TLDR: Land to graveyard, land to battlefield, rinse and repeat. Continue until suddenly you have an army of plants and/or elementals staring down your opponent like they're your older siblings and your opponent stole your lunch.
This modern deck is built around a cycle moving land in and out of the graveyard for value. It uses The Gitrog Monster and a buffet of methods to sacrifice lands to maintain card advantage while gaining additional value. It uses cards like Crucible of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator to allow those sacrificed lands to be played from the graveyard. Using Scapeshift, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Realms Uncharted, and The Gitrog Monster the deck has many ways to pump out extra land per turn to trigger landfall effects. Realms Uncharted has the additional value of triggering The Gitrog Monster for card draw and Titania, Voice of Gaea
for life gain. Speaking of Titania, Voice of Gaea
, she pairs nicely with Zuran Orb. Together they gain a ton of life while Easily triggering Titania, Voice of Gaea
's meld with Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
into Titania, Gaea Incarnate
. Other means of triggering the meld are Scapeshift and Tomb of Urami. Even better Scapeshift can be fired off at instant speed with the help of Emergence Zone. This is one of the decks main win conditions. As mentioned earlier, one of the main ways we get to our goal is through landfall. Undergrowth Champion holds the line. Nissa of Shadowed Boughs builds loyalty until she can drop big critters onto the battlefield for free. She leaves your mana open for more library, graveyard, and board manipulation. Assassin's Trophy keeps your opponent's largest threats at bay through versatile removal. Finally, Avenger of Zendikar joins Titania, Gaea Incarnate
as a big finisher to capitalize on the ramp while bringing its own landfall trigger. With the help of Doubling Season these two cards really knock it out of the park. Nissa of Shadowed Boughs helps me get creatures into play for free while also untapping lands like Lotus Field and Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
so I can use them twice in a turn. She further more pulls key characters from my graveyard so that I'm never truly down and out.
Land choice was a big deal to this deck. It was important to find lands that provided the correct mana while providing additional utility. Emergence Zone, already mentioned, allows me to regularly move at instant speed with cards that might sometimes, play to slowly. It allows me to sneak in combos on my opponent's end step so that they trigger before my opponent can react. Lotus Field does heavy lifting, fixing mana while sacrificing lands for the land shuffle. Buried Ruin returns my important artifacts when they get caught up in pesky removal. Overgrown Tomb is the right mana and can enter without being tapped. Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
provides chump blockers while filling my graveyard with lands and creatures. This synergy is fantastic considering it is necessary to meld with Titania, Voice of Gaea
. Tectonic Edge removes the fancy lands that keep my opponents decks working, though I'm not certain it's the best card for the spot. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth ensure that I ALWAYS have the right color mana and makes my colorless lands less of a drag on my deck's functionality. Lastly, we have Tomb of Urami. I keep going back and forth on this one. On one hand it synergizes well with Titania, Voice of Gaea
by giving an instant speed, fill my graveyard with lands without needing an additional helper. It even has the added benefit of giving me a big flier to take into battle along side Titania, Gaea Incarnate
. On the other hand, Scapeshift and Emergence Zone fill that role well with the added benefit that Scapeshift can double my mana. This makes Titania, Gaea Incarnate
bigger, triggers landfall, and allows me to play do less mana efficient plays. Both options fit in the deck well, but I can't help but feel that maybe there are better utility lands to work with. This is where I feel I need the most assistance, but I'll take any constructive criticism.
I'm still trying to figure out what a sideboard looks like for this deck. I have a friend who runs a Bant Voltron style deck with a focus on hexproof creatures. Blighted Fen is a counter to that, but it's slow, and may be too little too late when I finally have the land to use it. Seer's Sundial provides some card draw. I really like it, I'm just not sure when it would be applicable. The final three are all protection against what I see as this decks biggest weakness, graveyard denial. (Ignore Titania, Gaea Incarnate
, she's only there so that I can use her in playtesting) Elixir of Immortality instantly shoves my graveyard back into my library if someone tries to exile it (like swallowing the evidence as the cops are kicking in the door), Silent Gravestone prevents targeted denial, and Orbs of Warding protects against denial targeted at my graveyard by way of targeting me. I'm working under the assumption that graveyard denial is not a particularly common mainboard, but if I'm wrong, I'd like to know so I can adjust accordingly.
In the end this deck requires the ability to keep track of a lot of complex interaction. It has lots of triggers and lots of ways to land those triggers. It's a balancing act between staying alive and pushing your endgame.
Comments are always welcome.
