Big Brain Landfall

Commander / EDH* UBRG

Ski_the_Woods

Lands (34)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Canyon Slough
• 1x Cinder Glade
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Island
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Sheltered Thicket
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Snow-Covered Forest
• 1x Snow-Covered Island
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Taiga
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Waterlogged Grove
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Utility Lands (4)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Field of the Dead
• 1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

Tutors (3)

• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Scapeshift

Counter Magic (14)

• 1x Annul
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Delay
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Memory Lapse
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Tale's End

Ramp (12)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Growth Spiral
• 1x Harrow
• 1x Lotus Cobra
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Skyshroud Claim
• 1x Three Visits
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wild Growth

Value Engines (6)

• 1x Biomancer's Familiar
• 1x Curiosity
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Seedborn Muse
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Training Grounds

Stax Pieces (5)

• 1x Ashiok, Dream Render
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Hullbreacher
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Opposition Agent

Recursion (2)

• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Wrenn and Six

Commanders (2)

Removal (10)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Deadly Rollick
• 1x Fatal Push
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Magmatic Sinkhole
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Oko, Thief of Crowns
• 1x Reality Shift

Board Wipes (5)

• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Fire Covenant
• 1x Meltdown
• 1x Subterranean Tremors
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Card Draw (3)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Treasure Cruise

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Experimenting with a new scapeshift package, description is out of date.

Big Brain Landfall

Big - this deck aims to make a lot of mana and cast big spells. At our 85% power level, this means 5 mana win cons or 7 mana one-sided board wipes.

Brain - Brainstorming and just deck manipulation is one of my favorite mechanics in the game and as a result, it is very prevalent in this deck. The combination of our 9 fetchlands, 7 land ramp spells, and 2 tutors gives us 18 ways to shuffle our deck.

Landfall - I love lands way more than artifacts and while Lotus Cobra is the only true landfall card, I count Tireless Tracker and Tatyova, Benthic Druid as well. In combination with all our land ramp spells and fetch lands, the party never stops.

Complete primer of this deck is still a work in progress.

Preface

This is my favorite commander deck of all time. This is not a pure cEDH deck by any means but it is of the higher end. I would say this deck hovers around 85% but that's just my opinion. The power level is just tuned to the group I am currently playing with. I have tried to plenty of other decks but every time, they are never as fun as this one. This deck has been two years in the making and has gone through many iterations. Originally this was mainly a Vial Smasher deck with Thrasios being chosen for the colors. But now the roles have switched to a simic control deck that splashes black and red. A previous iteration can be seen here for a more damage focused, Vial Smasher based list.

Themes

The main theme of this deck is control. We have a million ways to interact with the game and plenty of card draw to keep our hand fueled. But there are also a lot of subthemes in the deck:
1. Top of Deck Manipulation
2. Alternative CMC
3. Landfall

The Plan

The goal of this deck is pretty simple:
Ramp -> Stop degenerate combos -> Land a Value Engine -> Draw-Go -> Land a Win Con
A more detailed explanation of this plan will be further down but before we can understand the plan, we have to break down the packages this deck has.

The Ramp Package

          I love lands in commander. To me they are a lot cooler than just a bunch of colorless artifacts. Plus, not having all my mana get bounced from an overloaded Cyclonic Rift/Vandalblast is a huge plus. I do in fact sacrifice speed by doing this but this is a control deck. It doesn't need a lot of fast mana since we are trying to win after turn 10. The main spell you want to cast is Skyshroud Claim The ability to find two untapped forests allows us to cast thrasios right afterwards or even hold up interaction. It allows us to keep tempo while ramping ourselves ahead massively. The other ramp spell we want to cast is Lotus Cobra. It is the one ramp spell in our deck that can rival, or even be faster than artifact ramp. While our 9 fetchlands will play a role in ramping out spells, it really shines with all of our land ramp spells. I'll go more in depth in the Landfall section.
          A lot of the ramp spells were chosen based on if the mana source came in untapped. Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim, Growth Spiral, Harrow, Search for Tomorrow, and of course Sol Ring. This allows us to chain our ramp spells and keep pace with the artifact ramp players. Another deck building choice was the exclusion of many of the artifact ramp spells like Fellwar Stone, signets, talismans, and all the standard cEDH fast mana artifacts besides Sol Ring. While previous iterations had them, I felt that by excluding as many as I could would give me an advantage when someone (or when we) inevitably casts an artifact board wipe. I also use to run Null Rod as my own artifact hate but my lack of tutors made it too inconsistent to be effective. This statement holds true for really any stax effect that could be in this deck. The only artifacts in the whole deck now are Sensei's Divining Top and Sol Ring. The Top is for Top-Deck Manipulation and Sol Ring is too good to cut. Even though black is a splash color and we don't play Cabal Coffers, we play Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to give our utility lands the ability to tap for mana. For example, if we don’t need colors, we can tap our fetchlands for black and hold on to them until we need their shuffle effect. This also allows us to offset the tempo lost from playing Glacial Chasm since we can tap the land itself for mana. Furthermore, we won’t have to take damage from Ancient Tomb or Mana Confluence. Normally in commander we don't care about self-inflicted damage but since we are going for long games, the damage will add up and we have to be mindful of it. This is also a reason not to run Mana Crypt.
          Part of the idea of not using mana rocks was to avoid being devasted after a board wipe. Following this logic means we shouldn't play any mana dorks as well. However, we play three mana dorks in this deck: Birds of Paradise, Deathrite Shaman, Arbor Elf. I have chosen these mana dorks because of one specific reason, they can all make blue mana. Green mana dorks don't really do anything for us and since we don't run Dramatic Reversal//Isochron Scepter combo, there is no need for nonland ramp. However, the lack of 1 mana land ramp spells means we have to play dorks to have a turn 1 play, otherwise we will fall behind. Deathrite Shaman is way too good not to include but the other two are also not useless late game. Since we play Jace, the Mind Sculptor, having chump blockers can be very vital to protecting one of out value engines. These also play a role in having sacrifice fodder against edict effects.
          The last idea behind the ramp package is the idea of deck thinning and shuffle effects. Over the course of the game, we will draw a lot of cards. The more cards drawn, the more deck thinning has an actual effect. But the much more immediate effect is the ability to have shuffle effects other than our fetchlands. This deck plays a lot of manipulation and always having some way to shuffle our deck is very vital to keeping our draws live. Finally, the amount of time it takes to properly shuffle a commander deck is longer than anyone has time for. Effects that make me shuffle all throughout the game keeps my deck randomized and avoids land clumps.

Tutors

I am not a fan of tutors as I feel like it makes every game you play similar to the last one. Also, a lot of tutors are card disadvantage which is only good when you are going to combo off the next turn. Because of this, I’ve cut as many tutors from the deck as possible.

• **Crop Rotation** - The main target for this is Bojuka Bog as our instant speed graveyard hate. The other two targets are Glacial Chasm and Ancient Tomb. If there is one player trying to win wih Kiki-Jiki, we will often let them combo off or even help to protect their combo. This is because they can kill two of our opponents while we are protected by Glacial Chasm. From that point, Vial Smasher is insanely good in 1v1 scenarios. Acting as a tempo deck, you should be able to win the game from this point. Ancient Tomb makes crop rotation a ramp spell that actually nets you a mana. Since we are rather color intensive though, the other options are normally better.
• **Green Sun's Zenith** - It’s a ramp spell on turn 1 and then it becomes whatever engine best fits the situation. Most of all though, it’s a shuffle effect.

Card Draw Spells

          I used to run a lot more one off card draw spells like Fact or Fiction but I realized that as a control deck, we need an engine to constantly refuel our hand. As a result, there are lot less cards in this category. The only one off spells to remain are Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise, and Brainstorm. They are all synergistic with Rashmi and the first two will de massive damage with Vial Smasher. The other three: Sylvan Library, Sensei's Divining Top, and Search for Azcanta   don’t quite draw enough to be called engines. However they do net card advantage over time. The closest one that could be considered an engine is Sylvan Library but due to how long our game plan takes, we do not have enough life to keep drawing 3 every turn and use it more as top deck manipulation. I was also considering putting Search for Azcanta   in the ramp section but because we cannot fill the graveyard very fast, it is more card selection than anything.

Value Engines

          I use to group all of these cards into my card draw category but I realized these cards play a much more different role in the deck. When any of the value engines land, they become targets for everyone else on the field. The card draw category has a much lower impact in terms of total cards drawn when compared to our engines. Unless we are desperate or have multiple engines in our hand, we do not want to play these out without protection. In previous iterations, I was more focused on a draw-go control game. The problem with this is that controlling three other players the traditional way is impossible, you need to have an engine constantly drawing you cards in order to keep up. Once an engine is out though, that's when we are able to sit back and play the draw-go game.

• **Training Grounds and Biomancer's Familiar** - The only creature these two cards interact with is Thrasios, Triton Hero. Even though the effect Thrasios has is insane for only 4 mana, it is still pretty slow in the early and mid game. These engines make Thrasios useful during the early game and become a powerhouse in the late game. Biomancer's Familiar may be more vulnerable than Training Grounds but the familiar can be fetched by Green Sun’d Zenith and it can block dorks from attacking our Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
• **Tireless Tracker** - My absolute favorite engine in the entire deck. This fits our landfall theme while also being heavily underrated by our opponents. No matter what point in the game we land this, it will be useful. In the early game, we are still using our ramp spells. This means our land drops and ramp spells will produce clues. When it comes to the mid game, thats when we will start cracking clues to refill our hand. At this point, tracker will start to grow. During the end game, this makes almost every “dead” card a redraw. If we draw a land, we can play it and crack a clue. Ramp spells will do the same thing. This ensures we always draw gas when Tracker is out. During the end game, Tracker will become a win con. It is so easy to produce clues with Thrasios and all our ramp/fetchlands. Swinging in with a 9/9 every turn will speed up our slow clock.
• **Rashmi, Eternities Crafter** - When comparing our deck to cEDH decks, it is most similar to 4C Rashmi. But here Rashmi is not the main focus of the deck. It does have a lot of synergy with our deck tho. Sensei's Divining Top, Sylvan Library, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Brainstorm, Noxious Revival, and Mission Briefing are all the easy ways to manipulate the top of our deck. We can get creative with Submerge, Memory Lapse, and Search for Azcanta   but that is normally not worth it in a game. While giving every spell we cast each turn the ability “draw a card”, its even better when we can cast the card. To make this easier, we have spells that have alternative mana costs. This includes: Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise, Submerge, Force of Will, and Mogg Salvage. Since a lot of our ramp spells come in with untapped mana, they effectively also have an alternative CMC. Search for Tomorrow, Nature's Lore, Three Visits, and Skyshroud Claim are great for when Rashmi survives a full turn cycle. Instant speed spells are better though since we can use Rashmi on our opponents turns. Therefore, Harrow and Growth Spiral are the best ramp spells to use with Rashmi. Just like with Counterbalance though, Sensei's Divining Top is Rashmi’s best friend. What will often happen when we have her out is that we are just playing the draw-go game. Most of our counterspells have a 2 CMC. Since we normally want to hide what answers we have, we do not always want to reveal what Rashmi draws us. Therefore when we use a counterspell, we will hold priority and draw a card with the top. We will draw the card we would have gotten off the Rashmi trigger anyway while also concealing what it is from our opponents. Then the Rashmi trigger will resolve and we will recast the top without paying its mana cost. Of course when we are casting a big CMC card, the top will find us the most valuable spell. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is also synergistic with Rashmi. Not only does he have a repeatable brainstorm, but you also don’t have to cast a spell when you use his brainstorm. This allows us to rearrange the top of the deck without setting off the Rashmi trigger first.
• **Jace, the Mind Sculptor** - To be honest, repeatable brainstorm is good enough to be in its deck on its own. The odds of us missing on a shuffle effect is incredibly low for an EDH deck. But there is so much more we can do with our boy. His second best ability is his -1 to unsummon a creature. In my opinion, bouncing is just as good as removing a creature in a 4 player game. A turn cycle is such a long time that forcing the opponent to replay their creature can be just as long as a stall as if we just removed their creature. It also gets around indestructible creatures but as pods get more competitive, this becomes less relevant. Most people think those are his only two relevant abilities in EDH but not us. His +2 has led to the best “gotcha!” moments in my games. Sure if someone uses Imperial Tutor, we can send that card to the bottom. All other tutors that put the card on top are instant so this interaction will almost never come up. However we have two cards in the deck that will put the card on top, Memory Lapse and Submerge. If we counter/remove a commander and our opponent sends it to the top of their deck, then we can Fate Seal it to the bottom of their deck and there is nothing they can do. Since the card never changes zones during this time, our opponent will be unable to send it to the command zone. So a word of advice if you are ever playing against me, always put your commander in the command zone.
• **Curiosity** - A lot of the competitive lists will use this card in conjunction with Firebrand Archer for a storm oriented build. But the lack of tutors makes assembling this rather difficult so instead we are just using this on Vial Smasher. I have also put this on other things like Swan tokens but it is far less effective. This is essentially our second version of Rashmi. On each turn cycle, the first spell we cast will draw us a card. Plus we can normally swing in on our turn to get an extra card. It is a little worse than Rashmi since it doesn’t cast the card we draw but thats alright, a majority of the time we rather hang on to the card till later anyway. While this effect is really good, I do not think it is worth running more than one effect. Curiosity is technically a 4 mana spell since it has to be used with Vial Smasher. However, if Vial Smasher dies, then we will have to pay 5 mana plus Curiosity’s 1 mana which effectively makes it a 6 mana card. Therefore if I were to put in Keen Sense, the second copy I draw becomes 6 mana and that is way too much for a draw engine. Our limit for what we are willing to pay in this deck is 5 mana (our win cons). Since we run Force of Will too, it makes sense to run Curiosity over Keen Sense.

          The idea with our value engines is to also diversify them as much as we can. This makes it so we are not devastated by one board wipe. Sure Toxic Deluge will kill Rashmi and Tireless Tracker, but we will still have Jace to generate us card advantage. Even something like Cyclonic Rift is not that bad for us. All of our ramp is in the form of lands so we will not lose all of our mana like the other artifact ramp players. Plus our deck is the most fit to play against Cyclonic Rift with our 12 counterspells.

Interaction

          In total, we have around 30 ways to interact with our opponents. The goal of the removal was to be as versatile as possible. By this I mean having spells like Beast Within and Counterspell. This gives us the ability to answer almost anything our opponents have, as well as not needing to change our deck whenever we switch to a different meta. Even though we are geared towards hard control, I still run a lot of the proactive counterspells such as Spell Pierce, Dispel, and Pact of Negation so we can land a value engine on curve and still be able to protect it.
          Make sure not to use all of our interaction protecting our value engines. If we spend all of our counterspells protecting Rashmi, Eternities Crafter, we will have nothing left for when our opponents cast their combo pieces. Once we have a value engine going, it will often draw us into another one. Instead of immediately casting another value engine, we want to hold on to them for when our opponents board wipe. After we cycle through a lot of our engines, and in turn, exhausted our opponents removal, we are ready to safely cast our win cons.

Win Cons

          Previously, this deck used to run a combo finish with Deadeye Navigator and Peregrine Drake. I couldn’t run the Dramatic Scepter combo because I didn’t have enough dorks/rocks to make it a consistent win. However, I have realized that a combo is unnecessary in this deck. It only ever served as win more or as a dead draw. Because of this, I decided to remove infinite combos entirely from the deck and go with just interactive win cons. Our deck is going with the traditional win of getting everyone else to zero life. Using just Vial Smasher to do this will take an eternity. In order to speed the process along, we have multiple cards that will serve as interaction in the early game and be a finisher late game. For more info on this, see cEDH TV’s video on Interactive Win Cons.

• **Deathrite Shaman** - Early game, this serves as a mana dork and graveyard hate. Late game though when we have Seedborn Muse out, Deathrite can drain 8 life every tuen cycle in a 4 player game.
• **Subterranean Tremors** - This is mainly used as a pyroclasm board wipe in the early game and potentially a vandalblast as well in the mid game. It should only be used as a win con as a last resort. Since most of our engines are creatures, this will often set us back, but clearing the board and making an 8/8 while we have a full grip is not the worst. This could also be a great response to an opponent overloading Cyclonic Rift.
• **Jaya's Immolating Inferno** - This is our main burn spell to finish off our opponents. it will most often be used when we have complete control over the game and have used most of our ramp spells. Unlike most combo cards, this is not dead in the early game. For 3 mana, we can wipe out some high impact 1 toughness creatures like Bloom Tender and Priest of Titania.
• **Tireless Tracker** - as stated before, this is a monster draw engine that can grow pretty quickly. A potential play could be to grow this to at least a 9/9 then use Subterranean Tremors for 8 and clear the board leaving just the tracker and an 8/8 Lizard.

          The other three cards in the Win Con categories are more like value engines. But because they cost a lot of mana and generate a huge amount of cards, I consider them more as win conditions that should be played after you have taken control over the game.

• **Seedborn Muse** - By far the best of our 5 CMC creatures. This essentially multiplies the amount of mana we have by the number of opponents we have. Since we have Thrasios as a mana sink, we can always use the mana we get. It also essentially gives our creatures vigilance so we can swing in without worry about not having blockers. One key thing to worry about though is to not always tap out at the end of every turn. If an opponent has spot removal that we no longer have mana to counter with, we can get blown out.
• **Underrealm Lich** - The amount of card selection we get from this creature is insane. Even without tutors, this card will make sure we find he answers we need. While we are not a graveyard deck, our two delve spells, Mission Briefing, and Volcanic Vision become so much better once the Lich is out. It can also protect itself through our 9 mana Subterranean Tremors.
• **Tatyova, Benthic Druid** - This card is like a better version of Tireless Tracker. It addition to all the cards it gives us, the life gain can also keep us stabilized while we pay for Glacial Chasm.

Piloting the deck

Under construction, sorry.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	3 years
Splash colors	BR
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 58 - 0 Rares 12 - 0 Uncommons 19 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.40
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Elk 3/3 G, Emblem Wrenn and Six, Food, Lizard 8/8 R, Manifest 2/2 C, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B