Win Conditions
This deck has several powerful win conditions. They are as follows.
Archangel of Thune and Spike Feeder: This combo is often a win out of nowhere. With the ability to retrieve the two pieces very consistently with Birthing Pod, Yisan, the Wanderer Bard , and Survival of the Fittest among other things, we essentially have access to this combo whenever we feel it is safe to push for it.
Sac Outlet (Altar of Dementia or Blasting Station) + either Academy Rector, Pattern of Rebirth, Boonweaver Giant, Protean Hulk , or any of the several combos that might be present in play already. This combo gets pretty heavily involved and takes some reps to get used to. If you have a sac outlet and Academy Rector, you sacrifice the Academy Rector for Pattern of Rebirth and put it onto another creature you control. If you have a sac outlet and Pattern of Rebirth attached to a creature, you sacrifice the creature and search for either Boonweaver Giant or Protean Hulk . Here's the breakdown for both avenues separately.
Boonweaver Giant: If you choose to get Boonweaver Giant, return Pattern of Rebirth from your graveyard to the battlefield attached to Boonweaver Giant. Sacrifice Boonweaver Giant. With the Pattern of Rebirth trigger, get Karmic Guide to reanimate the Boonweaver Giant. Boonweaver Giant trigger gets back Pattern of Rebirth. Sacrifice Boonweaver Giant again. With the Pattern of Rebirth trigger, get Saffi Eriksdotter. Sacrifice Saffi Eriksdotter to her own ability targeting Karmic Guide. Sacrifice Karmic Guide, and it returns to play because of Saffi Eriksdotter. Reanimate Boonweaver Giant, which gets back Pattern of Rebirth. Sac Boonweaver Giant get to get Reveillark . Sacrifice Karmic Guide. Sacrifice Reveillark . Reveillark brings back both Karmic Guide and Saffi Eriksdotter. Let Karmic Guide reanimate Boonweaver Giant. Now you can demonstrate and infinite loop with sac outlet + Karmic Guide + Saffi Eriksdotter, and if your sac outlet is Altar of Dementia and your opponent mills and eldrazi or something that shuffles back into his or her deck, then respond to the shuffle trigger by sacrifice Boonweaver Giant to get Stonecloaker and exile it, then mill them out. You can also utilize the Reveillark here with Karmic Guide, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Boonweaver Giant (and Pattern of Rebirth) to get every creature from your deck into play.
Protean Hulk : This is usually a stronger route due to it being extremely hard to interact with. If you choose to get Protean Hulk , sacrifice it to the sac outlet and get both Karmic Guide and Sylvan Safekeeper. Both enter the battlefield simultaneously and thus you can protect your karmic guide immediately. Reanimate Protean Hulk , then sacrifice Protean Hulk for both Saffi Eriksdotter and Dosan the Falling Leaf (and whatever other 1-drop you want). Your opponents can no longer cast spells this turn. You're free to go crazy. You can still do the Stonecloaker trick here too. When you see a shuffler hit the graveyard, you can sacrifice Saffi Eriksdotter to Karmic Guide, then sac the Karmic Guide to reanimate Protean Hulk . Sac the Protean Hulk for both Stonecloaker and Fiend Hunter . Exile their shuffler and let Fiend Hunter exile Karmic Guide. Then sac Fiend Hunter to return Karmic Guide to the battlefield. From here, you can actually go infinite with either Fiend Hunter or Saffi Eriksdotter, along with the sac outlet and Karmic Guide.
UPDATE (May 7th, 2017): Stonecloaker is no longer in the deck. To replace the function of Stonecloaker, simply use Scavenging Ooze. If you don't have the mana to activate it, you can use Sun Titan/Renegade Rallier and Sylvan Safekeeper to actually produce infinite mana utilizing the reanimation loop available through Saffi Eriksdotter + Reveillark + Karmic Guide. Also, Dosan the Falling Leaf is also no longer in the deck. Instead, I"m using Grand Abolisher.
UPDATE (May 7th, 2017): Mirror Entity is being playtested currently. The theory behind it is that it can be used as a creature-tutorable zero-mana psuedo-sac-outlet by machine-gunning its buff ability for zero mana infinitely while holding priority, and then letting the fireworks fly. Essentially, there will be infinite Mirror Entity abilities on the stack for zero mana, which means all of your creatures' toughness will become zero infinite times, and each time it happens, they all die. In this way, we sort of invoke a sac outlet that sacs our whole field a bunch of times in a row. The only issue is that it needs some degree of setup. For starters, you need a Saffi Eriksdotter in play or already in your graveyard. As well, you need to have either Strip Mine or Horizon Canopy in play or in your graveyard. As soon as those conditions are met, then if you have Mirror Entity in play with either Boonweaver Giant, Protean Hulk , or a creature with Pattern of Rebirth attached to it, then you're ready to combo off. If you use Eldritch Evolution on Academy Rector, you can get Pattern of Rebirth and Mirror Entity. If you have Academy Rector and Mirror Entity in play, and you want to start right there, you need a flash creature (like Aven Mindcensor) in your hand or a Saffi Eriksdotter in play to make this work. When your whole field dies for the first time, respond to Academy Rector's trigger by flashing in a flash creature so that there's a creature in play able to hold the Pattern of Rebirth, or make sure you've sac'd Saffi Eriksdotter on one of your creatures before the first sweep so that there's a creature in play able to hold the Pattern of Rebirth. From there, you can either get Boonweaver Giant or Protean Hulk . Here are the sequences.
Boonweaver Giant: The first step to this combo is setting up what I call the reanimation loop. You'll see in a moment. When Boonweaver Giant enters, get Pattern of Rebirth and put it onto him. Let him die to the next sweep from Mirror Entity. Get Karmic Guide. Karmic Guide reanimates Boonweaver Giant, which gets back the Pattern of Rebirth. Let the next sweep kill everything. Pattern of Rebirth gets Reveillark . Let the next sweep happen. Reveillark gets back Karmic Guide and Saffi Eriksdotter. Karmic Guide gets back Reveillark . Now that Karmic Guide, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Reveillark are in play altogether, we can perform the reanimation loop. It goes like this. Sac Saffi Eriksdotter to Reveillark . Let the next sweep kill Reveillark and Karmic Guide. Saffi Eriksdotter brings back Reveillark , and Reveillark brings back Karmic Guide and Saffi Eriksdotter. Then you're left with a Karmic Guide trigger to reanimate anything you want. When I refer to the "reanimation loop," I mean to perform that action to reanimate a given creature. Now perform the reanimation loop to get back Boonweaver Giant with Pattern of Rebirth. Let the next sweep happen making sure to keep the reanimation loop in tact and in the back of your mind. Pattern of Rebirth grabs Sun Titan (or Renegade Rallier). Sun Titan from here can be used with the reanimation loop to get back a land from your graveyard infinitely. You can take this opportunity to Strip Mine all of your opponent's lands. You can also use the reanimation loop on Boonweaver Giant and get whatever creature you want from your deck. If you get Sylvan Safekeeper, you can use him to sac a land, and then use the reanimation loop on Sun Titan to replay the land untapped. Alternating the reanimation loop this way on Sylvan Safekeeper and Sun Titan can produce infinite mana. From there, if you have a Horizon Canopy at your disposal, you can potentially draw your whole deck. From there, you could have your whole deck in hand with infinite mana and infinite ETB effects of whatever you want. If you want to run out all of the Mirror Entity sweeps, you can by just looping through Saffi Eriksdotter, Karmic Guide, and Reveillark until they're all done. Then, cast a deadly sac outlet.
Protean Hulk : It's slightly different to start, but generally similar. Under infinite sweeps, if Protean Hulk dies, get Karmic Guide to reanimate him, then let him get swept away again, grabbing Reveillark , which sets up the reanimation loop just like before. Then the combo is more or less the same as above.
Here are the combinations of cards that go infinite with a sac outlet.
Karmic Guide + Saffi Eriksdotter
Karmic Guide + Fiend Hunter
Karmic Guide + Reveillark
Sun Titan + Saffi Eriksdotter
Sun Titan + Fiend Hunter
Renegade Rallier + Saffi Eriksdotter
Karmic Guide + Fiend Hunter + Reveillark -- Special case: can exile all of your opponents' creatures permanently by using Reveillark to get back both Karmic Guide and Fiend Hunter . Fiend Hunter targets an opponent's creature and Karmic Guide targets Reveillark . Hold priority and sacrifice the Fiend Hunter before the exile happens, then let the exile happen and it will be permanent. Rinse and repeat.
Living Plane is another win-condition. With Linvala, Keeper of Silence, our opponents can no longer tap lands for mana. With Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, our opponents can no longer keep lands in play without state-based actions sweeping them up even before priority would allow them to tap for mana. As a special note, using Eldritch Evolution sacrifice Academy Rector gets both Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Living Plane.
Hate Bears
Our hatebears are each in here for a good reason, and there are very few weaknesses to our hatebear package. It's basically just Ixidron that slaps us in the face. Not even Hushwing Gryff stops that. :(
Gaddock Teeg: Haters gunna hate, potatoes gunna potate. This is our primary hatebear. He is incredible. He turns off Splinter Twin, Chord of Calling, Green Sun's Zenith , Tooth and Nail, 4+ mana wraths (which is most of them), and many impactful 4+ mana noncreature spells that we DO NOT want to be messing around with. Don't get blown out kids.
Aven Mindcensor: Cutting off tutors and fetch lands for our opponents is one of the strongest things our deck can do, and is one of the most efficient methods we have to shut down combo decks. This card is absolutely incredible.
Linvala, Keeper of Silence: She answers Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Splinter Twin, Deadeye Navigator, and Triskelion, which are all very popular combo pieces in the competitive field. She also turns off our opponents' mana dorks, which can often be a big subsection of our opponents' mana. As stated above, she also turns our opponents' lands off if Living Plane is in play.
Sanctum Prelate : This card is very difficult to play correctly. Obviously, we're choosing either 0, 1, 2, or 3. Gaddock Teeg takes care of everything else. The nice thing about Sanctum Prelate is that naming 2 shuts off Cyclonic Rift, which is definitely a problem for us. Naming 3 shuts off Toxic Deluge, which is another big problem for us. With Sanctum Prelate , you just have to have a grasp on what to play around, and name that number. The difficulty in playing this card is that it also turns off some of our cards too, but we're usually not too harshly effected by it, as we likely already have a board state.
Angel of Jubilation: This is one we have to be very careful with. It hates so hard that it actually hurts ourselves a bit too. We only proceed with the Angel of Jubilation plan if we are prepared to win without sacrifice combos. Angel of Jubilation shuts off our Altar of Dementia, Blasting Station, Birthing Pod, Mana Confluence, Saffi Eriksdotter, Caustic Caterpillar , Selfless Spirit, Loyal Retainers, Qasali Pridemage, Eldritch Evolution , and all of our fetchlands. Now I know that sounds bad, but it also shuts off our opponents' fetch lands, Necropotence, Toxic Deluge, Diabolic Intent, any sac outlet combo that our opponent was going to go for, and arbitrary other things that randomly matter. All the while, she acts as a lord by pumping our whole team +1/+1 and puts us on a hardcore beatdown plan (you might be pleasantly surprised how unbeatable this feels when this wins you the game). If you can get Sylvan Safekeeper, Gaddock Teeg, Sanctum Prelate naming 2, and Angel of Jubilation in play, most decks scoop.
Hushwing Gryff: This is another one that can be a bit risky. We definitely feel a little bit of the hate from this card when we play it. There's a sizable number of ETB effects in this deck. However, on our hatebear beatdown plan, Hushwing Gryff can be very effective at shutting our opponents' strategies down. For example, against a Roon of the Hidden Realm deck, obviously Hushwing Gryff is going to hurt them a lot more than it hurts us. If you have a sac outlet in play, then you can just sacrifice the Hushwing Gryff when you're ready to combo off. It's also just effective at shutting off Palinchron combos (and combos similar to it), as well as kiki/twin combos, and just lots of good value cards like Snapcaster Mage, Venser, Shaper Savant, Eternal Witness.
Spirit of the Labyrinth: This card is impressively good in this deck. We don't actually have any draw power except Sylvan Library. Our deck is all tutors and retrieval. Even though it's a two-way street effect, it doesn't actually have any effect on us at all (except Sylvan Library). It just turns off our opponents' draw to put them on a level playing field with us in terms of draw power. It often makes our opponents not want to cast wheel effects among other powerful draw spells.
Scavenging Ooze: One of our few answers to graveyards (the others being Stonecloaker and Angel of Serenity ). Scavenging Ooze has a more passive effect over our opponents' graveyards though. It will stop our opponents from relying on any graveyard strategies, and they will actively seek to get rid of the ooze if it effects them, giving away a key part of their strategy if it wasn't already obvious.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite: The fattest hatebear of them all. Just outright wrecks our opponents' attempts at an early game, and puts us well on our way to a beatdown plan. She is certainly an alternate win-condition in her own right.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben: Doesn't hurt us very much since we don't play expensive noncreature spells. It doesn't often make our cards uncastable, just a little it clunkier. However, it certainly puts some of our opponents back a turn, and stops them from casting two spells a turn for a long while. Slows some combo decks by even more than 1 turn.
Dosan the Falling Leaf: Our spells on our turns are pretty much uncounterable. It's a good feeling.
Interaction
Here are the ways we interact with our opponents and try to answer their strategies one at a time.
Swords to Plowshares: An excellent card at an excellent cost. Our opponents' life totals are 99.9% of the time completely irrelevant.
Path to Exile: Certainly a sharper downside, but still a beautifully versatile and fine addition to the deck at just 1 mana.
Council's Judgment: It's just a very strong blanket answer to just about everything, and can often get rid of two problems at once in 4-player.
Caustic Caterpillar : Artifact and Enchantment hate that goes under Hushwing Gryff and Torpor Orb.
Qasali Pridemage: Same as Caustic Caterpillar . Both are retrievable via Sun Titan and Renegade Rallier.
Reclamation Sage: He earns his spot. Artifact and enchantment hate are paramount to our strategy. Hitting Sol Rings is a big deal.
Fiend Hunter : A creature that can answer a creature is important in this deck, especially with Yisan, the Wanderer Bard , Birthing Pod, and Eldritch Evolution . Sometimes, it just necessary, and it has proven itself with lots of playtesting.
Angel of Serenity : Surprisingly extraordinary. At first sight, one might thing this card is a bit too costly. But it's actually not that bad for how strong it is. Our opponents' grunting becomes audibly louder when this card hits the field, sweeping away their best blockers while getting back our own cards.
Aura Shards: Even more artifact/enchantment hate. We need plenty of it to answer all the mana rocks, then finish it with a Linvala, Keeper of Silence to answer all the mana dorks. Finally, Living Plane. ;)
Strip Mine: This is basically what we've got for land destruction here. Can get it back with Sun Titan and Renegade Rallier.
Phyrexian Revoker: A great card. Just turns off any planeswalker, any mana rock, combo piece etc.
Stonecloaker: Not frequently used for general graveyard hate, but sometimes. It's basically in here to ensure that Altar of Dementia is lethal even against shufflers.
Boardstate Protection
These are the cards that save our boardstate from getting wrecked.
Eerie Interlude: Mvp for sure. This card protects us from literally anything, even Ixidron.
Heroic Intervention: It's a counterspell for removal for the most part. Also can be a profitable combat trick.
Selfless Spirit: Saves Gaddock Teeg among other things usually from random removal spells like Abrupt Decay, but also can be a great target for Pattern of Rebirth since it can sac itself instantly on command.
Sylvan Safekeeper: Protects our investments well, and it doesn't matter if it's summoning sick.
Mother of Runes: Not quite as good as Sylvan Safekeeper as testing as shown, but still very good.
Tutors and Retrieval
The reason this is such a difficult deck to play is because of how many tutors and retrieval it plays. We often have many lines of play available to us, much more than most other decks. This is an extremely choice-heavy list, and that's one of the reasons I love it so much.
Survival of the Fittest: What a card! It's both the strongest and most difficult card to play in the deck. I lack both the time and the effort to explain all of the lines of play this card allows. One great one that I will mention however is pitching any creature for Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, then pitching the Elesh Norn for a Loyal Retainers that will then subsequently reanimate the Elesh Norn. Often times, if you don't know what to get, getting Academy Rector is a good place to start.
Fauna Shaman: I can't complain about a slightly weaker Survival of the Fittest. This card is still an A+.
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard : The games where you have an active Yisan vs the games where you don't are very different games. Yisan's verse 1 often gets Sylvan Safekeeper, which proceeds to protect the Yisan for the rest of this rather short game. From here, there's lots of excellent choices. One of my favorites is getting Fauna Shaman on two, then getting Spike Feeder on 3 while the Fauna Shaman tutors the Archangel of Thune. Alternatively, you could just go straight hatebears all the way up until your opponents can't do anything anymore.
Birthing Pod: It's unfortunate that we can't cast this while Gaddock Teeg is in play, but it's one of the few cards that I'll play regardless due to its incredible power-level. It helps us get the exact hatebear or combo piece we need exactly when we need it, and it's difficult to interact with.
Recruiter of the Guard: Usually, it gets Academy Rector. But it also gets a lot of other things. Aven Mindcensor is a solid grab most of the time as well, and it can also get Sanctum Prelate to turn off an impending Cyclonic Rift.
Worldly Tutor: It's an obvious choice for a deck based around utility creatures. Can't get away from this card.
Eladamri's Call : Again, for a deck based around creatures, you can't not play this.
Enlightened Tutor: The only tutor in our deck that can grab a sac outlet.
Pattern of Rebirth: With a sac outlet, it wins. With something like Selfless Spirit, it's a free anything we want, any time we want it. While we can't cast it with teeg in play, we can still grab it off of Academy Rector.
Eldritch Evolution : This card is very strong, and definitely pulls its weight. I often use it to get an early Linvala, Keeper of Silence or whatever else I need to cripple my opponents a little bit.
Protean Hulk : Under the awkward circumstance where this dies without a sacrifice outlet in play, you still get basically whatever you need to pull through to a victory.
Eternal Witness: Regrowth effects are very good in a deck that brings on the hate.
Regrowth: Gotta play it.
Sun Titan: What a fantastic card. It gets back so many of our small hate creatures, and goes infinite sometimes.
Renegade Rallier: Can even get back a Survival of the Fittest or a Sylvan Library. This card is excellent.
Karmic Guide: Gets back anything. Combos easily. What's not to love?
Reveillark : Very central to my combo. Very strong.
Loyal Retainers: Gets back Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Saffi Eriksdotter, or Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. In rare cases, sometimes Dosan the Falling Leaf.
Sterling Grove : Often gets either Pattern of Rebirth or Survival of the Fittest. On rare occasions, I sometimes find it necessary to get an Aura Shards. It's also good to note though that there are several sideboard cards that this card can retrieve so that I see them more often.
Shortcomings
This deck, while very good, isn't without its weaknessess. It's important to be aware of the weaknesses in order to be able to take precautions and play accordingly.
Enlightened Tutor: It's our only tutor for our sac outlet, and our sac outlet combos are are major puzzle piece to us winning the game. We don't always need the sac outlet combo to win, but it can certainly be frustrating to not always have access to it. Believe me, I've tried using Reaper of Flight Moonsilver . It didn't work very well.
Toxic Deluge: This card is very good against us. We only have a few cards that play around it, and it is unfortunately a very popular card in commander.
Cyclonic Rift: This isn't just our weakness, it's pretty much everyone's weakness. Rift is just a really hard card to beat. We have Sanctum Prelate naming 2 and Eerie Interlude... that's about it.
Ixidron: Wow this card is a powerhouse. It can not only answer Gaddock Teeg, but keep him answered indefinitely. I've only been able to overcome Ixidron a handful of times. It's got about an 80% winrate over me, and there's not much I can do about it.
Sideboard Selections
Sideboard slots might still need some testing, but I have tested most of them.
Aura of Silence: This is ideal against stax and enchantment themes. Also decent against a lot of four-color decks popping up due to a heavy concentration of mana rocks.
Seedborn Muse: This is ideal against Winter Orb, Statis, and Static Orb.
Krosan Grip: Ideal against stax, colorless, and Mind Over Matter decks.
Glaring Spotlight: Makes Narset, Enlightened Master much easier to deal with, as well as a whole list of other hexproof commanders.
Ethersworn Canonist : Ideal against storm/cascade decks.
Aegis of the Gods : Ideal against Aetherflux Reservoir decks. Not a perfect answer, but it's something.
Carpet of Flowers: Pretty straight-forward.
Choke: Also pretty straight-forward.
Kataki, War's Wage: Ideal against heavy artifact stax.
Eidolon of Rhetoric: Ideal against storm.
Previously Playtested Cards
These are cards that have already gone through playtesting and have been cut from my list.
Knight of the Reliquary: Yeah, yeah... It gets Gaea's Cradle. That's about all it does.
Reaper of Flight Moonsilver : Literally the only creature that has a built in zero mana sac outlet in my colors. Unfortunately, it's not good enough.
Stoneforge Mystic: I tried playing this with a whole equipment package including Skullclamp, Umezawa's Jitte, Sword of Fire and Ice, and Sword of Feast and Famine. It just wasn't strong enough. I found that the strategy of fetching powerful equipment was lackluster, slow, and not good enough for the competitive field.
Dauntless Escort: I have Selfless Spirit. I evaluated that Selfless Spirit alone was enough for this kind of effect.
Palace Jailer: Not as good as it is in Legacy. Gotta admit; I was very hyped for this one. I really wanted a four-drop creature with creature removal built in. My opponents eventually just attack me with something difficult to block and get their thing back without having to spend much in the form of resources. It kinda ends up being a 1 for 0.
Master of the Wild Hunt: Just slow and not impactful enough.
Flickerwisp: Doesn't actually do much.
Dragonlord Dromoka: Too mana costly for a card that never really pulled its weight. I've been much more satisfied with Dosan the Falling Leaf.
Dromoka's Command: Too situational.
Seedborn Muse (mainboard): Wasn't good enough for mainboard. I was trying to be cute with untapping Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Fauna Shaman, as well as playing it with Winter Orb. I found that Winter Orb wasn't coming up very often because I only have one card that can tutor it, which is Enlightened Tutor. Except Enlightened Tutor usually has to get a sac outlet. So Seedborn Muse was just often a dead card.
Winter Orb: I basically just explained it. It didn't come up enough. I often found myself not wanting to play it because I didn't also have an active Seedborn Muse. It was cool a few times with Gaea's Cradle, but hardly won me any games.
Open the Armory: After I took out the equipment package, all it could get was Pattern of Rebirth, but I usually want to leave that in my library and use Academy Rector or Boonweaver Giant to get it anyway because Teeg doesn't let me cast it from my hand. So Open the Armory just doesn't make sense.
Sensei's Divining Top: Despite being a combo deck, I oddly didn't feel like I had enough opportunity to spin the top. I constantly needed all of my mana to cast my spells on curve, and wouldn't be using the top really until at least turn 4 or 5. Using it any earlier just meant I wasn't doing enough to keep the board under control,nor was I making a strong enough board presence.
Storm Crow: It was really broken, but teeg was alergic to blue.
Closing
Thanks again for checking out my deck, and I hope you liked it enough to give it a +1. I welcome all forms of commentary. Have a wonderfully hateful day!
PS: Check me out on Instagram! :)
