Let’s Go On A Quest!
The Questing Beast from Arthurian legend is in MTG, and from just from looking over the card briefly, you could tell it’s one of the best green creatures that’ve been printed in recent years. It has six, yes, six abilities - all relevant to its board presence - and all for a cheap cost of 2GG. This makes it a great card for green in Standard, and especially, in EDH. While most can argue that Questing Beast is a better card in the 99 of a Commander deck, its abilities are all relevant for a awesome mono green commander. Sure, it may not be as competitive as Yisan and Selvala, but for enabling all combat damage to be unnegated is something never to be overlooked.
This synergizes well for classic green beatdown, with a bit of combo, and a pinch of infect for the win - so if you’re interested in any of these kinds of win conditions, Questing Beast may be for you!
The Lands and Ramp:
Green is the best of the five colors for land ramp and mana fixing, so there is little issue for making our creatures cheap and easy to play.
Mana dorks like Elvish Mystic and Llanowar Elves are classic inclusions, but in order to keep up with any hate we can occur, we have backup mana rocks in the usual Sol Ring, Mind Stone, Emerald Medallion, and similar cards.
However, there’s also useful utility lands we can use for Questing Beast; but while I’d love to use a Gaea's Cradle, it’s worth more than half of the current decklist, so I’m excluding it. What is in the deck are cheaper utility lands for green, such as Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and Heart of Yavimaya for their pumping abilities, Yavimaya Hollow for regeneration, and Mosswort Bridge/Slippery Karst/Tranquil Thicket for the cycling and card advantage.
Rogue's Passage is yet another key card that can help end a game as it drags on, rendering one creature unblockable - and with Questing beast, damage unpreventable - can be lethal in many situations.
Finally, Myriad Landscape and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx are also auto-includes for all mono-colored decks in Commander, and definitely had to be added in.
Creatures:
The most important parts of the deck as a whole, especially when the Questing Beast will be relying on combat for its wins.
The first set are the utility and card advantage cards - Seedborn Muse, Beast Whisperer, and Sakiko, Mother of Summer. The first two are more self explanatory with their functions, untapping creatures and drawing cards for value. Sakiko, though, is one of those frequently overlooked legendaries that really shines in Commander. With Questing Beast’s damage negation prevention in addition to haste and deathtouch, you will likely always swing and net four mana - which won’t disappear until you end your turn. Especially in the mid and late game, this effect can be used to great success in casting big creatures that close out the game - she’s just an amazing ramp and value engine for the deck.
What do we pump all the mana into, though? Perhaps a Thunderfoot Baloth to make Questing Beast a 6/6 + Trample, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger to really make life annoying for opponents, or just go huge with Ghalta, Primal Hunger and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger (yes, Green is a very hungry color). Without getting into the wincons just yet - but knowing they tie closely in with creatures - you can play God-Eternal Rhonas, Nylea, God of the Hunt, or Rhonas the Indomitable, combined with Champion of Lambholt to make your creatures unblockable past a certain point, further buff all the creatures you played the turn before. If this goes unchecked, you can literally kill a player in one swing, without needing any other combos or the like to assist you. Hey, whatever works!
Instants and Sorceries:
If there’s one aspect green is pretty weak in, it’s having a wide variety of instants and sorceries. Like the creatures of the color, the noncreature spells are relatively straightforward, and tend to have overlaps on what they do.
For starters, we’ll talk card advantage. We have Beast Whisperer, but for draw, Harmonize is also one of the most useful mono-green draw sorceries (cheap, too!). Rishkar's Expertise is great to pull ahead when you have a creature with high power, and with the ability to cast a spell mana cost 5 or less for free, it’s really worth the 6-drop mana cost.
Road of Return, Regrowth, Eternal Witness, and Skullwinder all play into this card advantage theme by letting you recover cards directly from your graveyard, putting them back in your hand, with RoR specifically allowing you to bring Questing Beast into you hand from your command zone if needed. This can really be useful in the late game, if people have been hating it off the table to make it cost 8+ mana to cast.
Vizier of the Menagerie is another great card for this, as it lets you play creature directly off the top, without having to reveal them beforehand - though it’s a creature, it’s still worth mentioning here.
In terms of removal, Green isn’t very good at eliminating creature threats; we’d rather Trample over them or punch out opponents directly. What it can deal with, though, are noncreature spells. Creeping Corrosion, woodfal primus, Nature's Claim, Force of Vigor, and Beast Within will all get rid of pesky artifacts and enchantments that can restrict our creatures, with the latter eliminating any permanent that happens to bug us - and replacing it with a Beast. How ironic!
The final kind of spell that green excels in are search spells for creatures. Green Sun's Zenith and the new Finale of Devastation are amazing for this, with Finale able to close out games on its with enough mana. Additionally, Tooth and Nail and Genesis Wave can be so effective, they’re two of our win conditions themselves: pulling out two creatures you need, or slamming all permanents from your deck on the table essentially ensures you win that match if they resolve - making the deck imposing with those cards alone.
Planeswalkers:
There are only three Planeswalkers in the deck, each serving to help ramp us and gain card advantage. Both Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Nissa, Worldwaker ramp us, with the former’s static ability being simply amazing, not even mentioning her abilities to untap, animate and/or tutor basic lands. Worldwaker does a similar thing with her ultimate. Pulling out animated versions of every forest in your deck - although it’s mainly for her “+1: Untap four target forests” that we would mainly use her. Conveniently, it’s just as many forests as the base CMC as Questing Beast too!
Vivien, Champion of the Wilds is in the deck for her -2 ability over the others, since she’s able to exile a creature you can then cast as another form of drawing, without actually drawing (it can get around some cards like mono-U Narset). Her static to cast creatures like they had flash could be useful as well, although more conditional, assuming you have mana on your opponent’s turns; thus, it’s not as reliable as the WAR Nissa’s, though still decent.
Wincons:
Now we get into the fun! One of the ways I contemplated building Questing Beast at first was with an infect strategy at hand, but unfortunately, there just weren’t enough infect cards in green to warrant going that route. Instead, I kept the spirit of Phyrexia in mind with Grafted Exoskeleton and Triumph of the Hordes, both which go great with the Beasts’ ability to escape chump blocking, and negate damage prevention. Triumph can end games in any kind of Green deck that has enough creatures, while the Exoskeleton is highly recommended to be equipped to either Questing Beast itself or another large, trampling creature. Sure, it may be sacrificed when the equipment is removed, but the effect is well worth it!
Of course, infect isn’t the only strategy we’ll be using. You may have noticed Selvala, Heart of the Wilds was omitted from the ramp section - and that was purposeful. Though she’s amazing when piloting her own Commander deck (my current mono-green deck is commanded by Selvala), she’s just as useful in generating copious amounts of mana in the 99 of one - including infinite. Umbral Mantle and Sword of the Paruns, with Selvala and a creature that’s strong enough, will make infinite of any colored mana that can be dumped into anything, like all the spells in your hand, or, say, Genesis Wave or Finale of Devastation. A fun fact is that with a high enough devotion, those cards can also go infinite with Karametra's Acolyte, which may be even more discrete to opponents until the turn it completely explodes. Channeling it into Rhonas the Indomitable and Nylea’s pump abilities are yet another way to completely wipe out opponents
Another use for infinite mana, if you don’t have a wincon in hand, would be to create it, and then dump it into The Great Aurora. Resetting the board, then casting your entire hand while your opponents cry? Yes, please (maybe not that second part, that’s mean).
Without infinite mana, it’s still possible to snag a win with Tooth and Nail, as mentioned before - taking Craterhoof Behemoth and Avenger of Zendikar is a classic way of sweeping out an opponent, and with Questing beast, it’s even more likely the attack will go through. It’s also possible to get any combination of fat creatures to punch opponents with, from Vorinclex and God Eternal Rhonas to Ulamog and Woodland Bellower, with haste granted by Surrak, the Hunt Caller to any of them - but that list would probably be as long as this primer.
The Quest Continues...
The Questing Beast cements itself as a prominent and powerful new card throughout the formats it’s legal in, especially Commander. As spoilers are released for Throne of Eldraine, I’ll be sure to update this with any powerful cards that can be relevant to it for the deck. For now, I’m open to any and all suggestions, and hope everyone has much success with their quest of building around this amazing new creature!
