Sapling of Colfenor - Brainstorming BG Goodstuff

I recently broke apart Wrexial – Artifacts with the intention of rebuilding Thada Adel – Artifacts but never quite got to the point of finishing it. I used the black Wrexial cards to flesh out Balthor a little and I threw some artefacts into a GW Gaddock Teeg deck that just kind of fell together over the course of a couple of months when I started breaking up Rafiq.


I was intending to bring Teeg, Thada & Balthor to GP/PT Paris but, due to personal reasons, I missed work on Friday (Balthor was on my desk at work!) and didn’t have time to finish Thada so I was left holding Gaddock Teeg as my only complete and available deck to go have fun with at the Magic Weekend in Paris. Embarassing:

"Hi, I want to play Commander with you. I'm not a DB, I swear!"
[opponent looks at Teeg] "Yeah right!"


As I arrived late, I missed the GP but happily settled for gun-slinging. Gaddock got rolled by a Momir Vig, Simic Visionary deck that, had I not seen the general, could just have easily been a mono-G ramp deck. I don’t think Gis played a single blue spell as ramped through Primeval Titan up to Kozilek & Ulamog. I didn’t have very many permanents to start with and it was all over bar the pitiful sobbing by yours truly. I did score a Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas from the pack I won, so I’m not complaining too much.

On the table beside me, another Primeval Titan was tearing up things as well and, when I swung by later on to find no-one gun-slinging, I got to sit down again and destroyed things with my own Primeval Titan. This card is ripe for debate but it suffices to say for now that, if you have him, you should be playing him. He’s probably even better in Commander than the hype suggests.


I came back home with a hankering to sort out some decks. I wanted a new challenge but also something I’d not have to rack my brains too much about. New cards, getting into the Red Zone and having lots of fun was to be the order of the day. I decided on the colours first and that locked me into my general choice: I'd be revisiting my Sapling deck.


Sapling isn’t anything special in terms of its life gain ability but it is indestructible and costs only 5 mana. For a Green Black deck that is really nothing. Next step was deciding whether I’d try for Treefolk or just go straight to good-stuff. As I riffled through my folders I realised that I was missing a fair few Treefolk that I’d like to put into such a deck so good-stuff looked like the way to go.


There’s generally a clamour for things like Gift of the Deity or Worldslayer when you play Sapling as both clear the table pretty well. Of the two, Gift has a shot which I’ll decide when it comes down to the last few picks. Worldslayer on Sapling is just a move I don’t want to make in my playgroup.

So, we're down to a Green-Black deck that just wants to have fun. I have to warn you right from the off that there won’t be a particularly huge volume of innovation in this deck-list, maybe some kooky choices, but it’s unlikely I’ll be running cards you will need to look up on gatherer if you’ve been playing any length of time. If nothing else, this will probably end up being a free flowing ramble that illustrates how I go about building a deck that’s not constrained by flavour.

My best ever PTQ finish came off the back of a BGW extended Junk deck featuring Spiritmonger and Pernicious Deed so there was no chance I was going to miss out on those. Digging into the rest of my collection of gold/hybrid cards, I have:

Lord of Extinction
Maelstron Pulse
Necrogenesis
Pernicious Deed
Putrefy
Spiritmonger

That's some fun Magic right there! Two versitile pinpoint removal spells, a mass removal spell, some graveyard hate and a couple of cheap, fat bodies. I want to see a lot of fat (preferrably with benefits, sorry Doomgape!) hitting the field so it looks like adding some titans, an elephant and some plants to start with though I'll re-visit fat things in the list a little later:

Avenger of Zendikar
Primeval Titan
Grave Titan
Terastodon



K Tusker, E-Wit or Yav Elder:
Who is your #1?

 Primeval Titan makes me think about mana-fixing for this deck. Seeing as it’s going to be all the staples, here’s my basic list:

Darksteel Ingot
Sol Ring
Krosan Tusker
Yavimaya Elder
Wood Elves
Sakura Tribe Elder
Cultivate
Kodama’s Reach
Solemn Sim
Oracle of Mul Daya

This list gives me 8 colour fixers and another accelerator. While I’m not yet decided on the final list, it’s enough fixing to leave out Mana Vault, Golgari Signet and Colition Relic if I see the need to make space in this section. There will be ways to recur these creatures and spells so they aren’t 1-shot tricks:

Eternal Witness
Volrath’s Stronghold
Genesis
Living Death
Recollect
Regrowth


Now, I’m fairly sure you’re all pretty bored by now because, let’s face it, I haven’t named a single card that you guys don’t see in every singly other Green or Black deck every day of the week. I’ll try to switch that up now because I’ve been itching to try a particular combination for a while now and I’ve finally got the pieces to do so:

Lotus Cobra (though I’d really like to find an amulet of Vigor for the deck as well)
Bloodghast
Perilous Forays

The concept is pretty straight-forward: You play the enchantment and the Cobra and get Bloodghast into play with 1 mana open. You sacrifice the Bloodghast to the Forays and go find a basic land to put into play tapped. That triggers the landfall on the Cobra and the Bloodghast which leaves you back at square #1 except you have an extra (tapped) basic land in play. As this is something you can do as an instant, it’s best to try it at the end of the turn of the player to your right before untapping your huge board and drawing threats, spells and non-basics. Is it going to happen often? No, it’s not. The statistical chances of it going off is pretty low in a 100-card deck anyway and forewarned opponents aren’t likely to let you have simultaneous access to all the parts if they can help it.


In order to increase the chances of pulling it off, even once, we’re going to have to resort to tutors, which won’t hurt the rest of the deck either:

Demonic Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Worldly Tutor
Corpse Connoisseur
Buried Alive
Green Sun’s Zenith
Tooth and Nail


So now we have a potential mana engine and ways to find it, we can work on improving it a little bit and using it to fuel some fun plays. I’m thinking of adding Mana Reflection to all that in order to fuel huge a Genesis Wave. In no particular order of preference, here’s some things I’d really like to hit with my huge Wave in addition to everything that’s gone before:

Artisan of Kozilek
Blightsteel Colossus
Darksteel Colossus
It that Betrays
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre


The jury’s still out on what exactly I’m going to include but if I’m true to the cheese, it’s unlikely that I’ll look past BSC & the 2 remaining legal Eldrazi legends. As Bribery and Acquire as well as multiple Control Magic-type cards are heavily played in my group, I have no real problem running these from a power standpoint. In a tamer enviornmant I'd be a little less gung-ho but I think my opponents can handle it. I’m going to stick a Brooding Saurian in for good measure because, well, I’d still prefer to be killed by their creatures rather than my own. I'm not a charity after all.


Backing up a little, there is a hidden advantage to running Perilous Forays in that it counts towards my necessary quota of sacrifice outlets. I generally include most of the following list when building a deck:

High Market
Mirren, the Moaning Well
Ashnod’s Altar
Greater Good

Depending on the land mix, I can now afford to skimp on something here. As an additional tool against having my hard-earned beasties stolen from me, sacrifice outlets really should be put into every deck along with ways to find them. The more ways you have to find them, the less you need to run. If I go for Crop Rotation and/or Sylvan Scrying on top of Primeval Titan, I can afford to snip another card off this list. What’s additionally impressive about sacrifice outlets is when you can get a window to run out a Living Death, you can sacrifice all your creatures to an outlet, wrath the table and get back the entirety of your own board, possibly with friends. That’s the sort of crushing play that ends games, especially if you’re bringing back Titans, Elephants or Plant-thingies.


Greater Good reminds me that I need to look at some more enchantments to add to the deck. I’ll probably forego Doubling Season given that it’s going to combo with so few cards and I’m prepared to make less zombies, elephants or plant tokens just to stick in a card that’s going to be relevant more often. Another card that’s not going to make the list, but for quite different reasons, is Sylvan Library. My sole copy is in my Cube and I’ve learned through long hours of cube building that it pays more to have an additional copy than to strip the Cube for any reason. I’m looking at the following enchantments:

Phyrexian Arena
Necropotence
Gravepact
Survival of the Fittest
Wild Pair (I’ll have to check my P/T’s though I doubt I will be short targets for this.)
Lurking Predators
Mana Reflection
Concordant Crossroads

I’ll probably end up cutting the Necropotence from the final list, though not necessarily for the negative press it will give me at the table, more for not wanting to jump through hoops to avoid the drawbacks. Despite the obvious power level there's a couple of things I don't like about the card: when I discard, I like it to go to the graveyard and I don’t like delayed card drawing. Needing to add more cards to make up for the life loss is also going to be an issue because I’m getting the feeling that the deck is starting to bloat a bit and this is a cut I’ll happily make for all those reasons.

The rest of the remaining picks are pretty straight forward B/G cards, only the Crossroads looks a bit strange. There will come a time when you want to drop your hand and kill someone now either because they will kill you before you untap for your next turn or there’s some effect on the board freezing you out of playing your hand. If you forget about the downsides of Concordant Crossroads and take it to read “G, Sorcery: Your creatures have haste. Make it count!”, then you can see how it can be a pretty potent tool in any deck that likes to get big quickly.


We will need some small amount of board control, to deal with creatures and artifacts mostly and here’s the bones of the suite I’m thinking of:

Black Sun’s Zenith
Damnation
Decree of Pain
Indrik Stomphowler
Krosan Grip
Acidic Slime
Shriekmaw
Woodfall Primus
Duplicant
Butcher of Malakir


And that's pretty much it for the specific non-land card groups. From here I'm essentially flipping pages of my folders and finding things I want to play for their utility or cool factor. Here's what I'm down to for the moment:

Black:
Geth, Lord of the Vault:  He's a huge house and a "must answer" for your opponents whenever he hits play. I plan to have a lot of mana to play with and if I can get him into play with Seedborn Muse, things will get out of hand very, very quickly.

Puppeteer Clique:  I can't keep calling everything a "house" but it's clear that certain cards are just great at what they do. This creature version of Gruesome Encore is another excellent tool at stealing a problematic creature from an opponent's graveyard and dealing with it in a permanent fashion after you've had your wicked way with it first. Unlike the [MBS] sorcery, however, the loophole to avoid the Exile effect is there so you have to be careful how you use this.

Withered Wretch:  I don't know if I want to run the Wretch because I want to be able to interact with opponent's graveyards but he's in the pile to be considered at any rate.

Beacon of Unrest:  Adding this I was thinking about which point I need to consider the deck as a whole in light of certain cards like Genesis Wave. If I'm not too pushed about what the Wave flips over then the Beacon is almost an auto-include but if I want to maximize my hits, at some point I'm going to have to consider the type of cards that get added. As I really want to play Genesis Wave, I'm more likely to fall on the side of permanents over spells if I need to cut out cards with similiar effects. Adding Geth & Clique but cutting Beacon won't disturb me in the slightest.

Promise of Power:  Here's a confession: I hate Promise of Power, but, like Necropotence, there is so much up-side that I feel a little silly leaving it out of any B/x deck. I've included it in the list to mention this but it's most likely one of the first cards getting cut if I go over 100. As to why I hate it, I suppose that it's the feeling I get of not "winning" on the cards I draw off it but that is probably as much a criticism of the decks I build than the card in itself. :o)

Skeletal Scrying:  Let's get picky here, sometimes you want to S-Scry for a lot but there's cards in your graveyard you just don't want to exile. Ok, I'm being overly pedantic, this is excellent.


Green:
Fierce Empath:  In a deck with a reduced number of fatties, the Empath is a king. I don't see that as being the case here and I have tagged a number or tutors to go into the deck already. Does it warrant a place over Worldy Tutor in order to increase the permanent count? We'll have to see though WT's ability to find useful weenies may push it over the edge and Genesis Wave be damned.

Kamahl, Fist of Krosa/Ezuri, Renegade Leader:  Here I have a little bit of a pickle because I'm very aware that the average CC of the deck, even with the ramping and fixing, is creeping up and up. Do I opt for a 2/2 for 1GG or a 4/3 for 4GG, both featuring the ability I want to have: Overrun on a stick? When it comes down to it, Ezuri's first ability is pretty much a non-issue so it's Kamahl's Animate Land ability fighting against Ezuri's cheaper cost. I'll probably go with Ezuri here as I'm unlikely to be using Kamahl's first ability very often anyway. Both are on the pile but only one can make the cut!!

Rampaging Baloths:  Silly with Genesis Wave, silly with Perilous Foray and silly with the additional ways I have of droping an extra land into play. I'm not sure that this Baloth isn't just flat out better than another, larger-but-dumber beater. In Azusa/Broccoli it was an auto-include as the entire deck was concepted around hitting multiple landfall triggers. This made the Baloths a 1-Beast army. I'm interested to see how I feel about him here come cut-time.

Seedborn Muse:  Benny Smith over on Star City games believes Seedborn Muse is ban-worthy in Commander. I'm not sure I share that sentiment exactly but that could be because I'm not building decks specifically to take advantage of her untap ability. Just the idea of having her and Geth in play together would be enough to get me to play her. The fact that she untaps my team after I attack is just gravy.

Praetor's Counsel:  Last on the green list is the Counsel. I want to play it but it's really hard to get a bead on how good it's going to be. I'll probably end up not playing it initially and subbing it in for a fatty that I don't feel like running after a few tries.


Artifacts:
Expedition Map:  We're going to be running a lot of fun & functional non-basics and the Map will find them all. It's probably likely that this will get the nod over Crop Rotation and Sylvan Scrying in the final list.

Lightning Greaves:  Not so much for my Commander, this, along with the Concordant Crossroads will help to give someone a very nasty surprise.

Mimic Vat:  Here's a bold claim: Mimic Vat may just be the best artifact in Commander. It's this close -> <- to being the uncontested best only by virtue of the fact that occasionally it won't have a decent target (or too many good targets) but that's like saying something like "Sol Ring turn 1 isn't as great if you don't have a 4-drop to play on turn 2." It may not be relevant turn 2, but it will be relevant turn 3. For Mimic Vat, in a format where, if you're playing a creature, it's generally something that's worth playing, it becomes a de-facto factory that spits out copies of some of the most useful or most efficient creatures in the history of the game. If there's nothing on the board now, there will be soon and it's a serious set of brakes for players who were planning to drop that bomb-creature soon after. Now any creature in play is potentially yours for the very convenient cost of killing it. Not only do you remove a direct threat, you can stop opponents reanimating it from the graveyard and you give yourself a shot at churning out multiple hasty clones. To make things even better, you can then kill your own Vat to permanently exile an imprinted threat, especially tasty when you have a way of getting the Mimic Vat back into play under your control. Sun Titan says "Hi!". This is one sick puppy and should make every Commander deck.

Nim Deathmantle:  Scars of Mirrodin also gave us this particular gem. It's essentially a hideously expensive anti-Wrath and sacrifice-combo engine. At 4 mana per creature heading to your graveyard, you're unlikely to save very many but sometimes there's an essential 1 or 2 that just need to stick around to have a little more fun. Mix this in with some sort of sacrifice effect (Ashnod's Altar is particularly sweet for the mana to help reduce the reanimate cost) and you can push through a few "goes to graveyard" and/or "comes into play" triggers. When you have a tapped creature, the mana for the Deathmantle and a useful sacrifice outlet, you're probably going to be able to block. It's very important to remember that the ability triggers even if the creature wasn't equipped in the first place because, often enough, your opponents will.

Sensei's Divining Top:  We know it's good, I'm playing it.

And that's about it! Let's do a quick count.
Ha! Just my list of additional cards here runs to 17 cards which equates to about 33% of an average EDH deck. Add to the 68 that I listed previously and we have a total 85 cards, only 2 of which are lands. We need to make that list of 83 non-land cards into something about 63-65 long.

Rather than keep going at this point (I still need to do lands), I'm actually going to finish editing this a little bit and start the cuts offline. I'll come back with the land and the "final" list in a few days but feel free to comment on what you'd like to see stay, go or anything I've overlooked altogether!