Chulane Who Endures!

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive Control Exile GWU (Bant) Infinite Combo Midrange Stax Tap/Untap

kakkapylly69

Creature (26)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Destiny Spinner
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Eternal Scourge
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Faeburrow Elder
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Misthollow Griffin
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Oakhame Adversary
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Quirion Ranger
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Riftsweeper
• 1x Seedborn Muse
• 1x Shrieking Drake
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Thassa's Oracle
• 1x Thrasios, Triton Hero

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Food Chain
• 1x Mana Breach
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Wild Growth

Instant (20)

• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Retraction Helix
• 1x Silence
• 1x Submerge
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Veil of Summer

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Finale of Devastation
• 1x Foresight
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Manipulate Fate
• 1x Neoform
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Regrowth
• 1x Sevinne's Reclamation
• 1x Windfall

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
• 1x Oko, Thief of Crowns

Commander (1)

Land (30)

• 1x Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 7x Forest
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 4x Island
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 3x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Snow-Covered Plains
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Waterlogged Grove
• 1x Windswept Heath

Artifact (2)

• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Null Rod

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Introduction

Thanks for taking your time to read this Primer. Chulane is by far my favorite BWG (or Bant) commander, and I've had tons of fun playing him in casual metas while slowly coming up with a stronger version for a less casual environment. One thing to note right at the beginning is that this is more of a glass cannon build for Chulane, albeit super fun to play! It's not really cEDH viable, but it's definitely a powerful deck made for those "not too casual" metas that haven't reached the cEDH level quite yet. This particular build is also a bit more budget friendly (ignore the foils) than a lot of other heavily optimized decks.

One of my absolute favorite things about the deck, besides the color identity, is the tutor line-up. We get to play cards like Manipulate Fate and Foresight, which in addition to tutoring our Food Chain targets into exile, also draw us a card. Besides fetching us the two Food Chain targets from the deck, both of these tutors also exile a third card of our choice, which is almost always the other tutor we no longer have use for. So we're getting a cantrip effect and reducing the amount of dead draws in the future.

Another thing that make this deck fun to play is that our main win con relies on cards being exiled, which is a place our opponents usually can't interact with. These cards also work from exile even if the game gets grindier and we need a wall of flesh to block with or a decent attacker (Misthollow Griffin). There's also a small upside to having these "can be cast from exile" - creatures in play, which is that they make popular spot removal cards such as Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile a bit worse since they can't permanently affect these creatures. The deck is not really capable of playing any resilient graveyard strategies due to the color identity, so we are a bit underpowered during certain situations compared to decks that are able to run cards like Underworld Breach.

Being a Food Chain deck does however mean that we are very weak against removal that affects enchantments. Food Chain is the best way for us to close the game and losing it can be devastating for our win plan. Therefor we do run recursion in the form of Noxious Revival, Riftsweeper and Eternal Witness, which help us get our Food Chain back from various different zones.

Win Conditions

Food Chain being our main win condition does make things a bit more glass cannon because if it gets taken away we're in a very crappy situation. Luckily we have back up plans in case things don't go our way! Both of our win conditions revolve around the two "Laboratory Maniac" - effects ( = drawing into an empty library and winning the game ): Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, and in the case of Thassa's Oracle, summoning it when our library has 1 or less cards remaining to secure a win through it's ETB effect.

Combo No.1: Food Chain + Lab Man

Our goal is to go infinite by casting your Food Chain targets (Misthollow Griffin, Eternal Scourge) over and over again, which triggers Chulane's ability everytime we do so. This let's us draw our entire deck and put all our remaining lands into play as well. We can then drop one of our Lab Man effects and win.

Step by step guide:

1. Cast Food Chain (and either Misthollow Griffin or Eternal Scourge if not on board / in exile already) and proceed to gather infinite mana for creature spells.

2. Cast Chulane, Teller of Tales

3. Keep casting those exiled creatures through Food Chain, triggering Chulane's ability each time, which draws you a card and lets you put a land from your hand on to the battlefield untapped.

4. When we reach one of our win cons: Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, Laboratory Maniac, we cast it and keep using Food Chain and Chulane until we draw the rest of your deck. In the case of Thassa's Oracle, we need to cast her with one card left in the library to get her on the board without decking ourselves beforehand. Her ETB effect then wins us the game.

Combo No.2: Drawing our deck into Lab Man

Another way of drawing our deck is when you loop Shrieking Drake while Mana Breach and Chulane are both on the field.

Step by step guide:

1. Have Mana Breach and Chulane, Teller of Tales on the field

2. Cast Shrieking Drake which now triggers Mana Breach and Chulane. Remember to float blue mana from the land we're going to bounce back.

3. We bounce the land back to our hand and resolve Chulane's trigger. We draw a card and then put that same land back on to the battlefield untapped.

4. Shrieking Drake ETB trigger: We bounce Shrieking Drake back to our hand.

5. We use the blue mana we have floating from earlier to cast Shrieking Drake again. We now have a loop which draws us our entire deck.

NOTE: This only draws us our deck. It doesn't produce infinite mana or win us the game on it's own, because Shrieking Drake always requires one blue to cast. So we'd wanna set it up so that we also have a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries or Laboratory Maniac in play before we draw our deck using this combo. Also having a Thassa's Oracle in hand ready to cast is a way to win after we've drawn enough cards.

Additional Combo which we are not running currently

If we're playing Intruder Alarm in our deck, which we currently are not, and we have it in play along with 2 mana droks, then Shrieking Drake does produce infinite mana. The bad thing with Intruder Alarm is that it also lets our opponents float mana from their dorks, as they untap too when the effect of Intruder Alarm resolves. So we should look into setting it up so that our opponents have as few creatures to gain value from as possible.

Setting up

It's always good to try and secure a win through cards like Silence and Grand Abolisher. Casting these cards provide us a free turn to go off as they prevent our opponents from interacting with us during our turn. Abolisher is obviously a slightly better card to have in play since it affects everything besides land abilities and planeswalker abilities (if there are any relevant instant speed ones out there), where as Silence only affects spell casts. We can also find a slot for Teferi, Time Raveler for a third interruption effect, if we ever feel like we need one.

Stax

The deck also provides some staxing options vs. our opponents. My favorite picks from the stax line-up are: Collector Ouphe, Mana Breach and Drannith Magistrate. Together these cards make it very hard for our opponents to abuse graveyard strategies, win through fast mana using artifacts, or get ahead in value (read: Mana Breach). They buy us more time to assemble our own slower combo lines which usually take a turn or two longer than other faster combo decks.

Closing thoughts

It's not yet clear to me how far I can push this deck. Granted, this version is still more budget friendly and in no way an all out powerhouse, but I would like to see something like this in a cEDH table at some point, even if it's not my build. I love Chulane as a commander and I think he has a chance at performing in a high power environment. It might take a more experienced player to take him to the next level but I'd love to see it happen.

I plan on making improvements for this build and will update it whenever I get the chance!

Hope you enjoyed the deck, thank you again for reading the primer and feel free to leave feedback!

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Date added	4 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 37 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 17 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.09
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Elk 3/3 G, Food, Treasure