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This is a "Bear Hug" themed deck I've been brewing. I'm thinking about a 'lands matter' subtheme with some recursion to make better use of Ayula's Influence , which opens up a literal storm of bears. Bearscape and Grizzly Fate are very flavorful obvious auto-inclusions that ended up inspiring me to take advantage of other cards like Crucible of Worlds and Endless Atlas , as well as other cards I see potential in with Ayula's Influence + Rites of Flourishing + Words of Wilding allowing me to opt not to draw dards and instead make 2 bears each turn. Other cards that end up giving me an incredible little combo with Ayula's Influence + Crucible of Worlds + Storm Cauldron which also lets me take advantage of Rites of Flourishing , Ghirapur Orrery and Horn of Greed triggering lots of draws to instead maybe dredge Life from the Loam or instead do Words of Wilding . Each part adds to Ayula's Influence and creates a fairly powerful engine to just... Make bears. A whole lot of bears. Which will most definitely trigger Ayula, Queen Among Bears a whole lot, letting me either keep the board relatively clear of opposing creatures by fighting them outside of combat or just make my bears bigger with +1/+1 counters. Storm Cauldron is what really does a lot of work here. That's all this will really do, and I have no idea if this will be viable or not. Anyways, please feel free to suggest anything you'd personally think would be worth including. Some of the older vanilla bears like Bear Cub and Golden Bear will be difficult to find, and others like Forest Bear are unnecessarily expensive and almost impossible to find purely because of their age or set they were printed in, so I've chosen not to include them. Others like River Bear and Pale Bears are good to have. Uh. Some cards contradict others like Muraganda Petroglyphs and Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma end up making my bear tokens lose the +2/+2 when they gain trample, and there's some curve issues with having a low mana curve and not enough card draw. Hibernation's End should help mitigate this as my only real tutor ability. Um. Choosing not to include Doubling Season or Parallel Lives because I'm using them in another deck, but Might end up including Primal Vigor to amplify the "Bear Hug" theme. I think this will be great, but pretty hit or miss.

tl;dr: get angRY, MAKE B E A R S

x sickfreed

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The biggest strengths this has are in the early game, where not going first can actually be beneficial. Turn three and on things like Birds of Paradise and various Elves end up getting mauled by Ayula herself when I drop 2 or 3 CMC bears, instead of putting counters on her. Then as long as I can keep going on a one-for-one basis I can beat down a player or two relatively quickly, but having to play my opponents more and get into their heads can be difficult as the turns go by...

After a few more turns and I become boardwipe bait, and inevitably someone will bite. When this happens there's not much I can do to get my bears back quickly other than recurring them back to my hand and casting them again, which can take a while. Usually they just tend to stay dead.

Mid-game tends to be a lull. I usually screw off trying to play around my own cards like Storm Cauldron when I don't have something cool to abuse it with. Things go wrong fast I end up just kind of sitting on my paws for a few turns, hoping to draw something good. It can get pretty rough just kind of waiting around, but that's just what ends up happening more often than not. Recycle helps in this part of the game greatly, mitigating the lack of things to do on each of my turns by giving me sweeter options to hopefully dig into.

Late-game however, The Great Aurora and Boundless Realms being cast in any order, one after the other usually gives me a lot of gas. Aurora is just a really good spell; say, float 12 mana and cast it, end up drawing like 20 cards off of it, play like 7 lands and then just kind of figure it out from there. If I can manage to get the right things at the right time, I usually have a fairly interesting series of plays.

The main problem though is not being able to get what I need, when I need it. There's good removal but it doesn't do me any good if I can't draw it. Can't have any fight triggers unless I have a bear to cast or a land to discard to Ayula's Influence to trigger it. I'm trying the best I can, but everything about this build so far seems to be fairly lackluster. The parts are all there for this to be great, but I can't seem to find the right cards to bring it over the top. More again later.

x sickfreed

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Date added 5 years
Last updated 5 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

4 - 0 Mythic Rares

26 - 0 Rares

17 - 0 Uncommons

23 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.46
Tokens Bear 2/2 G, Centaur 3/3 G
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