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[EDH][PRIMER] Karametra's Garden of Eden

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive GW (Selesnya) Infinite Combo Multiplayer Primer Ramp

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Lands (30)

Protection (8)

Anthems (6)

Wincons (5)

Enablers (11)

Mana Advantage (9)

Tutors (8)

Hate (4)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Karametra, God of Harvests

Removal (10)

Card Advantage (7)

Stax Effects (1)

Maybeboard

Combo-Based Pieces (11)

Misc. Pieces (8)

Stax-Based Pieces (8)

Welcome to Eden

I know the primer is shit. I'm somewhat slowly working on it. Who am I kidding, it's never going to be completed.

Welcome to the Garden of Eden, home of Karametra, God of Harvests , one of my favorite legendary creatures that has ever been printed in Magic: The Gathering. I'm a big fan of her, as she was released during the set I started playing in, Born of the Gods. The deck seeks to abuse her ability to get lands into play by repeatedly casting low-costed creatures that bounce themselves to quickly get lots of lands out, and then take over the board with an army of tiny creatures. The deck lost a lot of firepower with the Paradox Engine ban, but it still works fine in medium-powered metas.

Note for Suggestions: Do not suggest landfall abilities. Do not suggest landfall abilities. Do not suggest landfall abilities. I'm not a fan of the mechanic, and the only reason Lotus Cobra is in the deck is because with it and Oketra's Monument and either Kor Skyfisher or Whitemane Lion you can get every single one of the forest or plains out of the library in a single turn.

When I build decks, I have a series of categories I fit my cards in. Unless I really love the card, if it doesn't fit into a category I don't run it. These are the primary categories I run whenever building my decks:

  • Lands: Self explanitory.
  • Anthems: Cards that give a positive boon to our entire board, or affects casting cost of our cards.
  • Enablers: Cards that allow us to combo off and begin the process of winning the game, or at least taking over the game with overwhelming advantage.
  • Hate: Cards that aim to shut down aspects of the board so that people may not take advantage of it. For example, despite having a little recursion in the deck, we do not particularly make use the graveyard. As such, the main type of hate I run is graveyard-hate.
  • Card Advantage: Cards that give us an advantage card-wise over our opponents.
  • Mana Advantage: Cards that give us an advantage mana-wise over our opponents.
  • Protection: Cards that protect our board state.
  • Stax Effects: Cards that openly hinder our opponents and what cards they can or cannot profit off of.
  • Tutors: Cards that allow us to search for either what we need at any given time, or our win-cons should we be in the later stages of the game.
  • Removal: Cards that allow us to deal with threats from our opponents.
  • Wincons: Cards we aim to win the game with. Usually these are played after our enablers.
  • Sideboard: Cards that could easily go into the deck and will probably swap out with certain cards depending on the game.
  • Maybeboard: Cards I am thinking about throwing into the deck.

I chose because I already had a large amount of staples for both colors and it involves my favorite color, green.

The deck is relatively slow on the first four to five turns of the game as we don't run too many ways of accelerating our mana output beyond a couple mana dorks and the staple rocks. However, once we get our commander out and if we have something like Whitemane Lion or Kor Skyfisher in our hand, we can easily get out all of the basic lands in our deck in 2-3 turns. From there, the deck can play pretty much anything it draws without problem.

The deck has three main weaknesses. The first being closing out games, albeit with the conversion to a more combo-oriented playstyle that has become a lesser factor. The next weakness is Rule of Law type effects. Since we're essentially a storm deck that capitalizes on us playing the same spells over and over again, forcing us to only play one spell a turn hurts. Finally, the last weakness is big creatures. Over two-thirds of the creatures in the deck are either 1/1's, 2/1's, or 2/2's. As such, massive creatures with trample swinging in our direction tends to screw us over, particularly because we don't want to be blocking with our tiny army of value. Our commander being an indestructible 6/7 helps, but she needs to reach a certain devotion to work. The main reason Akroma, Angel of Wrath and Ghostly Prison are both in the deck is to help with this problem, albeit it's like a band-aid to a gash that needs stitches - they can only go so far.

The entire strategy of the deck involves getting either Cloudstone Curio or Aluren out on the field as fast as possible with our commander in play. Then, using cards such as Whitemane Lion paired with Wall of Blossoms we can draw our deck. From there, cards like Hanged Executioner give us infinite tokens with just Aluren and Cloudstone Curio in play, since he can bounce himself with his token. Just need Concordant Crossroads and we can swing with infinite tokens that turn.

There are also some other lines included within the deck, all involving Cloudstone Curio and Aluren in some way/shape/form. First is the aforementioned line with any of the blink creatures paired with the creatures that draw cards. Other lines include Rhonas's Monument paired with the blinking creatures in order to give all our creatures infinite pump and trample, Oketra's Monument paired with the blinking creatures to give us infinite tokens we can either sac to Blasting Station , Phyrexian Altar , or Ashnod's Altar depending on the situation or swing with an army of infinite creatures, Hanged Executioner and Sandsteppe Outcast to make infinite tokens and pair them with the aforementioned sac outlets, etc. There aren't too many ways to generate infinite mana, but honestly we don't really need infinite mana if we have Aluren , as all our win-cons save for Craterhoof Behemoth are under three mana.

Saffi Eriksdotter and Sun Titan also pair well with any of the sac outlets, and you can replace Sun Titan with Eternal Witness if you have Aluren out.

Suggestions

Updates Add

First Round of Playing the New List — April 14, 2021
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So today I went up to my LGS and played a couple games with some friends of mine I haven't seen in years, and it was great fun. I ended up playing two games with Karametra - the first as the stock battlecruisery list against a Mina and Denn, Wildborn stompy creatures deck, a Rosheen Meanderer burn deck, and a Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy stax deck. All throughout the game, I held a strong board presence, however, lost in the end due to everyone being low on life and the Mina and Denn top decking a overrun effect.

The second game I swapped over to the combo decklist, and saw much greater success. The Mina player had swapped over to a Bosh, Iron Golem deck based around copying Bosh's trigger, the Rosheen player swapped to a Jasmine Boreal no keywords deck, and the Kinnan player swapped to a Chulane, Teller of Tales drawing cards deck. Bosh had a combo on board that could've killed the table, but I managed to interrupt it with a well-timed Krosan Grip. My next turn, I played an Aluren with a Oketra's Monument and a Rhonas's Monument on board. I played Whitemane Lion an infinite amount of times, making infinite tokens and pumping my creatures infinitely, and I swung for game. However, the Jasmine deck cast Fog saving the table. In my second main, I managed to recur Enlightened Tutor for a Blasting Station and killed the table with it, my infinite tokens, and Whitemane Lion infinitely blinking itself.

All in all, the deck performed as expected. It managed to eek a win out of nowhere, and was able to take several different routes in order to do so. The combo list is definitely more powerful than the battlecruiser list, but that is to be expected. Hope to test it out more soon.

Deck Revamp — March 30, 2021
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First Event Report and Testing — June 18, 2017
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Casual

98% Competitive

Revision 30 See all

(4 years ago)

+1 Forest main
-1 Vesuva main