Azusa, the Mistress of Green Mana
Hey Magic friends! This weeks commander article is one based around probably my favourite colour, green.
When looking at green commander a few popped into my mind, Omnath, Locus of Mana, Yisan, the Wandering Bard or Ezuri, Renegade Leader. Ultimately however I felt that the best advantage for a mono-green deck would be Azusa, Lost but Seeking.
Now when looking from a mono-green ramp edh deck, why would I not chose Omnath, Locus of Mana?
At face value Omnath seems like the commander of choice in this scenario, specifically because whoever is playing as Omnath can just fill up the commander with green mana and conceivably, never have to worry. The issue that I have with Omnath is that once you have channeled so much mana into him, all it takes is one good removal spell and that mana is no more. This is where the problem I have comes in, how to I retain my ramp even when my commander is gone? For that I chose my lady, Azusa, Lost but Seeking.
Now, Omnath is a bit of a glass cannon, meaning that once he is gone, unless you have something to use the mana on right there, it is gone, however with Azusa this is not the case. As a 3 cmc commander it is really easy to play her on turn 2, even sometimes on turn 1, and that can cause a HUGE advantage. Where the mana you get from a built up Omnath is temporary, the extra lands that you put into play from Azusa remain in play unless there is land removal which is more common in commander yes, however not usually an issue.
Where this deck began for me was to figure out the land base for this deck, which I know seems an obvious thing but really, what do I want out of the deck and how do I abuse the extra land drops? To start I wanted to have a greater than normal about of lands in the deck, if I want to hit my extra land drops, then I need some lands to put into play. For that I run 43 lands, almost 50% of the deck is lands, and of course there are some auto-includes in this deck for the land suite.
There are 5 key lands that I feel are auto includes for this deck:
1)Gaea’s Cradle
This card to me needs no explanation, in a green deck there is almost no better ramp card. Green likes to put out many creatures very quickly, including Dryad Arbor which doubles as a creature and as a land and as such guarantees that cradle is producing at least 1 mana. As I said, no better land.
2-4)Urza’s Tower, Urza’s Power Plant and Urza’s Mine
These lands are pretty good, they are the Urza tron lands which are fairly famous lands which are key to the modern tron deck. These lands, when in combination with each other, create 7 colourless mana which pretty much can help cast any creature in the deck.
5)The last land that I feel is super key to the deck is Strip Mine.
The reason why this is key to the deck is that, with multiple land drops a turn and ways to recur lands from the graveyard, you can abuse Strip Mine to the point of locking your opponents out of the game by destroying all of their lands.
This leads into the next part of my deck, acquiring extra land drops. There are a few cards in the deck to help boost the land drops beyond just what Azusa does and those are the following: Exploration, Oracle of Mul Daya and Burgeoning. Exploration is a pretty great card as it’s a 1 cmc enchantment that lets you play one additional land on each of your turns. This is great as simple acceleration that allows you to get some more lands into play quicker than your opponents. Oracle of Mul Daya is also a great card:
Now this card is awesome because of the simple fact that it lest you play lands from the top of your library. What this ensures is that you aren’t missing the extra land drops given to you by Exploration or Azusa just because there are no more lands in your hand.
The final piece of the extra landfall suite is Burgeoning. The thing that makes this card great is that it allows you to do things on your opponents turns. It allows you to capitalize on a game effect that cannot be countered, meaning when your opponents play a land, you get to play one. Seems like a pretty good advantage to me, and it allows you to get such a leg up on your opponents. When you play Burgeoning on turn 1, and then every one of your opponents plays their turn 1 land, you have 3 lands up on your next turn over you opponents.
There is one card that is relatively key in this deck, and it is every bit worth the dollar value attached to it, Crucible of Worlds.
Crucible is the card that probably gets the most mileage in the deck. It allows you to Strip Lock a player or multiple players from the game, and if you have one of the fetch lands which are in the deck, it allows you to get multiple Forests from your deck as long as you have your additional land cards out on the field. This allows you to expedite the mana ramp way quicker than any of the ramp spells you may have in the deck.
The final piece of tech that I feel is integral to any deck that abuses land drops, is Horn of Greed:
Now the first thing you may be thinking is that this card benefits everyone, well yes that is true, however when you are playing up to 5 lands on a turn and with Burgeoning out you’re playing lands on opponents turns, this card allows for pure advantage. You can draw more and more cards out of your deck, and eventually you’re going to pull out some really juicy bombs. Green is not really known for its card draw beyond Harmonize or Sylvan Library, so being able to draw so many cards so much quicker than your opponents quite often wins me the game.
Now that we have talked about some of the core cards in the deck, from land drops to strip locks, you must be wondering how do I win with this deck? Well there are many juicy goodies in this deck list and before I get to the actual juice, I’m going to talk about the tutor suite. Mono-Green doesn’t have a lot in the way of tutors but there are a few you should for sure include as I have: Chord of Calling, Tooth and Nail, Green Sun’s Zenith, Worldy Tutor and Pattern of Rebirth. These are all great cards to use and will pretty much get you whatever creatures you want, however the all-star tutor I feel is Chord of Calling simply because you can convoke it.
In the interest of ramping out quicker than your opponents, there are additional cards in this deck which help accelerate you into your big creatures: Mana Reflection, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger and Zendikar Resurgent.
Mana reflection and Zendikar Resurgent are just so great because it lets you generate and obscene amount of mana from the extra lands that you have played. The additional benefit of Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is that whenever your opponents tap their lands for mana, they are frozen that way for a turn. It greatly accelerates you and really slows your opponents down. Unfortunately this paints a really big target on your back and you’d better be ready to win once Vorinclex comes down otherwise you will be taken out very quickly.
Finally here is what you all want to know, how do I win? Well the best thing that green does well, is putting an obscene amount of creatures into play, very quickly, so here are some of the combinations of cards which I use to pull out the win.
1)The Eldrazi Suite
Now this is what I call my Eldrazi suite: Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and finally for a bit of control, Void Winnower. All of the titans that are legal plus the Winnower.
How I win with these is pretty simple, it’s really hard to play through the annihilator triggers from the two original titans as well as some spot removal and card draw. You get even better spot removal with the new Ulamog and a hell of a lot of control if there is a deck you want to get rid of. Finally you get some added control from Void Winnower, being able to neutralize the effects of the even spells your opponents control as well as preventing even cmc creatures from blocking give you a huge one up.
2)The Landfall Suite
Here are some cards which abuse the landfall mechanic of the game, Rampaging Baloths, Avenger of Zendikar and Craterhoof Behemoth.
With either Baloths or Avenger you are creating so many creatures, from the enter trigger of Avenger to the many landfall triggers that baloths gets you, you have flooded the board. After this flood you tutor for or just play your Craterhoof Behemoth and swing. This will very quickly finish the game.
3)The Infect Suite
There is only one card that makes it into this deck for me, and has infect, and that would be Blightsteel Colossus.
There isn’t much to say about this card other than if you do not see how amazing this card is, you probably have never played it or played against it.
4) Finally, the Genesis Wave
Genesis wave is one of the cards you usually auto-include in a green edh deck. This is a card that allows you to dump a good chunk of your deck onto the battlefield if you have the mana to do so. In a deck like Azusa where you’re not only getting multiple lands a turn but also are playing cards that allow your land to tap for multiple mana, this can easily allow for the x value to be anywhere from 10-50 with ease, dumping your deck onto the field and running people over with every card you have.
Well that’s all for today! My deck list for Azusa, Lost but Seeking is bellow!
Until next time,
MtgJoker
Creature
1x Avenger of Zendikar
1x Blightsteel Colossus
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Craterhoof Behemoth
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Forgotten Ancient
1x Genesis
1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1x Managorger Hydra
1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1x Omnath, Locus of Mana
1x Oracle of Mul Daya
1x Primordial Hydra
1x Rampaging Baloths
1x Seedborn Muse
1x Sylvan Safekeeper
1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1x Vigor
1x Void Winnower
1x Vorinclex, Voice of Hungar
1x Yavimaya Elder
Planeswalker
1x Garruk Wildspeaker
1x Garruk, Caller of Beasts
1x Karn Liberated
1x Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
1x Nissa Worldwaker
Instant
1x Chord of Calling
1x Worldly Tutor
Sorcery
1x Collective Voyage
1x Genesis Wave
1x Green Sun’s Zenith
1x Scapeshift
1x Tempt with Discovery
1x The Great Aurora
1x Tooth and Nail
Enchantment
1x Asceticism
1x Bonds of Immortality
1x Burgeoning
1x Concordant Crossroads
1x Doubling Season
1x Exploration
1x Gravity Well
1x Mana Reflection
1x Mirri’s Guile
1x Pattern of Rebirth
1x Primal Rage
1x Song of the Dryads
1x Sylvan Library
1x Zendikar Resurgent
Artifact
1x Caged Sun
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Horn of Greed
1x Lotus Petal
1x Sol Ring
1x Sword of the Animist
Land
1x Arena
1x Dryad Arbor
27x Forest
1x Homeward Path
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Myriad Landscape
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Rogue’s Passage
1x Sanctum of Ugin
1x Strip Mine
1x Temple of the False God
1x Urza’s Mine
1x Urza’s Power Plant
1x Urza’s Tower
1x Vardant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
