Taigam Likes Basketball

Commander / EDH Protection Spellslinger Turns WU (Azorius)

klaudiohmm

Instant (36)

• 1x Apostle's Blessing
• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cryptic Command *list*
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Echoing Truth
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Gods Willing
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Mission Briefing
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Negate
• 1x Nexus of Fate *list*
• 1x Opt
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Peer Through Depths
• 1x Rapid Hybridization
• 1x Remand
• 1x Scout's Warning
• 1x Sejiri Shelter  ^Flip
• 1x Shadow Rift
• 1x Shelter
• 1x Silundi Vision  ^Flip
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Telling Time
• 1x Valorous Stance
• 1x Whir of Invention

Land (30)

• 1x Adarkar Wastes
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Azorius Chancery
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Hengegate Pathway  ^Flip
• 5x Island
• 1x Lonely Sandbar
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 4x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Riptide Laboratory
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Secluded Steppe
• 1x Skycloud Expanse
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Temple of Enlightenment
• 1x Windswept Heath

Artifact (11)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Primal Amulet  ^Flip
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Thought Vessel

Commander (1)

Sorcery (13)

• 1x Call to Mind
• 1x Emeria's Call  ^Flip
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Said / Done
• 1x Solve the Equation
• 1x Supreme Verdict
• 1x Temporal Manipulation
• 1x Temporal Mastery
• 1x Time Warp
• 1x Treasure Cruise
• 1x Wrath of God

Creature (6)

• 1x Baral, Chief of Compliance
• 1x Dragonlord Ojutai
• 1x God-Eternal Kefnet
• 1x Monastery Mentor
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Spellseeker

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Search for Azcanta  ^Flip

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Teferi, Time Raveler

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Maybeboard

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Relearn
• 1x Rise from the Tides
• 1x See the Truth
• 1x Walk the Aeons

Instant (3)

• 1x Consider
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Force of Negation

Creature (1)

• 1x Azor, the Lawbringer

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Narset Transcendent

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Taigam EDH deck, cast a lot of spells and gain swarming tokens w/ Monastery Mentor, Aetherflux Reservoiring opponents or just attacking with Taigam and Dragonlord Ojutai himself with infinite extra turns.

Deckbuilding choices

Creatures

We only use five creatures. They are:

• Baral, Chief of Compliance reduces the cost of our instants and sorceries and has a loot effect when we counter spells.

• Dragonlord Ojutai is related with Taigam through the lore of the game, but it is a powerful creature with a good card draw effect and protects itself when untapped. This deck wins through combate damage and it's also a good beater.

• God-Eternal Kefnet has an ability that synergizes very well with all of our instants and sorceries. It is a great way of increasing the value of our taking turns spells.

• Monastery Mentor creates a lot of tokens, which can be used to aggresively win the game through combate damage if needed.

• Snapcaster Mage lets us reuse our spells and is a Wizard, so it can be bounced back with Riptide Laboratory.

• Spellseeker tutors any instant or sorcery with mana value 2 or less and this deck uses a LOT of cheap spells for Rebound value.

Artifacts

We use these artifacts:

• Cheap mana rocks like Mana Crypt or Sol Ring to cast Taigam on turn two.

• Mana rocks with mana value 2 like Arcane Signet and Azorius Signet to cast Taigam on turn three.

• Isochron Scepter lets us cast an instant many times on the game. This deck doesn't use Dramatic Reversal for the famous Dramatic Scepter combo because it doesn't have a way to consistently use infinite mana to win the game, instead going for a taking turns strategy.

• Primal Amulet   easily transforms with this deck and copy a taking turn spell is a very powerful way to enable our game winning plans.

• Sensei's Divining Top manipulates the top of our library so we can choose what to draw. If the top cards of our deck aren't that good, we can use a fetch land or a tutor to shuffle it.

• Swiftfoot Boots protects our attackers Taigam and his dragonlord, Ojutai.

Enchantments

We only use two enchantments. They are:

• Rhystic Study for tax opponents when they cast spells. Everyone that played against it knows that it can draw a lot of cards for us. It's also a way of drawing cards that doesn't depend on Taigam for work well.

• Search for Azcanta   provides us card selection, can become a land and its ability is great to dig for answers if needed.

Instants and sorceries

They're divided in these categories:

• Spells that protects Taigam from removal. They're very essential for our gameplan that heavily relies on Taigam attacking. We use spells of that kind that ideally have another benefit besides protecting it (e.g. Apostle's Blessing also protects our artifacts, Gods Willing also scry, Shelter also draws a card and Sejiri Shelter   is also a land if needed, Valorous Stance destroys threats).

• Spells that counters another spells. They help us deal with threats and is another way of protecting Taigam. I tried to include in this deck counterspells that can do other things if needed (e.g. Cryptic Command has a lot of modes that can be used in basically any moment, Mystic Confluence also fits this criteria, Supreme Will can be used to dig our deck for answers or threats).

• Cantrips. These spells often provides us some card selection, but when rebounded they are, indeed, card advantage spells. We use both instants and sorceries for this task (e.g. Ponder to shuffle, Preordain to select and put unwanted cards on bottom, Brainstorm with a tutor to shuffle bad cards, Impulse lets us look deeper in our library for the cards we need).

• Evasion. We're using some cards to provide Taigam any form of evasion. Here, we can include our "protection from color" spells and evasion spells indeed, like Shadow Rift.

• Taking turns. We use spells that lets us take extra turns. They're essential for us to repeatedly attack with Taigam, generate value and put us way ahead of our opponents. I'm using taking turn spells that doesn't exile themselves, so we can recur to them again with Call to Mind-esque spells. The exception for this is Temporal Mastery, that can easily be a copy of somewhat like a Time Walk inside this deck.

• Removal. We must have ways to deal with our opponents' threats. For this, we use Rapid Hybridization, Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares to deal with creatures, Echoing Truth to bounce permanents, Generous Gift to destroy basically everything and wipes like Cyclonic Rift and Wrath of God.

• Tutors. We use Mystical Tutor to pick an instant or sorcery, Enlightened Tutor to get artifacts or enchantments, Muddle the Mixture to get a vast amount of possible spells, Whir of Invention has some value even with rebounded (we can grab Mana Crypt).

Gameplay strategies

Cast Taigam and protect it

This deck heavily relies on Taigam for work in ideal circumstances. We will use cheap mana rocks (up to mana value of 2) to cast Taigam as soon as possible. But it is also important to protect it, because we will often using an entire turn just casting it. Cards like counterspells and "protection from" fits this role. If we feel that our opponents will deal with Taigam if we cast it, maybe we should cast Taigam a little later, when we have the mana to cast it and to protect it.

Taking turns

We can taking turns easily with these strategies:

Mystical Tutor + Temporal Mastery to take one extra turn for just 2 (max. 3) mana.

Play extra turn spells with Taigam's rebound to play two extra turns. Generally, in the first extra turn, the player have more freedom about what spells to cast (e.g. play draw spells). In the second extra turn, the player can try to cast another extra turn spell to maintain this strategy. For this, I'm using taking turns spells that doesn't exile themselves when they resolves.

This deck can also play infinite turns. For this, we need Relearn, Call to Mind and Time Warp or Walk the Aeons.

• 1) First, attack with Taigam. In the postcombat main phase, cast Time Warp for an extra turn.

• 2) On the first extra turn, cast Time Warp via rebound and get another turn. Attack with Taigam and cast Relearn, targeting Time Warp.

• 3) On the second extra turn, cast Relearn via rebound targeting any Instant and Sorcery in the graveyard, attack with Taigam, cast Time Warp.

• 4) On the third extra turn, cast Time Warp via rebound and get another turn. Attack with Taigam and cast Call to Mind targeting Time Warp.

• 5) On the fourth extra turn, cast Call to Mind via rebound, targeting Relearn. Attack with Taigam and cast Time Warp.

• 6) Rinse and repeat.

This deck can stack infinite turns with an Isochron Scepter with Narset's Reversal imprinted and any extra turn spell. This deck doesn't have the Dramatic Scepter combo because it uses few mana rocks and doesn't have much to do with infinite mana, but this deck have a lot of instant cards with converted mana cost 2 or less. We can even imprint anything on Scepter, bounce it back afterwards with Echoing Truth, recast it imprinting another instant.

We can also imprint Mystical Tutor to Isochron Scepter and, if we have the mana for it, always tutor and cast Nexus of Fate, causing us to take infinite turns.

I guess I will include Scroll Rack to perform the infinite turns loop with it and God-Eternal Kefnet. Scroll Rack is a powerful artifact per se, so I think that's good to give it a shot.

Win conditions

With infinite turns (maybe a lot of extra turns is enough), we can basically beat our opponents out of the game with Taigam, maybe with Dragonlord Ojutai and Monastery Mentor. If we don't win the game ths way, we will be way ahead of our opponents.

We can use Aetherflux Reservoir as an alternative win con to defeat our opponents. With cheap spells and rebound, it isn't that difficult to gain a lot of life enough to fire Aetherflux on our opponents' faces.

Small synergies

We can perform these synergies to obtain small advantages on the game

• Mystic Sanctuary to put a taking turn spell on the top of our library. Combined with Taigam's attacks, we can take a lot of extra turns this way.

• Riptide Laboratory to bounce back Snapcaster Mage or Spellseeker to our hand to cast them later and reuse/tutor another spell.

• Mission Briefing bypasses spot graveyard hate because it doesn't target a card, instead, we choose an instant or sorcery card.

• After we crack our fetches, we don't need them anymore. We can use these cards to fuel Delve spells like Treasure Cruise.

• We can use Scout's Warning with Taigam to cast it with flash, decreasing the chances of it from being removed.

• We can use Shadow Rift to give shadow to an opponent's creature, making it unable to block Taigam.

• Sensei's Divining Top reorganizes the top cards of our library. If we don't like them, we can crack a fetch or use a tutor to shuffle it, so we can reorganize again for only one mana.

Top Ranked	Achieved #26 position overall 3 years ago Achieved #17 position in Commander / EDH 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Protection 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Turns 3 years ago
Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 38 - 0 Rares 25 - 0 Uncommons 19 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.76
Tokens	Angel Warrior 4/4 W, Bird 2/2 U, Elephant 3/3 G, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Monk 1/1 W