This deck was designed as an homage to my favorite deck to play in legacy: Lands. The deck plays out in a similar way, where you will spend a majority of the early game controlling your opponents by taxing or denying them mana, eventually winning through a slow burn through attrition or with a combo finish out of nowhere.
Overview:
The primary gameplan is to ramp out Klothys on turn two and use her to ramp into a land destruction spell of some kind(Jokulhaups, Obliterate, Ruination). When combined with artifact removal or an effect stopping them from activating abilities (such as Null Rod or Collector Ouphe), this shuts off a majority if not all of our opponent's mana. From this point we break parity using Klothys's ability to give us mana, and can rebuild quickly due to many mana dorks and effects that recur lands from the graveyard (Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator). One thing that can not be understated here is the incidental graveyard hate that Klothys provides. It's only able to be activated once during our precombat main phase, but I've found that this is usually enough to slow down or completely stop graveyard centric decks that a second graveyard hate effect (such as Scavening Ooze) is unnecessary. When selecting targets for her ability, prioritize opponents that are playing Past in Flames, Snapcaster Mage, Mission Briefing, Yawgmoth's Will, Underworld Breach(this one in particular gets hurt the most by it), and also target decks that gain extra value from their graveyards, such as Kess or Gitrog.
Combo Lines:
If a mass land destruction spell can't be found, we can also lock out opponents by playing Strip Mine, Wasteland, or Ghost Quarter in conjunction with one of the aforementioned graveyard recursion methods. These lands work particularly well with effects that provide additional land drops, such as azusa or Exploration, and can work to adequately lock our opponents out from casting spells that cast 2 or more.
The main combo win condition is to have a Conspicuous Snoop + Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
on top of the library, along with a Goblin Recruiter or another top of the library tutor such as Worldly Tutor. We can also use Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Zealous Conscripts
. Dockside Extortionist + Temur Sabertooth
can also generate infinite mana, which can then be used with Duskwatch Recruiter
to find the Kiki combo.
One thing to keep in mind as you're piloting this deck is that it is rarely correct to try to jam the combo as soon as possible. When everyone has spent their resources denying each other from winning the game, that is where our deck truly excels. Our commander is incredibly resistant to removal(for the most part, only enchantment exile will hit her), and the value and the clock that she provides are very real.
The final thing that I will touch on in this primer is to make sure you keep track of your devotion. For the most part, you will not want to make Klothys a creature, as that will leave her more vulnerable. There are situations however, where her second 'hidden' mode can come in handy to push through the last remaining points of damage.
Matchups:
The best matchups for this deck are those that play greedy. Four and five color decks with not very many basics fold easily to us attacking their mana. The only caveat to this is decks that also play an exuberant amount of mana dorks. Decks like this will often have an easier time breaking out of a mana denial lock unless we cast Jokulhaups or Obliterate.
Some more difficult decks to play against include other decks that run blood moon or other stax decks. These decks often are built to be less effected by our stax or mana denial effects and can often break parity better than we can.
Closing Thoughts:
Overall, this deck provides a fresh take on the format and has been surprisingly resilient when matched up against a variety of other decks. So far in my testing I am 2-4, and I'm excited to see what further tuning can be done to cement this style of deck among the top decks of the format.
Updates:
4/20/20 - Out: Overmaster, Scavenging Ooze; In: Deflecting Swat, Wheel of Fortune.
Deflecting Swat accomplishes nearly everything that Overmaster does and more for less mana, at the cost of not cantripping. Fairly clear upgrade. Scavenging Ooze seemed underwhelming in my meta, and Klothys has enough incidental grave hate to justify not including it. Wheel of Fortune was initially not in the deck due to the anti-synergy with MLD spells, but the power and card draw sacrificed left me behind in too many games.
4/24/20 - Out: Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Llanowar Elves, Forgotten Cave, Tranquil Thicket, Birthing Pod; In: Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth, Arbor Elf, Forest, Chrome Mox, Imperial Recruiter.
After playing with the deck a little, it became clear that the deck was more vulnerable to small sweepers like Pyroclasm than I would like it to be. Cards like Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth avoid these effects and are more difficult for our opponents to remove. Arbor elf has more synergy with these cards, so we added a forest to more reliably be able to activate it, and a Chrome Mox and Mana Crypt to add some speed to the deck in place of the two tapped mono colored cycling lands and a basic Mountain. I also swapped Birthing Pod for Imperial Recruiter because Recruiter finds more of our combo. pieces and doesn't rely on having a pre-existing board state to do so.
4/26/20 - Out: Maze of Ith, Chandra, Awakened Inferno, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale; In: Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves.
The speed sacrificed by cutting the one mana dorks was not worth the insurance against pyroclasm. This deck needs to play Klothys on turn 2 to function properly, and a critical mass of one mana dorks is the best way to do that consitently. Hesitant to cut Tabernacle, because it works so well with targeted and mass land destruction, but cutting it for now because it hurts my dorks more than I expect it will hurt my opponents' creatures.
4/30/20 - Out: Sylvan Scrying, Winter Orb, Orcish Lumberjack, Field of the Dead; In: Survival of the Fittest, Treasonous Ogre, Decree of Annihilation, Fire-Lit Thicket.
Some pretty straightforward changes that I should have done earlier. Swapping Orc for Ogre because it allows for more consistent and explosive mana production, swapping Winter Orb for Decree as a mostly uncounterable way to wipe our opponent's lands that doesn't hit our mana dorks, and swapping Sylvan Scrying for Survival, because I missed that when I was first making the deck, and it helps find our combo pieces more than Sylvan does. Field of the Dead wasn't ever impactful enough the games I drew it and the deck could benefit from some additional mana fixing.
5/3/20 - Out: Rootbound Crag, Choke, Vandalblast; In: Mountain, Impending Disaster, Crop Rotation.
Testing out some different cards. Crag seems like it comes into play tapped often enough to warrant switching to a basic. Choke doesn't shut off non-Island blue sources like, and Impending Distaster seems like it could be good due to its cheap mana cost, despite it being delayed a turn. Vandalblast could be swapped out for Shattering Spree as a one for one replacement, but I think that the deck has enough artifact removal as is, and Crop Rotation adds enough utility to be worth including.
5/4/20 - Out: Comet Storm, Fauna Shaman, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Beast Within; In: Duskwatch Recruiter
, Eldritch Evolution, Courser of Kruphix, Noxious Revival.
After playing a couple more games and discussing card choices with opponents, Duskwatch Recruiter seems better than Comet Storm both as an infinite mana outlet and a value piece. Eldritch Evolution is faster than Fauna Shaman, and brings our combo pieces directly to the board. Courser doesn't provide additional land drops like Dryad does, but gives us some much needed card advantage. Testing Noxious Revival over Beast Within for now, but might swap back if it's too low impact.
6/29/20 - Out: Thorn of Amethyst, Wrenn and Six, Hyrax Tower Scout; In: Conspicuous Snoop, Mogg Fanatic, Goblin Recruiter.
The arrival of M21 brings with it a fun new gobbo combo that we can add to our deck. Because the deck already runs Kiki-Jiki, we can easily slot in the Snoop as a replacement that features more individually powerful cards. The combo is now also fully tutorable using a single creature tutor to get Goblin Recruiter, and all of the pieces are power 2 or less for Imperial Recruiter.
