Witty Frog Pun Goes Here (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Witty Frog Pun Goes Here

Commander / EDH BG (Golgari) Dredge Landfall Lands Loam Ramp Reanimator Sacrifice

herpdederp92

Land (35)

Enchantment (6)

Planeswalker (2)

Creature (22)

Sorcery (13)

Commander (1)

Instant (13)

Artifact (8)

Maybeboard

Creature (11)

Enchantment (3)

Land (10)

Artifact (2)

Sorcery (8)

Instant (7)

Hello! I'm a longtime commander player, and this is my homebrewed Gitfrog deck. I love lands-matter decks and graveyard decks, I love decks with cEDH potential, and I love decks with the flexibility to swap between value and combo as needed. Gitfrog checks all those boxes, plus he's incredibly fun to play.

Rethinking Lands Matter Strats Show

Monologue incoming. TL;DR This deck was built from lots of personal playtesting and durdling around with value strats.

So, my initial take on The Gitrog Monster was pretty simple: "I have plenty of land-matters cards sitting around. Why don't I just mess around building a Gitfrog deck from scratch, and see if I can come up with anything interesting?"

This is far from how I usually build decks. Normally I don't start building a deck until I have a specific idea in mind, like a combo, a hardlock, or an interesting value engine. The problem is, the Gitfrog is already kind of a solved deck. You can look up any one of hundreds of cEDH netdecks, buy your Dakmor Salvage and your generic graveyard combo, change a half-dozen control spells, and hey presto, you have a bland new deck. So I was inspired to go lone-wolf my deck construction and try to make something unique.

After playing around with a bunch of first-draft goodstuff decks, I'm starting to feel out a particular niche for my Gitfrog. I'm perfectly happy to run the usual Oblivion Crown shenanigans, but I want to double down on the deck's identity in a way that won't cause it to fall apart to an Extract on Dakmor Salvage . This isn't intended to quite reach cEDH levels yet, but in cEDH terms, I want my Gitfrog to feel more like an adaptive deck rather than only a proactive deck.

So, I've started treating my deck like a lands-aristocrats deck. How does that work? The Gitfrog deck already wants to play tons of lands, sacrifice tons of lands, draw tons of cards, and mill tons of cards. If you were to replace the word "land" with the word "creature," that would just be an aristocrats deck. I want to run a deck where we can pitch lands to a sacrifice outlet , play spells to reanimate them, and outvalue opponents with life drain triggers and token aggro , the exact same way an aristocrats deck would play around creatures.

So here's what I've built. It's not competitive, not without a lot more moxes , but it's pretty dangerous nonetheless.

You should play this deck if:

--Your name is Toad and you're friends with a Frog.

--You like having tons of mana and tons of cards and tons of spellcasts every turn.

--You like using your graveyard as a giant second hand and hate Rest in Peace with a burning passion.

--You live at the top of Dread Mountain.

--You prefer reactive, flexible decks with multiple paths to victory over decks that go all-in on a single combo.

--You enjoy decks that play around crazy resource-wasting mechanics (example: Ghost Quartering your own land for the landfall trigger)

--You've caught a frog in your throat and have nothing better to do. (Better get that checked out.)

A Quick Rundown of the Lands that Matter Show

Dakmor discard and other degenerate Frog dances Show

OK, so the process of winning games with this deck can be a little convoluted. The Frog's direct combo lines are always particularly complicated, as a result this section is gonna be a bit long.

The Dakmor Discard Combo

If you haven't seen it before, here's how the generic combo goes. First, we need a Gitfrog on the field and a Dakmor Salvage either in hand, or in the graveyard with any land in hand. The other piece of the combo is a free discard outlet like Oblivion Crown . We discard the land, trigger Gitfrog, and dredge Dakmor by milling two cards. If one of those cards is a land, Gitfrog draws us a card for free. Next, we discard Dakmor again, milling two more cards to dredge it back. Eventually, we will either draw or mill our Kozilek, Butcher of Truth ; if we draw him, we simply discard him and any cards we want to shuffle back in. This lets us discard the Dakmor to our discard outlet an infinite number of times, while simultaneously drawing an arbitrarily large chunk of our deck.

Got all that? Good. Now how does it win?

Without any effects on the specific discard outlet, we can generate infinite mana through two rituals, Dark Ritual and Lotus Petal . We can float infinite mana of all colors by goldfishing through the deck repeatedly with Dakmor to draw and cast Lotus Petal over and over again. Alternatively, to win at instant speed, we can use an open black mana to float infinite black by looping Dark Ritual; an open green mana allows Crop Rotation into Emergence Zone to execute a complete win on the stack.

In either case, we slap Torment of Hailfire on the stack for a thousand, protect it with Veil of Summer if possible, and goldfish Torment out over and over again if necessary. In case Torment is exiled, the backup wincon is to cast Reanimate on Ob Nixilis, the Fallen and loop Crop Rotation repeatedly to burn everyone to death. And of course, casting Assassin's Trophy on all of our opponents' permanents should force a win via commander damage.

Now, keep in mind that the discard loops can also be executed simply by overmaxing hand size and going to the end step. (We DEFINITELY don't play a Reliquary Tower in this deck, and Folio of Fancies hurts us pretty badly!) We discard Dakmor to hand size, trigger Gitfrog, dredge Dakmor, maybe trigger the Frog again, and force another cleanup step by being over 7 cards again. However, this can only win at instant speed (i.e. no Lotus Petal) and is incredibly telegraphed, so it's better to have an actual discard outlet available. What are our outlets?

Oblivion Crown Occasionally, you can combine a Crown on a Frog with some kill spells to get a very simplistic one-shot via commander damage. It's not elegant but it works.

Putrid Imp Cute, 1 mana, easy to work with.

Noose Constrictor Reach is occasionally a relevant keyword on this guy.

I've sideboarded the Skirge Familiar for now; his high mana value outweighed his greater potential utility and his ability to juke scary removal by activating as a mana ability.

Other ways to set Frog off

This section literally just describes some of the other crazy card interactions that happen with GitFrog specifically to make degenerate things happen.

Underrealm Lich Possibly the most apocalyptically non-infinite card in the deck. With 35 lands out of 100 cards, the probability is high that any group of 3 cards off the top of the deck contains a land, so we can just keep proccing Gitfrog over and over and over until we mill Dakmor Salvage . Problem is, there's no guarantee it works, so we actually have to play it out. Which sucks.

Squandered Resources The deck contains several other land sacrifice outlets like Sylvan Safekeeper , but Squandered Resources fulfils two extra roles. The first is that it creates some alternate combo lines, and the second is that it combines with Frog to arbitrarily draw cards and make mana, until we run out of lands in play. Notably, each land sacrifice triggers Gitfrog individually, as opposed to effects like Scapeshift .

Rain of Filth A lookalike to Squandered Resources, and another huge ritualistic play that can chain a dozen Gitfrog triggers while floating mana. Notably, Rain of Filth only grants its ability to lands that are in play at the time it resolves, so it's not a loopable combo engine.

Mesmeric Orb Another way to get a bunch of individual triggers that send lands to the graveyard singly for Gitfrog to munch. We get to simultaneously annoy our opponents and stuff our hand full of extra cards on our upkeep.

Life from the Loam Possibly the single most consistently valuable card in the deck, LFTL is pretty much a free chain of value plays with Frog on the field. Dredge Loam, mill a land, draw a card anyway, play Loam, recur a couple of fetches and the milled card, play the fetches, crack 'em, draw more cards, repeat next turn...

Dryad Arbor As a card that is both a creature and a land in all zones, we can do some fun shenanigans with Arbor and Gitfrog, such as putting it into play with Nissa of Shadowed Boughs and then sacrificing it to Phyrexian Tower .

Alternate Wincons based around Landfall Show

For the benefit of those who search for TL;DR, I'm putting the comparatively complicated alt-combos into their own box. Skip at your leisure.

Alternate combo lines for infinite landfall loops

While the Dakmor-specific loops are pretty interesting, we've got plenty of other deck tech in hand to win via direct damage or Frogless combo loops. Best part is, most of these other lines already cause lands to hit the graveyard, so we can still add Frog to the mix just to draw a bunch of cards.

I've identified two main loops that get us infinite landfall and land-sacrifice triggers already:

Drownyard Temple can be reanimated indefinitely, a la Reassembling Skeleton . How do we do it? Well, it's not easy. We have to get out Squandered Resources , Lotus Cobra , and Amulet of Vigor , which each individually grant 1 of the 3 mana needed to bring Drownyard back after it's sacrificed to Squandered Resources. I'm yet to find any practical way to give this combo redundancy; Lotus Cobra can be replaced with any mana-doubler like Heartbeat of Spring , but otherwise the cards are fixed.

Mortuary Mire and World Shaper can create an even more fragile loop. We also need a card like Phyrexian Tower that sacrifices World Shaper, a card like Sylvan Safekeeper that sacrifices lands, and a card like Nurturing Peatland (or Frog) to draw. Oh, and either a Lotus Cobra or a Amulet of Vigor , because World Shaper puts all the lands back into play tapped when sacrificed, and we need mana to recast it. So we sac a bunch of lands, play Shaper, sac Shaper, recur Mortuary Mire, put Shaper on top of library, use Peatland to draw it, and play it again to repeat the loop. Clear as mud? Cool. We can replace World Shaper with Eternal Witness and Sylvan Reclamation , creating a version of the combo where 7 cards plus at least 6 other lands participate. I've pulled this off with surprising regularity nonetheless.

There are some other crazy value loops that can be pulled off with cards like Veteran Explorer , but they generally don't go infinite because there's a finite number of basic lands in the deck.

Thankfully, the things that we get from landfall are nowhere NEAR as complicated as the ways to make landfall do combo things:

Ob Nixilis, the Fallen Damage, plus a big fatty to punch faces

Dread Presence Damage and/or card draw (add Urborg for best results)

Field of the Dead Tons of zombie tokens

Lotus Cobra Tons of floating mana to burn

Nissa, Vital Force Tons of card draw from the emblem

Nissa of Shadowed Boughs A lot of loyalty counters, so we can reanimate a ton of creatures.

Luckily, this deck has plenty of less combotastic ways to flop tons of lands onto the battlefield at once, and kill everyone with finite value:

Collective Voyage Up to 13 mana

Azusa, Lost but Seeking and friends

I see your Value Engine is as Big as Mine Show

So somebody might have mentioned that this deck likes playing lands and drawing cards and tutoring things that let it play more lands and draw more cards and maybe play some creatures and kill people. So here's all the stuff that does that!

PLAYING LOTS OF LANDS AND TUTORING SPECIFIC LANDS:

The Gitrog Monster (duh)

Azusa, Lost but Seeking

Dryad of the Ilysian Grove Another way to fix all lands into swamps for Dread Presence.

Exploration

Burgeoning

Collective Voyage

Veteran Explorer This man is a RITUAL card. Treat him as such.

Crop Rotation Occasionally, the instant-speed landfall is relevant.

Tempt with Discovery I wouldn't recommend trying to grab Dakmor Salvage , since we want that card in hand to combo off, not in play. My typical 4 selections would be Field of the Dead , Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth , High Market , and Ghost Quarter to kill the cheeky Cabal Coffers that some opponent is guaranteed to pull out.

Sylvan Scrying

Expedition Map

Elvish Reclaimer

Scapeshift Either dig out Field of the Dead or leave it in play and flop in a bunch of other lands. Either way, many Zombies.

WAYS TO DRAW OR MILL LOTS OF CARDS:

The Gitrog Monster (duh again)

Horn of Greed Notably, Horn only works on lands played, not on landfall, which kinda sucks. But it's still amazingly good.

Hermit Druid Kind of a funny deck to run Druid in, since we're not running too many nonbasics, but he's a good way to dump cards into the yard fast and get Frog triggers.

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Hidden secret deck tech, you can actually cast him to draw cards. Who knew?

WAYS TO USE THE GRAVEYARD AS A SECOND HAND:

Drownyard Temple

Dread Return Flashback plus reanimation equals very broken

Increasing Ambition Flashback

Eternal Witness

Skullwinder

Nissa, Vital Force When we don't need the emblem, her -3 is pretty good.

Dakmor Salvage (duh)

Life from the Loam A hilariously strong card in this deck. You should ALWAYS choose to dredge Loam when Gitfrog is in play; 9 times out of 10, it's a free action.

Entomb I am of course mentioning Entomb immediately after the two best cards to entomb (the ones with dredge). Dread Return is pretty good too.

Ramunap Excavator Particularly good since we can use the same fetchland from grave repeatedly.

Reanimate I've chosen Reanimate over Living Death in this deck simply because we usually only need a couple specific creatures to win, not a giant pile of dorks to attack with.

SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO TUTOR THAT ONE SPECIFIC CARD:

Wishclaw Talisman

Scheming Symmetry

Increasing Ambition

We're not playing a whole lot of tutors because this deck draws cards so quickly, but a few always help. Would I add Vampiric and Demonic? In a heartbeat, but they so expensive waaaaaaah.

Control and utility effects Show

I always put a heavy emphasis on reactive answers in my decks, because I like being the player with agency and political value. In this case, we're looking at a deck that draws cards fast and puts out tons of creatures, so we're focusing harder on cheap spot removal (especially removal for stax like Leyline of the Void ) and letting the deck slack off on boardwipes somewhat.

KILLSPELLS AND DISENCHANTS:

Dread Presence The damage hits any target, so in a pinch we can machine-gun down some creatures or 'walkers.

BOARD CLEARS:

Mutilate as a cut-rate Damnation

Toxic Deluge

Pernicious Deed to clear basically all nonland permanents.

Blast Zone ditto, albeit with more precision

OTHER UTILITY EFFECTS WORTH NOTING:

Glacial Chasm We really don't care about the downsides of this card. If we ever need to attack, it gets rid of itself on upkeep, and having a nice anti-aggro switch to flash in with Crop Rotation is very cute.

Carpet of Flowers Always a sketchy card IMO, but I get stuck playing in cEDH pods with this deck a lot, and that means Islands. When it works, it's WAY better than a Sol Ring.

Veil of Summer There are quite a few "anti-counterspell" effects we could run, but I like Veil of Summer over cards like Destiny Spinner because it works on important sorceries like Torment of Hailfire and Splendid Reclamation . Also a good canary in the coal mine to cast at the start of a big combo turn, a la Silence .

Collector Ouphe We can easily play around Ouphe. Many commander decks lose half their mana upon this card resolving, whereas we might get screwed out of a Sol Ring . Oh well?

Sylvan Safekeeper Notably, we're not playing many other hexproof/shroud effects. So it's important to use Safekeeper for her intended purpose too, as opposed to just holding priority and sacrificing a bunch of lands for kicks and giggles.

Claws of Gix I've been enjoying Claws more than Zuran Orb , as it allows me to protect even important enchantments like Squandered Resources by sending them to the grave for Eternal Witness to retrieve.

Phyrexian Tower and High Market are both represented in this deck so that they can sacrifice World Shaper or other cards we don't want sent to exile.

Geier Reach Sanitarium is an underrepresented all-star in this deck, since we can use it both for card selection and as a one-shot discard outlet.

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Casual

92% Competitive

Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 16 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.40
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Emblem Nissa, Vital Force, Zombie 2/2 B
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