Dawntreader Elk

Creature — Elk

{G}, Sacrifice Dawntreader Elk: Search your library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

Rasaru on Sek'Kuar's Hasty Mob Ball of Death | V-FND

4 months ago

I had an opportunity to look at each individual card in this list and have a few questions :)

As you mentioned above, you're taking advantage of ETB creatures and creatures that sac themselves. Totally makes sense. You also have the majority of your ramp in creatures, which I understand, because you can sac them to provide additional value (a 3/1 token, as well as a land). Those creatures are Dawntreader Elk, Diligent Farmhand (had to Google "Muscle Burst"), Insidious Fungus, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Solemn Simulacrum, Springbloom Druid, Viridian Emissary, as well as your more "huggy" cards like Veteran Explorer and Avatar of Growth. Then you have Wight of the Reliquary to fetch any land.

1. With all of those lands potentially coming into play, how often are you just sitting with waaaay more mana than you actually have cards to play?
2. Has 11 basics been sufficient? Most of those effects grab basics. (And I didn't even mention your land fetch cards - e.g. Myriad Landscape I love playing Field of the Dead, but struggle to play more than the original 6 basics (non-snow and snow) because I want to trigger FotD more often.
3. I only see 1 landfall effect in the entire deck. Is this intentional to keep the power level of the deck lower?

DreadKhan on Muldrotha Mill

6 months ago

Any reason you're not running land ramp effects? This is the most resilient form of ramp in Commander, very few decks target lands. There are permanents you can recast, like Wayfarer's Bauble, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Dawntreader Elk, Diligent Farmhand, Wight of the Reliquary, maybe Path of Annihilation? There is always Wood Elves and it's ilk. I feel like you could shave a few lands for land ramp effects, it's a good way to test them out and see if you enjoy the acceleration vs drawing so many lands.

You should also look at cards that help 'grease the wheels' of the deck, things like Llanowar Visionary and Elvish Visionary offer a body while drawing a card, and fwiw later on if you have nothing better to do you can just draw a card via Muldrotha. On that note, you might like small permanents that draw, there is trusty old Urza's Bauble, as well as Mishra's Bauble, if you don't run many artifacts then you should use these as good recast targets. Technically the info can be useful, but you mostly want them for free card draw.

I don't know if they're strong enough for your meta, but I used to love the old Seal of Removal family cards when I wanted small Enchantments. The others that might apply are Seal of Primordium and Seal of Doom, Doom is a lot of mana, but repeatable Artifact/Enchantment hate can be pretty helpful.

If you want to mill yourself you might like Altar of Dementia. This Altar can also be a wincon with a big enough creature, like Lord of Extinction or Consuming Aberration, or if you have a big enough board of smaller stuff. It's especially useful if people are going to hit you with a Farewell, this can let your creatures go to the graveyard for recursion while also milling someone (maybe you, maybe an opponent).

Goldberserkerdragon on Golgari Anime Girl

1 year ago

ACapo18 Been looking for a groovy golgari aristocrats deck, seems good! I would swap Naturalize for Foundation Breaker or Haywire Mite. A lot of the land fetching ramp is slow as well, swapping in mana dorks or things like Dawntreader Elk and Diligent Farmhand will increase creature count. :) Cheers!

DreadKhan on Meren

1 year ago

I suspect you've probably got enough creatures to look at Lurking Predators, it's ramp and card draw rolled into one package, you just need to run a lot of creatures. If you like big reanimation effects their is Grave Betrayal, this loves your various forced sacrifice effects. Coffin Queen and Hell's Caretaker are some lower to the ground reanimators that might be interesting, Queen can also reanimate your opponent's stuff. Demon of Dark Schemes is a weird recursion option, though it can go infinite, usually with creatures that make tokens via ETB. I've always loved having stuff like Dawntreader Elk and Diligent Farmhand in my Meren deck, they find a land without further input and end up in the graveyard when they do it, so you can recur them if that's the best option. I like Silverglade Pathfinder as both a clunky source of ramp that lets you discard creatures, it might not be powerful enough for your build though!

DreadKhan on

1 year ago

I could be wrong, but since your deck cares about lands I would make an effort to include more land ramp, artifacts seem to get blown up a lot anyways. I would use Wood Elves over arcane signet (or Dawntreader Elk?), replacing Sol Ring is harder, but there is Crop Rotation. Finding a Coffer or Urborg at the right time is a much bigger effect than Sol Ring. Deserted Temple is a good card in here with Coffers. Since you have Urborg and Coffers in here I wonder about Hour of Promise and/or Tempt with Discovery, if you can cheat out 2 or 3 lands at once you can probably cast your Commander and go off.

Not sure if it's really a 'good' card, but Silverglade Pathfinder can dig lands out repeatedly, your Commander is high enough MV that this might be worth doing.

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild is interesting in here, but especially if you've got something like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds out. Ashaya also works very well with your landfall effects.

I'm not sure if you need to stack up activations, but if you reanimate your Commander you can activate him again, so maybe some of the lower to the ground reanimation effects, stuff like Reanimate, Life / Death, and Animate Dead. They are pretty big ramp if you have a sac outlet and your Commander out.

I'm not sure if it's outside your playgroups boundaries, but Pitiless Plunderer is very good with Chatterfang. It's not a combo, but if you've got lots of Pests kicking around there is Savra, Queen of the Golgari, she's budget compared to Dictate of Erebos and might fit in here.

DreadKhan on Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

1 year ago

I've always loved Mazirek, such a cool Commander! I think Make an Example would probably do some work in here, and it's little brother Do or Die would probably be decent as well.

Mitotic Slime is a good source of creatures-from-a-creature, the only ones that can compete are cards like Underworld Hermit, which makes an army of squirrels equal to your devotion to Black. There are things like Grismold, the Dreadsower that can make a lot of bodies (it gives them to opponents as well, but if you can force them to sacrifice those tokens both Grismold and Mazirek go nuts), Grismold even offers a backup Commander of a sort for long games when you might not be able to recast Mazirek.

I'm not sure if you're interested in reanimation effects, but Hell's Caretaker is a free sac each upkeep, and he can bring back your best creature in exchange for your worst. Coffin Queen can reanimate from any graveyard, but it's especially useful to reanimate your opponent's stuff because it gets exiled when it dies. If you want a repeatable reanimation effect there is Demon of Dark Schemes, this offers a small wipe and it works very well with Pitiless Plunderer and something like the aforementioned Mitotic Slime.

Since your Commander cares about sacrifice effects, have you thought about using Diligent Farmhand and Dawntreader Elk in here? There is also Burnished Hart, all of these ramp you and can trigger Mazirek if he's out. There is also Ordeal of Nylea that would work with Mazirek later game (or anything that can get in early). I'm not sure if it comes up very much, but I put Forsworn Paladin in my Golgari deck because it had Haakon, but what I noticed was that it's also a useful way to ramp in Black, which importantly can fix your mana (to let you cast Green ramp), it's very low to the ground and can generate triggers for Mazirek or help recast Mazirek later.

Have you ever tried Sadistic Hypnotist? This offers a free and infinite sac outlet, and the effect can be pretty strong if you've got a bunch of creatures to burn through. Another really versatile sac outlet is Infernal Tribute, this lets you sacrifice any non-token permanent (it has to be an actual card) to draw a new card. I'm not 100% on it being a fit, but Savra, Queen of the Golgari is a pretty impressive payoff if you regularly have creatures being sacrificed, it can put a lot of pressure on an opponent's board.

It can get very out of hand with Mazirek, but I feel like I have to mention One with the Kami, it's very good on Mazirek with a free sac outlet. Similarly any creatures you can find with Persist will work very well with Mazirek and sac outlets, though again, this might be more pushed than what you're looking for. I took a gander and Aerie Ouphes might be interesting, and there is always Woodfall Primus, these might help support your Puppeteers!

If you ever want to throw in something pricier, I think Old Gnawbone would be absolutely hilarious in here.

DreadKhan on 100 cards for Meren

1 year ago

I would look into stuff like Diligent Farmhand, Dawntreader Elk, Yavimaya Granger, Burnished Hart and maybe Fertilid, each of these not only finds a land for you, they will die for your Meren, meaning she can recycle them if you still want more mana for some reason. I think these creatures are much more synergistic than your mana artifacts. There are also cards like Wood Elves and Farhaven Elf that will also find a land but these require a sac outlet.

If you want to add a fairly strong card, Sidisi, Undead Vizier is a really good repeatable tutor (I usually sacrifice her to herself and reanimate her). There are flashier cards like Razaketh, the Foulblooded or Protean Hulk, either should win very quickly if they end up in play, but Sidisi is a bit lower to the ground, and the ability to find anything with no real drawback (and the ability to repeat it) makes this worse Diabolic Tutor very strong. If you want a cheaper version that has huge political potential (you can get a desired effect out of someone else's deck) you might like Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire.

DreadKhan on Meren, Clan of Nel Toth

1 year ago

One of my favourite things to do in Meren is to ramp (my deck is on the clunkier side, and it runs very few lands), and one of the better ways to repeatedly ramp is to use more stuff like Sakura Tribe Elder, variations include Diligent Farmhand, Dawntreader Elk, Yavimaya Granger, and maybe Burnished Hart/Fertilid. All of these can find a Swamp for you, each sacrifices itself and thus they have some nice synergy with Meren. I think the only Meren decks that don't want multiples of that effect is if they are building a very high powered list, where this kind of play 'isn't advancing your board' sufficiently. I often find that farming XP isn't a waste of time early, so these recursive ramp sources offer that as well. I think it's very hard to justify running land ramp Sorceries when you can run creatures that do the same thing, and arguably do a better job of it. I would also shave stuff like Arcane Signet or the Talisman for creature ramp, Meren can't recur your rocks for you when they get blown up. In addition to Meren there are tons of things that synergize with creatures, stuff like Beast Whisperer and Liliana's Standard Bearer can draw lots of cards via creatures, and you don't get that synergy with a 2 mana rock. Using Meren to recur Liliana's Standard Bearer is a pretty impressive bulk draw option.

Some generically good cards for a Meren list that I love are Buried Alive, Final Parting, and Jarad's Orders, each of these offers real tutoring power, and none are especially pricey. Buried Alive can find a whole combo for you to win with. Old Stickfingers is probably worth a look for the similar reasons, Meren feels really weak if you have no creatures in your yard to reanimate. I'm not sure if it's too high budget, but Fiend Artisan has a lot of synergy with Meren. You don't have to dig out a combo piece for the card to do useful things.

In my Meren deck it's a much better Rhystic Study (I run a very high creature count), but I suspect you'd get some value out of Lurking Predators. There is also Heartwood Storyteller, in my experience both belong in a deck with even more creatures but they could still be useful I think.

In my limited experience Callous Bloodmage offers pretty good graveyard hate on a very low budget, and if you don't need that it can do other stuff, it's a great card to use in infinite loop since it can do a few useful things.

Mitotic Slime offers you a ton of bodies for only 5 mana, it's not especially hard to go infinite with as a result. I like using it with Demon of Dark Schemes and Pitiless Plunderer (and a sac outlet) to win, the nicest part about using a combo like this is that each piece is independently good. Phyrexian Altar is better than Plunderer, but it's even more money (though the difference has dropped sharply).

Dawnstrider is an extra Spore Frog, one that doesn't require reanimation but offers a discard outlet, letting you put creatures in your graveyard. Silverglade Pathfinder is another discard outlet, but offers ramp instead.

I hope this isn't too try-hard for your deck, Meren is a very fun Commander to build.