Hey, Magic friends! This week’s Commander article is one based around probably my favourite colour, green.

When looking at green commanders, a few popped into my mind: Omnath, Locus of Mana, Yisan, the Wandering Bard, and 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, 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 do 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. Once he is gone, so is your mana unless you have something to use it on right there. With Azusa, this is not the case. Her 3 CMC makes it easy to play her on turn 2, and even sometimes on turn 1, which can cause a HUGE advantage. While the mana you get from a built-up Omnath is temporary, the extra lands that you put into play from Azusa remain in play barring mass land removal, which — while more common in Commander — is usually not an issue.

I began this deck by figuring out the land base, which I know seems obvious, 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 amount of lands in the deck; if I want to hit my extra land drops, then I need lands to put into play. For that I run 43 lands — almost 50% of the deck. Of course, there are some auto-includes in the land suite.

There are 5 key lands that I feel are auto includes for this deck:

1) Gaea’s Cradle
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1 Gaea’s Cradle
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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 one mana. As I said, no better land.

2-4) Urza’s Tower, Urza’s Power Plant and Urza’s Mine
[sbplan]
1 Urza’s Tower
1 Urza’s Power Plant
1 Urza’s Mine
[/sbplan]

The Urzatron lands, fairly famous cards that are key to the Modern deck Tron, are good in EDH as well. In combination with each other, these lands create 7 colourless mana which can help cast pretty much any creature in the deck.

5) Strip Mine
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1 Strip Mine
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Strip Mine is key to this deck. 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 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:

Oracle is awesome because of the simple fact that it lets you play lands from the top of your library. This ensures that you won’t miss 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. By capitalizing on its uncounterable ability that lets you play a land whenever your opponents play one, you can get such a leg up on your opponents.When you play Burgeoning on turn 1, and then each opponent plays their turn 1 land, you’re 3 lands up on your opponents on your next turn. Seems like a pretty good advantage to me.

There is one card that is relatively key in this deck, and is every bit worth the dollar value attached to it: Crucible of Worlds.

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1 Crucible of Worlds
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Crucible is the card that probably gets the most mileage in the deck. It allows you to Strip Mine lock one or more players from the game, and if you have one of the deck’s fetch lands in your hand or graveyard, you can play it repeatedly with Crucible to get multiple Forests from your deck. This expedites the mana ramp way more quickly than any of the ramp spells you may have in the deck.

The final piece of tech that’s integral to any deck that abuses land drops is Horn of Greed.

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1 Horn of Greed
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Now, the first thing you may be thinking is that this card benefits everyone. While yes, that is true, when you are playing up to 5 lands a turn plus lands on opponents’ turns with Burgeoning Horn of Greed 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, and the ability to draw so many cards so much more quickly than my 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? Well, there are many juicy goodies in this list. 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, Worldly Tutor, and Pattern of Rebirth. While these are all great cards to use and will pretty much get you whatever creatures you want, the all-star 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.

[sbplan]
1 Mana Reflection
1 Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
1 Zendikar Resurgent
[/sbplan]

Mana Reflection and Zendikar Resurgent let you generate obscene amounts of mana from the extra lands that you have played. The additional benefit of Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is that whenever your opponents tap 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 huge 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 thing green does best is putting an obscene amount of creatures into play very quickly, so here are some combinations of cards which I use to pull out the win.

1) The Eldrazi Suite
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and finally, for a bit of control, Void Winnower

How I win with these is pretty simple: it’s really hard to play through the annihilator triggers, spot removal, and card draw from the two original titans. 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. The ability to neutralize your opponents’ even-CMC spells and prevent even-CMC creatures from blocking gives you a huge one up.

2)The Landfall Suite
Rampaging Baloths, Avenger of Zendikar, and Craterhoof Behemoth
Avenger’s ETB trigger and Baloths’ many landfall triggers let you flood the board with creatures. After this flood, tutor for or just cast Craterhoof Behemoth and swing. This will quickly end the game.

3)The Infect Suite
There is only one card with infect that makes it into this deck: Blightsteel Colossus.
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Blightsteel Colossus.
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There isn’t much to say about this card other than if you do not see how amazing it is, you probably have never played with or against it.

4) Finally, the Genesis Wave

Genesis Wave is one of the cards you usually auto-include in a green EDH deck. It 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 let your lands tap for multiple mana, you can cast Genesis Wave for an X-value of 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 below!

Until next time,
MtgJoker

Azusa, Lost But Seeking
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azusa, lost but seeking
[/display]
[deck]
[Creatures]
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Forgotten Ancient
1 Genesis
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Managorger Hydra
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Omnath, Locus of Mana
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Primordial Hydra
1 Rampaging Baloths
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Vigor
1 Void Winnower
1 Vorinclex, Voice of Hungar
1 Yavimaya Elder
[/creatures]
[spells]
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
1 Karn Liberated
1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
1 Nissa Worldwaker
1 Chord of Calling
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Collective Voyage
1 Genesis Wave
1 Green Sun’s Zenith
1 Scapeshift
1 Tempt with Discovery
1 The Great Aurora
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Asceticism
1 Bonds of Immortality
1 Burgeoning
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Doubling Season
1 Exploration
1 Gravity Well
1 Mana Reflection
1 Mirri’s Guile
1 Pattern of Rebirth
1 Primal Rage
1 Song of the Dryads
1 Sylvan Library
1 Zendikar Resurgent
1 Caged Sun
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Horn of Greed
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of the Animist
[/spells]
[Land]
1 Arena
1 Dryad Arbor
27x Forest
1 Homeward Path
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Rogue’s Passage
1 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Strip Mine
1 Temple of the False God
1 Urza’s Mine
1 Urza’s Power Plant
1 Urza’s Tower
1 Vardant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
[/land]
[/deck]