Ultramarines Honour Guard

Creature — Astartes Warrior

Squad {2} (As an additional cost to cast this spell, you may pay {2} any number of times. When this creature enters the battlefield, create that many tokens that are copies of it.)

Other creatures you control get +1/+1.

Tokens

• Ultramarines Honour Guard 2/2 W
• Copy Clone

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (1)

thefiresoflurve on Naya Populate True

4 months ago

Welcome to big board state club! (I used to run G/W populate back in the day).

Disclaimer: not sure what your budget is for recommendations, so I'm going to go by what I see here (Dockside, Smothering Tithe, Parallel Lives level of cost for individual recommendations).

I think Ghired, Conclave Exile would make a better commander here than Palladia-Mors, unless you're tied to the latter for sentimentality/flavor/etc.

Next, land base. The single best thing I did for my Esper deck was upgrading my land base. You don't have to go super hard here to see results, but I would put together a list like: 1x Cabaretti Courtyard 1x Command Tower 1x Jungle Shrine 1x Sungrass Prairie 1x Rockfall Vale 1x Branchloft Pathway  ^Flip 1x Needleverge Pathway  ^Flip 1x Rogue's Passage 1x Kessig Wolf Run 1x Gavony Township. If you like this route, there are even more cheaper dual lands you can add in like the Temple of Triumph and friends.

There are a few cuts or substitutions that I think the main deck could make really easily:

Ultramarines Honour Guard -> Caller of the Pack. If Ghired attacks with a creature that has Myriad, he can populate the token that Myriad creates, but the Populated token forgets about the exile clause. Thus, you can end up with a theoretically infinite horde of creatures. It's fantastic. :D

Going off that last bit... Wayfaring Temple -> Treasure. Basically a great card in commander anyway, here it's a free win if you manage to clone it.

Growing Ranks is an easy cut. It's way too slow for EDH (compare it to Parallel Lives...) Could replace it with a Talisman of Conviction or friends to help you ramp faster.

I would replace Momentous Fall with Teferi's Protection or Akroma's Will or Grand Crescendo - some extra source of board wipe dodging. I don't think your creatures are really big enough to warrant a momentous fall.

I would also replace Druid's Deliverance with one of the aforementioned board wipe dodges. There are also some cheaper options like Your Temple is Under Attack, Unbreakable Formation, Make a Stand. Reasoning being: you should have enough board state to block things that want to hurt you, as long as you keep your board alive.

As far as making tokens sooner: well, if you want to do that, you're going to have to run some cheaper creatures.... or ramp faster. I'd probably opt for ramping faster, TBH, since your creatures are really cool. If you add the entire Gruul Signet and friends, along with the Talismans I mentioned earlier, that should get you to the minimum ramp package in tricolor EDH to make sure you can play quickly.

Naya Charm -> Artifact Mutation can help make some earlier tokens.

Brindle Shoat and Call of the Conclave are some decent options for turn 3 tokens you might consider, as well. But adding those would also require cutting other stuff.... horrible choice I don't envy you : P

Sorry for the wall of text...Hope that helps, and happy building!