Immortal Arahbo- Cat Tribal *Primer*

Commander / EDH Cats GW (Selesnya) Infinite Combo Lifegain Primer Stompy

Wolffang988

Creature (27)

• 1x Adorned Pouncer
• 1x Armored Skyhunter
• 1x Balan, Wandering Knight
• 1x Brimaz, King of Oreskos
• 1x Chameleon Colossus
• 1x Felidar Sovereign
• 1x Feline Sovereign
• 1x Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1x Kaheera, the Orphanguard
• 1x Kemba, Kha Regent
• 1x Leonin Arbiter
• 1x Leonin Shikari
• 1x Leonin Warleader
• 1x Lost Leonin
• 1x Luminarch Aspirant
• 1x Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist
• 1x Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
• 1x Oreskos Explorer
• 1x Prowling Serpopard *f-pre*
• 1x Qasali Pridemage
• 1x Qasali Slingers
• 1x Regal Caracal
• 1x Sacred Cat
• 1x Skyhunter Skirmisher
• 1x Spike Feeder
• 1x Stonehewer Giant
• 1x Walking Ballista

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Cleansing Nova
• 1x Cultivate
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Explosive Vegetation
• 1x Idyllic Tutor
• 1x Nylea's Intervention
• 1x Single Combat
• 1x Steelshaper's Gift

Land (33)

• 1x Animal Sanctuary *f-pre*
• 1x Blossoming Sands
• 1x Castle Garenbrig
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Tower
• 7x Forest
• 1x Gavony Township
• 1x Graypelt Refuge
• 1x Labyrinth of Skophos
• 10x Plains
• 1x Razorverge Thicket
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Selesnya Guildgate
• 1x Stirring Wildwood
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Temple of Plenty
• 1x Unclaimed Territory
• 1x Vivid Grove

Enchantment (9)

• 1x Angelic Destiny
• 1x Armadillo Cloak
• 1x Aura Shards
• 1x Battle Mastery
• 1x Bear Umbra
• 1x Felidar Retreat
• 1x Light of Promise
• 1x Sunbond
• 1x Unflinching Courage

Instant (4)

• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Commander (1)

Artifact (17)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Basilisk Collar
• 1x Batterskull
• 1x Behemoth Sledge
• 1x Godsend
• 1x Grafted Exoskeleton
• 1x Hammer of Nazahn
• 1x Heirloom Blade
• 1x Loxodon Warhammer
• 1x Masterwork of Ingenuity
• 1x Maul of the Skyclaves
• 1x Shadowspear
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of Kaldra
• 1x Sword of Sinew and Steel
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x Umezawa's Jitte

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Ajani, the Greathearted

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Updates

11/21/20- New Territory and Cat Toys Show

-Removed Grappling Hook and Mace of the Valiant to add Maul of the Skyclaves and Walking Ballista

-Removed Pendlehaven and Krosan Verge to add Gavony Township and Animal Sanctuary

-Removed Sword of Feast and Famine and Ajani, Strength of the Pride to add Feline Sovereign and Felidar Retreat

These changes are centered on increasing the overall cat synergy with empowering effects such as Feline Sovereign’s ability and having the option to add +1/+1 counters to the cats with Animal Sanctuary, Gavony Township and Felidar Retreat. Mace of the Valiant has been replaced by Maul of the Skyclaves as it offers more reliable value. Added Walking Ballista as an additional wincon when paired with Heliod, Sun-Crowned. Descriptions have been updated to reflect changes!

11/14/2020 - Officially updated description to primer

An Introduction to Cat Care

So you’ve decided to adopt this pretty kitty! Hope you don’t mind if he comes with a few of his friends, because this deck is all about fielding cats and swinging hard! I built Arahbo as the third deck in my main series, after picking up the Secret Lair OMG Kitties, and it has consistently been among my favorite decks to play in my collection! It’s not my first time working with cats either, I used to run a pretty mean Cat Cannon deck in standard back in the Mirrodin Besieged block, so I used that experience and applied some of the same theory when building this deck. Core strategies feature high damage swings, life gain/infinite life, and direct player damage. Arahbo, Roar of the World is a fantastic tribal commander with his eminence ability buffing your attackers on your combat step even when he’s in the command zone, and this deck certainly takes advantage of the extra damage!

Give ‘em the Meow Mix (Strategies and Combos)

As mentioned in the intro, life gain and high damage are the main path to victory in this deck, and there’s a number of kitties and tools to help you accomplish victory!

Meet the Kitties (key combo cards and killers) Show

A few cats in the deck really take the spotlight when they hit the field, so I’ll point them out in this section along with their optimal usage:

Lost Leonin may stand out to you as an odd choice at first as it’s the only creature in the deck with infect, and that’s because infect isn’t really a central theme in the deck. However, with Arahbo, Roar of the World’s eminence ability, Lost Leonin can swing for 5 infect damage, without any equipment or enchantments! That’s half of the lethal amount in one swing, and if you equip it with one of the great equipment featured in the deck you can easily one shot an opponent with your suddenly deadly cat!

Felidar Sovereign functions as one of the wincons of the deck, as there are quite a few cats featuring lifelink and other heavy life gain. Since the commander starting life total is exactly 40 life, this means that it is typically easy to stay in range of Felidar Sovereign’s ability win condition, and the additional means of life gain in the deck can keep you well above the limit or even hit that infinite life combo I mentioned earlier.

Balan, Wandering Knight can be one of our biggest attackers and synergizes extremely well with the equipment featured in the deck. A base 3/3 with first strike, he gains double strike when equipped with two or more equipment AND he’s a cat which means he receives all of the benefit from Arahbo, Roar of the World’s abilities, potentially bringing him to insane amounts of damage in a single attack.

Chameleon Colossus is a bona fide cat thanks to its changeling ability, meaning it can get buffed by Arahbo’s abilities while also packing its own ability to double its power. Another high damage creature to help pick off opponents.

Qasali Slingers and Feline Sovereign are two cats that function in a similar manner, with a slight difference. Qasali Slingers ability allows you to destroy target artifact or enchantment when it or another cat enters the battlefield (Aura Shards, but for kitties), and Feline Sovereign allows you to destroy up to one artifact or enchantment whenever one or more cats you control deals combat damage to a player, while also giving other cats +1/+1 and protection from dogs. With the mentioned Aura Shards, this provides three good sources of board control, keeping artifact and enchantment reliant decks in check while allowing you to leave your own pieces untouched.

Now you may have noticed that there are some creatures that definitely aren’t cats in the deck, and that’s because they can pull off some pretty mean combos and give us a high chance of taking our feline companions home with a win! Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Spike Feeder goes infinite for life gain, as you remove a counter from Spike Feeder to gain 2 life, and use the life gain trigger from Heliod, Sun-Crowned to put a counter back onto Spike Feeder. You can repeat this process infinitely, thus granting you immortality!

Bring out the Treats (Key Wincons) Show

The deck features a few combos outer than just swinging big attackers, so I’ll cover those here!

Infinite Life
There are three primary ways for infinite life in this deck, featuring Spike Feeder. Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Spike Feeder I mentioned in the previous tab, and the deck features several ways to retrieve one or both of the creatures if you pursue this route. Spike Feeder + Sunbond and Light of Promise both achieve infinite life gain as well through the process of removing a counter from Spike Feeder and putting a counter back on from the enchantments trigger, but they differ from Heliod in that they say “whenever you gain life, put that many counters on enchanted creature”. This means that for each counter you remove from Spike Feeder, you will gain 2 life and put 2 counters back onto Spike Feeder. Not only does this grant you infinite life, but also an infinitely large Spike Feeder since it will be gaining an extra +1/+1 counter for each time you repeat the process. At this point, you can choose any player without a blocker or utilize Rogue's Passage to commence “Wipe target player from existence” by swinging your now infinite damage Spike feeder! Having infinite life also makes you extremely difficult to defeat if your opponents commander does not deal combat damage (such as a planeswalker commander) or is otherwise unsuited for combat.

Infinite Direct Damage
If you manage to pull off infinite life successfully but find yourself unable to close the game out by attacking or waiting until your opponent draws out, there is another solution provided by the deck to deal with problems. Aetherflux Reservoir is a great card in many decks with life gain, but in the hands of a player with an infinite life total? Ask your opponents to please hold 1000 damage each as you pay the 50,000 life with infinity to spare, and watch them shatter like your favorite mug after the cat pushes it off the table!

Infinite Damage V2

A recently added combo to the deck for infinite damage is the pairing of Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Walking Ballista ! By having at least two +1/+1 counters on Walking Ballista, you can give it lifelink until end of turn through Heliod, Sun-Crowned’s activated ability and then use Walking Ballista’s ability to remove a +1/+1 counter to deal 1 damage to any target. When the damage is dealt, you will gain 1 life from Walking Ballista having lifelink, and Heliod, Sun-Crowned will trigger and allow you to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature you control, which you’ll put back onto Walking Ballista. You can repeat this process infinitely, letting you deal lethal damage and beyond to any players or creatures you choose!

Backup Snacks (Alternative win cons) Show

If your goal of infinite life is blocked or you find yourself struggling to deal with an opponent, there a few alternative ways to win that may pull you through to victory!

Felidar Sovereign As mentioned in the “Meet the Kitties” tab, Felidar Sovereign can potentially snag an instant victory for you, because if you haven’t lost any life since the start of the game or have gained life to put you over 40 you will instantly win the game if Felidar Sovereign is alive and well at your upkeep. This alternate win con is much easier to pull off in 1v1 matches or smaller groups, as more players means more opportunity for someone to target Felidar with removal before it reaches your turn again. This should only be attempted if you are reasonably confident in your life total, as this action will encourage players to attack you immediately in an effort to reduce your life total below the required amount.

Infect Lost Leonin and Grafted Exoskeleton can easily enable you to deal a lethal amount of poison counters to an opponent in 1-2 turns, with Grafted Exoskeleton + Skyhunter Skirmisher or Adorned Pouncer + Grafted Exoskeleton easily one-shotting a player when buffed with Arahbo, Roar of the World’s eminence ability. This is another high risk, high reward play in games with several opponents, as in most cases it will paint a target on you instantly if you start swinging large amounts of infect damage. Rogue's Passage can be very helpful in getting damage through to opponents with strong or large numbers of blockers!

Feline Accessories (Utility and Ramp)

This section covers useful equipment and spells to make your kitties more powerful and increase the effectiveness of the deck. The deck includes a number of ramp spells as well as creature tutors to enable you to retrieve key pieces for combos and increase the amount of mana available!

Increasing Territory (Ramp) Show

The ramp included in this deck is pretty straightforward, featuring Cultivate, Explosive Vegetation and Nylea's Intervention. The simplified ramp is mainly focused on just increasing the amount of mana available for casting your spells, with Nylea's Intervention included to provide the option of retrieving special lands.

Is That Cat Wearing Armor? (Useful Equipment) Show

The majority of the equipment in the deck is focused on providing lifelink and boosting the damage of your feline fighters, though many of the equipment also pack other handy abilities to maximize the value of your stirkes! A few of the most Important pieces are Godsend, which discourages blocking and penalizes opponents who do choose to block by exiling the blocking creature, Sword of Kaldra which similarly discourages and punishes blockers, Sword of the Animist which is a helpful tool for ramping up more mana, and Grafted Exoskeleton, which grants damage and infect to the equipped creature to function as an alternative win con. One interesting piece of equipment featured in the deck is Umezawa's Jitte, an equipment that gains charge counters when the equipped creature deals combat damage. Removing the charge counters does a variety of things that synergize well with the deck, such as boosting the power of the equipped creature by a large amount, reducing the power of another target creature or simple life gain. There’s numerous way to utilize the equipment provided in the deck to empower your kitties on the field, and get them to maximum fighting potential!

Mesmerized by the Fluffiness (Enchantments) Show

There a couple supporting enchantments provided to grant lifelink, set off combos or give utility that I’ll cover in this tab. Armadillo Cloak and Unflinching Courage are identical aura enchantments that grant lifelink, trample and +2/+2.

Battle Mastery grants double strike, useful for securing lethal damage and can be attached to a lifelink creature for extra benefit. Angelic Destiny is used to grant a significant +4/+4 buff along with flying and first strike, and is can be used again if enchanted creature dies. Bear Umbra provides +2/+2 and untaps all our lands after enchanted creature attacks, letting us cast more spells in the post-combat mainphase!

Light of Promise and Sunbond are key pieces to the infinite life combo paired with Spike Feeder, fully detailed in the “Bring out the Treats (Key Wincons)” tab in the previous panel, and can also be used on a generic lifelink creature if you have already accomplished infinite life gain through other means! Aura Shards is a useful enchantment for constant artifact and enchantment removal, as the deck features a good number of creatures and creatures that spawn tokens.

Hunting Successfully (Board wipes and Tutors) Show

This section is pretty brief, you have two board wipes in the form of Single Combat, which allows you pick a creature to spare and hopefully engineer the battlefield to your favor until your next turn, and Cleansing Nova, which lets you choose between destroying all creatures or all artifacts and enchantments. The choice you make largely depends on the state of the board, and which benefits you the most at that moment. We also have excellent creature tutoring spells such as Worldly Tutor, Eladamri's Call and Eldritch Evolution to fetch key creatures to combo off with, as well as tutors for artifacts or enchantments such as Idyllic Tutor and Steelshaper's Gift, to retrieve a useful enchantment or piece of equipment!

If you liked this primer, please feel free to check out some of my other regularly updated decks! Korvold, the Draconic Railgun *Primer* is a deck that focuses on using tactics to nuke your opponents with high damage spells, and I recently made primer for my Eldrazi Tribal deck, Cold War Kruphix- Eldrazi Tribal *Primer*! I play and update these decks regularly, hope you enjoy them!

Top Ranked	Achieved #18 position overall 3 years ago Achieved #14 position in Commander / EDH 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH GW (Selesnya) 2 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Primer 3 years ago
Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Key combos	Spike Feeder + Sunbond Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Walking Ballista Heliod, Sun-Crowned + Spike Feeder Grafted Exoskeleton + Skyhunter Skirmisher Adorned Pouncer + Grafted Exoskeleton
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 21 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.03
Tokens	Adorned Pouncer 4/4 B, Cat 1/1 W w/ Lifelink, Cat 2/2 W, Cat Beast 2/2 W, Cat Soldier 1/1 W, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Sacred Cat 1/1 W
Folders	The Five, Evaluate, Commander Ideas, Favorite Decks, decks I like hehe, possibilities, Ideas and inspiration