4 New Generals all covered in Scars

Scars of Mirrodin is here and we have 4 new generals to play with! Let's just dive straight in!

An Elf Overrun Lord - Ezuri, Renegade Leader

Elves are known for being weedy little green guys with woop-loads of synergy especially in the mana-making department. Where before they had to go outside the tribe to get some beatdown going with Coat of Arms, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa or Overrun, Scars is handing Elves a turn 2 drop with lots and lots of potential. He's a decent 2/2 for 3 and has both the important characteristics you need in an aggressive Elf build: He's an Elf (ok, that's one's obvious) and he's a warrior. When he starts benefitting from both Elf and Warrior he's going to be annoying just by himself. He's adding to your Elf count for all the important "elf count" reasons but his text-box is what will push him right up there for inclusion with Rhys the Redeemed as a choice Elf General. Elves can benefit from the inclusion of White that Rhys provides but they don't necessarily require it to be viable. Rhys can churn out an army if left alone long enough but he shouldn't be, and regularly isn't, allowed to do so. What Rhys doesn't have is a way to protect key elements and here is where Ezuri calls attention to himself for the first time. Someone want to Terror your Priest of Titania and you have an untapped Forest? It's not happening. [This is some unobservant shit right here! Regenerate from a Terror? For shame! Read "Doom Blade" in that last sentence and you get the idea!] Keep that active Priestess open and Ezuri is going to regenerate your entire team if someone foolishly chooses a boardwipe without a "no regeneration clause". The only slight disadvantage is that he can't help himself, only other Elves.

His second ability is where Ezuri really shines. One of the disadvantages of Elves is that while they can swarm pretty well, there's not been an Elf Legend that can really push their damage potential over the top. The afforementioned Coat of Arms, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa or Overrun are generally included in the hope that they will become available at the right time and each has it's own drawback: Coat will also pump opponent's creatures; Kamahl is not an Elf, probably isn't your general and costs 10 to cast and activate his second ability; and Overrun is a Sorcery (still not an instant, Marc!) in a colour that doesn't really have a cheap way to tutor for it when necessary. Ezuri as your general gives you this ability built in and freely available from the General Zone to bust out a bunch of dorks and turn them into a force that will put a dent in any life total.

Do not underestimate the ability to protect your army and have repeated Overruns on a stick. He's cheap and he ticks all the right boxes. Straight to the top of the Elf Legend queue, Mr. Ezuri!


A Zombie Dragon - Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

Skithiryx gains immediate bonus flavour points for being an undead dragon skeleton (though you have to ask yourself how an undead dragon with no wing membrane stays aloft). He's a 4/4 flier for 3BB which are acceptable stats. He's smaller than other dragons but that's not as relevant as it would normally be as he regenerates for BB. He's only the second Dragon in the game with this ability after Hellkite Overlord and he's a lot cheaper to cast. That's not what pushes him over the top however. He has haste if you happen to have a spare B lying about the turn you  cast him. That isn't what pushes him over the top either (and, honestly, optional haste is a bit of a waste of an ability; either build it in or don't, it's useless after the first turn anyway)

What pushes Skithiryx over the top is the new key-word "infect". Infect is a mix of Wither and Poison: You deal wither damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and Poison damage to players. The advantage of dealing poison counters to players is that it only takes 10 to kill a player making Skithiryx what in normal damage terms would essentially be the equivalent to an 8/4 when unblocked. Two and a half hits just with this bag of bones and you've won the game and that's without pumping him in some manner. If he tackles a bigger beast than he is, well that beast isn't going to be bigger much longer with all the -1/-1 counters he's handing out. He regenerates to be able to stick around to do it again next turn too so all in all this is a nice creature to have on your side. All that taken together is what pushes him over the top in EDH.

In EDH we have 40 life, 21 general damage and 10 poison counters as means of winning the game (There's decking and a couple of "I win" cards but essentially the first three is what we're focusing on.) Poison was pretty much the forgotten child up until now but with Scars of Mirrodin and the two subsequent extensions, that's about to change. Skithiryx is the first huge step in that change. Where a normal general is looking to get in for 21 general damage, Skithiryx is looking to get in for 21 general damage or 10 poison counters, whichever happens first. Anyone who's any good at math can tell you that 10 is most likely going to happen before 21. Should you use Skithiryx as your general, you're announcing that you intend to win in half the time another 4/4 general would usually require. Add in Unholy Strength, Howl from Beyond, Hatred or any other boost effect and you can cut the time it takes you to win down even further. Look at all the support cards that Scars is offering the Infect mechanic, especially the other new Scars keywords "Proliferate", and it's entirely possible that you're not using Skithiryx as a two hit general, rather that you're intending to win once he connects even once as some smaller minnions have gotten in there already to start the infection and he's just the coup de grace.

A new, very aggressive black aggro-poison strategy is now available in EDH and it's got Skithiryx front and center. Dust off your leeches and fight the infection! [And check the comments below for how to die to general damage (not poison counters) from Skithiryx !]

A Phyrexian-aided Lich - Geth, Lord of the Vault

Let's be honest, Skithiryx is not a flavour legend, he's a mechanic-driven beast with extra "legendary". Scars of Mirrodin has given us a second mono-black general who is very much a sop to the Vorthos types out there who clamour for storyline enrished goodness at every opportunity. Geth is a Lich. At the end of the original Mirrodin Block storyline Geth was decapitated but, being a lich, he just went on undying. Apparently in the intervening time he managed to convey himself back to the Mephidross and went about putting a body together with the help of some of Magics' more dastardly villans: the Phyrexians. Those nice Phyrexians gave Geth the lovely half artifact/half carapace thing you can see in the card-art here.

Strangely enough, even though the Phyrexians are the source of the infection, they didn't give it to Geth so he doesn't get to poison or wither like Skithiryx. He's a formidable leader apparently so he gets to Intimidate and he's got a decent 5/5 body to go with his 4BB cc.  His ability is interesting and self sustaining and very relevant for both standard and EDH except for one little thing: the Eldrazi are everywhere and mono-black doesn't destroy artifacts well in order to get the Geth ball rolling. There work getting that first artifact (and thus the mill effect) into play and you could just as easily hit one of our colourless legendary friends and undo all the hard work.

Now he's not bad, don't get me wrong. I'm sure he has a place in Standard or somewhere. For EDH however, all I see are hoops here whereas with his set-mate, Skithiryx, there's just tick marks in almost the right boxes. If he was BG, BU or BR you'd have all the tools you'd need to get him on line aggressively but in Mono-B, his support suite is sorely lacking.

Edit: Nah, you don't really want to read all that stuff up there! ;o) As was pointed out in the comments, Geth's reanimate ability is not just for artifacts, a card type that, along with Enchantments, Mono-B usually has a little more trouble than most handling once they have resolved. It also targets creatures which is a card type that Mono-B generally has very little trouble dealing with, thankyouverymuch! So what does that change? His ability can target two very common card types in EDH and is self sustaining. He can start the ball rolling in-colour and, as such, is potentially very effective as a mono-coloured general. If an opponent doesn't have the means to automatically re-shuffle his/her graveyard into their library, you've got the upperhand in the resources game because you're depriving him/her of potential cards in hand and thus solutions to deal with your Geth.

There is a small downside to giving your opponent an increased number of cards in his/her graveyard, that's a resource he/she can mine too, however I think that here the advantages outweigh the disadvantages given that it's now your resource pool too and you have a means to play repeated, targetted Beacon of Unrests at instant speed while your opponent has to use a new card each time to benefit in the same way. You're using your opponent's resources to win the resource war and, in doing so, fuel the pool.

I mentioned the Eldrazi Legends above and I'd like to come back to them. Unlike Darksteel Collossus, who has a replacement ability and never goes to the graveyard, Geth can yoink an Eldrazi Legend out of your graveyard in response to the ability going on the stack. In fact, should this ever happen, if you listen carefully, you will actually hear a tiny >YOINK!< noise as Geth's ability resolves. The grumbling noise you will hear just afterwards is your opponent grinding his teeth.

So, am I sold on Geth now? I'm not sure. Yes, it's a lot better than I had originally thought and he can head up a very focused type of Mono-B EDH deck. I still think 5B is a hefty price to pay for your general, though it's true that we see Invasion and Planar Chaos Dragons quite frequently so a cmc of 6 is not strictly "too much". I think I'll have to see Geth in action to fully appreciate his power.

Edit: Ok, I'm halfway through our first Draft and I got passed a foil Geth as a second pick/first pack. The player to my right preferred the 7/7 green dude who blows up blockers. I take it all back.

Geth is insane.


A Kitty with a Rack - Kemba, Kha Regent

Finally we have a mono-W general, Kemba. In the original Mirrodin we had another mono-W Cat legend, Raksha the Golden Cub, but a 3/4 for 5WW was always going to be a hard sell unless his ability was really stunning. Giving your creatures Double Strike if he's equipped is neat but it's not setting the world alight, especially at that CMC. Kemba is from line of younger sleeker Cat Legends. She gives up a point of power to Raksha for a 4 mana cost reduction. Nice trade up! At 1WW she's playable and she's still got junk in the trunk at 2/4.

What about the ability trade-off? I'm sure everyone would just love a straight discounted Raksha but you can't have everything. Instead of granting your cats Double Strike, Kemba gives you free 2/2 cats for each equipment attached to her. One equip: one 2/2. 5 Equips: five 2/2s. Realistically you're not going to get a huge number of equipments onto her any any one time, but there are quite a few juicy ones that would make it worthwhile. Konda's Banner springs to mind. Kemba herself doesn't gain anything but she'll be whelping 4/4s, not 2/2s, if she's holding the Banner.

One of the most impresive things about Kemba is that, not only is she an equipment based general, she solves your ususal problems of balancing the volume of equipment in your deck with the number of creatures you actually have to equip. Now you don't really need to worry about going overboard on the equipment side of things, either you put it all on Kemba herself or on one of the many cats she's pumping out each turn. Did I mention that they are free, these 2/2s? That's probably important.

Given that the ever increasing instances of equipment support are turning up in mono-white of late, Kemba is going to have all the back-up she needs to find and equip the bling that builds her army. Cats are not the most explosive tribe ever but Kemba is a step in the right direction for a solid Cat deck. Hum, Is this the right place to question whether R&D are aware that they are treading a very fine line with Kemba? Give lady bling: lady gives you babies. There's a message here somewhere. Who designed the card exactly?

As her flavour text proclaims: "I am not Raksha. I never will be." Damn right, you're playable!

That's all for now folks. Here's a quick recap:

Top of the class: Skithiryx. New archetype, new playable Mono-B general. Beastly beast. A+

Close Second: Ezuri. Right up there for the go-to elf general. Will being Mono-G hurt his chances as he goes toe-to-toe with G/W Rhys?

Moving up through the pack: Geth. I'm bowing to crowd pressure here. He's not as explosive as Skithiryx or Ezuri given the built in damage work-around of the Dragon or the tribal support of the Elves.
Thunder Cat: Kemba. Nice cost, nice ability, right colour for all the support you will need, nice rack, questionable sexual politics in the design process. Not a "Must Play" legend, but a good, fun legend.

Re-Tooling Thada Adel

alter by http://www.cardkitty.com/

Seriously guys? Tolarian Academy too powerful in a deck dedicated to abuse it? Really? Seriously? Ban worthy? Honestly?

Ok, probably. Sometimes. More than likely. I mean, who doesn't love some hot, hardcast Emrakul goodness on turn 3?

What's that? "No-one"? Kill joys, the lot of them. :(

I had put my Thada-Adel "Taa-Daa" deck down for a while some time before Archenemy came out. As most of the cards are either deck specific or I have in doubles, it's one deck that I generally don't dip in and out of for cards to make other decks. This makes it quite simple to just leave untouched until the urge to wind up the robots takes me again. One change had to be made for sure and that was the exclusion of Tolarian Academy for something (which ended up as Oboro, Palace in the Clouds for no other reason than it was the card I replaced in my binders) after the last ban-hammer slammed down on the powerful legendary land. Despite the fact that I really enjoyed playing with Academy and obviously didn't want it banned, it can't argue with the RC when they did because it was a key component in powering up both tame Thada Adel decks (kidding) and broken Sharuum decks (totally not kidding).

As I live in France, we have players who choose to build their decks following the French 1v1 ban list rather than the multiplayer list we get from the EDH RC. If you clicked the link, you'll notice that Tolarian Academy does not feature on the French list. When it was banned on the multiplayer list and there was still grumbling about my use of Sol Ring (which is banned in France), I gave the team an option as to how I built my Thada Adel list: Either I play the multiplayer version with Sol Ring and there's no more grumbling or I change the deck to conform to the French 1v1 list, lose Sol Ring but gain Tolarian Academy. The pause was significant and deep as the potential of 2 colourless mana for 1 on a fragile artifact against, well, possibly the most broken land in the history of Magic was carefully considered. The mature consensus was that Sol Ring was a mere Camel's twizzle in the face of the location that almost destroyed the multiverse. Academy is out of our playgroup and Sol Ring is here to stay.

So I've tinkered with the list I had before to the one below. There's an Echoing Truth that I'm looking to squeeze in due to an increase of tokens in my metagame, though most of the obvious candidates to take out are flavour cards that I'm loath to cut. It looks like Sundering Titan is currently the most likely to be out because I'm not ever happy casting it.


Thada Adel, Acquirer

23 Island
Maze of Ith
Eye of Ugin
Thawing Glaciers

Academy Ruins
Darksteel Citadel
Seat of the Synod
Strip Mine
Faerie Conclave
Tolaria West
Remote Isle
Lonely Sandbar
Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
Reliquary Tower

Sol Ring
Dreamstone Hedron
Mind Stone
Mana Vault
Basalt Monolith
Coalition Relic
Darksteel Ingot
Overflowing Chalice
Worn Powerstone
Thran Dynamo

Nevinyrral’s Disk
Ensnaring Bridge
Oblivion Stone
Voltaic Key
Explorer’s Map
Sculpting Steel
Mycosynth Lattice
Lightning Greaves
Memory Jar
Engineered Explosives
Darksteel Forge
Sensei’s Divining Top
Portcullis
Mind’s Eye
Vedalken Shackles
Tormod’s Crypt
Crystal Ball
Whispersilk Cloak
Avarice Totem

Tezzeret the Seeker
Emrakul, the Aeon’s Torn
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Memnarch
Sundering Titan
Stormtide Leviathan
Etherium Sculptor
Master Transmuter
Platinum Angel
Vedalken Archmage
Karn, Silver Golem
Trinket Mage
Lighthouse Chronologist
Duplicant
Magus of the Future
Verdalken Engineer
Faerie Mechanist

Fact or Fiction
Reshape
Bribery
Acquire
Evacuate
Thirst for Knowledge
Capsize
Brainstorm
Fabricate
Careful Consideration
Rite of Replication
Ancestral Vision
Knowledge Exploitation

Future Sight
Artificer's Intuition

In recent games I've been having the most fun ever running a Lighthouse Chronologist out after a Mycosynth Lattice. I fully expect everyone to kill it on sight as a matter of course and I can generally level it right up to 7 with all my colourless mana. The look of horror on faces around the table when this first happened was probably a Kodak moment but I didn't have a camera on me at the time. Now he "only" provokes an immediate focusing of everyone's attention and fevered digging for answers before I can find a way to protect him. The huge drawback of the Thada Adel deck is that it can be very slow to get into the driving seat. Propaganda is a card that was in there at the beginning but was cut for flavour and space (though Karn art + Karn is probably enough to warrant re-inclusion, hummmm) and finding some way to get this guy into play and levelled around turn 5-6 essentially supercharges your deck. Well, it would do the same for anyone's deck but you're cutting whole chunks out of the turns people would normally get to attack you while you go on your merry way, hopefully torwards the win.

Speaking of flavour and Karn, Silver Golem reminds me that there are so many ways to be a complete barstud with this deck. Ok, we all know the Nevinyrral’s Disk/Darksteel Forge combo? Unlike Oblivion Stone which requires you to sacrifice the Stone as part of the cost, Nevinyrral's Disk says "Destroy all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments." In the normal course of events this would also nuke your Disk however the Forge makes it indestructible and allows you to repeatedly activate the disk. Nasty? Not nearly! Add in a Mycosynth Lattice and all permanents are Artifacts. Now all planeswalkers and, most importantly, all lands in play are artifacts and will also be destroyed by your Nev's Disk. Not your own stuff of course, as yours are indestructible, just everyone elses. So we've established that this is a pretty low move. How about what happens when our friend Karn starts mixing with the Mycosynth Lattice crowd? Get Lattice & Karn into play together with some open mana and suddenly there's a lot of very nervous lands. It's pretty much a repeat of Kamahl/Fist's interaction with White Crovax: "{G}, destroy target land" except we're paying {1} and we've got lots and lots of {1}. When you animate a land and give it a P/T equal to its casting cost (0, as lands have no cc) it dies once state based effects are next checked. That's a pretty low move this deck can make. Is it as bad as repeatable Disk activations? Probably. It's a bit sad for Karn though, who's a total pacifist. <- That's the flavour bit. Picture Karn animating these little artifacts only for them to die straight away. OOOooooooh, I feel like Volrath!!

Not an instant, Marc!

One of my playgroup runs a pretty extensive artifact destruction package. You know he's got one as he starts checking out exactly what's going on over my side of the table. He claims his biggest problem with the deck is that there's almost never a "right" target to destroy, or rather, there's always too many "right" targets. If he destroys Mycosynth Lattice or Master Transmuter, which is are enablers, all the pointy bits that actually do things to players are still on the table. If he takes out a pointy bit, the enablers are still there to enable something else absurd. If he declines to take out a mana source, he runs the risk of an Eldrazi. It's actually quite stunning to see how fast this deck still can be if it draws well especially considering how much slower it is now that Tolarian Academy is no longer in the format. The obvious drawback to "fast" is the afforementioned "occasionally slow" but that's not such a big deal because it's actually a good thing for the deck to get beat up from time to time. Overrun as an instant is, of course, the obvious exception, Marc.

The rest of the list is pretty much standard fare from the cards I have available to me. I don't have a Mishra's Workshop yet (nor am I likely to get one any time soon) though I fully expect Scars of Mirrodin to spew out a whole swathe of cards that will make the deck tick even faster including, dare I dream, a Karn - Artifact Planeswalker ......

Of Dentistry & Manucures...

Opponent #1: Em, nothing else, go! [Thinks: His board is empty, I should be safe on 33 life.]

Me: End of your turn: Vampiric Tutor [pays life, searchy, searchy, puts card aside, shuffles, puts card on top] Draw, Entwined Tooth and Nail. Anyone have any responses?

All opponent's: [Thinks: I hope the next guy has something!] They don't: [thinks: D'oh!]

Me: [searchy, searchy] Ok, Avenger of Zendikar aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnd, em........ Flame-Kin Zealot? Sure, why not?! So, I have 8 lands so I get 8 little 0/1 plant token guys. This Flooded Strand should give all the plants +1/+1, that ok? No Stifle on the Landfall trigger? Ok, activate, Flooded Strand, pay 1 life, any responses? [fetchey, fetchey] And another landfall trigger gets me more +1/+1 counters on my guys. That's, let me do a quick count,....eh, 33 power of hasty attacking. Anyone on exactly 33 life?

Opponent #1: [groans]

Me: [evil laugh!]

When the itch gets you to build a particular deck, you just have to go out and build it. While reading over in the strategy forum about everybody's favourite Tooth and Nail targets, I decided to get it going on and have come up with a deck to make a very Rare-heavy change from our current decks (Balthor/Zombies and Ashling/Burn Peasant decks) This may just be the most expensive deck I've ever sleeved!!

Right, the idea is simple. Comb through everyone else's ideas over on the other thread (thanks guys!), add a couple of my own, mix in some land and it's insta-deck time. So that's what I did.
 
There's a couple of cards I don't actually own that were listed in the thread, like Mephidross Vampire, so I excluded the Triskelion combo. The idea of the deck is to repeatedly hit Tooth and Nail for shennanigans either from your graveyard with Eternal Witness or back from your deck via Wheel of Sun and Moon with tutors.

There are a few caveats with the deck: You're totally running for the multiple Tooth and Nail plan, thus you have to forget about things like counterspells and boardwipes outside of what the combo can get you. You're also completely dependant on your manabase panning out so, if someone decides to Dust Bowl-lock you at 6 lands, you just have to accept that until you or some other nice soul finds a way past that.

I'm not suggesting this deck as anything competitive or complete, the obvious exclusions are testament to that. You're trying to TandN an Emrakul and Iona to semi lock a board or even some Flame-kin Zealot/Avenger of Zendikar/Fetchland goodness (damage easily into the 30's on this one!) out onto the battlefield so it's only fair that you leave a door open for your opponents to have some fun. No Wraths, No counters, nothing that's not already on a creature.

Here's the list:
Progentius - General

Creatures
Admonition Angel
Avenger of Zendikar
Butcher of Malakir
Clone
Crater Hellion
Duplicant
Empyrial Archangel
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Eternal Witness
Flame-kin Zealot
Fleshbag Marauder
Grave Titan
Iona, Shield of Emeria
It that Betrays
Karmic Guide
Keiga
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Primeval Titan
Rafiq
Realm Razer
Seedborn Muse
Solemn Simulacrum
STE
Sundering Titan
Sylvan Ranger
Teferi
Terastodon
Thrashing Wumpus
Vigor
Wood Elves
Woodfall Primus
Yavimaya Elder

Artifacts
Basilisk Collar
Brittle Effigy
Coalition Relic
Crystal Ball
Darksteel Ingot
Mind Stone
SDT
Skullclamp
Sol Ring

Spells
Beseech the Queen
Cultivate
Demonic Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Idyllic Tutor
Intuition
Kodama’s Reach
Harmonize
Mystical Tutor
Harrow
Tooth and Nail
Tunnel Vision
Vampiric Tutor
Wargate

Enchantments
Greater Good
Wheel of Sun and Moon
Survival of the Fittest
Wild Pair

Lands
Exotic Orchard
Fetch x10
Flagstones of Trokair
Forest x3
Gaea's Cradle
Island x3
Mosswort Bridge
Mountain x3
Plains x2
Shockland x10
Swamp x2
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Murmuring Bosk
Maze of Ith

Well, let's have a look then, shall we? There's a small group of players who exist only to work your mana base: Solemn Simulacrum, STE, Wood Elves, Yavimaya Elder and Sylvan Ranger are pretty much the bare minimum you can run without just hoping that your mana will sort itself out. Of course they have some support from the spell section but these guys run the double duty of chump blocking like champions.


After that we have the combos:

• Emrakul, the Aeons Torn with Rafiq or Iona, Shield of Emeria

Emrakul is pretty much the accepted archetype bad guy/gal at the moment. If you have something that can give her haste in play (like an untapped Kiki-Jiki and a Flame-Kin Zealot) you're pretty much bringing a bigger gun than most to the gun fight. With Rafiq of the Many, it's a gun that can upgrade or become very hard to deal with should you have chosen Iona instead. Of course you could just choose Flame-Kin Zealot and have her attack directly for 16.

• Flame-kin Zealot with Avenger of Zendikar or Terastodon

Speaking of Flame-Kin Zealot, these are two moves that can pull out huge damage very quickly. Presuming that you're running the Tooth and Nail off 7 lands and 1-2 artifact mana sources, you're getting 17 points of attack by dropping Avenger/Zealot. However you're not going to do this unless you have the land or fetch in hand for the additional 7 or 14 points on your plants so realistically you're looking at 24-31 attack for this move. There's a few advantages to the Avenger over the Terastodon here: Firstly, you're scaleable so you can decide based on your land count if your potential damage is worth getting one or the other and secondly, you have a lot more targets that need to be removed to reduce the damage and thirdly, you can combo with other cards that you may have on the table such as Kiki Jiki (copying the Avenger with the Zealot's CIP ability still on the stack will double your tokens and double any +1/+1 counters any subsequent landfall triggers give you) or Primeval Titan (which will give all your plants +2/+2 if everything attacks together). You can see that going this route is really only a question of how far you can push the boundaries.

Choosing the Terastodon allows for slightly chunkier beaters and a set attack value but at the cost of  three non-creature permanents which in turn may reduce your ability to repeat the Tooth and Nail any time soon if those three permanents were mana sources. What it lacks in scaleability, it makes up for in utility as the decks' main threat against opponent's non-creature permanents. Whatever Elephants you spread around the table will be smaller than your own as yours will benefit from the Zealot's +1/+1 until EOT ability. It's likely that they will throw their elephant under the bus anyway as the moma elephant, Terastodon, inexplicably for an elephant, doesn't trample. Major flavour fail Wizards!!

• It that Betrays with Fleshbag Marauder or Butcher of Malakir

This is a nasty little trick at a certain point in a game when all the chumps have been cleared away and all that's left are the big hitters. Drop It that Betrays and Fleshbag Marauder and collect a free creature from each of your opponents. If you have times it right, it will be something that was worth getting from each and every one. For a more long-lasting effect, go for the Butcher. This is especially good against larger armies if you control a means to kill off some of your own smaller guys, say, an Avenger of Zendikar with some tokens and a Thrashing Wumpus. Unless the potential return is apt to be a stunning sweep of unbeatable creatures, you're probably best advised to do this later on when you have ways to trigger the Butcher repeatedly. Oh, you also have a Skullclamp if you haven't already boosted your Plants past 0/1 for +2 cards and +X free creatures, a great way to spend some mana.

• Keiga, the Tide Star with Clone

What happens when Keiga and Clone both come onto the battlefield at the same time? You steal two target creatures! If it's legendary and you don't want it to go to the graveyard, or in the case of the Eldrazi back into their library, you only need to find a way to off your own Keiga to profit. That way is targetting it with your own Clone and killing both Keigas through the legendary rule. You then get two creatures from across the table.

If the creature concerned is not a legend, you can simply copy it with Clone and use the Keiga as a threat to steal the original. Obviously Clone is the perfect companion to a lot of other creatures in your deck, I think it goes without saying that 2 Avengers of Zendikar is better than one!

• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker with Woodfall Primus or Grave Titan or Primeval Titan or Duplicant or Karmic Guide or Eternal Witness

Kiki Jiki, Mirror Breaker, what a stunning creature! It's simple and yet so powerful at the same time. I've included some of the options here but really it can go with anything non-legendary in the deck.  One of my favourite plays was having it in play, playing a Tooth and Nail for Clone and Karmic Guide and having the Clone copy the Guide as well as Kiki Jiki. I went from just having the Kiki Jiki to having 3 Karmic Guides, a Flame-Kin Zealot, It that Betrays and a Fleshbag Maurader that had appeared, and were dealt with, in the early game. The Fleshbag/ItB combo brought me another 3 guys from the other players: Omnath, a 1/1 dork and a Bird of Paradise. Of course, I put the Flame-kin Zealot trigger on the bottom!

I'm fairly sure the combinations with Woodfall Primus, the Titans, Duplicant or EWit don't need to be gone into. They are all board or hand advantage doubled by Kiki Jiki.

• Realm Razer with Admonition Angel

This nasty little combo came straight off the EDH boards. Tooth and Nail for both parts and remove all lands from the game. Find a Landfall trigger and use the trigger to remove the Razer from the game with the Angel's ability. All the lands come back into play tapped but also giving you a pile of landfall triggers. You use these triggers to remove your opponent's threats. Now they have the dilema: Do I kill the Angel knowing that I will also lose my lands?

• Teferi with Seedborn Muse

A variant on the Vedalken Orrery/Seedborn Muse combo, Teferi grants a little more protection by slowing your opponent's spells down to sorcery speed and allowing you to "EOT: drop a creature, untap" at every end of turn.

• Vigor with Thrashing Wumpus or Crater Hellion or Empyrial Archangel

This one is my personal favourite. Vigor is a 6/6 Elemental that makes your other creatures impervious to damage. Better still, for each damage they take, they grow that much instead. If you already have some creatures out, go and fetch Vigor with Crater Hellion to give everyone a permanent +4/+4 while destroying a large part of your opponent's board at the same time. For a more lasting effect, you can use Thrashing Wumpus, itself a good friend of Seedborn Muse. The ultimate defense pairs Vigor with the untargettable Empyrial Archangel to prevent all damage to you and turning the Archangel into a flying monster at the same time.

Vigor - Likes Birds.

That's a quick tour of the deck and some of the possibilities involved though you can always mix and match between the given options. If you decide to run the deck, have a blast and don't be afraid to come back and leave some comments!

Hi Tom, it's Bob from the office down the hall.....

Hey Tom, my man!

You know sometimes you come across obstacles in life that you just have to work around somehow? You can chew your way through them, or lurch about in the vain hope that, you know, something will just come up. There are times, however, that getting some quality face time and having a good chat works wonders. I find that, when I'm feeling ravenous and just have to nip out a get a bit to eat, just talking about it generally solves the problem a lot of the time. Of course, this isn't universally true. Some people just don't have the stomach, or brains (and it's always wise to avoid those sorts!), for a good heart to heart. Others, sadly, feel that talking is overrated and would prefer a more pro-active approach to dining.

Me, I'm a talker. Sure, I could just follow the trend, just take what I need and hope not to lose too many limbs in the process, but I feel it's important to cultivate the old brain functions, especially now, as, well, I'm in an advancing state of decay. Being a Zombie isn't all the fun lurching and groaning that it's cracked up to be and, to be very honest with you, I kinda miss mobility in my knees. You just don't appreciate the little things you've got until you dont have them any more, right!?

Hey, do you remember the fun we used to have chasing Cheryl and Bonnie from the secretary pool into the broom cupboards after late meetings? Man, that was a hoot! I don't get those urges any more, all interest in that kinda "dropped off" a couple of weeks back, if you get my drift. Still, I did get to chase Cheryl and Bonnie from the secretary pool into the broom cupboards again a few days ago, so it being a Zombie's not all bad. Cheryl is around here somewhere.... oh yes, she's over there, chewing on the doors.

Look Tom, I'm not going to lie to you: this is probably going to end badly. At some point, some intelligent life-challenged being with a few more remaining appendages than most is going to mention that the doors to the mall are not edible and we can still drive a truck through them. I'm sure we can find a few desperate, brain-starved fellows to soak up whatever resistance you've all got waiting for us inside that mall. No matter how you cut it, you're all going to die screaming.

We're at an impasse here, maybe we should compromise: If you open up the doors, we'll all come inside and eat your brains..........

 
 

Yesterday Balthor Bob turned up in my mailbox.

Since then I've been riffing on Zombies and surprising myself at the number of common and uncommon Zombies I don't own. I'm positive I had a fistful of Gempalm Polluters and Nantuko Husks but, as it turns out, I had neither. I'm even thankful for the Phyrexia Vs Coalition duel decks for the sole copy of Carrion Feeder in my collection. Don't ask me what a Scourge common has to do with Phyrexia (apart from it being the last set based on Dominaria until Time Spiral though long after the Phyrexian timeline was supposed to have ended) but I'm glad they included one anyway. Right now, I have a full Peasant EDH deck and a pile of cards that still need to go into the deck about this high:

/|\

 |

_|_

You see, it's not easy trying to decide which of Exhume or Stitch Together is more "Zombie". Scathe Zombies, as the Ur-Zombie [that's first ever zombie creature in this here game here] is in there with a pile of other lurchers but, in reality, they are all just filler because being a Zombie isn't just about lurching across the table for some brain-munching goodness while whistling a tuneful little ditty by Jonathan Coulton, no siiiirrrr-E, Zombies gotta be clever now, and part of "clever" is knowing how to work together. That takes organisation which, let's be honest, is not a department your average horde of zombies is generally overabundantly blessed in.

Luckily for us, our lurching legions of vitally challenged have two big hitters in Noxious Ghoul and Vengeful Dead. These guys are the real deal. They are the ones we wheel out at the end of the movies when the hero looks like he's going to get one-up on the home team and all hope seems lost. I am, of course, talking about Zombie movies, not "zombie" movies here. Hell, we even grafted a few extra limbs to these guys so that, when stuff starts falling off, they just keep on truckin'! 

Nox and VD are like the one-two punch, the jab and the round-house, get's them coming and going, the proverbial ripping-your-arm-off and thrashing-you-around-the-head-with-it. Whenever Nox or any fellow crumbly (I gotta stop calling everyone a crumbly, it gets them all riled up!) comes on the battlefield, a little bit of shock and awe gets spread around. Sometimes you get smaller critters falling outta trees or suchlike when it's only 1 or two but with a whole crowd, everyone else just pretty much gets the Thriller treatment.

An aside on Michael J, Mr. Thriller Killer himself, that dude is so lucky he didn't join the legions. Just last week I walked past a TV store, they had left Thriller on repeat: I almost didn't get away. That damn tune must have dragged hundreds of vitally challenged into it's trap. Dancing & losely attached body parts is not a good combination, I can tell you! There were crumbly bits everywhere! Luckily someone finally, but inadvertantly, put a femur through the screen from 20 yards away. Bob only knows what the carnage would have been like had it gone on much longer. Still, got myself a couple of spares of important appendages so it wasn't a total loss.....

Vengeful Dead is pretty much the incarnation of getting pissed at livings trying to put us down. You can do it I suppose, but you're sure as hell going to pay for it! Put Nox up front and VD at the back, you've got a team! Bob says he can bring them both back whenever so all they have to do is bring friends and make sure they don't get caught in the open. Luckily, Bob was able to put us in touch with Phyrexian Ghoul, Carrion Feeder and Nantuko Husk. These guys are the business when it comes to duck and cover and the inconvenient "dying" part? Well, what do we care, we're Zombies! Another advantage of the sacrifice trio is that they pull a bit of the heat away from everyone else, VD and Nox excepted, because they have to be blocked or everyone's going to take a quick dirt nap to beef them up. Bring in Bob and place your setting in a lot of swampland and you've got the makings of a Zombiewood classic: "Bob may be a Zombie Dwarf but he doesn't need a step-ladder to kick your ass!" As a movie title, it probably could be a little sharper, but it communicates the theme pretty well.

That's pretty much the main thrust of our plan to eat your brains. Other Zombies are involved at different levels of the organisation.

But they're just crumblies, not real Zombies! 

Peasant Ashling - A Burning Vision

I hail from the land of Leprechauns, blarney, pots of gold at the end of rainbows and good beer. While it can be a bit tiring to be repeatedly assailed with the usual misconceptions about Ireland and the Irish, (I’m not a red-head, don’t live in a white-washed thatched cottage surrounded by sheep and I have more normal blood than Guiness running through my veins) sometimes you just get some things that others may have missed. This is the same for every culture of course, but, as I’m Irish and not, say, Brazilian, I only get our stuff: The cupla focail, GAA, Fr. Dougal and a lot of the phrases and legends that have made their way into modern life from old Irish culture and the Irish language. You may not have realised it at the time, but the Lorwyn block was an Irish/Celtic block. A lot of the feel was taken from Breton, Welsh, Scots & Irish origins from the monsters to the visuals to the names of the cards themselves.

I suppose you’ve never asked yourself why Ashling (the Pilgrim/the Extinguisher) is female. It just fits maybe? Or you know a girl called that or similar so you never thought to question it? Or maybe you don’t really care because she wasn’t tournament worthy and you just traded her away. :o) Well, Ashling is named after the a poetic genre that developed in the late 17th Century and continued into the 18th Century. It revolved around a female character know as “Aisling” who appeared either in dreams and visions as a young and beautiful woman or an old and haggard crone, and either represented something or entreated the readers in a roundabout way to do some task. In short, this character represented the nation of Ireland and either bemoaned the presence of the occupying English landlords and soldiers or entreated the Irish to rise up and free itself from the servitude and oppression of the occupying English. The genre was necessary as any open rebellion against the English or incitation to revolt was quickly quashed, violently and efficiently. The name is still quite popular however and Aislings are seen in Ireland and in Irish communities around the world.

Ashling the Pilgrim is both a more-pronounceable form of the original Aisling and a convenient play on Lorwyn’s elemental tribe’s link with fire: “Ash”-ling. I’m sure they giggled when they thought that one up. The trouble with the obvious nomenclature is that neither Ashling the Pilgrim nor Ashling the Extinguisher are “Aislings” in the truest sense of the word. One was a patsy for the Sapling and what she grew into was hell-bent on destroying the plane rather than a dream woman encouraging a people to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. I got the pun, I picked up on the reference straight away but, man, did they get that one wrong. Anyway.

Ok, so now we’ve done the irrelevant back-story, why am I even bringing this up? If you answered “You’re making an EDH deck maybe?” then go to the top of the class!! Yes, I’m making an Ashling deck but, wait!, it’s not any old EDH deck we’ve got here, today kids we’re making a Peasant deck.


Our little group decided to mix things up a little and set the challenge of a Peasant EDH deck, that is to say, only commons & uncommons are allowed. As most Legends are rare and our newer members are all post Shards of Alara, we allowed that the general could be rare. Very quickly we added Uril to the banned-list as most of the best solutions to troll-shrouded generals are at Rare or in Black which would put significant restrictions on anyone not playing Uril. Rather than warp the meta-game before we even got started, Uril was banned. We’ve seen a few versions of Peasant EDH, notably over at MTG-color-pie and 99 Things that suggested that any non-rare creature could be used as a general however we felt that, for flavour reasons, we would prefer to allow one single rare as general than to move outside Legendary. For those with a collection adequately large to choose a non-rare Legend, there is no drop-down for the single permitted rare: It’s your general or you don’t get one. And so everyone went their own way to build their Peasant deck.


An aside on Zombies:

I’ve been looking to build a Zombie deck for a long time now but haven’t for the lack of a number of what I consider to be key cards. I’m pretty picky when it comes it deck-building, I’ll build if I’m missing 2-3 cards but not 10 or 15. This was always the case when I started putting cards aside for a Zombie deck. Now that we’ve suggested a peasant format I could disregard any of the rare cards I was missing and plug the gaps with random brain munchers. I went to my binders and pulled everything out and found that I had 98 cards of the hundred I needed. One of the missing cards, Vengeful Dead, is pretty key in any mass recursion Zombie deck and up until this morning I couldn’t find this common. Now I have it and I’m only left needing to track down the last card which, unfortunatly, is my General: Balthor the Defiled. I know that some players have no problem with proxies or photocopies but I do. If you can’t play an exact card you should generally speaking be able to find a replacement. If you’re not willing or able to, you need to make the hard choice of changing your deck as a result. Here I’m faced with not playing Zombies until I find a Balthor but my mind is bent on the task. I will find one and I will be making a gap in my schedule to accommodate my playgroup RE: their brains.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm, Brrrraaaaaiiiinnnnnnssss!!!

End aside.

So temporarily thwarted with my first deck idea, I turned to Ashling & 99 Mountains.dec. Yeah, we laughed. Once. Maybe twice. Then it got old. This may have been about turn 5. I went into the tank (i.e.: the internet) to get some more out of the possibilities that peasant Ashling could offer. There’re lists and lists galore out there but they generally go for either very heavy mountain representation or a very heavy burn suite. The issue with both these approaches is that if you cut all the rare & mythic cards out of the lists, well, you’re generally left with Ashling & 99 Mountains again. Have a look at this list that was sent to Bennie Smith over on Star City Games to deck clinic:

1 Ashling the Pilgrim (general)

1 Akroma's Memorial
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Magebane Armor
1 Mana Flare
1 Shield of Kaldra
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 That Which Was Taken
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1 Smoldering Spires
1 Teetering Peaks
1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
88 Mountain


Here’s the same list without the rares:
1 Ashling the Pilgrim (general)
1 Smoldering Spires
1 Teetering Peaks
88 Mountain


Ashling and some land. We’re not getting much help here. The deck clinic went on to suggest: Urza’s Blueprints, Warp World, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, Gamble; Sword of Fire and Ice, Apocalypse; Mindslaver; Godo, Bandit Warlord; Loxodon Warhammer; Countryside Crusher Shinka the Bloodsoaked Keep, and Miren the Moaning Well. None of these, bar Loxodon Warhammer, can help us with the additional restrictions we have placed on the deck.

So I decided to break Ashling down to see what lines I could follow to fill out a deck. Ashling needs to use her +1/+1 ability to burn things and she needs to gain +1/+1 counters so that, when she burns things, she burns them for a lot. While one is a means to the other, these two are not necessarily connected. Ashling can gain +1/+1 counters independent of her built-in ability to add them. If we can add counters outside of her own ability, it won’t count towards the number of activations per turn though it will make the fires burn all the brighter when she does flame on. I first thought of a silly little card called Ashnod’s Transmogrant which, in addition to adding a single +1/+1 counter, turns a creature into an artefact. As I’m sure anyone playing for any length of time is aware, there’s an excellent mechanic that allows for +1/+1 counters to pass from one artefact creature to another: Modular. Unfortunatly Ashling is totally dependant on the Transmogrant to become an artefact and we have no way to find or recur it within our rarity restrictions. So while it maybe a cheap & easy additional +1/+1, it’s not the key to an Ashling – Modular deck. Heck! Back to the drawing board!


There are loads of cards that give +1/+1 counters. Unfortunatly most of these are Rare or non-red. We have the aforementioned modular mechanic, there’s Dragon’s Blood, that’s good. Energy Chamber will help us as much as Modular would: a lot if we can be sure to be able to change Ashling into an artefact with any regularity but very little if we can’t. Power Conduit is an option but we’ll need some permanents with counters.


Let’s leave that there for now and take a look at the other side of Ashling: She needs to activate her ability 3 times per turn to explode. In a multiplayer game Ashling can activate her ability twice on any player’s turn and gain two +1/+1 counters without exploding. Essentially she can grow by +2*X/+2*X for each trip around the table where X is the number of players provided you have enough mana to fuel her. Man is the second key element to making an effective Ashling explosion. You need a lot of mana all throughout the game including the first few turns. This is the only way to ensure not only that you’ll be able to set her off at will but also that you’ll have no problems replaying her again and again. After all her ability is pretty self-destructive, the usual suspects used to protect her from herself are rare and, thus, not available to us.

We are going to need pretty much every non-rare colourless or red permanent source of mana acceleration. This may look boring, it is, however the mana investment Ashling requires is huge and she’s likely to need it all. Excepting all but two of the creature based mana sources, we have Fire Diamond, Mind Stone, Foriysian Totem, Grinning Ingus, Coldsteel Heart, Dreamstone Hedron, Everflowing Chalice, Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, Soulbright Flamekin, Sisay’s Ring, Star Compass, Sol Ring, Temple of the False Gods, Thran Turbine, Red Mana Battery, Ur-Golem’s Eye & Basalt Monolith. The reason we want to avoid creatures is simply that they will likely die when Ashling does her thing. Grinning Ingus allows us to occasionally pay now to benefit the next turn. On the off-chance that this could be useful, as well as having a warm body to throw under the bus occasionally, I’m willing to give him the nod. Coming at it from the other side, Heartstone will allow us to pay less for her ability so I’ll add that in too.

On the land front we have some Mountains and the possibility of Dormant Volcano and the underwhelming Mercadian Bazar. A Terrain Generator is essential of course which will prompt the inclusion of an Expedition Map. Ramping up your land count in this way, and with Wayfarer's Bauble, is where we want to be going.

We mentioned Power Conduit before and the cards that we can use to use it to add (or subtract) counters from Ashling. Mercadian Bazar, Everflowing Chalice, & Red Mana Battery will all turn 1 counter into an extra +1/+1. With the help of a Voltaic Key, it will turn 2 of these counters into extra +1/+1 counters. It can also work in reverse if we want to change +1/+1 tokens into mana for any reason. It allows us to use Coalition Relic counters to stockpile on our Everflowing Chalice or even gain some probably much needed life with Sun Droplet.

Life is going to be a bit of an issue as we’re low on defence and high on throwing fire about. Unfortunatly Red is a little under-stocked with life-gain and equipment that gain life are generally rare. Fortunatly Loxodon Warhammer saw print as an uncommon so that’s an easy inclusion. That’s pretty much all we can allow for in the deck though, hardly more than a nod in the direction of hopefully not dying too quickly! In other equipment Lightning Greaves and Whispersilk Cloak can protect Ashling long enough to go nova and occasionally surprise a player with a quick beating. The only remaining idea I have is Slagwurm Armor. Its +0/+6 gives Ashling some room to explode and still stick about. Unfortunately when you activate her ability for the third time in a single turn, you also remove all the counters. Any damage is likely to destroy the Legend without some help and our “Protection from Red’ equipment is all rare. The Slagwurm Armour gives you a little lee-way in clearing the board without needing to recast your general.


So we have looked at a few of common and uncommon ways to try to maximise both the token and mana production needed to really turn up the heat, what are we going to do with all this mana bar pumping it into Ashling? We could pump it into X-spells, surely there’s a couple at our rarity that are playable:

Blaze, Fireball, Flaming Gambit, Kaervek's Torch, Fanning the Flames, Jaws of Stone, Spire Barrage, Lava Burst, Volcanic Geyser and I may have The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service lying about somewhere. It’s worth a laugh if nothing else. As a sop to killing off the inevitable elf deck that Marc is going to build, I’m including Breath of Darigaaz, Pyroclasm & Sulfurous Blast. That may or may not be enough but it is a lot of potential fire.

That leaves us with the following list:


General:
Ashling the Pilgrim

Creatures:
Grinning Ingus
Brighthearth Banneret

Artifacts:
Ashnod's Transmogrant
Dragon’s Blood
Power Conduit
Fire Diamond
Mind Stone
Foriysian Totem
Darksteel Ingot
Coldsteel Heart
Dreamstone Hedron

Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Worn Powerstone
Sisay’s Ring
Star Compass
Sol Ring
Thran Turbine
Red Mana Battery
Ur-Golem’s Eye
Basalt Monolith
Heartstone
Expedition Map
Wayfarer's Bauble
Voltaic Key
Sun Droplet
Loxodon Warhammer
Lightning Greaves
Whispersilk Cloak
Slagwurm Armor
Fireshrieker

O-Naginata
Vorrac Battlehorns
Tenza, Godo's Maul
Explorer's Scope
Adventuring Gear
Sensei's Diving Top
Crystal Ball
Darksteel Pendant

Spells:
Blaze
Fireball
Flaming Gambit
Kaervek's Torch
Fanning the Flames
Jaws of Stone
Spire Barrage
Lava Burst
Volcanic Geyser
The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service
Breath of Darigaaz

Pyroclasm
Sulfurous Blast

Lands:
43x Mountains
Dormant Volcano
Temple of the False Gods
Mercadian Bazar
Terrain Generator

Now we have a list that is a very good starting point for a more solid deck. There are obvious flaws: the lack of creatures, the lack of more pinpoint removal and the fact that we’re totally ignoring any artefacts that may appear on the other side of the table. With 56 land and another 16 mana sources, there’s always going to be space for any changes that need to be made. Feel free to chime in the comments section for any obvious omissions.


Edit:
Now with a lot more games under my belt, I've made the obvious change of taking out the illegal Coalition Relic for Darksteel Ingot and have added a few more goodies. Sensei's Diving Top and Crystal Ball are a good place to start. These are obvious to filter off the lands polluting the top of your deck. While I find you can generally accellerate quickly up to a critical mana point, there's a time that you need to be drawing spells. I may even bring Darksteel Pendant in here such is the need to filted down through your deck. There is next to no drawing in the entire deck so we'll filter instead.

Brighthearth Banneret has taken the place of Soulbright Flamekinas the latter's ability was never relevant and the former has been useful in both reducing the cost of and boosting Ashling with it's reinforce ability.

Finally, as you're building Ashling up to be a huge furnace for the rest of the table, we must remember that she's also a big beater. The biggest issue then becomes the lack of trample so O-Naginata, Vorrac Battlehorns & Tenza, Godo's Maul all join Loxodon Warhammer in turning her into an offensive threat. In the same vein Fireshrieker's double strike is a huge bonus if she can also have trample from elsewhere. Interesting to keep in mind that, as with the Slagwurm Armor, Tenza, Godo's Maul will allow Ashling to survive an activation at 3 counters as it will give her a permanent +3/+3.

Finally, another two equipment round out the Voltron that Ashling seems to be becoming: Explorer's Scope and Adventuring Gear. With the large % of lands in the deck we have a higher chance than usual to hit with the Scope and benefit with the Gear as well as accellerating your land. These last two are more or "we'll see how it goes" rather than "this is what the deck needs" so further testing will decide. The updated decklist is above.

Curious Broccoli - Mono Green Combo beats

Sorry for the brief hiatus, I've been camping!

So far I've introduced Thada-Adel & Rafiq; Group Hug doesn't need much of a mention (apart from re-stating my belief that Hive Mind is NOT a card you should include!); I'm not finished building Toshiro Umezawa to the point where he can be presented to the reading mill... eh, handfuls so that leaves me to introduce you to one of my favourite ladies in Magic: Azusa. (Maybe one day I'll get to bring you Michiko Konda, my #1 lady, in her own deck but not yet!)

What's the deal with Azusa? She's a 3 mana 1/2 that gives you a couple of extra land drops. That's not very..... Legendary. Her backstory isn't really much to go on if you want to base a deck on her especially as her goal of "uniting the peoples of Kamigawa" would by necessity involve other colours and EDH will restrict us to Mono Green. Here is her Wiki entry:

Legendary monk of the sacred order of Jukai Forest, disciple of Rokuan and best friend of Iwamori. A master tracker, she started a quest from Jukai all across Kamigawa, and learned from all the cultures of the world in order to join together the peoples of Kamigawa. Her ultimate fate is unknown.

Meh, that's not going to encourage me to build a deck. Azusa accellerates your lands but then again so did the recently banned Roffellos and he was never a candidate to head up this army even when he was legal. So why choose Azusa over any other mono Green legend? It all goes back to infinite land drops in an Enchantress deck I played years ago. You see, when you have an Exploration in play you get an extra land drop. You play that extra land and somehow return the Exploration to your hand. If you tap the additional land to replay the Exploration, the game doesn't remember your initial extra land and treats the replayed Exploration as giving another additional land drop. If you could find a way to repeat this process multiple times you could conceiveably play all the land in your deck.

Taking this a step further, if an effect allowed you to return a land to your hand during this loop, you could re-play and re-bounce lands for as many times as you desired. Essentially the loop would be self-perpetuating until you want to stop it. In the Enchantress decks of old, the bounce mechanism for both the lands and the Exploration was Words of Wind which had the advantage of forcing your opponent(s) to return their board to their hand in addition to your loop. In the Enchantress deck, you were drawing cards off the loop with the traditional Enchantress effects in addition so, once the engine got going, you essentially neutered your opponent and found your win condition in a single turn.

Moving back to EDH, our first issue is that any such shennanigans need to conform to the formats' strict deckbuilding restrictions, to wit: Either we change our General or we omit the traditional motor and find a replacement. Luckily to achieve multiple or infinite land drops in mono-green we can ignore the Enchantress engine entirely (and thus blue) and simply add Cloudstone Curio.

Ah, jank rares that look great in design but struggle to find their niche out in the real world! I'm of the opinion that this little bauble is potentially one of the most degenerate motors in Magic. Had R&D not included that little "non-artifact" caveat, I'm sure we would have seen quite a lot of broken plays including (old) extended turn 2 infinite storm count into Brain Freeze. Unfortunatly the requirement to actually pay mana to put a non-artifact permanent into play pushed the Curio from easily breakable into very powerful in a very niche set of decks. (Old) Extended Elves ran this in some of the Glimpse/Elf decks as an additional meant not to run out of steam. It allowed the deck to "go off" on a single Glimpse as long as a pair of 1cc elves could continuously trade places netting 2 cards for each full loop. With Nettle Sentinels & Heritige Druid, this little combo pretty much meant you could draw your entire deck if needed.

That's not our goal here though (actually it is but not with elves!) So we have a means to recur lands in the Curio and, in our general, a means to play multiple lands, how do we take this to the next step and make it so we can play infinite lands? If we were to add another creature to the mix we could bounce Azusa off the Curio when we played that second creature and re-play her for 2 addional land drops much like we did with the Exploration in the Enchantress decks of old. There's four options here:

• We could pay G for a Bird of Paradise or similiar. This is a solid option because the Bird/Llanowar or Fyndhorn elf is a useful enough accellerator outside of this interaction. The downside is that it brings the mana cost of the loop to 2GG and we have only 2 additional land drops. We'd run out of mana pretty quickly.
• We could use Dryad Arbor (conveniently a "forest" as well as a creature), making the loop cost only 2G, though, being a creature, the Dryad Arbor couldn't be tapped for mana the turn it arrived. We're still where we were with the 1cc guys, needing 2 extra mana.
• We could use an automatic Token generator like Genesis Chamber though these effects are generally for all players (and you don’t want to give your opponents more resources than strictly necessary) and there are timing issues. When you play Azusa, you generate the token. When the token comes onto the battlefield it triggers the Curio. You won’t have time to play your two additional lands before you resolve the trigger and return Azusa to your hand. If you have a third creature, you could, but this negates the entire point of the exercise.
• Just don’t pay for your creatures at all. As long as you’re willing to share and you restrict yourself to a certain group of creatures, this is possible with Aluren. This 4cc enchantment allows all players to play any creature costing 3cc or less at instant speed without paying its mana cost. Ok, you’re helping your opponents quite a lot here because most decks will have creatures that fall into this category however in EDH the trend is generally towards utility in smaller creatures rather than splashy effects and they must have the creature in hand in order to benefit. These are slim safety-lines to be clinging on to but you can generally profit during important turns enough that the drawback doesn’t really matter.

So we have Aluren and Cloudstone Curio: one allows us to play our creatures for free and the other allows us to bounce a creature once we play another. At this point we can play Azusa and any other cheap creature for free generating multiple instances of two additional land drops. As the Curio will also allow us to bounce lands, we also have our means to generate infinite land drops. If we play a land and bounce a land that has been tapped for mana, we can thus generate infinite mana. If the second creature also has an effect that triggers on entering the battlefield, we have more possibilities. A very basic package could look like this:

- Elvish Visionary & Wall of Blossoms to draw as much of your deck as you need.
- Eternal Witness to recur useful cards from your graveyard.
- Sylvan Ranger & Wood Elves to purge your deck of lands into either your hand or into play.

So the theory is sound and the deck can be built around this interaction. After all, so far we’ve only listed about 15 cards including land to fuel a degenerate engine, however I’m not all that much about the degenerate combo engines and I needed a hook that would make this idea into a deck I’d actually enjoy playing. After all, we don’t really want to combo out in every single game. If that was the aim, I would have just played Rof/Staff and whined when he got the general ban. One of the requirements of having a general that focuses on getting a lot of land into play is that you must get a lot of land into your hand. This in turn requires you to dedicate deck slots to getting those lands into your hand. We have 3 windows of opportunity here:
- Landfall
- “Lands in play matter”, or in our case “Forests matter”
- Lots of mana is good for “stuff”

One of my first ideas was Baru, Fist of Krosa. His “Forestfall” ability was huge when you had a head of creatures in play that you wanted to beef up. In application however he was never a go to guy and generally ended up being a little more kill rather than the means to kill. If I can find a way to get him back on board, he may make it, but sitting waiting for an army was not his bag. Other “Forest matters” cards that made it were Beacon of Creation & Howl of the Night Pack. Both are capable of generating huge armies out of an empty board state. In the case of Beacon of Creation, combined with Planar Portal, it’s an insect army each and every turn until one or both effects are dealt with. This allows you to sandbag other cards in your hand for when your opponents finally do kill your Portal or Beacon.

Speaking of huge armies, when you have a board empty except for 15 lands, Rude Awakening can provide a, well, rude awakening and deal lethal out of nowhere. It’s a risky move but generally one that slips under the radar. Other cards that generally love having lots of land on the table and multiple land drops or boat loads of mana are Ant Queen, Avenger of Zendikar,

Chamelion Colossus, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, Rampaging Baloths and Wolfbriar Elemental. The last, Wolfbriar Elemental, is worth singling out here as another cute 2 card combo. With Cloudstone Curio in play, you can use one of the Curio triggers from the wolves to bounce the Elemental back to your hand. The following turn you can rinse and repeat until the Curio or Elemental is dealt with (with the trigger on the stack or an old fashioned Counterspell). Your army becomes “X 2/2” wolves where X is “your total available mana -4”. In a deck that likes to vomit its mana base onto the table you can see that repeated large wolf armies is a distinct possibility.

The rest of the deck is a large dose of finding lands and getting them into hand or play through increased land drops: (Krosan Tusker, Oracle of Mul Daya, Primeval Titan, Sakura Tribe Elder, Solemn Simulacrum, Yavimaya Elder, Rites of Flourishing, Exploration, Gaea's Touch, Seek the Horizon, Skyshroud Claim, Crop Rotation, Cultivate, Gaea's Bounty, Harrow, Kodama's Reach) The need for some defence in the deck has trimmed this down to what we have here. The less you want the deck to be a combo deck the less you need these slots dedicated to thinning your deck out.

There are also a few cards that will increase your mana count as opposed to your land count: (Lotus Cobra, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Vernal Bloom) Interesting to note that I have not included the mana elves or BoP mentioned at the very start of the article. In playing the advantage they give you of getting a second turn Curio or Azusa is largely negated by their general uselessness later on in the game.

Some graveyard recursion: (Genesis, Regrowth, Eternal Witness) Notable exceptions are Nature’s Spiral, Restock and Recollect but cut had to be made somewhere and these fell by the wayside.

A pinch of disruption: (Acidic Slime, Terastdon, Woodfall Primus, Krosian Grip) This is no-where near enough of course. No Desert Twister, no Creeping Mold? No Lignify? At a certain point in the deck-building and testing process I had to make a decision as to whether the deck was to be a proactive or reactive deck. Given the fight for places there was little choice but to be the aggressor where possible and thus a lot of solutions are left out. Actually we have a lot of solutions, just not the ones you’d normally associate with green control. One of the most elegant, I always find, is attacking with big monsters for the win. It tends to solve a lot of problems.

Cards that draw or filter cards: (Wall of Roots, Elvish Visionary, Greater Good, Sylvan Library, Scroll Rack, Seer's Sundial, Skullclamp, Harmonize) Green has precious little card drawing so anything that allows you to draw cards is obviously golden. The exception is Horn of Greed. My land drops far outstrip all my opponents however in certain situations, as with Rites of Flourishing and especially Storm Cauldron, the advantage slips more and more against you. The calculation you need to make is not your # of card draws again 1 other opponent but your card draws against the total of all your opponents. You need to be out-drawing them each x3 or x4 in order to benefit from the Horn. For this reason a card that would be an auto-include in a 1v1 deck is marginal here. It simply gives too much advantage to your opponents collectively to be blithely thrown into the deck.

The rest of the deck is a mish-mash of like-type redundancies, cards that will make your army more threatening and ways to stay alive.

Seedborn Muse – With Ant Queen, Kamahl & Planar Portal, the Muse is a terrible weapon that announces your victory next turn.

Haste is not something that people expect from a mono-G deck. Who cares if you make 20 wolves when they can wrath them away on their own turn? Akroma's Memorial & Concordant Crossroads punish players for not dealing with you sooner by deciding the game there and then.

Storm Cauldron is a replacement Cloudstone Curio for lands granting you an additional land drop and punishing your opponents for playing spells that don’t directly remove it. Lifegift is to gain some (ok, quite a lot of) life during the game. When you’re constantly taking 4-8 from your Sylvan Library, you want to stay in the game and this helps you do that.

Two final notes on card inclusions/exclusions: I’ve brought in Crucible of Worlds & Zuran Orb. With Multiple land drops this is essentially the same landfall combo however it goes through your graveyard rather than through your hand, gaining you life as you do so. Don’t be a dick and Strip Mine everyone!

Cards I don’t have that I really need to find a place: The overriding one at the moment is Burgeoning. I think you can see the potential applications!

Enjoy playing Broccoli!

Azusa, Lost but Seeking

25 Forest
Windswept Heath
Misty Rainforest
Wooded Foothills
Dryad Arbor
Sapseep Forest
Terramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Stripmine
Wasteland
Gaea's Cradle
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
Khalni Garden

Acidic Slime
Ant Queen
Avenger of Zendikar
Chamelion Colossus
Elvish Visionary
Eternal Witness
Genesis
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
Krosan Tusker
Lotus Cobra
Oracle of Mul Daya
Primeval Titan
Rampaging Baloths
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Sakura Tribe Elder
Seedborn Muse
Solemn Simulacrum
Sylvan Ranger
Terastdon
Wall of Blossoms
Wolfbriar Elemental
Wood Elves
Woodfall Primus
Yavimaya Elder

Akroma's Memorial
Cloudstone Curio
Crucible of Worlds
Eldrazi Monument
Planar Portal
Scroll Rack
Seer's Sundial
Skullclamp
Storm Cauldron
Zuran Orb

Aluren
Beastmage Ascension
Concordant Crossroads
Doubling Season
Exploration
Gaea's Touch
Greater Good
Lifegift
Rites of Flourishing
Sylvan Library
Vernal Bloom

Beacon of Creation
Crop Rotation
Cultivate
Gaea's Bounty
Garruk Wildspeaker
Harmonize
Harrow
Howl of the Night Pack
Kodama's Reach
Krosian Grip
Life from the Loam
Overrun
Recycle
Regrowth
Rude Awakening
Seek the Horizon
Skyshroud Claim