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EDH: Tasigur's Banana Hammock

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Control

bimjowen

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Land (30)

Sorcery (6)

Instant (27)

Enchantment (8)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Creature (14)

Artifact (14)

Maybeboard

Sorcery (3)

Land (1)

Enchantment (2)

Artifact (1)

Creature (1)

Hey! Thanks for taking an interest in my Tasigur EDH deck!



A Quick History of My BUG Deck:

I've had a BUG EDH deck since Damia, Sage of Stone was spoiled back in Commander 2011. Unfortunately, Damia fell out of favor in my playgroup due to her high CMC and the rapidly-increasing power levels of competitive EDH decks. I ended up switching her to Tasigur, the Golden Fang around 2015. However, since Tasigur is no longer considered a tier 1 commander, I figured I should optimize my deck and try to get some solid feedback from people who are better at cEDH than I am. I'd like to thank you fine folks in advance for any constructive criticism you provide.

As anyone would expect, swapping commanders forced me to change the deck rather dramatically. Instead of focusing on tricks like Damia + Manabond to ramp into big fun spells, Tasigur favors a low mana curve, a lower land count, a more reactive play style, and several overlapping combo win conditions. All of these attributes are typical of competitive EDH decks.

Inspiration For Improvement

I've done my best to fashion this deck as competitively as I can with the cards I own. I've taken inspiration and competitive win conditions from a few competitive Tasigur lists. I was originally using the Reality Within combo, first seen in the "Reality Within" deck by ShaperSavant. I have a lot of respect for ShaperSavant and his deck because the win condition of infinite mana + Tasigur + Reality Shift + Beast Within is a combination of cards that are useful even independent of the combo. I really dislike combo pieces that are dead cards by themselves.

While I don't always agree with his card choices, I also dedicate a ton of credit to Cameron from LabManiacs. He has done a tremendous amount of playtesting and deckbuilding with Tasigur. He's also the one who introduced me to the power of Life from the Loam in Tasigur. Since then, Intuition for LFTL + fetches / cycling lands has become a favorite value line of mine.

Our Gameplan:

Of course I'm biased, but I think this is a fairly competitive build of Tasigur. I've worked hard to cut out the "cute" spells I see a lot of popular Tasigur decks running. Probably the "cutest" card I'm currently testing is Incubation Druid . It seems promising, but I acknowledge activating the Adapt ability for 5 mana is no small expenditure.

Meta calls are always a thing though. If you see heavy creature-based strategies at your LGS, it would certainly be wise to cut some of the mana dorks in favor of wrath effects -- preferably ones that spare Tasigur, if possible.

This deck is pretty lean. There is room for meta-based flex slots but I have filled some of those slots with additional mana dorks and rocks to improve our speed and consistency.

It may also be possible to cut a land or two with the density of mana enablers the deck currently runs; I'm unsure.

The deck aims to be:

  • a controlling, reactive permission deck.
  • a combo deck that hinges upon infinite mana and using Tasigur as a mana sink to put our deck into our hand.
  • a combo deck with as few dead card slots as possible. By "dead cards," I mean cards that are essentially useless outside of the combo turn. This deck pretty much only runs two dead cards -- Freed from the Real and Paradox Engine . However these are both compact combo pieces that enable infinite mana with several different overlapping cards in the deck.

How Do We Create Infinite Mana?

We aim to create infinite mana via one of the following lines:

  1. Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal + mana rocks and dorks
  2. Freed from the Real + Arbor Elf + Utopia Sprawl + Tropical Island or Breeding Pool
  3. Freed from the Real + Bloom Tender
  4. Freed from the Real + Incubation Druid after the druid's Adapt ability has been activated
  5. Paradox Engine and any number of mana rocks and elves
  6. Paradox Engine and Isochron Scepter , imprinted with any reusable instant ( Swan Song and Winds of Rebuke are powerful options)
  7. Finally, if we have a high life total we can Ad Nauseam for ~30 life and pray we draw into Dramatic Scepter or Paradox Engine + rocks. We generally use AN as a value draw and not a storm enabler, but if things get desperate this is a last resort option.

There are probably additional lines I've forgotten to mention here; I apologise in advance if so.

Transmute Artifact

One of the niche enablers to get Paradox Engine / Isochron Scepter into play is Transmute Artifact . I am surprised I practically never see this played in Tasigur decks.

What Do We Do With Infinite Mana?

  1. We cast Tasigur and sink the infinite mana into his activated ability to put our deck into our hand. We cast all relevant spells (or continue looking at least one castable spell), then win by lasering everyone to death with Aetherflux Reservoir .
  2. We can also blow up all our opponents' permanents by loop-casting Assassin's Trophy , and then safely placing a few cards back on top of our library with Noxious Revival and passing turn. At this point it would be fairly trivial to win through commander damage over the next several agonizing turns; our opponents would control no permanents and we have our deck in our hand.
  3. Alternately, we can use Tasigur to loop-cast Winds of Rebuke on any card we own ( Mana Vault , for example) and keep recasting the Vault, continuously Rebuking it until our opponents' libraries are exhausted. In the event an opponent has an Eldrazi Titan that will shuffle their graveyard back into their library, we have Faerie Macabre at our disposal. Of course, we again have Noxious Revival available to restore cards to our own library.
  4. We also have Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal + Copy Artifact + Swan Song / Winds of Rebuke ,
  5. And also Isochron Scepter + Swan Song / Winds of Rebuke + Paradox Engine . Really, any instant imprinted on Scepter will provide "infinite" casts, which kills the table with Aetherflux Reservoir in play.

Outdated Lines of Play

These following lines are outdated but I will keep them here in case I decide to roll the deck back:

  • We have an Eldritch Evolution combo sacrificing Tasigur to tutor and play Razaketh. We then sacrifice a creature to tutor up and cast Life , animating all our lands. We then sacrifice two lands to find and cast Scepter and Reversal to assemble the Dramatic Scepter combo.
  • We can actually HARDCAST Razaketh to kickstart the combo, using Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth . We also have Life from the Loam , Entomb , and Crop Rotation as ways to enable this land-based mana combo (outside of our standard black tutors). I generally prefer to save Crop Rotation as a way to exile a Protean Hulk from a graveyard at instant speed using Bojuka Bog , but it is an option to keep in mind.

Synergies

The (Monetary) Price of Progress?

This deck is painfully expensive. I now have paid for and own all of these cards. The only two cards I don't own that could find a home in this deck are Scalding Tarn -- which I refuse to buy until it's reprinted -- and Timetwister -- which I will likely never own. However, I'm not entirely convinced the deck wants a Timetwister as it unfortunately refills the hands of our opponents. It certainly has nice synergy with Chains but otherwise it's rather suspect, except as either a turn 1 play after dumping mana rocks out, or as a way to safely shuffle our graveyard back into our library. In either case, it's certainly not worth $3000.

Weakness of the deck

Regrettably, I don't think Tasigur is as powerful as Thrasios + Tymna and unless bans happen I don't think he ever will be.

Partners providing access to white combo-protecting cards like Silence and Grand Abolisher , Tymna providing easy command zone card advantage, and Thrasios not requiring colored mana to combo off just make things much easier than Tasigur can. However, I will say that people generally target the Tasigur players with less vigor than the Thrasios + Tymna netdeckers, at least at my LGS -- perhaps it has to do with the reputation Tasigur has as a "policeman" commander rather than a "cutthroat combo" commander. So that's one upside!

Ultimately, if you enjoy a deck that's slower to combo off, with huge decision trees to navigate and a very reactive play style, I think you'll enjoy giving Tasigur a try. I certainly have!

Many Thanks!

In closing, I'd like to thank you all again for reading. Looking forward to deck feedback, both positive and negative! Also, be sure to check the "Updates" section further down the page to see a list of the deck's recent changes!

-bimjowen

Suggestions

Updates Add

Enormous Update — May 20, 2018
Edit

The deck is now completely up to date and currently "finished." I will continue to playtest monitor for new cards useful for the deck.

Note after testing it extensively, I did finally remove the Dramatic Scepter backup win condition. It's extremely powerful but it's simply too many dead cards to justify running in a control deck where slots are at a premium.

I also switched our reanimator target from Jin-Gitaxias to Nezahal. The sea monster's effect isn't as profound as the praetor's but he dodges removal pretty effortlessly. I'm considering switching to or adding Tidespout Tyrant.

I may add more instant speed interaction to deal with troublesome permanent cards. I was playing a game yesterday and realized how badly a single Cursed Totem harms my win condition.

Finally, I removed Dark Confidant. While insanely powerful, he would always eat removal, turning attractive opening hands into terrible ones. Also, with the mana curve of the deck slowly creeping upward his life loss is getting a bit scary. YMMV.

Thanks for your interest in the deck!

5/17/2017 Deck Alteration Explanations! — May 17, 2017
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Revision 17 See all

(6 years ago)

+1 Aetherflux Reservoir main
+1 Barren Moor main
+1 Bojuka Bog maybe
-1 Cephalid Coliseum main
-1 Chrome Mox main
+1 Copy Artifact main
+1 Crop Rotation main
+1 Damnation maybe
+1 Disallow main
-1 Elves of Deep Shadow main
-1 Exotic Orchard main
-1 Exploration main
+1 Faerie Macabre main
-1 Flooded Grove main
+1 Grafdigger's Cage maybe
+1 Incubation Druid main
+1 Mana Vault main
-1 Mental Misstep main
-1 Morphic Pool main
-1 Mystical Tutor main
and 36 other change(s)