Commander Collection: The Boss

Commander / EDH GW (Selesnya)

Jurrane

Creature (45)

• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Beast Whisperer
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Containment Priest
• 1x Dauntless Escort
• 1x Doorkeeper Thrull
• 1x Dosan the Falling Leaf
• 1x Dragonlord Dromoka
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Giver of Runes
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1x Hushwing Gryff
• 1x Kataki, War's Wage
• 1x Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Magus of the Moat
• 1x Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1x Manglehorn
• 1x Moonshaker Cavalry
• 1x Mother of Runes
• 1x Myrel, Shield of Argive
• 1x Phyrexian Revoker
• 1x Prowling Serpopard
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Ranger-Captain of Eos
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Scavenging Ooze
• 1x Selfless Spirit
• 1x Serra Paragon
• 1x Shalai, Voice of Plenty
• 1x Sigarda, Font of Blessings
• 1x Soulless Jailer
• 1x Spirit of the Labyrinth
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle
• 1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
• 1x Vryn Wingmare
• 1x Walking Ballista
• 1x Welcoming Vampire

Land (35)

• 1x Bountiful Promenade
• 1x Branchloft Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Brushland
• 1x Canopy Vista
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Demolition Field
• 1x Dust Bowl
• 1x Encroaching Wastes
• 4x Forest
• 1x Fortified Village
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Glacial Chasm
• 1x High Market
• 1x Horizon Canopy
• 1x Hostile Hostel  ^Flip
• 1x Miren, the Moaning Well
• 10x Plains
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Sungrass Prairie
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Tectonic Edge
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Wasteland

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Dense Foliage
• 1x Tocasia's Welcome

Sorcery (1)

• 1x The Battle of Bywater

Commander (1)

Instant (9)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Flawless Maneuver
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi's Protection
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Artifact (6)

• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

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{W}{G} Introduction: Bitch Better Have My Honey {W}{G}

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"The Boss" is Selesnya Hatebears, with Gaddock Teeg at the helm. It's a creature-based deck that makes the most of hatebears: small (usually 2/2 or similar) creatures that grant resource denial, taxation, or stax effects. These effects impose restrictions on the way our opponents' play, either slowing them down, negating the benefits of their key cards or, in some cases, locking them out of the game altogether. Although we're not strictly a cEDH build, we're capable of hanging at more competitive tables as we have a number of silver bullet cards can that shut down high powered decks.

Deck Strategy

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Our goal is to employ a series of efficiently-costed creatures with additional effects to slow down and disrupt opponents while we continue to develop a board state or assemble a game-winning combo. Our typical finishers are either the Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Walking Ballista combo, or large flying threats like Moonshaker Cavalry or Dragonlord Dromoka.

Our commander Gaddock Teeg exemplifies this strategy. A hatebear himself, Teeg stops any noncreature spells of mana value 4 or greater from being played. This is a significant chunk of the typical Commander meta. He also has the fringe benefit of stopping noncreature spells with {X} in their mana costs from being cast. Alone, these two abilities can shut down certain decks, but we support Teeg with a wide range of other bears intended to hamper our enemies.

Although most of our hatebear effects are symmetrical (they impact us as well as our opponents), we have the luxury of building our strategy to offset their restrictions. Only one of our non-creature cards has a mana value of 4 or greater (Birthing Pod) so we're not significantly hampered by Gaddock Teeg's restriction. Plus over 40% of the deck is creatures as we can rely on their static effects to control the board and restrict our opponents.

A Staxonomy of Hatebears

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We draw on a variety of white and green's finest hatebears to make life miserable for the opposition. Here's a taxonomy (a Staxonomy?) of the best ones we run.

Artifact Hate: Nearly every Commander player likes to load up on mana rocks to help them ramp, or other utility artifacts to support their decks' strategy. Collector Ouphe, Kataki, War's Wage and Manglehorn punish them for doing so. We run a handful of artifacts ourselves so we need to be careful when sequencing our plays.

Board Control: We can restrict our opponents in a number of ways, often shutting off particular strategies or negating particular ways that certain cards gain advantage. This allows us to control the board which stops us getting overrun. Phyrexian Revoker switches off any pretty much any permanent we choose; Thalia, Heretic Cathar offsets hasty creatures and slows things down; Magus of the Moat stops non-flying attackers in their tracks; and Eidolon of Rhetoric hoses storm, spellslinger and other greedy decks.

Counterspell Hate: Nothing is more annoying than our important cards getting countered by those pesky blue mages. We stop them in their tracks with Dosan the Falling Leaf, Dragonlord Dromoka, Myrel, Shield of Argive, Grand Abolisher, Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar and Prowling Serpopard.

Creature Hate: EDH is generally a creature-heavy format so it stands to reason that some of our most effective hatebears are those that shut down creature strategies. Drannith Magistrate gets a special mention as it stops opposing Commanders being cast from the command zone, and Containment Priest, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Hushwing Gryff and Doorkeeper Thrull do a great job of limiting other creature abilities. The right combination of these can be backbreaking for our enemies.

Graveyard Hate: We can spoil graveyard shenanigans with Scavenging Ooze and Soulless Jailer. We have to be a bit careful they don't disrupt our own recursion tools but, like many other bears in this deck, played at the right time they can stop or sometimes even shut down entire archetypes.

Tax Effects: Gaddock Teeg is our king of tax effects as he stops any non-creature spell with a mana value of four or more from being played. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Vryn Wingmare make spells cost more, therefore usually slowing our opponents down. Although some of these are symmetrical effects, we don't mind them so much as our deck is quite low to the ground, with an average CMC of under 2.8. We support our tax hatebears with a land destruction package that includes Strip Mine, Wasteland, Dust Bowl, Demolition Field etc.

Other Utility Creatures

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Although hatebears are the backbone of this deck, they're not the only creatures we run. We feature plenty of others to help protect our board state, draw cards and provide other handy effects. Again, they fit into a few key categories.

Combo: One of the drawbacks of hatebear decks is they can lead to stalled board states, with opponents' cards shut down but not enough power on our side to punch through. We therefore run an instant kill combo to close out games on the spot. Heliod, Sun-Crowned goes infinite with Walking Ballista for just {1}{W}. The only thing to watch for is our own hatebears like Collector Ouphe which can shut us off (see Weaknesses section below). We use a range of different tutors including Worldly Tutor, Eladamri's Call, Recruiter of the Guard and Ranger-Captain of Eos to find the right combo pieces at the right time.

Card Draw: We rely on a steady stream of creatures to generate the effects we need to restrict our opponents. Beast Whisperer, Welcoming Vampire, Mangara, the Diplomat and Esper Sentinel keep us topped up with cards. It's not a creature but Tocasia's Welcome helps too.

Protection: One well-timed enemy board wipe and our plans go up in smoke. Fortunately most board wipe cards are four mana value or higher so Gaddock Teeg shuts them down. However, when he's not around, we can rely on Selfless Spirit and Dauntless Escort to protect our team; or Mother of Runes and Giver of Runes to stop individual creatures being targetted. Or we have Sigarda, Font of Blessings or Shalai, Voice of Plenty to give our stuff hexproof. Dense Foliage stops all creatures being targetted (it affects opposing creatures too so we have to be careful).

Ramp: With an average mana value of under 2.8, we're quite low to the ground so don't need to ramp a lot to execute our strategy. However Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic and Avacyn's Pilgrim can give us a nice speed boost when needed.

Recursion: Sometimes our stuff will get removed, especially when other players decide we're the fun police and start targetting us. Serra Paragon, Sun Titan and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle help us bring key permanents back from the graveyard. Along with Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator lets us recycle our land destruction package.

Strengths

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Hatebears decks are often incredibly efficient in terms of mana-cost and impact, emphasizing lower average converted-mana-cost cards with powerful effects. As a result, we can often begin influencing the game early on, and have tremendous resilience once multiple hatebears have been deployed on the battlefield. Gaddock Teeg can almost always be cast on turn 2 if needed and usually has an instant impact on the game.

Also, by emphasising low-costed creatures, hatebears decks can often capitalise on breaking parity against their own downsides and disproportionately affect opponents, such as using Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Vryn Wingmare for example. We work best as a utility toolbox deck, using our tutors and Birthing Pod to find the right creatures to deal with specific game states, or to proactively shut down threats before they appear. Consequently, we punch well above our weight at higher powered tables.

Weaknesses

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Our hatebears are targeted and specific in their nullifying effects, which means some hatebears may be mismatched against an opponent’s strategy. There will be times when our restricting abilities simply don't line up against enemy decks, leading to us quickly being run over. We can be outclassed by bigger, faster stompy creature decks and find it difficult to punch through damage when many of our own creatures are so small. This is where we rely on Moonshaker Cavalry or our infinite combos to help us.

Finally, there are times when our hatebears make own life difficult and don't just impact our opponents. Examples of this are Gaddock Teeg stopping Birthing Pod being cast, or Collector Ouphe and Kataki, War's Wage shutting down our own artifacts. In these cases, sometimes we have to remove or sacrifice our own hatebears to stop this happening, either by sending them into combat, chump blocking, or sacrificing them to High Market, Hostile Hostel   or Miren, the Moaning Well.

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All My EDH Decks

• S(i)erra Sidewinder: Mono-White Angel Tribal
• Blue Streak: Mono-Blue Spellslinger
• Clone Zone: Mono-Blue Shapeshifters
• Swamp Thing: Mono-Black Goodstuff
• Black Hole: Mono-Black Sacrifice/Aristocrats
• Red Force: Mono-Red Group Slug
• Firebird: Mono-Red Storm/Tokens
• Timber Terror: Mono-Green Stax
• Hydrus: Mono-Green Hydra Midrange
• Control Freak: Azorius Control
• Crystal Wing: Azorius Skies & Scry
• Dreamcatcher: Dimir Faeries Tribal
• Ice Breaker: Dimir Snow/Zombies
• Steamin’ Demon: Rakdos Life Loss
• Pandemonium: Rakdos Sacrifice
• Trailblazer: Gruul Kicker
• Barnstormer: Gruul Conspire
• Stampida: Selesnya Humans Tribal
• The Boss: Selesnya Hatebears
• Diamondback: Selesnya Auras
• Curse of Novgorod: Orzhov Constellation
• Oblivion: Orzhov Lifegain & Lifedrain
• Time Traveller: Izzet Suspend/Big Mana
• Scorpion Express: Golgari Deathtouch
• Outlaw Run: Golgari Elves/Discard
• Steel Force: Boros Equipment
• Gatekeeper: Boros Multicoloured
• Wicked Twister: Simic +1/+1 Counters
• Steel Vengeance: Esper Artifacts
• Twisted Twins: Esper Theft/Clones
• Mindbender: Grixis Discard
• Dragon Wagon: Jund Dragons Tribal
• Raptor Attack: Naya Dinosaurs Tribal
• Vapour Trail: Bant Flicker
• Hair Raiser: Abzan Reanimator
• Storm Runner: Jeskai Tokens
• Phantom’s Revenge: Jeskai Spirits Tribal
• Boomerang: Sultai ETB Triggers
• Abyssus: Mardu Angels & Demons
• Boulder Dash: Temur Landfall

Date added	3 years
Last updated	1 week
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 53 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.71
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Elephant 3-3 G, Food, Soldier