SO World Shaper

It seems most sets have some Commander tie in decks these days. Some can be lackluster, but others really stand out. When it comes to Edge of Eternities, the set comes with 2 very strong and cohesive options for commander players. As is tradition, I'm going to take one of those decks, Strip Out all the cards that don't quite fit the build, and leave you with a strong alternative that may do things slightly different than before.

This set brought 2 options: a Jeskai proliferate deck focused on charge counters and artifacts, or a Jund Land sacrifice deck. Jeskai is a favorite, and I love telegraphed “win the game” spells like Darksteel Reactor. But I already did something like that with my Izzet Winning deck. There were a lot of alternate win conditions in that deck. No, I'm looking at the Jund Land focused deck.

My choice of commander is really important, and which one I choose will shape the play style of the deck. If you didn't know, there's a new rule in EDH where Vehicles and spacecraft can be your commander. I learned a lot putting together my Vehicular Commander deck, where I had a Vehicle as my commander. I was less inclined to choose Hearthhull, the Worldseed for those reasons, but hadn't closed the (pod bay) doors on the idea. If not the ship, there was the bug. Szarel, Genesis Shepherd lets me play lands from my graveyard and rewards me for sacrificing a card, not tokens. I came into this experiment knowing a lot of lands would be moving into my graveyard, so why not choose the option that insulates me from this risky strategy? Even then, my work wasn't over. The deck has 2 more Jund commanders in it: Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and Soul of Windgrace. I wasn't going to let one of those old school boogey men into my command zone. No, I was all in on the Insect Druid this time.

Szarel, Genesis Shepherd has some things for him I really liked. He lets me play lands from my graveyard. That makes a self mill strategy more rewarding as well as playing some funky fetch lands. He also rewards me for sacrificing non tokens. This plays nicely with those fetch lands I mentioned before. The more I can increase his power, the more counters I get to stack the next time he triggers. I had my basic play pattern. Play Lands=>Sacrifice Lands=> Profit. Lucky for me, the deck is positioned to reward that play pattern already.

The stock deck has multiple cards that allow me to play extra lands in a turn. Oracle of Mul Daya is arguably the most iconic creature with this effect, and it just so happens to be in this deck. Playing with the top card of my library revealed isn't ideal, but it really informs the best time to crack a fetch land for me. Augur of Autumn allows me to be sneakier since I can see my next card without having to show my opponents. Escape the Wilds lets me dial up how many cards to exile. It's worth it not to play a land before hand so I can play 2 that I exile this turn and 1 more next turn. Exploration Broodship is a powerful new Artifact. It just needs me to tap a 3 power creature before I can play an additional land each turn. Worldsoul's Rage goes even further, letting me play up to X lands from my hand and graveyard. The direct damage is a great addition to the card and can close out a game for me.

Green is heavily represented in the original deck, and many of those cards provide land ramp. Cards like Nature's Lore and Farseek let me put an additional land into play when I cast them. Classic and simple. I mentioned before how sacrificing lands is part of my strategy. Well, the deck has cards that embody step 1 and 2 together. Harrow and Roiling Regrowth both require me to sacrifice a land and get 2 back. With Szarel I can go ahead and play the sacrificed land from my graveyard and immediately recoup my lost land. I have other land sacrifice options too. Newcomer Evendo Brushrazer lets me sacrifice a land to make 2 red mana. It goes a step further and lets me exile a card from my library to cast later on. Braids, Arisen Nightmare and God-Eternal Bontu allow me to sacrifice lands, among other things, and reward me with card draw. This deck will thrive with those extra cards and lands in my graveyard.

This brings me to the best step, Profit (If this was 15 years ago, I would make a joke about underpants gnomes). I mentioned how Szarel, Genesis Shepherd and Evendo Brushrazer require me to sacrifice non token permanents and then immediately profit. The deck also included Mayhem Devil, which can get out of hand if it sticks around long enough, and Juri, Master of the Revue, who adds a counter to himself for each other card I sacrifice. When he dies, Juri zaps another target equal to his power. That is a great way to knock out another opponent. Korvold, Fae-Cursed King gets counters too, and goes a step further by drawing me cards. These last couple cards don't care if the sacrificed permanents are cards or tokens. I'm keeping Tireless Tracker in the deck for that reason. The Landfall ability provides me with a clue that can fuel my sacrifice plan.

The deck was pretty solid “out of the box” but there were some cards worth cutting. Groundskeeper was first on the chopping block. The ability is great, but I just don't have a lot of basic lands in the deck. World Breaker does have some removal potential and recursion built into it, but 7 mana is a lot for a creature that really amounts to a big beater. Formless Genesis fits into this category too. Yeah, I'm going to have lands in my graveyard, but they're going to be moving out of there too. This weird Kindred card is out. My most controversial cut might be The Gitrog Monster. This Golgari Frog is a notorious combo machine. I'm not going down that road, so I think it's better to exclude it and not draw the heat from the rest of the table.

All these cards are old news and players have a lot of experience with them. You know by now Hearthhull, the Worldseed isn't in my final version. I think it's important to remove the other face commander from decks in my Stripped Out series. I want to avoid the feeling that the other commander should just be the default option. I also dropped Eumidian Wastewalker. It's slow, needing to attack before I get value back. My deck isn't designed to take advantage of discard effects, so I cut it. Scouring Swarm is not Scute Swarm. I don't want 7 lands in my graveyard early on in the game. I think the temptation may be too great and cause me to sacrifice too many cards in a single turn. If I get stymied, I might just be out those lands for good.

And I cut Sol Ring too. I always do. I would rather open up a slot for a more interactive card or one that fits my theme.

Let's look at the numbers. There are 58 non land cards in the original deck. Of that, I cut 13. Not a lot, really. I kept 76%. That's high for this series. That's in part because the deck was already very solid and has some generally powerful and versatile cards. I would add cards like Blasphemous Act, Night's Whisper, or Putrefy to most decks in these colors.

Here are all the cuts

Hearthhull, The Worldseed	Groundskeeper	Satyr Wayfinder
Eumidian Wastemaker	The Gitrog Monster	Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar
Rampaging Baloths	Omnath, Locus of Rage	World Breaker
Formless Genesis	Windgrace's Judgement	Sol Ring
Scouring Storm

That left 13 slots open for me. So what did I add? I wanted to expand certain things the deck was already doing. I already have Tireless Tracker, so why not add Tireless Provisioner? Ramunap Excavator and Conduit of Worlds are like my commander, as they let me play lands from my graveyard. Szarel is expensive, so a little redundancy is king. Druid Class lets me gain some life and eventually play additional lands, just like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. Couple those with Szarel or Excavator and I'll empty out my graveyard very quickly. Or I can just play Cultivator Colossus and play them all from the yard at once and draw a lot of cards in the process.

Between the extra lands I can play in a turn and my ramp spells, I can get a lot of landfall triggers in a turn. There's a perfect card to take advantage of this: Scute Swarm. This gets out of hand quickly. People make lots of copies of this in a game, and I'm looking forward to being one of them.

All those lands also present an opportunity. They can be quite the finisher. Kamahl's Will lets me turn all my lands into indestructible 1/1s. That can quickly run over an opponent's defenses. The fact that it also gives those lands Haste and Vigilance means I can drop a lot of lands, attack with them suddenly, and still use them for mana later on in the turn cycle. I like that idea so much, I also added Sylvan Awakening. This one ups the stats and trades Vigilance for Reach. More importantly, the lands stay animated until my next turn.

So that's it. Nothing else to talk about. I hope you enjoyed the deck. Have a nice day.

Ok, I admit it. You're right. There's more. There is another part of my strategy that I haven't covered and it's all tied up in the mana base. I can play cards in my graveyard with Szarel, Genesis Shepherd so I don't need to be as worried about them winding up in the graveyard. So put those lands to work! I'm talking about animating my lands and letting them attack. This strategy works great with the extra +1/+1 counters Szarel offers up when I sacrifice certain permanents. A card like Raging Ravine already thrives on +1/+1 counters and dodging removal on opponents' turns. I'm going to build on that in a big way. I don't usually do much to overhaul the mana base in these decks, but if there is one deck to do it in, it's this one.

Den of the Bugbear, Hive of the Eye Tyrant, and Lair of the Hydra all have the potential not to enter tapped. Some of their creature clauses provide some powerful benefits like making tokens or acting as graveyard hate. Restless Vents becomes an evasive bug and Restless Ridgeline pumps up another attacker and untaps it. I can make more mana later on this way, or restore a valuable blocker.

Those cards are all great, but a lot of my available options happen to be colorless. These will be my first option to animate and attack with to allow more flexibility with color fixing later in the turn cycle. Crawling Barrens will add counters to it every time I animate it, then let those counters stick around for more damage later on. Mobilized District is a little costly on its own, but I can save on the cost if I have the right creatures out. My most dangerous addition happens to be Inkmoth Nexus. An invasive infect creature always makes opponents notice. Once I throw a couple counters on it, I really put opponents on the clock.

I have some more land support here as well. Blossoming Tortoise makes the cost to animate these lands cheaper and a step further by bumping their stats. Earth Surge provides a stat boost too, but twice as powerful. Embodiment of Fury is the real standout here. It gives my land creatures Trample, which means I can really push damage through on an unprepared opponent. It also lets me animate lands as a landfall trigger. That base 3/3 is comparable to the stats on many of my land creatures. The fact it's a landfall ability just means I'm set up to make a small army out of nowhere with my land ramp and recursion.

Let's look at the final deck list

Szarel, Genesis Shepherd

Aftermath Analyst	Pest Infestation	Ramunap Excavator
Juri, Master of the Revue	Farseek	Scute Swarm
Sprouting Goblin	Infernal Grasp	Tireless Provisioner
Augur of Autumn	Nature's Lore	Embodiment of Fury
Evendo Brushrazer	Night's Whisper	Blossoming Tortoise
Horizon Explorer	Rakdos Charm	Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
Loamcrafter Faun	Tear Asunder	Cultivator Colossus
Mayhem Devil	Worldsoul's Rage	Kamahl's Will
Springbloom Druid	Beast Within	Sylvan Awakening
Tireless Tracker	Cultivate	Broken Bond
Uurg, Spawn of Turg	Gaze of Granite	Conduit of Worlds
Baloth Prime	Harrow	Druid Class
Centaur Vinecrasher	Putrefy	Earth Surge
Oracle of Mul Daya	Roiling Regrowth	Spelunking
Soul of Windgrace	Skyshroud Claim	Invasion of Zendikar
God-Eternal Bontu	Splendid Reclamation	Exploration Broodship
Korvold, Fae-Cursed King	Escape to the Wilds	Arcane Signet
Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest	Planetary Annihilation	Binding of the Old Gods
Titania, Protector of Argoth	Blasphemous Act	Hammer of Purphoros
Moraug, Fury of Akoum	Braids, Arisen Nightmare
Restless Vents	Raging Ravine	Lavaclaw Reaches
Restless Cottage	Crawling Barrens	Restless Ridgeline
Hissing Quagmire	Blinkmoth Nexus	Inkmoth Nexus
Hive of the Eye Tyrant	Cactus Preserve	Mutavault
Den of the Bugbear	Myriad Landscapes	Mobilized District
Lair of the Hydra	Bojuka Bog	Darksteel Citadel
Blast Zone	Cascading Cataracts	Command Tower
Evolving Wilds	Terramorphic Expanse	Drossforge Bridge
Escape Tunnel	Eumidian Hatchery	Fabled Passage
Rocky Tarpit	Riviteer's Overlook	Maestro's Theatre
Cabaretti Courtyard	Mountain x3	Swamp x3
Forest x3

This may be one of the more interesting ones in my Stripped Out series. Attacking with lands is already novel, but the incidental advantage that comes from ramping, recursion, landfall and sacrifice triggers really puts me over the top. There are so many self sacrificing lands today that I'm never worried about hitting a sacrifice trigger.

What do you think? Are lands the best option for attackers? Would you rather play this or the Azrious Noyan Dar deck?

Thanks for reading and all the support to date. I have affiliate links with Mana Pool and TCG Player to help fund these off the wall strategies. It's what makes all this possible,

https://manapool.com/settings/referrals?referrer_code=MP-ifiutnoqbctnnQUxCPWfkJ

https://t.co/2tbIuQ0rMj