Selvala You Got Some Splorin To Do

Commander / EDH* Competitive Elves GW (Selesnya) Infinite Combo Stax Toolbox

Ghawn

Creature (30)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Containment Priest
• 1x Destiny Spinner
• 1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Elvish Spirit Guide
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Gaddock Teeg
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Karametra's Acolyte
• 1x Kataki, War's Wage
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Phyrexian Revoker
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Quirion Ranger
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Scryb Ranger
• 1x Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1x Stoneforge Mystic
• 1x Temur Sabertooth
• 1x Walking Ballista
• 1x Wirewood Symbiote
• 1x Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Natural Order

Land (28)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bountiful Promenade
• 1x Brushland
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Deserted Temple
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Savannah
• 5x Snow-Covered Forest
• 4x Snow-Covered Plains
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wirewood Lodge
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Instant (13)

• 1x Angel's Grace
• 1x Argivian Find
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Natural State
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Silence
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Commander (1)

Artifact (15)

• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Static Orb
• 1x Thorn of Amethyst
• 1x Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1x Trinisphere
• 1x Umbral Mantle
• 1x Winter Orb

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Conclave Tribunal
• 1x Concordant Crossroads
• 1x Deafening Silence
• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Rule of Law
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Sylvan Library

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Maybeboard

Creature (3)

• 1x Dryad Militant
• 1x Fairgrounds Warden
• 1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Wheel of Sun and Moon

Instant (1)

• 1x Spidery Grasp

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PRIMER IN PROGRESS

Tired of playing magic where everyone gets to have a good time? Do you enjoy the look on your opponents faces when they can't cast spells to interact with your board when you are comboing off thanks to Grand Abolisher and Thorn of Amethyst? Does the sound of your opponents going "ugghhh" when they realize you are about to make infinite mana and make them deck themselves without even playing mill excite you? Then Selvala, Explorer Returned might be the deck for you. This deck is designed to play a stax based strategy with lots of resource denial and ways to abuse your generals capabilities of generating a massive amount of mana/card draw to push ahead on board while creating a weird game state that doesn't exactly break parity with Selvala but allows you to grow your boardstate with pieces that will indeed only benefit you and hinder everyone else. However we also have the additional ablity to be a a very fast combo deck that while using the power of taxation to make our opponents combos more miserable to pull off, make counterspells difficult to cast, and allow us to establish a board state and play over top of the cards hindering our opponents it also allows for us to be very versatile and adapt to the boards no matter who we are playing against. I like to consider this deck Birthing Pod Stax/Adaptive Combo based upon the multitude of lines you can go through to find a win. Primarily though this deck feeds off a strict lockdown strategy using Selvala to help break parity on the mana denial and quickly establish a prominent boardstate that overpowers the enemies and cripples your opponents using the additional card draw to keep applying pressure and hopefully in time making them incapable of actually playing.

Introduction

To start us off let us go into what this deck is since from a first glance people are confused as to what is actually going on. This deck is a Birthing Pod Stax deck. So what exactly does this mean? Well the main lines of this deck is to use pod to find the pieces to get our combo online and win early. Pod is not NEEDED to win but it allows us a free line to go unintterupted if we play our cards right and keep protection on (careful out there first timers). Birthing Pod allows us to find a Grand Abolisher the turn we go to combo out by saccing a dork to it. This deck however always plays differently regardless of what the original line of play is. We can play a very fast combo strategy that explodes into early wins with little to no effort if unintterupted or we can grind the game out for a long time and usually win off getting our opponents stuck in a position they cannot get out of. Now that you have a little insight into the deck let us go into what our objectives are and how we get there.

How do we win with this deck?

As I stated in the Introduction this deck really doesn't play the same. However our ideal play is sticking a T2 Selvala most of the time but the important thing to remember is you may need her to win (most of the time as we win via "forcefeed".) yet you don't have to even play her at all if you have enough dudes on board when you go to combo off. The main combos are the "Dork that produces at least 4 mana" + Umbral Mantle then with G/W Selvala we activate her ability several times to put most of our deck in our hand (try to make sure you choose a resonable number otherwise you will die by this). After you have your deck in your hand you cast an Angel's Grace and use the mantle + Selvala, Explorer Returned until your opponents deck themselves out thus having them die to state based actions while you yourself do not.

Stax and Tax the Competition

So with a bunch of fast combo decks that can win T1-T3 we have to have some sort of reasonable answers to handle them. We are not in the strongest colors so we have to make use of what G/W does best. So we play EVERY good hatebear that we can that will not hurt us too much. Gaddock Teeg is incredible against ad nauseum. WhileEidolon of Rhetoric or Ethersworn Canonist are super strong against Storm or other combo oriented decks that need to cast a bunch of spells in 1 turn to really go off. Aven Mindcensor slaps decks that rely heavily on black to tutor up their wincons while also just generally hurting people who need to use fetches to maintain a consistent manabase or are lead by Yisan, the Wanderer Bard making their ability to find the pieces to combo off incredibly difficult. We also have a nice little tax package that also allows me to play 1 of my favorite cards in all of mtg which is Trinisphere. Trinisphere is the end all be all tax card. If your spell costs less than 3 then BAM it hurts like hell and if you stick it turn 1 the card is nuts. Other cards to do some taxation is Thorn of Amethyst or the best of them all against a lot of decks that rely on fast artifact mana(so most of the cEDH community) is Kataki, War's Wage this card can just end someones good day, shut them off, make them lose important pieces, ruin mana that is important to have on that turn and the card just generally hurts like hell if it stays on board. We play a lot of artifacts so people may wonder why it is even around but the thing is we can make enough mana to justify it and when we are on the slow game plan we don't wanna play a lot of rocks except on the important turns.

Cards to Add

Mentor of the Meek

Date added	7 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 44 - 0 Rares 27 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.96
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Treasure
Folders	Other people's decks, EDH, Optimize current decks, Decks I like, Future Decks, funny decks, Comp, saved decks, inspiration, Casual edh