Derevi, Token Tactician

Commander / EDH*

Zyphyx

Land (29)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Canopy Vista
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 3x Forest
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 3x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 3x Plains
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Windswept Heath

Draw (6)

• 1x Beck / Call
• 1x Champion of Wits
• 1x Coiling Oracle
• 1x Elvish Visionary
• 1x Mulldrifter
• 1x Skullclamp

Other (5)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Reveillark

WinCondition (3)

• 1x Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1x Helix Pinnacle
• 1x Throne of the God-Pharaoh

Ramp (13)

• 1x As Foretold
• 1x Awakening Zone
• 1x Emerald Medallion
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Primal Growth
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sunscape Familiar
• 1x Talisman of Progress
• 1x Talisman of Unity
• 1x Wild Growth
• 1x Wood Elves

Combo (11)

• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Body Double
• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Eldrazi Displacer
• 1x Felidar Guardian
• 1x Flash
• 1x Karmic Guide
• 1x Peregrine Drake
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Saffi Eriksdotter
• 1x Sidisi's Faithful

Tokens (6)

• 1x Angel of Invention
• 1x Avenger of Zendikar
• 1x Deranged Hermit
• 1x Sprout Swarm
• 1x Squirrel Nest
• 1x Thelonite Hermit

Recursion (4)

• 1x Dusk / Dawn
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Open the Vaults

Commander (1)

Tutor (12)

• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Idyllic Tutor
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Tooth and Nail
• 1x Trophy Mage
• 1x Wargate

Disruption (6)

• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Combo2 (4)

• 1x Earthcraft
• 1x Intruder Alarm
• 1x Midnight Guard
• 1x Presence of Gond

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Maybeboard

Other (5)

• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Ghalta, Primal Hunger
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Tormod's Crypt

Tutor (2)

• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Mystical Tutor

Ramp (4)

• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Cryptolith Rite

Disruption (1)

• 1x Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Draw (3)

• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sylvan Library

Recursion (1)

• 1x Bow of Nylea

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Why should I bother playing this deck?

Do you like to chump block all your opponents' fatties with nothing but little squirrels, plants, and saprolings? Do you like to swing at your opponents with nothing but little squirrels, plants, and saprolings? If so, this is the deck for you.

Why tokens and not stax?

Ever since my cousin told me about it, I've always loved the idea of generating infinite squirrels with the infamous Squirrelcraft combo. What's not to like about squirrels?

But seriously, why not stax?

Stax is just not my style. I opted for a more aggressive approach to Derevi rather than a control-oriented deck.

Combos

Flash Hulk (requires at least )

• Flash brings out Protean Hulk, but we don't pay the remaining cost because we want Hulk's trigger to go off. The first trigger tutors Karmic Guide and Sidisi's Faithful. Karmic Guide reanimates Hulk which then gets sacrificed to Faithful's exploit trigger and bounces itself.

• Hulk tutors for Saffi Eriksdotter and Felidar Guardian this time. Guardian flickers Karmic Guide reanimating Hulk again. Now we sac Saffi targeting Hulk and recasting Faithful to sac Hulk again and reanimating Hulk with Saffi's ability.

• Hulk tutors for Deadeye Navigator now. We recast Faithful yet again to sac Hulk and bounce itself and tutor for Peregrine Drake to soulbond with Deadeye Navigator.

Birthing Pod

• Two particular Birthing Pod lines exist for this deck, both of which require a lot of mana, but can be done over the course of a few turns.

1.

• Pod Derevi

• Tutor Felidar Guardian, flicker Pod, Pod Guardian

• Tutor Karmic Guide, reanimate Guardian, flicker Guide, reanimate Derevi, untap Pod, Pod Guide

• Tutor Deadeye Navigator, soulbond with Derevi, flicker Derevi, untap Pod, Pod Guardian

• Tutor Peregrine Drake, soulbond with Deadeye Navigator, flicker repeatedly for infinite mana

2.

• Pod Eldrazi Displacer

• Tutor Felidar Guardian, flicker Pod, Pod Guardian

• Tutor Karmic Guide, reanimate Displacer, flicker Guide with Displacer, reanimate Guardian, flicker Pod, Pod Guardian again

• Tutor Peregrine Drake, flicker Drake with Displacer to generate infinite mana

Infinite Tokens

• Earthcraft + Squirrel Nest enchanted on a basic land
• Squirrel Nest enchanted on Dryad Arbor + Intruder Alarm
• Midnight Guard + Presence of Gond
• Intruder Alarm + Sprout Swarm + 4 or more creatures on board

Infinite Mana

• Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake
• Arbor Elf + Squirrel Nest enchanted on a forest + Intruder Alarm
• Angel of Invention/Avenger of Zendikar/Deranged Hermit + Nim Deathmantle + Ashnod's Altar
• Earthcraft + Squirrel Nest + Midnight Guard
• Karmic Guide + Reveillark + Ashnod's Altar
• Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal + mana dorks/rocks making more than 2 mana

What do I do when I have infinite mana?

• Assuming you used an infinite token generator to get there, you can use Beck to draw out your deck and find your win conditions. Sometimes you don't even need infinite mana to get here, because Beck will draw you into all the cards that generate you mana.

• With Deadeye Navigator, you can flicker all of your etb triggers and fool around. The sky's the limit with this guy.

• Using the Karmic Guide/Reveillark method, you can repeatedly reanimate anything in your grave with power 2 or less (which is a pretty large amount of our deck).

• With an etb token generator effect like Avenger, or Deranged Hermit, you can make more tokens than you're sacrificing resulting in a large amount of them. Turn them sideways towards people.

Win Conditions

• Craterhoof Behemoth - This thing explains itself.

• Throne of the God-Pharaoh - Turn all your creatures sideways with Earthcraft and blow your opponents out of the water.

• Helix Pinnacle - Says it on the card.

• Pairing Derevi and Deadeye Navigator with infinite mana lets you tap down everything your opponents control. While not a direct win condition, they'll probably scoop if you refuse to advance the game state. Not the most fun way to lose, but it works.

Card Considerations

• Beck vs Glimpse of Nature - Glimpse only draws on cast, not when the creature etbs. So even though it seems like I'm playing a subpar card, it's because of this technicality. Not to mention that given enough mana, I can also draw 4 from the birds that I make with the Call half.

• Thelonite Hermit - Why this card? It doesn't even make tokens when it etbs! - That's because it's included as a tempo play, to give us a start on generating tokens. If you have no tokens on the board, then you're doing something wrong with the deck.

• Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, and Sylvan Library - I'm still testing whether or not these need to be included or not. For now, Coiling Oracle and Elvish Visionary are in because I also need bodies on board to fuel things like Earthcraft.

• Awakening Zone and Cryptolith Rite - I'm also still testing whether these deserve a slot in the deck. Lots of kinks still need to be ironed out in this deck.

• Bow of Nylea - This was in an older iteration of the deck as a means to recycle my graveyard when Eternal Witness got removed, or to provide win condition through untapping it repeatedly with Derevi and stacking +1/+1 counters on creatures to win. It's also a 3 cmc enchantment artifact, so it can be tutored with many different cards in the deck.

• Why aren't you using (insert expensive card here)? Sometimes we can't have nice things. If you see expensive stuff in the deck, it's because it's somewhat necessary and I also own proxies of a few of these cards.

Afterthoughts

All in all, this has shaped out to be an extremely fun deck to brew and refine. At first it was two separate decks actually. The first one was helmed by Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker and Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa as a token heavy deck. Nothing special besides the Squirrelcraft combo. The second one was an almost complete netdeck of the deck found here by DarknutNoir.

One thing that I really enjoy about this deck is that some of the combos are modular and as such can function if certain pieces are missing or have been previously removed. So unlike a lot of combo decks that I've seen, one missing piece won't make the entire deck fall apart. So that's it, hope you enjoyed playing the deck if you built it, and if you read all the way through, thanks for the taking the time to do so!

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 0 Mythic Rares 50 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 18 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.06
Tokens	Bird 1/1 W, Bird 2/2 U, Champion of Wits 4/4 B, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Elf Warrior 1/1 G, Morph 2/2 C, Plant 0/1 G, Saproling 1/1 G, Servo 1/1 C, Spirit 1/1 C, Squirrel 1/1 G