Commander Deck Tech - Six

Modern Horizons 3, or, shall I say, "Commander Horizons", included several new cards and interesting additions to this incredibly popular format, as well as several new legendary creatures. In today's deck tech, we'll explore one of Wrenn's oldest friends: Six!

Six's main mechanic is Retrace, an ability that lets you discard a land to cast a card with Retrace. Six gives this ability to every nonland permanents in your graveyard, and thus lets us build a "reanimate" deck, in a way. The deck we'll show you today is a recursive Monogreen deck that interacts with the graveyard.

This build has as much recursion we could possibly put in it, and as many utility permanents we could add. Keep in mind: it is fragile because it uses your graveyard and relies on its commander a lot, so you need to keep Six on the board for as long as possible if you want to get the most out of its Retrace.

Thus, we have some protection and answers in case our opponent tries to exile our graveyard, which we'll show you later on. We'll also show you a budget version at the end of this article.

This list might be different, in some aspects, from most of the Monogreen decks around, but its win conditions are basically combat damage. To make this a reality, we have Infect and several cards that create creature tokens. Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Ramp and Fuel for Retrace

For this deck, we focused on having more permanents on the board to get the most out of Six's ability. So, we let go of ramp like Nature's Lore and Three Visits, for instance, and added mana dorks in their place.

Of course, we needed Sol Ring and Emerald Medallion, as they're permanents, besides great mana accelerators. We also used most 1-cost mana dorks: Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise, Fyndhorn Elves, and Delighted Halfling, to play around any counters.

We then added some 1-cost enchantments for more ramp, like Exploration, Utopia Sprawl, and Wild Growth; they're great, considering they're hardly ever removed, and, if they are, they easily return to play thanks to Six. Exploration might not be exactly ramp, but one extra land per turn is quite helpful, particularly with the other cards we have that let us play lands straight from our graveyard.

Sakura-Tribe Elder is a classic in Reanimate decks, and an absolute must for our list. We also added Nissa, Who Shakes the World as an extra source of mana, even more when you play her with Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth.

As sorceries, we have the iconic Kodama's Reach and Cultivate, and the newest addition straight from Modern Horizons 3: Flare of Cultivation. Because we have so many 1-cost mana dorks, you can cast it on turn 1 for its alternative cost, which is sacrificing a nontoken green creature.

Finally, we added some cards to bring lands to our hand, as that is our fuel for Six's Retrace. Kura, the Boundless Sky is one of the best cards in the entire deck: besides being a flying blocker with deathtouch (so, terrifying enough to make your opponents think twice before attacking it), when it dies it lets you add any 3 lands to your hand.

And Retrace lets you cast it again. There are some good lands in this list that you can get with it, like Strip Mine, and Shifting Woodland (something new from Modern Horizons 3), Boseiju, Who Endures as an answer, and many other utility lands. In later turns, Kura can give you a creature token, which you can use either as a blocker or attacker.

Yavimaya Elder brings two lands to your hand when it dies, and you can sacrifice it to draw a card. Groundskeeper easily retrieves the basic lands you discarded with its ability, which is great with Six's Retrace.

Last, but not least, we have Life from the Loam. This is also one of the most important cards in this deck, as it retrieves 3 lands from your graveyard and adds them to your hand. You can also get it back thanks to its Dredge 3. This is how we'll fill our graveyard with it, and, even if we "lose" a card draw that turn, the 3 cards we'll mill can be our "draws" if they're permanents.

Utility Lands and Creatures

Firstly, let's discuss the pseudo-ramp we didn't mention so far: World Shaper, Splendid Reclamation, and Aftermath Analyst.

They return all our lands from our graveyard all at once, so it's interesting to use them when your graveyard actually has enough lands.

I'll stress that you need to have lands in your hand to use Retrace, so it is crucial to pay attention to when you'll use these cards. I'll also highlight World Shaper, as it reanimates all your lands too.

We then added Ramunap Excavator, Conduit of Worlds, and Crucible of Worlds. Having lands in our hand and using Retrace is great, but please note that you must play one land per turn constantly throughout the game. Conduit of Worlds can help us do that while Six is not on the board, as its ability is "similar" to Retrace, in a way.

It may seem redundant, but cards like Eternal Witness or Timeless Witness are crucial if we want to get back nonpermanents, or even relevant permanents, without discarding any lands or casting them with Retrace. Shigeki, Jukai Visionary plays a similar role because of its Channel, and it is even better if you get it back with Eternal Witness or Timeless Witness. This way, you don't need to wait for its summoning sickness and use its activated ability.

Satyr Wayfinder and Wrenn and Seven will give us even more lands. The first one, in particular, feeds our graveyard well, and is useful as a blocker or sacrifice - you will cast it as many times as you want with Six in play. Wrenn and Seven's abilities are all useful, but the first one, specifically, is great. Having lands in your hand to use as fuel and filling your graveyard with more cards you can cast separately is great, but Wrenn makes all of this even better because you'll do both of these things simultaneously.

Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar fits this build like a glove because it can get quite big and puts lands in our hand with its ability if it's in our graveyard. So, even if it is destroyed or milled, it can easily return to play. You can also get it with Archdruid's Charm, an extremely useful tutor, particularly with Eternal Witness or Timeless Witness.

Sylvan Safekeeper saves all our creatures from occasional removals if you sacrifice one land, a very low cost considering the amount of recursion you'll have to return it either to your hand or the board.

Smuggler's Surprise also protects our creatures, a few of them, but you'll use it mostly because it is an engine that feeds your graveyard or puts big creatures directly on your board.

Turntimber Sower interacts with Retrace really well, as it creates creature tokens when lands are sent to your graveyard.

Drawing Cards and Ending the Game

As we said before, our main win condition is combat damage. Be it with several Scute Swarm tokens, Avenger of Zendikar plants, Titania, Nature's Force Elementals, or by heavily buffing your creatures with Finale of Devastation. You can even use Nissa, Ascended Animist's last ability, which is better with Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth in play.

However, if neither of those options work, you can also hoard creatures that are big enough to mill your opponents' entire deck with Altar of Dementia and force them to lose through deck out. After all, you can do that if you have something close to a thousand Scute Swarms.

Putrefax also works really well in this deck because it kills your opponents in just 2 combats if it isn't blocked. It mostly beats them in the long-term, after several combats, but, with Rogue's Passage, you'll just need to hit your opponents with it in two different instances, as we mentioned.

Now, for card draw, as this deck has around 32 creatures, Beast Whisperer is one of your best calls. Particularly because you can cast your creatures again.

Guardian Project plays a similar role, but it draws you cards when your creatures enter the battlefield. Lifecrafter's Bestiary will also draw you cards, as well as let you Scry 1. And speaking of manipulating your top deck, Sylvan Library is crucial for this deck, as it gives us an absurd advantage: it draws us up to 3 cards per turn.

Disciple of Freyalise is from the very-recent Modern Horizons 3, and has already performed well in this Six build. Alongside Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar, or Titania, Nature's Force, it can draw us multiple cards at once. We also have Abundance, to pick which card we'll draw. The choice between a land or nonland could be crucial mid to late game, particularly if you only need one mana to cast a certain spell, or if more lands are useless for you at that point in the game.

Finally, we have Tireless Tracker. Even though it's not card draw, per se, and also relies a bit on the Clue tokens you create, it is good enough. Drawing cards is nearly always good, so having more ways to do that, even if they're not that efficient as the other ones, is what makes this deck work.

Answers and Removals

As any great Commander deck, we need removals for occasional problems, and answers for when we are the problem and our opponents want to destroy our cards.

This deck includes some auras that disable other cards like Kenrith's Transformation, Song of the Dryads, and the new Trickster's Elk. Song of the Dryads definitely stands out among these three, as it disables any relevant permanents your opponents may have.

We can also deal with more aggressive decks with Spore Frog, which prevents combat damage, and, if there is more than one aggressive deck on your table, Constant Mists is a second way to prevent damage. Heroic Intervention protects us from occasional global removals, and the newest addition, Collective Resistance, protects at least one creature and, at the same time, deals with artifacts and/or enchantments.

Speaking of removing artifacts and enchantments, we have an array of removals for this type of threat.

As permanents, we use Haywire Mite, Cankerbloom, and Reclamation Sage, precisely because we can use them again with Six's ability. Cankerbloom can Proliferate the counters on Avenger of Zendikar's Plants, or the Poison counters Putrefax gives you.

Finally, we have the classic Beast Within, which deals with any type of permanent, and Krosan Grip, to remove something without giving your opponent any chance to answer.

Endurance is great for this build for two reasons: it answers actual Reanimate decks, and stops possible combos or problematic interactions. It also saves our graveyard if you have enough keywords to end the game and an opponent targets you with a Bojuka Bog, Rakdos Charm, and similar.

We kept some of the win conditions we mentioned before, like Scute Swarm, Putrefax, and Nissa, Ascended Animist, for instance. We also didn't change the deck's main strategy all that much, even though we changed a reasonable number of cards. The secret is, we kept the same mechanic, so you can pilot both lists quite efficiently.

Six has proven to be a great commander in many different builds! This is just one of many, as you can build it around several cards. I hope I see more Six lists around, and I'm anxious to check out how everyone is getting the most out of him.

Did you like our build? Do you prefer other cards? What would you change in it? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below!

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!