Hardcore Turf War (Updated EDH Lands Primer)

Commander / EDH*

TheLoneDart

Land (49)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Arcane Sanctum
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Barbarian Ring
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Celestial Colonnade
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Creeping Tar Pit
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dark Depths
• 1x Diamond Valley
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Frontier Bivouac
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Grand Coliseum
• 1x High Market
• 1x Hissing Quagmire
• 1x Horizon Canopy
• 1x Ice Floe
• 1x Jungle Shrine
• 1x Lotus Vale
• 1x Lumbering Falls
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Miren, the Moaning Well
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Petrified Field
• 1x Plateau
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rishadan Port
• 1x Savage Lands
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scrubland
• 1x Seaside Citadel
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Taiga
• 1x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Tolaria West
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
• 1x Vesuva
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold
• 1x Wasteland

Sorcery (18)

• 1x Beseech the Queen
• 1x Bring to Light
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Day of Judgment
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Hour of Promise
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Reap and Sow
• 1x Scapeshift
• 1x Splendid Reclamation
• 1x Summer Bloom
• 1x Supreme Verdict
• 1x Sylvan Scrying
• 1x Tempt with Discovery
• 1x Wargate
• 1x Wrath of God

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Burgeoning
• 1x Diabolic Servitude
• 1x Exploration
• 1x Prismatic Omen
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Quarantine Field
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Zendikar's Roil

Creature (6)

• 1x Azusa, Lost but Seeking
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x The Gitrog Monster
• 1x Wayward Swordtooth

Commander (1)

Artifact (11)

• 1x Amulet of Vigor
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Ensnaring Bridge
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Horn of Greed
• 1x Mana Web
• 1x Meekstone
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring

Instant (6)

• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Constant Mists
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Realms Uncharted
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Volcanic Offering

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Nissa, Vital Force

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Maybeboard

Land (3)

• 1x Dust Bowl
• 1x Ice Floe
• 1x Phyrexian Tower

Instant (2)

• 1x Skyshroud Blessing
• 1x Teferi's Response

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Dark Petition
• 1x Oketra's Last Mercy

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Welcome to my EDH Lands/Valkut/Child of Alara deck!

The Strategy

This deck is a lands deck focused on abusing land abilities to tax opponents, destroy their lands, kill their creatures and deal damage. The deck is built from the manabase up, and, as such, we have an arsenal of high-utility, top-quality lands that allow us to perform various functions such as color fixing, search and retrieve, tapping, taxing creatures, etc.

Ultimately, we are looking to set up defence with this deck long enough to win via one of our various conditions. We have a number of board sweepers in the deck, examples of which are Supreme Verdict and Child of Alara. We are aiming to hold off opponents threats until we can find a win condition and then employ that to end the game.

The Lands

I am going to make this section very short as the lands are quite self-explanatory in their own respects. Please take some time to look through the list and familiarize yourself as the manabase is the backbone of the deck. Here's a few general themes for the manabase that you'll find are important and lend their own credence to the overall strategy:

1. Fixing - dual lands (i.e. Bayou, Savannah), three-colour lands (i.e. Seaside Citadel), all colour lands (i.e. Command Tower, City of Brass, Grand Coliseum).
2. Taxing - I.e. The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Maze of Ith, Rishadan Port
3. Burn - Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Barbarian Ring
4. Sacrifice - Miren, the Moaning Well, Diamond Valley, etc.
5. Retrieving - Volrath's Stronghold, Tolaria West, Petrified Field
6. Manlands - Celestial Colonnade, Creeping Tar Pit, Hissing Quagmire, etc.
7. Utility - Horizon Canopy, Reliquary Tower, etc.
8. Destruction - Strip Mine, Ghost Quarter, Dust Bowl, etc.

Please check the manabase out to see everything included and then continue reading on for the bulk of important information about the deck and its functionality.

Win Conditions

Our main win conditions for the deck are either to burn the opponent with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Prismatic Omen. Omen serves a dual function in the deck of color fixing and turning everything to mountains for Valakut, thus triggering its ability.

We can accelerate into winning by using various tutors in the deck to find Valakut and Omen, and also to find the needed amount of lands to kill opponents. I will review the tutors and other utility cards in depth later.

Our other win condition is using manlands such as Celestial Colonnade and Dark Depths, which we copy with Thespian's Stage to effectively create Marit Lage without having to remove the ice counters from Depths. Our manlands avoid all the sweepers and mass removal, making them impervious to our own threats so that we can go all out in our efforts to overthrow the opponent.

Tutors and Searching

The deck has a number of tutor cards to help find our needed components. These tutors come in two varities, land tutors and other tutors. Our land tutors, as the name implies, help us find lands that we need from the deck, enabling us to stabilize the board quicker. Our land tutors for the deck are Hour of Promise, Sylvan Scrying, Expedition Map, Realms Uncharted, Reap and Sow, Tempt with Discovery, Tolaria West, crop roatation, and, in its own respect, Scapeshift, which is often used as a win condition, as well.

Our other tutors can perform various functions, such as finding nonland spells only, or, alternatively, finding anything, such as lands and nonland spells. Our other tutors for the deck are Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Beseech the Queen, Wargate, Bring to Light, Bringer of the Black Dawn and Gamble.

From these spells we are able equipped with over 15 ways to find components of the deck. This is instrumental in making the deck competitive and operate smoothly throughout the game.

Accelerating and Recursing

Many EDH decks used ways to accelerate mana so that they can cast high CMC spells more easily. This is normally done with artifacts that can be tapped to produce mana. For this deck, since we are playing a land-heavy strategy, we instead use cards that allow us to play extra lands on our turns. Examples of these cards are Oracle of Mul Daya, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Exploration and Wayward Swordtooth.

We also have cards that allow us to play lands from our graveyard. These outlets, paired with our accelerants, allow us to blow up opponent's manabases in the late-game. Our two ourlets for grave recursion are Ramunap Excavator and Crucible of Worlds. Furthermore, these outlets also allow us to retrieve any lands that our opponents have blown up, which is often our most threatening lands such as The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. Having these outlets keeps the deck resilient to threats and allows us to be more threatening to opponents.

Two Important Cards

I just want to take a moment to touch on two very important cards that are often used in conjunction to win games, and, because of their effectiveness, deserve their own aside.

The first card I am talking about is Ad Nauseam. With Ad Nauseam our goal is to draw as many cards as possible without going overboard on taking damage. The goal is to either find a tutor or Splendid Reclamation, ultimately so that we can get Reclamation in hand.

The lands we reveal from Ad Nauseam don't cause us to lose life so we can often draw 15-20 cards without killing ourselves. At end of turn we are looking to keep spells in hand and ditch our lands to grave to set up for a win.

...The other card that I want to touch on is Splendid Reclamation. We use this spell to retrieve all the lands from Ad Nauseam and put them to battlefield. In an ideal scenario we have Valakut and Prismatic Omen on the field and can deal fatal damage as a result of Splendid Reclamation to end the game.

Utility Cards

I just quickly want to list some other utility cards so that they're visible. Here's a list of items in the deck that are important in their own respect to their overall strategy:

Horn of Greed, Amulet of Vigor, Bojuka Bog, Ensnaring Bridge, Eternal Witness, Life from the Loam, Nissa, Vital Force, Quarantine Field, Sylvan Library, The Gitrog Monster, Vesuva, Zendikar's Roil, and more.

Child of Alara

Our commander, Child of Alara, has a built in board wipe which we can employ to help keep the board clean. She is potent and swift, making her a use-when-needed type of item, as she can sometimes pose a drawback to ourboard, as well.

The deck has various outlets in the manabase that we can use to kill Child of Alara, i.e. Child Abuse. These outlets are Diamond Valley, Miren, the Moaning Well and High Market. For a player who wants more outlets for Child Abuse you can also use Phyrexian Tower, which is found in the Maybeboard of this deck.

I also would like to point out Diabolic Servitude, which allows us to find Child of Alara from the grave, post-boardwipe. The combination of these two cards gives us an outlet for constant recursion of Child of Alara without having to retrieve her by way of another outlet, such as Volrath's Stronghold, which becomes much more tedious a process.

Notes on The Deck

Because there are a number of card categories in the deck there are a number of ways to balance the functionality of the deck, as well. I have the deck fitted to be more of an aggressive style that attempts to focus on the main win condition of Valakut and Omen.

Depending on your meta, you may want to change this. Here's a few ideas:

-Competitive meta, more tutors -Aggressive meta, more sweepers-Control meta, more manlands and protection-More casual meta, more win conditions and fun cards

For some ideas you can check the maybeboard where I will list some options. Ultimately, in Magic, it's all about finding what is good for your playgroup/meta and adjusting to that so it's fun to play.

Anyway, thank you for reading and please like and comment!

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 62 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.96
Tokens	City's Blessing, Elemental 2/2 G, Emblem Nissa, Vital Force, Marit Lage, Zombie 2/2 B