When
Tana, the Bloodsower
was first spoiled, I immediately thought that she could make a pretty good Voltron commander. Eventually I decided to run with that idea, and this is what came of it. My goal for this deck is to make it as competitive as possible. This deck is mainly a 1v1 deck, but can hold it's own in a 4-player pod.
WHY TANA IS GOOD:
The classic weakness for Voltron commanders is they are wide open to retaliation attacks, especially in a 4-player pod. Tana solves this weakness by vomiting out tokens when she connects with a player, which is pretty easy to do with her with her built-in trample. Another positive is that she's quite cheap, at . This makes it so if she dies (which she's a big target like all Voltron commanders are) it's not back-breaking to get her back into play. Being in Gruul also means that you have a good amount of ways to give your creatures haste, which is quite important for explosive turns in this deck.
TANA'S WEAKNESSES:
A big problem with Tana is that Gruul doesn't have a whole lot of good ways to bring or cheat in artifacts, which is what I chose to be the main way to make her huge. You've just gotta hope that you draw all the tools you need in order to beat face. Tana also comes into play quite small, which can also be a bit of a problem if you can't find ways to make her indestructible or increase her toughness.
EQUIPMENT OVER AURAS:
I decided to go for more equipment over more auras because they don't just die with Tana if she gets blown up. Gruul has pretty limited options for getting enchantments back, and it's very well possible you'd rather get another card back over an aura. Plus red gives you
Goblin Welder
, which can swap out equipment or useless mana rocks for better equipment.
THE RAMP:
Ramp is obviously quite important in any Voltron deck. You want to get your commander out ASAP to start dealing some damage, and your deck is mostly useless without them out. The same is true for Tana, though she can still hold her own in the early turns. Lots of the ramp in here only costs around 2 or 3, while there are a couple of 4 ramp. An ideal opening hand usually has one of the 2 drop ramp spells in it, either being a
Rampant Growth
spell or a signet.
THE EQUIPMENT:
I tried to make most of the equipment in here pretty cheap, ranging from 1-3, the highest being
Batterskull
at 5, and
Hammer of Nazahn
at 4. Hammer of Nazahn is arguably the absolute best equipment you can get on Tana as it skyrockets her power, and makes her indestructible. It also has the great bonus of making all equip costs free, which is super important to dump out your hand.
Skullclamp
is also a super important equipment, but you didn't need me to tell you that.
BIG MANA:
There are a few ways in this deck to get ridiculous amounts of mana,
Utopia Mycon
,
Bear Umbra
,
Growing Rites of Itlimoc
, and
Grand Warlord Radha
.
Utopia Mycon
is probably the second most important 1 drop behind
Sol Ring
, since you'll be getting a ton of mana off of any solid Tana hit. It also has the added bonus of occasionally pooping out a spare Saproling which can be the difference between a win or a loss.
Bear Umbra
is quite the obvious one, "swing with a large Tana and untap all your land". Can cause some pretty silly turns, especially paired with
Growing Rites of Itlimoc
. You'll almost always transform it at the end of turn, and it's a great filter to clear the top of your library if you're not feeling it. As soon as you play
Grand Warlord Radha
, it's time to start swinging with your Saproling horde. This can net you a nice chunk of extra mana, especially when paired with Utopia Mycon.
THE BOMBS:
There are quite a few big bombs in this deck that if you get them and they stick, you're almost assuredly going to get a win. I'm only going to talk about the biggest 3, them being
Craterhoof Behemoth
,
Burn at the Stake
and
Purphoros, God of the Forge
.
Craterhoof Behemoth
should be incredibly self explanatory, drop him when you have a mass of Saprolings, and suddenly you can swing with a 20 somethin' power Tana, no real need to explain this choice.
Burn at the Stake
is a card that I'm surprised isn't an auto-include in any token deck with red in it. It's an incredible finisher that can nuke a player for an enormous amount of damage and is super fun to catch a life-gain player off-guard with. Almost every time I play it and it happens, I win the game.
Purphoros, God of the Forge
is a very special card, as it can get an entire table to very low life totals very quickly. It also gets around those pesky Pillowfort players that tend to play
Leyline of Sanctity
type cards.
THE TL;DR:
All in all, this deck is fun ol' Voltron/token deck hybrid that can win a game out of nowhere very easily.