Magic: the Gathering

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The Commander with Scapeshift - Tatyova, Benthic Druid

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A commander who abuses the landfall interaction

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Hello, my dears! Is everything ok with you? My name is Fogaça and I'm here again to talk about Commander

A long time ago, in one of our first articles, I commented on adapting archetypes of constructed formats like Standard, Modern, Pioneer, Pauper and/or Legacy to EDH, allowing players to use decks with similar strategies. For those who mainly follow Standard and Modern, they know that Amulet Titan is on the rise in Modern, as well as we had a brief era of lands on T2 with the card Field of the Dead - now banned in the standard format - and, with that in mind, I wondered how I would adapt this game mode to brew in the generals format; after a lot of thinking, I was able to build a list based on the card Scapeshift (a classic from Modern) and enjoy its advantages to develop it with a commander that abuses the landfall interaction: today is Tatyova, Benthic Druid's day.

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INITIAL CONCEPTIONS

When it comes to Commander's casual tables, the landfall mechanics is one of the most popular, encompassing generals and bombs that use the presence of many lands to create high-impact creatures or to control the table after an extensive play. In cDEH, there's no espace for this kind of mechanics; the reality may be cruel, mas creating a lot of 5/5 everytime that a land enters the field is pointless if they'll be removed, can't attack or even if the game is over before you have the chance to do so. With that in mind, we must extract the mechanics potential to not let it die, after all, it isn't all bad, it's just hard to enjoy - the solution to this is to use a commander like Tatyova, which gives us the primordial for any deck (drawing cards) every time we play a land card, thus, transforming any land we've got into a new draw to spin our gears.

DECK BUILDING

The active principle of our list will be to put Tatyana into play as soon as possible, in order to convert considered dead draws into new draws and enable the abuse of mechanics that give us the ability to play additional lands each turn. Multiple effects have been added to the list to speed up our manas in the early turns of the game, even if they have no synergy with the theme itself.

With our druid in the game, we can focus on developing our gameplan, which will work in a time-control posture, using the banned Field of the Dead to apply some pressure to the table. Even if the clock isn't large, it will have a good consistency if we consider the fact that every land-drop will be followed by a zombie; To this end, we will add the land tutors, allowing us to make our seventh land almost always the Field of the Dead. I know it seems unappealing, but this is just a backdrop to our true intentions - having fun with Scapeshift and the entry of countless zombies will also give us cards, so we'll dig the deck looking for our combo.

To understand how we will win, I want you to look at the Oboro, Palace in the Clouds. At first glance it seems innocent, or, for closer eyes, it may mean a way of always having our drop of land, but here it is something else; In addition to allowing us an additional draw of cards every turn, it can be picked up by our tutors, along with the Field of the Dead (which will cover their presence), and develop a great interaction with other important pieces individually for us: Retreat to Coralhelm and cards with the effect of Sakura-Tribe Scout. Think it with me, if we abuse the entrance of land to draw cards, eventually our library will end, right? And what suits it better than Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries? What if we could condition this draw to have the match in hand? The solution to everything will be Coralhelm's interaction when a land enters the field - each trigger of landfall can untap Tribe Scout or another creature of the same effect, allowing us to put into play Oboro and condition the following loop:

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• We tap Oboro to generate a blue mana;

• We pay the cost of its ability with self-generated mana;

• We tap Sakura-Tribe Scout, Walking Atlas or Skyshroud Ranger to put Oboro on the field again;

• We draw a card by the effect of Tatyova, Courser of Kruphix;

• With the entrance of Oboro, Coralhelm's trigger will target our creature and will untap it;

• We restart the Oboro loop, now with one more card in our hand.

At some point, we will draw Jace or Maniac to allow a win condition in case the loop isn't disturbed. An unused option in this list is the addition of Beacon of Tomorrows and Nexus of Fate, to have infinite turns as soon as we have a deck over.

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Notice, in our list, that I have added great redundancy to the lands entry effects, as well as combining their effectiveness with higher card draw and the presence of classic table control or draw in early turns. The whole build is done thinking about the speed and consistency for the Benthic Druid entry, as well as the best use of each land individually for the development of the game strategy.

CONCLUSION

Thus, after analyzing the arguments, it can therefore be concluded that even if the cEDH goal has its classics, it doesn't mean that you'll have to abandon your favorite archetypes to get into the format. Adapting decks built for Commander is complex, but not impossible.

Tatyova is an ideal commander for those who enjoy land interactions, being simple enough to get on the list of perfect decks to start with competitive EDH, so those who want to understand how to start with the deck or even how to replace high-value pieces, we'll have that information in an upcoming vídeo about Taty on my YouTube channel.

For today we stay here. Thanks to everyone who has followed this series of articles and I ask you to always leave your feedback so we can keep improving. To follow us on YouTube, visit the channels linklink outside website. Until next time, my dears!