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The Cat and the Muse (Yeva, Nature's Herald)

Commander / EDH Casual Goodstuff Mono-Green Multiplayer Value Engine

Haliscyon

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Creature (40)

Sorcery (9)

Enchantment (8)

Artifact (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Yeva, Nature's Herald

Instant (4)

Land (36)

Sideboard

Creature (1)

Welcome to The Cat and the Muse deck description. The decklist presented here is an exact listing of every card I have in paper. The card listed in the sideboard is also included in the deckbox and can be used to replace the commander. The quick summary of the deck is to use Seedborn Muse + Yeva, Nature's Herald to emulate the banned Prophet of Kruphix and rapidly power out the deck on each player's turn; ending with a large Overwhelming Stampede, Finale of Devastation, or Craterhoof Behemoth.

Yeva, Nature's Herald is a 4/4 for . While the stats aren't terribly exciting, she can block a decent chunk of early drops from our opponents and will trigger all of our power-dependent card advantage tools like Garruk's Packleader or Elemental Bond.

Where our commander differs from other mono-green commanders is her ability to enable us to play at instant speed. This gives us greater flexibility in deploying our creatures for maximum effect, such as dodging board wipes or giving our board pseudo-haste by flashing in our board on an opponent's end step.

As with almost any commander deck out there, having ways to increase the amount of mana we can produce beyond the one land per turn is helpful. The deck runs mostly creatures in this area to both increase the number of plays we can make at instant speed when our commander is out, and to enable some creature synergies with cards like Soul of the Harvest.

  • Forest: THE quintessential card in any deck running . I'm not sure what I'd do without them in the deck honestly. Look for 2-3 of these guys in the opening hand.
  • Castle Garenbrig: Nets us one extra mana, but only for creatures. Considering the deck runs more creatures than lands, this usually won't be an issue.
  • Arbor Elf, Elvish Mystic, & Llanowar Elves: These are all functional copies of each other in the deck and just generally nice to see in our opening hand or early on.
  • Krosan Tusker: This guy makes sure that we hit our land drop for turn and draws us a card; essentially doing the best creature-based impression of the ubiquitous Cultivate.
  • Wood Elves & Yavimaya Dryad: Both of these have ETB triggers that give us an extra land. Of note is that we can use the dryad to give an opponent one of our forests if we are feeling political.
  • Whisperer of the Wilds: Double the CMC of its' cousin Elvish Mystic, this card can reliably produce since our commander meets the ferocious criteria.
  • Selvala, Heart of the Wilds: At the very worst, this card taps for net each turn. We can reliably tap her for triple since we will generally have access to our commander. Caution should be exercised when deploying Selvala. While certainly capable of fueling our hand, she can just as easily fuel an opponent's hand as well.
  • Shaman of Forgotten Ways: This fellow will be giving us 99.9% of the time. Going for his second ability, a Biorhythm effect, to win the game can often put our opponents at critically low life totals faster than Craterhoof Behemoth can.
  • Karametra's Acolyte: This card can tap for ridiculous amounts of mana if not dealt with quickly; it produces more mana the larger our board state.
  • Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: The land version of Karametra's Acolyte. Harder to remove, but also taps for if our board is completely empty.
  • Growing Rites of Itlimoc  : This card will help us dig deeper into our deck and flips into Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun, which will typically produce an enormous amount of .

  • Emerald Medallion: Makes every non-land card in the deck minus Rhonas's Monument cheaper to cast. The effect starts to add up once we begin to dump our hand out onto the board and it makes chaining together more creatures with one of our card draw cards easier.
  • Rhonas's Monument: Unlike the medallion above, this card only gives us a discount on our creatures. It does offer a nice temporary +2/+2 and more importantly, trample, to any creature on our board.
  • Awakening: Even though this card untaps each player's boards as well as our own, Yeva enables us to abuse this way more by playing creatures on each of our opponent's turns. We gain our normal untap as well as the untap from Awakening on each of our own turns, effectively giving us doubled mana.
  • Nature's Will: Hitting an opponent untaps our lands, giving us more mana to work with each turn of the table. There will usually be at least one opponent that we can get an attack through on, and we can choose to simply leave the mana untapped and play out our creatures as needed or on someone else's end step.
  • The Muse: One of the best cards in the deck, the Muse untaps only our board on each player's turn. This gives us double mana on our own turn as well, similar to awakening. Unlike the other cards in this section, the Muse is also searchable with our tutor package.
  • Kenrith's Transformation & Lignify: Both of these enchantments help us to get rid of problematic creatures on our opponent's boards. These cards are key since mono-Green tends to have difficulty removing opposing creatures in general.
  • Beast Within: Another card that is here to help deal with mainly problematic creatures, although it is also our only card that directly destroys planeswalkers, assuming our creatures cannot kill it for whatever reason.
  • Ulvenwald Tracker: Remember how our commander gives our creatures pseudo-haste? Flashing in this card on an opponent's end step lets us use his ability on our turn without needing to wait an entire turn cycle. This fellow helps us remove a decent number creatures. When combined with Kenrith's Transformation, Lignify, or Beast Within and our commander, we can remove any problematic creature we would need to. We'll be more likely to see Ulvenwald Tracker than the enchantments or Beast Within over the course of a game since it is more easily tutored due to it being a creature.
  • Acidic Slime, Brutalizer Exarch, Caustic Caterpillar, Manglehorn, Reclamation Sage, & Terastodon: These cards will remove almost any card you would need removed, minus opposing creatures. We'll want to save our creatures like the Acidic Slime that can destroy lands for cards like Maze of Ith and Glacial Chasm. Manglehorn in particular will slow down artifact decks. Caustic Caterpillar is easily tutorable due to its low CMC and allows us to hold up the mana and pass the turn; if we don't end up using it we can choose to spend the mana elsewhere with our commander.
  • Loaming Shaman: Our only card that can hose opposing graveyards, and also one of the few ways our deck has to potentially reuse all the cards in our own graveyard. Choosing when to target our opponent's and when to target our own graveyard generally depends on whether we have our Eternal Witness/Genesis available or if the opponent can abuse their graveyard more. We can also deny our opponent from getting value from us when they use their Animate Dead or Rise of the Dark Realms.
  • Return to Nature: This card is a functional upgrade over the ever-popular and equally budget-friendly Naturalize. It can be used to deal with cards like an opponent's Gideon's Intervention when they have named the card we are using to destroy their enchantments. This kind of situation is quite rare however. If one of the creature options above are available to us, it is preferable to utilize them instead and save this for an emergency as the creatures have more synergy with other cards and are more easily recurred.
  • Bane of Progress: This card is the literal bane of artifact and enchantress decks alike. Popping just one artifact or enchantment from each opponent gives similar value to a Terastodon. Usually the number of artifacts and enchantments destroyed on our opponents' boards outweighs the number of artifacts and enchantments destroyed on our board. If either Awakening or Nature's Will are on the board, it may be useful to reconsider whether the wipe needs to happen.
These are cards that, while fun, are slightly more situational.
For the most part, the deck aims to build a massive board state and overrun the rest of the table with huge Green creatures. To that end, the usual board state we'll want to establish to get there is typically going to consist of some combination of Yeva, Nature's Herald with Seedborn Muse/Awakening/Nature's Will and any card that draws us more creatures when we play out creatures. Ideally, our commander will let us play around our opponents' board wipes and edict effects in order to establish a lasting board. The following section gives more detailed descriptions of ways to deal with our opponents' strategies.

For the most part, we'll be looking to field the largest creatures and the widest board. Sometimes, we aren't able to do so for whatever reason. Either someone else has the bigger board, or an aggro or voltron deck are going hard for us. To deal with this, we'll primarily be using either Spore Frog or Timbermare to lock out at least one opponent from dealing damage to us.

Spore Frog will usually be combined with one of the few ways in the deck to bring it back from the graveyard to our hand.

  • Genesis: this card can be flashed in with our commander in response to a board wipe or to block a massive creature to send it to the graveyard. Alternatively, we can use Eldritch Evolution to send it to the graveyard on our own terms, usually finding Seedborn Muse or the Spore Frog with it.
    Once in the graveyard, Genesis can return the spore frog to our hand during each of our upkeeps. This method can only fog a single player's attack step however.
  • Eternal Witness + Temur Sabertooth : This combination of cards can return any card in our graveyard to our hand. In this case, we'll be returning our Spore Frog to our hand in order to recast it. Adding Seedborn Muse or Awakening with our commander allows us to fog every opponent's attack step.

Timbermare needs to be flashed in with our commander just as the opponent we want to fog is going to combat. Timbermare is better than Spore Frog if we need to stop attack triggers such as the ones from opposing Ulamog, the Infinite Gyres or Sun Titans. Alternatively, if Yeva, Nature's Herald is on the board we can flash in Timbermare right after we declare attackers in order to tap down all the blockers and get our damage through. This same trick can be applied when opponent A is attacking opponent B and we want opponent A's attack to get through.

  • Genesis can still return our Timbermare to our hand each upkeep if we choose not to pay the echo cost. This option costs us significantly more mana each turn compared to returning Spore Frog and will likely be keeping us solely focused on the defensive while our opponents advance their board states.
  • Temur Sabertooth can bounce the Timbermare back to our hand in response to the echo cost. Again, with Seedborn Muse + Yeva, Nature's Herald we can stop every opponent from having productive combat steps or blockers.
In either of the above scenarios, if we have Emerald Medallion or Rhonas's Monument to reduce Timbermare's cost, it makes it significantly easier to control our opponents' boards and advance our own board state.
Assuming our opponents do nothing to us, our ideal set up as described in the start of this section will let us develop our board more quickly than any other player at the table. In actual gameplay, it will be extremely likely that our opponents will see our developing board and attempt to answer it with board wipes like Wrath of God. In these kinds of games, another of the best cards in the deck, the Cat will be critical.

The fact that it is able to return our other creatures to our hand is already an amazing effect. What takes it over the top is the fact that the Cat grants itself indestructibility. If a board wipe or some targeted removal looks likely to be cast, leaving our mana open can save our board; if it doesn't happen, then we can continue to develop it since Yeva, Nature's Herald lets us flash out our creatures.

If we need to keep up in terms of card advantage with some decks, the Cat enables us to reuse our plethora of ETB effects and gives us extra cast triggers for some of our card draw engines like Beast Whisperer. Cards that were useful before now become even more powerful with the addition of the Cat due to being repeatable. Reclamation Sage can now systematically destroy key artifacts or enchantments; Bane of Progress now threatens to wipe our opponents' boards repeatedly; if someone at the table is being truly irritating we can also reuse our Acidic Slime or Terastodon to completely wreck their mana base or deny them from producing mana of a specific color. Alternatively, if we're feeling particularly generous or need to enter the political arena, Yavimaya Dryad can now give multiple lands to our opponents.

Invasive Species does a really nice one-off impression of the Cat and when used in conjunction with the Cat, can be used to save our lands from Strip Mines and Armageddons. It will also be used to save the Cat in the event that an opponent is running tuck or exiling board wipes like Hallowed Burial or Merciless Eviction respectively.

If there's an opponent running a large number of Grave Pact or other edict effects, bouncing our board back to our hand will result in us being forced to sacrifice the Cat. Creating a large number of tokens through our Avenger of Zendikar or our Tendershoot Dryad can help us get more sacrifice fodder to salvage the rest of our board. They will also give us a larger board state for our Craterhoof Behemoth and its less easily tutored cousin, Overwhelming Stampede.

Alternatively, if it becomes impossible to maintain a board state or if it constantly gets destroyed, Creeping Renaissance can be used; twice if necessary. Also see the "Underhanded" Strategies section.

The decks that like to pass their turn with all their mana open will generally be the ones that can give us the most trouble since they can respond to whatever we want to do. They'll also greatly benefit from seeing our Awakening out on the board, so try to get a feel for how the opponents' decks operate before playing it out; especially if we're up against a spellslinger deck. If we suspect our opponents have some countermagic saved up, there are generally a few options:

  1. Destiny Spinner: The look on the player's face when we tap to flash this card in and render their counterspells useless is always hilarious. If the meta you regularly play with runs a large number of decks that use countermagic, swapping out cards for Gaea's Herald and Prowling Serpopard can make your life easier. Destiny Spinner does make our enchantments uncounterable as well, so it's definitely better at covering most of our cards. If you need to fight through a disgusting amount of counterspells, Destiny Spinner can be swapped out for Prowling Serpopard.
  2. Eternal Witness: Sandbag this card and pick up the card that was countered to cast it again.
  3. Similarly, using the Loaming Shaman with any of our tutors can give us a key piece that was countered back.
  4. We can look to use our Creeping Renaissance (twice, if absolutely necessary) to get all the creatures or enchantments from our graveyard back to our hand, including the one that was countered.
  5. Remember that most of our sorcery tutors ask us to find a creature with CMC X or less. We can scare our opponents by casting it for X = 8 to make them think that we'll be getting Craterhoof Behemoth out of our deck. Most commander players that have been playing for a while will likely be expecting that and will do their best to answer it. This will basically force us to take the turn off just to bait out a counterspell, but also remember that our tutors find any creature with CMC X or less. If it resolves somehow, we can find any other creature we would reasonably need from our deck, aside from Ghalta, Primal Hunger.
  6. As a last ditch effort, just keep casting cards. Don't let the player with countermagic force us into total inaction. Getting Yeva, Nature's Herald out onto the board will force them to deal with the fact that we can interact with the board at instant speed too. If they want to stop us from doing that, recasting Yeva, Nature's Herald could repeatably bait out the counterspells for the rest of the team. Just be wary of racking up the commander tax too high.
If we can catch a moment where the opponent is tapped out, we need to prioritize getting the Muse, the Cat, and our commander out; in that order. Spellslinger decks will usually run very low creature counts; look to Biorhythm them out of the game or at least drop their life totals to critically low levels.
Some players feel that certain strategies like land destruction, stax, or theft are "unfun". While I'm certainly not aiming to abuse such strategies here, there will be opponents that are.
It depends on whether the opponent is using a repeatable, targeted removal of each land. Normally, it is expected to have Castle Garenbrig or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx strip mined to prevent the generation of large amounts of mana. What this section is talking about are strategies like looping the Strip Mine with Crucible of Worlds and Azusa, Lost but Seeking to deny us of mana. In this instance, we're going to need to rely more on our creatures that can produce mana. Try to use the Loaming Shaman to shuffle away the offending Strip Mine. Alternatively, if they are using some kind of artifact or enchantment to perform the loop, destroying that card with one of our deck's interaction pieces can buy enough time to mount a counterattack.

If the opponent is going for a Armageddon into Sylvan Reclamation strategy, again, we'll want to lean more heavily on the mana producing creatures in the deck. If it's something like Jokulhaups that is wiping the board, getting the Cat and saving a very large amount of mana is probably the only way we are going to be able to retain any semblance of a board state. Flash in Yeva, Nature's Herald and as many mana dorks as possible after the board wipe occurs to try and rebuild.

These decks also come in a few varieties. They'll try to deny the deck either the ability to maintain a board state or the ability to develop the board state. If they run an aristocrats-style deck with Grave Pacts or Butchers we'll want to look for our creatures that can produce large numbers of tokens: Tendershoot Dryad or Avenger of Zendikar. Watch out for cards like Tainted AEther. If we can, we'll need to pop their offending artifact or enchantment. The deck will struggle to deal with opposing cards like the aforementioned Butcher or Savra, Queen of the Golgari decks.

If the opponent is instead using cards like Winter Orb or Static Orb we can either abuse it ourselves by getting the Muse out and leaving our remaining opponents to deal with the issue or we can stop one part of a potential lock by getting out creatures that can pop the threatening card. Note that Stasis will still stop us from generating mana even if the Muse is on the board. We'll need to destroy it.

I try not to flick my cards and dislike it when other players just take my cards and flick them. Flicking aside, theft decks will try to take away our key pieces and use them for their own gain. Similar advice here; destroy any opposing artifacts or enchantments like Corrupted Conscience to get the creature back. We'll need to save the cards that can deal with opposing creatures and use them sparingly, especially if we're staring down a Sen Triplets deck or a Rubinia Soulsinger deck. Alternatively, we can try to bounce our creatures using the Cat to prevent them from being targeted and taken.
The Bard is definitely a more powerful commander when compared to Yeva, Nature's Herald. He offers us the capacity to play at instant speed as well, and his ability to sequentially "ladder up" and tutor out creatures from our deck as the situation calls for grants the deck an added level of consistency and inevitability. I usually don't run Yisan, the Wanderer Bard as the commander since he can draw a lot of hate from the rest of the table before the game even starts. If everyone at the table is playing pretty cutthroat however, Yisan, the Wanderer Bard will most likely see action.

If we're running the Bard in the command zone, getting the Muse or Awakening out onto the board makes it possible for us to put ourselves firmly in the driver's seat at the table. The Cat becomes slightly less essential to our game plan as bouncing the Bard back to our hand would reset the chain. Wirewood Symbiote becomes more useful and less tangential to our game plan however; the ability for us to double verse with the Bard is crucial to adding flexibility to the deck.

If you're not aware, the Bard can "skip" one of the CMCs when laddering and grab 2 cards of the CMC one higher. You will need the Bard, a way to untap him, and 6 mana. In this decklist that would be Wirewood Symbiote but there are other decks that run other cards to untap him. Here's how to do it:

  1. We start with Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Wirewood Symbiote on the board. Yisan, the Wanderer Bard has X verse counters on him.
  2. Spend , tap Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and put 1 more verse counter on him to put the search ability on the stack. Yisan, the Wanderer Bard now has X+1 verse counters on him.
  3. Instead of letting the ability resolve, you hold priority and respond to the search ability by returning any other elf card to put Wirewood Symbiote's ability on the stack, targeting Yisan, the Wanderer Bard.
  4. Let the Wirewood Symbiote's ability resolve, untapping Yisan, the Wanderer Bard.
  5. Respond to the first search ability, which is still on the stack, again by spending another , tapping Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, and adding another verse counter on him to put a second search ability on the stack. Yisan, the Wanderer Bard now has X+2 verse counters on him.
  6. Allow the stack to resolve now. The second search ability will resolve first, checking the current number of verse counters and allowing you to search the deck for a creature with CMC equal to X+2.
  7. The first search ability now resolves, also checking the current number of verse counters and allowing you to search the deck again for a creature with CMC equal to X+2.

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94% Casual

Competitive

Date added 4 years
Last updated 3 years
Exclude colors WUBR
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

7 - 0 Mythic Rares

28 - 1 Rares

17 - 0 Uncommons

15 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.67
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, City's Blessing, Elephant 3-3 G, Plant 0/1 G, Saproling 1/1 G
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