Introduction
I've been enjoying all the new legendary creatures that were thrust upon us with Dominaria, and have been especially entranced with the group of uncommon legends. Several have some very nice abilities tacked onto them, and so I'm brewing several of them. With Tatyova, Benthic Druid, I was intrigued by her card-draw trigger; when a land enters the battlefield. Which means, not just your single land drop for the turn, but however you can sneak more lands into play. This left me with thinking of several different ways to synergize this triggered ability. In this deck, with Tatyova on the battlefield, Evolving Wilds = drawing two cards. Llanowar Scout ends up reading "tap, ramp and draw a card." Gush is more like drawing four cards.
This build around Tatyova is a land-matters build, and its all about playing lands, bouncing them, and re-playing them, as many per turn as we can, all the while reaping the bountiful rewards that Tatyova, Benthic Druid provides, along with other landfall triggers.
How Is This Deck Different?
The land-matters theme is becoming more and more popular as more and more Commanders are being printed that support the theme. The Gitrog Monster has long been a staple of the theme, and Lord Windgrace provided a planeswalker approach to the build. Titania, Protector of Argoth, Omanth, Locus of Rage, and even Muldrotha, the Gravetide and Yarok, the Desecrated have become suitable options for the land-matters builds. I feel that my build differs significantly from some of the more popular approaches in that it focuses more on getting the lands in play from my hand, and not from my graveyard. This allows me to play with the bounce theme more, and I avoid some of the more expensive staples seen in the graveyard-focused land-matters theme, like Crucible of Worlds, Life from the Loam, Scapeshift, and Squandered Resources. I hope the deck can be an inspiration to others looking for a land-matters theme that plays a bit differently.
Step 1: Playing Lands
Taty provides the most benefit to me in this deck in drawing cards. The lifegain is just gravy. The first thing the deck wants to do is get ahead on land drops. This helps ramp up and get Taty out early, so I can start benefiting from the card draw.
These are the cards that grant us extra land drops in a turn. These provide the most value, as the lands come in to play untapped and ready for use.
These are the creatures or other spells that help me search up lands to either fill my hand, or place on the battlefield (usually tapped), providing more card draw from Taty. With this deck, the fuller my grip, the better I'm doing.
I'm calling this section "land dumpers," because these are cards that don't really allow me to "play" more than one land per turn, but allow me to otherwise get some more lands onto the battlefield from my hand, still providing triggers, and some being combo pieces.
Step 2: Bouncing Lands
Now that we're curving out and getting ahead on land drops, it's time to start the land-bouncing shenanigans, gaining further value in card draw and setting up our landfall triggers.
Kamigawa block brought us the Moonfolk, with their land-bouncing shenanigans, so I'm playing off some of that, with Meloku the Clouded Mirror leading the way. Keeping the Moonfolk theme going, they get to pay their homage to Patron of the Moon, who basically reads, "pay , draw two cards." With all the card drawing, Psychosis Crawler does a lot of work.
Back when the Kamigawa block came out, I always had an affinity for the Moonfolk, and tried to build several casual decks around their abilities. They did ok, but never seemed to come together the way I wanted them to. The nature of Commander gameplay, however, has allowed me to build around their abilities more successfully, which is why this deck is one of my very favorite decks. So the inclusion of the Moonfolk is mainly just a bit of nostalgia for me. Their land bouncing mechanic is very useful in this deck for facilitating extra card draw and landfall triggers.
Three of these cards will mess with other players at the table, but not affect Taty as much, as we get ahead on land drops early, and stay there. Our plethora of "land dumpers" help mitigate these affects on us.
### Step 3: Landfall Triggers and other Land-Matters Effects
And then there are the landfall triggers. The relationship here is obvious. The value of getting lands onto the battlefield multiple times in a turn can set off some crazy landfall shenanigans. Some of them pour creatures onto the board, and some of them lead to combo wins.
Self-explanatory: cards that have an effect when lands enter the battlefield.
Most of these cards are the beaters and finishers of the deck, and these cards like for there to be a critical mass of lands on the battlefield.
### Card Draw
Card draw is an important aspect of building any EDH deck, and this one is no different. What I've found as I've played this deck is that although I want to constantly play, bounce, and re-play lands out of my hand is that I tend to keep a very full grip of cards throughout the course of the game. This seems like a "well, duh!" observation since I'm playing a Commander with card draw stapled onto her, but the power of the card draw in this deck can't be overstated, and it can't go underutilized, either. To that end, I've got a nice card draw package included, and some cards that benefit from the sheer volume of card draw in the deck.
These are the cards that benefit from having no maximum hand size.
With all this fun stuff going on in the deck, there are lots of fun synergies that pop up. I'm sure I'll end up listing more of these as I go along. These fun synergies are what I live for, and the most fun part of the deck. Some are infinite combos, and some are just plain annoying (especially the one with
Sunder).
Tatyova, Benthic Druid +
Abundance +
Llanowar Scout +
Retreat to Coralhelm: kind of like the
Abundance + Sylvan Library
combo, but it doesn't have to stop at just three cards. If I'm tracking right, I should be able to just about draw out all the lands in the deck if I wanted to; put a land into play for the turn, trigger
Tatyova, Benthic Druid to draw a card, use
Abundance's ability to choose "land," search for the next land, put it into play using
Llanowar Scout, triggering
Retreat to Coralhelm to untap the Scout, and also triggering Tatyova again to draw a card, which triggers
Abundance again...ya, that should work, right?
So that's it for now. Please let me know where I've gone wrong. I imagine that many would be more inclined to do a build like this around someone like
Thrasios, Triton Hero, but he's really running around a lot out there, and he's a bit expensive, so Tatyova I think gives me an option to go some different routes, and at least have something a little bit original.
