No-Reserved List cEDH Deck Tech: Tasigur, the Golden Fang

This article brings an optimized Tasigur, the Golden Fang Decklist, but without using cards from the reserved list. Our list fits the Midrange archetype, and behaves like a control deck at many times.

The Reserved List contains cards that Wizards of the Coast promised they won't reprint in any new products, to maintain their collectible aspect. This led to an increase in the prices of these cards, due to the high demand. You can check more information about it in this article.

These cards became an entry barrier for cEDH, making it almost impossible to build a 100% optimized deck that has more than one color without spending more than the value of a car. For that reason, this article series focuses on building optimized decks — but without running anything from the Reserved List.

The Decklist

It's a commander who only needs one colored mana to play and still enables two more colors due to his ability. We have a high mana commander for competitive decks, but Delve allows him to cost less (up to a maximum of ), and even helps filter which cards in your graveyard you want to keep there.

Its activated ability is a card advantage engine, giving recursion to every nonland card in your graveyard, helping the player to play with their opponents to stop a specific player and, in addition, also functioning as an infinite mana outlet.

The fact that Tasigur has Delve and costs six mana is something that allows you to use several creatures with a mana value of 7 or 8 in your deck, using it as a sacrifice to find one of them with pod effects cards.

Thassa Consult

Combo Condition: Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation/Tainted Pact in hand, and enough mana to cast them.

1 — Cast Thassa's Oracle.

2 — Answer her ETB by casting the other spell from your hand, naming a card you don't have in your library, or exiling until the last card.

At Thassa's Oracle ETB resolution, you win the game.

Isorev

Loop Condition: Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal in hand and ability to generate at least 3 mana through artifacts and creatures, plus mana to cast the Scepter; you need to be able to generate at least one blue/green mana, so you can have infinite colored mana for Tasigur's ability.

With Isochron Scepter, you cast it and use its imprint ability to exile Dramatic Reversal, so you only need to generate at least 3 mana with artifacts or creatures to have infinite mana.

You will spend that infinite mana to feed Tasigur, putting all cards in your library into your graveyard 2 by 2, then into your hand; to end the game, just cast Thassa's Oracle.

Hullbreaker Horror Infinite Mana

This combo is based on Hullbreaker Horror and its ability to return non-land permanents to their owner's hand when you cast a spell. This added to positive rocks allows you to tap a rock, cast another, triggering Horror, return the tapped one to hand and keep repeating this until you have infinite mana.

Combo Condition: Hullbreaker Horror in play + two mana rocks that generate positive mana when looped, in hand.

1 — Cast the first mana rock, triggering Horror;

2 — In the trigger, return anything to the owner's hand;

3 — Tap the rock to generate mana and cast the next one, triggering the Horror;

4 — In the trigger, return the tapped rock to your hand.

Repeating steps 3 and 4 will generate infinite mana, allowing you to cast your commander and mill yourself until you get Thassa's Oracle and cast it to win the game. You can also use this to cast all permanents in your deck and win by attack, while playing Noxious Revival, so you don't lose from deck over.

You can loop rocks that generate colorless and, after you have infinite mana, loop one that generates colored mana to filter.

This deck likes to go for late-game. The value we can get from its engines only gets bigger, and for that, it has many engines and grind mechanisms that generate advantages while delaying opponents.

Keeping a good hand is important, having at least one draw engine, two to three ramps to keep from falling behind in mana, and two to three lands. The better the quality of ramps and their quantity, the less need for lands.

Tutors come in as trump cards, being able to search for any type of cards to optimize the beginning of the game and guarantee the mid-game.

Ramps

The deck has a good number of ramps, enough for you to cast a Necropotence or Rhystic Study on turn one quite often, but we also have numerous mana rocks, as they are a more efficient since they continue to generate mana.

Sacrifice turns your commander into a six mana ritual to cast a Peer into the Abyss. Jeweled Lotus allows you to cast Tasigur at 2, even if it's your only ramp, as you can break it to add mana, and exile the card from the Graveyard.

Aside from these ramps, there's nothing out of the ordinary.

Interactions

We have all kinds of interactions. In order to be able to hold the game and generate resources, Kamigawa's lands gave the deck a great boost, allowing you to have utility and a land at the same time. We also have several counterspells, removals, bounces and sweepers to stop our opponents.

Malevolent Hermit // Benevolent Geist works as a counterspell and protection for your spells, and Hullbreaker Horror to control the board while casting any spell.

Toxrill, the Corrosive serves to clean dorks from the board and gives you board and draw, Dress Down counters troublesome creatures. Stubborn Denial is a great answer on lists where you can guarantee having a creature with power 4 on the table.

Card Advantage

This deck doesn't have many card advantage tools, but its main ones are enchantments, in addition to the new Ledger Shredder - which filters the cards in your hand and provides fuel to cast Tasigur as soon as possible.

Peer into the Abyss is the closest to an Ad Nauseam in a list that has 3 7-mana creatures in the deck, as it's not much fun to cast a Naus and take 7 damage for a Toxrill.

Tutors

In addition to the forbidden spells that we use with Thoracle, this deck has the tutors with the lowest possible mana costs to maximize the chances of being able to look for a card that allows you to win, deal with a problem on the board, or search for the right card to take advantage of a situation.

7 Drops and Tutors for them

In addition to the standard tutors, we also have tutors that demand sacrifice and search for a creature that costs more than the sacrificed one. They mainly serve to use Tasigur as a fuel to get to 7 mana creatures, which is what makes this deck so special.

Additionally, these same tutors can be used on low-mana creatures to find Thassa's Oracle and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.

Each of these has a scenario where it is most interesting. Nezahal, for example, is good when your opponents have plenty of noncreature spells, granting you a lot of card advantage, and it protects itself from interactions.

Toxrill is good at tables that rely on creatures to generate value, such as Najeela and Tymna, in addition to finishing off Yisan's elves deck, all while managing to generate creatures to maybe try to take the board in the beatdown or turn them into card advantage.

Hullbreaker is to go for the win with the infinite mana combo or abuse if you already have a Seedborn Muse on the battlefield to get enough mana to cast many spells during untaps, while removing troublesome stuff from the table in the process.

If I used the reserved list, this would be the decklist I'd build. My changes take cards I don't like so much, including cards from the reserved list instead.

Lands

Out: Phyrexian Tower, Underground River and Yavimaya Coast

Taking out the Phyrexian Tower isn't a problem, as it's not that good on a list with few such creatures. Including an old dual is definitely better.

The same goes for pain lands, which damage you and have no land type.

Creatures

Out: Malevolent Hermit

Here being removed a card that helps to prevent others and sometimes to combo, to use a card that, in addition to helping to prevent them, also generates value.

Mana Rocks

Out: Talisman of Dominance and Talisman of Curiosity

Swapping two mana rocks for two positive mana rocks to speed up the deck more and removing the need for a thirtieth land from the list.

Enchantments

Out: Forest

As mentioned before, including positive mana rocks helps the deck get faster. So taking out a Forest to put a card that will give you an absurd recursion is also great.

Instants

Out: Diabolic Intent

Diabolic Intent was the worst tutor on the deck while. Intuition is one of the best available.

Even though it costs 3 mana, you can tutor 3 combo pieces and leave it at the opponent's mercy or get a Noxious Revival and two combo pieces — there are several possible stacks.

This list definitely won't perform as well against many turbo decks, but it can handle some of them.

Our deck has a Midrange strategy and doesn't mind Stax since we won't be the most affected by them. It is possible to execute your game plan well even with some lock pieces around, and the pilot must analyze when to change the approach during the match.

Thanks for reading and until the next article!