand. There are a few cards that have been cut that have temp cards rotating about that havent been solidified yet. I might have to look to see if I am missing anything in here currently.
Krosan Verge -> Academy Ruins With the addition of all of the equipment I feel that the ruins deserves a spot now. The option to abuse a metamorph with the ruins to just eat opponents commanders is very powerful as well.
Cultivate -> Wood Elves I had been sort of on the fence as to what the cultivate would turn into but Solemn Simulacrum didnt really pan out in here so I am back to the Wood Elves as the only real option. They are actually fairly decent with the addition of equipment to the deck though. I like the fact that they are a turn faster to drop as well.
Yavimaya Elder -> Birthing Pod I have been less and less impressed by the Yav elder of late. Birthing Pod has some great chains for CIP creatures as well. I didnt give it that much time to really see play and so I figure I will bring it back in to see how it functions.
7/19/11:
Condemn -> Darksteel Plate condemn wasnt doing what I needed. I dont like waiting until something attacks to deal with it as that can mean eating an eldrazi annihilate, allowing a sphinx to go unanswered, allowing utility commanders to go unanswered. Long story short it wasnt what I really wanted. The Plate will give me some wrath protection and allow me to expand a bit easier against a control player.
Bribery -> Oblivion Stone Bribery hadnt been working so well due to Homeward Path of late. O stone gives me another wrath option and I can recur it with academy ruins and I can tutor it up with tezzeret.
Gaddock Teeg -> Primal Command teeg has been too random for this deck. Without being able to build around him more he has been too hit and miss. I have had really bad effects due to him and I have had really good effects due to him. I think it is just a bit too random for this deck. The command gives me several options, of which answering graveyard abuse which has been a problem of late.
7/21/11:
Umezawa's Jitte -> Bribery I am not 100% sold that Bribery deserves to stay in but the Jitte has been a bit lackluster of late. I will continue testing with Bribery with the new complications of Homeward Path. I had one bad experience with it but I want to continue testing and see if I cant make it work better next time.
7/25/11:
Saffi Eriksdotter -> Solemn Simulacrum I cant say for sure that this is the exact trade that was made but I swapped saffi out and sort of jumbled from card to card for a bit. I think that this is a decent fit as it gives me another 4 drop for my birthing pod chains. I have had some success with it already chaining off to Karmic Guide to rez him back in for more card draw and ramp.
7/27/11:
Phyrexian Ingester -> Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite this gives me some options to deal with token strategies as well as swarms of utility guys. I can use my own utility guys with this to do an alpha strike for some good damage.
8/19/11:
Rings of Brighthearth -> Jace the Mind Sculptor the rings had become a bit too much of a winmore. I was down to like 5 nonland cards that it interacted with. While I love using my fetchlands twice I just don't see it as a necessary card. I haven't actually tried out Jace TMS in EDH so I will give it a shot as Ammo187 suggested.
Greater Good -> Mirror Entity greater good has been in this deck so long that I haven't really ever reevaluated the card. My curve has gone way down in the past few months and a lot of my creatures are a net loss. I have plenty good enough card draw as is and I think it is time to axe the card from the list. Mirror Entity will allow me to Lark combo again to blow out lands so that should be fun.
8/24/11:
Cauldron of Souls -> Lurking Predators The problem with the Cauldron was that it was situational in when it was good. It was primarily in for wrath defense but if I wasnt against decks that did lots of wrathing it was sort of lackluster. I do like Lurking Predators in the fact that it is sort of a fire and forget sort of card that just works amazingly on its own. It works really well with the top in play as well.
Jace the Mind Sculptor -> Beast Within Jace just wasnt working out. I assumed as much but he only went in for testing. Beast Within gives me more instant speed removal. While Krosan Grip is really solid in this spot too I like the extra versatility of Beast Within instead.
Brutalizer Exarch -> Harmonic Sliver I might end up missing the option to hit lands, indestructables, and planeswalkers at some point but the sliver is cheaper and more abuseable than the exarch is. Plus a side note, the sliver gives my Mirror Entity a naturalize which is nice.
8/29/11:
Mirror Entity -> Phantasmal Image honestly I dont like to combo out unless I am forced to and the Mirror Entity is sort of bad outside of the combo so I think it is out. Phantasmal Image has been a card I have meant to test for a while anyways so it can come on in. Thanks for pointing this out Ammo as I agree with your reasoning to cut the Entity.
9/1/11:
Avenger of Zendikar -> Wurmcoil Engine I had a tough time with dropping Avenger into play. He is usually met with a wrath response so it can be tough to utilizie and took a lot of setup usually. Wurmcoil on the other hand is a solid wrath positive creature as it splits into two more targets. I also like the Wurmcoil Engine in respects to a Birthing Pod target, equipment carrying target, Academy Ruins target and a rez target. The lifegain that it provides is something that we did not really have before so if we start looking a bit low on life it can be tutored up which is quite nice. Overall, Wurmcoil Engine is a lot less of a target than the Avenger was due to it having a bit of a lower profile and being less attractive to use a non exile kill spell on. Plus black has problems killing artifact creatures with things like Terror, Shriekmaw, Go for the Throat so that is also a plus.
Darksteel Plate -> Mystic Remora the plate sort of goes a bit against what we really want to be doing in this deck. While protecting is nice we dont have that many targets that we really NEED to protect. The Remora is another very solid card draw outlet and it can be rezed off of Sun Titan which is extremely cool.
Lurking Predators -> Aura Shards while lurking predators is a good card unfortunately it does have sort of a high cost to drop in and it is completely random. It is a value engine but it can take some time to get going. Unfortunately in this deck we don't have that many impressive creatures so a lot of the time it will probably be flipping 1/1 guys when it does work and it is only going to work like 1/3 of the time. Aura Shards on the other hand gives us another route to mass destroy opposing setups. I like how it can quickly mass shatter mana stones and other value engines. Plus Aura Shards is able to rez off of Sun Titan which is always a plus.
9/15/11:
Mystic Remora -> Sylvan Library Sylvan Library has been panning out for several other users of this deck and it does sound more convenient from the aspect of it is usable all game and has lots of uses for us. The Remora is a short term card draw whereas the Library is really solid the whole whenever you get it.
Plains -> Flagstones of Trokair hopefully this change doesn't really affect the deck much. I don't see much mass LD but when I do I am going to want that flagstones. I will give it some time and if I have problem with the loss of the plains then I can always swap it back. I figure it is a colored mana that doesn't come in tapped and it doesn't really have a downside outside of the possibility of it reducing the basic count too far.
Wurmcoil Engine -> Terastodon we were looking more for a ETB effect on our fatty and the elephant gives us some strong removal. I have in the past wished I could hit 3 lands on a combo deck or clear up some troublesome enchantments. He hits hard too so he can generate more card advantage off of taking out chumps.
Primal Command -> Proteus Staff Primal Command was sort of under performing so it is going out. I thought that the staff was funny as most of our creatures are only in the deck for their ETB abilities so we can just shuffle them back in and re roll. There is always the chance that we get something big like Akroma which is cool and it can be used to tuck opposing commanders / fatties which is sweet.
9/20/11:
Aura Shards -> Lurking Predators So with the addition of Terastodon last update I am feeling a bit heavy on these effects. Aura Shards is sort of an odd card that you cant just play whenever either as it is hard to play and utilize well in the same turn. It draws a lot of hate quickly and usually doesnt accomplish as much as I would hope. Lurking Predators just feels like it is less situational and it works on its own in the fact that I dont need to worry about pushing interactions or anything.
10/4/11:
Rhystic Study -> Snapcaster Mage the problem is that Rhystic Study is a card best in the first few turns of a game. If it is drawn beyond the 8th or so turn of a game it becomes much weaker. While it is still a good card we have like no ways to tutor for it and no means to improve on its effects with additional taxation. The Snapcaster Mage gives us some further reach into our spells while giving us a body that can be abused in all of our usual ways. While we don't have tons of targets for the snapcaster usually any one of our spells is good enough to warrant him a spot.
10/11/11:
Mimic Vat -> Crystal Shard Mimic Vat had been a problem to get active and it drew ****loads of hate. I am hoping that the shard wont draw as much hate and possibly will do a bit more for the deck. Ideally I think that crystal shard will likely go out if I come across a better creature utility card yet but I just havent found something I think will be better. I still probably like Mimic Vat more than the shard but due to the hate that it seems to always draw and the time to go active I am cutting it.
10/18/11
Crystal Shard -> Green Sun's Zenith green sun gives us another toolboxing tutor and it just costs so little to cast vs how flexible it is. Worst case it tutors up a Fierce Empath into a big fatty. It can ramp us in the early game or go get a noncreature hate card. It can hit E witness for recursion. Overall I think it will be a great add to the list.
11/4/11
Scavenging Ooze -> Loaming Shaman we went back and forth on this one for a while and it ended up me being in the minority of people for the Ooze so I am swapping the shaman in for it for a bit to see how it operates in comparison. Personally I would have rather included them both over making the swap but I was again in the minority.
11/9/11:
Forest -> Winding Canyons I wanted to test out another utility land in this deck now that I finally got all of my original duals squared away. The canyons has some nice options for our late game plays while only imparing us if we get few lands in an opening hand with it.
11/14/11:
Sword of Light and Shadow -> Sword of Feast and Famine This is more of an experiment for me. I like the idea of Feast and Famine in here however I keep second guessing myself. I need to give it a shot and try it out. Feast and Famine can start working long before Light and Shadow which can be a dead in opening hand sort of card so that is a plus. Also Jenara + feast and famine seems like some powerful synergy. Also we have the option to swing in and keep some mana up for answers which is a plus.
Proteus Staff -> Yavimaya Dryad I found the staff difficult to work with and sort of expensive to activate. I figure more ramp could be a good add to the list so I will try another ramp critter in its place. The GG on its cost is a bit of a worry but I think my manabase has come a long way and hopefully it will stand up to it.
Woodfal Primus -> Preordain this allows me to trim some of the fat out of the deck for faster card draw / filter. I like this change as it really opens the deck up to better options in the early game and easily cycles off in the late game into other cards.
Tooth and Nail -> Brainstorm I know a lot of people wont want to follow me here however I have found the T&N to be lackluster without Avenger of Zendikar in my list. I figure this gives me a faster moving deck without clogging up my hand early on with so many fat cards. We have tons of shuffle effects in here too so my usual complaints of redrawing what I put on top of library doesnt really exist here.
1/10/12:
Loaming Shaman -> Scavenging Ooze I dont like how Loaming Shaman only gets a single graveyard and even then they can tutor that stuff back up which I still dont like. I prefer to exile things. The grave abuse decks tutor into their graveyard so just retucking doesnt do a good enough job especially as I can only use this at sorcery speed without some means to flash him in which I only run the Winding Canyons and Chord of Calling currently.
Preordain -> Tormod's Crypt I needed a second piece of grave hate and I like how the crypt is easily tutorable through several means and I have good means of recurring it. It can work at instant speed without any mana available which is a plus as well.
1/30/12:
Lurking Predators -> Knowledge Exploitation Lurking has been sort of on my radar as a largely unknown payoff effect that draws a ton of attention and rarely lasts long enough to do much. Knowledge Explosion gives me all sorts of capabilities and versatility is definitely king in EDH. If need be it can be another wrath effect or I can go for extra turns, mass LD if someone is running it, mass graveyard return effects, big wincons like storm herd / Insurrection, Wildfire, Tooth and Nail, Warp World... I really like the versatility of the card and the ability to get utility in red and black if I want or situational cards that I just didn't want to run in my own list.
Oblation -> Venser, Shaper Savant I unofficially made this alter but unless it doesn't pan out I plan on keeping it that way. It increases my creature count, venser is great for recursion, it gives me another 4 drop option off of Birthing Pod and he functions somewhat similarly to Oblation without giving a CA bump. He will be a little worse vs opposing commanders but it opens up another tutorable ability that the deck doesn't have and he recurs nicely. I considered Mystic Snake here instead but it doesn't recur nearly as nicely.
2/23/12:
Skyshroud Claim -> Time Warp sort of a small swap but I have been less impressed by Skyshroud of late. I have no way to abuse it or tutor for it and beyond the opening several turns I don't like drawing it. Time Warp opens up a lot more ways in which to be utilized for mana management, drawing cards, and card advantage off of titans / swords due to more activations. It also has the capability of going into infinite turns if I get the right setup.
Brainstorm -> Crystal Shard Brianstorm has been sort of my rotating card for a while now. It has actually not been in the list for a while now so it needs to be cut. I haven't really gotten much testing in with the shard however it seems promising in here.
4/20/12:
Winding Canyons -> Alchemist's Refuge because it is such a tasty delicious upgrade!!! It is a bit harder on the manabase considering that Alchemist's Refuge requires colored mana to activate however its ability is a strict upgrade. This seems to be one of the easy swaps from AVR. Other changes will be further discussed.
4/25/12:
Coiling Oracle -> Capture Of Jingzhou Oracle was a nice card to draw but I didn't tutor / rez him much. I just find that I am a bit happier just drawing an extra turn rather than the oracle. Turn 2 oracle is really nice but that usually isn't how it plays out.
Rafiq of the Many -> Temporal Manipulation Rafiq is nice due to his ability to be tutored up however I have just been finding the extra turns to be a lot more versatile. Both can be good game enders and while I like the ability to tutor rrafiq, I just liked the extra turns more than I liked him.
Venser, Shaper Savant -> Restoration Angel Venser had some issues dealing with opponents spells when looking at cheap spells. I liked him against T&N and such but trying to stop a Swords to Plowshares was almost useless. I like the new angel and want to see how she plays out more with some more testing.
Terastodon -> Mystical Tutor I just don't really need the impact that he gives all that much. I have a lot of other sweepers as well as target removal that is smaller. I dislike drawing him early and even alter in the game I find that we wrath targets enough that I don't really use him much. Mystical really opens up a whole new toolbox for me as well which is nice.
6/11/12
Restoration Angel -> Mana Drain There were some issues in what the angel would cover for me as far as not working against wrath effects and not working to help Jenara evade either. I couldnt use it to flicker Karmic Guide or Akroma as well so there were some issues with the coverage that I got from it. The 4 mana casting cost was a bit troublesome as well when trying to hold it up as an answer to things. I have been trying to push another counter into my list for a while and I think that defensively speaking it gets me out of a lot mroe issues than the angel does. I can stop combo decks and I can stop wrath effects which the angel couldnt do. Counters can be very versatile and I felt like the angel was sort of like an expensive counter that was very situational. I like the angel but I felt like I wanted a counter more in most situations.
9/19/12:
Primeval Titan -> Venser, Shaper Savant Well... Primeval Titan got banned yesterday so its time to make a change. I considered replacing him with a 2-3 mana ramp spell but it just didnt seem like it would ever really be a decent swap. So, instead I added a lower mana replacement control style creature back to the deck. Venser offers a lot of versatility and is one of those cards that takes sort of a high amount of skill to abuse correctly. I like him though because he really keeps me on my toes thinking about all of his possibilities.
10/15/12:
Knowledge Exploitation -> Ixidron as I always say, bant has a much easier time tutoring, recurring, and abusing creatures than it does spells. Ixidron is sort of a weird effect that isn't so great vs tokens. However the fact that this gives us a tutorable wrath seems really useful. He bounces nicely, he screws with opposing commanders, and he actually buffs a lot of our creatures who are usually 1/1s. He deals with indestructible, hexproof, and shroud as well.
2/4/2013:
Sphinx of Uthuun -> Prime Speaker Zegana Prime Speaker really interests me as it is something we can tutor into through a lot of means and it is easier to recur / tutor for because it has low power on the card and it is green so that means that Reveillark can rez it and Green Sun's Zenith can tutor into it.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath -> Sylvan Primordial this gives me another ETB trigger and removal / ramp. What I like about him is that unlike Terastodon it cant be turned to hit multiple of my own cards when stolen and it doesn't benefit the non green player like primetime did. Well, he needs to be tested for sure and in theory sounds amazing.
9/24/2013:
Crystal Shard -> Bident of Thassa If you like playing combo, you probably want to keep the Shard in the deck. Outside of going infinite turns, I haven't found the shard really that amazing. I am going to try out the new Bidant because I have wanted to play Coastal Piracy for so long anyways.
1/24/2014:
Bident of Thassa -> Ephara, God of the Polis I am trading card draw for card draw. The big thing is I feel like Ephara is more robust and easier to go get thanks to it being a creature. Ephara is more of a value over time where as Bident was more of a hope for fast value until it got answered but I think the fact that the gods are indestructable and likely not to go active is a good trade off.
Solemn Simulacrum -> Karametra, God of Harvests it is a bit of a bold move to consder cutting simulacrum but he is a bit slow on the ramp and I still have Mul Daya in the 4 cost to ramp with if need be. Since Simulacrum was sort of a slow value based ramp I felt like it was the most similar to Karmetra who will also be sort of a slow value based ramp effect. The gods have some advantage in their being creatures for tutoring purposes but probably not being a creature in play for removal purposes and having built in indestructibility. When I originally added Simulacrum to the list it was in part because I didn't have very good or very many 4 mana targets for pod to hit. I am picking up Ephara as well as a 4 drop target which is good and bad since she is a dead end to podding but still very good as a target.
2/20/2014:
Sylvan Primordial -> Conjurer's Closet SP was banned shortly ago and I guess I need to make a swap. The closet really sort of reminds me of Mimic Vat in a lot of ways but I dont have to drop mana into it and it has a much shorter time until value sort of measurement to it. It also has good interaction with extra turns which is a plus but on sort of a downside for me further enables infinite turns via Eternal Witness. Still, I really like what Venser, the Sojourner does for this deck and I have to assume it will be sort of similar in execution.
4/15/2014:
Conjurer's Closet -> Brainstorm closet has been very awkward in most every situation I have seen it. It lacks the ability to theft back Guilded Drake like Venser does and has no crazy ult that takes over the game. As much as I wanted it to be Venser PW #2 it just wasn't. Brainstorm isn't anything huge but it very cheaply increases my hand quality. It is very useful with shuffle effects as well as topdeck matters effects like Oracle of Mul Daya. I dont feel like I am really missing anything in the deck currently though so I feel like just a cheap hand improvement effect like Brainstorm will work just fine.
9/17/2014:
Path to Exile -> Unexpectedly Absent I have had some really good results in switching Path out for Unexpected to be honest. One game I was stringing together extra turns and I ended up using it on my own Snapcaster Mage to add another extra turn into the ones I was already taking. It has potential to set up your own creatures for another ETB trigger in some situations but its also really strong against the opposition as it can potentially tuck things in response to shuffle effects as well as just act as an emergency stall effect. Its relatively cheap to push around and its increased targeting capabilities have made me overall quite happy having it over Path. There is still something to be said about exile removal and ease of use of Path to Exile but I love having increased targeting and have so far enjoyed having it over Path to Exile.
Duplicant -> Wall of Reverence it might seem like an odd change but time and again siphoning and overly aggressive decks have proven to be an issue for this deck. There isn't a lot of sustaining lifegain effects in this deck as it stands and in trying to be a toolbox deck I have found I don't use Duplicant as much as I used to in general. The wall acts as an amazing blocker and dodges the protections that a lot of the common swords use (Sword of Fire and Ice / Sword of Feast and Famine). Its an odd move but I have found it gives me a great ongoing sustaining buffer against decks that push hard on life and or if I get low its a means to get back into a safe range. Its an amazing defensive tool and so far I have enjoyed having access to it. There are games where it is not needed for sure but there are some games where its a high priority tutor as well. Its ability to block is quite strong though in general paired with its lifegain it grants some great sustainability. With even just Jenara + the wall in play you can often control combat entirely.
Ephara, God of the Polis -> Clever Impersonator of the two gods, Karametra, God of Harvests seems to continue to do work for me where as Ephara seems to not quite have the same effect. I find myself tutoring for Karametra fairly normally but almost never for Ephara. I don't think that Ephara is bad but I need to make room for Clever Impersonator and my continued lack of interest in Ephara leads me to think I should cut her.
I thought I'd post my version of this deck here rather than continue to update my thread, since it seems best to focus the discussion of this list/archetype into one thread.
My version is quite similar to that in the OP. I was quite surprised to find multiple nonland maindeck differences, which mostly result from a slightly different philosophy, likely a function of playgroup. The LGS I tend to play at leans more towards "Battlecruiser Magic" style of play, and the points based reward system they have tends to reward flashy plays. It also tends to be a slower metagame, with plenty of time to develop mana and very little land destruction. This leads me to want to focus the curve around 5 and 6 drops (since you tend to be fine even with no plays from turns 1-4 in my shop) and include some flashy, epic type plays. If you love this deck but are a bit more Timmy than the OP, you might enjoy this list.
0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil) 0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil) 0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil) 0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil) 0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
Card Choices
Here's commentary on all the cards I've included and what's missing compared to the list in the OP.
Inclusions
Sword of Light and Shadow
Recursion? Check. Shuts off the format's best removal? check. lifegain? check. Awesome? check. Really amazing card for the long game. I like it over Feast and Famine since I run Seedbourne Muse.
Voidslime
I run this over Hinder. It's a power vs. versatility thing. Note that Hinder lives in my 10 card optional sideboard. I like having a stilfe effect available, it can lead to some absurd blowouts.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
I get that 'walkers can be a little hard to protect, but I really do think the exclusion of this card from a Bant list is somewhere approaching a mistake. If he lives to brainstorm twice, you get huge value. If you get into a vendetta, the Fateseal is realyl nasty, and the unsummon has excellent applications in a list like this. I've never been sad to see him.
Karn Liberated
Karn is VERY hard for some people to deal with. He can kill anything that doesn't have shroud/hexproof, and it's gone for good. He's my Beast Within slot, since my metagame allows for higher curves.
Mirari's Wake
Sicne I've taken out some fo the smaller ramp (STE, Farhaven Elf) from the original list, this is the Atom bomb version. Casting this on turn 3 is game-winning, and people skimp on enchantment removal.
Rite of Replication
This is a huge nuke in an ETB deck. For example, I've had multiple instances of casting with with kicker on Rune-Scarred Demons recently. The look that play elicits is priceless. Casting it on Terastodon tends to just win the game outright.
Restoration Angel
With a bigger focus on ETB effects, this card gains alot of value. I also like pairing it with Deadeye Navigator to set up a "blink anything" engine.
Coiling Oracle
This is my least favourite card in the deck right now. He provides good value, but I have a huge order planned for September to finish foiling out the deck, and I may replace him with Sensei's Divining Top when that happens. Of course, that will make me want trinker mage back... Agh!
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
This is the best draw engine I've ever run. He is BORKED. If you really want to deny opposing draws, one nice trick is to sacrifice him to High Market to avoid opponents getting draws, and then rez him with Sun Titan so you get the draws. He also works well as a pollitical tool in a less cutthroat metagame, and is obviously completely absurd in 1s1.
Venser, Shaper Savant
What can I say? He's just so versatile and gets really nasty paired with Deadeye.
Archaeomancer
This is pet card syndrome at work, and I really do like re-using my powerful spells. it also gives me a redundant piece to Eternal Witness for infintie turns.
Seedbourne Muse
A wonderful value engine with Alchemist's Refuge, and good synergy with my style (I tend to tap out) and runnign countermagic, plus works well with the general.
Thragtusk
I do find myself at low life totals quite often with this deck, given 9 fetchlands, paying phyrexian mana for birthing pod, and having a high curve. He provides enough extra value on a well-costed body to finally make running a "lifegain" card worth it. I enjoy pkays like copying him with Image and then podding the image into a Sun Titan, bringing the image back and copying him again.
Brutalizer Exarch
This is my battlecruiser version of Harmonic Sliver, being able to hit Planeswalkers and the like, and turning into card selection if needed.
Deadeye Navigator
I'm not sure this one needs much explanation, it's been discussed to death in this thread, and is grossly powerful with ETB effects.
Chancellor of the Spires
This often does an imitation of Sphinx of Uthuun (FoF is run by most layers at my LGS) or Rune-Scarred Demon, while randomly winning vs the popular Rite of Replication, and providing similar utility to Knowledge Exploitation while being easier to abuse.
Terastodon
BOOM. this one shouldn't require much explanation in context.
Exclusions
Trinket Mage
Yes, I cut Trinket Mage. In my list, he has 2 targets since I don't run Tormod's Crypt (the Ooze tends to be enough vs. GY decks around here), and tutoring for Sol Ring on turn 15 tends to be pretty underwhelming. I miss him, but i needed the room for some of my bombier cards.
Sakura Tribe Elder
I know this is a good card, but I've never been a big fan. I want more swingy stuff in multiplayer rather than small ramp that doesn't maintain board presence.
Fierce Empath
You'll notice I run 3 fewer tutors than the list in the OP, again a function of the Battle Cruiser magic feel of the LGS.
Harmonic Sliver
Sliver decks are pretty popular around here, which makes this into a liability rather than an asset. I replaced it with Brutalizer Exarch, which is more versatile and is a good replacement in a metagame suitable for a higher curve.
Sphinx of Uthuun
This is the #1 card I miss off this list, apart from the real FoF itself. I love the minigame these cards create, but since most of the folks at the LGS run FoF, Chancellor of the Spires tends to give me that effect at the same CMC when I want it, while adding versatility and randomly winning vs Rite of Replication, which is very popular around here.
Tormod's Crypt
The GY decks in my metagame are not very well developed, so the Ooze tends to be enough against them, and this card is very low impact if they don't show up (which is fairly common). I do keep one in my 10 card sideboard though.
Sensei's Divining Top
As I mentioned above, Coiling Oracle may get cut for this when my big September order geos through.
Seedbourne Muse is easier to tutor and recurr and does everything I'd want from this, and is MUCH better with Alchemist's Refuge.
Mystical Tutor
I really hope that RTR prints an UWor UG creature with this as an ETB effect. If it does, it will be in this deck. As it is, it's just a card disadvantage split wrath/counterspell. It's very good, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure what I'd cut for it ,and generally woudl rather just run more draw spells.
Path to Exile
I HATE this card in this format. Ramping my opponent is not what I want to be doing. Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's there, but I am personally not a fan.
Beast Within
I run Karn here. He's easier for my lsit to tutor for, and some decks in my meta literally can't beat him if resolved behind any sort of board presence. He's also colorless and exiles, which is very relevant from time to time.
Hinder
I've got voidslime here, a trade of power for versatility.
Spell Crumple
I've got Force of Will here, which is likely more pet card syndrome than anything else. I always feel better with a FoW in hand, and I do tend to tap out alot.
Fact or Fiction
I really do miss this card, but again witht he creature toolbox nature of the deck, the Sphinx would make it first.
Capture of Jingzhou and Time Warp
Temporal Manipulation is the best of the 3 (due to cost and avoiding Misdirection effects), and i already get sideways looks for running an extra turn spell and several ways to go infinite. I do firmly belive in having at least 1 infinite combo to close out long games, and extra turns is the best one, since I can then get all the league acchievements before I kill everyone.
Hallowed Burial
I like Terminus a bit better. We've got enough topdeck manipulation (especially if I ever find room for SDT), that it often goes off for 1, and the extra 1 doesn;t bother me if I don't miracle it.
Commentary on the Manabase
Flagstones, forests 5 and 6, fliter lands
vs
Extra utility lands and fetchlands
I run 1 less land than the OP (I've always found 36 to be fine), 2 fewer forests, and a few more utility lands and fetchlands vs stuff like Flagstones of Trokair. High Market and Inkmoth Nexus are the big ones here. I like to have a sac outlet for any number of reasons (it creates some great synergies in this list), and High Market produces mana and costs none to use, so it's better than Diamond Valley and Miren for this purpose. Inkmoth given me a wincon if I lock the table with O-Stone/Academy Ruins, and I generally like to run at least 1 manland in every list - this is the best one that doesn't ETBT. Also brutal in duals.
For 1vs1, I often take out Knowledge Exploitation and Rite of Replication for Serra Ascendant and Silverblade Paladin, which add alot of speed to the deck.
I run return to dust in my list and it has been invaluable as I seem to run against combo sharuum and friends occasionally. Aura of Silence is also worth considering if you see many hardcasted enchantments / artifacts though it is much less a surprise.
Still haven't gotten around to testing out silverblade paladin over Rafiq, though Rafiq has been causing me some damage problems as of late. I have a foil paladin that I'll finally make its way in over Rafiq for some testing. Room? Where can I find you?
I really want to find room for Farhaven Elf or Yavimaya Dryad and Crystal Shard. Return to Dust might finally get the axe and probably Mosswort Bridge. I just don't see myself cutting any of my other creatures at this point.
GTC Changes:
Akroma -> Sylvan Primordial: This will likely be a change for the better and will stay. I did like her having haste though, and I might miss that. Regardless, she's up there on the pod chain, and I'd normally grab a t-don over her and this guy slows opponents while ramping me. All good.
So, after playing my version of the deck for a few weeks, it's clear that it's a different deck I've wanted to build, and it's even more clear that it's a different deck from your ETB bread and butter, which is only normal, since it came about from a different perspective.
As a recap, I was rebuilding my Cromat deck, which has been disbanded for near about a year now. The past theme was creatures that say "Draw a Card" (in some form or capacity), and equipment. The new theme was going to be effective beaters+heavier equipment. Think of things like Glissa, the traitor, Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, Thada Adel, Acquisitor, and Jenara, Asura of War, (probably Olivia would have made it if I had gotten that far).
As is typical when building a deck without planning it online first, I pulled way too many cards, I hit about 500+ cards and hadn't even looked through all the colors I wanted. In fact, all the equipment stuff was lying to a side, and after staring at the pile of cards I had, and the fact that it was predominantly Green/White, I decided to put aside my current plans, and just build the shell into Jenara instead, which left me still with about 300 cards out.
The current rough shell, which is still not to original expectations (Azusa, Lost but Seeking is still in, instead of Loxodon Warhammer, which I have managed to misplace, again).
Notable Omission goes to Dead-Eye Navigator. Amusingly enough, I didn't want to be "that guy" with DEN + E.wit,or DEN+Snake, etc. Ironically, I run familliars ruse to do almost the same thing, but worse.
Other notable Omissions: Phantasmal Image, Phyrexian Metamorph. After I put the deck together, I saw them still sitting right next to it in the spot I placed to reserve for them so they wouldn't get omitted, and realized that I had accidentally omitted them. I didn't feel like figuring everything back out again.
Thoughts so far:
When it runs smoothly, it runs smooth.
My first game, I should have died, but someone wrathed for me, which was nice since I had just dropped Cathar's, and had shenanigans in hand. I proceeded to win with E.witt + Familiar's Ruse soft lock. And Sacred Mesa + Cathar's, of course, though I had Counterpart in hand to go with witness as well, but I ended up using it as an extra counterspell instead in that game.
I've had color issues a few games, but it's also been amusingly to my advantage in a few games.
The equipment, while is something I want to do, feels a bit like not what I want to do with this deck. Then again, some of the equipment face beat wins have been all so delightfully rewarding.
I think I want to go more ETB, and also more +1 counter theme. Put in Sage of Fables, some of the decent grafters, like Cytoplast Root-Kin, etc. Maybe the few decent proliferate spells that are decent on their own.
Removal is an issue, especially with my lack of tutoring. Not running Mystical and Worldly Tutor, let alone Eladamri's Call (which was already out as part of a sunforger package for the Cromat that I was building)... I don't know what went through my mind.
Back to removal, having only one wrath effect, with it being 50% of my non-targeted removal (rift), has put me in a bind a few times.
Lack of grave hate hasn't come up, but is stupidly absent, again.
I feel like my engines are too diverse, and too spread out. And that I need more of them.
So, for a first rough build, it's proven itself rather resilient, but I think now I need to decide what path I want to take the deck down, and how to split it apart into it's two themes.
Here's a breakdown of you deck that analyzes, well everything. Genesis Wave is misspelled and I think you should remove some white mana sources in favor of more blue ones to balance the fixing out a little better. Since you aren't building the deck around Jenara really I would push the blink theme harder since every card that fits the theme makes all the other cards that fit the theme better. You don't really have to stretch into bad cards either, just take out Kodama's Reach and Cultivate for Farhaven Elf and Wood Elves for example. This also allows you to run things like Cloudstone Curio and Wild Pair which are both just absurd cards and to combat wraths you can run Gaddock Teeg and then just bounce him back to your hand when you need to cast expensive stuff. Out of Telekenesis suggestions I really like Stonecloaker, Aura Shards, Ghostway and Mistmeadow Witch. Stonecloaker isn't that great by himself but graveyard hate is necessary and he's the best of the bunch in these colors (aside from maybe Primal Command if you consider it graveyard hate).
As for me not listing the Spike Weaver in specific, I am in a bit of a 10 wraths per deck sort of meta. I like creatures that give value immediately as otherwise they tend to get eaten up by a wrath. I for one would be more likely to run Constant Mists due to this but I will make a note of it.
As for the Trygon Predator vs Aura Shards debait, I will sort of agree with you that Aura Shards is more likely to wrack up some kills, however for some reason the Predator is good at something else and that is eating up spot removal early on which is still useful. If an opponent uses spot removal early on they will have used a turn they could have been doing something else solving our creature as well as running them down one answer for later on. I am trying to build my version of the deck extremely aggressive so I tend to try to push more early game creatures that can come out swinging rather than artifacts/enchantments for utility.
I'm not sure if I understand this logic - You don't like Spike Weaver because he gets eaten by removal, but you like Trygon Predator because he eats removal? This isn't really making sense to me.
Here's a breakdown of you deck that analyzes, well everything. Genesis Wave is misspelled and I think you should remove some white mana sources in favor of more blue ones to balance the fixing out a little better. Since you aren't building the deck around Jenara really I would push the blink theme harder since every card that fits the theme makes all the other cards that fit the theme better. You don't really have to stretch into bad cards either, just take out Kodama's Reach and Cultivate for Farhaven Elf and Wood Elves for example. This also allows you to run things like Cloudstone Curio and Wild Pair which are both just absurd cards and to combat wraths you can run Gaddock Teeg and then just bounce him back to your hand when you need to cast expensive stuff. Out of Telekenesis suggestions I really like Stonecloaker, Aura Shards, Ghostway and Mistmeadow Witch. Stonecloaker isn't that great by himself but graveyard hate is necessary and he's the best of the bunch in these colors (aside from maybe Primal Command if you consider it graveyard hate).
I agree with this. I originally built Jenara good stuff, and while it was somewhat effective, I soon realized that it would be much, much stronger if I took it in a specific direction. Going with ETB theme is a natural fit, because Bant has arguably the strongest cards for that theme. I also think it's a lot more fun this way, as playing good stuff just gets old after a while.
I personally tried Teeg but ended up cutting him, he just draws too much hate and doesn't fit that well into the deck. Stonecloaker not only is grave hate, he is another enabler for ETB shenanigans, among other things.
I'm a little mystified...no Terastodon? No Admonition Angel? Those two are incredibly potent sources of disruption. Tooth and nail for the angel and the primeval titan for an incredibly potent pair of threats. Also, given the number of ETB creatures you have, a Crystal Shard, a Cloudstone Curio, and a Tezzeret to fetch them is probably a good idea.
Also...no Trinket Mage? When you're running Sol Ring and Top?
First and foremost thank everyone for all of the feedback. I want to start out by saying I have not worked this deck to perfection by any means. I feel it is a strong deck and a strong general. My own personal approach to the deck is by no means the only approach. I would encourage anyone who has another viewpoint on how to run her to post their own decklist here if you would like and discuss the different approach they have taken and why. I will do my best to explain why I have chosen to run my deck the way I am but am willing to discuss options to be swapped one way or another.
Here's a breakdown of you deck that analyzes, well everything. Genesis Wave is misspelled and I think you should remove some white mana sources in favor of more blue ones to balance the fixing out a little better. Since you aren't building the deck around Jenara really I would push the blink theme harder since every card that fits the theme makes all the other cards that fit the theme better. You don't really have to stretch into bad cards either, just take out Kodama's Reach and Cultivate for Farhaven Elf and Wood Elves for example. This also allows you to run things like Cloudstone Curio and Wild Pair which are both just absurd cards and to combat wraths you can run Gaddock Teeg and then just bounce him back to your hand when you need to cast expensive stuff. Out of Telekenesis suggestions I really like Stonecloaker, Aura Shards, Ghostway and Mistmeadow Witch. Stonecloaker isn't that great by himself but graveyard hate is necessary and he's the best of the bunch in these colors (aside from maybe Primal Command if you consider it graveyard hate).
I am aware that I am running the deck a bit light on blue sources. This is completely intentional as I have very few blue cards that I rely on having early game and the deck ramps up quite a bit. Early game fetchlands often fix me into having at least one blue in my early game. I am running a bit heavier white so that I can pump my general more late into the game. I have considered increasing the amount of blue in my deck on a few occasions but I feel that it has yet not impaired me.
Sorry about any misspellings as I haven't gone back to check spelling personally. I will make sure to update it.
I do like the idea of the blinking creatures however it is usually rather mana intensive to keep it as an option. I have some of these types of cards in already but I don't know what I think of increasing the amount of these effects in the deck. I think Telekinesis has a bit of a better build to try that sort of tactic though as it is more built around being able to control the board.
I have never thought of Kodama's Reach or Cultivate as bad cards in this deck. To be honest though they started in the deck early on and I have not re-evaluated them in the deck since then. While your suggestion to swap them out for a chump creature that fetches a land does sound interesting I have to weigh the change a bit before I can decide one way or another. Looking at them strictly as a sorcery that ramps one land and fetches one land into hand vs a chump creature that fetches a land I like the sorceries more. However there is a lot of interaction with creatures and rez abilities that might be more powerful now than in the first few drafts of the deck. Extra creatures will give me more targets to throw out to Survival of the Fittest and rez off of the lark / sun titan in a pinch.
The bottom line on this would be that I am very willing to test it and see how it pans out. On paper it sounds like it could be a good swap but unless I end up drawing into some support for them I would usually rather have 2 lands over 1 land and a chump.
As far as Cloudstone Curio goes, it is probably one of the best cards at what it does. However I am using some things currently like Mimic Vat and Equilibrium which I feel are more versatile in what they accomplish.
I'm not sure if I understand this logic - You don't like Spike Weaver because he gets eaten by removal, but you like Trygon Predator because he eats removal? This isn't really making sense to me.
I agree with this. I originally built Jenara good stuff, and while it was somewhat effective, I soon realized that it would be much, much stronger if I took it in a specific direction. Going with ETB theme is a natural fit, because Bant has arguably the strongest cards for that theme. I also think it's a lot more fun this way, as playing good stuff just gets old after a while.
I personally tried Teeg but ended up cutting him, he just draws too much hate and doesn't fit that well into the deck. Stonecloaker not only is grave hate, he is another enabler for ETB shenanigans, among other things.
The reason I am not as fond of the Spike Weaver is because I am relying on him to save my bacon when I play him out. If he is removed before he is needed to save me from the threat then what is the point of having a fog ready to go??? The predator is all about incremental advantage where if he stays around then I will keep blowing things out and give an incentive not to play out artifacts / enchantments. I am still myself not 100% sold on him but he is an alright creature. I like how the weaver is easier to search up than Constant Mists however I like how the mists seems to be a more reliable fog vs attacking decks. A person running heavy counterspells rarely has tons of threatening attackers so the chance of it being counterspelled seems less likely
I also dont know if I like Teeg in the deck as it seems to hinder me a lot. In a lot of ways I like Glen Elendra Archmage more as I can selectively stop spells with her.
I'm a little mystified...no Terastodon? No Admonition Angel? Those two are incredibly potent sources of disruption. Tooth and nail for the angel and the primeval titan for an incredibly potent pair of threats. Also, given the number of ETB creatures you have, a Crystal Shard, a Cloudstone Curio, and a Tezzeret to fetch them is probably a good idea.
Also...no Trinket Mage? When you're running Sol Ring and Top?
[CARD]
Terastodon[/CARD] didnt make the cut as I felt it fell into a very similar role as Woodfall Primus. They are both great big creatures that are a bit slower and do lots of removal. I sort of felt I should run one or the other. Running both makes things a bit difficult considering I might need the utility of destroying an artifact / enchantment early in the game and running too many big creatures that do this job could make this an issue. When I want a large effect creature like this I can tutor into it but I could get stuck with too many big creatures like this in hand early on.
If you would like to debait running the Terastodon over Woodfall Primus I would be interested to hear the debait but I dont feel I need another creature in this deck with a similar mana cost / effect.
Admonition Angel - If I made room for this creature in the deck it would be for the ability to flash enter battlefield effects back in. I really dont like running creatures that reward opponents for killing them.
As for Trinket Mage, The benefit that this deck recieves from Sol Ring actually deminishes very quickly after turns 1 and 2. It accelerates my start and quite well. The ability to drop a Sol Ring on turn 4 is just not that impressive. The ability to search up my top is great by all means. I can consider it again but I sort of feel I should end up cutting either Scroll Rack or Sylvan Library for it to go in again. The top is not that impressive an option when I already have one of these effects in play. I might end up cutting out the library to run the trinket again. It is good to have but not with how many top like effects I currently have in the deck.
Thank you everyone for the feedback, this deck is far from perfect and I respect everyone for having an opinion here. I will be experimenting with a few cards in this deck for the future as follows:
These changes will increase my creature count allowing for more options in my recursion / bouncing / survival of the fittest plans. If I feel these changes are worth keeping after a few games trial I will update it to the decklist. Thanks again for all the feedback guys.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I do think Equilibrium is more versatile for the extra per activation than Cloudstone Curio. I like the testing cuts you made and I'm going to make similar changes to my B/G deck per Donald's suggestions concerning Farhaven Elf and friends. And you definitely don't need Terastodon or Admonition Angel.
I would not be surprised if you find Trinket Mage to be better than you thought. Searching up a Top would take over for Sylvan Library quite nicely and you know how we all feel about Sol Ring :). I frequently use Trinket Mage to search up emergency GY hate as well like Tormod's Crypt or Relic of Progenitus.
I do think Equilibrium is more versatile for the extra per activation than Cloudstone Curio. I like the testing cuts you made and I'm going to make similar changes to my B/G deck per Donald's suggestions concerning Farhaven Elf and friends. And you definitely don't need Terastodon or Admonition Angel.
I would not be surprised if you find Trinket Mage to be better than you thought. Searching up a Top would take over for Sylvan Library quite nicely and you know how we all feel about Sol Ring :). I frequently use Trinket Mage to search up emergency GY hate as well like Tormod's Crypt or Relic of Progenitus.
Ya I have a feeling that if the Trinket Mage sticks, I will need to add a 0-1 mana grave hate back in.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Terastodon didnt make the cut as I felt it fell into a very similar role as Woodfall Primus. They are both great big creatures that are a bit slower and do lots of removal. I sort of felt I should run one or the other. Running both makes things a bit difficult considering I might need the utility of destroying an artifact / enchantment early in the game and running too many big creatures that do this job could make this an issue. When I want a large effect creature like this I can tutor into it but I could get stuck with too many big creatures like this in hand early on.
If you would like to debait running the Terastodon over Woodfall Primus I would be interested to hear the debait but I dont feel I need another creature in this deck with a similar mana cost / effect.
Admonition Angel - If I made room for this creature in the deck it would be for the ability to flash enter battlefield effects back in. I really dont like running creatures that reward opponents for killing them.
As for Trinket Mage, The benefit that this deck recieves from Sol Ring actually deminishes very quickly after turns 1 and 2. It accelerates my start and quite well. The ability to drop a Sol Ring on turn 4 is just not that impressive. The ability to search up my top is great by all means. I can consider it again but I sort of feel I should end up cutting either Scroll Rack or Sylvan Library for it to go in again. The top is not that impressive an option when I already have one of these effects in play. I might end up cutting out the library to run the trinket again. It is good to have but not with how many top like effects I currently have in the deck.
While Sensei's Divining Top is not that much better than Sylvan Library and Scroll Rack, the fact that Trinket Mage (and Tezzeret the Seeker) can fetch it means that you're likely to get it in play earlier and more often than either of the other two cards. It's not a huge margin, sure, but it does make your deck more consistent. The fact that it can fetch a Sol Ring to ramp you by 2 mana almost for free is just gravy. And believe me, 2 mana is a lot, even in the late game. That's 2 more mana per turn that can pump Jenara, after all.
As for Terastodon vs. Woodfall Primus, there's really no contest. Terastodon kills three permanents, Woodfall Primus kills one. Sure, your opponents get elephants, but they usually just chump or get wrathed away. Yes, Woodfall Primus has persist, so it technically gets two permanents, but if you're planning on bouncing things with Equilibrium and such, you're basically getting 3 times as much value, plus a bigger body.
As for Admonition Angel, I can understand how most people are underwhelmed by it initially, but in practice it's actually surprisingly powerful. Most people see it, smirk, and then a couple turns later wonder where all their permanents went.
As for Terastodon vs. Woodfall Primus, there's really no contest. Terastodon kills three permanents, Woodfall Primus kills one. Sure, your opponents get elephants, but they usually just chump or get wrathed away. Yes, Woodfall Primus has persist, so it technically gets two permanents, but if you're planning on bouncing things with Equilibrium and such, you're basically getting 3 times as much value, plus a bigger body.
I'm not so sure about this.
1) Woodfall Primus plays well with Oran-Rief. He will basically never die unless he's exiled.
2) Woodfall Primus is a fantastic rattlesnake as a blocker. Who would dare send their 6/6 towards one and walk right into a devastating two-for-one?
3) Woodfall Primus costs one mana less. This can be important.
4) Bouncing and replaying Terastodon can get you mauled by an army of 3/3s if the rest of the table decides they've had enough of your shenanigans. Bouncing Woodfall Primus doesn't carry this risk.
It's definitely not a "no contest" situation. Sure, Terastodon carries more raw power but it's more likely to screw you down the stretch if you try to abuse it. It's a Sniper Rifle vs Rocket Launcher debate. Hard to argue one is better than the other and who can deny they both have their uses?
The reason I am not as fond of the Spike Weaver is because I am relying on him to save my bacon when I play him out. If he is removed before he is needed to save me from the threat then what is the point of having a fog ready to go??? The predator is all about incremental advantage where if he stays around then I will keep blowing things out and give an incentive not to play out artifacts / enchantments. I am still myself not 100% sold on him but he is an alright creature. I like how the weaver is easier to search up than Constant Mists however I like how the mists seems to be a more reliable fog vs attacking decks. A person running heavy counterspells rarely has tons of threatening attackers so the chance of it being counterspelled seems less likely
Think of Spike Weaver as a deterrant. As long as it's on the battlefield and you have one mana open, there's no point in other people attacking you. Sure, they could spend their removal on it and then attack into you, but that takes a lot more effort especially when you will still have blockers and the possibility of recurring the Spike Weaver.
The Predator gives you incremental advantage, but it's slow. You need to cast it, wait a turn, then attack through blockers with him in order to destroy one thing. It has no real synergy with the deck and it's something that you can't rely on if there's anything you really need to destroy. It's really not worth it in a deck like this.
For the Terastodon vs. Primus debate, I like Primus better if I had to pick one. It's got better utility and it draws less hate overall. However, I just recently started using both.
Admonition Angel: Maybe I'm underestimating this card, but I'm not a fan for the same reasons I don't like Oblivion Ring. It has the potential to protect all of the opponent's stuff from sweepers, and the Angel is a bit easier to deal with.
While Sensei's Divining Top is not that much better than Sylvan Library and Scroll Rack, the fact that Trinket Mage (and Tezzeret the Seeker) can fetch it means that you're likely to get it in play earlier and more often than either of the other two cards. It's not a huge margin, sure, but it does make your deck more consistent. The fact that it can fetch a Sol Ring to ramp you by 2 mana almost for free is just gravy. And believe me, 2 mana is a lot, even in the late game. That's 2 more mana per turn that can pump Jenara, after all.
As for Terastodon vs. Woodfall Primus, there's really no contest. Terastodon kills three permanents, Woodfall Primus kills one. Sure, your opponents get elephants, but they usually just chump or get wrathed away. Yes, Woodfall Primus has persist, so it technically gets two permanents, but if you're planning on bouncing things with Equilibrium and such, you're basically getting 3 times as much value, plus a bigger body.
As for Admonition Angel, I can understand how most people are underwhelmed by it initially, but in practice it's actually surprisingly powerful. Most people see it, smirk, and then a couple turns later wonder where all their permanents went.
I think you might be right on replacing the Scroll Rack as well for Tezzeret the Seeker. While I had at first wanted to rely a bit less on my divining top, it is a great bit of utility that is hard to replicate. When I have a Scroll Rack or a Sylvan Library in play, they tend to get blown out eventually by some effect even if it is just a Nev Disk effect loosing that bit of utility at that time is inconvenient. I will also try out Tezzeret in my deck, he has had some great luck in my Teferi deck and I am sure he will fit in here just fine as well.
I still prefur the Woodfall Primus over Terastodon. I will keep him in mind though next time I draw or tutor out a Primus what the impact would have been if it were Terastodon instead.
Think of Spike Weaver as a deterrant. As long as it's on the battlefield and you have one mana open, there's no point in other people attacking you. Sure, they could spend their removal on it and then attack into you, but that takes a lot more effort especially when you will still have blockers and the possibility of recurring the Spike Weaver.
The Predator gives you incremental advantage, but it's slow. You need to cast it, wait a turn, then attack through blockers with him in order to destroy one thing. It has no real synergy with the deck and it's something that you can't rely on if there's anything you really need to destroy. It's really not worth it in a deck like this.
For the Terastodon vs. Primus debate, I like Primus better if I had to pick one. It's got better utility and it draws less hate overall. However, I just recently started using both.
Admonition Angel: Maybe I'm underestimating this card, but I'm not a fan for the same reasons I don't like Oblivion Ring. It has the potential to protect all of the opponent's stuff from sweepers, and the Angel is a bit easier to deal with.
I can respect your viewpoint of the Spike Weaver, in the right meta in the right deck I think it can be good. In my meta in my deck however, I am the deck to beat currently as a lot of my opponents dont have quite as aggressive of decks as I do. Due to this I end up at the but end of a lot of removal and a lot of attacks. Having something out there like this as a deterrent from being attacked will not work as well as I tend to be the one getting attacked by multiple opponents simply because it is me playing the deck and probably the fact that I tend to win something like 70-80% of all our EDH games.
I do have to admit I havent been extremely impressed by how the predator has been working out in the deck so far. I wouldnt mind alternate ideas as I havent completely decided what I plan to do about it yet. I used to run Aura Shards in its place but every time I played it, it got nuked right off. I had considered instead perhaps running a creature to blow out artifacts / enchanments. I think Qasali Pridemage might be at the top of my list for alternates as it costs little, it can be used with almost every means of recursion in the deck, and it costs very little to play so it can be used with things like Equilibrium very easily. Any ideas that might work out better?
It has become clear to me that I really need to get a Spike Weaver O.O
I don't think you need Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library. I could see removing one of them for Qasali Pridemage or Spike Weaver. Both of them are great draws at almost any point in the game. Scroll Rack is also no good if you don't have cards to get back- since you're kind of weak on card draw in this deck, it's not as good as it would be in a more blue-oriented deck.
I am able to turn them into amazing card selection and with all of my shuffle effects I almost never run into a stale top deck like some other decks. I am going to try to run the Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library cards into 2 different tutor effects as I have in the past had issues drawing a second top type effect which does little for me. Having more ways to tutor into the top will allow me for more of a toolbox rather than stacking lots of top effects just to draw multiple of them.
EDIT: I am currently testing out Trinket Mage and Tezzeret the Seeker as replacements for the Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library. The only downside I can foresee is that they are slower to get rolling as one allows me to start using my top on turn 4 and the other on turn 5-6. The upside of not drawing multiple top style cards though plus the option to recur the tutors, tutor into a creature to get a top are very strong perks.
EDIT 2: Also as a side note I am going to need to swap out my Night Soil for a Relic of Progenitus due to all of the additional tutoring options for artifacts I will be adding.
I'm not a fan of the Relic because it hits your own yard as well and exiles itself. My standard issue hate package is Trinket Mage, Academy Ruins, Tolaria West, Expedition Map and Tormod's Crypt. Recurring Crypt with Ruins is a nightmare for graveyard abuse decks.
I'm not a fan of the Relic because it hits your own yard as well and exiles itself. My standard issue hate package is Trinket Mage, Academy Ruins, Tolaria West, Expedition Map and Tormod's Crypt. Recurring Crypt with Ruins is a nightmare for graveyard abuse decks.
You might be right... I like the card draw option on the relic but it sux to exile my yard too.
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I'm not a fan of the Relic because it hits your own yard as well and exiles itself. My standard issue hate package is Trinket Mage, Academy Ruins, Tolaria West, Expedition Map and Tormod's Crypt. Recurring Crypt with Ruins is a nightmare for graveyard abuse decks.
I play the exact same package, for what it's worth. Recurring the Crypt seems to have the fewest drawbacks of other grave hate strategies in these colors (We can't all have Necrogenesis! and Night Soil, although this deck certainly benefits from the latter) and it's so easy to set it up in blue if you need it.
You know, if you're going to play more artifacts, Enlightened tutor is still very good and it can fetch Night Soil, so you won't have to slot artifact-based GY hate if you run that.
Ok I did a bunch of updates. I finally got those pesky enormous headers down to a decent size. I also added in a current trial section under the updates section as well as updating what I am currently testing in the deck. Oran-Rief, the Vastwood finally got included in my deck for its fun interaction with persist.
I ended up still having one sorcery based land ramp in the deck Kodama's Reach. I wasnt able to find a creature I felt was good enough to be its replacement. Wood Elves is ok as it grabs the shocklands but I don't feel it is as good as Kodama's Reach. The one other thought I had was possibly replacing it with Ghostway. I am trying to abuse ETB abilities and feel that Ghostway is good for that. It is also hilarious with an Eternal Witness in play. I just dont think I can say that it is a replacement for ramp by any means. For now the Kodama's Reach will probably stay put.
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I like the list. Reminds me of mine and Kaylee's lists. Although mine is more focused on 1v1 and hers is sort of in between and out of date.
All of us seem to focus mostly on EtB effect creatures with a Reveillark engine or infinite combo of some kind.
Personally, my favorite card in these decks is Venser, the Sojourner. It's really fun getting to reuse your EtB triggers to control the game till he can use his ultimate ability to turn all your spells into bonus removal. I'm sure Kaylee would run him in her deck if she is still playing EDH.
The only suggestion that I think has already been mentioned, but I'd like to 2nd it or whatever is Aura Shards. Really great giving each creature the option to disenchant just for EtB which goes along well with your cards that help you reuse EtB effects.
I agree that Aura Shards is totally amazing. I might have to try to run it again. In the past I think I got it out like twice ever, the first time I dropped it into play early on and wanted to start shooting stuff. It was destroyed before it got back to my turn... The other time it dropped in late in the game and there was nothing to target. Then it was blown up a few turns later right before a lurking predators dropped in... both times it sort of let me down so I don't know. I love it but it draws hate if it is going to be any good.
I agree that I probably need to run it again though. I am also somewhat tempted to try running Sword of Light and Shadow again in here. I love the spot removal protection that it gives as well as a very nice effect on connecting to an opponent.
I just hate trying to make room in the deck. Making cuts is always so tough.
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Hey, awesome primer man. My Rafiq deck has gotten boring, then I read this and decided to shift it into a Jenara deck to change things up a little bit! I have most of the cards already, so I can come pretty close to your build. I'm pretty much missing only newer stuff. After testing, I'll make some modifications and I should have some more feedback.
I noticed you have Scroll Rack already, have you thought about Land Tax? To me the card advantage seems way too good.
Yes I know Scroll Rack + Land Tax is crazy good stuff. I guess it comes down to the fact that I have never really felt that I need Land Tax as a standalone card in the deck due to the decks power to power out lands already. While I think it is a great combo I just dont see much need for Land Tax in this deck. Plus a lot of times I actually have more lands than my opponents thus turning it off.
Aside from that I am actually testing the deck currently without the Scroll Rack. I am seeing if Trinket Mage and Tezzeret the Seeker are decent options to replace my Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library. Originally I wanted as many top like effects in this deck as I could get. Eventually I realized that the other two effects while being good are far more vulnerable to being destroyed. I was also having problems with the fact that I was drawing into multiple of the top effects at the same time which was difficult to really make use of. So as of currently I am doing a bit of testing with only runing the Top and two different ways to tutor it up. I can also if I really want my top creature tutor into the Trinket Mage. But usually I have better things to do with creature tutors.
While I think the Scroll Rack + Land Tax is an amazing card advantage combo for non blue decks... We have blue as an option and Land Tax doesnt work for me more often than not so I think it would probably be better as just some blue card draw option instead.
Also make sure to check my test log as there are some options I am trying to figure out if they might end up being good replacements for parts of the deck that are currently listed. I just want to make sure that the change is for the best before I update the decklist.
Ok I tried going through NPH specifically looking at cards that might be usable in this deck or at least should be looked over for possible use in the deck.
WHITE Exclusion Ritual I love how this exiles anything. The problem being it just costs too much mana. I would have loved to have just seen it exile a card for like 4 mana perhaps. 6 mana makes this card too high to end up using.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite She seems very solid for any deck that can run white just for her ability to auto gimp off token decks and a lot of utility generals. I cant say for sure that she is in but she feels very solid for the deck and I wouldn't be surprised if she makes it in for trial at least.
BLUE Chancellor of the Spires by far my favorite of the Chancellors for EDH. I love the possibilities that this card can give the deck. The creature is good sized and what I get when it comes in varies depending on what is in graveyards. This guy will make it in for trial for sure.
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur Jin is great so I thought I should at least address him. I feel he belongs a lot more in a control based deck due to his nature to be removed very very quickly. You need counterspells and other ways in which to try to cover for him which this deck just lacks. He has no coming into play ability and the chance that he dies very quickly is high. I would rather rely on my 6 mana Consecrated Sphinx to draw me a few cards. I very doubt he will ever make it in the deck.
Phyrexian Ingester an offshoot of Duplicant. I love the option to have a bit more control built into some of my creatures but I don't know how badly I want to pay an extra mana for duplicant. I like it but not enough to really feel like it is going to get a spot at this moment. I will keep him in mind though if I need to pick up some more creature based removal.
Phyrexian Metamorph a better clone. I ended up cutting my clone a while back and other than when I play against Uril, the Miststalker I have not missed it much of at all. Considering this guy is just outright better than clone I will bring him in before I bring in clone in the future. It probably wont go in for testing anytime soon but it has its uses.
GREEN Beast Within ohhh boy this card has got some hyph behind it. I think it will pan out very well for green. I am very willing to give this card some testing and see how it works. It has a very similar role to my Oblation but the 3/3 beast is less of a drawback than giving an opponent 2 cards. I do like how Oblation can deal with indestructables though. I dont know if Beast Within will take Oblation's spot or if I will run both. I am sure it will see some testing though.
Birthing Pod ohhhhh man this card is soooo cool... until you get to the whole only as a sorcery part. I love the idea behind this card but other than just trying to trigger as many enter battlefield triggers as possible I don't know if I can make enough use for it to get it in the deck. I could see it working fantastically with Archon of Justice though which would be a riot. I think there would be some fun possibilities for this card and while I am not ruling this card out currently the only as a sorcery part is a huge turnoff for me. I would be willing to try it out in the future... but I just dont expect much.
Brutalizer Exarch I totally love this guy for his second ability to tuck noncreature permanents. I sort of wonder though if it is worth it for 6 mana though. I wish I got something a little larger than a 3/3 for that much mana or perhaps had a way to pay a little more for both effects or something... I dont know. I feel like I might be better off with a Primal Command instead. Sure it doesnt actually solve a problematic noncreature but it solves it temporarily while tutoring for a good creature as well.
Noxious Revival I guess the fact that this is at instant speed and can be cast by paying 2 life impresses me the most on this card. Donwside to this card is that it doesnt go into hand but man the option to save something like a Primeval Titan from a grave removal or a reshuffle effect sounds like fun. I doubt it will see play but I thought it was cute enough to mention.
Triumph of the Hordes Ohhhhh boy this card is soooo good for EDH. When you do a mass pump with infect / trample you better assume someone is gona die. I feel it might be better than overrun due to the fact that it will only take 10 to kill when you do this. The downside of this for me is that most of my meta is wrath happy. If you feel you can on a regular basis swing for 10+ with trample you might check this one out. Unfortunately I usually have to accept swinging in for small numbers and getting wrathed about every turn later on in the game.
Cards I am a bit afraid of from NPH: Torpor Orb I am hoping that including this in a decklist is bad enough for a majority of other decks to the point where people just wont even bother running it. It is mean as hell and I don't want to see it played.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Banner.siouxwerks. & rizlawerks
***Note***: This primer is to build a very powerful agro / control based bant deck. Jenara is great as she is versatile and there are many ways in which to build her. I try to keep an open mind to others opinions so if you feel strongly for or against a card please voice it and we can discuss. Feel free to ask any questions about card choices as I would love to review any past experience I have had with other options. If you are looking for a deck that combos out on turn 4-6 though this is not the deck for you.
Deck History
When I originally built Jenara she was a bit voltron and I built it with the sole intention of killing opponents with her and due to such it was a lot more protective of her running a lot of equipment and enchantments that would stop opponents from targeting her and such. I have since then realized the power of the rest of the deck and I rely on her a lot less than I used to. My average cost per spell was a lot higher back then as well as I used to run Time Stretch, Genesis Wave, and Rite of Replication.
From there I changed the deck to be all about the interaction of dropping creatures with enters the battlefield (ETB/CIP) triggers. I pushed it to the point where I tried to replace everything that wasn't a creature with a creature. This version turned out to be good against the wrath control heavy decks which we had been rolling for some time but I found it a bit lacking when facing some creature based decks. Uril for one used to roll me every game.
Currently I would consider this deck to be an aggro-control deck. We have a lot of creatures in the list but most of those creatures are about building up card advantage and taking away threats of opponents. As a game goes on our deck is designed to have better resources and win the game through means of our better resources. For a long time I considered this deck an aggro deck but I have since sort of changed my mind a bit to say it is aggro-control with plenty of control elements in it that you probably could get away with calling it a control deck. Regardless the deck has had fantastic performance to date and I am happier with the list than I ever have been.
Why Play Jenara?
Jenara is completely different from every other bant deck. Unlike Rafiq, Jenara's abilities can cover all of the buffing necessary. Jenara's flying helps evade chump blockers as well which are often found in token and utility decks. Using Jenara as your general means that you will not be relying on your deck to boost your general up for a win, likewise you do not require your general to win the game. I often throw my general out into play early on just to throw a few punches. She will die eventually and it is fine as she has a very low starting mana cost.
You should consider running Jenara if you like a powerful commander that your opponents will always fear at every stage of the game while not being bound to using her to win. The colors of Bant allow us a huge variety of builds between being a control player, a combo player, and perhaps an aggro player. It is up to you to determine what sort of build you want to take on your deck. I like to think that most every Jenara deck can be a bit of a combination of the three all at once.
Our colors give us the following:
Counters, Draw, Theft, Clones, Recursion.
Ramp, Noncreature Removal, Recursion, Creature Tutors
Wraths, Spot Removal, Recursion
The three colors are very powerful together leaving very little weakness to any one specific tactic.
REASONS YOU SHOULD PLAY JENARA:
- You enjoy having a commander who scales well at every stage of the game. She is just as amazing on turn 3 as she is on turn 15. She comes in early and can make herself scary simply by paying some mana. She needs no other cards to build up.
- Her decklist can run a lot of amazing cards that are truly powerful with or without access to Jenara. I find that due to this interaction you see less people tucking Jenara as it does a lot less to your deck. Plus this deck can do a lot without her as well as having an easy time tutoring her back up if needed.
- You love Bant! Personally it is probably my favorite 3 color combination in EDH as it is so versatile. The colors lend to some strong agro tactics while giving options to control as well in white and blue. Green gives ramp and fatties so it really covers most every outlet.
REASONS YOU SHOULD NOT RUN JENARA:
- You enjoy a synergistic build around commander. Jenara's ability to self buff makes her a bit of a goodstuff commander. The equipment in here are primarily for the utility abilities rather than the buff / evasion.
- You enjoy streamlined commanders that build their deck for you. Jenara has tons of different ways to be built because she is more of a good-stuff Bant approach than a build around sort of commander. Every decklist you see out there could very well be different as every meta is different.
- You want to combo out on turn 4. Jenara has some very powerful interactions and some good solid combos such as the Lark + Survival combos but these colors aren't the best at tutoring noncreatures. There are a few white tutors that still work for this but you are probably better with someone else other than Jenara if you want to dedicated combo.
RUNDOWN ON JENARA HERSELF
Ok, first lets stack up all of the bant options before we go in depth on Jenara herself just to show other options and then I will justify why I chose Jenara to lead this deck.
So you can see that there are a few other decent choices in bant. I have seen some of the alternates and played a few of them myself. In my experience, Jenara is the option that plays the best as a goodstuff commander and while many of the alternate options have their merits, I found that many of them required more building around them in general. The utility bant commanders are fun but I personally have really enjoyed the versatility of a cheap wincon as a commander. It also frees up some of the slots in the deck and allows the other 99 to perform a bit more consistently in my experience. Rafiq is sort of the one other solid beater commander but I personally find him requiring more cards to set up and he tends to be more explosive of an early game kill style of commander but I have seen many complain that they run out of gas trying to push early game Rafiq beats.
As for Jenara, I could talk all day about how she can be utilized but honestly I will save all that talk for the strategy section of the primer. Breaking her down quickly she is a 3/3 flyer for GWU which in its own gives her good power for her cost as well as evasion with flying. Add to that the fact that you can pay 1W to give her a +1/+1 counter and she can be an absolute house in the mid to late game. She comes in early and has good power + evasion making her powerful in the early game. Combine this and the fact that she scales her powerful at every stage of the game. She is always a big threat and never easily dismissed. When opponents start running out of removal in the late game you can punish them with her then as she tends to be the biggest beater on board.
Personal Bio
My name is Brian, I am 27 years old, I live out in South Dakota sort of in the middle of nowhere. I have been playing EDH with the same group of people most of my EDH career with some time spent in a few other playgroups but I am back to where I got started on EDH again. We often get together on Tuesday nights and split into 2-3 games of EDH playing for a real fun time. I tend to get targeted quite heavily as a player for having good cards and good decks. While I love perfecting my decks I try not to make them too broken in the ways of combo and mass LD so I tend to stick to synergistic strategies that avoid that when possible. I am a spike player and I love getting my cards worth so I play plenty of card advantage style cards and I love comes into play effects.
I have been playing magic since 1996 or 1997. I have been playing magic since Ice Age, but that was when I was in like 4th grade, so obviously I was not the player then that I am now. I picked up on playing standard FNM back in high school where I played a lot in the Odyssey / Onslaught blocks. I played into Mirrodin and quit around when Kokusho started beating everyone up. I don't hold it against him though, I would love to see him come off of the ban list as I think he is fine in EDH. Perhaps keep him banned as a commander.
I am back to playing magic again and have been playing standard since Zendikar came out. I go back and forth on my thoughts of Standard but regardless I love playing EDH. I am sure that at some point I might give up on standard again but I hope to keep playing EDH for years to come. My EDH play started up sometime early in the summer of 2010 so I guess around the release of Rise of the Eldrazi or somewhere in that time frame. (You can bet we all smashed with all 3 big eldrazi in like every deck early on.)
I have built a whole lot of decks at this point but generally I have stripped away most of the decks I have built. Jenara is my oldest deck at this point and one of my favorite go to commanders. Due to how much play testing I have put into her though I dont play her all that much anymore as there isn't that much more tuning to do I feel like. I don't like replicating how decks feel so I try to have each deck have its own unique style or game plan to it. I was originally a huge aggro player but have really sort of blossomed into a control player the longer I play magic. I tend to dislike playing combo so I never really add cards because of their combo off interactions but if a card belongs in the deck it will make the list regardless of the combo interaction.
Deck List
1 Jenara, Asura of War (Alter)
CREATURES (29)
1 Gilded Drake
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Sakura-Tribe ElderFoil
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Snapcaster MageFoil
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Eternal WitnessFoil
1 Farhaven ElfFoil
1 Fierce EmpathFoil
1 Harmonic SliverFoil
1 Trinket MageFoil
1 Wood ElvesFoil
1 Clever Impersonator
1 Glen Elendra ArchmageFoil
1 Oracle of Mul DayaFoil
1 Phyrexian MetamorphFoil
1 Venser, Shaper SavantFoil
1 Wall of Reverence
1 Acidic Slime (Alt)
1 Body DoubleFoil
1 Ixidron
1 Karametra, God of Harvests
1 Karmic Guide
1 MulldrifterFoil
1 Reveillark
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Prime Speaker ZeganaFoil
1 Sun TitanFoil
1 Elesh Norn, Grand CenobiteFoil
1 Tormod's CryptFoil
1 Sensei's Divining Top (Alt)
1 SkullclampFoil
1 Sol Ring (Alt)
1 Oblivion Stone (Alt)
1 Sword of Feast and FamineFoil
1 Sword of Fire and IceFoil
1 Birthing PodFoil
ENCHANTMENTS (2)
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
INSTANT (14)
1 Pact of NegationFoil
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Swords to PlowsharesFoil
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Mana Drain
1 Unexpectedly Absent
1 Bant CharmFoil
1 Beast Within (Alt)
1 Chord of Calling (Alt)
1 Hinder (FULL ART)
1 Spell Crumple
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Fact or FictionFoil
SORCERY (7)
1 Green Sun's ZenithFoil
1 Bribery
1 Capture Of Jingzhou (Japanese)
1 Hallowed BurialFoil
1 Temporal Manipulation
1 Time WarpFoil
1 Austere Command
1 Tezzeret the SeekerFoil
1 Venser, the SojournerFoil
LAND (37)
1 Academy Ruins
1 Alchemist's RefugeFoil
1 Arid MesaFoil
1 Breeding PoolFoil
1 Command Tower
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Flooded Grove
1 Flooded Strand
6 Forest
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Island
1 Kor Haven
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mystic Gate
4 Plains
1 Savannah
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Strip Mine
1 Temple Garden
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Wooded FoothillsFoil
The original deck development / alterations can be found here if you are interested to see some of the progressions my deck went through.
You can find other user's lists of Jenara following the primer posts.
Strategy
Using Jenara
Ok, so probably one of the biggest questions you should try to answer quickly in a game is how you plan on using Jenara in that particular game. There is no right or wrong answer to how to use Jenara but I suppose I can sort of give you a good idea of how I use her. Keep in mind that this isn't always true but the following is usually a fairly good guide of using Jenara.
Early Game: I used to be less for using her early on but in my more recent builds of the deck I am a lot more willing to cast her early on and beat on people. The following are some of the considerations I often consider when considering to cast her early on:
1) Determine how likely it is that your opponents intend to combo off on you. If there is even a perhaps chance that a player might combo on you smash Jenara hard on them. Forcing opponents to play defensive with tutors and removal will slow them down. Assuming other players also see the combo player as a threat this shouldn't really give you any additional enemies which is a nice way to use her. In fact I have on occasion had people help clear the way and combat the combo player with counterspells allowing me to remove them quickly.
2) What is the size of the game. In smaller games, it is more productive to take an aggressive start and take out your biggest opponent quickly. That will put them on the defensive which always takes away from their own game. In larger games especially 5+ players, it is harder to hone in on players and pissing off opponents early can make multiple enemies. In 4 player games it largely is dictated by your own setup and opponents. Take into consideration the size of the game before utilizing Jenara. Playing her early in larger games is not as good of an idea unless as above you need to kill a combo player. Aggro strategies scale poorly for more opponents so keep that in mind.
3) Assuming you are playing a 4 player game, evaluate your opening hand to determine how effective she will be. If you aren't going to be doing anything else anyways you might as well pull her out and put her to some use. She often does a little bit of work and then takes a wrath / spot removal but there is always the chance that she just mauls someone. I often like to bring her up to a 5/5 early and then go back to my ramp game. Even as a 5/5 though she adds up very quickly considering she can do that on turn 4 without really any assistance. I generally speaking attempt to play Jenara in the early game unless you have a really solid early hand.
I would say that more often than not I do end up bringing Jenara in early for some beats. Occasionally if I have a really solid hand I will pass on her but more importantly she just gives you great options. Thanks to the extra turns in the deck she has enormous finishing power once you get someone halfway or so to dead with her. Don't be afraid to spread out the damage a little in the early game especially in larger games. If you dont think you can actually kill a player its a good option to have a few people down on commander damage giving you options on who dies to her faster later on. I suppose this is sort of seen as a political play and I dont usually do too much of it but it can be very easy for the threat of one player to overtake that of another. If you start in on one player but see someone else exploding then by all means swap targets.
Midgame: Generally speaking once you cast her in the early game I will try to avoid casting her again in the mid game unless you have like literally nothing else going on. The midgame is when a lot of blockers, wraths, and spot removals start being used and I just try to milk some value out of the ETB creatures and let some of it blow over during this time. This tends to be where you see people tutoring into wraths and using spot removal. Hands should still be fairly big at this time as people are using card draw, tutors, and wraths. Due to this I tend to focus a lot less on Jenara at this time unless I am without other things to do or I am just steamrolling.
Late game: This is where Jenara does a lot of the clean up work. In the early game you should likely have gotten a few punches in on someone. Good threat evaluation should hopefully have gotten them where you need them. At this point of the game people's hands should be getting a little smaller as they have been beating each other up. It gets harder to stop Jenara and thanks to our ramp game and the low cost she has recasting her a few times here is often fairly easy. Her ability to give herself counters here is enormous as you should have racked up quite the landbase. It becomes very easy to kill people in just a few attacks thanks to early pokes and big mana dumps for her.
Extra Turn Effects: There are a lot of things that extra turns do in this deck (Ex. Time Warp). Assuming they resolve they always replace them self in hand and allow you to un-tap. This means that anything you do in addition to these two things is extra value. I use them with Jenara for multiple attacks on an opponent. Don't forget that you can use extra mana beyond what it takes to cast the extra turn to pump her up. This means that the damage output will increase significantly especially if you string a few of these together. If for instance you have 10 mana and extra turns, that means you can put two counters on Jenara before taking the extra turn, then attack for damage. When you untap you have the option of pumping her again up to 5 more counters and swinging out again. If you have the capability of taking 3 turns in a row with another extra turn or recuring / flashing back the other extra turn it turns into even more damage output. I generally try to save Extra turns for instances where I really need those extra turns but keep in mind that if you play against wheel effects and or combo players waiting can have bad results as they can go off it will be too late for them.
Deck's Strategy
The War of Attrition: this deck can very easily be considered an attrition based deck. We take small pokes at our opponents resources and life totals. This deck is best defined as an Aggro / Control deck. It is a control deck that utilizes creatures to control the flow of the game. The general idea behind this deck is to control opponent's resources until they run out and then to kill them with our utility creatures and commander.
Some of they key elements to this deck:
Enter the Battlefield (often abbreviated ETB): Creatures that have an immediate effect when they hit play are great as they are built in 2 for 1 effects. Since we get some effect off of them coming into play we have already generated value off of them immediately. Anything that they accomplish after coming into play is just extra card advantage.
Creature Abuse (Engine Cards): These cards generate lots of card advantage and are generally speaking repeatable. These effects generally give additional value for each activation or trigger we can get from them or load a lot of value into a single trigger. A few examples would be Sword of Fire and Ice, Birthing Pod, Sun Titan, Ghostway and Skullclamp. Every activation or trigger you manage to get from them increases your war of attrition. By using these we are able to squeeze more value out of the creatures with ETB abilities.
Good Stuff: Well, a good portion of the deck falls into the above two sections. Some cards though are just really good value or removal. Fact or Fiction for example doesn't really need to get better. It does in some ways give us access to graveyard recursion tactics and can be reused using some of our ETB creatures such as Snapcaster Mage and Eternal Witness. But the point of these cards is just to get solid value. Lots of the instant and sorcery removal falls into this category. I wish we could abuse them further but occasionally what you need is just a spot removal or wrath. My opinion of these cards is that they tend to have the least synergy with the rest of the deck however even when things aren't working out well, these cards are still good to see and do good things.
Most of the deck is made up of these above three elements. The ETB creatures and engines have the most synergistic interactions for the deck but even just a solid good stuff card has its place in the list. Things like Swords to Plowshares give you access to cheap spot removal that can be vitally important to remove a threat quickly like Consecrated Sphinx or stop that Deadeye Navigator right away rather than after he pairs up with that broken ETB creature.
Combo Options
My own current list has very little for infinite combos in it. I currently have the infinite turn option which can go off however the primary reason for all of the cards in it being included are not that it turns into infinite turns but because they are good cards. I could focus more on tutoring into them and or include the lark combo again however I in general dont much care for infinite combos but include those cards because I believe they deserve a spot regardless of their combo interactions.
Reveillark Combo:
When I first started playing Jenara I fumbled around with using a Reveillark combo by using Saffi Eriksdotter in a traditional GW method of executing it. After playing with the list for some time I realized that by utilizing blue you can shortcut the process, use less cards, and execute it much stronger. To start it out you will need Survival of the Fittest in play. Using Survival of the Fittest, move a creature in your hand to be all of the following creatures. You can throw away all of the creatures except for Reveillark into your graveyard so just save him for last and it will work fine. Tutor up Mirror Entity, Body Double, and Acidic Slime in your graveyard with Reveillark in your hand as the last tutor target. This only requires a single creature in hand to get started. Just chain that one creature between them all.
1) Evoke Reveillark into play. It dies and resurrects Mirror Entity and Body Double into play. The Body Double comes in as a copy of Reveillark.
2) Mirror Entity triggers some large number of times... lets say 100 times for 0 mana while retaining priority. Allow the first trigger to resolve and kill your creatures.
3) Body Double dies and triggers the Reveillark ability. Using Reveillark ability you rez Body Double and Acidic Slime into play with Body Double as Reveillark and the slime into play wrecking a target. From here you have the combo rolling and the Body Double replaces a lot of the complicated parts just rezing itself and Acidic Slime over and over. Once you run out of targets for slime to work with rez something else or just opt to keep cycling Body Double as the only rez target until you are out of Mirror Entity triggers. End the last trigger with Mirror Entity + Body Double as a copy of Reveillark and you can kick back into the combo anytime you would like.
Using this method you can also rez Body Double and Karmic Guide if you want. Using the Karmic Guide you can literally rez anything else into play to execute the combo with any ETB creature.
Infinite Turns
There are a few ways in which this deck can kick into infinite turns. I dont focus a lot on achieving this in my list so much as it existing however if you would like you can focus more on it. There are 3 main parts to this combo to make it work so this is sort of the basics of how it works:
Extra Turn + Spell Recover Creature + Re-usable Blink / Bounce
An example of this combo would be to use the following:
Time Warp + Eternal Witness + Crystal Shard
Temporal Manipulation + Eternal Witness + Skullclamp + Sun Titan
There are lots of alternate ways to achieve this as well. Once you take an extra turn you recover it and cast it again. The blink / bounce option allows you to recur the creature's ability to return a spell to hand and loop the extra turn infinitely. I dont overly focus on this as a win condition however it does exist in my list and I do on occasion utilize it for the win.
Other Combo Options
There are a lot of other combos that could potentially be run in Bant colors. I will do my best to jot the more reasonable ones down here.
- Static Orb + Opposition + Mobilization another lockout strategy.
- Tooth and Nail into Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger + Palinchron = infinite mana to dump into whatever.
- Future Sight (or magus) + Sensei's Divining Top + Cloud Key (any artifact cheapener) = infinite draw. Drop a Brain Freeze effect in and storm combo your opponents.
- Temple Bell + Mind over Matter = mill opponents to death. Make sure to include an eldrazi to shuffle yourself.
Combo Decks:
As it Stands: We play a lot of attrition based magic with this list. This can be a problem when it comes to the late game because combo decks have more time to assemble counters + combo pieces. The combo decks that use less permanents in comboing out are harder to stop because we only run a select number of counterspells. In our current setup if you suspect someone is playing a combo deck I would try to focus them hard with Jenara putting some pressure on them and forcing some defensive tutors. The more time you let them run free the more chance you run of getting blasted by a spell based combo that will be hard to stop. Later in the game try to keep mana up to bluff counters even if you dont have it because that will put them second guessing if they can go off or not.
How to Improve against it: You have a few options in improving this matchup. I think the personal better option is just to add another few counterspells to your list and bank on being able to disrupt their combo. Keep counters cheap as this deck has tons of stuff to do on average. You could also try to add some hatebear style cards to the list to hinder opponents depending upon what sort of combos are expected.
Mass Land Destruction:
As it Stands: This deck loves excess mana so I often find myself playing most of my land out that I draw in a game. If you suspect LD or your meta regularly runs it then I would suggest holding a few lands in hand for emergencies. The low mana cost of the deck will help here as well. Keeping up spot removal can make a world of difference as well because often someone will wrath the lands trying to push a threat through for the win so removing that can keep you in the game. Keep in mind also that keeping a threat on the field also makes them consider what you can do with it while the lands are sealed up.
How to Improve against it: There are tons of options in bant for improving this match up. You could consider something like Life From the Loam, Crucible of Worlds, Land Tax, Mana Stones... Keeping the average mana per card low is also great at improving this match up for you as well.
Hyper-Fast Aggro:
As it Stands: I dont run tons of wrath effects in here which can be a problem if someone is moving really really fast. Generally speaking I start off by trying to drop a few bodies and turn them in another direction. Jenara is often one of the first threats that will land in a game and against a hyper aggro the 3/3 evasive body will be great on defense. Don't bother going on offense against this tactic unless it is Edric because generally you just want to stem the problem to someone else until they solve it. These tactics can be a problem if they insist on going after you especially if it is Kaalia or something pushing hard against you. Generally speaking I will see if I cant deter them with blockers and creatures first but if they follow it up with spot removal of their own you will be forced into cloneing commanders / using spot removal back to slow them down. These decks often die from being slowed down so anything to buy time is great here. Most of these commanders suffer a lot from being tucked as well so do what you can to just get rid of them for a while. Even if they tutor back up buying the time is what is needed here.
How to Improve against it: generally speaking a few wraths does the job nicely here. There aren't a ton of decks that really fall into this category of deck but if you find yourself repeatedly having issues with them some spot removal / wrath effects go a long ways here. I find this to usually be manageable due to the fact that we have so many early game creatures and spot removal though. If you need more wraths for this type of deck try to keep them cheap so like 4-5 mana to hit as soon as possible and disrupt their momentum is good.
Shroud Aggro:
As it Stands: commanders like Uril, the Miststalker and Sigarda, Host of Herons can be a huge problem. Generally speaking throwing bodies in their way can work and Jenara can pump quickly but the problem is a lot of times they pick us to target first due to our scaling commander being able to block them with time. These commanders on occasion will come out of nowhere and practically one shot people so dont take them lightly. As it stands tuck wraths / counters work the best on them as any time you can spend with them out of the picture is just great. Clones work well at slowing them down and killing them as well. Throw chump creatures at them when you can and blow up anything they attach to their commander as that stuff stacks up to damage on you really fast.
How to Improve against it: more mass tuck effects, more counterspells, more instant speed artifact / enchantment removal. If you are having problems against these commanders continuously remove some of the spot removal for what was mentioned earlier. Cyclonic Rift also could potentially be quite useful as it can strip buffs off of them or be overloaded to really slow them down. If you want to get into some tech you might look at adding Martyr's Cause and or Righteous Aura just because they will give them fits.
Card Options
I will try to give a bit of a breakdown on different cards that can give some good flavor to any build of Jenara. Some of these cards are cards that I have had in my own personal build in the past and for some reason or another I have removed or never used them in my build. Keep in mind that the cards listed here are just cards that have at some point been in or considered for the list. The decklist itself is located further down in this post. I will try to explain within the card's details what I had wrong with the card or the reason it was cut.
I will try to keep what I am currently running in my list updated in bold here.
CREATURES
Serra Ascendant Alright, anyone who has ever tried this in a multiplayer setting knows it has some issues. If you drop it turn one in a FFA you will turn the game into archenemy and probably die first. I would generally speaking not recommend playing this out in a FFA multiplayer game of commander. There are a lot of issues that Serra Ascendant has in FFA which are usually you can only focus fire a single opponent to under half life then people start stabilizing. People get really pissed off when they see this on turn one and it usually leads to the whole table running you over first. Not to mention the issues if people start cloning it. I love that it is a good target for Ranger of Eos but it is just one of those stupid cards that when played in the first few turns really screws with the game.
Coiling Oracle I like this guy as I never really dislike drawing him. He has a lot of ways to be abused and has the chance of ramping you in the early game. Later in the game he comes in and essentially draws you the next card keeping some good card momentum going while leaving you with a body to be abused with sac outlets, carry swords, and whatever really.
Elvish Visionary generally speaking, I would say that Coiling Oracle is stronger than visionary but his effect is still strong. Drawing a card might not seem like much but he does it very cheaply, then provides as a means to abuse him through means like skullclamp, chump blocking, carrying swords, and possibly a bounce target with something like Crystal Shard or Venser, the Sojourner if it came down to it. I consider him better than cards like Wall of Omens / Wall of Blossoms due to the fact that he can attack with swords and he dies to skullclamp which is usually a good thing.
Gilded Drake This guy is a bread and butter type of answer. He is very cheap so its easy to tutor for him and cast him in the same turn or do an X mana tutor for him. Stealing someone's powerful threat / commander is a good way to deal with them as they usually need to kill them to get them back. I was afraid that Homeward Path was going to be like everywhere in every single deck but that is far from the case. Overall I have been pleased with having him in here. He gives us some great utility for our creature tutors as he can be a great solution to a sticky situation and he is a very good abuse target with Venser, the Sojourner (who targets permanents you OWN which menas you can flicker him under someone else's control). He also rezes off of Sun Titan which is just groovy.
Mistmeadow Witch This is another card to abuse enter battlefield creatures. It can also be used to a lot of success in defending your creatures from wraths. Generally speaking though it is too mana intensive for most Jenara builds though as paying 4 mana to flicker is just a bit too much. I love the feel of the card but generally speaking I get the impression that it just costs too much.
Phantasmal Image this guy is the cheapest clone effect you can get. He was absolutely incredible when clones used to kill legends but even now he is a very cheap clone who copies ETB effects and such. Some of the few times I regret him is when there is something in play that I want a copy of that is a robust creature like Avacyn or Ulamog where the target and sac still happens. He is useful though as a solid Sun Titan target though as its super fun to get a Sun Titan and get this guy back as a Sun Titan continuing the chain of fun things.
Qasali Pridemage another option for some creature based removal. If you see people in your group packing some Torpor Orb, this is a great creature to pack to counter them. We have a high density of creature tutors to go get him. He rezes off of like everything as well and even can grab Skullclamp and then pop something off very profitably. He is likely the next place I would go to pick up more artifact / enchantment hate in the deck.
Sakura-Tribe Elder I love this guy for a number of reasons, he comes out on turn 2 and can fix my mana in time for a turn 3 general drop, he can chump block into a land late game. If he isn’t needed he can always be fed into something like a skullclamp for some other fodder. One of the biggest upsides to him is that he gives you some ramp at the 2 mana mark that can be abused in other ways later, or if you draw him later on he can carry a sword in for some card advantage.
Scavenging Ooze I like the ooze for being versatile. I can tutor him up easily when needed, he can strip several targets at instant speed in response to them being abused, he gives a little lifegain and is a huge beater that I can also easily recur. He doesn't do anything on ETB per say but with a good manabase I can generally use him 3+ times by turn 6 or so.
Snapcaster Mage the biggest value from this guy is that you can just keep him back as a wildcard until you are ready to do something. With cards like Archaeomancer or Eternal Witness you need to play them at sorcery speed and pick something back up, this guy flashes in and immediately gives you access to cast that card. This means that you are keeping your options open until the last second. Being a cheap drop 2/1 is also a lot of bonus as there are tons of things you can do with a 2/1 to get additional value and he recurs easily. He gives you access to abuse your spells and the deck can abuse him nicely so its a good tie in to multiple sides for this deck.
Stoneforge Mystic really amazing with an equipment package. The fact that he cheats equipment into hand is really solid. I also like how he can cheat swords out and equip on turn 4 which makes for a great setup with Jenara if you turn 2 stoneforge + fetch a sword. Turn 3 hit Jenara. Turn 4 cheat a sword in and equip it to jenara for a nice hit for 5+ the sword advantage. Really a solid creature at any point in the game and great to abuse with rez and such.
Edric, Spymaster of Trest he gives a good bit of card draw. Personally I don't really like giving opponents cards though so I don't run him. He can result in a lot of card draw for you very quickly though. I think there are some social aspects to him as well. If you like manipulating your opponents with words and such you might like him more than I. He is easy to tutor for, easy to recover, and can draw tons of cards. If you play against a lot of swarm decks or lots of white spot removal he becomes a little less good. I think he actually gets much better if you see more combo decks as they tend to run less creatures.
Eternal Witness Hands down best recursion in the game. Sure there are bigger flashier recursion cards but I never regret getting a witness to hand. Generally speaking I tend to use her to rez spells back to hand for further use due to all of the creature recursion I already have but in a pinch she works fine to rez anything really. Of late I have been using her to rez extra turns back to hand which has been absolutely backbreaking for my opponents. Probably the hands down best graveyard recovery spell ever printed.
Farhaven Elf another low mana critter with some good utility behind him. I like having a higher creature count in this deck as I abuse enter battlefield triggers and this allows me for more ways to abuse stuff. I like the value that the creature based ramp options give me when you start looking at sacrificing them to things and carrying equipment / recovering them with things like Sun Titan and Reveillark.
Fierce Empath so I have known about this guy for a really long time now and just of late he has become like one of my favorite creatures to add to decks. He replaces himself in hand with any big fatty which gives me another sort of toolbox and he can be rezed, bounced, equipped up and punch in for utility sword triggers. He just has so many uses that he has become one of my favorite adds.
Harmonic Sliver This guy gives some great removal. He is really cheap, he can be abused after his ETB trigger, cloning him works fantastically, and he is super easy to rez and tutor into. We don't run a whole ton of artifacts / enchantments either so even when playing against a sliver deck he can be nice. The fact is they MUST destroy a target when a sliver comes in so eventually they will be wrecking their own stuff as well. I have had great luck with him and generally speaking I don't run into sliver decks all that often but even when I do I haven't seen him really be a bad thing for the most part.
Mirror Entity Part of the Reveillark combo. Generally speaking, outside of wanting to run a Reveillark combo I don't really care for this creature. Every now and then you can still stomp people with a bunch of 13/13 creatures but generally speaking he is hard to use outside of the combo.
Silverblade Paladin he has been brought up a few times as another double strike option to push Jenara. Overall, I am not as fond of him as I am Rafiq of the Many. However that being said, he can be rezed off of Sun Titan and Reveillark which Rafiq cannot. Rafiq on the other hand moves his buff a bit more freely, buffs exault as well, and can be tutored for off of Green Sun's Zenith. There are clearly some gives on both sides. Again the Silverblade gives a nice extra buff to sword triggers hitting them twice per combat. Also, the fact that you are not constricted to attacking with one creature alone is nice.
Stonecloaker sort of a cool creature as he hates on graveyards while saving himself or another target from removal. I ended up cutting him as I never really got much use out of him. I found Scavenging Ooze to be a better graveyard removal card due to less mana investment and the fact that the ooze is easily recurred and can hit a handful of targets when he comes in.
Trinket Mage I used to use multiple topdeck manipulation cards such as the Sensei's Divining Top, Sylvan Library, and Scroll Rack. After a while I realized that it is probably better to use one topdeck manipulation card and multiple ways to tutor into it as it really reduces redundant cards. I like how I can tutor into this creature or pass it off to Survival if needed. I can bounce, flicker, persist, and rez the Trinket Mage really allowing me to pick up some card advantage and create an artifact toolbox of utility cards that I can use.
Wood Elves these land ramp critters are great as they can grab a dual land and it comes in untapped. We can abuse land ramp critters in a lot of ways to generate extra value and the ability to rez them again for a bit more value is always good too. Try to generate additional value outside of the ETB abilities is important for this deck. This is usually considered the best of the land ramp critters due to its ability to retrieve dual lands into play untapped.
Ephara, God of the Polis as she is still a relatively new card I cant speak much about her yet but I am looking forward to seeing how she performs. The gods in general are a great cycle of cards for consideration in a creature based deck like this as we can tutor for them much easier and she has synergy with playing creatures which is what we do already anyways. I have very high hopes for her in here. I sort of look at her like an indestructible creature tutorable phyrexian arena that has a downside of the deck needing to play like it already does so... it seems really good to me.
Glen Elendra Archmage Two counterspells ready to rumble. It is a bit annoying when you play her out to be followed by a Duplicant but it still solves a lot of problems. She makes for a good Tooth and Nail target as well if you would like to run it and Avenger of Zendikar. I ended up cutting those other cards however the fact is she is easy to clone, rez, tutor, and equip. Putting a Skullclamp on her and passing is a one way ticket to value town.
Mystic Snake A counterspell with a body. The snake is much better than Draining Whelk in my mind because of the problem that the Whelk sort of suckers you into countering bad things just for the bigger amount of counters on it. It is fun to recur this or slap it into your Mimic Vat given the option for even more fun. The big problem that it seems to have though is that most of the rez in these colors are into play which makes it hard to utilize there. It is great when bouncing and flickering it though.
Oracle of Mul Daya Oracle can generate a lot of card advantage that people really don't seem to notice or mind. Remember that your opponents don’t have an option to kill her when she hits play until your pass priority. Always try clearing lands off the top of the library first before you do anything else. Library manipulation such as Sensei's Divining Top and Sylvan Library are great for setting up your land drops for Oracle use too. Fetchlands can give you a second chance to sculpt your topdeck when she is in play as well.
Phyrexian Metamorph is almost a strict upgrade over Clone. This is the damn best clone avalible so far. I still really like Phantasmal Image for its cheap use and easy rez but as far as power goes the Metamorph is as good as it gets. The fact that you can artifact tutor into it and rez it off of Academy Ruins or creature tutor into it and then copy an artifact. It just has so much versatility.
Rafiq of the Many for anyone looking to push Jenara just a little faster and harder, Rafiq adds a ton of damage to Jenara's output. Generally speaking, Finest Hour is a little bit more robust than Rafiq. The reason though I would recommend you look at running Rafiq over Finest Hour though is that this deck has a lot of ways to tutor into creatures and recur creatures. Due to this you will see more reliable results from Rafiq than you will from Finest Hour. Another big plus to these effects is that they double trigger sword effects. So if you want to push your swords a bit further he is also nice. In the end I stopped using him because in general when he would be useful, I was already doing good. He is nice for a surprise buff in a situation where someone is setting up to answer you next turn though.
Restoration Angel the flicker ability here can be used for a variety of purposes due to the flash ability it has. Re-triggering an ETB ability works well with this or even saving a creature from a spot removal or aura lockdown. The fact that it has flash + well costed + has aggressive stats + flying makes this guy really nice. Keep in mind that you will have better results with her in a spot removal heavy meta and worse results with her in a seeper removal meta. I often wished she was just a counterspell when I would get her and she doesnt work well if you find yourself pushing Jenara for fast kills often either since she is an angel and un-blinkable with restoration angel.
Solemn Simulacrum this creature tends to give a lot of good card advantage throughout the course of a game. Birthing Pod off of him into a Karmic Guide or hook him up with a Skullclamp. He does a lot of good card advantage generating things and can work great on defense or carry swords in. He reanimates easily and is nicely cloned. There are lots of great ways to generate advantage off of him.
Venser, Shaper Savant a very nice control creature. He has so many ways to be used and abused. Anytime you can rez him, he can do something useful. He can be bounced and flickered for great results too. Keep in mind that if you rez him, you can always target him to bounce himself loading up to counter things again. He is just so dang versatile. The only time I don't really like using him is against cheap removal. Even in that situation though, you can always bounce the target of the removal. He is really a nice creature though.
Wickerbough Elder I don't run this guy anymore but if you are looking to run more artifact / enchantment removal I found that he works fine. He works really well with Cauldron of Souls if you are into running it as well. Overall I just found that there were better options available and he left the list to better cards IE Harmonic Sliver. Another side note, he works really well if you face down a lot of Torpor Orb users as he can still break it.
Acidic Slime this guy has gotten me out of many a tight jam. The fact that you can blow up any troubling artifact / enchant / land then have a deathtouch creature for chump blocking is just sooo good. Plus its low power allows you to rez it off lark. Also functions in lark combo.
Body Double this guy actually reads Rise from the Grave for blue. He is a great piece of utility that you just cant get in these colors otherwise. I originally ran clone over him but after some experience with him having a mix of clone effects including him has been fantastic.
Ixidron he gives a tutorable wrathlike effect to the deck. Creatures are much easier to abuse in this deck so anytime we can pick something up on a stick it is going to be great. His ability is very unique in the fact that he disables commanders without killing them. He deals with indestructible and hexproof or shroud creatures. To top him off, he is usually fairly decent sized to beat on people with.
Karametra, God of Harvests it is still a new card so I cant speak much about her yet but I am looking forward to seeing how she performs. The gods in general are a great cycle of cards for consideration in a creature based deck like this as we can tutor for them much easier and she has synergy with playing creatures which is what we do already anyways. The one sort of downside I see so far about this god is that it has sort of a relatively high cost to get into play in the first place. It does great though at just picking up solid value though once it makes its way into play and it should open me up to having easier access to multi tasking in my turns and doing bigger things in general.
Karmic Guide amazing recursion on legs. Also part of the Reveillark combo. There are tons of uses for her between using Birthing Pod off of a Solemn Simulacrum or rezing a good creature then putting a Skullclamp on her to watch her die. Generally speaking she usually only sticks around for part of a turn but the fact that you get a rez effect + get to abuse her and possibly have a spare blocker for a turn is all good stuff. If you pay for her echo cost it is usually because you need a flying attacker / blocker or intend to clone her next turn.
Mulldrifter I go back and forth a lot on my thoughts of this guy. I like that he somewhat cheaply draws me a few cards and gives me an evasive body. He can carry equipment and he can die if need be to things like Birthing Pod or sit back on defense with a clamp on. There are a lot of nice things that he can do for me and in an opening hand evoking him for the cards is usually still really solid.
Prophet of Kruphix I will digress that this is essentially a better Seedborn Muse so I wont bother talking about seedborn since I will address this one. Prophet is a great card if you run it in the right deck. These style of cards give a much larger potential mana availability per turn rotation and prophet allows flashing creatures. I think its best means to be utilized is with mana sinks so if you can spend mana and achieve some sort of value without burning cards in hand it can get really out of hand. I myself have relatively few mana sinks as this deck is built around being an ETB value deck. Prophet can be used to flash in creatures but my problem with that is it usually just leads to burning yourself out too quickly. Dropping and pumping Jenara is probably the biggest thing that I can consistently do in this deck as it stands now. I think it's a great card but I just dont believe that it fits in this deck.
Reveillark mmmm recursion. This deck runs a lot of creatures with power 2 or less so even if you don’t want to run the combo, lark is an amazing creature to include in the deck. Also remember that it triggers its ability when it leaves the battlefield so it still works great even if someone is dropping an exile / tuck effect on you. He can be slow played or evoked and generally speaking he is just huge value regardless of how he is played.
Consecrated Sphinx I am guessing by now it needs no introduction. Sometimes he draws you your deck and sometimes he draws you 0-2 cards. Results may vary but generally speaking that is because he is more of a later game type of creature. If you are playing him on turn 6 then I have to say that generally you are playing him incorrectly. Later in the game when people have used a lot of their removal he can come in and be difficult to answer. If you can time him right you can also draw stupid amounts of cards as well. Flash him in off of the flash lands in response to a wheel effect is also very very stupidly good.
Deadeye Navigator I often am asked why I do not play with this card. I think it is an excellent card but it is not quite what I am shooting for here. Let me explain some of why I dont run it:
Duplicant Nice and easy removal effect on legs. The fact that he can be tutored by so many effects in the deck is very useful. The fact that his removal means is exile is really solid as well as it stops opponents from abusing them. His low power allows him to be rezed off of lark and his artifact status allows him to be rezed off of Academy Ruins. Very solid all in all.
Prime Speaker Zegana she has been an absolute bomb for card draw in this deck. Among the advantages she has, she is green and so can be tutored with green creature only tutors like Green Sun's Zenith. She has low power/toughness on card which means she can be rezed with lark, and she is a huge creature in play with a big draw effect. If you tutor her into play with something like Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling, or Birthing Pod, your opponents cannot respond to her getting her +/+ counters and thus she gets her card draw short of some sort of stifle effect. Overall, she has proven to just draw cards really well and be a solid threat in play. She is also very well costed for what her effect tends to be.
Primeval Titan This is sort of a basic high end ramp effect where it gives a 6/6 creature who immediately fetches any 2 lands including utility lands if I want them then still leaves me with a 6/6 beater that needs to be answered. Generally speaking I dont need a ton of mana beyond 6 to operate my basic cards however every bit of mana I have is more mana I can multi task with or keep mana up for removal or pump jenara with. He is sort of winmore ramp but he gives a great target where opponents need to sink good spot removal on him taking more of their spells away from them.(BANHAMMERED!!! Otherwise I would still be playing him.)Sun Titan Originally I didn't give Sun Titan as much credit as I do now. Generally speaking he is only a step behind Primeval in broken power in a deck that can properly use him. He doesn't ramp nonbasic lands into play but there are so many amazing cards that he can rez back into play that it feels silly how good he is sometimes. I see a lot of broken plays sort of originate by Sun Titan rezing great cards.
Avenger of Zendikar He is really aggressive however there are also some problems with the avenger due to the fact that he often demands to be answered by all of your opponents. He can be hard to protect but he can also end games very quickly. You have to sort of weigh on fast game enders vs playing the slow grind game here. I found that in situations where he didn't get answered I likely had the game with any threat at that point anyways.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite She doesn't technically have a comes into play ability but it really does. It eats tokens and small commanders on entry without actually triggering an ability, it hinders agro strategies, it strengthens my creatures. She is scary and very powerful. She is sort of situational depending upon what your meta looks like though. If you see a lot of agro and token strategies she is good. If on the other hand your meta is all control and combo then she isnt as good. I have had good results so far from her though.
Sphinx of Uthuun Fact or Fiction on legs. He draws cards, dumps some in the bin, and usually draws like no threat beyond that. He is a fire and forget card draw that can be cloned, rezed, flickered, whatever for further value after his initial value. I like the guy but I moved to Prime Speaker Zegana who was easier to tutor and rez not to mention it tended to get me a lot more cards when it would hit play and cost me less mana to play her.
Sylvan Primordial another card that got banned. Honestly I didnt abuse him in this deck nearly to the extent of some of the GB lists I had. He was fairly broken overall though with how much he did but yea.... hes gone now.Akroma, Angel of Wrath Akroma is a really controversial card to be totally honest. I use her because of all of her political uses she has. If I play out Akroma and hit someone for 6, the rest of my opponents have to deal with her on defense. She defends like a champ and doesn't really pull spot removal all that much. She isn't the most aggressive creature out there but she plays politics fairly well and usually just turns attackers around you until the next wrath goes down. She also doesn't usually on her own spawn those wraths unlike Avenger.
Terastodon He kills 3 targets on ETB and the elephants are generally speaking never an issue. He is really abusive when you clone / rez him for another shot as well. It sucks that he doesnt have trample but you can still slap a sword to him or just beat into an open board though. He eats up blockers and makes a great blocker which are all great. I stopped running him because generally I didnt need the level of removal he gives. He isnt bad but he can sit in a hand a long time and usually I am fairly good at removing a lot of the targets he would go for before there gets to be that many.
Woodfall Primus He is a good option for a big finisher / noncreature removal. The downside here though is if someone messes with his persist by means of grave hate / mimic vat / exiling him. Other than that I like his persisting quality. I like him a little more though in a list that has the ability to sacrifice him at will though.
ARTIFACTS
Tormod's Crypt There are a lot of options to deal with graveyard abuse out there. One of the big percs of this card though is that it takes out an entire graveyard without touching my own graveyard. It is tutorable off of Trinket Mage, Wargate, and Tezzeret the Seeker as well making it generally speaking easy to retrieve when needed. It can be recurred off of Sun Titan, Academy Ruins, and Eternal Witness as well making it very nice for re-usability which it's cousin Relic of Progenitus does not have going for it. It is unfortunate to topdeck when you are not facing a graveyard abuse deck but it is one of those tools that I would rather have access to than not have access to it.
Sensei's Divining Top This deck has a ton of ways to shuffle the deck and thus clear out a bad topdeck. I have started seeing this card a bit less as a staple for every deck out there and more of a great tool for decks that do a lot of shuffling. The more shuffling you can manage to do the more chances you can get a crack at a new set of three cards. Card selection is always amazing and the more often you can refresh your selection the better this card becomes.
Skullclamp This card might be the hands down best card draw engine in the deck. All of our x/1 utility guys can be clamped for 2 cards apeace. This thing is bonkers and if your opponents let you keep it then it becomes even crazier. If you haven't ever experienced the power of the clamp this is a great deck to see it in.
Sol Ring Sure it doesn't get me into having my 3 colors sooner but it gets everything other than Jenara going sooner. This is just basic good ramp.
Crystal Shard Very nice for re-triggering ETB abilities. You can force opponents to sort of play around it a bit as well which is fun. Generally speaking I use it to play defensively and pick up extra ETB triggers however it is interesting if you want to control an opponent who just happened to tap down too much mana as well.
Mimic Vat another card that I have stopped using a while back. I love Mimic Vat and it is fantastic when it gets going but my problem was getting it going in the first place. I have very little for means to get it going so sometimes it just sits empty for a time or gets blown up before I can activate it. With more sac outlets I think it would be a great card again but unfortunately a lot of our removal is counters, exile, and tuck effects. I just couldn't easily get it going more often than not.
Oblivion Stone I started running Oblivion Stone as my 3rd wrath in this deck when I realized that it gave me a tutor target wrath effect which I could recover with Sun Titan / Academy Ruins. The fact that I can sit behind this effect and set it off at instant speed is just fantastic as well. It has great synergy with the list and it gives a good wide sweeper effect.
Proteus Staff somehow or another I went a very long time before considering this card in the list. However I have been impressed at how it can go both offensive and defensive very nicely. Our creatures are all about the ETB effects so we can easily polymorph them after that and flip out a new creature. I like how it can tuck opposing commanders and big fatties if necessary as well. The big downside to it being the sorcery only as well as 3 mana at sorcery speed feeling a bit heavy. If I could do it at instant speed I would likely pay 4 for the mechanic but at sorcery speed even 3 mana feels a bit heavy.
Sword of Feast and Famine I didn't like this sword at first due to the lack of CA on it however the land untap is huge and I like it a lot now. It can give you extra mana to dump to Jenara and or give you options to pretend to have counters / answers on opponents turns. Best of all you can drop / equip and untap all your land at 5 mana so it really doesn't slow me down much. It also screws with opponents a little due to the discard on it.
Sword of Fire and Ice The more I use this sword the more I like it. Card draw and control all in one sword activation is probably my favorite of the swords. I like having it at most any time during the game and the results are quite solid.
Sword of Light and Shadow This sword used to be my favorite but then someone pointed out to me how slow it was to go active. Since then I have gone away from using it due to the slow time to get it up and running however the lifegain and recursion were quite solid.
Birthing Pod this deck is all about the CIP triggers and this card is very nice for abusing that. It can only be activated at sorcery speed but it just churns value so amazingly. This deck is great at turning creatures over with this effect.
Tawnos's Coffin a little spendy to drop and use in the same turn however when you do the breakdown on what you would spend to bounce things in and out using the Crystal Shard this is actually probably a cheaper option and it can be used against opponents. It is expensive to cast and use though so it has some issues.
Vedalken Orrery anytime you can play behind flash you open yourself up to control the board better. The downside is that it also extends your board position further to the point where it can be difficult when someone blows everything up. These mass flash effects bring down some hate on themselves. Being 4 mana makes it hard to recur but somewhat optional on tutoring in these colors.
Cauldron of Souls mass persist in an ETB deck can be very crazy. The big problem I had with it though is the lack of a mass sac outlet made it hard to really abuse regularly. I liked it but it seemed like it was really hard to work with when I was testing it in here.
Conjurer's Closet sort of like a Venser planeswalker light card. It allows us to re-trigger an ETB ability at EOT every turn it remains in play. It looks decent on paper however I still think that it is a little bit overpriced in my opinion. It is hard to tutor and hard to recur due to its mana cost. It generates value every turn it remains in play though. It could be worth testing but I also dont know what sort of lifetime to expect from it. It has the advantage of not dying from combat damage like Venser can however artifact removal is easier to come by than planeswalker removal. Also with venser, his ultimate is game winning in itself so I personally like venser due to his ability to flicker more things and end games on his own. Keep in mind as well that this doesnt trigger at all until EOT so any sort of instant speed artifact removal can remove it before it kicks in once where as venser can be used immediately and can steal back things that were stolen from you.
ENCHANTMENTS
Mystic Remora an option for some card draw in Bant. The upside is that it is cheap to cast and generally can draw a bunch of cards / it can be recurred of of Sun Titan which is nice as well. The downside though is that it ties up a lot of mana to keep it rotating. However it is sort of rare for it to just sit in play for an extended amount of time as that just turns into you winning.
Sylvan Library This card is all about card selection. If every turn you pick the best available card and then shuffle your deck you are seeing a lot more of your deck and essentially weeding out the things you do not need. If need be drawing extra cards is also an option off of it as well. This card comes in very quickly and generates great value over the time it sticks to the board. Don't feel like you have to pay much life for this card to be amazing. Even just picking the best card every turn is often amazing on its own.
Survival of the Fittest this is a great creature tutor ability. Expect this card to be blown up almost on sight most of the time. If you want there are some great combos that you can execute off of this which I cover some in the strategy section. The fact that you can rotate any creature into whatever you need it to be for a single green mana is really great. Expect this to die on sight most of the time.
Aura Shards I ran this for a while but my issue with it is still that it draws tons of hate. Generally speaking you want to play it and a creature in the same turn to ensure you generate some value so it puts it sort of slow to come in. I like this card a lot more in a token deck where you might see creatures hitting play right away. You can still run it but I just found that too often it blows up before I kill anything.
Rhystic Study a nice taxing effect that can draw you some cards. My problem was that we didn't have a way to really improve on this effect and later in the game it just never really mattered. It was great to drop on turns 2-5 usually but beyond that I felt like it just didn't matter. Still it can make it difficult for opponents to play multiple cards in a turn as the tax adds up quick.
Coastal Piracy ok, so its hard to tutor for, and hard to recur. Beyond that though, this thing is solid gold. It gives you cards for every creature you can connect with and gives opponents nothing. It is high impact and high profile. I have been really meaning to playtest it some but keep putting it off. Edric, Spymaster of Trest is similar in a lot of ways but easier to go get when you want him. He has more political aspects as he benefits opponents as well and is easier to answer but there are some pros and cons between the two.
Greater Good I ran this early in the deck's creation. I still like it however the problem with it is that we don't have a ton of big fat creatures to run through it. I still think it is solid but with so many small utility creatures it is sort of hard to run it in my mind.
Leyline of Anticipation mass flash for everything and the ability to come in for free in an opening hand. This card is really powerful and really cool. It lets you play behind your opponents sorcery speed effects and respond better to things. Adding more mass flash in these sort of cards really increases your ability to control games. Opponents not knowing what they are attacking into or playing into is a huge advantage.
Mirari's Wake This is the best mana doubler available in bant. My issue with it is that it is a high profile card that when blown up leaves you with really nothing. If you don't find your enchantments being destroyed as much then I think you can go for it however I just have a problem that I want to ramp sooner and I want to have lasting results from my ramp. This card is blown up on sight quite a bit and it is a bit slower than I like ramping.
Lurking Predators Great in a creature heavy build as it is a fire and forget sort of effect. It just does its own work and you can let it roll. Even if someone tries to answer it it will trigger once for you. The downside is that even in a creature heavy deck it will whiff at least 2/3 of the time. Even when you are hitting creatures you often don't have much for control of their triggers.
INSTANT
Pact of Negation this is by far my favorite counterspell of the deck. We can counter opponents when tapped out! You do have to pay for it later but generally speaking that isn't a problem. Be careful using this if you are at low land count or if opponents run large scale land destruction as they can force you to loose the game off of them. Generally speaking though what I counter with this effect is a gamebreaking effect that either forces me to win then or stops an opponent from winning on the spot.
Enlightened Tutor So I go back and forth on this card. If you are running a survival lark combo then you probably want this card to help you tutor into the combo. In my own list I have a hard time including this when there are so many artifact tutors that don't involve card disadvantage. I only run 2 enchantments and honestly I dont find myself really wanting to tutor into them all that much. I still like Tezzeret the Seeker more than this card due to not having card disadvantage plus the chance of tutoring into 2 separate artifacts is quite solid.
Mystical Tutor This gives sort of a versatile tutor into our spells. Unfortunately it is card disadvantage however it toolboxes us into our spells. This opens up the option of grabbing a wrath, bribery, Knowledge Exploitation into an opponent's game ender, extra turns, creature tutors. This card might be card disadvantage but if you use it to fetch an extra turn it totally evens out. I just love how this opens up a whole new toolbox of card options.
Path to Exile not as good as swords but when you need an answer, paying only one to answer any creature is very nice. I dont like using this on commanders as it feels even worse then.
Pongify / Rapid Hybridization this would be my next addition if I were to include more spot removal to the deck. Generally speaking though I would rather add more versatile spot removal if I were to expand my spot removal package though. These cards are solid to be fair but I just dont want to be looking at 3-4 instant speed creature only spot remove effects.
Swords to Plowshares great creature removal that exiles the target. Stopping opponents from abusing creatures later is always a plus. This is the best of the cheap creature removal. The only reason I ever consider passing up on Swords in white would be if the deck already deals with creatures extremely effectively and then I would probably be looking at something with more versatility than just a creature kill effect. It is incredibly efficient and strong.
Arcane Denial I have always found this counter to be useful in a multi colored EDH deck due to its low color intensity and mana cost. The fact that you give an opponent 2 cards in a multiplayer format isn't as big since you get yourself a card too. Remember, that one card you counter off of this is probably going to be rather important to them so giving them 2 replacement cards often wont be as useful to them. Plus it shines a bit of a better light on you and draws less hate your way. You cant count card advantage the same way in multiplayer as heads up. In heads up, this spell is a lot less effective but in multiplayer its actually quite reasonable.
Constant Mists reusable fog. If you find yourself needing a means of blocking off a troublesome general like Uril, the Miststalker for instance, this card can stall him for ages. Often someone with a strong attacking general will swing elsewhere after you buy this back once as they will want to be killing opponents rather than killing one land at a time. Try not to piss off the counterspell.deck player as if you do, expect this to get blown up.
Cyclonic Rift I think its a decent card. I was actually less keen on it when it came out but you should generally speaking consider it a 2 mana removal effect that CAN be overloaded. Don't get it stuck in your head that it has to be overloaded as there are plenty of situations where you cant keep up 7 mana at all times and a bounce will save your bacon. Overall though, this sort of effect is a stall at best or possibly a means to try to tempo through to connect on an opponent. It can be a powerful move to overload this and then chain together some extra turn effects.
Eladamri's Call tutor into any creature and put it into hand at instant speed for only 2 mana…. This is probably the best creature tutor in existence. If you want to step up to something better than this you are looking at black tutors generally speaking. Still this is 2 mana at instant speed for a card into hand with no limitations on what color, creature type, or mana size. It is really really good.
Mana Drain solid counterspell with the potential to ramp you some mana. In the early game this gives you a chance to ramp into a larger play earlier or later in the game you can take this mana and dump it to Jenara. There are a lot of solid things you can do off of this as it sets you up for some big plays. As for the counter... it is a counter for 2 mana which is about where we want our counterspells to fall. Being UU in the cost is a bit rougher on the manabase but assuming you have a solid one its shouldn't be a problem. For anyone out there on a budget, I would recommend you look at: Voidslime, Arcane Denial, or Mystic Snake in place of this. This is probably the last place I would spend the money on this deck. The counter is nice but in my opinion its about the last polished card I would go for.
Bant Charm Versatile tuck spell at 3 mana that can do other things if needed. Don’t forget that it has other options other than tucking creatures. Using it as a counterspell and or an artifact kill can be quite useful as well. This is the best of the charms by far and it is an amazing spell. Generally speaking I use it as a tuck spell but dont forget the other options it has.
Beast Within versatile removal effect and the 3/3 beast generally speaking doesn't matter. It has versatility going for it so generally speaking it can dig you out of a situation in a few ways. Keep in mind that in EDH, a 3/3 is a very small creature with little that it can do. Giving some token decks a free 3/3 can be slightly problematic but overall, I haven't found that the downside really ever matters here.
Chord of Calling instant speed creature tutor that puts it into play. The convoke portion of this spell is nice as well as it lets you keep less mana up to run this than you normally would. Often you end up just paying the cost of the creature with this. The fact that it is instant speed into play and you can cheat on its cost by using creatures in play makes this high up on my list of amazing creature tutors for this deck.
Ghostway This card can be very fun with enters battlefield creatures such as Eternal Witness. This can re-trigger all of your ETB effects all in one shot and dodge a wrath. It is a good effect but it is very dependent on sticking a few good targets in the first place. Of all of the flickering effects you can use, this in my opinion is the best option for if you want to run a bit of a blink package but might not want to go all out. It would be one of the first tools I would add to any deck looking for blink effects for this style of deck.
Hinder I personally don’t run a whole lot of counterspells but being able to tuck a problematic card is amazing. The fact that it stops the spell from being recurred is also nice. If you only have room for one tuck removal use this one because leaving it in the graveyard is better than bottom of the library how Spell Crumple works.
Oblation This sucker can tuck generals or just deal with anything that is giving you problems. I think the big thing that does it for me is the ability to target any permanent with it. Sure your opponent will draw 2 cards but if you were loosing to a specific threat what is two cards really? Also as a side note if you Oblation a permanent stolen from you, you get the two cards.
Spell Crumple Yet another Hinder counterspell. The fact that it tucks itself is actually probably a bad thing here as it is easier for this deck to use a spell in the graveyard than it is to tutor for it again. Still it is essentially another copy of Hinder.
Voidslime another decent counter option. I like that it has the option to be Stifle or Counterspell. Generally speaking I find stifle only effects to be too narrow but in this situation it is a nice optional portion of the counter. Three mana is generally the top of what I want to play for a counter though without some sort of additional incentive. Keep track of how often that stifle option is for you as if you never find yourself using it, there are plenty of other two and three mana counterspells.
Fact or Fiction This is one of my favorite draw effects in commander. It digs deep and you get to decide what stack of cards you want. Drawing 1-4 cards at instant speed while digging 5 cards deep is amazing. If you catch someone who is dying with this effect sometimes they will give you a 0-5 split as well lol. For downsides, often you get the whole table throwing in votes on how to split it and everyone sees what you draw off of it. Still though it is great as it digs deep at instant speed for relatively cheap mana.
Vanish into Memory sort of a tech card for this deck. I used it early in my builds. You can flicker Jenara and turn all of her counters into straight card draw here. It works nicely with equipment as well and it can work against opposing voltron strategies as it returns them without auras / equipment / +/+ counters.
SORCERY
Green Sun's Zenith This is essentially a green wildcard creature. It costs one extra than the creature itself but can be any of the green creatures. Anytime I can toolbox into what I need to keep going it is a good thing for me. I wish I had a few more multicolored creatures in here though to improve this card. Still, it opens itself up to ramp and noncreature removal fairly solid still.
Cultivate / Kodama's Reach both very solid cards to be honest. I stopped running them a long time ago though in this deck because of the fact that I just got more value and synergy out of the creature based ramp critters. When you Birthing Pod, flicker, Skullclamp, swing with swords, the creature options just become much more powerful. These effects are strong but I put a lot of emphasis into creature abuse in here so it just makes more sense to stick with creatures when I can.
Wargate This tutors for any permanent. Originally it was primarily in here to tutor for the Survival combo but I enjoy all of the options I can use it for these days. At 3 mana it can ramp a land into play, at 8 mana it can be Venser who has no other way to be tutored up in this list. It is one of the slower tutors that I still use however its versatility is really nice.
Rite of Replication This is a really big game ending spell when copied but I realized that I had more ways to tutor, recur, and use clone creatures in this deck. Until you actually kick a rite it is almost strictly worse than a clone creature. Even then when you go to kick a rite of rep you run the risk of someone screwing with your target which fizzles the spell. It is big but it is bad in a lot of situations and I just found the clones to work out better generally speaking.
Skyshroud Claim It ramps 2 land into play untapped. It is actually quite good however I was really not happy drawing it later in the game so I ended up cutting it. Keeping the ramp package creature based means you can abuse those creatures in the late game still.
Bribery This card is so stupidly versatile. Just remember that if you are using it early on people usually still have removal. Early on I try to grab some fast value effects. Later on I am more willing to grab slow rolling effects like Consecrated Sphinx or an eldrazi but early on they tend to have more chance of being removed. Just sort of know your meta, if a group is running removal light then go for a game ender early on can be easier done.
Hallowed Burial Tuck generals while essentially wrathing the board. Downside being that you can recur creatures that would be normally dead to this. Upside being we run a ton of tutors and can probably go get a creature that got tucked by this easier than a lot of opponents. I love hitting a graveyard abuse deck with this wrath as it usually jacks them up good.
Rout Instant speed wrath is good to have. This would be one of the next few wraths considered if you wanted to bring your wrath count up above the 3-4 mark though. I like the versatility of the instant speed, however I have found that my other wrath options that I use often give me better results. Again though, if you want to bump the wrath count higher this is a good one to consider.
Time Warp / Temporal Manipulation / Capture of Jingzhou There are a lot of benefits to extra turn cards. They can allow you to ramp from 5 mana to 6 while drawing a card and untapping you land so it can be good tempo in the early game. They can provide an extra attack phase to get an extra swing in with a titan / sword / Jenara. They can allow you to drop a few small critters then untap and draw a card. Overall, these effects have a lot of plus sides to them with little to now downside. For anyone on a budget, I would recommend you go with Time Warp and Walk the Aeons and call it a day at that.
Austere Command So many ways to use it that it is truly an amazing wrath style card. It allows you to selectively wrath what is giving you problems potentially allowing you to keep your own threats on the board and sweep up opponents. Other than the fact that it doesn't have a can't regen clause on it I really like this.
Terminus another wrath very very similar to Hallowed Burial. Generally speaking though, I have a hard time ever wanting to miracle a wrath card though. It can be nice with topdeck manipulation especially Sensei's Divining Top or tutoring for it with Mystical Tutor. Overall though, I have found the cheaper overall mana cost of Hallowed Burial to be a bit more solid than the random situations where you can profitably miracle cast a Terminus.
Knowledge Exploitation this is a nice versatile card that can do about everything you could need it to do. I usually consider it to be a 7 mana for a more versatile Austere Command that could be an Insurrection, Decree of Pain, Plague Wind, Tooth and Nail, Storm Herd, etc etc. This card is a little expensive at 7 mana but it has a lot of potential uses.
Tooth and Nail There was a time I felt like this was mandatory in every green deck I ever built. I have since then changed my opinion of the card but it is really powerful still. The downside of it in this deck is that there aren't a lot of creatures to tutor up to end the game on the spot. I ran it with Avenger of Zendikar but still I want to end games upon resolution if I am running this. It was cool but really seemed to be very narrow as to when it would work. Plus Avenger seems like he never really ends games anymore unless its super late game or my opponents aren't doing much of anything.
PLANESWALKERS
Jace, the Mind Sculptor I have to say, I think he is better in 60 card 1v1 but even here he can be a good source of card advantage. He is sort of hard to protect from a table of opponents though for his sort of slow over time advantage though. Still, brainstorming every turn is really powerful thanks to how many shuffle effects we have.
Tezzeret the Seeker Good bit of utility since he can repeat tutor. He has a lot of different targets he can go get and can repeat tutor if you can defend him. In the early game I often try to use him to ramp or grab me a top. In the midgame I will usually consider grabbing the clone or Birthing Pod. Its really all about what is good for the situation though.
Venser, the Sojourner Blinking comes into play effects for tons of fun. Remember that you can blink a Bribery’ed creature to return it to your control. He builds fast and his emblem is totally nuts. Gilded Drake is like his best buddy thanks to how his ability works. Venser is probably my favorite EDH planeswalker.
LAND
I will divide this up between mana fixing and utility lands. If I dont mention a mana fixing land it is probably because I view it to be low on the priorities list.
THE FIX
Starting at the top being the best and going down is how I would prioritize the mana fixing lands. If you cant afford one set you might just keep going down the list until you find some that you can afford.
Original Duals: (Savannah, Tropical Island, Tundra) These will put you back somewhere in the range of $50-100 in most situations for a cheap one. However they are very powerful in this deck. I often try to have all three of my colores fixed by the third land drop and having expensive lands like these help me make that objective. These are the cream of the crop. I would not bother obtaining these first thing for your list but they do finish off the list quite nicely.
Ravnica Shocklands: (Breeding Pool, Hallowed Fountain, Temple Garden) I would highly reccomend obtaining at least the shocklands if you pass on the original duals. Having some sort of fetchland targetable dual land will really strengthen your decks power a lot. Unfortunately Modern Magic just came along and destroyed the pricetags on these lands. I obtained all of mine for $5-10 apeace a year back and now they are in the range of $20-35 per land which sucks but if you are lucky you already have them.
Command Tower I was tempted to put this at the top of the list just because it is so silly good but sadly due to the fact that I cannot easily tutor it out I am placing it here between the dual lands and the fetchlands. Considering how easy to obtain these things are you would be crazy not to run one. It has like no freaking downside.
On Color Fetchlands: (Misty Rainforest, Flooded Strand, Windswept Heath) These fetchlands are really solid especially if you also have some of the above dual lands as the on color fetchlands can solve any mana issue you have in conjunction with set of dual lands.
Off Color Fetchlands: (Wooded Foothills, Polluted Delta, Arid Mesa, Marsh Flats, Scalding Tarn, Verdant Catacombs) While these off colored fetchlands aren't as good as the on colored ones, if you have plenty of dual lands in your deck then these are still quite powerful. Keep in mind that all of these can only go get one type of land so when obtaining these I would recommend just obtaining the cheapest ones first and the more expensive ones later. So essentially fill in the Zendikar ones first and the last one you need to obtain is Polluted Delta. I have found 8 fetchlands to be quite powerful and I just left the 9th one off myself. I dont really feel I need the last one. I would strongly reccomend considering at least 5-6 fetchlands if you are trying to max this list out. I went all the way up to 8 of them and I enjoy them but I dont think it is really necessary.
Eventide / Shadowmoor Filter: (Flooded Grove, Mystic Gate, Wooded Bastion) These lands are so good at filtering mana if you tap wrong or have some spells with 3+ colored symbols on them. The one constraint for them is you sort of want to use them first so that you arent stuck with colorless mana open. I have found them to be very useful when trying to activate Jenara's ability a lot in one turn as I can filter other colors to be white mana for this process. Dont forget though that if you save them to use last you will end up with colorless mana.
20XX Core Set Duals: (Glacial Fortress, Sunpetal Grove) These things are really actually great lands assuming you have a good density of dual lands. While they are not fetchable themselves, they have a very high tendancy to come in untapped and provide either of 2 colors of mana with little to no downside.
Mass Fix: (Seaside Citadel, City of Brass, Grand Coliseum) These lands have the ability to tap for any color mana that we need. Unfortunately the come in tapped, ping us for the mana, or both and they are harder to go and find. Grand Coliseum is probably the worst of them so if you dont need these lands cut that one first followed by the City of Brass as it can really add up over the duration of a game.
Pain Duals: (Adarkar Wastes, Brushland, Yavimaya Coast) These lands arent too bad if on a budget. I like how you can choose to use them for colorless mana and not get pinged which sort of pisses me off later in the game with City of Brass. I dont run these just because they are sort of lower on my rung of land fixing.
Worldwake Manland: (Celestial Colonnade, Stirring Wildwood) Personally I hate lands that come in tapped so I try to avoid them when possible. If I have a land come in tapped I want really solid utility or I want it to fix for all of my colors. Even then I hate lands that come in tapped. The big disappointment in these lands is that they just dont scale all that well into commander with the 40 life totals. If you have nothing better to do in a turn than activate a manland then you have some really really bad hand / deck.
I could continue with more examples but the land beyond this point gets sort of really lackluster. If you need help with a landbase beyond these examples leave me a message on this page or send me a PM.
UTILITY ACTION
Utility lands can make or break you in commander. If you run too much utility you could have problems with being the target of 3 LD off of a Terastodon, you could run out of basic lands to fetch with your ramp / fetchlands, or you could be blood mooned to death due to your lack of basic lands. However by using utility lands we can have the ability to strip lands, stop voltron commanders, gain card advatnage, or regain the use of lost cards. The key is balance in your utility. If you find that your utility lands are always being targeted by opposing LD you might cut it back and thus become less of a target in these measures. Sometimes it is better to have a basic land in play then have no land in play. I will try to discuss some of the better options for utility lands in this section. These are by no means in any order though just sort of the list I thought of them in.
Target LD: (Strip Mine, Wasteland, Tectonic Edge, Dust Bowl, Ghost Quarter) These things are great answers to someone having a Cabal Coffers, Emeria, the Sky Ruin, or Gaea's Cradle. On occasion I will use these to destroy random other lands such as maze lands or who knows what. I tend to try to get 1-2 of these lands in every deck I build as someone is going to make you pay for not having them. My favorite 2 of these to run are usually Strip Mine and Tectonic Edge. Sure Wasteland is tecnically better than Tectonic Edge but most any time I would use it in multiplayer the Tectonic Edge does the same thing for a hell of a lot less money. If you find yourself needing to shotgun lands every turn you might consider Dust Bowl. Ohhh also if you run Flagstones of Trokair it can be good.
Maze Effects: (Kor Haven, Mystifying Maze, Maze of Ith) I usually try to reccomend running at least one of these maze effects in a list. In a more control heavy list I might run more than one of them. I tend to like Kor Haven in here as it still taps for mana and has the lowest mana activation of the ones that still tap for mana. Plus you can still gang up on the attacker to kill it whereas Mystifying Maze will retrigger a ETB effect for them. These lands can really screw with voltron commanders though as you can fog their attacks.
Academy Ruins one of my more recent favorite utility lands. It can recur equipment and Oblivion Stones like a champ when needed. I have also used it to recur my Phyrexian Metamorph and Duplicants on occasion. It is a great land and it can really come in handy. Keep in mind it is a legend though.
Flash Lands: (Academy Ruins & Winding Canyons) These lands enable really stupid instant speed responses. They can get you behind the lines of wrath effects later in the game and allow you to respond to all sort of emergency situations. Banking off of flash really opens up how we can play and puts us even further into a control setup than normal.
Sac Outlets: (Miren, the Moaning Well, High Market) These lands are good if you use a lot of theft or want to protect a creature from being stolen itself / tucked. There are a lot of uses to have a land that allows you to sac to out there and if you feel strongly about having one I think they work quite well. I feel like my colored mana really matters a lot early on in this deck though so I limit my colorless options quite a bit. Diamond Valley also belongs in this group but considering I dont see enough reason to run a sac outlet I am sure as hell not paying over $100 for a sac land like the Valley.
Homeward Path this one is sort of a meta call. If you see a lot of theft you might consider running this card. To be honest though this list runs a ton of creatures with ETB abilities that arent nearly as big of a deal if they are stolen after that. Obviously there are still several solid targets in here but I dont feel it is as backbreaking as it can be for other lists.
Yavimaya Hollow regen... hummm it can be good but there are a lot of things you cant regen through in EDH. Of the few effects that you can regen from I can think of are Oblivion Stone and Austere Command. I suppose creature combat also but still I dont see this as a really needed ability.
Vesuva sort of a fun land to steal fixing or utility with. Keep in mind that legendary lands will blow up on you so keep an eye on what you are copying but it can be fun. I dont care much for the fact that it comes in tapped though.
Tower of the Magistrate I have seen this used to prevent people from equiping stuff or to nock an equipment off of a creature before. I suppose this is also sort of a meta call but if you see a lot of equip decks run this as it is really funny and it will piss them off to no end.
Flagstones of Trokair a great land if you combat mass LD regularly or like using your Dust Bowl. Generally though I dont see much of a need for it outside of those though.
Tolaria West It can tutor for another land or Pact of Negation which are both nice options. However I hate tapped lands a lot and if I have to play the damn thing I hate it. I find I have plenty of things to do in a turn and I dont like paying 3 mana to sorcery speed tutor for a land or pact. So I dont run it but if you want to run more utility land you might consider running it.
Hideaway Lands: (Mosswort Bridge, Windbrisk Heights) The blue one is terribad so I didnt even link it. Out of the two I guess either are probably attainable but the deck doesnt really easily and regularly obtain either of them. They are decent for getting card advantage but I found I would get mine striped a lot before I could hit them. Plus they are tapped lands and I dont hit them that often so I dont run them anymore.
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood it can be amusing for abusing people with persist but it is a far cry from perfect. I found the interaction just way too narrow for how annoying the land is. Keep in mind that it only affects Woodfall Primus in here as it specifically says that it does it for green creatures. Novijen, Heart of Progress can give counters to other persisters but there is no way in hell that I would take a colorless land for something so narrow.
Minamo, School at Water's Edge this land could be really fun if you made the deck more control heavy and draw / go based rotating arround Jenara. You could use her to attack and defend using this land and save mana to level her up until end of turns. It could be interesting but I am not going to run it in the forseeable future.
Reliquary Tower cool in the fact that you dont have to ditch your hand but sort of lame in the fact that it is a colorless land. I havent found a max hand size worth the addition of this land yet but it is an option. I do have to discard cards now and then but it doesnt give me enough pain that I care to solve the problem.
Mistveil Plains Personally I dont know how effective this land is for this deck. It gives some good defense to rez tactics that might target our graveyard but it can be tricky to activate. This deck taps out a lot and it requires 2 white permenants to activate. I wouldnt really be worried about using this to defend the graveyard from being exiled as if it does its not the end of the world. We have some graveyard recursion cards but not enough that I feel I need to protect it. This land can be fetched as it is a plains which is handy however it is a nonbasic so it is susceptible to Blood Moon effects and Ruination and the sort. My big dislike for the land is the comes in tapped part. I have to admit though I have not played it in this list so I cannot say for sure on it but I have my doubts.
Deckstats
The deckstats for this list can be found here. (Last updated 9/17/2014)
I try to keep the deckstats info up to date best I can as it provides some fairly good information on mana curve and average costs and what not. If it is a bit behind please don't worry I will do my best to update it regularly.
I used to have sample hands in this section as well but the decklist kept changing and that information might have been a ways off in some places so I am just going to opt to not include that information anymore.
Building on a Budget
The purpose of this section is sort of two fold for users either trying to assemble this deck from the ground up and or users who just never intend to go all of the way on the investment involved here. This deck can easily hit over $1,200 without doing any foiling due to some pricy cards. I will try to cover some of the less essential cards here and or some substitutions here.
Top ways to cut costs here:
Capture Of Jingzhou - the tip top of expense in my list currently. There are three different five mana extra turns and I am running them all in here. This one will put you back something close to $180.00 - $250.00 last I checked. My suggestion for a budget replacement is to use Walk the Aeons which costs more and is unlikely to use its buyback effect however it is a very cheap card to obtain and the drop in performance is very small.
Mana Drain - this is honestly the absolute last place I would put my money into this deck. This is a nice card to finish things off with however a simple Counterspell or Arcane Denial works just fine here. This is the absolute last thing I would spend money on in this deck. I just happened to have one sitting around and it works nicely.
Tropical Island / Tundra / Savannah - even to get white bordered versions are extremely expensive on these lands. They are really nice to have but I remember not having them not so long ago and they are not a mandatory card to play the deck. Getting some shock lands (Breeding Pool, Hallowed Fountain, and Temple Garden) and getting fetchlands (Arid Mesa, Flooded Strand, Misty Rainforest, etc) to back them up is what I would suggest for anyone with sort of a medium budget they can allocate to a landbase. That being said, if you are going to penny pinch while building an EDH deck whatever landbase you can afford might be what you get to run.
Temporal Manipulation - Cutting this will save you another $50.00. If you already added Walk the Aeons in place of Capture Of Jingzhou then I would probably suggest adding Temporal Mastery in place of this card to save yet again, a lot of money. It will end up being less powerful but it also saves another good portion of money when it comes to building this deck. If you fill out the rest of the deck, replacing Temporal Mastery with Temporal Manipulation is a decent move but as a finishing touch after you finish the other parts of the deck.
Pact of Negation / Sphinx's Revelation / Survival of the Fittest these are just three cards from the deck where I feel like their value comes after you have most of the rest of the deck assembled. These are all good solid cards but I don't believe that their price tags are worth obtaining until you have the deck mostly assembled.
Just cutting the above cards however will save you something like $800 - $900 on the overall cost of the entire deck. These few cards really do make up over half of the cost of the deck. Making adjustments here is how I would still get the biggest bang for your buck in assembling the deck.
Moving on to how I would personally suggest to build this deck from the ground up. This deck costs a lot of money and I outlined a number of cards above that avoiding as you build the deck will help you money wise. I am playing a little bit with how I personally suggest to build the deck and I think my current advise is along these lines:
Step 1: Equipment especially early on, you will be pushing Jenara extra hard as a wincon until you can piece more of the deck together. So to get started expect you might be playing sort of almost a voltron build of Jenara. I suggest starting with an equipment package to help pull this off.
Step 2: Creatures This is a creature value deck so I would suggest trying to get a lot of the creatures early on as well. Keep in mind that until your creatures are mostly filled in, the creature tutoring wont be as good so I suggest mostly filling in the creatures before going for tutors as without a full arsenal of creatures your options will be limited making the tutors less effective.
When it comes to money though, I would suggest that Gilded Drake, Scavenging Ooze, Snapcaster Mage, and Glen Elendra Archmage be lower in your priorities as they are more expensive to obtain. You might wait until it comes to time to obtain the tutors and come back to these guys then potentially. They are good solid creatures but I don't think they need to be early priorities. There is a lot of their power comes from being able to tutor and recur them which isn't something that a half built deck will be able to do efficiently.
Step 3: Extra Turns Extra turns serve a lot of different functions for this type of deck. It turns into more combat damage, another card for the turn, and any sort of value over time engine will generate additional value meaning that there is potential for a lot of value out of a single extra turn. At worst case they will replace themselves in hand and draw another card assuming they aren't countered obviously. Extra turns will help you run Jenara extra hard with will be important early on before the entire deck is together. She will be a primary wincon early on and even once you get the deck together.
For budget reasons, I would suggest going with Time Warp, Walk the Aeons, and Temporal Mastery in place of what I run. I run very expensive ($$$) extra turns which are not needed for someone approaching this from a budget approach. While mine will be cheaper (mana wise) and more consistent, these three will still give you a very good punch and cost a LOT less ($$$) than the ones I run.
Step 4: Tutors By now, you will have a lot of the creatures filled in. Tutors help consistency and allow you to toolbox into the cards you need for the situation at hand. I usually suggest tutors to come essentially last because until you have good targets for them, they aren't that productive. This deck is a toolbox deck and putting in the tutors should allow you to go and get the correct answer for the situation at hand.
Stragglers I didnt cover literally everything from my list in the 4 steps above. You can sort of grab anything left at this point either before or after you go for the tutors. I attempted to sort of outline a priority way to get the deck where you will get good value from the cards in the order you buy / trade for them.
Change Log
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Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
My version is quite similar to that in the OP. I was quite surprised to find multiple nonland maindeck differences, which mostly result from a slightly different philosophy, likely a function of playgroup. The LGS I tend to play at leans more towards "Battlecruiser Magic" style of play, and the points based reward system they have tends to reward flashy plays. It also tends to be a slower metagame, with plenty of time to develop mana and very little land destruction. This leads me to want to focus the curve around 5 and 6 drops (since you tend to be fine even with no plays from turns 1-4 in my shop) and include some flashy, epic type plays. If you love this deck but are a bit more Timmy than the OP, you might enjoy this list.
2 Stoneforge Mystic (Foil)
2 Phantasmal Image (Foil)
2 Gilded Drake (Japanese)
3 Farhaven Elf (Foil)
3 Wood Elves (Foil)
3 Eternal Witness (Foil)
3 Stonecloaker (Foil)
3 Trinket Mage (Foil)
4 Phyrexian Metamorph (Foil)
4 Glen Elendra Archmage (Foil)
4 Venser, Shaper Savant (Foil)
4 Restoration Angel (Foil)
4 Solemn Simulacrum (Foil)
4 Sakashima, the Imposter (Foil)
4 Archaeomancer (Foil)
4 Oracle of Mul Daya (Japanese Foil)
5 Body Double (Foil)
5 Mulldrifter (Foil)
5 Acidic Slime (Japanese Foil)
5 Reveillark (Foil)
5 Karmic Guide (FOIL)
6 Duplicant (Foil)
6 Consecrated Sphinx (Foil)
6 Sun Titan (Foil)
7 Sphinx of Uthuun (Foil)
7 Angel of Serenity (Foil)
7 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (Foil)
8 Akroma, Angel of Wrath (Foil)
1 Sol Ring (Judge Foil)
1 Skullclamp (Foil)
1 Sensei's Divining Top (Foil)
2 Lightning Greaves (Foil)
3 Crystal Shard (Foil)
3 Sword of Fire and Ice (Judge Foil)
3 Sword of Feat and Famine (Foil)
4 Birthing Pod (Foil)
5 Batterskull (Foil)
5 Gilded Lotus (Foil)
2 Sylvan Library (Foil)
5 Mirari's Wake (Foil)
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (FOIL)
5 Venser, the Sojourner (Foil)
5 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage (Foil)
0 Pact of Negation (Foil)
1 Swords to Plowshares (Foil)
2 Mana Drain (Signed English)
2 Eldamari's Call (Foil)
3 Beast Within (Foil)
3 Chord of Calling (German Foil)
3 Bant Charm (Japanese Foil)
3 Voidslime (Full Art Foil)
3 Ghostway (Foil)
3 Intuition (Judge Foil)
4 Fact or Fiction (Foil)
2 Farseek (Foil)
3 Wargate (Foil)
4 Rite of Replication (Japanese Foil)
5 Temporal Manipulation (German)
6 Terminus (Foil)
6 Austere Command (German Foil)
7 Knowledge Exploitation (Foil)
0 Command Tower (Judge Foil)
0 Reflecting Pool (Japanese Foil)
0 Strip Mine (Foil)
0 High Market (MM Foil)
0 Academy Ruins (Foil)
0 Alchemist's Refuge (Foil)
0 Kor Haven (Foil)
0 Wasteland (DCI Foil)
0 Flooded Strand (Judge Foil)
0 Windswept Heath (Judge Foil)
0 Misty Rainforest (Foil)
0 Scalding Tarn (Foil)
0 Verdant Catacombs (Foil)
0 Arid Mesa (Foil)
0 Marsh Flats (Foil)
0 Wooded Foothills (Judge Foil)
0 Polluted Delta (Judge Foil)
0 Tropical Island
0 Savannah
0 Temple Garden (Foil)
0 Hallowed Fountain (Foil)
0 Breeding Pool (Foil)
0 Forest (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Forest (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Forest (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Forest (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Forest (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Plains (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Plains (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Plains (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
0 Island (Urza's Saga Arena Foil)
Card Choices
Here's commentary on all the cards I've included and what's missing compared to the list in the OP.
Inclusions
Sword of Light and Shadow
Recursion? Check. Shuts off the format's best removal? check. lifegain? check. Awesome? check. Really amazing card for the long game. I like it over Feast and Famine since I run Seedbourne Muse.
Voidslime
I run this over Hinder. It's a power vs. versatility thing. Note that Hinder lives in my 10 card optional sideboard. I like having a stilfe effect available, it can lead to some absurd blowouts.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
I get that 'walkers can be a little hard to protect, but I really do think the exclusion of this card from a Bant list is somewhere approaching a mistake. If he lives to brainstorm twice, you get huge value. If you get into a vendetta, the Fateseal is realyl nasty, and the unsummon has excellent applications in a list like this. I've never been sad to see him.
Karn Liberated
Karn is VERY hard for some people to deal with. He can kill anything that doesn't have shroud/hexproof, and it's gone for good. He's my Beast Within slot, since my metagame allows for higher curves.
Mirari's Wake
Sicne I've taken out some fo the smaller ramp (STE, Farhaven Elf) from the original list, this is the Atom bomb version. Casting this on turn 3 is game-winning, and people skimp on enchantment removal.
Rite of Replication
This is a huge nuke in an ETB deck. For example, I've had multiple instances of casting with with kicker on Rune-Scarred Demons recently. The look that play elicits is priceless. Casting it on Terastodon tends to just win the game outright.
Restoration Angel
With a bigger focus on ETB effects, this card gains alot of value. I also like pairing it with Deadeye Navigator to set up a "blink anything" engine.
Coiling Oracle
This is my least favourite card in the deck right now. He provides good value, but I have a huge order planned for September to finish foiling out the deck, and I may replace him with Sensei's Divining Top when that happens. Of course, that will make me want trinker mage back... Agh!
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
This is the best draw engine I've ever run. He is BORKED. If you really want to deny opposing draws, one nice trick is to sacrifice him to High Market to avoid opponents getting draws, and then rez him with Sun Titan so you get the draws. He also works well as a pollitical tool in a less cutthroat metagame, and is obviously completely absurd in 1s1.
Venser, Shaper Savant
What can I say? He's just so versatile and gets really nasty paired with Deadeye.
Archaeomancer
This is pet card syndrome at work, and I really do like re-using my powerful spells. it also gives me a redundant piece to Eternal Witness for infintie turns.
Seedbourne Muse
A wonderful value engine with Alchemist's Refuge, and good synergy with my style (I tend to tap out) and runnign countermagic, plus works well with the general.
Thragtusk
I do find myself at low life totals quite often with this deck, given 9 fetchlands, paying phyrexian mana for birthing pod, and having a high curve. He provides enough extra value on a well-costed body to finally make running a "lifegain" card worth it. I enjoy pkays like copying him with Image and then podding the image into a Sun Titan, bringing the image back and copying him again.
Brutalizer Exarch
This is my battlecruiser version of Harmonic Sliver, being able to hit Planeswalkers and the like, and turning into card selection if needed.
Deadeye Navigator
I'm not sure this one needs much explanation, it's been discussed to death in this thread, and is grossly powerful with ETB effects.
Chancellor of the Spires
This often does an imitation of Sphinx of Uthuun (FoF is run by most layers at my LGS) or Rune-Scarred Demon, while randomly winning vs the popular Rite of Replication, and providing similar utility to Knowledge Exploitation while being easier to abuse.
Terastodon
BOOM. this one shouldn't require much explanation in context.
Exclusions
Trinket Mage
Yes, I cut Trinket Mage. In my list, he has 2 targets since I don't run Tormod's Crypt (the Ooze tends to be enough vs. GY decks around here), and tutoring for Sol Ring on turn 15 tends to be pretty underwhelming. I miss him, but i needed the room for some of my bombier cards.
Sakura Tribe Elder
I know this is a good card, but I've never been a big fan. I want more swingy stuff in multiplayer rather than small ramp that doesn't maintain board presence.
Farhaven Elf
Same commentary applies here.
Fierce Empath
You'll notice I run 3 fewer tutors than the list in the OP, again a function of the Battle Cruiser magic feel of the LGS.
Harmonic Sliver
Sliver decks are pretty popular around here, which makes this into a liability rather than an asset. I replaced it with Brutalizer Exarch, which is more versatile and is a good replacement in a metagame suitable for a higher curve.
Sphinx of Uthuun
This is the #1 card I miss off this list, apart from the real FoF itself. I love the minigame these cards create, but since most of the folks at the LGS run FoF, Chancellor of the Spires tends to give me that effect at the same CMC when I want it, while adding versatility and randomly winning vs Rite of Replication, which is very popular around here.
Tormod's Crypt
The GY decks in my metagame are not very well developed, so the Ooze tends to be enough against them, and this card is very low impact if they don't show up (which is fairly common). I do keep one in my 10 card sideboard though.
Sensei's Divining Top
As I mentioned above, Coiling Oracle may get cut for this when my big September order geos through.
Sword of Feat and Famine
Seedbourne Muse is easier to tutor and recurr and does everything I'd want from this, and is MUCH better with Alchemist's Refuge.
Mystical Tutor
I really hope that RTR prints an UWor UG creature with this as an ETB effect. If it does, it will be in this deck. As it is, it's just a card disadvantage split wrath/counterspell. It's very good, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure what I'd cut for it ,and generally woudl rather just run more draw spells.
Path to Exile
I HATE this card in this format. Ramping my opponent is not what I want to be doing. Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's there, but I am personally not a fan.
Eladamri's Call and Green Sun's Zenith
Again, a function of going for more epic games rather than the tight focus of the OP list.
Beast Within
I run Karn here. He's easier for my lsit to tutor for, and some decks in my meta literally can't beat him if resolved behind any sort of board presence. He's also colorless and exiles, which is very relevant from time to time.
Hinder
I've got voidslime here, a trade of power for versatility.
Spell Crumple
I've got Force of Will here, which is likely more pet card syndrome than anything else. I always feel better with a FoW in hand, and I do tend to tap out alot.
Fact or Fiction
I really do miss this card, but again witht he creature toolbox nature of the deck, the Sphinx would make it first.
Capture of Jingzhou and Time Warp
Temporal Manipulation is the best of the 3 (due to cost and avoiding Misdirection effects), and i already get sideways looks for running an extra turn spell and several ways to go infinite. I do firmly belive in having at least 1 infinite combo to close out long games, and extra turns is the best one, since I can then get all the league acchievements before I kill everyone.
Hallowed Burial
I like Terminus a bit better. We've got enough topdeck manipulation (especially if I ever find room for SDT), that it often goes off for 1, and the extra 1 doesn;t bother me if I don't miracle it.
Commentary on the Manabase
Flagstones, forests 5 and 6, fliter lands
vs
Extra utility lands and fetchlands
I run 1 less land than the OP (I've always found 36 to be fine), 2 fewer forests, and a few more utility lands and fetchlands vs stuff like Flagstones of Trokair. High Market and Inkmoth Nexus are the big ones here. I like to have a sac outlet for any number of reasons (it creates some great synergies in this list), and High Market produces mana and costs none to use, so it's better than Diamond Valley and Miren for this purpose. Inkmoth given me a wincon if I lock the table with O-Stone/Academy Ruins, and I generally like to run at least 1 manland in every list - this is the best one that doesn't ETBT. Also brutal in duals.
For 1vs1, I often take out Knowledge Exploitation and Rite of Replication for Serra Ascendant and Silverblade Paladin, which add alot of speed to the deck.
Well, there it is!
- Willy Wonka
The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
3.56 Avg CMC
1x Acidic Slime
1x Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1x Body Double
1x Coiling Oracle
1x Consecrated Sphinx
1x Duplicant
1x Edric, Spymaster of Trest
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Eternal Witness
1x Fierce Empath
1x Gilded Drake
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
1x Harmonic Sliver
1x Ixidron
1x Jenara, Asura of War
1x Karmic Guide
1x Mulldrifter
1x Oracle of Mul Daya
1x Phantasmal Image
1x Phyrexian Metamorph
1x Rafiq of the Many
1x Reveillark
1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
1x Snapcaster Mage
1x Solemn Simulacrum
1x Sphinx of Uthuun
1x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Sun Titan
1x Terastodon
1x Trinket Mage
1x Venser, Shaper Savant
1x Wood Elves
1x Academy Ruins
1x Alchemist's Refuge
1x Arid Mesa
1x Breeding Pool
1x Celestial Colonnade
1x Command Tower
1x Flooded Grove
5x Forest
1x Glacial Fortress
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Hinterland Harbor
5x Island
1x Kor Haven
1x Marsh Flats
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Mystic Gate
3x Plains
1x Reliquary Tower
1x Savannah
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Strip Mine
1x Sunpetal Grove
1x Temple Garden
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Vesuva
1x Wooded Bastion
//Enchantment (2)
1x Survival of the Fittest
1x Sylvan Library
//Planeswalker (2)
1x Tezzeret the Seeker
1x Venser, the Sojourner
1x Bant Charm
1x Beast Within
1x Chord of Calling
1x Eladamri's Call
1x Ghostway
1x Hinder
1x Mana Drain
1x Pact of Negation
1x Path to Exile
1x Return to Dust
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Voidslime
//Sorcery (8)
1x Austere Command
1x Bribery
1x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Hallowed Burial
1x Rout
1x Time Warp
1x Walk the Aeons
1x Wargate
//Artifact (8)
1x Birthing Pod
1x Oblivion Stone
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Skullclamp
1x Sol Ring
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Tormod's Crypt
Still haven't gotten around to testing out silverblade paladin over Rafiq, though Rafiq has been causing me some damage problems as of late. I have a foil paladin that I'll finally make its way in over Rafiq for some testing.
Room? Where can I find you?
I really want to find room for Farhaven Elf or Yavimaya Dryad and Crystal Shard. Return to Dust might finally get the axe and probably Mosswort Bridge. I just don't see myself cutting any of my other creatures at this point.
GTC Changes:
As a recap, I was rebuilding my Cromat deck, which has been disbanded for near about a year now. The past theme was creatures that say "Draw a Card" (in some form or capacity), and equipment. The new theme was going to be effective beaters+heavier equipment. Think of things like Glissa, the traitor, Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, Thada Adel, Acquisitor, and Jenara, Asura of War, (probably Olivia would have made it if I had gotten that far).
As is typical when building a deck without planning it online first, I pulled way too many cards, I hit about 500+ cards and hadn't even looked through all the colors I wanted. In fact, all the equipment stuff was lying to a side, and after staring at the pile of cards I had, and the fact that it was predominantly Green/White, I decided to put aside my current plans, and just build the shell into Jenara instead, which left me still with about 300 cards out.
The current rough shell, which is still not to original expectations (Azusa, Lost but Seeking is still in, instead of Loxodon Warhammer, which I have managed to misplace, again).
3 Jenara, Asura of War
CREATURES
2 Saffi Eriksdotter
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Zameck Guildmage
3 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
3 Cold-Eyed Selkie
3 Eternal Witness
3 Farhaven Elf
3 Frontline Medic
3 Mentor of the Meek
3 Stonecloaker
3 Spirit en-dal
4 Archaeomancer
4 Forgotten Ancient
4 Mystic Snake
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Steelshaper Apprentice
4 Solemn Simulacrum
5 Glory
5 Karmic Guide
5 Sigarda, Host of Herons
5 Stonehewer Giant
6 Sun Titan
ENCHANTMENTS
1 Exploration
2 Trade Routes
3 Aura of Silence
3 Mobilization
3 Sacred Mesa
5 Cathar's Crusade
5 Mirari's Wake
5 Perilous Forays
SPELLS
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Arcane Denial
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Familiar's Ruse
2 Life from the loam
3 Bant Charm
3 Cackling Counterpart
4 Plasm Capture
4 Rite of Replication
5 Global Ruin
5 Hallowed Burial
1 Sol Ring
3 Chromatic Lantern
3 Coalition Relic
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Darksteel Ingot
3 Evolution Vat
3 Mimic Vat
3 Oblivion Stone
3 Rings of Brighthearth
EQUIPMENT
1 Skullclamp
2 Lightning Greaves
2 Ring of Thune
2 Swiftfoot Boots
3 Behemoth Sledge
3 Champion's Helm
3 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Sword of Light and Shadow
5 Batterskull
=====
LANDS
3 Forest
3 Island
6 Plains
1 Command Tower
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Breeding Pool
1 Temple Garden
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Flooded Strand
1 Krosan Verge
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Windswept Heath
1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Azorius Chancery
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Buried Ruin
1 Deserted Temple
1 Gavony Township
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 Vesuva
1 Winding Canyons
Notable Omission goes to Dead-Eye Navigator. Amusingly enough, I didn't want to be "that guy" with DEN + E.wit,or DEN+Snake, etc. Ironically, I run familliars ruse to do almost the same thing, but worse.
Other notable Omissions: Phantasmal Image, Phyrexian Metamorph. After I put the deck together, I saw them still sitting right next to it in the spot I placed to reserve for them so they wouldn't get omitted, and realized that I had accidentally omitted them. I didn't feel like figuring everything back out again.
Thoughts so far:
When it runs smoothly, it runs smooth.
My first game, I should have died, but someone wrathed for me, which was nice since I had just dropped Cathar's, and had shenanigans in hand. I proceeded to win with E.witt + Familiar's Ruse soft lock. And Sacred Mesa + Cathar's, of course, though I had Counterpart in hand to go with witness as well, but I ended up using it as an extra counterspell instead in that game.
I've had color issues a few games, but it's also been amusingly to my advantage in a few games.
In a 1v1 while waiting, I kept a hand of plains, plains, plains, Sol Ring, Sacred Mesa, and Stonehewer Giant. Was awesome.
The equipment, while is something I want to do, feels a bit like not what I want to do with this deck. Then again, some of the equipment face beat wins have been all so delightfully rewarding.
I think I want to go more ETB, and also more +1 counter theme. Put in Sage of Fables, some of the decent grafters, like Cytoplast Root-Kin, etc. Maybe the few decent proliferate spells that are decent on their own.
Removal is an issue, especially with my lack of tutoring. Not running Mystical and Worldly Tutor, let alone Eladamri's Call (which was already out as part of a sunforger package for the Cromat that I was building)... I don't know what went through my mind.
Back to removal, having only one wrath effect, with it being 50% of my non-targeted removal (rift), has put me in a bind a few times.
Lack of grave hate hasn't come up, but is stupidly absent, again.
I feel like my engines are too diverse, and too spread out. And that I need more of them.
So, for a first rough build, it's proven itself rather resilient, but I think now I need to decide what path I want to take the deck down, and how to split it apart into it's two themes.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
I agree with this. I originally built Jenara good stuff, and while it was somewhat effective, I soon realized that it would be much, much stronger if I took it in a specific direction. Going with ETB theme is a natural fit, because Bant has arguably the strongest cards for that theme. I also think it's a lot more fun this way, as playing good stuff just gets old after a while.
I personally tried Teeg but ended up cutting him, he just draws too much hate and doesn't fit that well into the deck. Stonecloaker not only is grave hate, he is another enabler for ETB shenanigans, among other things.
Commander/EDH:
WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator WU
GW Saffi Eriksdotter GW
BW Selenia, Dark Angel BW
W Heliod, God of Sun W
Retired:
Jenara, Asura of War Thada Adel, Acquisitor Jaya Ballard, Task Mage Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero Lyzolda, the Blood Witch Akroma, Angel of Wrath Nath of the Gilt-Leaf Tajic, Blade of the Legion Selvala, Explorer Returned Maga, Traitor to Mortals
Tiny Leaders:
W Mangara of Corondor W
Also...no Trinket Mage? When you're running Sol Ring and Top?
I am aware that I am running the deck a bit light on blue sources. This is completely intentional as I have very few blue cards that I rely on having early game and the deck ramps up quite a bit. Early game fetchlands often fix me into having at least one blue in my early game. I am running a bit heavier white so that I can pump my general more late into the game. I have considered increasing the amount of blue in my deck on a few occasions but I feel that it has yet not impaired me.
Sorry about any misspellings as I haven't gone back to check spelling personally. I will make sure to update it.
I do like the idea of the blinking creatures however it is usually rather mana intensive to keep it as an option. I have some of these types of cards in already but I don't know what I think of increasing the amount of these effects in the deck. I think Telekinesis has a bit of a better build to try that sort of tactic though as it is more built around being able to control the board.
I have never thought of Kodama's Reach or Cultivate as bad cards in this deck. To be honest though they started in the deck early on and I have not re-evaluated them in the deck since then. While your suggestion to swap them out for a chump creature that fetches a land does sound interesting I have to weigh the change a bit before I can decide one way or another. Looking at them strictly as a sorcery that ramps one land and fetches one land into hand vs a chump creature that fetches a land I like the sorceries more. However there is a lot of interaction with creatures and rez abilities that might be more powerful now than in the first few drafts of the deck. Extra creatures will give me more targets to throw out to Survival of the Fittest and rez off of the lark / sun titan in a pinch.
The bottom line on this would be that I am very willing to test it and see how it pans out. On paper it sounds like it could be a good swap but unless I end up drawing into some support for them I would usually rather have 2 lands over 1 land and a chump.
As far as Cloudstone Curio goes, it is probably one of the best cards at what it does. However I am using some things currently like Mimic Vat and Equilibrium which I feel are more versatile in what they accomplish.
The reason I am not as fond of the Spike Weaver is because I am relying on him to save my bacon when I play him out. If he is removed before he is needed to save me from the threat then what is the point of having a fog ready to go??? The predator is all about incremental advantage where if he stays around then I will keep blowing things out and give an incentive not to play out artifacts / enchantments. I am still myself not 100% sold on him but he is an alright creature. I like how the weaver is easier to search up than Constant Mists however I like how the mists seems to be a more reliable fog vs attacking decks. A person running heavy counterspells rarely has tons of threatening attackers so the chance of it being counterspelled seems less likely
I also dont know if I like Teeg in the deck as it seems to hinder me a lot. In a lot of ways I like Glen Elendra Archmage more as I can selectively stop spells with her.
[CARD]
Terastodon[/CARD] didnt make the cut as I felt it fell into a very similar role as Woodfall Primus. They are both great big creatures that are a bit slower and do lots of removal. I sort of felt I should run one or the other. Running both makes things a bit difficult considering I might need the utility of destroying an artifact / enchantment early in the game and running too many big creatures that do this job could make this an issue. When I want a large effect creature like this I can tutor into it but I could get stuck with too many big creatures like this in hand early on.
If you would like to debait running the Terastodon over Woodfall Primus I would be interested to hear the debait but I dont feel I need another creature in this deck with a similar mana cost / effect.
Admonition Angel - If I made room for this creature in the deck it would be for the ability to flash enter battlefield effects back in. I really dont like running creatures that reward opponents for killing them.
As for Trinket Mage, The benefit that this deck recieves from Sol Ring actually deminishes very quickly after turns 1 and 2. It accelerates my start and quite well. The ability to drop a Sol Ring on turn 4 is just not that impressive. The ability to search up my top is great by all means. I can consider it again but I sort of feel I should end up cutting either Scroll Rack or Sylvan Library for it to go in again. The top is not that impressive an option when I already have one of these effects in play. I might end up cutting out the library to run the trinket again. It is good to have but not with how many top like effects I currently have in the deck.
Thank you everyone for the feedback, this deck is far from perfect and I respect everyone for having an opinion here. I will be experimenting with a few cards in this deck for the future as follows:
Kodama's Reach -> Farhaven Elf
Cultivate -> Yavimaya Elder
Sylvan Library -> Trinket Mage
These changes will increase my creature count allowing for more options in my recursion / bouncing / survival of the fittest plans. If I feel these changes are worth keeping after a few games trial I will update it to the decklist. Thanks again for all the feedback guys.
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[Modern] Allies
I would not be surprised if you find Trinket Mage to be better than you thought. Searching up a Top would take over for Sylvan Library quite nicely and you know how we all feel about Sol Ring :). I frequently use Trinket Mage to search up emergency GY hate as well like Tormod's Crypt or Relic of Progenitus.
:symu::symr: Melek WheelStorm
:symw::symg: Trostani Enchantress (updated 6/5)
:symg::symr::symu: Unexpected Results.dec
Thada Adel Stax WIP
Ya I have a feeling that if the Trinket Mage sticks, I will need to add a 0-1 mana grave hate back in.
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[Modern] Allies
While Sensei's Divining Top is not that much better than Sylvan Library and Scroll Rack, the fact that Trinket Mage (and Tezzeret the Seeker) can fetch it means that you're likely to get it in play earlier and more often than either of the other two cards. It's not a huge margin, sure, but it does make your deck more consistent. The fact that it can fetch a Sol Ring to ramp you by 2 mana almost for free is just gravy. And believe me, 2 mana is a lot, even in the late game. That's 2 more mana per turn that can pump Jenara, after all.
As for Terastodon vs. Woodfall Primus, there's really no contest. Terastodon kills three permanents, Woodfall Primus kills one. Sure, your opponents get elephants, but they usually just chump or get wrathed away. Yes, Woodfall Primus has persist, so it technically gets two permanents, but if you're planning on bouncing things with Equilibrium and such, you're basically getting 3 times as much value, plus a bigger body.
As for Admonition Angel, I can understand how most people are underwhelmed by it initially, but in practice it's actually surprisingly powerful. Most people see it, smirk, and then a couple turns later wonder where all their permanents went.
I'm not so sure about this.
1) Woodfall Primus plays well with Oran-Rief. He will basically never die unless he's exiled.
2) Woodfall Primus is a fantastic rattlesnake as a blocker. Who would dare send their 6/6 towards one and walk right into a devastating two-for-one?
3) Woodfall Primus costs one mana less. This can be important.
4) Bouncing and replaying Terastodon can get you mauled by an army of 3/3s if the rest of the table decides they've had enough of your shenanigans. Bouncing Woodfall Primus doesn't carry this risk.
It's definitely not a "no contest" situation. Sure, Terastodon carries more raw power but it's more likely to screw you down the stretch if you try to abuse it. It's a Sniper Rifle vs Rocket Launcher debate. Hard to argue one is better than the other and who can deny they both have their uses?
This sort of discussion deserves its own thread.
:symu::symr: Melek WheelStorm
:symw::symg: Trostani Enchantress (updated 6/5)
:symg::symr::symu: Unexpected Results.dec
Thada Adel Stax WIP
The Predator gives you incremental advantage, but it's slow. You need to cast it, wait a turn, then attack through blockers with him in order to destroy one thing. It has no real synergy with the deck and it's something that you can't rely on if there's anything you really need to destroy. It's really not worth it in a deck like this.
For the Terastodon vs. Primus debate, I like Primus better if I had to pick one. It's got better utility and it draws less hate overall. However, I just recently started using both.
Admonition Angel: Maybe I'm underestimating this card, but I'm not a fan for the same reasons I don't like Oblivion Ring. It has the potential to protect all of the opponent's stuff from sweepers, and the Angel is a bit easier to deal with.
Commander/EDH:
WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator WU
GW Saffi Eriksdotter GW
BW Selenia, Dark Angel BW
W Heliod, God of Sun W
Retired:
Jenara, Asura of War Thada Adel, Acquisitor Jaya Ballard, Task Mage Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero Lyzolda, the Blood Witch Akroma, Angel of Wrath Nath of the Gilt-Leaf Tajic, Blade of the Legion Selvala, Explorer Returned Maga, Traitor to Mortals
Tiny Leaders:
W Mangara of Corondor W
I think you might be right on replacing the Scroll Rack as well for Tezzeret the Seeker. While I had at first wanted to rely a bit less on my divining top, it is a great bit of utility that is hard to replicate. When I have a Scroll Rack or a Sylvan Library in play, they tend to get blown out eventually by some effect even if it is just a Nev Disk effect loosing that bit of utility at that time is inconvenient. I will also try out Tezzeret in my deck, he has had some great luck in my Teferi deck and I am sure he will fit in here just fine as well.
I still prefur the Woodfall Primus over Terastodon. I will keep him in mind though next time I draw or tutor out a Primus what the impact would have been if it were Terastodon instead.
I can respect your viewpoint of the Spike Weaver, in the right meta in the right deck I think it can be good. In my meta in my deck however, I am the deck to beat currently as a lot of my opponents dont have quite as aggressive of decks as I do. Due to this I end up at the but end of a lot of removal and a lot of attacks. Having something out there like this as a deterrent from being attacked will not work as well as I tend to be the one getting attacked by multiple opponents simply because it is me playing the deck and probably the fact that I tend to win something like 70-80% of all our EDH games.
I do have to admit I havent been extremely impressed by how the predator has been working out in the deck so far. I wouldnt mind alternate ideas as I havent completely decided what I plan to do about it yet. I used to run Aura Shards in its place but every time I played it, it got nuked right off. I had considered instead perhaps running a creature to blow out artifacts / enchanments. I think Qasali Pridemage might be at the top of my list for alternates as it costs little, it can be used with almost every means of recursion in the deck, and it costs very little to play so it can be used with things like Equilibrium very easily. Any ideas that might work out better?
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[Modern] Allies
I don't think you need Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library. I could see removing one of them for Qasali Pridemage or Spike Weaver. Both of them are great draws at almost any point in the game. Scroll Rack is also no good if you don't have cards to get back- since you're kind of weak on card draw in this deck, it's not as good as it would be in a more blue-oriented deck.
:symu::symr: Melek WheelStorm
:symw::symg: Trostani Enchantress (updated 6/5)
:symg::symr::symu: Unexpected Results.dec
Thada Adel Stax WIP
I am able to turn them into amazing card selection and with all of my shuffle effects I almost never run into a stale top deck like some other decks. I am going to try to run the Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library cards into 2 different tutor effects as I have in the past had issues drawing a second top type effect which does little for me. Having more ways to tutor into the top will allow me for more of a toolbox rather than stacking lots of top effects just to draw multiple of them.
EDIT: I am currently testing out Trinket Mage and Tezzeret the Seeker as replacements for the Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library. The only downside I can foresee is that they are slower to get rolling as one allows me to start using my top on turn 4 and the other on turn 5-6. The upside of not drawing multiple top style cards though plus the option to recur the tutors, tutor into a creature to get a top are very strong perks.
EDIT 2: Also as a side note I am going to need to swap out my Night Soil for a Relic of Progenitus due to all of the additional tutoring options for artifacts I will be adding.
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[Modern] Allies
You might be right... I like the card draw option on the relic but it sux to exile my yard too.
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[Modern] Allies
I play the exact same package, for what it's worth. Recurring the Crypt seems to have the fewest drawbacks of other grave hate strategies in these colors (We can't all have Necrogenesis! and Night Soil, although this deck certainly benefits from the latter) and it's so easy to set it up in blue if you need it.
You know, if you're going to play more artifacts, Enlightened tutor is still very good and it can fetch Night Soil, so you won't have to slot artifact-based GY hate if you run that.
:symu::symr: Melek WheelStorm
:symw::symg: Trostani Enchantress (updated 6/5)
:symg::symr::symu: Unexpected Results.dec
Thada Adel Stax WIP
I ended up still having one sorcery based land ramp in the deck Kodama's Reach. I wasnt able to find a creature I felt was good enough to be its replacement. Wood Elves is ok as it grabs the shocklands but I don't feel it is as good as Kodama's Reach. The one other thought I had was possibly replacing it with Ghostway. I am trying to abuse ETB abilities and feel that Ghostway is good for that. It is also hilarious with an Eternal Witness in play. I just dont think I can say that it is a replacement for ramp by any means. For now the Kodama's Reach will probably stay put.
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[Modern] Allies
All of us seem to focus mostly on EtB effect creatures with a Reveillark engine or infinite combo of some kind.
Personally, my favorite card in these decks is Venser, the Sojourner. It's really fun getting to reuse your EtB triggers to control the game till he can use his ultimate ability to turn all your spells into bonus removal. I'm sure Kaylee would run him in her deck if she is still playing EDH.
The only suggestion that I think has already been mentioned, but I'd like to 2nd it or whatever is Aura Shards. Really great giving each creature the option to disenchant just for EtB which goes along well with your cards that help you reuse EtB effects.
I agree that I probably need to run it again though. I am also somewhat tempted to try running Sword of Light and Shadow again in here. I love the spot removal protection that it gives as well as a very nice effect on connecting to an opponent.
I just hate trying to make room in the deck. Making cuts is always so tough.
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[Modern] Allies
I noticed you have Scroll Rack already, have you thought about Land Tax? To me the card advantage seems way too good.
Aside from that I am actually testing the deck currently without the Scroll Rack. I am seeing if Trinket Mage and Tezzeret the Seeker are decent options to replace my Scroll Rack and Sylvan Library. Originally I wanted as many top like effects in this deck as I could get. Eventually I realized that the other two effects while being good are far more vulnerable to being destroyed. I was also having problems with the fact that I was drawing into multiple of the top effects at the same time which was difficult to really make use of. So as of currently I am doing a bit of testing with only runing the Top and two different ways to tutor it up. I can also if I really want my top creature tutor into the Trinket Mage. But usually I have better things to do with creature tutors.
While I think the Scroll Rack + Land Tax is an amazing card advantage combo for non blue decks... We have blue as an option and Land Tax doesnt work for me more often than not so I think it would probably be better as just some blue card draw option instead.
Also make sure to check my test log as there are some options I am trying to figure out if they might end up being good replacements for parts of the deck that are currently listed. I just want to make sure that the change is for the best before I update the decklist.
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[Modern] Allies
WHITE
Exclusion Ritual I love how this exiles anything. The problem being it just costs too much mana. I would have loved to have just seen it exile a card for like 4 mana perhaps. 6 mana makes this card too high to end up using.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite She seems very solid for any deck that can run white just for her ability to auto gimp off token decks and a lot of utility generals. I cant say for sure that she is in but she feels very solid for the deck and I wouldn't be surprised if she makes it in for trial at least.
BLUE
Chancellor of the Spires by far my favorite of the Chancellors for EDH. I love the possibilities that this card can give the deck. The creature is good sized and what I get when it comes in varies depending on what is in graveyards. This guy will make it in for trial for sure.
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur Jin is great so I thought I should at least address him. I feel he belongs a lot more in a control based deck due to his nature to be removed very very quickly. You need counterspells and other ways in which to try to cover for him which this deck just lacks. He has no coming into play ability and the chance that he dies very quickly is high. I would rather rely on my 6 mana Consecrated Sphinx to draw me a few cards. I very doubt he will ever make it in the deck.
Phyrexian Ingester an offshoot of Duplicant. I love the option to have a bit more control built into some of my creatures but I don't know how badly I want to pay an extra mana for duplicant. I like it but not enough to really feel like it is going to get a spot at this moment. I will keep him in mind though if I need to pick up some more creature based removal.
Phyrexian Metamorph a better clone. I ended up cutting my clone a while back and other than when I play against Uril, the Miststalker I have not missed it much of at all. Considering this guy is just outright better than clone I will bring him in before I bring in clone in the future. It probably wont go in for testing anytime soon but it has its uses.
GREEN
Beast Within ohhh boy this card has got some hyph behind it. I think it will pan out very well for green. I am very willing to give this card some testing and see how it works. It has a very similar role to my Oblation but the 3/3 beast is less of a drawback than giving an opponent 2 cards. I do like how Oblation can deal with indestructables though. I dont know if Beast Within will take Oblation's spot or if I will run both. I am sure it will see some testing though.
Birthing Pod ohhhhh man this card is soooo cool... until you get to the whole only as a sorcery part. I love the idea behind this card but other than just trying to trigger as many enter battlefield triggers as possible I don't know if I can make enough use for it to get it in the deck. I could see it working fantastically with Archon of Justice though which would be a riot. I think there would be some fun possibilities for this card and while I am not ruling this card out currently the only as a sorcery part is a huge turnoff for me. I would be willing to try it out in the future... but I just dont expect much.
Brutalizer Exarch I totally love this guy for his second ability to tuck noncreature permanents. I sort of wonder though if it is worth it for 6 mana though. I wish I got something a little larger than a 3/3 for that much mana or perhaps had a way to pay a little more for both effects or something... I dont know. I feel like I might be better off with a Primal Command instead. Sure it doesnt actually solve a problematic noncreature but it solves it temporarily while tutoring for a good creature as well.
Noxious Revival I guess the fact that this is at instant speed and can be cast by paying 2 life impresses me the most on this card. Donwside to this card is that it doesnt go into hand but man the option to save something like a Primeval Titan from a grave removal or a reshuffle effect sounds like fun. I doubt it will see play but I thought it was cute enough to mention.
Triumph of the Hordes Ohhhhh boy this card is soooo good for EDH. When you do a mass pump with infect / trample you better assume someone is gona die. I feel it might be better than overrun due to the fact that it will only take 10 to kill when you do this. The downside of this for me is that most of my meta is wrath happy. If you feel you can on a regular basis swing for 10+ with trample you might check this one out. Unfortunately I usually have to accept swinging in for small numbers and getting wrathed about every turn later on in the game.
Soooo... Out of NPH the cards I am excited about and will probably see some testing in this deck are as follows:
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Chancellor of the Spires
Beast Within
Cards I am a bit afraid of from NPH:
Torpor Orb I am hoping that including this in a decklist is bad enough for a majority of other decks to the point where people just wont even bother running it. It is mean as hell and I don't want to see it played.
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[Modern] Allies