Time for my obligatory land-centric deck! This time with a kitty at the helm.
Hey everyone, this is my Lord Windgrace deck. Some of my favorite decks that I've ever built revolve around land. Get off my Land (and yours) and Don't give me that sass, Aya! are both decks that I've built in the past that I had a really fun time building and always have fun playing. This deck is no exception, just when I think I'm done with land decks this little kitty comes around. This is by far the card I was most excited to build around that I've seen previewed so far for Commander 2018. Before I break down what this deck does, let's just go over our commander.
Lord Windgrace is honestly really good, I've done some playtesting and he's incredible. He allows you to discard land cards to draw two cards, which is pretty good, and it's really good when you can still use the land in your graveyard. He wants you to do that too because he can fetch two lands from the grave straight to the battlefield. His ult can just clear out a board of any nonland cards, and as you'll see it often end up just clearing their board entirely. All whilst making us kitties!! We've gone over his effects, let's do this.
It's no secret that our commander gives us some good card advantage by either letting us loot, or draw two if we discard a land. Let's elaborate on that though, because card advantage is pretty key in this deck, it's also not hard to achieve. Borborygmos Enraged gives us land cards in hand which in turn allows us to draw more cards, and he also gives us the option to discard our lands to snipe things for 3 instead of using them for card draw, always good to have options. Courser of Kruphix gives us pseudo-card draw and some lifegain, which isn't ever a bad thing. Greenseeker can be pretty useful, circumstances willing. If nothing else, she allows you to dump things in your graveyard and she enables you to get a land to discard to your commander, or color fix if necessary. Eternal Witness, Skullwinder, and Greenwarden of Murasa all have similar effects where they let us bring cards from the graveyard back to our hand. Elvish Rejuvenator can be pretty useful. Rites of Spring is honestly such a great card, I'm happy to run it in here. Aggressive Mining is one that could easily bite me in the ass, I still think it's janky and fun and it combos with our commander pretty well. Elfhame Sanctuary is a card that I discovered while building this deck and I'm a big fan of it. Finally, Path of Discovery is a card I like to run in every deck that can run it, and the fact that it can pull lands to our hand for free is pretty nice. We're also running some token shenanigans so it's nice that it triggers whenever a creature enters. If we leave a nonland on top we just give all our tokens a +1/+1 counter.
Speaking of tokens, let's touch on that briefly. I considered making tokens a larger part of the strategy, and you can do it pretty easily by subbing a few cards out. Regardless though, I do have token generators in here. Let's start with the most obvious one Avenger of Zendikar, he likes lands a whole lot! You know who else does? My boi Dragonmaster Outcast, he'll even give you dragons if you have enough! Rampaging Baloths, Omnath, Locus of Rage, and Nesting Dragon will give you tokens with their landfall effects. Titania, Protector of Argoth gives us tokens when lands leave our field. Also, if we have enough land to dump into Hydra Broodmaster he's very nasty.
We're planning on throwing lands into our graveyard a lot, so we should have more ways than just our commander to get them back. Ramunap Excavator and Crucible of Worlds make having lands in our graveyard very useful. Titania, Protector of Argoth will grab one land for us, which is nice of her. World Shaper and The Mending of Dominaria do insane things to ramp us, while milling us in the meantime. Tilling Treefolk will grab us a couple lands. Praetor's Counsel is just so good, and also Creeping Renaissance does a lot to help us recur things, whether they be lands or some other type of card.
- The Worst Kind of Group Hug
As is pretty readily apparent by looking through this deck, the real main theme is land hate. Most commander players will get upset immediately if you start blowing up their lands (me included), so the only land hate I included was stuff that also makes me lose land. We're all in this together guys, oh wait.. You don't have ways to recur yours?? I thought it would be funny to make the main theme of this deck group land hate, and I'm pretty happy with it thus far. Army Ants makes me sac a land, but I'll also blow up one of yours that I choose. Ember Swallower becomes monstrous and makes everyone sac land. Tectonic Break is a good group hug. Devastating Dreams I personally think is just funny, and very cheap. Easy to just add onto the end of a turn after you're tapped out. Wildfire is good for group land sac and dealing damage to creatures. Desolation is also kinda funny and burns any white players at the table a bit. Destructive Flow is really good in here because the only nonbasic lands we're running in the deck that isn't a fetch land are Command Tower and Savage Lands, I get the feeling that other players might have a few more nonbasics in their deck
Most of the hate in this deck is group hug, but I like making people at the table upset at me and some of these are just too funny to not include. Maybe the funniest card in this section is Herald of Leshrac, he's such a nasty card in general. He becomes so much worse to see across from you if your opponent is playing a deck where they sacrifice lands though. I'll be stealing all your land, buffing my guy and then I'll sacrifice your land to any of the group hug hate. It's too mean and I love it. Invader Parasite will exile an opponent's land, and then punish any opponent who plays a land with the same name. Torment of Hailfire is just of inherently a hate card, and it's incredible since we plan on having access to a lot of mana. I'm really looking forward to playing these against someone: Choke and Tsunami just hose anybody playing blue, and honestly I'm OK with that. You asked for it, don't see any blue in my color pie do you? Mana Web is also pretty nasty, but unfortunately only targets one player. Nevinyrral's Disk is also in this section because it doesn't hit our commander or our lands, good.
Lastly, we'll touch on win-cons. Any of our token generators can potentially win us the game if given enough time. Herald of Leshrac can cripple people so badly that they just get shut down, and we win by extension. Liege of the Tangle can do some amazing things for us. Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar can also become a huge beater and potentially kill someone. Exsanguinate and Torment of Hailfire are both amazing mana dumps that can win us a game or take a player or two out. Also, Sylvan Awakening can be a win con depending on your circumstances.
That's all she wrote guys, let me know what you think! I'm really excited about this deck and this commander and I hope you all are too!!
