Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Commander / EDH

MaxRadau1

Creature (38)

• 1x Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
• 1x Augury Owl
• 1x Azami, Lady of Scrolls
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Body Double
• 1x Clever Impersonator
• 1x Coiling Oracle
• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Eldrazi Displacer
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Elvish Visionary
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Farhaven Elf
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Felidar Guardian
• 1x Fiend Hunter
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Inquisitor Exarch
• 1x Karmic Guide
• 1x Mirror Entity
• 1x Mulldrifter
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Peregrine Drake
• 1x Pestermite
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Renegade Rallier
• 1x Restoration Angel
• 1x Reveillark
• 1x Saffi Eriksdotter
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Sea Gate Oracle
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Trophy Mage
• 1x Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1x Wood Elves

Land (36)

• 1x Azorius Chancery
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Canopy Vista
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flooded Grove
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 3x Forest
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 6x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mystic Gate
• 1x Nimbus Maze
• 3x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Simic Growth Chamber
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Wasteland
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Bastion

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Bring to Light
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Wargate

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Evolutionary Leap
• 1x Sylvan Library

Commander (1)

Instant (12)

• 1x Bant Charm
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Ghostly Flicker
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Artifact (8)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Altar of the Brood
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Panharmonicon
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Skullclamp

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Let me present you a headache of any hard game multiplayer - Bant Combo Deck with brilliant commander Derevi, Empyrial Tactician.

Great set of colors and incredible abilities of this commander grant us tremendous opportunities to play surrounded by heavy control decks, versus hateful stasis lock decks, deal with bloodthirsty aggro decks and surely against other combo decks ahead of them in speed and stability or preventing them from reach their win conditions.

This deck requires a certain amount of experience to operate it at full power. Making the right decisions, analytical evaluation of threats, rapid or smooth transition to the implementation of the master plan for the game, choose a good time to enter the combo pieces in play to avoid possible responses or to be sure that you will be able to get them back from graveyard.

We are equally able to count on a quick hand, which is usually interrupted by insidious opponents, or in a bitter struggle break the plans of the other players, simultaneously provide the opportunity to reflect on our combo pieces on the table.

Card synergy & interactions

It's always a pleasure to have on T1 any of our manadorks like Birds of Paradise, Elvish Mystic or Noble Hierarch to throw our commander onto the battlefield on T2 and use tap_untap technology as fast as we can. In late game we can discard them for paying Fauna Shaman ability, or eat them with Evolutionary Leap and Eldritch Evolution or starting a growing row by Birthing Pod. Birds of Paradise has another sacred mission to add black/red mana for Bring to Light

Bloom Tender is our T2 manadork which is involved in few comboes and provides incredible advantage in resources. Pretty standart tech to use Derevi, Empyrial Tactician and Bloom Tender to get 222 on T3 and release serious threats. It's still good in late game, but if you absolutely don't need an extra resources - just eat it with Birthing Pod or Evolutionary Leap

Evolutionary Leap perfectly utilizes our useless ETB creatures like Augury Owl, Coiling Oracle, Elvish Visionary etc. And using our privilege to put our commander for fix price into play Evolutionary Leap gives us card advantage and can inadvertently find the missing part of combo.

Birthing Pod is our primary target to find with Enlightened Tutor and most often wins the game for us. if we have enough resources, you can just run a series of processing of our creatures, for example:

• CMC2 creature =>Pestermite=>Felidar Guardian=>Karmic Guide for Felidar Guardian=>Reveillark. Any sac engine+Karmic Guide+Reveillark+Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

• CMC2 creature =>Pestermite=>Felidar Guardian=>Body Double enters as Felidar Guardian=>Reveillark. Then sacrifice it and return Body Double as Reveillark and something else. Any sac engine+Body Double+Reveillark+Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

• CMC2 creature =>Pestermite=>Felidar Guardian=>Karmic Guide for Felidar Guardian=>Peregrine Drake. Attack with Derevi, Empyrial Tactician to untap Birthing Pod and turn Karmic Guide into Deadeye Navigator

There are many other options to use Birthing Pod, tap it wisely.

Clever Impersonator and Phyrexian Metamorph are very important when somebody already has useful combo parts or some good stuff, we can become the happy owner of the same helpful permanent, it is a huge plus to play with other combo decks for us which use similar combinations. We can find them with the most of our tutors, so it will be a good idea to look at the battlefield sometimes for a something interesting. Body Double can do the same, but aside from that it can replace most of our combo pieces.

Azami, Lady of Scrolls and Consecrated Sphinx are strong draw machines, which need to be destroyed immediately or they will give us a powerful advantage. Mirror Entity can transform all our creatures into wizards to draw a pleasing number of cards.

If you want to change the deck build for your convenience, it is necessary to bear in mind our creatures must meet certain requirements:

• ETB trigger. This is exactly main idea of this deck and personally for Panharmonicon.
• Flying or unblockable. We need to hit our opponents to use tap_untap effect of our commander.
• Power 2 or less. It's because of Reveillark.
• Toughness 2 or less. It's because of Recruiter of the Guard and Skullclamp.
• To be a wizard. It's because of Azami, Lady of Scrolls.
• CMC 3 or less. It's because of Sun Titan, Bring to Light, Chord of Calling and Wargate.

Finally, I want to to tell a little about tutors:

Enlightened Tutor almost always looks for Birthing Pod, but sac engines will also be a good help.

Eladamri's Call, Primal Command, Chord of Calling, Eldritch Evolution and Recruiter of the Guard have a wide range of applications depending on the situation.

Fauna Shaman is best way to discard useless creatures from hand to obtain a good ones. At the end of turn of your opponent discard a creature to find Reveillark and at the beginning of your turn discard Reveillark to search Karmic Guide or Body Double and with sacrifice engine it looks like a great trouble for others.

Wargate is searching for a noncreature permanent, like Birthing Pod or land with colorless sourse for Eldrazi Displacer.

Bring to Light often looks for Eldritch Evolution or Fauna Shaman, but when hard times came to us we can search for Bant Charm, Beast Within or any other removal.

Muddle the Mixture turns into Altar of Dementia in 90% of cases.

Blink Comboes

Infinite mana comboes.

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• Deadeye Navigator/Eldrazi Displacer(with 1-2 sourses of colorless mana)
• Peregrine Drake

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• Eternal Witness
• Peregrine Drake
• Ghostly Flicker

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• Bloom Tender
• Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

• Deadeye Navigator

• Azami, Lady of Scrolls suitable for repeated draw

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• Panharmonicon
• Felidar Guardian
• Restoration Angel/Clever Impersonator/Phyrexian Metamorph

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• Panharmonicon
• Deadeye Navigator
• Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

• Azorius Chancery/Simic Growth Chamber

• Azami, Lady of Scrolls suitable for repeated draw (without Panharmonicon only for endless draw)

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And others with 5+ pieses which are usefull, but sometimes...

So, we have infinite mana and what do we do now? We can take advantage of services of:

a) Inquisitor Exarch can ask to lose all hp

b) Venser, Shaper Savant can return everything to opponents hands

c) Altar of the Brood is good enough for grinding decks

d) Mirror Entity make our creatures huge enough to smash anyone

e) Nevermaker can send all nonland permanents on topdeck and Eternal Witness+Primal Command will send the rest Eternal Witness+Beast Within and Nevermaker works good too

f) Vendilion Clique can leave opponents with lands in hand only and before draw step we can use Derevi, Empyrial Tactician to tap all lands, then Vendilion Clique after draw step turns good stuff into fresh tasty land persistently drain patience

This deck has enough draw engines or tutors to deal with endless stream of mana, but if you haven't that options right now obviously you did something wrong and your greed got the better of the wise calculation.

Sacrifice Comboes

Using of this inhumane technology requires some special devices, so here we have Altar of Dementia, Phyrexian Altar, Mirror Entity and Evolutionary Leap if we have full pockets of green mana.

Altar of Dementia => grinding your opponents(or yourself for some reasons)

Phyrexian Altar => infinite mana

Evolutionary Leap => creature enlister

Mirror Entity => versatile creature with sac option

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• Sun Titan/Karmic Guide
• Fiend Hunter
• sac engine

With Panharmonicon much more usefull

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• Sun Titan/Karmic Guide/Reveillark
• Saffi Eriksdotter
• sac engine

With Panharmonicon much more usefull (that doesn't apply to Reveillark, it great enough without Panharmonicon)

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• Karmic Guide/Body Double
• Reveillark
• sac engine

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• Karmic Guide
• Phyrexian Metamorph
• Clever Impersonator
• sac engine

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• Bloom Tender
• Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
• Phyrexian Altar

Works with Panharmonicon and/or Altar of the Brood

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• Reveillark/Karmic Guide+Panharmonicon
• Felidar Guardian
• Phyrexian Altar/Altar of Dementia or Evolutionary Leap with a large stock of green mana

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Any s-comboes with Reveillark opens new horizons with:

• Derevi, Empyrial Tactician/Pestermite/Peregrine Drake For infinite mana and tap/untap targets like Birthing Pod, Fauna Shaman and Azami, Lady of Scrolls

• Coiling Oracle/Elvish Visionary/Mulldrifter/Sea Gate Oracle/Azami, Lady of Scrolls For draw as much as you want

• Venser, Shaper Savant For cleaning operation

• Eternal Witness With some annoying spells

• Farhaven Elf/Wood Elves/Sakura-Tribe Elder For extra lands in play

• Inquisitor Exarch For a landslide victory

• Recruiter of the Guard For searching any creature above

The same is true for s-comboes with Karmic Guide and Sun Titan if you lucky enough to keep safe Panharmonicon in play.

Weaknesses

Code Red.

Torpor Orb, Hushwing Gryff, Containment Priest

These three cards make us urgently seek for removals and fortunately we have them:

• Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares and Fiend Hunter deal with Gryff and Priest

• Cyclonic Rift, Bant Charm, Nevermaker and Beast Within deal with all of them.

• Primal Command can be used for Orb

Code Orange.

Rest in Peace, Mimic Vat, Tormod's Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, Relic of Progenitus

This problem is solved as well as previous, but this is not necessary if we want to use blink comboes.

Code Yellow.

Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, any exile effects and countermagic.

These are the threats that we face all the time, we have to play with them using Grand Abolisher, Bant Charm, Muddle the Mixture and sacrifice/blink our creatures before they went to exile and surely tapping lands of most dangerous opponents before doing something significant.

Date added	8 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 55 - 0 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.92
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G