Hapatra, Queen of Snakes (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Hapatra, Queen of Snakes

Commander / EDH

yakob67

Creature (28)

Sorcery (6)

Land (35)

Artifact (11)

Commander (1)

Enchantment (12)

Instant (6)

Planeswalker (1)

1x Vraska, Golgari Queen

This is a deck based off of Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons. As soon as the card was spoiled I fell in love with it. Not only is she in my favorite color pair, but she also does some of my favorite things: token generation and placing -1/-1 counters.

The deck design is based off of the 8x8 theory. The 8x8 theory is an idea to help simplify deck building. The idea behind it is to come up with 8 different categories that you want, and then find 8 different cards to fit into each of those categories. The 8 categories I wanted to include in my deck are: Ramp, Counters, Tokens, Interaction, Recursion, Card Draw, Win Conditions, and Generic Value. The specific choices that I made for these categories and cards in these categories is based almost entirely on what I like to do, and to what I feel leads to consistent game play. You will also probably notice that there is a lot of overlap between multiple categories. This is good because it raises the floor of the card, as well as the ceiling.

I also decided to include Staff of Domination because there are a bunch of ways we can use it as a mana sink (with Growing Rites of Itlimoc flipped and Cryptolith Rite out we can easily generate 100+ mana). We can combo it with either Ulvenwald Tracker or Plaguemaw Beast to shoot down all the creatures or throw counters out like nobodies business.

Ramp/Accelerators

Ramp

Sakura-Tribe Elder

Cryptolith Rite

Devoted Druid

Growing Rites of Itlimoc

This is a basic ramp package. We have a lot of mana rocks, especially Golgari Locket because it gives us card draw when we don't need the mana. I wanted Growing Rites of Itlimoc because with how many tokens we pump out this will end up tapping for 10+ mana. Cryptolith Rite is similar in that it lets us tap all our tokens for mana as well. If the games drag out we have plenty of mana sinks to dump all this mana into, especially with Staff of Domination. If we really wanted, we could include Earthcraft so that every creature untaps our Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun and get thousands of mana, but at that point it might be a little overkill. We run the Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers combo too so we really shouldn't be hurting for mana as the game goes on.

Counters

Trigon of Infection

Splended Agony

These cards help us throw a bunch of -1/-1 counters on the field and help them stick. Contagion Clasp, Contagion Engine, Trigon of Infection, and Serrated Arrows let us consistently keep counters on the field. This is important later on for the other packages, because playing these cards with our commander out lets us generate tons of tokens which we can abuse in other ways as well. In general, those cards are also better than straight up proliferating because being able to place a counter on a new creature is more valuable than putting a counter on something that also has one. That being said, it is important to have a couple of proliferate cards so that we can shrink big threats down to manageable sizes.

Tokens

These cards are all about taking advantage of the ability we have to create tons of tokens. A lot of our win conditions revolve around going wide with a bunch of snakes, so getting extra mileage out of our token making abilities is pretty important. Because cards like Doubling Season and Parallel Lives stack (x4 instead of x2) it is possible for us to rebuild our board almost completely right after a board wipe. We also want to have Nest of Scarabs and Flourishing Defenses out because we can just flood the board with tokens and kill people without any anthem effects.

It is also important to know the difference between Nest of Scarabs and Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons. Hapatra cares only about the number of TARGETS while Nest of Scarabs cares only about number of COUNTERS. Knowing the difference is pretty important because in order to maximize value in any given situation, we will want to place as many counters on as many individual targets as possible, before we start stacking multiple counters on a single target (unless we really want to kill a big threat).

Champion of Lambholt is a nice card to have because the deck has a lot of potential to just vomit 10+ snakes onto the board growing our champion to gigantic proportions and making everything unblockable. This is great with our commander and Driven//Despair because it gets us cards and more snakes.

Interaction

These are important to deal with the threats the opponents are going to be slamming down. Skinrender is spot removal on a stick, and Incremental Blight lets us deal with a wide range of stuff we don't like. Crumbling Ashes is important because it is repeatable removal for incredibly cheap. Ulvenwald Tracker is similar because it lets us throw a snake at the biggest creature on the board every turn. Vhati il dhal is the only way we can deal with indestructible creatures quickly (the -1/-1 counters kill indestructible creatures because of state based actions), and Wickerbough Elder lets us repeatedly deal with artifacts and enchantments.

We also have some of the more common answers for dealing with artifacts and enchantments as well.

Recursion

Eternal Witness

Meren of Clan Nel Toth

Journey to Eternity

Wretched Confluence

Because almost all of our interaction is based entirely on the abilities of creatures, having a way to get those back is very important. Ideally we would have a little bit more, and we probably could if we cut some of the weaker pay off cards from our deck.

Card Draw

Generous Patron

Skullclamp

Regal Force

Seshiro the Annointed

Dusk Urchins

Vraska, Golgari Queen

Deathreap Ritual

Dark Prophecy

This is the section that helps us win the game. All of these cards will in some way generate card advantage, but the most important thing is that they need to do it as we do what we normally would do anyways. We want to throw a bunch of counters on our opponents creatures anyways, so why not draw cards with Generous Patron? Vraska nets us card advantage, removal, and a wincon all in one card. Skullclamp can combo with Deathreap Ritual getting us 3 cards for 1 mana and 1 token because who doesn't love a 'build-your-own-repeatable-ancestral-recall'. I can not stress how important it is that these cards draw us cards while we are doing something that we are already doing. You can include other card draw effects, but the most powerful ones are those that draw us cards while we are doing something we already want to do. We also tend to be pretty aggressive with how we use our snakes, which makes Dark Prophecy a great fit for the deck.

Win Conditions

Beastmaster Ascension

Exsanguinate

Triumph of the Hordes

Eldrazi Monument

Here we basically have a ton of different anthem effects. We can go wide and punch them to death with 100 10/10 snakes. We can keep Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, or Poison-Tip Archer on the field to help cover us against our biggest weaknesses, which are board wipes, and effects like Propaganda. With a sac outlet like Viscera Seer or Ashnod's Altar we can just drain the entire table at instant speed and win the game.

I also included Exsanguinate because its not uncommon to be able to tap out for 50+ mana and kill everyone on the spot. If you wanted to rely on this more, I would include more tutors so we could reliably have this online before the game goes on too long.

Value

Whispersilk Cloak Here are cards that just generate good value for what they cost. Necroskitter lets us steal our opponents threats, while Viscera Seer lets us scry ~30 cards a turn. Quillspike is nice to have because it combos with Devoted Druid to become massive and kill someone if it goes unblocked.

I also wanted to include Staff of Domination because we have ways to generate tons of mana but not a whole lot of ways to use it effectively. Staff works with Plaguemaw Beast to proliferate a big creature to death. It also works with Vhati il dhal if we want to kill a bunch of creatures with counters on them. Last but not least it basically turns Ulvenwald Tracker into a snake firing machine gun to shoot down the entire board.

Finally we have Whispersilk Cloak to protect our commander as well to allow her to get in and make a snake if we want to.

Maybe

A lot of decks include Melira, Sylvok Outcast. She is in enough decks that it is important to mention her. I didn't include her in my deck because being able to place counters on your own creatures lets us generate maximum value. While all of our snakes, scarabs, and elves will die, the counters will still be placed, and at a minimum replace themselves. If we have one of our token doublers out then we end up with way more than what we started.

However, not including Melira also cuts us off from a lot of combos that we would normally be able to do. For example Melira + Woodfall Primus + anything that lets us sac at instant speed = blowing up all of the opponents lands, artifacts, and whatever else. Sometimes thats enough to win you the game. Now her ability to combo off with persist is great, except that there are so few cards with persist that we could include in our deck in the first place. She can also combo off with other cards in the deck, but at the same time she turns off some of the other combos in our deck. She turns off Wickerbough Elder, Ammit Eternal, Carnifex Demon (Although if you play her after carnifex demon she can help protect your board, if its necessary).

I may change my mind about including her, but I just wanted to let you know that she is not an auto-include and you should not feel compelled to include her just because she protects our stuff. Protecting Hapatra from -1/-1 counters is nice, but shes one of the cheapest commanders in the format and Black and Green have some of the best ramp of all the colors so we probably wont ever be concerned about not having enough mana to cast her. Either way, the decision is yours. I just wanted to put my disclaimer here for everyone.

EDIT: I tried working with her. If we play her, we also want to play as many combo cards with her to make her as effective as possible. Including all of those combo cards dilutes the other packages that we have in the deck. Most of the cards that we run generate value either by themselves or when the commander is out. Melira on the other hand needs at least 2 other cards most of the time to start to combo off. This is not consistent without tutors, and as you can tell, we don't have any tutors in this deck.

There are also a lot of cards like Rendclaw Trow that are not included. While having it is nice, most of the time having hapatra + wither creatures usually means that nobody attacks you and nobody blocks you. No damage = no snakes. Since most EDH games tend to end with spells with CMC 7+ being cast, I think it is better to spend the early turns ramping into your big threats instead of trying to curve out with random wither creatures. The other thing to keep in mind is that since life total starts at 40, getting in for 2 damage a couple of turns isn't going to win us the game.

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Date added	7 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 35 - 0 Rares 31 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.42
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Copy Clone, Elf Warrior 1/1 G, Emblem Vraska, Golgari Queen, Experience Token, Human Cleric 1/1 BW, Insect 1/1 B, Snake 1/1 G, Snake 1/1 G w/ Deathtouch
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