Teneb, the Harvester

Legendary Creature — Dragon

Flying

Whenever Teneb, the Harvester deals combat damage to a player, you may pay {2}{B}. If you do, put target creature card in a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control.

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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

MTGBurgeoning on Scion of the Ur-Dragon: Every. Dragon. Ever.

3 months ago

Hello! Thank you for the comment. There was a time, early in this deck's inception, where Teneb, the Harvester and a couple of Dragons with similarly-costed activated abilities were in the build. Over time, it became apparent that Teneb was never a target for Scion of the Ur-Dragon's activated ability. The deck continues to evolve, as more and more powerful Dragons are created constantly. The Dragon-pecking order is reassessed after each new set that releases, and it has become more strict and more difficult to earn a spot. We want Dragons that can deliver hay-makers to our opponents. Unfortunately, Teneb does not do this. Swinging for six points of damage and recurring a Dragon for a total of five mana (two for activating Scion and three for activating Teneb) is just not enough these days (frown).

KongMing on Scion of the Ur-Dragon: Every. Dragon. Ever.

3 months ago

Why not Teneb, the Harvester? Seems really good since you put the tutored card from Scion in your grave.

legendofa on Card creation challenge

4 months ago

My interpretation of this challenge is my in-depth introduction to the game trying to decide between two precons, Unraveling Mind or Rituals of Rebirth, from Planar Chaos.

I had explored a Portal to other worlds, and knew a little about a great Tempest and some other bits and pieces, but I consider that decision between the precons to be the moment my spark ignited. Pulling some inspiration from that event and the deck themes, here's this bit of weirdness that might fit into the Planar Chaos set.

Instability

{B}{B}

Enchantment

{B}{R}: Each player discards a card. Activate this ability as a sorcery.

{1}{B}{G}{W}: Return target creature from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate this ability only as a sorcery.

---

I eventually went with Unraveling Mind, the {B}{R} Madness one. I still don't own a Teneb, the Harvester.

This one sat for a while, and weekends tend to be slower, so the challenge is wild card.

DemonDragonJ on Should I Put FotVD in …

4 months ago

I would like to put Feast of the Victorious Dead into these two decks, but I am not certain what cards to remove from those decks to make room for the feast.

In my Tariel, Reckoner of Souls deck, I feel that Glory of Warfare may be rather expensive (although I admit that Fists of the Demigod or Searing Meditation may also be rather superfluous in that deck, as well; Pain Magnification at least helps to fill my opponents' graveyards, for me to plunder them), but I am less certain about my Teneb, the Harvester deck; I am not certain that that deck contains a sufficient number of artifacts to justify it containing Glissa, the Traitor, but she also is an easy way to get creatures into my opponents' graveyards, for me to then steal with Teneb.

What does everyone else say about this? Should I put Feast of the Victorious Dead into those two decks?

Guerric on [Primer] Unleash the Dragon! *Updated*

8 months ago

Hi everyone! At long last I've updated the list with some of the ancient dragons that I think will work best in the deck list.

Updates to the List, January 3, 2023

The first is, unsurprisingly, Ancient Silver Dragon. I've long wanted a good card draw piece on a stick for this deck, and this is the best we could have hoped for. It's unfortunate that it gives us no maximum hand size since it will be harder to discard dragons that way, but we'll take it anyway. We cut Spellbound Dragon for it. This card was always great utility since we could discard a dragon with it, and at least once it gave me enough commander damage to win the game. That being said, it's one of the weaker links in the deck so he's retired with honors.

The second is actually Ancient Gold Dragon. Kudos to AJohnney101 for pointing this out! It's not just good with Dragon Tempest. It's also good for our other cards that care about the number of dragons attacking, such as Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury who can easily kill a table with enough dragons on board, or to a lesser extend Dromoka, the Eternal. It can also wipe any board with Silumgar, the Drifting Death or add some 6/6s to the 1/1s with Utvara Hellkite. There's just a lot of combos and lines of play here that are really good. We'll cut Kairi, the Swirling Sky for it which isn't super great and certainly nowhere near as great as this.

Ancient Brass Dragon intrigued me initially, but at best it's a second copy of Teneb, the Harvester that doesn't take mana to activate, but which will whiff sometimes. Having a second copy of Teneb is considerable, but the risk of whiffing is as well, so I'm still on the fence.

Ancient Copper Dragon is also amazing and I wouldn't critique anyone adding that, but I think I'm good at the moment with Old Gnawbone and Savage Ventmaw for rampy dragons and am not at the present time investing a slot or money in it.

I also think AJohnney101's suggestion of Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm is intriguing. I can definitely see the value in making copies of not just Miirym but other dragons we want to reanimate, and there would be a lot of fun to be had with mass reanimation on this one. The ward {2} is also not nothing, as this could also be played to nullify removal at Scion if someone holds up {W} one for Path to Exile of can't otherwise pay to overcome the ward. I'll definitely keep this in mind!

Replies to Comments

AJohnney101

Thanks for all the fabulous suggestions! My replies are mostly in the update list above. I also agree that late game we can usually run this deck just fine without Scion. He's a great tool to get us going, but we have lots of tricks to close out the game and a great toolbox.

StormageddonBHOJ

I don't have Fellwar Stone because I am in green and don't really need many mana rocks. Rampant Growth and its many clones do most of my work here. I've only included Chromatic Lantern because of the incredible utility it provides to my mana base. I can see the case for Faithless Looting or as AJohnney101 suggested Amass the Components and the like. That being said, I in dislike in general one-off effects in a deck like this which often just aren't as useful as a piece that could give me repeat value, but that might be just me!

Dev31

Thanks for the compliment! For the BG dragons see the update above

As usual, thanks for all of your valuable contributions to the deck and primer. They appreciated!

Decidares on Ur-gonomics

1 year ago

Hey Eldmoi, thanks for the info. There's a quite a bit I would recommend optimizing. The long story short is that most of the dragons I'd recommend are already on my budget primer that you've seen and my super budget deck list that was part of the primer but is also available here if you're interested here.

First of all, you need to make sure your deck has a decent amount of ramp to cast your awesome dragons within a reasonable amount of time. If you are on a budget then I'd recommend Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Sakura-Tribe Elder at the very least. Other options for cheap ramp are Farseek, Wild Growth, and Fertile Ground. If you want to further optimize ramp, then adding in Nature's Lore and Three Visits on top of some forest based shock lands (e.g. Stomping Ground or triomes (e.g. Ziatora's Proving Ground would be ideal.

Second, you want to optimize your mana base by minimizing the number of taplands and ensuring you have the colors you need. Any tap lands that tap for only 2 colors (e.g. guild gates) could safely be dropped for basic lands. Tri-lands like you mentioned are decent enough to start off, because they can tap for 3 colors, but even those are suboptimal in the face of options like Dragonskull Summit and Blood Crypt. Furthermore, almost 50% of your deck requires red mana, so I'd ensure your lands reflects that.

Regarding the planeswalkers you have, I'd say Sarkhan, Fireblood is the most useful (distantly followed by Sarkhan Unbroken and Kiora, Master of the Depths). I'd consider cutting the others.

Some things off the top of my head for instants and sorceries: I would consider Crucible of Fire to be a win more card. Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy is almost a strictly better Sarkhan's Unsealing. Damn and Farewell are really good board wipes that aren't as mana intensive as some you're running. Garruk's Uprising is a very potent form of card draw. Monster Manual is probably better than Thran Temporal Gateway in most cases.

Finally the dragons. There are so many good dragons to consider, many of which I've mentioned in my deck primer, and many of which are available on most dragon lists online, that I'll focus on highlighting dragons I would recommend removing:

• Acid-Spewer Dragon - Overcosted and doesn't do much. Deathtouch isn't as useful on a dragon that should be big enough to kill most thing it hits in the first place.

• Backdraft Hellkite - Most instant and sorceries you have are too expensive or are simply aren't as immediately useful (e.g. don't want to board wipe your own dragons). The most useful ones you run are removal, but at that point you can just play dragons that can inherently remove things like Steel Hellkite.

• Crosis, the Purger - Hard to save mana to take advantage of its effect. It'll feel bad to take advantage of its effect in casual metas anyways. If you really want to run a dragon like this then Teneb, the Harvester might be more fitting but even then I wouldn't really recommend it, because of the mana investment needed to make it work.

• Dragonmaster Outcast - Not a good early game play and easy to kill later on.

• Dream Pillager - This dragon is overcosted and is mostly a means of pseudo card draw. I'd just play an actual card draw card instead like Ancient Craving or Sign in Blood or Rishkar's Expertise.

• Kargan Dragonlord - Costs too much to do too little. We have so many dragon options, even in budget decks, that vanilla dragons simply aren't worth it.

• Malfegor - Discarding our hand isn't good to do unless it involves redrawing more cards (e.g. Knollspine Dragon).

• Necromaster Dragon - Summoning vanilla 2/2 zombie tokens for 2 mana isn't good value in a dragon deck, and you have to go through combat to get it off. In a world where Ancient Gold Dragon exists, it's hard to justify an effect like this. Dragon Broodmother and Lathliss, Dragon Queen and Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm would be far more effective token generators.

There's always more we could do to optimize any deck, including mine for sure, so I'd be happy to comment more later if you'd like. But I also want to emphasize that as long as you and your playgroup are having fun, you really can't go wrong :)

DemonDragonJ on Behold the Beyond or Rune-Scarred …

1 year ago

I have two decks that place a strong emphasis on reanimating creatures from graveyards, either my own or those of my opponents, one of which has Tariel, Reckoner of Souls as the general and the other of which has Teneb, the Harvester as the general. I currently have a copy of Ring of Three Wishes in both of those decks, but I plan to replace those copies with copies of either Behold the Beyond or Rune-Scarred Demon, but I am not certain which card to put into those decks, so I seek the advice of the other members of this forum on this subject.

Putting aside the fact that both cards allow their controller to search their library, they each work toward different strategies: BtB can potentially put creatures in my graveyard, which I could then reanimate, but the demon is, itself, a creature, which I could sacrifice (as each of those two decks contains numerous sacrifice outlets) and then reanimate. In perfect honesty, I do favor the demon, but I shall consider everyone's opinion on this subject.

What does everyone else say about this? Which card should I put in those two decks?

DrukenReaps on Teneb, the Harvester

1 year ago

Alright I suppose these are what I'd choose to keep then- Teneb, the Harvester, Pull from Eternity, Harness Infinity, Planar Birth, Eerie Ultimatum, Sun Titan, Minion's Return, Unholy Indenture, Emeria Shepherd, Splendid Reclamation, Animate Dead, Eternal Witness, Timeless Witness, and Noxious Revival. This is if you want to lean fully into those cards that win the game.

Dread Return, Reanimate, and Reclaim are ones that I'd still try to find a spots for above the others.