MTG Salvation

I have no idea why this appeals to me, but I want to make a 98 land deck around Thrasios. That's right - Thrasios hits EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. That is some amazing value, only offset by the fact that you don't get to play any instants, sorceries, enchantments, artifacts, planeswalkers, or other creatures.

The tricky part right now is figuring out who his partner should be. Since almost the entire deck is utility lands, color identity is really important, and the more colors the better. It's not like it'll be hard to hit colors when the entire deck is lands. The options are:

akiri, line-slinger - so if we ran the artifact lands...nope, still nope.

bruse tarl, boorish herder - strongest partner in terms of effect, by quite a bit, but RW is arguably the weakest pairing in terms of utility lands.

ravos, soultender - pumps up my manlands and has evasion. In a dead heat with Tymna for BW commander of choice.

tymna the weaver - ordinarily very powerful, but the draw ability is very mediocre since we'll just be discarding to hand size. Lifelink is ok though.

Vial Smasher the Fierce - just for the colors. At best we'll do 2 damage a couple of times when we recast Thrasios. RB does have some good utility lands, though.

Here's the breakdown of the important utility lands that care about which partner you're using:

White:

• Celestial Colonnade
  
• Gavony Township
  
• Kor Haven
  
• Prahv, Spires of Order
  
• Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree

Black:

• Creeping Tar Pit
  
• Hissing Quagmire
  
• Ifnir Deadlands
  
• Spawning Pool
  
• Westvale Abbey

Red:

• Kessig Wolf Run
  
• Kher Keep
  
• Raging Ravine
  
• Shizo, Death's Storehouse

WB:

• Vault of the Archangel
  
• This isn't a real card, but I wanted it to display as a list so here we are.

BR:

• Lavaclaw Reaches
  
• Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace

RW:

• Slayers' Stronghold
  
• Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion

Red probably has the fewest good cards, so it seems like it should be BW...but kessig wolf run is easily the best of all of them. And Bruse is so much better than the other options. So idk.

Anyway, here's a rough list for the Bruse version of the deck:



And yes, I will be busting out my tabernacle, duals, cradle, etc for this stupid, stupid deck. That's actually going to happen.

EDIT: 99 commanders built - next one will be #100!

Second edit: added some lands I forgot about as I was digging through my collection, and removed some that were less effective. Right now it's put together except 4 lands I need to borrow from my Pang Tong deck, and Field of the Dead which I won't be able to get until this weekend for obvious reasons, but is also obviously an incredibly powerful card for the deck. Hopefully I'm still interested in this pile of crap by then.

Tested twice last night.

The weird thing about this deck is that it's actually kind of fun. I mean it's obviously not very good, but it's surprisingly entertaining.

Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of choice in who I was playing against - in our group, we tend to splinter off into pods and then it's rare for those pods to intermingle since games never finish simultaneously. So I was playing against a fairly competitive group of people. Game 1 I was facing down zur, yuriko, and Kess. With a 98 land deck.

Yuriko did the table ~35 damage by turn 4-5, somehow dealing me an extra 4 presumably from combat damage (or maybe I messed up my math) and setting me to 1. Then Zur imprisoned in the moon yuriko and yuriko basically fell completely out of the running. I got Kess to 1 life with a 2-power double-striking (lifelinking!) thrasios, and then held him at gunpoint with ramunap ruins. Unfortunately I was really throttled on red mana, so keeping him down meant never recasting bruse, which means I was stuck at 5 life. Zur then killed me with extort triggers (along with kess) and killed the largely defenseless yuriko player.

Game 2 was a 3-player game vs zur and sapling of colfenor - haven't seen him recently. I was fairly nervous that sapling was packing combos since he talked about it beforehand, but what can you do with 98 lands? Not much. Anyway Zur had greaves out, but luckily I had prahv, spires of order which doesn't give a crap about your shroud, and then I copied it with vesuva. After killing sapling, He spreading seased one of them, and then copied spreading seas to take out the other...but I had tutored for kessig wolf run with tolaria west, so eot I made a token, and animated a manland. He could have survived pretty easily but he made a bunch of misplays that meant he got trampled down to 1 (with me tapped out) and then died on his upkeep to phyrexian arena because he didn't have any instants he could extort during his upkeep.

Victory! with 98 lands!

Anyway, as I said - this deck is surprisingly fun. I like the challenge. It'd probably be sooo much better if it was like...70 lands instead of 98, but then it sort of loses its gimmick. So idk.

I like the idea. My Azusa is that kind of deck in part but I have "only" 50 lands and kill only with Dark Depths. Anyway to get Thrasios going you need a lot of mana so consider adding UrzaTron lands and Cloudposts. Since you will get lot of mana eventually think about using power of Eye of Ugin and Eldrazis as wincons. It will cost you only few land slots and you can even cut second Partner or change it to Vial Smasher to hit opponents twice (when the time comes).

Also - do not underestimate power of Panglacial Wurm

I mean, urzatron is cool but I only have 1 way to tutor them in the deck so...I think the odds are kind of slim of getting them before turn 20 or so. Locuses are a bit more likely since I just need to hit cloudpost and then vesuva or thespian's...but idk, pretty steep cost to etbt and tap for colorless. It's an interesting idea, though.

If I do switch to a mostly-but-not-all lands build, it'll probably be to include more interaction, not more bombs. I'm actually reasonably happy with the deck's path to victory, the main problem is that I can't stop enemy things besides single large creatures and grave interaction (and that's still contingent on hitting the right lands).

Another thought I had was making it SORT OF all lands, by including flip lands. There a lot of really interesting ones...the mono-color ones are mostly trash (white one is ok) but the multicolored ones are VERY spicy.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. We're here for you and we love you.

Original concept for sure!

You could also try that land that makes you win if you control 10 different gates. Just a suggestion.

Quote from GloriousGoose »

The first step is admitting you have a problem. We're here for you and we love you.

Alcohol and EDH: Two addictions that go better together

Quote from Magiqmaster »

Original concept for sure!

You could also try that land that makes you win if you control 10 different gates. Just a suggestion.

Thanks!

Unfortunately the most colors you can have with partner commander is 4. So it's not possible to win via maze's end (unless your opponents donate you some gates or something).

I considered making the deck around Golos, tireless pilgrim instead, but tbh I just don't see a line that makes it work well. Once you have him in play, there aren't any great ways that I can find to re-trigger him, so then he's just a 3/5 dork with a nearly-useless ability.

Played again with it tonight, and it pulled off another win! I hit kessig relatively early, and was waiting for a good opening for a win - ideally by pumping something of theirs that was attacking, and then eliminating another player on my turn, but people were durdling for way too long, and eventually one guy played DEN. Didn't have any super scary combos (well, he sorta did, but arena took care of that) but I cannot suffer a DEN to live. So I killed him with thrasios, and then once the other players killed thrasios I killed them with bruse. I think I was up to 30+, maybe almost 40 lands on the table.

some individual card thoughts:

most of the manlands have been...meh. Not terrible but I rarely activate them. To be fair, maybe i should be, but usually thrasios is so powerful that I don't like using mana on my turn unless I'm actually killing someone. so usually they aren't activated. I think a certain number is good, but i should maybe cut some of the less interesting ones, especially the colorless ones.

gavony township seems awesome, but it's slow enough and fights for mana with thrasios. kessig really shines by comparison since it only wants mana when somebody's gonna die. Still worth it, I guess, but honestly it's borderline. There's probably some cute strategy where I animate all my lands eot and then activate a couple times but...why do that crap when you can just go for kessig kills?

all the fog lands are awesome. wouldn't cut a single one.

desert package is neat. Don't activate them usually, but I don't see much harm in any of them, and the upside is real.

blast zone is one of the best. Having removal is extremely clutch.

arena is also pretty great. Works best if I can get something like opal palace.

bazaar is....not sure what I think. It did dig me into blast zone to save my ass when thrasios got imprisoned in the moon once. But usually I'd rather it tapped for mana. I guess that doesn't matter super often, but still...also i frequently have a hard time discarding after the first couple activations. Not sure if I'll keep it in. But it's nice to show off dat bling.

bruse is legitimately great. Majorly underestimated how useful he is. Being able to slam for massive damage, and recover my life which not many lands can do...very good option for the deck. Nobody else would have come close imo.

Not sure if I want to tinker with the deck, and see how I could make it a little more competitive. It's kind of tricky, though, since thrasios has a rep as being one of the best cEDH commanders, which I'm not interested in. Being able to say "well, sure, he's good, but the deck is 98 lands" kind of takes the edge off. 70 lands doesn't really have the same ring to it.