Dear Azami: Delvers Of The Deep

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another installment of Dear Azami. Before we begin this week, I want to draw folks’ attention to last week’s commander: Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. She’s a trans character, the first canonical trans character in Magic. Personally, I think that’s pretty cool!

Anyway, let’s move on to a different commander from the early history of Tarkir: Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Tasigur makes for an interesting commander: he’s
a graveyard matters general who is not going to reliably trigger threshold. That doesn’t necessarily matter mechanically, but I think it changes how you
evaluate the card qualities when comparing Tasigur to Sidisi, Brood Tyrant or The Mimeoplasm. In those decks, cards like Splinterfright can be major
players, but in a deck that’s regularly delving for a discount, you may not have the necessary support to turn Splinterfright into grade A beef.

That was what I was considering when I stumbled upon the next little deck in our queue. Now, if you want to see some disgusting stuff you can do with a
self-mill deck, we’ve certainly covered that ground before.
Instead, I’d rather focus on the building blocks that make up a deck like this. Tasigur, the Golden Fang is more of an enabler than a finisher; you can
play almost any type of victory package and still manage to have fun. I went with some cheaper, more straight-forward options, but I’m sure we’ll see some
innovative takes on this commander once he’s more established. Because like it or not, Tasigur, the Golden Fang is going to be one of those commanders who
sticks around for a while.

I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely certain how “AIIIEEEE!” translates into Commander strategy. Still, Erik, your deck was fairly new, and as such, it ran
into some minor issues. It’s big, for starters: 106 cards total by my count. Of those, 51 cards were lands. My guess is that the point of running so many
lands is that it ensures you’re hitting your land drops even when you’re self-milling and minimizes the choices available to your opponents when you use
Tasigur’s ability, but I still think 51 is too many. Tasigur isn’t always going to be in play, and his ability is fairly costly. It’s probably better to
have more action so that you’ve still got plays when you can’t afford to spend four mana drawing a card.

The Lands (aka Armageddon)

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As you can see, I cut a bunch of lands. Now, you may want to cut fewer than I did, since Temple of Malady and Woodland Cemetery somewhat strain the budget,
but I like complete cycles. You’re missing those two from their respective set, and it’s more of a problem since they’re the Golgari ones than it would be
if they were Simic. The green in your deck is important because you have ramp cards, and the black’s important to cast your commander. In many ways, blue
is your least necessary color, at least in the earlygame, although the triple blue requirement of Blue Sun’s Zenith makes me think you should probably run
an extra Island when compared to your Forest count.

Since I was planning to put in some self-mill enablers that helped recur lands from your graveyard, it seemed like a good opportunity to add in some of the
lands that sacrifice for an interesting effect. Terramorphic Expanse, Myriad Landscape, and Evolving Wilds all act as budget fetchlands, while Haunted
Fengraf seems particularly strong when you can delve out all the chaff in your graveyard. Dakmor Salvage is a dredge card worth playing, since it takes up
a land slot, and Buried Ruin helps out if any of your shiny gets milled away as well.

This frees up thirteen nonland slots, and we’re going to use them on cards that help you have enough mana to make good use of Tasigur’s abilities.

Highway Off-Ramp

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One of the neat things about Tasigur, the Golden Fang is that his ability is not limited to a specific type of nonland card. As such, we can play a bunch
of different types of cards that do fundamentally similar things. Font of Fertility is an enchantment, which means you get it off Commune with the Gods,
Horizon Spellbomb comes back with Buried Ruin, Restore can get any of your milled lands–with the option to take from your enemies if your mill unearths
anything interesting–and Sakura-Tribe Elder is an occasional Fog you can get back with Sibsig Muckdraggers, your biggest delver.

Each one of these does basically the same thing (get you ahead by a land), but they give you a bunch of different means of accomplishing that end. If one
of your lines of play gets shut down (Rest in Peace, Null Rod, Chalice of the Void, etc), you still have a chance of drawing well and getting out of the
situation. When it doesn’t mess up your synergies, diversifying is a great way to increase your resiliency.

Enabling Friends

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One of the irritating things about Tasigur, the Golden Fang is that his ability is expensive to use. It’s not prohibitively expensive, but it feeds your
graveyard slowly, and it only “draws” you one card at a time. That’s why it’s worth rounding out the deck with cards that help it along. Commune with the
Gods, Fact or Fiction, Forbidden Alchemy, Grisly Salvage, Mulch, Satyr Wayfinder, and Tracker’s Instincts all work the same way: they’re draw spells that
put cards in your hand and your graveyard. They’re the workhorses of a deck like this, and they’ll make it easier for you to get Tasigur on the board.

Bow of Nylea is a different way to prune your graveyard. From time to time you’ll have cards in there that aren’t things you want to recur with Tasigur but
are also too valuable to exile. The Bow lets you tuck them back into your library while also giving you ancillary benefits by means of its bevy of random
abilities. Bow of Nylea does five different things! That’s a lot of power in one card.

Codex Shredder might seem a bit cute, given how many other cards in this color combination can mimic Regrowth (including Regrowth). I do like it in a deck
like this, when the milled card means a steady stream of card advantage. Because you’re playing out of the graveyard, each milled card is either something
you can recur to your benefit, or an extra mana for Tasigur. In many ways, that’s more relevant than an incidental (and yet recurring) Regrowth.

Extract from Darkness is cool because it’s a difficult-to-disrupt reanimation spell. You get the best creature in any graveyard, it mills everyone for two
cards, and it can’t be countered by removing your target, since it doesn’t target! No more will you have your reanimations shut down by Withered Wretch or
Scavenging Ooze, at least not with this card.

Mirror-Mad Phantasm is an old favorite. It’s easy to dump out half your library with a single activation, and sometimes it will be more (or less). It’s
random, but that seems in line with what I imagine the Goblin Ski Patrol doing with a deck like this.

Finally, there’s Gamekeeper. I’ve been trying to work this card into a Commander deck for a while, and it’s yet to find a good home. I think self-mill
might be the best strategy for it, particularly self-mill that’s not trying to put creatures in the ‘yard. Since you’re not running a ton of creatures, the
mill is going to hit a couple of cards on average, and you’re left with a potentially huge discount on your next creature, plus some binned cards. Manage
to trade with something, or chump a nasty assault, and it’s definitely a win, for you at least.

Oh, and I cut Mindscour Dragon. It’s cool that it can mill you when it hits an opponent, but in general, I find the card underwhelming. There are better
ways to get cards in your ‘yard, and we’ve added several of them in!

Loopers

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There are also cheaper ways to get things out of your graveyard. Dutiful Return may be a two-for-one, but at four mana it doesn’t represent much of a
discount on Tasigur’s ability. Eternal Witness and Tilling Treefolk both cost less and get you back things that Tasigur won’t. I like the treefolk in
particular, since the 1/3 body can hold off a lot of incidental aggro while also being a cheap way to get back two lands.

Life from the Loam is one of the pricier cards in the deck, but it’s definitely worth it. Not only does it help you make your land drops, but it’s a
reliable dredge engine to boot. The changes we made to your manabase help power this card up; you don’t need to be running Verdant Catacombs and Misty
Rainforest to get a ramp bonus off Life from the Loam.

Advice

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Momir Vig’s color requirements make him a dicier proposition in a deck like this. Maybe if Tasigur were truly a three-color card, it would be reasonable to
run Vig, but without the ready access to a means of triggering his ability, it seems like he’s a wasted slot. Instead, let’s put Corpse Connoisseur in
there. Often, getting a creature in your graveyard will be almost as good as having one in your hand, and the Corpse Connoisseur has the extra power of
self-exile, via its Unearth ability.

Maverick

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I also added in some more efficient draw engines. Archivist is slow and fragile, Lunar Mystic is unreliable, and Courier’s Capsule compares unfavorably to
Concentrate. While I like Unexpected Results, it’s a lot worse when you’re not running 50 lands. Finally, Read the Bones is just underwhelming, as far as
one-shot draw spells go.

Instead, let’s bring in some more efficient cards. In place of Archivist, there’s Mulldrifter. It will on average draw you as many cards as the Archivist
will, only it does them at once instead of over three turns. For Lunar Mystic, let’s add in River Kelpie. It’s bonkers with Marang River Guide, there’s no
chance of missing the draw triggers for mana issues, and it also triggers on your opponents’ spells. Add in the resiliency granted through persist, and
it’s actually a pretty sweet card.

For Read the Bones, let’s bring in Skeletal Scrying. Skeletal Scrying scales better in the lategame, and it has the added ability to prune down your
graveyard to improve your Tasigur activations. To replicate the ramp aspect of Unexpected Results, let’s put in Yavimaya Elder, which will generally draw
you more cards for less mana, which is sweet. Finally, if you want a draw engine that works through a noncreature permanent, Palace Siege is a pretty good
one. The Khans ability gives you a Raise Dead every one of your upkeeps, which is a steady stream of card advantage that doubles as a pruning mechanism.
And if you’re in a pinch, or if you’ve got victory near at hand, you can choose Dragons, and put your opponents on a slow but inexorable clock.

Fatal Forces

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In general, I find the damage that you can rack up with Fate Unraveler and Underworld Dreams rarely is equivalent to the amount of irritation these cards
invariably pique. They’re valued players in Nekusar, the Mindrazer builds, but generally they need to be at the core of the deck to be worthwhile. Instead,
let’s take advantage of the minor mill theme and put in the blue and black Primordials. Since they both care about cards in your opponents’ graveyards,
they’ll get fueled up by your Mind Grinds and Consuming Aberrations. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and manage to snag a Baneslayer Angel or Decree of Pain,
but even if you’re just taking advantage of a Nekretaal or a Think Twice you’re still getting card advantage. And that’s something you’re not going to get
from Fate Unraveler or Underworld Dreams.

Nemesis of Mortals seems like a good card, but you’re going to be pruning back your graveyard regularly. As such, the mana discount will probably be
modest, and then you’re just running a relatively boring slab of beef. And Soulflayer, while a decent card, is limited by the abilities you have on
creatures in your deck. As your creatures don’t have too many applicable keywords, I suspect you’ll find that on average it ends up being worse than
Hooting Mandrills.

Instead, let’s bring in Empty the Pits. It’s a great card for pruning the chaff out of your graveyard, and it spreads its power over many more bodies. Add
in the instant speed, allowing you to make a ton of them during an opponent’s end step in order to surprise them with a fearsome assault, and you’ve got a
delve card worth checking out.

Finally, I had the idea to try out See the Unwritten. Tasigur’s ability is an enabler. If you prune your graveyard right, you can draw the same card every
turn. You can do the same play over and over until somehow that play makes you win. So you want to have some powerful spells in your deck that will end the
game if you cast them every turn. See the Unwritten does this by digging for your bombs, with the added benefit of being powered up when Tasigur, the
Golden Fang is on the board: he’s a 4/5, and thus triggers ferocious. But the best part of the card is that it’s also a fairly strong graveyard enabler.
For a total of seven mana you can cast See the Unwritten for six and have milled enough cards to let you cast Tasigur again for a single black mana. That’s
pretty cool, and it’ll definitely get there some games.

The Business End

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We’re left with a bunch of cards from across the spectrum, which I am replacing with removal spells. Amulet of Vigor, for example, doesn’t particularly
synergize with the rest of the deck. Perhaps if this were a Boundless Realms deck it would make sense, but it’s not, and it doesn’t.

I’ve had the Cyclonic Rift argument before, and I’m not super interested in hashing it out, but it seems particularly unpleasant in a deck that can readily
recur it. Cyclonic Rift-locking your friends seems like a quick way to have fewer friends. Leyline of Anticipation was a bigger concern when most of the
deck was at sorcery speed, but I’ve added in some more instants, and I think it plays a little better for it. Since Leyline of Anticipation does nothing
else, it seems like it’s worth a cut.

I kept Prophet of Kruphix, although I find the card to be one of the more annoying cards printed in the last decade. It turns out having both pieces of the
oppressive Seedborn Muse combo in one card is a pain in the butt for your opponents; Murkfield Liege, however, does not seem like its earned its inclusion,
even if it could interact with Tasigur.

Rakshasa’s Disdain is a little cute for a counterspell, since it costs more than Counterspell and can’t stop some ramp decks… even before you start pruning
your graveyard. I didn’t replace it with a counterspell, since this deck wasn’t feeling particularly controlling, but if you find that was a grievous
oversight, I’d suggest Mystic Snake or Dismiss.

Sultai Runemark has all the aura drawbacks with none of the compensatory mechanisms they’ve been pushing in the last few years. It’s an easy cut. Temporal
Mastery doesn’t seem like a good fit for the deck; you can’t recur it with Tasigur, the Golden Fang because it exiles upon resolution, and it doesn’t prune
your graveyard like Temporal Trespass. And Venser’s Journal would be a better card if you didn’t occasionally want to have the option of discarding a card
from your hand. Plus, it’s a lot of mana for a card that does so little.

Consume the Meek and Gaze of Granite were brought in so that you could recur a mass removal spell that didn’t kill Tasigur. Consume the Meek is often
overlooked in Commander, but it brutalizes some of the cheaper commanders that are seeing play these days, as well as devastating most token strategies.
Necrogenesis is graveyard removal that doubles as a token generator, which can be handy in a pinch, even if it’s not your primary strategy. And finally
there’s Murderous Cut, which is instant speed delve tied to a removal spell. It’s pretty sweet and particularly strong in this deck.

The List!

Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Jess Stirba

Test deck on 02-03-2015

Commander

Creatures (26)

• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Yavimaya Elder
• 1 Gamekeeper
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 River Kelpie
• 1 Tilling Treefolk
• 1 Corpse Connoisseur
• 1 Jace's Archivist
• 1 Mirror-Mad Phantasm
• 1 Consuming Aberration
• 1 Diluvian Primordial
• 1 Sepulchral Primordial
• 1 Thassa, God of the Sea
• 1 Prophet of Kruphix
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Satyr Wayfinder
• 1 Kruphix, God of Horizons
• 1 Nyx Weaver
• 1 Rakshasa Vizier
• 1 Kheru Lich Lord
• 1 Sultai Soothsayer
• 1 Marang River Prowler
• 1 Silumgar, the Drifting Death
• 1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
• 1 Sibsig Muckdraggers

Planeswalkers (1)

• 1 Kiora, the Crashing Wave

Lands (38)

• 6 Forest
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 7 Swamp
• 7 Island
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Dakmor Salvage
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Woodland Cemetery
• 1 Haunted Fengraf
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Temple of Malady
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Thornwood Falls
• 1 Jungle Hollow
• 1 Dismal Backwater
• 1 Myriad Landscape

Spells (35)

• 1 Skeletal Scrying
• 1 Mulch
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Necrogenesis
• 1 Consume the Meek
• 1 Horizon Spellbomb
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1 Praetor's Counsel
• 1 Forbidden Alchemy
• 1 Tracker's Instincts
• 1 Grisly Salvage
• 1 Codex Shredder
• 1 Mind Grind
• 1 Gaze of Granite
• 1 Commune with the Gods
• 1 Bident of Thassa
• 1 Bow of Nylea
• 1 Restore
• 1 Dictate of Kruphix
• 1 Font of Fertility
• 1 Extract from Darkness
• 1 Sultai Charm
• 1 See the Unwritten
• 1 Empty the Pits
• 1 Murderous Cut
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Villainous Wealth
• 1 Scout the Borders
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Temporal Trespass
• 1 Palace Siege
• 1 Tasigur's Cruelty
• 1 Fascination

That’s what the deck looks like when it’s been put back together. It has a fairly nice curve, with an interesting wrinkle: it’s got a relative dearth of
four-drops. I actually like this, though. It gives you the chance to play three drops two turns in a row while dropping a tapland, and there are some ramp
spells that can jump you up to five a turn sooner as well. And there’s some seriously neat things to do at the five-drop-slot!

I also managed to keep the budget pretty small for this one. The final tally is $38.23, but that number is a bit misleading. The two most expensive cards
are Temple of Malady and Woodland Cemetery, which you can replace at your leisure. Without them the total is $22.99, and the $20 credit we give our
submitters knocks that down to my cheapest update yet!

Hopefully this is in line with what you had been hoping to see, Erik. I still think the “overloading on lands to maximize Tasigur’s ability” strategy is a
weaker one than building a more consistent deck, but now you’ll be able to compare the two builds and see which way you prefer. I’d love to hear more about
your experiences with that in the comment section, and the same goes for any readers with strong opinions about the optimal build.

That’s it for this week’s Dear Azami! Keep those submissions coming, and we’re still looking for interesting decks that take advantage of some of these
neat Fate Reforged cards!

Like what you’ve seen? Feel free to explore more of Dear Azami here, in the Article Archives! Feel free to follow Sean on Facebook… sometimes there are extra surprises and bonus content to be found over on his Facebook Fan Page, as well as previews of the next week’s column at the end of the week!

And feel free to check Jess’s own Command of Etiquette column on Hipsters of the Coast for more Commander and casual content.