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Hazezon, Shaper of Sand - Desert Warfare (v0.5)

Commander / EDH* Landfall RGW (Naya) Tokens

KBK7101

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Lands (40)

Finisher (8)

Desert Synergy (5)

Recovery (3)

Tokens (22)

Ramp (12)

Lands Synergy (10)

Protection (4)

Haste (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: altered Hazezon, Shaper of Sand

Deserts (20)

Card Draw (10)

Removal (8)

Board Wipe (1)

Maybeboard

Other (8)

Removal (4)

Deserts (3)

Haste (1)

Land Synergy (1)

Tutor (1)

Protection (7)

Finisher (4)

Burn (3)

Basically a token doubler (1)

Lands (1)

Tokens (6)

Card Draw (4)

Board Wipe (3)

Ramp (3)

**WIP 6/28/25 **

Please do not recommend any Universes Beyond cards. They will not be considered for this deck.

The deserts precon for Thunder Junction was really cool but after play testing with Yuma a bunch and being a bit underwhelmed, I decided to try out Hazezon instead..... And really enjoyed it! After heavily tweaking it, this is now my starting point for Hazezon, Shaper of Sand!

Recommendations welcome! Looking to tweak this deck some more and make it the token deck of my dreams!

PRIMER WIP

TOP RATED HAZEZON, SHAPER OF SAND DECK ON TAPPED OUT!!

Hello and welcome to the primer for one of my absolute favorite decks, Hazezon, Shaper of Sand! Dominaria United was a set full of warm, loving nostalgia for the past and a bright, shiny hope for the future (despite the looming Phyrexian threat, of course!) and featured a wide range of commander options for all colors and playstyles (a total of 75 new commanders from the main set and commander set combined!). The accompanying commander set also featured a selection of 20 commander cards from the 1994 set Legends, reimagined and redesigned for modern MTG. One of those reimagined commanders was Hazezon, Shaper of Sand. Calling back to the original Hazezon Tamar's design it creates loads of 1/1 Sand Warrior creature tokens but with an additional focus on deserts, something MTG didn't have any design space for at the time. Though this new version of Hazezon caught my eye at the time, it wasn't until the release of the Outlaws of Thunder Junction commander deck Desert Bloom that it really piqued my interest. That deck was led by Yuma, Proud Protector or Kirri, Talented Sprout. I was planning on upgrading the deck for Yuma because I love the art but the more I playtested it, the more I found it..... kinda okay. Hazezon was reprinted as a back up commander in the deck and I figured I'd give it a shot because I liked the design and the Sand Warrior tokens had awesome art. I ended up liking Hazezon waaaaaaay more than Yuma and almost immediately set off to upgrade it with cards I had in other decks. This deck can spit out tokens a truly insane pace and with tokens being my favorite playstyle, it immediately become one of my all time favorite decks.

While the term "budget" means different things to different people, my decks do have one. Because of that, please do not recommend overly expensive cards like Gaea's Cradle. I am also not looking to add "fast mana" sources like Mana Vault or Mox Amber. Please do not recommend those, either.

Lastly, I am, unfortunately, one of those people who does not like Universes Beyond cards. I see the appeal of them, and I do enjoy the precons when they're played against each other and I won't fault other people for playing them but I will not play them myself and they will not be considered for this or any other deck I build, regardless of how good they'd be for the deck. Crossover cards are crossover cards and Magic is Magic for me. So... please do not recommend those, either.

Any ideas, recommendations, advice (whether needed or given) or anything else you can think of, please leave as comments below. I don't post as much as I used to on here but I'm still on this site daily and will likely respond fairly quickly.

With all that being said... let's get into the deck!!

CUSTOM CATEGORIES FEATURES CARDS IN MULTIPLE LOCATIONS. THEY ARE NOT DUPLICATES. DECK CONTAINS 100 CARDS.

This part is totally optional and not related to the deck. Please feel free to skip if uninterested. I don't blame you!

My journey with Magic began briefly in 8th grade. I tried it out for a little while due to the popularity of other card games at the time like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! with some friends from school (this was around Mirrodin block and 8th edition for reference). While I loved the art, the basic gameplay was a bit too complicated for me to understand at the time and I dropped the game for what I thought was for good.

Fast forward to years later. My brother had asked for some MTG stuff for Christmas. I thought it would be kind of cool to check out Magic again since I hadn't even seen or heard of it since I dropped it. While doing some research for what to get him (he already had some cards/decks previously, plus whatever I had given him from the stuff I had from 8th grade which was mainly 8ed bulk) I came across various Amonkhet products and I think it was basically love at first site from that point on. The art and feel of Amonkhet hooked me and managed to do what I thought was impossible... and that was to get me back into TCGs for the first time in 15 years. The first deck I ever purchased was the M19 Ajani Planeswalker deck, which I still have and love (though it doesn't see any use anymore). After getting into the game and purchasing a handful of booster packs and bundles and few more Planeswalker decks (M19 Sarkhan, HOU Nicol Bolas and a set of Nissa vs Ob Nixilis duel decks) to build up a collection over the next few months, the trailer for the first new set to be released since I started playing the game was released... the Liliana trailer for War of the Spark. I was floored by what I was seeing. The music (huge Linkin Park fan in my teenage years), the emotions in the internal conflict Liliana was facing, the real possibility of major characters dying... I think that trailer is what hooked me for good. The amount of love and care put into that trailer has yet to be matched by any other set trailers since then in my opinion.

A few months later my brothers and I found commander and it's been what we've played almost exclusively ever since. Legendary creatures are one of the coolest parts of the game and building entire decks around one fascinated me far more than whatever I was building at the time. Our first decks we played with were Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons, Nicol Bolas and Niv-Mizzet, Parun. These decks were mostly bulk and were unsleeved (the horror!) but we had a great time and my commander deckbuilding urge has never really been sated since. It's a fantastic format and the focus on fun over competitiveness is something I love.

Sadly, as I was debating getting into the local game store scene in my area, the covid-19 pandemic began and kinda killed that dream. That, combined with the fact that the nearest local game stores are 45-60 minutes away from me, means that as of right now... I've only ever played Magic with my two brothers (and very rarely, my brother in law as well) in my own house. Please keep this in mind when commenting. This means that my "local meta" consists of all the decks that I have built and listed on here, both public and private ones. (The private ones are locked only because they're not terribly interesting or unique.)

I am an avid deckbuilder and am almost always working on something, whether it's public on here or not. I love working on commanders with cool or interesting lore or characters that had a major importance in Magic's history. I also love building decks for lesser known commanders/partner pairings because I find it a bit boring to see so many decks for, like, Kenrith, the Returned King, Atraxa, Praetors' Voice or Nekusar, the Mindrazer for example. I am very lore focused when it comes to the decks I build, however (which I'm sure you can tell by this deck). I'm also the kind of dude who makes sure the basic lands arts all match the theme/plane of the deck. Flavor > function for me!

And while I think it's possible that Wizards might not have the game's best interest in mind anymore (with the seemingly endless spam of releases and cash-in crossovers), I still love this game and it's various planes and characters. Any critiques/concerns I may express are only because I love the game and I want it to be around for years to come for others to discover and enjoy as I have.

  • Favorite sets: Amonkhet/Hour of Devastation, War of the Spark, Commander Legends, Kaldheim, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, The Brother's War

  • Favorite planes: Amonkhet, Kaldheim, Kamigawa, Dominaria

  • Favorite characters: Rebbec and Glacian, Kaito and The Wanderer, Nicol Bolas, Ajani, Feldon, the original five Amonkhet Gods (RIP)

  • Favorite colors/playstyles: I will play just about anything that's not mass land destruction and stax but I love token strategies, no matter the colors!

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Suggestions

Updates Add

40 upvotes! New update v0.5! Primer WIP! — June 28, 2025
Edit

OUT - 1x Mountain, 1x Forest, Queen Allenal of the Ruadach, Outcaster Greenblade, Bovine Intervention, Mina and Denn, Wildborn, Colossal Rattlewurm

IN - Field of the Dead, The World Tree, Clever Concealment, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Toski, Bearer of Secrets, Elspeth, Storm Slayer, Warleader's Cal

Recently made a pretty big buylist of stuff I didn't need and used all the store credit to upgrade this deck! Field of the Dead and the new Elspeth are outside of my usual card price limit, so they were the first things I grabbed. lol I haven't upgraded this deck in a while but I'm gonna try and get back to it more.

Debating trying to add some more removal by cutting Chromatic Lantern, which I think is a bit redundant now with three or four other cards that color-fix, Chivalric Alliance because it's a bit slow and probably best in mono-white or Boros decks where card draw is harder to come by and Sand Scout which has an awful "once per turn" clause.

Also debating swapping out Decimate and Cataclysmic Prospecting for better board wipes and maybe Embrace the Unknown for another source of card draw, though I'm less sure about that one. The Retrace ability on is can be pretty useful.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

20+ upvotes/1k views! Primer soon(ish)! — Oct. 12, 2024
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99% Casual

Competitive

Revision 7 See all

(4 months ago)

-1 Bovine Intervention main
-1 Colossal Rattlewurm main
+1 Crop Rotation maybe
+1 Cryptolith Rite maybe
+1 Dawn's Truce maybe
+1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove main
+1 Elspeth, Storm Slayer main
-1 Forest main
-1 Mina and Denn, Wildborn main
+1 Molten Gatekeeper maybe
-1 Mountain main
-1 Outcaster Greenblade main
-1 Queen Allenal of Ruadach main
+1 Renewed Solidarity maybe
+1 Survivors' Encampment maybe
+1 Teferi's Protection maybe
+1 Worldsoul's Rage maybe