Happy Quarantine, ladies and gents! Welcome back to Konglicker’s Premiere Primers, where I take a legendary creature that’s never been played before and build a brand-new deck around it, speculating its ideal strategy and playstyle.
Once again, it’s the most wonderful time of the year: Commander Precon spoiler season! It seems like yesterday that I was writing the Primer for Marisi, Breaker of the Coil, my personal pick for spiciest 2019 precon commander. This year, as you know, Wizards is going all-in on 2020 being the Year of Commander, hoping to spread the popularity of the format faster than the Coronavirus (good luck). The next installment of the annual Precons this year are tied directly into the newest standard set, and I have a gut feeling that people are more excited about said decks than they are about the standard release…
As before, I try to steer clear of the “chase” commander, because the hype surrounding it is sure to reach a level so great that said creature will already be fully fleshed out when I publish this primer! From what I’ve seen so far, Zaxara, the Exemplary has taken the MTG online community by storm in less than a day and with good reason: it has the most powerful color combination in the format (besides Atraxa), access to the Thassa's Oracle / Flash / Protean Hulk combos, taps for mana, enables Hydra Tribal in Sultai, and encourages a big-mana build focused on X spells like Villainous Wealth, Blue Sun's Zenith, Torment of Hailfire and Exsanguinate, which also happen to be the most popular type of cards in the game. Where’s the fun in writing about a commander that’s already been solved?
My focus instead turned to a legendary creature that’s been almost completely overshadowed by the release of Zaxara: Tayam, Luminous Enigma. This commander speaks to me on a deep level as it appeals to an important facet of my deckbuilding style.
When building Commander decks in real life, one thing I often do as an avid connoisseur of Modern is port any decks that I’m tired of playing in that format over to Commander so my cards don’t go to waste. The result is often a ground-up approach to building EDH decks that I’ve maintained for years. This is often simple for me, as most of my past Modern builds were grindy and revolved around repeating triggered and activated abilities or oppressive static abilities, which also translate well to Commander. There is a gentleman who writes for EDHREC, Matt Morgan, that has a similar approach with his article series “60 to 100”. For example, I played a Modern deck for a while that was very oppressive with a good start: Owling Mine. I can best describe it as an Izzet Tempo/Prison deck that sought to keep players’ hands full, both with Howling Mine-like effects including Jace Beleren and Fevered Visions, and by bouncing my opponents’ lands back to their hand with Boomerang and its functional clones. Once my opponent’s hand size was locked in at 7 as they couldn’t play, they would be finished by cards like Runeflare Trap and Ebony Owl Netsuke. The deck won me many FNMs from 2017-2018, but it also had a track record of making opponents incredibly salty. Due to the overwhelmingly one-sided fun factor, I disassembled that deck but kept most of the permanents for what would ironically become my most popular Commander deck: 5-Color Burning Hand, led by O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami (essentially a 5-Color Nekusar deck but with green ramp, white board wipes, and no wheels: a Death Hug deck).
So how does that tie into Tayam? My absolute favorite color combination to play in Modern is Abzan, and the best deck I ever played competitively in those colors (and still play today) is Devoted Company. If you haven’t heard of it, the deck wins by making infinite green mana with the two-card combo Devoted Druid and Vizier of Remedies and then sinking that mana into Duskwatch Recruiter
to then sink the mana into either Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Rhonas the Indomitable or Walking Ballista to win. My all-time favorite Modern (and now Pioneer) spell, Collected Company, is used to assemble the combo at instant speed or as a combat trick. As a rule, “CoCo” decks as they’re affectionally called depend on a critical mass of creatures with CMC 3 or less, which Tayam also appears to have an affinity for.
So, for the love of all cheap creatures out there, we’re going to bring Abzan Company to EDH. Buckle up.
The General
Tayam, Luminous Enigma is for a 3/3 Legendary Nightmare Beast (love the creature type and that art is amazing) with the ability to give every creature that enters the battlefield under your control a “vigilance counter” (essentially giving them all vigilance but it’s removable). You can pay and remove three counters of any kind from amongst your creatures to mill yourself 3 cards and put any permanent in your graveyard with CMC 3 or less directly onto the battlefield.
I’m not sure why Tayam is obsessed with the number 3 but costs 4 mana, but this commander is absolutely nuts. First, I’ll dissect all of the implications of his mechanics as I do with all of my primers.
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Having all of your creatures enter the battlefield with vigilance when he’s in play is excellent in a multiplayer game. If an opponent is wide open you get free attacks without forfeiting blockers. Chipping away with damage in this fashion is classic in weenie strategies.
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Interacting with counters is classic Abzan, but the ability to interact with any kind of counter on your creatures opens you up to so many possibilities. Remove -1/-1 counters, bounty counters or any other kind of not-so-good counters put on your creatures by opponents trying to clear the board or play politics. Proliferate the counters you like!
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Tayam’s ability requires colorless mana and does not require him to tap. If you have a way to infinitely apply counters to your creatures and generate infinite mana, you can theoretically use Tayam’s ability to mill yourself and put a fat chunk of your library into play.
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Notice that Tayam’s first ability does not say “nontoken creatures”. You could fill your deck with token generators to put more bodies on the field, thereby giving you more vigilance counters to use to pay for that second ability.
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Notice that Tayam’s second ability says “permanent card” with converted mana cost 3 or less. Not “nonland permanent”, not “creature”, just permanent. If build right, you can put your whole deck back into play including artifacts, enchantments, planeswalkers, and even lands. That is absurdly powerful.
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At 4 CMC, Tayam has an ideal casting cost for a commander. He is cheap enough that casting him a few more times in a game isn’t painful and very much worth it.
So, given all of the above, you can see how he appeals to me as an “Abzan Company” card for Commander. So, how are we going to make that happen?
Deck Strategy and Playstyle
One of my life mottos, which actually applies pretty well to Magic, is “restrictions and limits breed creativity”. Ikoria’s Companion mechanic taps into that, but as Tayam does not have that keyword, we’ll emulate it as best we can. Here are my rules for building this Tayam Company deck:
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All permanents, except for Tayam, are to be CMC 3 or less.
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Noncreature spells that are essential to making a good commander deck don’t have to be CMC 3 or less, but they need to be as close to 3 as possible, preferably no more expensive than 4. We’re running a crazy-low curve here.
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Include as many of the cards you’d find in a Modern Abzan Company deck as possible, as long they’re actually good in Commander.
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The deck must play Collected Company. Other similar effects like Summoning Trap are also welcome.
Collected Company decks can also bear some resemblance to a lot of Death and Taxes strategies in Modern and Legacy with their low curves and colors, so this deck should have some “Hatebears” flavor. If we can’t put giant creatures on the board, we should play oppressive creatures instead. One thing I’m noticing as I put this deck together under these mandates is that it could get quite expensive. Low CMC creatures with these types of effects are in high demand in competitive constructed formats….
The goal of this deck will be to accumulate a board state of hatebears, impactful small creatures and enchantments to keep our opponents from getting too far ahead, and then either Overrun our opponents literally or assemble a combo and win on the spot with infinite mana, damage and life. Tayam’s ability makes our strategy quite resilient, and because our curve is so low we almost never get mana-screwed. With cards not devoted to that game plan, the emphasis has to be on card draw or else we will find ourselves in topdeck mode quickly.
Card Types and Categories
1. Melira Combo and Devoted Druid package: In the olden days of CoCo, the win condition of choice was putting
Melira, Sylvok Outcast together with creatures that have persist and using a sacrifice outlet to get infinite scries and life drain. So for this deck we will include her alongside her most impactful playmates:
Kitchen Finks,
Viscera Seer,
Carrion Feeder,
Zulaport Cutthroat,
Blood Artist,
Cruel Celebrant, and the brand-new
Bastion of Remembrance.
Lesser Masticore is a creature from Modern Horizons with Persist that also serves as a good mana sink to wipe the board of enemy creatures.
Devoted Druid partners with
Vizier of Remedies for infinite mana, and when
Quillspike attacks it can be made infinitely large with the help of the Druid. The +1/+1 counters floating around in the deck can also reset the persist creatures and Devoted Druid if Melira or the Vizier are not in play. Once you have infinite mana you can sink it into Lesser Masticore to wipe the board, or into your commander Tayam to start milling yourself, or into
Duskwatch Recruiter
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Vivien's Grizzly to win on the spot by digging to find
Rhonas the Indomitable or
Walking Ballista. If you have
Altar of the Brood in play, the infinite ETBs generated by combos of this nature will mill your opponents’ libraries.
- Triumph of the Hordes and Proliferate: If we’re going really wide in green with creatures, this is a must-include. Even if we don’t immediately get lethal infect on all opponents in one swing, all we need is just one poison counter on each player. From there we can proliferate them to death with Karn's Bastion, Contagion Clasp, Grateful Apparition and Evolution Sage.
1.Mana dorks: We are a go-wide weenie/hatebear deck with a low mana curve and cheap, revivable permanents, so one ramp style of choice should be Elf mana dorks with at least 1 power. They can accelerate us in the early game and attack in the mid to late game when we’ve drawn enough lands. We have artifact hate in the deck, so we don’t want a “nonbo” with mana rocks. Llanowar Elves and its functional clones that are CMC 2 or less will do fine. Skull Prophet is an excellent new inclusion that ramps our commander on curve and can also tap to mill us, pulling double duty.
2.“Dork Anthems”: Cryptolith Rite turns all of our creatures into Llanowar Elves, giving them the ability to tap for green. Rishkar, Peema Renegade does the same for all creatures with any type of counter on them. Growing Rites of Itlimoc
is a budget knock-off of Gaea’s Cradle, equally powerful and can dig for a creature on ETB.
3.Filtering: Prismite is a cheap utility creature that can take the piling mounds of green mana this deck can generate and filter it into white or black if we need it. Not very good if our artifact hate is in play, though.
4.Land-fetchers: We have access to some classic cheap creatures that pull lands from our deck and put them into play, and with our commander we can get them back. Wood Elves, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Farhaven Elf are commander mainstays for a reason.
5.Never Miss a Drop: In case our commander mills lands into the grave, we can use Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator and Life from the Loam to get them back. These are not ramp cards per se, but useful with the lands we have that can sacrifice themselves after we curve out.
6.Altars and Token Generators: In order to combo off with our commander (milling and summoning 3-drops infinitely), we need to be able to continuously generate mana to pay for his ability. The best way to do so are with the free altars Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar, both also eligible reanimation targets. We pair the altars with cheap creatures that bring multiple token friends along, as the tokens mean more bodies with counters and mana from sacrificing them. The best sac targets in the deck that will allow you to go off with the right setup are Dripping-Tongue Zubera, Hallowed Spiritkeeper, and Weaponcraft Enthusiast. The unique ability of Priest of Gix also goes infinite in this setup. Grismold, the Dreadsower and Teysa, Orzhov Scion do not go infinite by themselves with an altar and Tayam, but they can extend combos greatly, giving you a stream of bodies and counters.
Hatebears will not make up the bulk of your deck. The spaces left in the deck that are not devoted to the core win-condition cards, sac outlets, ramp, targeted removal, and card draw are flex slots that can be filled by whatever hate bears best suit your play group.
1.Artifacts: Collector Ouphe, Manglehorn.
2.Graveyard: Tymaret, Chosen from Death, Scavenging Ooze, Remorseful Cleric.
3.Boardwipe Resistance: Selfless Spirit
4.Countermagic: Prowling Serpopard, Destiny Spinner, Gaea's Herald
5.Counters: Blightbeetle
6.Unconventional Battlefield Entry: Drannith Magistrate
7.Noncreature Spells / Big Spells: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Gaddock Teeg
8.Activated Abilities: Grand Abolisher
9.Lands Matter Decks: Tomik, Distinguished Advokist
10.Tutoring: Leonin Arbiter, Aven Mindcensor
11.Edict Effects: Tajuru Preserver
12.Playing Creatures: Suture Priest, Thalia, Heretic Cathar
I hope you enjoyed my casual primer for Tayam, Luminous Enigma! Tayam to sleeve this bad boy up.
