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[Primer] I need a Tree-ro!

Commander / EDH Aggro BGW (Abzan, Junk) Casual Multiplayer

Decisive

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Utility (31)

Land (37)

Draw/Tutor (9)

Commander (1)

Commander: Doran, the Siege Tower

Removal (14)

Ramp (9)

A Casual-Competitive take on classical Doran . No one man can stop this powerhouse of toughness! Now with an infinite combo! Buy now! Only 30 payments of $67.76!

Now, I’d like to start by saying that this is not a typical Doran deck. I don’t run many defenders, nor do I run Treefolk Tribal. If you want to play a causal defender based deck, look elsewhere, and same goes for if you want treefolk tribal. Now on to the colors

Green: Provides ramp, allows access to removal and brings some great High-Toughness creatures, and some utility

White: Allows access to a mass amount of removal, large amount of utility, and a butt-ton of creatures, not to mention combo pieces

Black: Is splashed, brings along more removal, some good creatures, and great utility

Land: Self-explanatory

Utility: Cards that do something helpful. Lifegain primarily

Ramp: Cards that increase total access to mana, or mana fix

Removal: Cards that remove threats

Win Con: Cards that, once played, greatly increase your board presence and one step closer to victory, or just outright give you access to an instant win

Draw/Tutor: Cards that either draw cards or let me tutor

Other: Cards that don’t fit into other categories, primarily creatures.

*Cards are put into the category that falls under their MAIN purpose in the deck.

There are some cards that are in 2 categories, so duplicates are here.

This deck’s objective is simplistic, yet complex, deal lethal damage. It’s easy to play creatures, but this deck doesn’t run enough for you to constantly draw one almost every turn. This is where it gets complicated.

Since your drawing of creatures is almost always less than 50/50 every draw step, this means that your plays should always be considered. You're required to use 100% of your brain throughout the match. You can not, I repeat can not play this deck on “autopilot”.

You need at least 3 lands in your hand, or at least 2 lands and a castable ramp spell, making sure that 3 mana is covering the 3 you need to cast Doran. Casting him turn 3 is the biggest priority. An optimal hand would look like this land, land, land/ramp, removal, creature, creature.

This deck’s average mana cost is around 3, so having 3 mana means you can cast over 40% of this deck. Drawing a 4th land/mana source allows you to cast over 50% of it.

You shouldn’t have the need to mulligan past 7 in most games, as this deck’s mana base should work well enough. You can survive mulligan-ing to 6, but I wouldn’t recommend going any further down.

Early game is the slowest and moderately fun, but most important. This is where you set up pieces. You should always have a turn 1 play, which is okay. Playing something turn 2-4 is essential. Doran is the default turn 3 play, but other things would be better (Like Aura Shards). Play somewhat peacefully during this portion of the match, but you can try to remove a player from the game if you have the means of doing so.

Mid game entails dropping some bombs, playing more utility and starting to actually deal the majority of your “setting up” damage to every player(Which is just enough damage to put your opponents within killing range, which is around 30 or so life). Some big threats can pop up at this point, in which case, they should be dealt with ASAP. Nothing good can happen from leaving a threat to manifest itself. Politically speaking, you shouldn’t become the target yet, and should atleast have a friend at the table.

At this point in the game, you’ve already dealt some damage to every player, making them much easier to kill. You’ve probably already been found out as a deadly threat, and thus have everyone at the table hate you. You can easily overcome anything they do.

Contingency, the moment where everything fails. When everything goes wrong you always have to have some sort of backup. In these cases, you need to stall until you get your second wind, removing any and all threats are essential until you’ve managed to finally re-plant your feet (Pun intended), this deck runs enough removal to give you enough time to draw out defenses. You also have access to an infinite combo, in case attacking becomes impossible. Once you’ve got some stuff back down, the timer has started up once again. Good Luck, Soldier!

Strengths include responses. This deck can easily respond to almost situation that may arise. A wide range of removal helps this deck play around anything that happens. This deck is also a good and unique type of aggro, creature-based to an extent, lots and lots of damage! Once this deck starts up, it can do almost anything, the things it can't do can be remedied using basic game politics.

This deck has its shortcomings. It can fail to supreme aggro since this deck has limited token production, a Krenko deck of sorts can overwhelm us in some cases. We also struggle against stax, but what deck doesn’t?

This deck lacks large synergistic combos and replaces them with small ones. We do have a single infinite combo, Daru Specialist + Shaman en-Kor / Lightning Greaves + Another creature. With this combo, you can get yourself infinite toughness, or if you want to, infinite life. This life can be used on something like Aetherflux Reservoir or Kuro, Pitlord . A good combo, though circumstantial, would be Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Aura Shards . Others include Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper + Rogue's Passage + Any Creature, Oathsworn Giant + Elspeth, Sun's Champion (Amass a giant army, very powerful).

Most of these combo’s assume you have Doran in play

I will exclude most of the lands in this list, as they’re more or less self-explanatory

Forbidding Watchtower : 5/5 for 2. Powerful land, even if it enters tapped.

Gaea's Cradle : Powerful in any creature heavy deck

Miren, the Moaning Well : Sac outlet for that lifegain

Murmuring Bosk : Fetchable tri-land….god damn is that powerful

Reliquary Tower : Sometimes you draw too much, this helps counteract that whole “discard every turn” thing

Rogue's Passage : Making any high toughness creature unblockable for a turn is devastating for the enemy

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth : Sac Swamps to Strands of Night, return something good, replay the land using Ramunap Excavator

Vault of the Archangel : Life gain and dissuading people from blocking

Winding Canyons : Flash cast creatures

Abzan Beastmaster : Chances are that it’ll trigger every upkeep, and card draw is fantastic

Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim : Lifegain on a 3/3, is good

Daru Spiritualist : Combo’s out with Shaman en-Kor or Lightning Greaves.

Disciple of Griselbrand : Life gain, like Ayli

Dragonlord Dromoka : Lifelink, flying, stops blue players from messing with me.

Eternal Witness : Fetchback for essential cards

Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper : Life gain on a good body

Indomitable Ancients : One of the best T/CMC ratios for 4

Kuro, Pitlord : With all that life we can go ahead and kill everything that ain’t ours

Nyx-Fleece Ram : Lifegain and amazing T/CMC ratio

Oathsworn Giant : Fantastic boost, vigilance enabler

Oketra the True : A 6/6 double striker for 4 is fantastic, enabling her isn’t hard

Ramunap Excavator : 3/3 for 3 with Crucible of Worlds rules text, fantastic

Rhox Faithmender : Good T/CMC ratio, ability is relevant

Sakura-Tribe Elder : Creature ramp is good, discardable to Survival, and returnable with Witness

Sapling of Colfenor : Shoddy-ish T/CMC ratio, but her ability is amazing

Selvala, Explorer Returned : Not bad ratio, but her ability provides ramp and utility.

Shaman en-Kor : Combo Piece, ability can be useful sometimes too

Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa : Not bad ratio either, makes my creatures somewhat unblockable

Silklash Spider : 7/7 for 5, and deals with flyers. Freakin’ amazing.

Skinshifter : 8/8 for 3? Freakin’ Fantastic

Solemn Simulacrum : Creature ramp is good, discardable to Survival, and returnable with Witness, plus he draws me a card

Tree of Perdition : I’ll suck all your life, sure

Vizier of the Menagerie : 4/4 for 4 is moderate, but his ability makes it all the more worth running

Wood Elves : Creature ramp is good, discardable to Survival, and returnable with Witness

Aetherflux Reservoir : Life gain and life sink for killing people outright

Arguel's Blood Fast  : With all that lifegain, let's get some card too

Asceticism : Giving all my creatures hexproof plus the ability to regenerate them is fantastic

Assault Formation : Backup Doran, allows us to enable Defender creatures, and it also adds a small anthem-esque boost.

Aura Shards : Amazing and constant removal, for those pesky artifact/enchantment heavy decks.

Behind the Scenes : Skulk is potent here, making almost everything unblockable is stupidly stupid.

Brave the Sands : Vigilance enabler, allows for a deadly Souls of the Faultless.

Chromatic Lantern : Mana Fixing and ramp.

Chrome Mox : Mana ramp

Lightning Greaves : Amazing haste-enabler, and shroud too boot.

Mana Crypt : Amazing iconic ramp

Meekstone : Most creatures here are under 3, and for those that are 3+, we have vigilance. Great way to stop aggro.

Necropotence : Great draw engine for when you start to lose your hand, or start to draw duds. Not hard to get BBB early on.

Phyrexian Arena : One life for an extra card every turn is fantastic!

Phyrexian Reclamation : Another way of recurring my creatures

Slagwurm Armor : 4 mana for a +0/+6 boost, most potent artifact here.

Sol Ring : Most iconic ramp spell in EDH.

Survival of the Fittest : Pitch something dead in your hand for a combo piece

Strands of Night : Return anything useful.

Sylvan Library : Basically lets you pick and choose one (or more) of the top 3 cards of your library

Ad Nauseam : With all that life, let’s just draw the whole deck

Anguished Unmaking : Remove any threat, 3 life ain’t much to pay

Austere Command : Most potent “targeted” removal ever

Crop Rotation : Mana fixing for any land I could possibly need

Demonic Tutor : One of the best tutors out there

Dusk / Dawn : Retribution of the meek, with reanimation to boot

Fell the Mighty : Basically reads “Kill everything that ain’t yours”

Krosan Grip : Almost 100% uncounterable removal for artifacts/enchantments. Amazing

Path to Exile : Best targeted removal

Putrefy : Remove a creature, or an artifact, very potent

Retribution of the Meek : Kills almost everything not yours

Skyshroud Claim : Amazing ramp card, due to duals I can fetch a lot of lands

Toxic Deluge : Typically a one-sided board wipe, and it’s not that hard to pay for using all that life

Tower Defense : Just like Bar, it allows for some out-of-nowhere wins

Utter End : Great way to rid the world of something

Vampiric Tutor : Great instant speed fetch

Vindicate : Perfect to remove any, and I mean ANY, destroyable threat

Wave of Reckoning : Won’t kill anything of big importance on my side.

This deck was created late January 2017. After a few revisions I left this project to pursue my Angel deck (deck-small:atraxa-angels-voice-1), but once I got some time, I went ahead and re-focused my attention here and made a major revision, followed by another large one.

February 5th, 2017

Removed the following: Sun Titan , Crenellated Wall

Added the following: Dragonlord Dromoka , Archers' Parapet

November 3rd, 2017

I've revised the whole deck. It's been a long time, and I'm sorry for the wait. I've been pre-occupied with my Atraxa Angels deck in the meantime. Mana Base may still need some adjustments, but other than that its better than before!

November 11th, 2017

Removed:

Stirring Wildwood : Not good enough for its cost

Shambling Vent : Same reason

Belbe's Armor : Not good enough since I can't generate enough mana to be really useful

Leyline of Vitality : Too expensive, lifegain was minimal

Belligerent Brontodon : Too expensive, too bad of a T/CMC

Added:

An-Havva Constable : Very impressive. Can be immensely powerful.

Gaea's Cradle : Good ramp land

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx : Though not as good in a tri-color deck, still fantastic

Lumithread Field : Cheaper Leyline, can morph which is nice.

Crenellated Wall : Better then Belbe's Armor in this deck

November 11th, 2017 (Later that day)

Removed:

Courser of Kruphix : Lifegain was minimal, really didn't do much

Siege Rhino : Lifegain was minimal, really bad T/CMC ratio

Added:

Selvala, Explorer Returned : Ramps, draws, good body. She's amazing

Sentinel : Is amazing, need it to block/be blocked once.

November 12th, 2017

Removed:

Grim Contest : Not good enough

Pontiff of Blight : Too expensive

Temple of the False God : So-so

Added:

Vizier of the Menagerie : Amazing

Winding Canyons : Flash for creatures in an aggro deck is amazing

Parapet : Great boost

November 16th, 2017

I was disappointed with the way the deck handled itself. So I enlisted the help of WizardMN to help and help he did. This deck now comes with a better mana base, infinite toughness based combo (Gives infinite toughness, which can give infinite life)

I wanted to stay away from infinites, but Doran is not a card that is professionally supported in Magic. This deck still has its roots based on toughness, but now comes with a larger power level.

November 26th, 2017

Added:

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmouth

Strands of Night

Ramunap Excavator

Chrome Mox

Removed:

Abzan Charm

Souls of the Faultless

Bar the Door

Merciless Eviction

I'd like to personally thank WizardMN for being kind enough to help me out with my deck. He's been a great help, thanks mate!

If you want to provide a suggestion, check the changelog, provide a reason behind it, and suggest what remove to make room for your suggestion.

If you like the deck and would like to show your support, here's an upvote button!

Suggestions

Updates Add

A huge revamp! — April 4, 2019
Edit

It's been a while, but I looked at my irl version of this deck and thought about finally making an update to it on tappedout. So here ya go!

Minor Change — April 5, 2018
Edit
More changes — Nov. 26, 2017
Edit
Another revision - This time gigantic — Nov. 16, 2017
Edit
Many more Changes! — Nov. 12, 2017
Edit
Few Changes — Nov. 11, 2017
Edit
Few Changes. Part 2 — Nov. 11, 2017
Edit
Major, Major and long awaited Revision! — Nov. 3, 2017
Edit
Some Minor Changes! — Feb. 5, 2017
Edit

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Revision 27 See all

(5 years ago)