Essence Warden

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander 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

Essence Warden

Creature — Elf Shaman

Whenever another creature enters the battlefield, you gain 1 life.

Craeter on Ode to the Oregon Trail

1 month ago

Cool theme, what a classic and great to see in MtG. Also love how you've assigned roles to your cards, very cool. Cleric Class is a better version of Sunbond, the set came out ~6 years after so it's power creeped. I see you have Soul Warden and Essence Warden, there is also Soul's Attendant if you've got the room for it for extra redundancy. What purpose does Famished Paladin have? Seems like it's just a 3/3 for 2 mana, doesn't seem very useful but maybe I'm missing something. Blood Artist could also be good here, it's basically a better version of Nadier's Nightblade. These are just a few optimization tweaks I think would help, overall the deck looks great.

ProgramIncomplete on The Mycotyrant

2 months ago

Sure thing!

When I decided to build this deck I really wanted to lean into the descend theme so I challenged myself to run as few non-permanent spells as possible. I think my initial list had like 1 or 2. Overtime, I ended up adding more since I realized I needed efficient self mill payoff cards like Reanimate and Overwhelming Remorse or else the deck was a little too clunky. Currently I'm running 9 but I'm looking for oppurtunites to cut some without losing power or efficiency.

But still, even though it isn't "pure permanents" I still tried my best to cover all of the deck's bases with permanent spells. We have permanents that can remove threats like Chupacabra Echo and Reclamation Sage; permanents that can draw cards like Skullclamp and Izoni, Thousand-Eyed; permanents that can ramp us like Sakura-Tribe Elder and Aftermath Analyst; permanents that mill like Mesmeric Orb and Ripples of Undeath; permanents that can bring stuff back from the grave like Journey to Eternity  Flip and Animate Dead; we even have The Meathook Massacre and Invasion of Fiora  Flip as our boardwipes.

One really nice upside to having everything our deck wants to do on permanent spells is that it makes cards like Malevolent Rumble and Cache Grab really consistent at grabbing something useful. And I recently added Revival Experiment which seems like a really nice payoff for going all in on permanents.

Anyway, the basic idea of this deck is self-milling and using my commander's ability to swarm the board with tokens. Usually we want to spend the first couple turns setting up, hopefully getting a repeatable mill effect on the battlefield like Mesmeric Orb or by pairing one of our dredge cards with a discard outlet like Matzalantli, the Great Door  Flip or Geier Reach Sanitarium. Once we've got our mill engine set up, then we can cast our commander. We want to make sure he triggers his end step ability the turn he enters so we can start getting our tokens online.

The tokens really are the core pillar of the deck. They can be sacrificed for value with cards like Skullclamp and Wight of the Reliquary; we can turn them into mana dorks with Insidious Roots; they can gain us a ton of life off of Essence Warden and Ayara, First of Locthwain; and they can present lethal by giving our Craterhoof Behemoth an army to buff. We also have the ability to drain the table to death with the aforementioned Ayara or Mirkwood Bats if we manage to mill enough cards. And of course, since they pump our commander, we can also win with commander damage.

Since we're milling so much the deck also has a reanimator subtheme. Reanimate and Animate Dead can bring back wincon creatures like Craterhoof and Ayara. Squirming Emergence can reanimate any permanent so it's an awesome way to put planeswalkers into play or snag an engine piece or even wipe the board with Invasion of Fiora  Flip. Similarly, Rise of the Witch-king let's us bring back any permanent while also forcing our opponents to sack a creature which is nice.

A new card that I'm actually testing right now is Chthonian Nightmare. The fact that it's a repeatable reanimate effect for only 2 mana seems really strong. And even if you don't "charge it up" by repeatedly reanimating creatures that cost less than 3, roughly 75% of the creatures in my deck are 3 or less anyway and among those are some really impactful targets like Eternal Witness, Reclamation Sage, Six, and Accursed Marauder just to name a few. Very excited to see how it performs!

Alongside the reanimator subtheme we have an aristocrats subtheme. As mentioned earlier the tokens make great fodder for stuff like Skullcamp and Wight. And we have creatures that either sack themselves, like Sakura-Tribe Elder and Aftermath Analyst, or want to be sacrificed, like World Shaper. All that sacrificing can net us additional value off of Liliana, Dreadhorde General or Mirkwood Bats since he triggers on token sacrifice as well. We also have Disciple of Freyalise  Flip, a great reanimation target that can draw us a ton of cards by sacrificing our creatures that grow in size as our graveyard does like Splinterfright and Souls of the Lost.

So yeah, that's the deck. It can be a bit slow and the lack of instant speed interaction is definitely a drawback but overall I like it a lot and it can have some explosive turns. You just have to be careful not to mill yourself out which is why I added in Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. He's a bit random so I might replace him with Elixir of Immortality. We'll see.

P.S. Apologies for the long winded reply, hopefully it was insightful.

Timsgotnickels on Mono G Elf

10 months ago

Hi, you've got a decent start here. If you wanted to get down to 60 cards, here's what I'd consider dropping:

4 Forest, Wild Growth and Verdant Haven. 20 lands should be plenty, especially with all of your Elf ramp cards.

Bountiful Harvest and Wurm's Tooth. Between Wellwisher and Essence Warden there's plenty of life gain.

2 Fog. The Druid's Deliverance fits your theme better.

Giant Growth, Titanic Growth and Trollhide. You could swap all of these out for an Overrun, Overwhelming Stampede or Ezuri, Renegade Leader if you have them.

2 Elvish Eulogist, Elvish Scout, Golgari Decoy and Skyshroud Archer. These creatures don't fully fit into what you're trying to do.

2 Moonglove Extract, Blessings of Nature, Cobbled Wings and Bower Passage. These just seem like filler.

Hopefully that helps. Good luck.

thijmnesoy on Pauper Jund Midrange (based on Modern Jund)

1 year ago

very sweet list! you totally convinced me on Essence Warden and Wakedancer. The only remarks I have to this deck are that I would put Cast Down instead of Doom Blade, or even Feed the Swarm, which works kind of like Abrupt Decay since it also hits enchantments. Furthermore I would use Divest instead of Ostracize.

Then, I wanna suggest Sibsig Icebreakers as a little Liliana, in addition to Chainer's Edict

Aexislord on Emmara, Soul of the Tapped (EDH - Optimized)

1 year ago

ParacleX Thank you so much for the kind words! Boromir, Warden of the Tower is definitely a great card, being a direct improvement over Dauntless Escort. As a general rule, the list I show here is what I consider to the optimized in a vacuum. So feel free to experiment and adjust the list to fit your meta/matchups! And agreed, Moonshaker Cavalry aka Craterhoof #2 was exactly what the deck needed at this point.

So the reason why I feel lifegain doesn't have a place in this list is because it requires too much investment to be viable. The only inbuilt lifegain mechanic Emmara has is attacking with the tokens she makes, which have lifelink. This is sub-optimal since (1) you don't want to risk getting your tokens killed, (2) you can only attack once per round (3) you are normally tapping her tokens for mana and they don't naturally have vigilance. As such, if you really wanted to go lifegain with Emmara you would have to start adding cards like Soul Warden and Essence Warden. These cards are great, but by themselves they are kinda useless. At that point you might as well just go all-in and make a lifegain Emmara build, which in my opinion is not an optimal way to play her. But to each their own! Other than that, I cannot think of a lifegain card that is powerful enough by itself to slot into the current build. I am always open to suggestions though!

mlequesne on Dance Beneath the Moon

1 year ago

Soul's Attendant and Soul Warden are nice additions as another Essence Warden, for even more triggers. As a backup for your commander you can add Ajani's Pridemate and Ajani, Strength of the Pride

Love your deck friend :)

flapjackwars on Twilight Sparkle Lifegain

1 year ago

IMO the most efficient lifegain cards are Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, and Essence Warden, followed by Leonin Elder, Spectrum Sentinel, Profane Memento, The Meathook Massacre, Auriok Champion, and Lifegift. They all scale absurdly well with multiple opponents.

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