Four Color Hermit-Oracle Midrange

Canadian Highlander* Combo GWUB Midrange Toolbox

UncleHo

Creature (41)

• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Baleful Strix
• 1x Charming Prince
• 1x Coiling Oracle
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Fiend Artisan
• 1x Hermit Druid
• 1x Lion Sash
• 1x Satyr Wayfinder
• 1x Scavenging Ooze
• 1x Stoneforge Mystic
• 1x Sylvan Caryatid
• 1x Tarmogoyf
• 1x Thassa's Oracle
• 1x Callous Bloodmage
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Hullbreacher
• 1x Kitchen Finks
• 1x Knight of Autumn
• 1x Leovold, Emissary of Trest
• 1x Master of Death
• 1x Murderous Rider
• 1x Nimble Larcenist
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Plague Engineer
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Renegade Rallier
• 1x True-Name Nemesis
• 1x Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
• 1x Bramble Sovereign
• 1x Grief
• 1x Hostage Taker
• 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
• 1x Palace Jailer
• 1x Siege Rhino
• 1x Shriekmaw
• 1x Solitude
• 1x Spring-Leaf Avenger
• 1x The Scarab God

Land (38)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Deathcap Glade
• 1x Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Indatha Triome
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Karakas
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Overgrown Farmland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Scrubland
• 1x Shattered Sanctum
• 1x Spara's Headquarters
• 1x Sunken Ruins
• 1x Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Wasteland
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Woodland Cemetery
• 1x Zagoth Triome

Sorcery (9)

• 1x Prismatic Ending
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Neoform
• 1x Winding Way
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Lingering Souls
• 1x Sevinne's Reclamation
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Bring to Light

Instant (5)

• 1x March of Burgeoning Life
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Grapple with the Past

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Recurring Nightmare

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Liliana, the Last Hope
• 1x Garruk Relentless  ^Flip

Artifact (2)

• 1x Aether Vial
• 1x Umezawa's Jitte

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Overview:
This deck is a hybrid midrange-combo deck looking to leverage creature tutors and graveyard recursion to toolbox/grind with other midrange decks, while holding Hermit Druid + Thassa's Oracle in reserve to quickly close out games.

The Combo:
The druid presents a one turn threat to kill, as you activate hermit druid's ability, mill your entire library because you don't have any basics in your deck, then flashback Lingering Souls, flashback Dread Return sacrificing Hermit Druid and the tokens from lingering souls, returning Thassa's Oracle which wins the game off its ETB trigger as you have no cards in your deck. This combo can be quite powerful as it only requires you to have Hermit Druid in play, making it (as far as your resources in game is concerned) a one card combo. However, it is extremely vulnerable, as the druid needs to live for an entire turn in order to be able to tap (and it dies to literally every removal spell played in the format due to its one toughness and lack of protection), and you lose on the spot during the combo turn to removal spells, graveyard hate, counterspells, or even instant speed targeted draw spells.

The Midrange Gameplan:
In order to offset the vulnerabilities of the combo, this deck combines it with a resilient, grindy midrange gameplan designed to wear down resources and force your opponents to use up their interaction before you try to combo. This gameplan is heavily focused on abusing creatures with high-value enter the battlefield abilities (and being able to tutor up the most impactful ones), and powerful graveyard synergies.

Toolbox:
The deck runs a variety of ways to tutor up creatures from your library, either into your hand (with cards like Eladamri's Call or Survival of the Fittest) or directly into play (with cards like March of Burgeoning Life and Bring to Light). The deck uses this to fetch the best creature in the deck for your current situation, allowing it to be very versatile. These creatures fall into a variety of categories, with a few of the larger ones described below:

1. Removal: Creatures who have enter the battlefield abilities that allow them to deal with threats your opponents have in play, such as Shriekmaw, Palace Jailer, and Knight of Autumn.

2. Hand Attack: Creatures who can take cards from your opponents hand, like Grief and Sin Collector.

3. Graveyard Hate: Creatures who can disrupt your opponent's graveyard, preventing them from using it for their benefit, such as Scavenging Ooze, Lion Sash, or Anafenza, the Foremost.

4. Defense: Creatures who excel at stymieing aggressive decks, either with life gain, large stats, or both Kitchen Finks, Siege Rhino.

The tutors can also fetch Hermit-Druid to threaten the win next turn as described above if you think the cost is clear (or if you just need to try and close the game quickly).

As most of these creatures have a spell-like ability when they enter, then leave behind a body, this provides a baseline value package as these are all often two for ones. The deck also runs a variety of cards that can function as "engines" to grind out midrange and control decks, either by acquiring the monarch, repeatedly recurring creatures from the graveyard (through things like Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Recurring Nightmare), and/or by repeatedly converting the bodies left behind by your toolbox creatures into more value (like Prime Speaker Vannifar).

Graveyard:
As part of the deck's plan to use up resources that could disrupt the combo, the deck heavily leverages its graveyard to enact it's midrange gameplan, as it is both a highly efficient resource for accruing value, and it can force opponents to use up graveyard hate (which the combo is vulnerable to) too early, in many ways playing like "The Rock" in it's use of cards like Survival of the Fittest and Recurring Nightmare.

In addition to the creatures with graveyard synergy, the deck also runs a few spells that either set up or payoff a creature-dense graveyard. The set up generally serves as good card selection like Winding Way, while the pay off is reanimation like Sevinne's Reclamation.

Powerful Synergies or Interactions:
Survival of the Fittest / Fauna Shaman / Jace, Vryn's Prodigy   + Master of Death - Because of Master of Death's upkeep trigger, you can discard it to any of the cards above abilities to either tutor a creature or draw a card every turn. This can also be replicated (although with more steps) with Meren of Clan Nel Toth or Sword of Light and Shadow.

Eternal Witness + Neoform -> Meren of Clan Nel Toth - If combined with Eternal Witness, you can use E. Witness to rebuy neoform, which combined with Meren, allows you to tutor out a 4 drop creature into play every turn with +1/+1 counters on them.

Misc. Interesting Cards:
The spell-based card selection is supplemented by two drop creatures that draw/filter cards when the come into play like Baleful Strix and Voyaging Satyr, which help the deck in it's mulliganing, being able to keep about 2/3s of it's hands.

Summary:
Overall, the deck grinds well as a midrange deck like "The Rock" but helps overcome one of the weaknesses of that strategy (ie. lacking a way to finish games quickly once it has the upper hand or in trying to race combo decks) with the ability to pivot with a single tutor to it's own combo plan.

Points:
Demonic Tutor - 4
Survival of the Fittest - 2
Thassa's Oracle - 2
True-Name Nemesis - 1
Umezawa's Jitte - 1

Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Key combos	Hermit Druid + Thassa's Oracle
Card Score	5 / 10
Legality	This deck is Canadian Highlander legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 72 - 0 Rares 10 - 0 Uncommons 5 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.71
Tokens	Copy Clone, Emblem Liliana, the Last Hope, Experience Token, Human 2/2 G, On an Adventure, Pest 1/1 BG, Spirit 1/1 W, The Monarch, Treasure, Wolf 1/1 B, Wolf 2/2 G, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Canadian Highlander