Archelos, the Greatest Commander to Ever Exist

Commander / EDH BUG (Sultai)

Emerson685

Land (37)

• 1x Alchemist's Refuge
• 1x Bad River
• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Cephalid Coliseum
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dakmor Salvage
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Field of the Dead
• 1x Forest
• 1x Glacial Chasm
• 1x Golgari Rot Farm
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 1x Ice Tunnel
• 1x Island
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Opulent Palace
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Rejuvenating Springs
• 1x Rimewood Falls
• 1x Simic Growth Chamber
• 1x Snow-Covered Forest
• 1x Snow-Covered Island
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 1x Tolaria West
• 1x Tranquil Thicket
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Witch's Cottage
• 1x Woodland Cemetery
• 1x Woodland Chasm
• 1x Zagoth Triome

Instant (23)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Deadly Rollick
• 1x Evacuation
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Growth Spiral
• 1x Mission Briefing
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Necrologia
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Rapid Hybridization
• 1x Read the Runes
• 1x Reap
• 1x Shared Summons
• 1x Stroke of Genius
• 1x Sultai Charm
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Windgrace's Judgment

Sorcery (12)

• 1x Agadeem's Awakening  ^Flip
• 1x Bala Ged Recovery  ^Flip
• 1x Ecological Appreciation
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Find / Finality
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Pieces of the Puzzle
• 1x Pir's Whim
• 1x Scapeshift
• 1x Splendid Reclamation
• 1x Three Visits

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Nissa of Shadowed Boughs

Commander (1)

Creature (15)

• 1x Ancient Greenwarden
• 1x Azusa, Lost but Seeking
• 1x Cosima, God of the Voyage  ^Flip
• 1x Elvish Reclaimer
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Lotus Cobra
• 1x Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
• 1x Patron of the Moon
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Scute Swarm
• 1x Stinkweed Imp
• 1x Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1x The Gitrog Monster
• 1x Tireless Provisioner
• 1x Titania, Protector of Argoth

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Druid Class
• 1x Excavation
• 1x Exploration
• 1x Journey to Eternity  ^Flip
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Retreat to Hagra
• 1x Wilderness Reclamation

Artifact (4)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Smuggler's Copter
• 1x Zuran Orb

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Maybeboard

Land (13)

• 1x Cabal Pit
• 1x Cryptic Caves
• 1x Drownyard Temple
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Memorial to Folly
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Polluted Mire
• 1x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Vesuva
• 1x Waterlogged Grove
• 1x Windswept Heath

Creature (8)

• 1x Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait
• 1x Golgari Thug
• 1x Nyx Weaver
• 1x Rampaging Baloths
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Springbloom Druid
• 1x Timeless Witness
• 1x World Shaper

Enchantment (1)

• 1x The Mending of Dominaria

Artifact (1)

• 1x Sol Ring

Instant (6)

• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Constant Mists
• 1x Epiphany at the Drownyard
• 1x Harrow
• 1x Putrefy
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Unmarked Grave
• 1x Villainous Wealth
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Worm Harvest

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BACKGROUND

I like Turtles. Alot. Maybe you have seen my original Archelos deck where I tried to make a Butts-Matter, Turtle Tribal deck (here: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/shell-ya-tough-turtle-tribal/ ). If you haven't, just that statement should tell you how much I like Turtles. The problem with that deck was it sucked. Maybe one day WOTC will get their shit together and treat turtles right, but for now, turtle tribal is not a thing.

A NEW ARCHELOS

I'm still committed to my favorite turtle though, and he's not actually that bad as his own engine. This is like a graveyard/landfall deck in Sultai. Like if you mixed a Yarok landfall deck with a Gitrog Monster dredge deck. Could I use Yarok as the commander? Yes, but he's not a turtle, dummy.

GOALS

This deck doesn't really do anything to try and tap Archelos during my opponents' turns, unless he just happens to be able to attack. I tried using some of those pieces that tapped Archelos on demand, like Opposition , but trust me that it's just a waste of time. This deck tries to speed toward winning, not mildly inconvenience my opponents.

Instead, we want to take advantage of Archelos allowing out stuff to come in untapped. This makes our ramp cards explosive (turning Farseek and Springbloom Druid into 1 mana spells), our bounce lands like Simic Growth Chamber into ramp, and our utility lands like Field of the Dead and Mystic Sanctuary even more efficient.

Most important, it makes Scapeshift and Splendid Reclamation absolutely disgusting as either huge value plays or part of a sweet combo (more on that below)

IMPORTANT INTERACTIONS

The explosive combo that can come out of nowhere and win the game goes like this:

1. Have Archelos on the battlefield
2. Have a landfall payoff on the battlefield, such at Scute Swarm , Field of the Dead , Tatyova, Benthic Druid , Retreat to Hagra , or Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
3. Have Scapeshift and preferably Splendid Reclamation in hand
4. Cast Scapeshift making sure to first tap and float all mana available
5. Sacrifice all lands except Field of the Dead if that is out, making sure to grab Mystic Sanctuary if it's still in your library
6. Put all the lands out untapped because of Archelos. This allows you to use the Sanctuary's ability to put Scapeshift back on top of your library. If you have Tatyova out, stack the triggers so you draw after so you can immediately draw Scapeshift again.

From here you can do a couple of things depending on what cards you have and whether or not anyone is alive still if Ob Nixilis was out:

• If you drew the Scapeshift immediately, just cast it again. You at least have equal mana to the beginning of your turn, or you're likely up on mana. If you had Lotus Cobra out, then you have ALOT of mana.
• At some point, Scapeshift will either be stuck in your graveyard or you'll have no more land to pull out of your deck, so you will cast Splendid Reclamation to pull all lands back out of your graveyard and all those juicy landfall triggers again. All these lands will also come into play untapped, so you should have an arbitrarily large amount of mana.
• If you're opponents aren't dead from a draining ability yet, you either have pretty much drawn your whole deck, or you have 1000000 Scutes and/or Zombies, or hopefully both.
• Cast Altar of Dementia and mill out all your opponents by sacrificing all those tokens
• Alternatively, use that stupid amount of mana to cast Villainous Wealth or Exsanguinate

The great thing about this "combo" is even a portion of it will be explosive with Archelos out. Just resolving a Scapeshift could effectively give you an extra turn with the mana it returns + all the landfall triggers. If you happen to get Splendid Reclamation first, hopefully you've already been dredging and using fetchlands to get lots of lands into the graveyard. The deck is so good at repeating this process that I've actually run out of lands in my deck to trigger landfall and lost while trying to find a big X-spell

Let me know any thoughts on how to make it more consistent or better at surviving until I can find the combo!

Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 41 - 0 Rares 28 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.98
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Elemental 5/3 G, Food, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Insect 1/1 G, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Decks