Unlimited Growth, Endless Armies

Commander / EDH GW (Selesnya)

Reluctant_Bant

Creature (21)

• 1x Anointer Priest
• 1x Champion of Lambholt
• 1x Darien, King of Kjeldor
• 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1x Emmara Tandris
• 1x Essence Warden
• 1x Heliod, God of the Sun
• 1x Jazal Goldmane
• 1x Karametra, God of Harvests
• 1x Mycoloth
• 1x Nylea, God of the Hunt
• 1x Odric, Master Tactician
• 1x Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter
• 1x Rampaging Baloths
• 1x Soul Warden
• 1x Thunderfoot Baloth
• 1x Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
• 1x Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
• 1x Voice of Resurgence
• 1x Wayfaring Temple
• 1x Wilt-Leaf Liege

Instant (11)

• 1x Advent of the Wurm
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Druid's Deliverance
• 1x Flawless Maneuver
• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x March of the Multitudes
• 1x Rootborn Defenses
• 1x Second Harvest
• 1x Secure the Wastes
• 1x Selesnya Charm
• 1x Unbreakable Formation

Land (35)

• 1x Blighted Woodland
• 1x Blossoming Sands
• 1x Canopy Vista
• 1x Castle Ardenvale
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 8x Forest
• 1x Gavony Township
• 1x Graypelt Refuge
• 1x Grove of the Guardian
• 1x Krosan Verge
• 1x Mosswort Bridge
• 1x Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 10x Plains
• 1x Saltcrusted Steppe
• 1x Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1x Stirring Wildwood
• 1x Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
• 1x Windbrisk Heights

Sorcery (13)

• 1x Call of the Conclave
• 1x Crush of Wurms
• 1x Entreat the Angels
• 1x Finale of Glory
• 1x Full Flowering
• 1x Gelatinous Genesis
• 1x Harvest Season
• 1x Hour of Reckoning
• 1x Nomads' Assembly
• 1x Phyrexian Rebirth
• 1x Sprouting Renewal
• 1x Wake the Reflections
• 1x Wurmcalling

Commander (1)

Enchantment (15)

• 1x Anointed Procession
• 1x Asceticism
• 1x Aura Shards
• 1x Beastmaster Ascension
• 1x Cathars' Crusade
• 1x Cryptolith Rite
• 1x Dawn of Hope
• 1x From Beyond
• 1x Growing Ranks
• 1x Luminarch Ascension
• 1x Parallel Lives
• 1x Privileged Position
• 1x Sandwurm Convergence
• 1x Song of the Worldsoul
• 1x True Conviction

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Elspeth Tirel
• 1x Garruk Wildspeaker
• 1x Huatli, Radiant Champion

Artifact (1)

• 1x Bow of Nylea

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Sideboard

Creature (5)

• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Marwyn, the Nurturer

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Camaraderie

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Divine Visitation

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After years of being indecisive, I'm finally making an EDH deck! Originally I latched onto Doran, the Siege Tower... then I tried Sapling of Colfenor, but I'm just not a Golgari, so then I tried Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, but she just wasn't powerful enough. Oona, Queen of the Fae was looking like my choice for a long time, before Tuvasa the Sunlit caught my eye, but she and I just... didn't work out. And now here I am with Rhys the Redeemed!

The first move before anything else was to get lands sorted out, because I wanted to know exactly how much room I would have left to work with. I started with 35 land, mostly following other peoples' trend of stuffing in as many double-lands as possible. As far as mana ramp, Cultivate and Kodama's Reach are both wonderful cards, but for this particular deck, Harvest Season outpaces both, and Cryptolith Rite and Awakening Zone play much better with the token-heavy theme. I had a few one-drops like Birds of Paradise, but they ultimately got replaced by cards like Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter, who can basically pump out a Scion of the Wild every turn.

The next step was to chuck in all the obvious Selesnya choices like Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, Wayfaring Temple, and Voice of Resurgence. I pulled up Gatherer and searched for cards with "Populate" or "Convoke" in their rules text for gems like Full Flowering, Chord of Calling and Hour of Reckoning. That brought me to about 75 cards. I searched other Rhys/Trostani decks for some other good choices, then started to work on shortcomings.

The first problem I faced was a lack of token generation; I had heaps of doubling and populate effects, like Anointed Procession and Parallel Lives, but not enough tokens. I searched Gatherer again for cards with "create" "creature" "token" that didn't include Red, Black, or Blue cards, and I tried to pull all the best effects to create the meat of the deck; cards like Wurmcalling, Secure the Wastes, and Gelatinous Genesis.

The next problem was that a lot of my cards were far too expensive. I wanted to keep the CMC of my stronger cards to around 6 or so... with a few exceptions. Which meant cards like Deploy to the Front didn't make the cut, while Nomads' Assembly did. I also started removing cards that didn't scale well; cards with blanket effects like Heliod, God of the Sun or Nylea, God of the Hunt were prioritized over singular effects, as were cards with persistent effects like Mycoloth.

Finally, I started weeding out cards that weren't worth their CMC. For 6 mana, True Conviction is simply better than Collective Blessing, and spells like Unbreakable Formation, Flawless Maneuver, and Rootborn Defenses were simply better and cheaper than Join Shields.

While I found that while it was very tempting to throw in cards like Increasing Devotion or Conqueror's Pledge, the best cards for generating tokens are ones that scale, like Entreat the Angels or Finale of Glory, so I can use them early-game if there are no better options, or I can wait until I can pour 10+ mana into the same spell.

A second draft saw me pull out a lot of unnecessary double-lands, partially because I didn't like them, but also so that Karametra, God of Harvests would have more land to tutor. I removed Selesnya Eulogist when I realized I couldn't guarantee her Populate effect every turn. From what I've seen, 35 seems like it's on the low end for lands, but I think further testing will determine if I need to replace Soul Warden and Essence Warden with Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic.

There may be a few cards out there I've missed. In particular, I'm not as familiar with the Eldrazi cards as I'd like, but for now, I think every card on this list has earned its place, and I definitely think I succeeded in my goal of keeping the mana curve as low as possible, while filling the deck with blanket effects and token generation that scales well to any part of the match.

Yes, I know I skipped Doubling Season. And I am okay with that.

The reason Concerted Effort didn't make the cut is because it doesn't copy Lifelink. Otherwise it would go in the deck in a heartbeat.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 1 Mythic Rares 50 - 3 Rares 12 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 3 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.63
Tokens	Angel 4/4 W, Angel 4/4 W w/ Vigilance, Anointer Priest 1/3 W, Beast 3/3 G, Beast 4/4 G, Centaur 3/3 G, Construct */* C, Copy Clone, Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Elemental 8/8 GW, Elemental */* GW, Elf Knight 2/2 GW, Elf Warrior 1/1 GW, Emblem Huatli, Radiant Champion, Enchantment Cleric 2/1 W, Human 1/1 W, Knight 2/2 W w/ Vigilance, Kor Soldier 1/1 W, Ooze */* G, Horror */* C, Saproling 1/1 G, Servo 1/1 C, Soldier 1/1 W, Soldier 1/1 W w/ Lifelink, Soldier 2/2 W, Warrior 1/1 W, Wurm 5/5 G, Wurm 5/5 G w/ Trample, Wurm 6/6 G, Wurm */* G