Tasigur Shares

Commander / EDH BUG (Sultai)

PlutoniumWedding

Land (39)

• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Deserted Temple
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 6x Forest
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 6x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Nephalia Academy
• 1x Opulent Palace
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 6x Swamp
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Tower of the Magistrate
• 1x Tree of Tales
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vault of Whispers

Removal (4)

• 1x Capsize
• 1x Lethal Vapors
• 1x Sunken Hope
• 1x Tainted AEther

Wipe (4)

• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Evacuation
• 1x Spreading Plague
• 1x Whelming Wave

Counter (1)

• 1x Arcane Denial

Hinder (12)

• 1x Arcane Laboratory
• 1x Embargo
• 1x Frozen Aether
• 1x God-Pharaoh's Statue
• 1x Overburden
• 1x Pendrell Mists
• 1x Portcullis
• 1x Stasis
• 1x Static Orb
• 1x Storm Cauldron
• 1x Sunder
• 1x Ward of Bones

Ramp (11)

• 1x As Foretold
• 1x Boundless Realms
• 1x Burgeoning
• 1x Cultivate
• 1x Exploration
• 1x Hour of Promise
• 1x Kodama's Reach
• 1x Mana Reflection
• 1x Migration Path
• 1x Skyshroud Claim
• 1x Zendikar Resurgent

Utility (6)

• 1x Ivory Tower
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation
• 1x Library of Leng
• 1x Meishin, the Mind Cage
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Wilderness Reclamation

Recursion (2)

• 1x Elixir of Immortality
• 1x Praetor's Counsel

Commander (1)

Burn (11)

• 1x Bloodchief Ascension
• 1x Dark Suspicions
• 1x Iron Maiden
• 1x Liliana's Caress
• 1x Megrim
• 1x Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted
• 1x Polluted Bonds
• 1x Price of Knowledge
• 1x Raiders' Wake
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Underworld Dreams

Forcefeed (6)

• 1x Font of Mythos
• 1x Forced Fruition
• 1x Howling Mine
• 1x Minds Aglow
• 1x Prosperity
• 1x Skyscribing

Wheel (3)

• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Whispering Madness
• 1x Windfall

---

Maybeboard

Removal (32)

• 1x Acidic Slime
• 1x Altar of Shadows
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Blessed Reincarnation
• 1x Calming Verse
• 1x Capital Punishment
• 1x Consign to Dust
• 1x Curse of the Cabal
• 1x Death Match
• 1x Death Pits of Rath
• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Executioner's Capsule
• 1x Fade into Antiquity
• 1x Gild
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Lignify
• 1x Mycosynth Lattice
• 1x Necrotic Plague
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Night of Souls' Betrayal
• 1x Oblivion Stone
• 1x Predator, Flagship
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Rebuild
• 1x Sever the Bloodline
• 1x Song of the Dryads
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Sultai Charm
• 1x Universal Solvent
• 1x Unstable Obelisk

Ramp (15)

• 1x Black Market
• 1x Cryptolith Rite
• 1x Explosive Vegetation
• 1x Hunting Wilds
• 1x Jace's Sanctum
• 1x Khalni Heart Expedition
• 1x Manabond
• 1x Nature's Will
• 1x Rampant Growth
• 1x Ranger's Path
• 1x Revel in Riches
• 1x Sprouting Vines
• 1x Squandered Resources
• 1x Tempt with Discovery
• 1x Traverse the Outlands

Counter (6)

• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Daring Apprentice
• 1x Forbid
• 1x Insidious Will
• 1x Summary Dismissal
• 1x Time Stop

Tutor (5)

• 1x Beseech the Queen
• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Liliana Vess

Defence (3)

• 1x Collective Restraint
• 1x Meishin, the Mind Cage
• 1x Propaganda

Hinder (24)

• 1x Back to Basics
• 1x Call to the Grave
• 1x Damping Sphere
• 1x Defense Grid
• 1x Desolation
• 1x Dream Tides
• 1x Drop of Honey
• 1x Energy Flux
• 1x Feroz's Ban
• 1x Hum of the Radix
• 1x Ice Cave
• 1x Mana Breach
• 1x Mana Maze
• 1x Mindlock Orb
• 1x Possessed Portal
• 1x Rising Waters
• 1x Shimmer
• 1x Squeeze
• 1x Storage Matrix
• 1x Tainted Remedy
• 1x Thorn of Amethyst
• 1x Vile Consumption
• 1x Winter Orb
• 1x Words of Wind

Discard (18)

• 1x Bottomless Pit
• 1x Cunning Lethemancer
• 1x Darkest Hour
• 1x Gibbering Descent
• 1x Honden of Night's Reach
• 1x Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
• 1x Larceny
• 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip
• 1x Lore Broker
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Necrogen Mists
• 1x Oppression
• 1x Painful Quandary
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Thoughtrender Lamia
• 1x Warped Devotion
• 1x Words of Waste

Wipe (7)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Creeping Corrosion
• 1x Crux of Fate
• 1x Deadly Tempest
• 1x Extinguish All Hope
• 1x Kindred Dominance
• 1x Soulquake

Draw (6)

• 1x Compost
• 1x Future Sight
• 1x Geth's Grimoire
• 1x Honden of Seeing Winds
• 1x Null Profusion
• 1x Recycle

Stasis (4)

• 1x Frozen Aether
• 1x Nissa, Vital Force
• 1x Tezzeret the Schemer
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker

Recursion (2)

• 1x Seasons Past
• 1x World Shaper

Utility (21)

• 1x Abundance
• 1x Bow of Nylea
• 1x Clever Impersonator
• 1x Clone Legion
• 1x Copy Enchantment
• 1x Cruel Entertainment
• 1x Grim Feast
• 1x Mechanized Production
• 1x Memory Plunder
• 1x Morality Shift
• 1x Path of Discovery
• 1x Praetor's Grasp
• 1x Primal Amulet  ^Flip
• 1x Sangromancer
• 1x Swarm Intelligence
• 1x Thoughtleech
• 1x Twincast
• 1x Unwinding Clock
• 1x Vedalken Orrery
• 1x Venser's Journal
• 1x Waste Not

Forcefeed (19)

• 1x Curse of Echoes
• 1x Dakra Mystic
• 1x Dictate of Kruphix
• 1x Fascination
• 1x Ghirapur Orrery
• 1x Hive Mind
• 1x Jace Beleren
• 1x Kami of the Crescent Moon
• 1x Laquatus's Creativity
• 1x Master of the Feast
• 1x Nature's Resurgence
• 1x Otherworld Atlas
• 1x Rites of Flourishing
• 1x Seizan, Perverter of Truth
• 1x Temple Bell
• 1x Temporal Cascade
• 1x Urza's Guilt
• 1x Vision Skeins
• 1x Well of Ideas

Burn (11)

• 1x Breathstealer's Crypt
• 1x Death Cloud
• 1x Dingus Staff
• 1x Ebony Owl Netsuke
• 1x Faith of the Devoted
• 1x Fate Unraveler
• 1x Liability
• 1x Malignant Growth
• 1x Misers' Cage
• 1x Temporal Extortion
• 1x Wound Reflection

Land (5)

• 1x Alchemist's Refuge
• 1x Fetid Pools
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Wheel (3)

• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Magus of the Jar

---

I noticed this deck, which I thought had been set to private, had actually gotten no less than three likes. So I figured I'd write a brief description. It's the least I can do for my countless adoring fans.

This deck is the meanest one I have. It runs mana denial cards like Stasis and Storm Cauldron and serious hate cards like Tainted AEther and Lethal Vapors. I never play it with people I have just met. It (unsurprisingly) tends to make for longer games where people have limited options and hard choices.

In a word, this deck is torture. But still, uh... Friendly torture.

Backstory (Why this deck exists)

So I have a friend with a Tasigur, the Golden Fang deck which is mostly about Mindslaver-ing you and then making you choose Mindslaver with Tasigur's ability. It's a pretty fun deck. He had the suggestion in our playgroup that we should all make a Tasigur deck and have an all-Tasigur showdown. I spent hours and days working out various drafts. Tasigur, after all, is very open and the Sultai colours can do pretty much anything. I started with a token theme with green tokens and buffs, blue draw and black recursion and removal. Then I ended up including Nath of the Gilt-Leaf and Larceny.

That led to Geth's Grimoire and Waste Not. But if you make your opponents discard all their cards, they don't have any cards left to discard, so you can't proc your discard lovers anymore. So I added cards like Fecundity and Prosperity to refill their hands so I could make them discard them again.

But if you give your opponents a bunch of cards, they will often end up saying stuff like "Sol Ring, Amulet of Vigor, Boundless Realms, Exanguinate for 36". So how do you stop that? Given time, it's pretty much impossible. But there's a whole class of cards in magic designed to slow people down. Cards like Arcane Laboratory and Overburden that keep down the pace and allow you to keep working towards your goal, and pillowfort options like Meishin, the Mind Cage that keeps you from getting brutalized by creatures.

Once I was playing cards like Meishin and a bunch of board wipes and combat was no longer the win condition, why not go all the way and make it creatureless? I'd never done that before, and while there are a lot of great creatures that fit the strategy, it would allow for far more liberal use of creature hate cards.

So here we are today. This may be one of my most unique decks (and I like making weird decks) and it's a lot of fun to play and not so bad to play against as some of the card choices would suggest.

Torture, you say..? (Deck strategy)

This deck has a lot of decision making and creates a lot of tough decision making for your opponents. It is very difficult to make a general guide for it, but here's a shot.

Early game

Your first priority is ramping, so whenever you have a Cultivate available you should probably play it. Meanwhile, slow down your opponents with milder cards like Overburden, while putting down the occasional punisher card like Megrim. These do very little on their own, so you probably won't draw too much attention if you wait with the bigger hate cards. Dropping your steady card draw like Font of Mythos is also good as it helps you get your good stuff while also maybe buying a few diplomacy points. Playing Tasigur is always an option if you need an early blocker. He is super tawny in his artwork, but he actually has quite a big butt. Don't be afraid to play cards like Minds Aglow to just draw a handful of cards if you risk missing land drops or don't have anything better to do. There's a lot more draw in the deck.

Mid-game

Once your opponents start looking like they are ready to get their engines in gear for real, put down the Spreading Plague, the Ward of Bones and the Pendrell Mists. All the cards that really make decks screech to a halt. Watch them scramble to destroy them. You will get a lot of stuff destroyed at this stage. It's a contest between your ability to put on more weight on your poor opponents' backs versus their ability to shake it off.

Late game

Choke them out. Keep layering on debuffs, keeping your opponents off their mana, without creatures and overall ability to kill you while you drain their life totals with every card drawn or discarded, every spell cast and every land played.

Synergize our assets (combos and important synergies)

Stasis and Static Orb work very well with Wilderness Reclamation and As Foretold as these will let you keep casting. Tezzeret the Seeker can tutor for Seat of the Synod and then untap it every turn to keep Stasis alive. Since he can untap two artifacts, you can also have him get Tree of Tales and Vault of Whispers.

Hour of Promise can get Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, or either or both of Thespian's Stage, Deserted Temple if you already have those assembled for some massive mana.

There's a package that cares about lands. Storm Cauldron and Sunder are symmetrical until you play Exploration, Burgeoning and Polluted Bonds.

If you have Tasigur on the battlefield and Arcane Denial in your graveyard, you can counter any spell that another player would also be happy to see countered for a mere six mana by forming a simple pact. In fact, you may be able to leverage this for future diplomatic purposes (but probably not, because you will usually be everyone's primary target).

Winning and losing (how to)

How does this deck win?

The idea is to win by effects like Underworld Dreams and Liliana's Caress combined with things like Prosperity and Windfall while stopping your opponents from killing you with all those cards by slowing them down with soft stax-y cards.

What's fun is that usually, opponents only die as a result of their own actions. You get to say things like "Hey, you opted to cast all those spells with Forced Fruition and Raiders' Wake on the table. Don't look at me.", "Torment of Hailfire gives you three options. The fact that each card you discard costs you four life is unfortunate, but maybe you would have had the life to pay if you hadn't shocked in that Hallowed Fountain on turn 2." and "Polluted Bonds and Storm Cauldron may seem mean, but you don't have to play lands. Or you can just run Burgeoning like me and get your mana back in notime!"

How does this deck lose?

In reality, most people will team up against this deck, and it's difficult to keep three or so opponents down. If just one opponent gets their engine going enough to bypass or force their way through your various effects, you can bet they will be coming for you first.

The deck can also just lose to a single creature that comes down early and that keeps attacking you, since it does not have a lot of actual reactive answers.

It's important to note that you're almost always effectively on a timer. Your opponents will eventually find a solution to the puzzle you've laid out for them, most of our 'lock' pieces aren't absolute so you will likely be taking chip damage, and a significant number of cards in the deck come with a life tax.

Therefore it's all about two things: Extending that timer by slowing down your opponents (and sometimes gaining life), and speeding up your own clock by accelerating and sticking more burn. The only time you can take it in the slow is the beginning, before you become the target.

Self-harm is no joke (A note on when to hate)

Timing is everything with this deck. Cards like Arcane Laboratory will slow you down just as much as your opponents, and it's up to you to play them when the time is right. This can be when an opponent is far ahead in ramp and needs reigning in, or it can be when you have a punishment setup in place and are ready to slow the game to a crawl and watch your opponents bleed out. However, it certainly is not 'whenever I have the mana'. Basically, a significant number of the cards in the deck are symmetrical and straight up bad in a vacuum, so you need to make synergy for them to benefit you and harm your opponents, and not the other way around.

The same is true in reverse for group draw cards. Are you going to benefit more from that big Prosperity or are they? Or, more specifically, do you have the tools to stop them when they try to use those cards?

You may or may not like this deck...

You may like this deck if...

• ...you like forcing your opponents to make difficult decisions
• ...you think its more important to have a fun game than winning
• ...you have played enough D&D to understand that the social skills are to be used in the order of Diplomacy - Bluff - Intimidation
• ...your playgroup likes a puzzle and can handle the occasional high-roll Stasis + Frozen Aether + Wilderness Reclamation
• ...you like permanents and grinding value, but can live with taking a break from creatures
• ...you want to try something different

You may not like this deck if...

• ...you feel insecure without at least three 6/6 blockers ready and want to win at a high life total
• ...you think noncreature spells should be banned
• ...you think you need Scheme cards to play Archenemy
• ...you want to win in one big turn
• ...you are playing with new players or people you just met, or just want to be liked

I usually play far more aggressive decks with much less blue in them and have found myself surprised by how much fun this deck is to pilot, so I figured I would note specifically the below: You may like this deck even if...

• ...you think Stax is an unfun strategy
• ...you usually play aggressive decks

Counters and wipes? (Notable exclusions)

A traditional control package of counterspells and efficient board wipes would likely do a better job of winning games than the mess of "no, you can't"-cards that this deck likes to stack. The vast majority of the "removal" is preemptive, either in terms of limiting the casting of spells or by more direct means such as getting out Lethal Vapors. This is a quite different method, and I've found it quite entertaining to play.

I also run no tutors (other than Tezzeret the Seeker, who's mainly there to find and untap artifact lands). I like to embrace the variation inherent in the format. In particular in decks with this much drawing power, you'll always have something to do.

Specific cards:

• Karn, the Great Creator - As soon as I get a copy of this guy he's going right in. His passive is just incredible as is, locking down mana artifacts which otherwise avoid our significant bevy of disruption for land-based mana. On top of that, if your playgroup allows wishboards, he can go get Mycosynth Lattice and make everyone cry. What a beast.
• Winter Orb - Our mana acceleration is land-based, and this will punish us disproportionally compared to other (nongreen) decks that ramp with artifacts.
• Torpor Orb - This is a very powerful card that would stop those pesky Reclamation Sages from killing our precious enchantments. The problem is that despite having literally zero creatures, our very best removal is ETB-based. Shutting down Tainted AEther, Lethal Vapors, Spreading Plague and Overburden simply is not acceptable. If it was phrased like "Creatures entering the battlefield don't trigger the abilities of permanents your opponents control", we would be all over it.
• Sphere of Resistance - Too expensive.

FAQ (as if I had ever received any questions)

Have you met Muldrotha?

Muldrotha, the Gravetide may well be a better commander for the deck. However, if you make a Muldrotha deck, you'd want to include more Muldrotha-synergistic cards like Seal of Doom, Executioner's Capsule and Seal of Primordium. That deck is honestly quite likely stronger than this one, but it's really a distinct deck. Let me know if you build that!

Also worth noting is that this deck is capable of making a lot of mana, and treating Tasigur as a sorcery is sometimes right. Cast him and exile any spent ramp spells in your graveyard, then in response to whatever trigger you have that's going to kill him, activate his ability several times. With Spreading Plague you can also use him as "Destroy all black creatures". Admittedly, Muldrotha would do better as an impromptu board wipe by getting green and blue creatures as well.

Isn't this just a bad [...]?

Whatever you were thinking, probably yes. It's much worse att control than control decks, it's much slower at doing the Nekusar, the Mindrazer thing than Nekusar decks and it's no real stax deck. But it's its own thing, and that has value here in casual land.

Have you thought about this card..?

I've thought about all the ones in the maybeboard, at least. Let me know your ideas! I find it really hard to find cuts, though.

Shoutouts

Shoutout to God-Pharaoh's Statue for being a far better card than I thought it would be.

Word to Tower of the Magistrate, my secret tech against Voltron commanders. "Don't worry, I'll Protect you from those scary Lightning Greaves!"

Notes for myself

Lifegain options in decreasing order of preference: Retreat to Hagra, Bow of Nylea, Exquisite Blood, Subversion, Retreat to Kazandu. Combine with Splendid Reclamation?

Why not?

Maze of Ith Mystifying Maze Labyrinth of Skophos

Mist of Stagnation + Bojuka Bog

Cards I really want in:

• 1x Propaganda #Defence
• 1x Dissipation Field #Defence
• 1x Necrotic Plague #Removal

Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 48 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.79
Tokens	Zombie 2/2 B
Based on	Tasigur Discard PlutoniumWedding EDH