[Primer] Yisan's Monstrous Toolbox

Commander / EDH Creature Cheat Devotion Elves Mono-Green Primer Toolbox Trample

4_Dimensional

Creature (41)

• 1x Apex Altisaur
• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Archetype of Endurance
• 1x Artisan of Kozilek
• 1x Avenger of Zendikar
• 1x Bane of Progress
• 1x Beast Whisperer
• 1x Courser of Kruphix
• 1x Elderscale Wurm
• 1x Elvish Archdruid
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Elvish Visionary
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fierce Empath
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Garruk's Packleader
• 1x Ghalta, Primal Hunger
• 1x Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma
• 1x Gyre Sage
• 1x Hydra Broodmaster
• 1x Impervious Greatwurm
• 1x Incubation Druid
• 1x Kalonian Hydra
• 1x Karametra's Acolyte
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Llanowar Tribe
• 1x Omnath, Locus of Mana
• 1x Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Regal Force
• 1x Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1x Soul of the Harvest
• 1x Sylvan Safekeeper
• 1x Terastodon
• 1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1x Ulvenwald Tracker
• 1x Void Winnower
• 1x Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
• 1x Voyaging Satyr
• 1x Worldspine Wurm

Land (37)

• 1x Arch of Orazca
• 1x Bonders' Enclave
• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1x Castle Garenbrig
• 1x Eldrazi Temple
• 25x Forest
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Khalni Territory  ^Flip
• 1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 1x Mosswort Bridge
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Artifact (3)

• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Sol Ring

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury
• 1x Garruk Wildspeaker
• 1x Vivien, Monsters' Advocate

Instant (2)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Heroic Intervention

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Kenrith's Transformation
• 1x Lignify

Commander (1)

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Cultivate
• 1x Finale of Devastation
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Natural Order
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Nissa's Pilgrimage
• 1x Overwhelming Stampede
• 1x Primal Command
• 1x Regrowth
• 1x Skyshroud Claim
• 1x Tooth and Nail

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Maybeboard

Creature (11)

• 1x Carnage Tyrant
• 1x Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1x Duplicant
• 1x Emrakul, the Promised End
• 1x Gaea's Herald
• 1x Hornet Queen
• 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1x Prowling Serpopard
• 1x Saryth, the Viper's Fang
• 1x Stonehoof Chieftain
• 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Land (6)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Winding Canyons
• 1x Yavimaya Hollow

Sorcery (3)

• 1x All is Dust
• 1x Genesis Wave
• 1x Whirlwind

Artifact (2)

• 1x Oblivion Stone
• 1x The Great Henge

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Defense of the Heart
• 1x Lignify
• 1x Song of the Dryads
• 1x Sylvan Library

Instant (3)

• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Garruk, Caller of Beasts
• 1x Karn Liberated
• 1x Nissa, Worldwaker

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Hello! I'm 4Dimensional and Welcome to my primer for Yisan's Monstrous Toolbox, a deck that is full of creatures for every occasion! I have always been a green Timmy player at heart. Ever since I started Magic in Middle school 11 years ago, I always was interested in playing really big creatures. I was there back when green was considered a support color at best, and it was considered weak. Look how far its come in 10 years... Anyway, back to the deck. This deck utilizes Yisan, the Wanderer Bard as kind of an enabler. You can use him to find protection pieces, draw pieces, Mana pieces, or removal pieces. You can always just get a ton of green mana and cast the big boys, or you can cheat them out through cards like Tooth and Nail, Green Sun's Zenith, or Natural Order. This deck has a couple powerful finishers in Finale of Devastation and Overwhelming Stampede. We utilize a few protection pieces such as Archetype of Endurance and Sylvan Safekeeper to keep our creatures safe from removal.

You like playing a bunch of massive monsters and overwhelming your foes with high bursts of combat damage? Then this is the deck for you! Overall, I have had a lot of fun with this deck and honestly it can perform quite well. You can get some really powerful early plays going, while having a lot of options in how you take your turns. Its easy to use, but has just enough utility to keep itself from getting too boring. Some substitutions can be made depending on local meta and I have included some of those suggestions in the maybeboard for your convenience. I found this list answers most things quite well. But what are we? A bunch of {U} Mages?! Lets get to doing what {G} does best, which is stomping our way to victory!

Why pick Yisan for a deck featuring big creatures?

The goal for this deck was to strike a balance between rapidly amassing board power, but also being flexible enough to answer other threats at the table and protect our bigger creatures. Yisan enables us to not only generate mana acceleration through elves, but it also gives us access to finding things that help us draw, destroy artifacts / enchantments, or to remove problematic creatures. The creatures that make up this deck have a wide variety of uses that make it so that we are usually only 1 to 2 turns away from getting what we need. This deck keeps the flavor of big creatures, while adding a bit of utility to such a theme.

The game plan (Basically the TL;DR)

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard hits the curve nicely with only a 3 cmc casting requirement. For the cost of three mana, we place a counter on him and then search our library for a creature with a cmc equal to the number of verse counters. Often times, we won't have more than four counters on him tops. We mostly want to use his ability to help us find mana Elvish Mystic, quick draw Elvish Visionary, protection Sylvan Safekeeper, or removal Ulvenwald Tracker. Around the lower cmc's are where we keep most of our things to answer threats, but we have a couple of bigger ones too such as Bane of Progress, Terastodon, and Apex Altisaur. Later on, we want to cast (or cheat) bigger monstrosities to help us win such as Worldspine Wurm, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, and Impervious Greatwurm. We can then either chip opponents out with combat or go for a finish with something like Overwhelming Stampede. Ideally, we would use cards like Craterhoof Behemoth or Pathbreaker Ibex which are more easily tutorable. I always try to design my decks to be strong, but have a specific flaw. This ties into my deckbuilding design which I will discuss at the end. We can also tutor up a few combos to basically softlock people out of the game such as Void Winnower + Archetype of Endurance or even something like Sylvan Safekeeper + Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger. Once those things are out on the board, it gets really difficult to deal with them and we can start chipping people out through damage.

Humble beginnings (The early game)

At the beginning of the game, we have a few strategies depending on our hand. We can either try to amass mana early through our elves to try to set us up to cast something big like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger or, if we think there is a low risk of removal, we can try to get Yisan out and start tutoring some of our pieces in. This deck can go either way depending on the hand, and in some cases it's worth trying to use Yisan to bait out removal if we have enough acceleration to cast bigger things in the mid game. If you're facing a lot of counterspells, it can be worth it to just keep using Yisan's tutor ability until someone removes him. We have a few cheap answers such as Kenrith's Transformation, Lignify, or Beast Within, but these should only be used sparingly. Don't bother unless someone is trying to setup combos or they are going to target you a lot. Focus on getting our draw engines, protection pieces, and mana set up. A good hand will have some acceleration and curve out enough that we are ideally doing something every turn. A bad hand will have two or more large cmc cards in it, with few acceleration. In some metas, its advantageous to have slower hands that scale well up until later turns. What actions you take heavily depend on who you are up against, and whether you want to try to race people or go for a more steady approach.

Power gathers (The mid game)

Assuming that we have managed to setup a board state, we should have plenty of mana and / or some things to help protect our big boys when they hit the field. At this point in the game, it's important to do some threat assessment. If we have some tutors, It can be better to try to tutor for things such as Apex Altisaur or Bane of Progress rather than Ghalta, Primal Hunger if people have really dangerous boards. In any case, getting out some of our draw engines such as Beast Whisperer or Garruk's Packleader can help us keep a steady stream of cards in our hand. If you have a low amount of cards in your hand, it can be a good idea to try to get Regal Force out to refill the hand. We have a couple mana sink lands such as Bonders' Enclave to help us draw up some threats. Powerful synergies such as Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Priest of Titania, can generate large amounts of mana. This can let us rapidly play some of the bigger creatures in the deck, which can end the game in a short amount of time if they are left unchecked. A primary part of this deck is mastering WHEN to do WHAT. Sometimes, you want to just plop some big boys and go for the kill. Sometimes, you'll want to try to set up a lockout by keeping some protection for your creatures. Either way, always assess the situation. Throwing cards out left and right can lead to you getting a nice field wipe in the face, and can make you lose. Sometimes you'll want to keep a couple cards in reserve.

It's feasting time boys! (The late game)

The late game is honestly the easiest part of this deck. You throw down our biggest baddies, and start chunking people out. This can happen really late sometimes or really early depending on how things go. But regardless, we are running some of the strongest (power wise) cards in the game. Very few things can actually straight up trade with a Worldspine Wurm. We have cards like Finale of Devastation and Hydra Broodmaster that can give us a wincon if we need to dump tons of mana out.

Detailed card breakdown (For those wanting more in depth discussion of card choices)

Mana Production

Lands

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: Taps for colorless or lets us pay {2} and generate {G} equal to our devotion. This thing generates a lot of mana for us very frequently, and is honestly one of the best cards they made to support monocolor decks. I put this thing in basically all my monocolor decks that use mostly permanents.

Castle Garenbrig: Generates green mana and lets us pay {2}{G}{G} to generate 6 {G} that can only be used to cast creature spells or activate abilities of creatures. Comes in handy for letting us cast some bigger boys sooner.

Eldrazi Temple: Colorless land that can potentially generate {2} for casting eldrazi. This card has come in handy but can be axed in favor of anything else. I personally like being able to get Void Winnower or Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger out a little quicker for the cost of a forest land, but there are plenty of alternatives you can put in here.

1 cmc

Fyndhorn Elves, Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves: Self explanatory. Cheap, 1 cmc mana producers that are quickly tutorable by Yisan and also help feed into some of the elvish synergy featured.

2 cmc

Priest of Titania: More elves = more mana. Sets us up for some power plays towards the midgame as well.

Incubation Druid: a 2 cmc elf that gives us one mana. If we pay 5, we can put some +1/+1 counters on it and can then generate three mana. The counters can get doubled by Kalonian Hydra.

Gyre Sage: A 2 cmc elf that doesn't do much until it gets some counters on it. We can easily proc it's evolve multiple times and Kalonian Hydra can make this thing get really big really fast, which also gives us a lot of mana.

Voyaging Satyr: A satyr that untaps a land. Has high synergy with some of our lands such as Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or Mikokoro, Center of the Sea to draw more.

Nature's Lore: Fetches a forest and puts it in play untapped. Simple, effective, and enables some faster plays due to the land being untapped.

3 cmc

Llanowar Tribe: Powerful card that gives 3 green mana while costing three and being an elf. This card is really good at powering us up for some plays.

Selvala, Heart of the Wilds: Gives mana equal to the highest power among creatures we control and lets us draw a card if we get a creature that enters the battlefield with the greatest power. While this card can sometimes help opponents, it also helps us generate a lot of mana with the numerous big power creatures we have in the deck. Powerful and effective.

Elvish Archdruid: Generates mana for each elf we control as well as buffing other elves. Curving into this with a Priest of Titania allows us to generate large amounts of mana. The buffing power helps our elves trade with smaller creatures as well but usually it doesn't really matter.

Omnath, Locus of Mana: While not really a source of ramp, Omnath functions more like a bank. Loading this guy up with green mana can be an effective way to generate a wincon. Just be careful, because people will remove him quickly.

Cultivate: Puts a forest in play and sets up a land drop. Effective for amassing resources and curving up next turn.

Nissa's Pilgrimage: Similar to Cultivate except its better with more instants and sorceries in the graveyard. Usually this will basically operate like a cultivate, but sometimes we will get extra lands off of it.

4 CMC

Oracle of Mul Daya: Lets us play lands off the top and play an extra land each turn. It's also an elf so this gets affected by stuff like Priest of Titania. This card is honestly really good 90% of the time by not only ramping us up, but preventing mana flood draws. Very effective.

Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma: Not really ramp, but reduces the cost of big creatures. Coupled with sources of ramp, this allows us to chain cast some big boys. With a draw engine, we can play tons of creatures back to back and still have stuff in hand. The fact this also gives attacking creatures +1/+1 and trample, makes this a really good card for our strategy.

Karametra's Acolyte: This card can generate A LOT of mana. Especially when paired with something like Llanowar Tribe where there is a lot of devotion. This card can set up some really powerful mid game plays. Curves nicely with Yisan too.

Skyshroud Claim: Fetches two forests at sorcery speed and puts them into play UNTAPPED. This card can be chained with some of our two cmc elves to generate some mana really fast. Very good resource generation.

Garruk Wildspeaker: His +1 Untaps two lands, which at worst gives us two more mana to use. At best, it enables some Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx power plays and lets us use stuff like Bonders' Enclave Multiple times. His -1 puts a 3/3 beast token out which is handy in a pinch. His -4 gives ALL your creatures +3/+3 and trample until end of turn. Useful for enabling cards like Impervious Greatwurm and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger who have lots of power but no trample. Overall, this card gives us everything we want.

5 cmc

Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury: Solid card. Her +2 Generates Elf tokens that tap for 1 green and boost our other mana producers. Her -2 eliminates Artifacts or Enchantments. Her -6 is basically a Regal Force. This card can generate lots of value for us.

8 cmc

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger: Doubles the mana our lands produce and makes opponents lands take longer. This thing is really annoying for our opponents the longer it stays around. Caution: Likely to induce salt from other players. I'd advise against bringing this thing out unless you can protect it, use the mana from it, or have nothing else to play.

Card Draw

Lands

Arch of Orazca: Generates colorless mana and lets us pay {5} to draw a card if we gain ascend (By having ten or more permanents at one time). While the draw is expensive, it comes in handy in the very late game.

Geier Reach Sanitarium: Generates Colorless mana and lets us pay {2} to have each player draw a card and then discard a card. Handy if we really need to dump some bad spells for better stuff late game. Don't bother using this ability unless it's urgent.

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea: Generates colorless mana and lets us pay {2} to have everyone draw a card. Can be used as a political piece, but mostly used to draw cards if our hand is empty. Don't use the ability unless you're going to get something out of it. It's a bad idea to give enemies free cards.

Bonders' Enclave: taps for colorless mana and lets us pay {3} to draw a card if we have a creature with power 4 or greater. Really easy condition for a pretty useful effect. I include this card in plenty of other decks due to the draw not benefitting opponents and having a really easy drawback.

2 cmc

Elvish Visionary: a cheap elf that lets us draw a card. Useful to tutor this up with Yisan for a draw and then tutor up an Elvish Archdruid to accelerate. This card is an important part of the toolbox as it often functions as a cheap draw on command for the late game or early game. Can be axed for other stuff if necessary, but I find it useful.

3 cmc

Courser of Kruphix: Not really a draw, but not really an accelerator either. This card exists to help us filter lands off the top. This card is also not usually a removal magnet, and the tiny bits of health have saved my life a couple times. Can be replaced with Augur of Autumn, but I rather like the bits of healing.

4 cmc

Beast Whisperer: Cast creatures, draw cards. Simple as that. This guy is also an elf so it has synergy with cards like Priest of Titania. Usually a go to if you reach four counters on Yisan.

5 cmc

Garruk's Packleader: Lets us draw cards when our beefier things enter the battlefield. Can be a good target if you happen to reach five counters on Yisan. This guy pairs very nicely with things like Beast Whisperer for letting us generate a lot of card advantage.

6 cmc

Soul of the Harvest: a 6/6 Trampler that lets us draw a card when a nontoken creature enters the battlefield. Very useful draw engine that curves nicely.

7 cmc

Regal Force: a 5/5 that mostly exists to let us draw a high burst of cards. Highly tutorable, and very useful in the mid-late game.

Removal

Lands

Khalni Territory  : Operates as a land drop or a 3 cmc removal depending on the situation. Quite handy in a pinch. I put it under lands as it can be either 3 cmc or just a land.

1 cmc

Ulvenwald Tracker: Lets us pay {1}{G} to have our creatures fight stuff. Can easily be tutored with Yisan, and is useful for being able to eliminate specific creatures that want to sit back and generate value outside of combat. Our creatures are big enough to win most fights, but this card can be ineffective against deathtouch.

2 cmc

Kenrith's Transformation: Turns something into a 3/3 green elk with no abilities and lets us draw a card. Handy for neutralizing creatures with high base power or for dealing with utility creatures. This card can lose effectiveness against Aura strategies or creatures with a lot of counters on them.

Lignify: Turns a creature into a 0/4 tree folk with no abilities. Handy for neutralizing commanders or big creatures. This card is similar to Kenrith's Transformation except it makes them a 0/4 tree folk instead of a 3/3 elk and we don't draw a card.

3 cmc

Reclamation Sage: Destroys an artifact or enchantment, as well as being an elf. Curves nicely, and with Priest of Titania or Elvish Archdruid we don't lose any mana tempo. Easily tutorable with Yisan to deal with annoying artifacts or enchantments.

Beast Within: Destroys a permanent and gives them a 3/3 beast token. Good for eliminating really big creatures that we can't currently handle, or for eliminating a problematic artifact or enchantment. Flexible, and effective.

4 cmc

Nevinyrral's Disk: a slow artifact that comes in tapped, but lets us pay {1} to wipe the board clean of everything but planeswalkers. When paired up with something like Impervious Greatwurm or even Worldspine Wurm it lets us sneak in some huge damage if they can't stabilize quickly. This thing wins games. Hands down.

5 cmc

Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury: Her -2 lets us remove an artifact or enchantment. Comes in handy in a pinch, or can be used a few times over a few turns if you build up her loyalty with the +2.

Primal Command: Lets you put a noncreature permanent on top of someone's library while picking another option such as tutoring a creature, gaining some life, or shuffling a graveyard into someone's library. Has plenty of uses, but mostly we will use the removal and tutor.

6 cmc

Bane of Progress: More like, the bane of voltron. This card hoses artifact decks, Aura decks, or decks that rely on large amounts of enchantments or artifacts PERIOD. This creature gets a +1/+1 counter on it for each artifact / enchantment it destroys. This thing can get really big in some matches. Has synergy with Kalonian Hydra as it can double the counters on this thing.

8 cmc

Terastodon: Comes out as a 9/9 that destroys three non creature permanents and gives them a 3/3 elephant token for each destroyed. Useful for getting rid of problematic non creature things, or for locking a multi color deck out by targeting all of a specific color (hint, if they run green you'll usually want to target green mana producing lands as they won't be able to cast cards that mana fix out of that very easily). The 3/3 tokens they get aren't that big of a deal as the base power of our creature enables stuff like Overwhelming Stampede. If this is too big of a problem, replace this card with Woodfall Primus.

9 cmc

Apex Altisaur: Comes in, roars, fights a ton of stuff, dies. This basically sums up what this thing does. You use it to eliminate problematic creatures. If it actually manages to survive, that's a bonus. Keep in mind that the fight triggers are REQUIRED. That means that it fights until death.

10 cmc

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: Oh man... Does this guy even need an explanation? Everything about this card is just straight up win. When CAST, he exiles two permanents. Just for existing, he's a 10/10 indestructible that makes the defender exile 20 cards off their library. I pulled this guy out of a pack my mom grabbed off the shelf and bought at a Wal-mart a while back. True story.

Protection

Lands

Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Use this if you are facing a lot of counterspells. I like to run this because most decks have stuff like Negate and this makes sure that your Tooth and Nail, Overwhelming Stampede, etc go through.

Homeward Path: People will try to steal some of our big things. This puts a stop to that.

1 cmc

Sylvan Safekeeper: Lets you sack a land to give a creature shroud until end of turn. We don't have tons of ways to recur lands, so it's important not to use this guys ability too much or we will have no lands left. This guy can be tutored early on, and if people remove him with targeted removal it's not that big of a deal as it makes the odds of our bigger boys getting through more likely. This card can bluff people into not wanting to target your stuff with removal though, almost giving your creatures a weaker form of hexproof. Sometimes sacking the land is worth it though, especially for our bigger stuff.

2 cmc

Regrowth: Lets us grab stuff back from the graveyard. Can be used to loop stuff like Cultivate for more mana, or to loop a Tooth and Nail for more value. Good all around.

Lightning Greaves: We have few cards that target our creatures, so giving our commander (or bigger creatures) haste and shroud is very useful. This on a Worldspine Wurm can let us rapidly chip enemies out without much they can do about it outside of a field wipe.

Heroic Intervention: I have deliberated on this card. But due to the fact that this is such a creature heavy deck, I realized that it was really important to mainboard this as field wipes are a big issue and this protects against that quite well. Some play testing with this has also made me realize how useful this card really is for a deck like this.

3 cmc

Eternal Witness: Basically regrowth on a stick. Can be fetched with Yisan or other tutors. Can form a quick synergy with something like Natural Order to get it back and generate a powerful board presence. If you are going to do this in the early game, always get something with indestructible or Archetype of Endurance to protect your board. You will get focused by any playgroup with half a brain.

7 cmc

Elderscale Wurm: makes it so we cannot be damaged below seven health. The point of this card is to keep us alive if we are being focused or someone is trying to finish us off. This card is vulnerable to removal, so ideally you will want to use other cards to keep it protected. This thing can stall out the game long enough for a win. Very useful against battlecruiser decks.

8 cmc

Archetype of Endurance: One of the most important cards in any deck featuring big creatures. You will be tutoring for this thing very often as it gives ALL of our creatures hexproof and takes it away from other peoples creatures. This card is almost always grabbed along with Void Winnower or basically anything when we use Tooth and Nail. This thing and Void Winnower are used to soft lock players out of the game as they cannot cast even converted mana cost cards and they can't target your creatures with removal due to hexproof. When paired together, there are very few cards that can deal with this as most board wipes are even, and removal is targeted.

9 cmc

Void Winnower: One of the most hated cards in EDHREC, and here we are making this thing even more annoying. This thing wins games. Hands down. People will hate you so much for having this thing. So much so, that you may get killed off next game. But this thing is everything we want in a deck full of big boys. It's an 11/9 that gives protection and lets us get more damage through. Apparently if you are an eldrazi with mythic rarity, high cmc, and you're colorless, you are basically blessed with being borderline OP. This thing isn't even legendary. LOL.

Artisan of Kozilek: When cast, he brings something back with him from your graveyard (which is a BOMB late game). At his worst, he's a 10/9 with annihilator 2, which makes them sacrifice 2 permanents when this attacks. Apparently WOTC seemed to really like making high CMC eldrazi powerful back in the day. Even Ulamog's Crusher is a beast. If this dude were mythic rarity he'd have indestructible or something. You know it and I know it.

Tutors

Lands

Mosswort Bridge: Comes in tapped, but lets you view the top four cards of your library and exile one. You can then play it for one {G} later if you have total power of 10 or greater, which is really easy to do. This card has allowed me to play really powerful stuff either early or late. It's great and really underrated.

1x cmc

Green Sun's Zenith: Useful for grabbing mana acceleration or protection early, or for tutoring out a bomb late game. This card is always useful to have. It also shuffles itself back in the deck which is nice.

2x cmc

Finale of Devastation: A powerful finisher. The true cost of this card is really {10}{G}{G} as you will use it to find something like Avenger of Zendikar to end the game quickly. Can be used to tutor something like Regal Force or Apex Altisaur in the case of emergencies, but I mostly use it as a finisher.

3 cmc

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard: The namesake of this deck. for just {2}{G} per turn, he lets us set our board up the way we want. This card is excellent early or late, but honestly kind of weak in the mid game where you want to start making plays. Yisan has plenty of uses though, and he enables lots of ways to set our board up or answer threats.

Fierce Empath: An elf with an ETB trigger that fetches a creature with cmc 6 OR GREATER. This card is basically an alternate one time use Yisan as our high cmc creatures are also quite flexible. You can use yisan to tutor this guy and then he tutors something. An excellent choice if you pair this with Priest of Titania to help you accelerate your mana. This guy is really underrated IMO. Has plenty of uses in lots of different deck strategies.

4 cmc

Natural Order: This thing is honestly a bit of a cheese strategy. While it can be very powerful, it can screw you over if you aren't careful with it. The sacrifice is tied to the casting cost, so if it gets countered that really sucks. However, this can be useful in the mid game as we can easily tutor something with Yisan Like Elvish Visionary or Fierce Empath that have ETB triggers, and so we already got something useful out of them. You could also use this while targeting a token generated from one of our planeswalkers. BE CAREFUL WITH THIS! What you choose to grab is heavily situational. If you aren't sure then grab Archetype of Endurance or get some draw with Regal Force if you already have a few creatures out.

5 cmc

Vivien, Monsters' Advocate: This card was made for this kind of deck. It generates beast tokens that we can give reach (to deal with pesky fliers), it has a static ability that lets us play creatures off the top of the deck, and it has a -2 that makes it so that when we cast our next creature spell it brings along a friend who costs 1 or more mana less. This has excellent combo potential with many applications. The easiest combo here is something like Void Winnower to get Archetype of Endurance. Lots of potential applications for this ability though.

7 cmc

Tooth and Nail: The card that has literally carried mono green in modern and beyond, this thing has been a staple for years. We can use it to put two creatures from our hand onto the battlefield, search for two, or both. Mostly you'll want to use the entwine so you can fetch up a couple of things like Void Winnower + Archetype of Endurance. You can also use this to just plop two monsters out quick. Can be really cheesy if you happen to have good mana acceleration.

Primary Win Conditions

1. Tooth and Nail to grab Void Winnower + Archetype of Endurance to soft lock the enemies out of doing much.

2. Finale of Devastation with at least 12 mana to grab Avenger of Zendikar to generate some 10/10 tokens with haste that can kill QUICKLY.

3. Hydra Broodmaster with around 12+ mana, to generate a ton of high power Hydra tokens. Really sneaky way to generate a win late game.

4. Overwhelming Stampede with any high power creature and mana elves on the board. This allows us to easily kill 2 to 3 players.

5. using Ghalta, Primal Hunger or Worldspine Wurm to chip opponents out with super high trample damage.

6. Kalonian Hydra This thing... My goodness this thing. The first swing it's an 8/8 trampler. Next swing it's a 16/16?! This thing will slaughter if it isn't answered in two turns. Very good card, that even doubles counters on other stuff.

7. Using High power creatures to chip opponents out period.

Synergies and finishers

This deck contains multiple powerful synergies. Deciding what to play and when is really important when piloting this deck. These are some fun combinations you can do.

Mana Generation

Mega Mana Mania

Priest of Titania + Llanowar Tribe + Elvish Archdruid = Large elvish mana synergy

Yisan mana curve tutoring

Elvish Mystic + Priest of Titania + Elvish Archdruid = Large mana tutored by Yisan.

Yisan early Tutor against heavy removal

Sylvan Safekeeper + Gyre Sage + Llanowar Tribe = Some protection and scaling ramp

Untap Shenanigans

Voyaging Satyr + Garruk Wildspeaker + Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx = More devotion, more mana.

Devoted to Bringing Destruction

Elvish Mystic + Priest of Titania + Llanowar Tribe + Karametra's Acolyte = Lots of mana that can be tutored in sequence with Yisan.

Subtle Scaling

Ulvenwald Tracker + Incubation Druid + Elvish Archdruid = removal, plus two sources of ramp that are not as alarming to other players.

Steady Scaling

Elvish Mystic + Elvish Visionary + Elvish Archdruid + Beast Whisperer = plenty of mana generation and draw.

Synergistic Slaughter

Counters of killing

Gyre Sage + Kalonian Hydra + Bane of Progress = Creatures that get really big.

Trampling Trepidations

Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma / Garruk Wildspeaker + any large creature without trample = Trampling for high damage

Indestructible Intimidation

Nevinyrral's Disk + Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and / or Impervious Greatwurm = Enemies are opened up entirely and take high dmg swings.

Tooth and Nail, Claw and Fang

These are finishers, tutor pieces, and cards that synergize together to set up a wincon.

Soft Lock out

Void Winnower + Archetype of Endurance = Cant cast even spells, cant target our creatures. Everyone hates you.

Sowing Salt

Void Winnower + Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger = You played two cards with high salt score, Everyone hates you, good luck not getting focused next game.

Monstrous Mow down

Apex Altisaur + Bane of Progress = enchantments and artifacts are gone, and you eliminate high priority creatures too.

Ferocious Finisher

At least 12 mana + Finale of Devastation + Avenger of Zendikar = Multiple 10/10 plants with haste.

Rapacious Ravening Rampage!

Overwhelming Stampede + Any number of smaller creatures + Something really big (Ghalta, Impervious greatwurm, Worldspine wurm) = Chomp chomp now you get stomped!

Harbingers of Hunger

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger + Ghalta, Primal Hunger + Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger = Some really hungry dudes.

Potential card choices for this deck

My current list is balanced based on my local meta, and my design philosophy. This list can be made more powerful, more reactive, or more resilient based on substitutions you can make. Here are some of my suggestions.

Protection

1. Stonehoof Chieftain: Indestructible, and gives attacking creatures indestructible + Trample. Very useful, I just found that I often don't need it. You might want it though.

2. Gaea's Herald: Makes it so that creature spells can't be countered. Helps against counterspell heavy meta games. I personally found it not that useful as I didn't have to deal with much countering.

3. Saryth, the Viper's Fang: Gives untapped creatures hexproof and gives tapped ones deathtouch. Really solid card for this deck, But I found I didn't really want to cut anything for it as I don't have to deal with TOO much removal. Useful if people are running lots of stuff to target your things, and you want an edge in combat.

4. Prowling Serpopard: an uncounterable snake that prevents other creature spells you control from being countered. Handy in counterspell heavy metas.

Removal

1. Karn Liberated: Exiles stuff in case you need it. Rarely will you get his ult off. Mostly used as quick removal.

2. Oblivion Stone: Used as a field wipe if you need more of that kind of removal.

3. Duplicant: Used as targeted removal in case you need it.

4. Hornet Queen: Good for dealing with attackers, and pairs nicely with our overall strategy. Found that I'd rather pay 7 for a big thing or a ton of cards rather than this though. But this has Its uses.

Wincons

1. Pathbreaker Ibex: Basically a tutorable Overwhelming stampede. I purposely did NOT want to be able to tutor for something this consistent, so I left it out. You might need this though.

2.Craterhoof Behemoth: powerful finisher and Tooth and nail target. Purposely left it out to make this deck more balanced and not binary in gameplay. Effective finisher though.

Conclusion (My thoughts on game philosophy)

So earlier I mentioned a bit about my deck building philosophy. In a nutshell, EDH (or commander) is a wonderful format that gives players countless ways to express themselves through their decks with many different ways to achieve victory. I am a firm believer in trying to strike a balance between competitive and fun. That's why when I design decks, I make sure they are powerful as that gives satisfaction to the player piloting the deck. With that being said, I also try to Impose reasonable limits. Yisan is a powerful commander who can tutor up the same stuff again and again if so chosen. Tutors are inherently powerful in a format that is singleton and has 99 cards in it. That means that we want to make sure that 1. We don't win quickly without allowing at least 1-2 turns of response and 2. We try to create engaging, and interactive gameplay instead of monotonous gameplay that discourages anything but "Focus me or lose" style gameplay. This is not me coming here to bash cEDH or to bash casual players. I believe that there is a balance between the two and that is where the best games of magic come from. So if you decide to power this deck up, make sure it's in the appropriate setting and you aren't trying to stomp people. You can also easily weaken this deck by swapping some of the bigger stuff for more generic stuff like Titanoth Rex or swapping Void Winnower with something like Desolation Twin. All in all, adjust this deck to fit your needs and really, just make sure to have fun.

Thanks so much for taking the time to visit this page! This is my first Primer I have ever made so any constructive feedback would be appreciated. Good luck!

Our battle theme:

Date added	4 years
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	15 - 0 Mythic Rares 32 - 0 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	4.29
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, City's Blessing, Elephant 3-3 G, Elf Druid 1/1 G, Hydra */* G, Plant 0/1 G, Wurm 5/5 G w/ Trample
Folders	EDH Decks