Abzan Farm - Tymna Ikra Turbo Nauseam
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 58 | 6 COMMENTS | 23568 VIEWS | IN 26 FOLDERS
More Ramp, Veils & Elks —Dec. 30, 2019
Cuts: Exotic Orchard, Emergence Zone, Elvish Reclaimer, Skullclamp, Fellwar Stone
Adds: Wild Growth, Springleaf Drum, Lotus Cobra, Autumn's Veil, Kenrith's Transformation
Time to shake things up a bit with some novel cards, especially with ramp which can also be used on Ad Naus turns. The prime candidate here was Lotus Cobra due to its absurd mana production and fixing potential when you have a huge hand and a lot of cards that allow lands to hit the field, all this through many stax cards like Null Rod and Cursed Totem. Wild Growth, while often a mana-neutral play, is bonkers with Earthcraft, which is why I'm willing to give it a test drive. Finally, a spicier inclusion of Springleaf Drum is here as another mana-neutral play that can fix us mana during combo turns.
In addition to ramp, adding some defensive and offensive forms of interaction was timely. Autumn's Veil is an older protection piece that increases our odds of topdecking those juicy uncounterable Ad Naus lines, while also helping us throw more and more of questions to the blue players. Finally, Kenrith's Transformation is essentially a green Gilded Drake, working especially as commander removal while also drawing us topdeck tutored cards on the side.
The cuts happened mostly because our new additions filled the functions our additions filled, albeit a little bit more effectively. I tested both Orchard and Zone, and while Orchard performed well, Zone didn't see much usage due to not being that enticing of a tutor target, even for Crop Rotation which was mostly used to get more mana instead. Cutting one extra land because of our increased ramp only made sense, especially because we run so much more ramp than deck:Mad Farm does by default. Due to the inclusion of Arcane Signet and the new ramp, Fellwar Stone also felt like a reasonable cut.
Reclaimer got the axe due to similar reasons: it was very rarely if at all a tutor target for Ranger-Captain of Eos, being as slow as it is in its activations. Skullclamp, while incredibly powerful, is somewhat narrow with only several x/1s in the list and due to mostly filling the function of drawing topdeck-tutored cards during our storm turns. Clamp is very likely to be reincluded in the future, but for now its taking the sidelines to test other cards.