2021 Secret Santa EDH Submission
The idea here is to showcase the commander, in this case Yedora Grave Gardener. Yedora's ability is triggered whenever a nontoken creature you control dies. At that point, you may return it from your graveyard, facedown as a Forest land. It has no other abilities or types. So when building this, we need to keep in mind a few things: we want creatures that can sacrifice to themselves/sacrifice others, we want creatures that can turn face-up, we want things that trigger off land or benefit from the lands we will be getting, and most importantly, we need some way to benefit from all this land!
So this narrows us to a few different abilities. The first ones we can look at are Morph and Mega-morph.
Morph and Mega-Morph are somewhat similar card abilities. Some creature spells have morph or mega-morph, which allows the player to cast a creature with that ability face-down as a 2/2 creature with no other types, abilities, or colors. At any given time, you can then turn that card face-up for it's morph cost; which is noted on the card, usually giving you some kind of additional benefit. So aside from that benefit, turning a creature with morph or mega-morph face up is not something your opponents can respond to because it doesn't use the stack. The weakness of morph creatures is that after you turn them face up, there are very few ways to turn them facedown again, which is where your commander comes in! Now, with something to sacrifice your morph creatures to, you then trigger Yedora's ability, bring that morph creature back facedown as a Forest and can turn it back face up! You can even use your new land to pay for that morph cost! Then there are other cards that for the low cost of returning a Forest to your hand can give you some kind of benefit and guess who has a bunch of creatures that just happen to be temporarily face-down Forests? That's right, you do!
So that's the first route we have, but there's more to Yedora than just being Yedorable, we need stuff to do with all this land we got. The best thing to do here? How about we attack with our land? Green loves turning trees into dudettes, thanks to a lot of cheap enchantments we can do this all day long! And as an added benefit, guess what happens if your nontoken land creature happens to die? That's right! Yedora's ability triggers, bringing them back as face-down Forest lands, which then become creatures all over again!
So there are a few ways for you to win with this deck, you can give a creature an infinite number of +3/+3 stat increase from Ambush Commander (preferably use a creature with trample or some way to keep them from stopping the combat damage), you can mill everyone out with Altar of the Brood, go infinite with Blasting Station, or you can just swarm over your opponents with your Forest army. The main thing you want to keep in mind with a deck that is built around the commander is you have to make sure Yedora stays alive, which is why there are a number of protection cards that can give it indestructible, hex proof, regenerate, and stuff like that.
I really hope you enjoy playing this deck as much as I enjoyed building it for you! Merry Christmas!
Morph/Mega-Morph Rules Primer:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/morph-trigger-rules-primer-2003-01-08-0
Yedora and Morph Rules:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDH/comments/mogdwr/wizards_staff_confirms_morph_works_with_yedora/
Yedora and 'Manlands' Rulings:
https://mtg.cardsrealm.com/combo-infinite/card-with-free-sacrifice-ability-life-and-limb-yedora-grave-gardener?lang=en
Yedora and Mass Creature Removal (board wipes) Rulings:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgrules/comments/n0m6sf/yedora_grave_gardener_and_board_wipes_and_cards/
