Ishkanah – "Envy of Man" Spider Tribal Commander

Commander / EDH* BG (Golgari) Casual Counters Tokens Tribal

Sabethes

Instant (8)

• 1x Arachnogenesis
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Gloomwidow's Feast
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Malicious Affliction
• 1x Putrefy
• 1x Tangle
• 1x Tribal Unity

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Increasing Savagery
• 1x Mulch
• 1x Parallel Evolution
• 1x Spider Spawning

Enchantment (12)

• 1x Arachnus Web
• 1x Assault Formation
• 1x Beastmaster Ascension
• 1x Cover of Darkness
• 1x Curse of Predation
• 1x Death's Presence
• 1x Durable Handicraft
• 1x Font of Fertility
• 1x Hidden Spider
• 1x Lurking Predators
• 1x Primal Vigor
• 1x Rancor

Artifact (7)

• 1x Bow of Nylea
• 1x Coat of Arms
• 1x Conjurer's Closet
• 1x Door of Destinies
• 1x Golgari Cluestone
• 1x Obelisk of Urd
• 1x Urza's Incubator

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Liliana Vess

Creature (31)

• 1x Acid Web Spider
• 1x Arachnus Spinner
• 1x Archweaver
• 1x Blightwidow
• 1x Canopy Spider
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Corpsejack Menace
• 1x Deadly Recluse
• 1x Frostweb Spider
• 1x Goliath Spider
• 1x Grappler Spider
• 1x Graverobber Spider
• 1x Jungle Weaver
• 1x Juvenile Gloomwidow
• 1x Kessig Recluse
• 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
• 1x Netcaster Spider
• 1x Nyx Weaver
• 1x Oran-Rief Recluse
• 1x Penumbra Spider
• 1x Root Spider
• 1x Sentinel Spider
• 1x Silklash Spider
• 1x Skysnare Spider
• 1x Somberwald Spider
• 1x Sporecap Spider
• 1x Stingerfling Spider
• 1x Swift Spinner
• 1x Varolz, the Scar-Striped
• 1x Watcher in the Web
• 1x Woolly Spider

Land (36)

• 1x Blighted Woodland
• 1x Blooming Marsh
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 14x Forest
• 1x Foul Orchard
• 1x Golgari Guildgate
• 1x Golgari Rot Farm
• 1x Hissing Quagmire
• 1x Jungle Hollow
• 1x Llanowar Reborn
• 1x Mortuary Mire
• 1x Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Sequestered Stash
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Swarmyard
• 1x Temple of Malady
• 1x Tree of Tales
• 1x Turntimber Grove
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Commander (1)

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Maybeboard

Instant (5)

• 1x Entomb
• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x Lifecrafter's Gift
• 1x Solidarity of Heroes
• 1x Tower Defense

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Far Wanderings
• 1x Fortuitous Find
• 1x Gather the Pack
• 1x Nature's Spiral
• 1x Resourceful Return
• 1x Rishkar's Expertise

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Aid from the Cowl
• 1x Evolutionary Escalation
• 1x Hardened Scales
• 1x Khalni Heart Expedition
• 1x Nature's Will
• 1x Oversold Cemetery
• 1x Snake Cult Initiation
• 1x Vessel of Nascency

Artifact (2)

• 1x Golgari Keyrune
• 1x Riptide Replicator

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Garruk, Caller of Beasts

Creature (3)

• 1x Cairn Wanderer
• 1x Metallic Mimic
• 1x Reyhan, Last of the Abzan

Land (1)

• 1x Buried Ruin

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I have an undying affection for spiders and ran a 60 card kitchen table deck for ages. With Ishkanah, Grafwidow coming out in EMN, this is my first attempt at Tribal EDH deck.

Token & Counter Shenanigans

My all time favorite strategy in MtG has always been playing with tokens and counters, and spiders work great in tokens. Ishkanah, with her Delirium ability drops 3 baby spiders every time she enters, and Conjurer's Closet helps to ensure that she keeps coming back. In order to get that delirium though, we need to do a bit of work, and simple things like Nyx Weaver, Evolving Wilds, Mulch, and Golgari Cluestone help get some diversity into the pits. But let's be honest, 3 spiders is far less fun than 6. Primal Vigor helps to make sure that those little ones go a little farther. Coat of Arms, Door of Destinies, Beastmaster Ascension, and Cover of Darkness helps pump those 1/2s into something far more ferocious. Additional tokens come in pretty easily with Spider Spawning and Arachnogenesis . Conjurer's Closet can also make great use of other ETB effects like Acid Web Spider and Stingerfling Spider .

The next important part of amassing a clutch of spiders is making them enough of a threat to really smash someone's face in. Obviously, you get to bleed the opponents' with Ishkanah's ability, which makes for a good mana sink, but you need to be able to hold out on your own. Varolz, the Scar-Striped helps make use of some of the lost spiders, and Corpsejack Menace helps to make sure that that Scavenge goes a step farther. In conjunction, Corpsejack and Primal Vigor leave you with 4X on your +1/+1 counters, which makes for perfect timing to drop Increasing Savagery and show everyone how vicious perturbed spiders can be. Death's Presence helps to make sure that those that get traded out can bolster a friend, and maybe then be sacrificed again through Scavenge.

All-in-all, this should be a fun way of stacking spiders about spiders and letting them get bigger and bigger each turn. Assault Formation helps to make sure those big butts get put to work.

I spent a great deal of time considering Planeswalker cards that would go well for this particular deck, and for a time, I considered Garruk, Caller of Beasts, because I knew that his -3 and Ultimate abilities were just too tempting not to play with in a creature-heavy deck. That aside, the free mana for a creature drop, while it would be nice for a freebie spider to add an extra life to Ishkanah's bleed ability, may not be enough to make it short term viable.

Liliana Vess, however, has some helpful little techniques up her sleeve for this deck. While technically a necromancer, she has some nice pure black spooky flavor that I think seems to fit well with this in her less Zombie-centric cards (because flavor is important in Tribal). Her +1 ability helps slow down the opponent(s), which is helpful when amassing an army of spiders might take a bit. Her -2 ability could prove vital for finding things like Coat of Arms, or Spider Spawning, or anything that else that might prove useful, and I think the EDH tends to travel slowly enough that the extra turn and draw is viable. It also has the added benefit of surprise you don't have to reveal that card. Her Ultimate ability is perfect if you've lost a lot of spiders throughout the game, allowing you to bleed out players with Ishkanah's ability. Their extra creatures just happen to be an added bonus.

Maybeboard Chat

The maybeboard is a little light and a lot of editing has happened to this deck recently. With the decision to exchange Caller of Beasts for Liliana, I maybeboarded the former to ruminate a little bit further. I thought about Garruk, Apex Predator for a bit, but it doesn't necessarily fit the flavor, and is a little tough to swallow.

Cairn Wanderer appears in a lot of tribal decks, and it could certainly be nice for stacking effects on spiders, but I kind of don't like its flavor, so I'm still questioning it.

Entomb could prove very useful for finding useful cards to toss to meet the Delirium requirement, like Nyx Weaver to get a twofer, and this is a strong consideration.

Khalni Heart Expedition is another way to help meet the Delirium requirements, but I keep wavering between it and Font of Fertility . Vessel of Nascency sits there for similar reasons.

Nature's Will could prove useful for controlling the flow of mana. This again, though, enters the battle of what has the most value.

Oversold Cemetery is a good way of rebirthing creatures, but I'm almost wondering if keeping to the Scavenge mechanic is more useful in the long run, especially with Corpsejack.

Tower Defense is a sick little instant that would make Assault Formation HURT, and for cheap, and I'm still considering it. I'm just not quite sure what has less value than it.

The remainder of this are just thoughts and potentially useful things to cycle through. Like everything here, they maybeboard is open to critique and comment.

Any thoughts and recommendations are welcome to help improve the deck. I have added a few things from C16 and the Kaladesh Block to the maybeboard for consideration, but I have yet to decide on a final template.

Finally, the deck title comes from Ishkanah herself, which is Hebrew. "Ish" meaning man, and "kanah" (or "kinah") meaning envy.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	7 years
Exclude colors	WUR
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	2 - 0 Mythic Rares 27 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 31 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.70
Tokens	Copy Clone, Experience Token, Spider 1/2 G, Spider 2/4 B