This deck has taken many turns throughout its production. Starting as a quite horrible Odric, Master Tactician, it morphed into an Emmara Tandris and eventually into its final forme, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice. Its creation came about when I'd attempted to make the mono-white Odric EDH, which while functioned alright in lower standard games, was easily defeated against properly constructed decks. With a nudge, I set out to morph the mono-white EDH into a Selesnya EDH. Beginning, I had little plan for it but already possessed a number of token spam cards from the Odric EDH, such as Increasing Devotion and Nomads' Assembly, so a general idea of what sort of deck this could be was already set into place. It really started forming upon my coming across Emmara Tandris which drew me towards a common Selesnya practice of token spam. Due to Emmara's ability to provide a form of protection for tokens, prevent all damage, I set out to construct a deck which spammed tokens and then provided numerous means of either boosting or protecting said tokens as one of my great fears with this deck, being that most token spams are 1/1, are cards such as Goblin Grenade or general board wipes.
Due to the high cost of most of the spells, many of the lower drops are meant to mana ramp, such as Avacyn's Pilgrim and Elvish Mystic. There are a few non-creature ramps as well, such as Khalni Heart Expedition and late game, Boundless Realms. While Boundless Realms isn't all that necessary its primary objective if not to thin my deck is to also activate landfall effects, such as Emeria Angel. Additionally, with the combo of Primeval Bounty, landfall will grant also produce lifegain. The land base itself contains primarily basic lands but does also contain some duel lands as to add for easier casting and a Grove of the Guardian, which when sacrificed will provide quite a formidable target for populate.
Populate doesn't play a very high role in this deck due to the fact that when I was constructing it, I focused primarily on creating swarms of tokens faster than population allows; however, as the deck progressed population has made a decent presence. Such populate cards are Trostani, Selesnya's Voice and Wayfaring Temple, which have quite the array of choices in terms of population from an 8/8 elemental to token copies of Giant Adephage. With the addition of Growing Ranks and the hopeful early game destruction of Doomed Traveler, it doesn't take very long to amass a token army.
With most token spams being cast from mid-game to late-game, Storm Herd for example, these primarily serve as the set up for the kill cards. As mentioned before, there are a number of cards which play with the tokens, granting them abilities such as flying (Victory's Herald), vigilance, first strike or lifelink (Angelic Skirmisher), trample (Craterhoof Behemoth), and +1/+1 counters (Cathars' Crusade). These combos are meant to help the tokens maneuver around common threats and so allow them to directly harm an opponent or at the very least minimize their possible threat in future turns.
While the deck is slow building, it has a number of combos which highly increases field presence and your threat. Such combos are Craterhoof Behemoth and the token army, in which each token gains +1/+1 for each of its fellow creatures. Parallel Lives naturally doubles every token spam and for each creature entering the battlefield, Healer of the Pride and Cathars' Crusade are triggered. Karametra, God of Harvests additionally triggers landfall while spells of any type trigger Primeval Bounty, which if a creature spell, creates a token which in turns triggers previously mentioned cards. One of the decks most powerful combos in my opinion is Devout Invocation, which creates 4/4 angels for each creature you tap. Playing it after any general token spam is pretty good but after Ajani, Caller of the Pride ult, your opponent will be in serious need of a board wipe. Additionally, if Devout Invocation is countered, your creatures untap due to the fact they tap at resolve speed so opponents can't try to play tricky. And if an opponent presents a threat due to an overwhelming number of creatures, most methods of board whipping are token free, allowing the survival of your army and the destruction of the opponents.
Overall, Trostani has had quite a few updates and at this moment is fairly in its final form. It doesn't lose to much, other than hard control, poison and infinite combos. Otherwise, Trostani is a deck well worth using and I greatly enjoy playing her in all forms of EDH.
