MTG Salvation

Imo Marath is just too good compared to gahiji. She/he allows you to always have some way to get tokens, especially at that awkward 3 mana stage. Marath can also ping dorks down which has been pretty damn useful so far. Also, with that new 1 cmc green enchantment that adds a 1/1 counter she's even better. Of course, doubling season and parallel live with her is awesome. Being able to make sure you can always interact with those clutch cards is.... clutch.

Red adds a few things:
Like you mentioned, purphoros and vicious shadows adds some killing power.
Xenagos gives bonkers mana.
Tempt with vengeance is a surprisingly good token producer I've found because of it's flexibility with X, as well as haste.
Rith's charm is a great little card that gives 3 tokens for 3 mana which you don't find often, OR it blows up a problem land.
Of course, dragon broodmother is an insane token producer that always needs to be answered in a deck like this. I feel like I'm cheating when I drop her.
Siege-gang commander is a card that has grown on me. Four bodies with the ability to ping creatures or players has been a big upside to this deck.
You get some clutch removal like hull breach, chaos warp, and decimate if you so choose.


One thing I'm trying to work on right now is what spot removal and mass removal to run. Notice the lack of swords to plowshares and return to dust. R/G has a lot of artifact and enchantment removal, but it's hard to pass up return to dust's exile. StP is great and this deck can have issues removing larger creatures.

Finally have some time to post my Marath deck, heavily influenced from this Rhys deck. The parenthesis denot how many major roles the card serves in the deck. The more the better.

Quote from Wotanubis »

If Herald of Anafenza isn't relevant here then I don't understand MTG.

Jade mage, ant queen, awakening zone arguably all do the job better

Now if outlast didn't require a tap that might be different.

I've been running a marath/gahiji deck I'll be posting in here sometime soon. Xenagos, the reveler is a beast.

Quote from Donald »

Quote from Drizzle »

Yeah, not sold on warstorm surge and vicious shadows as jund and thromok would probably like those more. And by tutors I meant white and green has what we need, so yeah red doesn't necessarily add here. I'm still trying to figure out if red is worth it, but it will be a fun experiment either way.

Haven't seen the mirror entity stuff, but I'm sure it surprises people haha. Have you ever had luck with lands as creatures?

I had a 60 card deck with Life and Limb I played in my group. If you turn lands into creatures you should try to win immediately, it's very dangerous.

Much agreed. I imagine Elesh norn coming out the turn before or with it, trampling over people for the win, or wiping all the lands in some other way to secure a win. I feel it might be necessary to neuter some combo decks that would normally require something like a counter spell to stop them.

I think the white/green feel of rhys doesn't make a "I don't need land if I win the game" strat as obvious or useful as it can be, as it's usually seen in red and black.

Quote from Donald »

Quote from Drizzle »

And of course all of the right tutors to grab the enchantments and creatures, with room to spare for whatever combo or meta cards you'd like. I'm personally going to add elesh norn + living plane, though of course rhys can already do this.

One of my favorite little combos is Gilt-Leaf Archdruid + Mirror Entity. It's janky but I've won several games with it when I had it in the deck.

Careful with a lot of those red spells, there's some cool stuff in there but you don't add any tutoring power other than Gamble to find a lot of that stuff. Gahiji also doesn't work very well with Warstorm Surge unfortunately but Surge into Mogg Infestation seems pretty sweet.

Yeah, not sold on warstorm surge and vicious shadows as jund and thromok would probably like those more. And by tutors I meant white and green has what we need, so yeah red doesn't necessarily add here. I'm still trying to figure out if red is worth it, but it will be a fun experiment either way.

Haven't seen the mirror entity stuff, but I'm sure it surprises people haha. Have you ever had luck with lands as creatures?

Quote from Donald »

Quote from Drizzle »

That said, I'm going to take this deck and my Thromok deck (which rhys eventually became) and combine them for a Gahiji, Honored One. I don't think anyone has really pushed this guy to his limits yet. All of the "competitive" decks I've seen look pretty weak.

Thanks for the guide as it was crucial to my rhys deck and eventually my thromok deck.

I think that's a great idea. Hazezon has always been the Naya replacement option but he was simply a token generator of which there are already many. Gahiji brings an anthem combined with a political aspect and I think he could really make the deck more aggressive. If you end up with a list I'd like to see it.

Glad the primer helped, I'm always happy to hear that it helped someone.

I'm actually surprised at the lack of power adding red to Rhys would bring, but there are some fun things like tooth and nail into Aurelia, the Warleader + craterhoof behemoth. Again, normally you might be waiting one more turn to win because you grabbed eternal witness instead, whereas adding the red has the potential to end the game earlier.

I'm feeling less late game overkill, but quicker damage with adding red. You get things like:

Savage beating
Elemental mastery
Kher keep
Siege-Gang commander
Dragon broodmother
Chaos Warp
Sarkhan Vol
Vandalblast
Mogg infestation
Vicious shadows
Warstorm surge
Haste enablers

And of course all of the right tutors to grab the enchantments and creatures, with room to spare for whatever combo or meta cards you'd like. I'm personally going to add elesh norn + living plane, though of course rhys can already do this.

Glad to see the deck is speeding up. Last time I tried a very similar version, I was always one or two turns behind a combo deck winning. It felt too white to compete.

That said, I'm going to take this deck and my Thromok deck (which Rhys eventually became) and combine them for a Gahiji, Honored One deck. I don't think anyone has really pushed this guy to his limits yet. All of the "competitive" decks I've seen look pretty weak. He's the only token commander that can just straight buff when you need him, requiring less set up than Rhys or Thromok. Of course, his ultimate power level is not as great, but I'm hoping the speed and lack of setup will help win more games.

Thanks for the guide as it was crucial to my Rhys deck and eventually my Thromok deck.

There is of course collective unconscious too. The problem with this and slate of ancestry is that they are parasitic. They 100% rely on a certain board state. I'm not saying that a board state like that is hard to achieve with this deck, but these are rough cards to look at when you just got wiped or haven't drawn enough token producers. Green and white can take what it gets in terms of card draw though.

It's too bad the more powerful green card draw like greater good, garruk, primal hunter, soul's majesty etc don't synergize well with this deck. They seem to have a similar problem as collective unconscious though, requiring a certain board state to be effective. For some reason it always felt easier to just drop 7+ power creatures and sac them to greater good then to have enough tokens to make slate of ancestry worth while or even needed at that point.

In fact the only non parasitic card draw I can think of in green is harmonize, sylvan library and garruk, primal hunter since he can at least make his own 3/3 to draw from.

I've was looking around for cheap token creators because I felt like my early game token production was weak. Looking around at cost ratios I realized 1 mana for 1 token is actually pretty good. It's great to be able to just flat out put tokens into play sometimes and not have to rely on your general, a card that costs 2-3 mana per token, or a card that already requires tokens in play. Enter promise of bunrei.

This is a nice early drop that can give you 4 tokens for 3 mana if something dies, or gives you something to build on after a wipe. It's real fun is being part of an engine with sun titan and a sac outlet like spawning pit. I feel like this is a cheaper, recurable requiem angel if you were ever interested in a card like this.

Some other options after careful consideration were increasing devotion, as it's a 1:1 ratio that relies on no other cards or board states (besides mana), and beacon of creation. Again, beacon of creation will often be a 1:1 ratio or better. The problem is that this isn't guaranteed though. These might not seem that awesome, but compared to the other token creators, these cards fill nice niche spots in the lower level mana curve for creating a nice amount of tokens fast and cheap.


Anyways, how does your guys first 6 or so turns usually go? I was feeling like mine was slow minus ramping into seedborn muse.

Quote from KingsRanger

I really like this card, and want to give it a try, but so often I am not playing multiplayer and in 1v1 I do not think it would fare very well =/.

Perhaps I shall make a sort of sideboard for when I play multiplayer/1v1 and switch out a few cards that go with those so that I can play this card and others that wouldn't be good 1v1. I'll ask my playgroup if they mind (I do not think they will as we allow wish sideboards and such)

I like the fact that we don't really get 2 for 1'd if we play this on a token. More like 1 and a Half for 1.

It is a lot of fun. I'm still waiting for my friends to catch on and blow it up right away, but that happens with a lot of cards in this deck. I have a feeling it might flll up that nice role of being good, but not so good someone wants to get rid of it right away with spot removal, unlike a grave pact, aura shards, humility, or whatever else you or your friends bring.

I still feel like this deck is a mana hog and lacks card draw. Either-or can shut down this decks potential quite a bit. The ability to tutor for skullclamp, or the ability to tutor for stoneforge mystic seems like enough fuel so far. I had to get used to tutoring for them early if I didn't have one of them in hand already.

Lastly I also feel like there is a lack of early turn token creators. Have you guys had issues with this also? Sometimes I feel like I'm not doing enough the first 5 turns, and this means combo decks will have enough freedom to do their thing before I get a chance to build. Sure, there is sacred mesa, but you still need a load of mana to creature a nice amount of tokens which means you aren't casting normal cards. I guess this is why verdant embrace has been so good. Oh, there is luminarch ascension too, but I feel like the game is completely different with that out, instead of a "normal" synergistic token strategy.

edit: Druids' repository: So far I've decided this card is win more in a semi normal meta, but still a great card against heavy control and stax decks. It can be hard to swing your tokens early/mid game to get mana out of them without them dying. It also takes a while to get online as you must have tokens ready to swing, so it's kind of deceiving for a 3 drop "ramp" spell. Besides that it is definitely fun and can blow up fast.

I played at a 6 player tables last night and got verdant embrace out on turn 4. Oh man was it awesome. It only lasted two turns, but a card that gives you 12 tokens in two turns without you having to spend mana on them was amazing. Not only that, but it is a must answer card. Unless someone is going to combo out in a turn or two, this card is going to win you the game. If not then it forces peoples hands to wipe the board so you can throw down your other token producers after.

Quote from Pookelyduke

Actually, if you consider Scroll Rack as a piece of library manipulation as well, and as a non-U Brainstorm this might be a really fun card. The only problem I see with it is that it fails the "tutor test". It is not easy to get to it.

EDIT: Sensei's Divining Top could be used in a similar fashion to Sylvan Library. I really like the possibility of putting cards from my hand onto the library though with rack.

The rack isn't a bad idea. I have one laying around so maybe I'll give it a go in this deck. I've already had issues with the card draw we have access to as it is, though I don't have an extra sylvan library for this deck.

As for being able to tutor it... sometimes I like surprises haha. In fact I usually don't like drawing tutors unless it's for a creature for some reason. As for actually tutoring for card draw spells... I don't think I will actually be tutoring for anything besides skullclamp, and I have mentor of the meek if I really need it. I think that sounds like enough, and I'd hate for the "tutor test" to dictate my deck too much.

Speaking of decree of justice, how do you guys feel about entreat the angels? I feel like it's a complete bomb with a deck with slyvan library in it. The only reason I haven't tried it out yet is because of it's price.

Storm Herd is one of the few cards that I know will win me a game next turn if not dealt with. I like it. With a board position like concordant crossroads and beastmaster ascension/cathars' crusade it usually is a win right there. It's also great with earthcraft out. Of course, no one I know spends a slot on massacre wurm (though they do have wipes), and goblin sharpshooter doesn't mean much when my tokens aren't 1/1's. So this may be a meta choice. Either way, it's one card that can make people have to answer you or you win.

Last night I played a fun game (for me at least). By turn 4 I had rhys out, 4+ counters on luminarch ascension, and seedborn muse out. Suprisingly by turn 5 no one shut me down and I had 96~ angels ready to swing (5 player table).

Also, the night I take elesh norn out is the night I face a krenko, mob boss deck and could of really used her.... oh well haha.

As much as I'd like to add another color, I'm not sure if the deck even has room either.