Retreat to Kazandu

Enchantment

Landfall — Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, choose one —

• Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
• You gain 2 life.

Discussion (51)

Takermania on Kraj

1 month ago

So, I like the ramp. Definitely looks better and will allow you to play Kraj sooner. Let's talk about card draw. Fathom Mage is a must-have as you get to draw a card for free every time you put a +1/+1 counter on it. Sage of Fables is good as it lets you cash in your counters for cards. Not quite as good as Fathom mage, because you have to pay for the ability. Path of Discovery pulls double duty by giving your creatures counters AND smoothing out your draws Bred for the Hunt is also an effective and free source of card draw.

Moving onto getting counters on things and protecting them

Durable Handicraft and Retreat to Kazandu are great options for easy ways to get counters on things Hardened Scales can lead to some really silly things, though admittedly, it is a little pricey Sporeback Troll can save your team or specific creatures, assuming you have the mana Counterspells are also useful for stopping a boardwipe Glen Elendra Archmage is fantastic as putting a +1/+1 counter on it negates the -1/-1 it gets from persist, meaning you can just keep using the ability Mystic Snake and Frilled Mystic are also good options as they are creatures as well If you want to be mean, you could put in a Trygon Predator to help shut down artifacts and enchanments. Speaking of which, you might want to consider Bane of Progress for that purpose Overall its looking good though!

SharpRaptor on Omnath: Locus of landfall & combos

2 months ago

Hi, I hope that at least some of what i'm going to put here will be useful, and even if you don't use any of my advice then maybe you will be able to see where I am coming from and use the logic to find your own improvements :)

Ramp

As the previous commenter has suggested the amount of ramp spells that put lands in to play in your deck is a bit to low for a ramp deck especially one that has subthemes of landfall. Typical commander deck building suggestions say that you should have 10 pieces of ramp to tide you into the midgame. This goes for any deck, not just ramp decks. In ramp decks you will want more. At my count you have 12 ramp cards that are reusable (ie, aren't the one shot sacrifice elemntals) this will want to be more really, with a focus on them being ones that put lands in to play. Another of note, is that cards like Zendikar Resurgent don't really count as a ramp slot, as by the time we can cast it, we have a lot of mana already. 'Ramp' cards are ones that you want to see in your opening hand to get you into your game plan faster.

For this reason I would look into replacing some of the creature based ramp and some other low impact cards with this ramp that will get us executing our main game plan faster and better.

• Beastcaller Savant
• Catalyst Elemental
• Generator Servant
• Gruul Locket

These can all be easily replaced with land based ramp spells as they don't get you any further ahead on mana than 1 land, or are one shot abilities when we want to be dropping big things multiple times over multiple turns.

Smokebraider Is unique because it produces 2 mana for only 2 investment, but only if we focus in on elemtals so can be left on a short list to be evaluated. We'll list other potential cuts later when looking at more over all deck evaluation.

The previous commentor has provided a list which at first glance seems to be comprehensive enough to provide some ideas for what to add.

Removal

More conventional commander wisdom suggests that you have at least 5 ways to directly interact with your opponents game plan. I personally nearly always play more than this, but you should have at least 5. This direct interaction is preferred to be the targetted simgle response cards that can remove threats in any shape or form. Of note, this removal count is seperate from the count of mass removal. At my count you have Song of the Dryads , the down tick of Domri, Anarch of Bolas and Ingot Chewer as easily accessable removal. Things like the trigger from your commander or things like Magmatic Force are more incedental as you can't rely on them doing what you want when you need it.

Cards that could be added in this slot are many. But it is a good idea to have as many as you can being generic answers to anything, but also you need to make sure that they are ones you can realistically weave into your game plan instead of leaving up those answers at all times. This is mostly a balncing act that is where fine tuning comes in from playing the deck. But potential recommendations for all purpose would be Beast Within and Chaos Warp . After that they become more specific but can be cheaper in mana,

• Nature's Claim
• Domri's Ambush
• Force of Vigor
• Krosan Grip
• Hull Breach
• Broken Bond
• Vandalblast
• Manglehorn
• Reclamation Sage

Wrath

This may seem counterintuitive, seen as you are planning on being the big creature deck that wants the board presence. But sometimes the opponents boards just need answering (Not to mention that you might end up getting a lot of elemental death triggers from Omnath). As such having 2 or 3 creature wraths might be worth trying. And having 2 or 3 artifact and enchantment wraths will be good to have access to aswell. Something you already have so I assume you already know.

Creature wraths to consider in green red include

• Blasphemous Act
• Chandra's Ignition
• Arcbond
• Chain Reaction
• Savage Twister - This one is representative of X cost ones that are interesting to try as it gives you the oppertunity of clearing out small creatures while keeping yours alive if you would prefer. Another one that can also be used to finish of players is Rolling Earthquake

You already have the cards for mass removing artifacts and enchantments so I won't bother listing any more.

Card Draw

One of the most common recommendations I have to make to people about their deck is to up the amount of card draw or selection in their decks. There is no point in having sweet cards and synergies in here if we never get to see them! Normally I recommend having 10 ways of drawing cards in your deck, with some of them being repeating and some being one shot. At my count you currently have 7 (Or 8 if you count Praetor's Counsel which can do effectively a similar job), so you are nearly there but I would recommend adding a couple mr just to smooth out the deck running.

• Harmonize is the most obvious recommendation withit being notorious for its colour pie break with not haveing a restriction based on creatures or similar.
• Horn of Greed is universal, but we should be getting more value from it.
• Greater Good is amazing if you keep having big creatures to sacrifice. Thankfully due to our commander triggers, we do!
• Chandra, Flamecaller can cover multiple bases of what we need, it can be counted as both a wrath AND a card draw engine :) IT also even makes elementals (of note, they get exiled at end step instead of dieing so you won't normally get Omnath triggers. Sacrificing them to Greater Good though....... )
• Rishkar's Expertise can be great card draw as you don't need to take a full turn off to refuel, you still get to cast something that costs less, which could be that removal spell or something you needed!

These overview sections are recommendations for generic cards that could go in. From here on, we will be looking at more specific card options, and possible cuts from the existing deck

Deck Applications

Now, again as the previous commentor mentioned, there are multiple ways you can take an Omnath deck. My take on them being

• RG Big thing Ramp. No specific synergies in mind except for incidental ones like, I need land to cast my big spells, and this card cards about land. Not a bad deck by any means, just less commander or theme focused.
• Elemental Tribal Ramp. This seems to be closer to what you are currently going for. Similar to the RG ramp deck, just with tribal synergies from elementals
• Landfall / Lands Matter. Here we are focusing on many landfall triggers, and keep cycling our lands round and round to get them. This deck will likke having access to things like Crucible of Worlds and many effects like Exploration

Here, i will suggest some cards for each of them and maybe later on if you want we could look more into one or a mix of these strategies.

RG Ramp

• Ruric Thar, the Unbowed This card is very very powerful. Expecially as the decks around you get more and more powerful and wanting to do more combo and storm bsaed strategies.
• Gruul Ragebeast A good way of keeping the board under control when you play your 'large and incharge' creatures
• Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger We have mana, they don't. Enough said really. Just beware that with this creature, sometines the adage If you can't remove the problem, remove the player can be applied to just killing you.

Elemental Ramp

Other than ones recommended here, perhaps a good idea would be to use Gatherer or mtg.wtf to find elementals in your colour. Or cards which reference elementals in your colours, the example in wtf would be this

• Chandra, Acolyte of Flame can rebuy your ramp spells and can make elementals that will die to trigger Omnath.
• Chandra, Awakened Inferno A wrath that doesn't kill elementals and can provide a reasonable clock on the game with her uptick.
• Omnath, Locus of Mana Store mana for a rainy day. Or for hitting your opponents upside the head with it. Both work.
• Parallel Lives Double the tokens, double the elementals, double the damage. We like.
• Tornado Elemental clears out any things like Dragons, or Flying Slivers or similar. Also good at picking of planeswalkers as it has sudo unblockable.
• Liege of the Tangle we can go REALLY all in on making all our lands elementals and meaning that if someone wraths us we can basically kill everyone from Omnath triggers
• Budoka Gardener Ramp early game, big guys late game.

Lands Matter

This deck idea might have elements that are closer to a combo deck than the others, but will still mostly be a midrange deck.

• Perilous Forays With your commander out this card is bonkers. But if we are making other elemental tokens too then we can truly get going somewhere
• Crucible of Worlds , Ramunap Excavator , Life from the Loam Allow you to play the lands from your graveyard after we have sacrificed them for effects. Also makes always hitting your lands drops easier if you are playing and sacrificing a fetch land
• Exploration , Azusa, Lost but Seeking , Oracle of Mul Daya all ways to play more lands per turn
• Cavalier of Flame can be card draw and synergizes with lands in graveyard. As well as being an elemental!
• Scapeshift lots of triggers all at once
• Splendid Reclamation if we are sacrificing lands then this gets them all back. Very good after a scapeshift
• Amulet of Vigor makes some of our ramp a lot more effective, while at the same time providing a good combo with Perilous Forays and Omnath, Locus of Rage Of recommendation if you run a lot of land recursion effects then other lands that sacrifice themselves might be worth it. Like Wasteland Strip Mine etc

Possible Cuts

Cutting Criteria

I won't re-list the cuts recommeneded in the ramp section. I will be evaluating cuts in the assumption that the deck is wanting to be a combination of an elementals ramp deck and a lands value deck. A lot of these recomendations for cuts will have very similar reasonings, which I will elaborate on first to be able to be brief later on. These recommendations will possibly sound rather brutal, however I find that it makes it a lot easier to have too many cards that are on the cutting block rather than not enough.

• Too Slow. If the card takes too many turns to start pulling its weight then it could be replaced with something that does what we need sooner. This is common in cards which have 'at the beginning of your upkeep' effects as they will normally have to wait an entire turn cycle to start doing something. Enters the battlefield triggers or similar things that have an effect the turn you play them are often preferred.
• Too expensive. This should be self explanatory. If the card costs too much mana, especially if the same effect can be achieved for less mana then it should be exmined.
• Doesn't do enough. While the effect might be interesting and maybe something we actually want in the deck, The card just doesn't pull its weight in whatever role it is supposed to be doing
• Doesn't contribute to our game plan This might be a good card, maybe even a great card in other decks. But perhaps the effect just isn't one we need in this deck

Cards

Creatures

• Cytoplast Root-Kin Too slow. Doesn't contribute to our game plan.
• Dragonmaster Outcast Too slow. Doesn't do enough
• Grazing Gladehart Doesn't do enough. While we like landfall triggers. The life gain is small enough to be negligable unless we are massrecycling all lands from our yard multiple times.
• Magmatic Force Too Slow.
• Magmaw Doens't contribute to our game plan / Doesn't Do enough. We can run other sac outlets if we want ways to sacrifice our elementals
• Scute Mob Possibly too slow. But I love me a scute mob so I'm fine with this staying in :D
• Spawnwrithe Doesn't do enough. However this one can stay in if you have found that you realistically get to connect with it at least twice to have four of them
• Tendershoot Dryad Doesn't contribute to our game plan. Though it is very good at gummin gup the board
• Tyrant of Discord Doesn't do enough. However if you change to having some ways to knock your opponents off of lands then the chances of this hitting multiple nonlands go up and its value does too. However there are enough control players where the onlything this will do is destroy a land at random
• Undergrowth Champion Deosn't do enough. It's got all the right keywords but thats about it

Enchantments

• Retreat to Kazandu Doesn't do enough. THe landfall idea is good, but putting 1 counter an a guy once or so a turn isn't worth the slot really

Artifact

• Sword of the Animist Too Slow. We want this effect, but we aren't attacking multiple times in one turn so there are better effects to get lands from our deck. We don't neccessarily even have than many small creatures to equip this too to get it active early enough for the ramp to be that useful as ramp

Sorcery

• Animist's Awakening As much as i want this spell to ever be good. It's just not really at all.
• Journey of Discovery Too slow. For this to be actual search out ramp you need to entwine it which is then 6 mana. Any of the 4 mana double basics would be better here. Or just Explore type effects that cantrip too.

Planeswalker

Turns out there is only slightly too much Nissa. (And not enough Chandra ;) ) All of the Nissas' contribute to our gameplan well except for Nissa, Voice of Zendikar . The general rule of Planeswalkers in commander is to assume that you will only get two activations if you are lucky. So with this one you will at best buff your team a little. Consider Garruk Wildspeaker instead maybe?

Other random Card Recommendations

• Boundless Realms All the rest of our lands from our deck? Yes please
• Sylvan Awakening We do this, then we overrun and nobody will be expecting it
• Genesis Wave As previously mentioned. It's the better Animist's Awakening
• The Mending of Dominaria More mass land recursion.

Closing

Well I hope some of this helped at least a little :)

SharpRaptor

griffstick on Muldrotha vs Yarok

3 months ago

Another good interaction is the cards that say when they enter choose one but give you 2 or more options. So for instance Retreat to Coralhelm , Retreat to Hagra , Retreat to Kazandu , Palace Siege , Frontier Siege , and Monastery Siege

You get to choose both. Another idea is Stuffy Doll choose 2 players for stuffy doll. And another thing to think about is yarok doesn't care if it's your things entering that triggers your stuff so cards like Polluted Bonds , Soul Warden , and Faerie Artisans are good here too

SubduedRhombus on GW Proliferate

4 months ago

hullos and kamarupa, I love the suggestions.

This is the first deck I ever built dating back to the 2015 prerelease. It's evolved a ton since then, clearly, with all the cards from later sets in it. That's kinda why the cards are so seemingly random. I haven't purchased cards for this deck yet. Everything I have was either pulled or traded for.

There's currently 69 cards because to be honest, I really struggle with deciding what to remove to meet 60 cards. I feel like they are all pretty good and serve a distinct purpose in the deck.

I definitely want those lands. I don't really like Fertile Thicket either. Probably remove the Selesnya Guildgate s because they're too slow too, huh? I like Oran-Rief, the Vastwood , Sunpetal Grove , and Temple of Plenty . I love the combo of Canopy Vista + Windswept Heath , but that seems like a lot of money for land, although I might justify it if I could see it's worth. What are the most important things I'm looking for when choosing land?

The Wanderer , Suspension Field , Wanderer's Strike , Hunt the Weak , and Prison Realm all help with protecting from creatures that I otherwise wouldn't be able to deal with, and Dragonscale Boon and Stony Strength surprise my opponent when they're attacking or try to mess with tapped creatures. What I really need are a couple cards that exile permanents rather than creatures, though. I have a couple of Generous Gift s in another deck that I could pull out and put into here.

I could see cutting The Wanderer , Retreat to Kazandu , New Horizons , and a lot of the kind of piddly creatures that are just there to get beefed or beef others.

If I cut The Wanderer , all instants, sorceries, and enchantments and dropped down to 24 creatures, I could have space for 8 cards if I kept 23 lands. What do you think the best would be the best 8 cards to have? Right now I'm thinking: 2x Generous Gift , Bow of Nylea , Nissa, Voice of Zendikar , 2x Blessed Alliance , Oblivion Ring , maybe Hardened Scales (how bad is it really if you play it first turn, considering all I would have to play other than that would be a hexdrinker, and it benefits massively from it if I can beef him before he gets protection from everything?) or Harvest Season ? (but that wouldn't that only be good with some landfall stuff or Vinelasher Kudzu , like you had said?)

Would that provide me with enough board removal to be consistently successful?

EPICSpider23 on Tatyova, Land-Matters

4 months ago

I love the deck, personally I love the uncommon commanders, I've got Hallar, the Firefletcher who is pretty beast as a commander so you have great respect. Now for some suggestions.

Landfall:

• Tideforce Elemental combos off with your Llanowar Scout
• Lotus Cobra is expensive but can help you play heaps
• Jaddi Offshoot and Grazing Gladehart gain you heaps more life
• Guardian of Tazeem I know it's not Mono-blue but I think this would still work with your land bouncing
• Tireless Tracker is such a great card, you may have missed it because it has pseudo-landfall instead of the real thing
• Retreat to Kazandu Very versatile to gain you heaps more life or pump up one of your creatures (or someone else's you never know)

Drawfall

• Horizon Chimera nice little neat creature to keep your life total up
• Oneirophage is new and such a cool card and a meme. Flying is helpful though

Planeswalkers: (Maybe you have something against them which is ok but here's a few)

• Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner you'll get the creature trigger off every Rampaging Baloths and the untap is great for your lands and scouts. Maybe even consider Kiora's Follower with it?
• Nissa, Vital Force nuff said, great card
• Tamiyo, the Moon Sage draw, Draw, DRAW!!

On top of all that, River Hoopoe is adorable and a good mana sync and Ramunap Excavator is good recovery for your panoramas etc.

I don't know what your budget is like (especially with Gaea's Cradle in there) but there's some suggestions that might make your already awesome deck even better. Happy brewing, hope this helps :)

Drakorya on Voltron Help

4 months ago

Equipment that gives shroud/hexproof or indestructible are usually great for voltron commanders. Lightning Greaves , Swiftfoot Boots , Whispersilk Cloak and Darksteel Plate are the usual suspects.

For plus counter synergy, Solidarity of Heroes , Blessings of Nature , Increasing Savagery , Soul's Might , Sunbringer's Touch , Verdant Confluence , and Retreat to Kazandu .

You can get some plus counters and ramp with Map the Wastes and Ordeal of Nylea .

Ulvenwald Tracker can be good to kill opposing creatures.

Icbrgr on Nissa who Janks the Board

4 months ago

cute idea but i think people will get wise to this after a game or 2 and enchantment removal/ Pithing Needle will shut you down.

I'd suggest implementing a Landfall theme to help support a heavy land count:

Support Explore , Harrow , Rampant Growth , Cultivate , Harmonize , Khalni Heart Expedition

Landfall Seer's Sundial , Adventuring Gear , Explorer's Scope , Retreat to Kazandu , Groundswell

Grazing Gladehart , Undergrowth Champion , Lotus Cobra , Embodiment of Insight , Baloth Woodcrasher , Avenger of Zendikar , Murasa Ranger , Oran-Rief Hydra , Turntimber Basilisk , Jaddi Offshoot , Territorial Baloth , Snapping Gnarlid , Snapping Creeper , Scythe Leopard , Rampaging Baloths

hejtmane on Asus, lost but seeking

5 months ago

I forgot a few I thought about after posting Retreat to Kazandu , Dryad Greenseeker and Vivien Reid and Nissa, Who Shakes the World