Dear Azami: Ill-Met By Moonlight

Remco, meet Aren:

We don’t usually work on two decks at the same time… but we don’t never do it either, and this
seemed like a reasonable compromise to the fact that we have set ourselves on a course to work on just a very limited subsection of the submissions we’ve
been receiving lately. Both Aren and Remco had solid sketches of a Titania, Protector of Argoth decks to start with, and I thought it would be interesting
to see their two decks side-by-side – using a direct comparison to see what strengths they were building towards and what tools seemed interesting to them.
Remco’s deck sketch was only about 70 cards, while Aren’s was 103, but we’re not going to do our usual game of “swapping things around” so we’re not really
penalized for the fact that Remco’s deck is skinny or Aren’s is heavy… we’re going to compare, contrast, and then build to a final 99 that hopefully both
should like.

We begin by automatically accepting anything their two decks have had in common, which gives us the following starting point:

Lands:

Then we simply add 20 Snow-Covered Forest.

Spells:

Creatures:

Artifacts:

This is 52 of the 99, just over half of the deck – we’ll be starting from here as we move forward, with the remainder of the deck being additions that were
in Aren’s deck, Remco’s deck, or things I think would fit that neither of them included. Let’s start with the lands – with twenty basics and eight
nonbasics so far, we’re going to need at least nine more lands to hit my basic minimum estimate of 37, and probably even more than that. Remco had 40 and
Aren had 43, so my usual count is going to be a bit off here, and looking more closely we can see why – both decks have a Gaea’s Cradle, which doesn’t tap
for mana under at least some conditions (many of which you’ll encounter in the developing turns of the game), and each deck has at least one more land that
doesn’t tap for mana readily and easily by itself – for Aren it’s a Safe Haven, and for Remco it’s a Thawing Glaciers (which I’ll give a pass) and a Lotus
Vale (which does mess with the total counts of how many lands you need, so it counts). Both Remco and Aren think Titania needs more lands than my
basic assumption, so I’ll take their opinions as well-grounded and shoot for Remco’s 50 lands… meaning we have room for twelve more.

There are fourteen I want to add, which means we’re going to shave two Snow-Covered Forests in order to make room for all of them, which should still work
just fine since we’re not overloading on colorless lands, the majority of our additions here act as fetchlands to work with Titania, and thus, we’ll still
have tons of green mana regardless.

Three of Aren’s choices get moved over here:

And we’ll have a whopping eleven of Remco’s:

This is partly in keeping with what really draws me to Titania – I love getting extra value from fetchlands in general concept, and thus, I really
love fetchlands as token-generating beatdown devices thanks to Titania; I am more interested in using her ability this way than how Aren is: going after
opponents’ lands. Part of that is positioning – I think Aren’s build puts Titania up a little too adversarially in dealing with opponents, since going
after their lands is generally regarded as dirty pool – and part of that comes with the fact that these lands require you to go down a land in play in
order to trigger Titania. Between the two, I’d rather have a land and a 5/3 than no land and a 5/3… working on opponents’ manabases provides a benefit,
sure, but I’d rather build my position up than use it trying to hold just one of my three opponents down. I think that also staggers how you have to decide
to use these lands, since you have to consider holding off on sacrificing them until your position is itself stable or at least until your opponent
provides you with a good target, which ultimately slows your token-based beatdown.

Moving next to the artifacts, we had five cards that were already included – Sunstone and Zuran Orb as sacrifice outlets to trigger Titania and make
tokens, Mind’s Eye and Seer’s Sundial as card advantage sources, plus Crucible of Worlds because it is obviously awesome with everything this deck is going
to have going with it.

I’m going to keep one of Remco’s additions, Akroma’s Memorial, because I concur that the powerful turns you can build towards with it suggest it as a
powerful, fun, and flavorful addition – sending over Titania’s token army as would-be Angel tokens is a strong plan for finishing the game, and I consider
it to be a better plan than the one Aren had built towards with Eldrazi Monument because of the haste granted by the card. I’m also going to keep three of
Aren’s – Sol Ring, Sensei’s Divining Top, and Oblivion Stone – because I consider them key additions for power concerns, at least as far as Ring and Top
are concerned, and we do want to have at least a few ways in the deck to potentially handle an awkward boardstate, so we’re limited in choices here (we are talking about a monogreen deck, after all, not exactly well-known for blowing stuff up) and should take what is on offer with Oblivion Stone.

We’ll add five more cards:

This doesn’t really seem like an Equipment-based deck, since it’s pretty light on creatures overall, but the reason for that is because Titania’s
land-based token strategy is going to be asked to pull a lot of weight. For that to work, you’ll need to be able to keep her around – so I’m in
favor of adding Lightning Greaves, not necessarily for the haste (though that certainly doesn’t hurt) but definitely for the untargetability. So few of the
cards we’re really considering aim to target your own creatures, so we don’t have any real interest in Swiftfoot Boots instead, and I don’t think we’re
enamored enough of the effect to play both.

Druidic Satchel and Coercive Portal both help with two sides of the theme – Druidic Satchel is land-ramp and card advantage wrapped into one, as getting
extra lands off the top of your deck and into play frees up your draw step for real cards instead, and it even provides benefits for the other two card
types too. We’re going to have enough ways to see or touch the top of our deck, plus a whole host of ways to shuffle it, so the Satchel is going to be
exceptionally strong here – while Coercive Portal is either card advantage or a board wipe, depending on what seems optimal at the time. It’s not good for
you if you’re the one who’s ahead, as three players can then vote to use your card to blow up your stuff, but if at least one other player likes things
staying just how they are right now instead, it’ll provide card advantage rather than a way to make things go kaboom. Though it’s a little bit
unpredictable, by the sheer fact of it being a ‘politics’-type card, we’re starved for both card advantage and board control effects in mono-green and this
provides both as-needed.

Strionic Resonator is here because we’re going to have a lot of juicy targets for doubling, such as Titania’s token-making trigger or the whole host of
ancillary abilities lying around – fetchlands are low-hanging fruit here, since you can readily double their ability and get an extra land for your
trouble, so this card will always have something worthwhile to do and gets better as you get more creative with its ability. And last but not
least, Staff of Domination is here because we desperately want a card advantage source – it doesn’t hurt that it can also play board control pretty nicely,
letting you keep a problem creature or two in check, or that it gets more powerful the more mana you have in play. This deck can reasonably expect to have
a lot of mana in the later stages of the game since it’s building towards that very nicely, so this also works as a scaling card that gets better later on
and helps make sure you always have something relevant to do with all of that mana now that you’ve gone to the bother of accumulating it.

Moving on to the spells, we’re at 73 cards out of 99, and Aren and Remco both agreed on these ten spells:

I’m also going to keep six of Aren’s choices, leaving all of the token-doubling cards out of the picture along with everything that touches up against the
sort-of-LD side of the deck as well.

All is Dust and Beast Within are included because we really have very few choices for handling problem permanents, so the few that are very effective at
that job need to be held onto so that we can actually play up the control elements of the deck on such occasions as when we actually need them. Exploration
is obviously just a high-quality card for a deck that is going to focus on land-drops mattering, which both Aren and Remco seemed content to wander
towards, Greater Good is a powerful card-drawing machine in a color that has very few of those and Garruk, Primal Hunter can serve much the same role…
and sometimes he’ll even do more than that, but we’re not playing him with the expectation of using his +1 ability with any regularity, powerful though
that may be. I have five more additions of my own to make:

Burgeoning is a better ‘extra copy’ of Exploration than Gaea’s Touch is, specifically because it doesn’t care about the identity of the lands in your hand
– there is nothing quite so awkward as having a bunch of fetchlands and a Gaea’s Touch that refuses to ramp you, while Burgeoning can let you make a whole
bunch of land drops very quickly right away; it’s one of the most potent one-drop plays in the format and well worth the trouble of hunting down in order
to get the deck ramping on all cylinders. Ditto for Survival of the Fittest – the most powerful version of this deck will include this card, so we’re just
going for it here, neither of our contributors this week seemed to be price-shy so we’re building in a “price no object” environment and hoping this works
for everyone.

Harmonize is just a solid draw spell in a color that doesn’t get many of those, and since we’re in the market for effects like this we’re happy to put it
in. Asceticism is a card you actually have to twist my arm to include – I’ve basically never seen it played “fairly” and consider it a huge bullseye to
drop this on the table – but again, following through on the logic of trying to play the optimal version of this deck, it protects Titania so she can keep
doing the good work of pumping out tokens and it protects your army too from most mass removal spells. This seemed to cover most of what Aren wanted
Eldrazi Monument to do, and covers the weaknesses I saw with those Lightning Greaves effects. They protect your Commander, sure, but only to a certain
point. This goes a few extra steps further, so it fits what we’re trying to do here even if I have rarely seen this put to positive effect in a deck
without trying to tip it over into a broken, non-interactive pile of frustrated opponents. I think we’re playing reasonably fair otherwise, especially
without the land destruction elements that could otherwise be present, and this card’s effective at a role we are interested in filling.

The last card is for the sheer value of the thing – Primeval Bounty gives you tons of value added to every play you make, anything that involves playing a
piece of cardboard gives you a trigger that has clear upsides attached to it, and this deck will readily appreciate its ability to help build up your board
on the cheap once it’s in play.

Including the pre-filled creature slots where Aren and Remco agreed, we have now filled 84 of our 99 slots – that leaves us fifteen yet to fill, then we’ve
got a sweet monogreen deck to put to the test!

Those nine creatures already added to the deck are:

Choosing from the other creatures Remco wanted to play, I’d like to put Tilling Treefolk to work and see what happens – it seems like we’re pretty
well-optimized for the card to buy back two fetchlands on turn 3, so I’m eager to give it a shot and see what happens. It could work out nicely for us and
is strongly on-theme even if it is a weird, obscure card probably nobody remembers existed. (I sure didn’t – and I pride myself on being a veritable
walking, talking Magic encyclopedia. But perhaps “pride” is the wrong word there…)

From Aren’s selections, I’m going to say no to the cards that are really there to be mean to opposing lands – Terastodon, Acidic Slime and Kamahl, Fist of
Krosa seem like they are here to primarily accomplish that particularly mean goal – and add the following:

These may seem uninspired choices, sure, but they are also exceptionally good at what we’re trying to do – and being able to manipulate the top of our deck
or otherwise see what is coming is especially good in this deck, since fetchlands help give us the ability to shuffle away bad cards in search of more good
ones, so both Courser and Oracle will be high-synergy cards here in addition to just being the highly-effective card advantage / mana ramping machines we
know so well. Budoka Gardener is the only interesting card of the bunch, tapping to help accelerate you in the early game and tapping to make Huge/Huge
Elemental tokens in the later stages of the game. We want power cards early and power cards late, and this is an odd duck in that it actually fills both of
these roles quite well.

That leaves us at 89 cards, so we have ten more creatures to add in order to complete the deck. The first set of five we’ll add here are the following:

Lotus Cobra is a card I am fairly obsessed with, it’s
true, but it’s also true that it is incredibly powerful with other land-matters cards and fetchlands, so this can be especially dangerous as a
two-drop since it can actually accelerate us into a turn-3 Titania and get back a fetchland for her to sacrifice, so just in the normal course of
our best draws this is an absolutely crazy accelerant to add to the deck. It can potentially get gross in the later stages of the game too – this deck’s
very good at putting bonus lands into play or otherwise juggling with lands, so I can see games where we cast Scapeshift in order to make a whole bunch of
5/3 tokens… and actually make mana in the process thanks to Lotus Cobra, which would let us keep going and do more crazy things on top of that crazy
turn.

Hermit Druid is a card I keep wanting to work out in “fair” decks instead of only playing them in patently unfair decks, and with eighteen basic lands plus
a deck that loves getting more lands in its hand to put into play quickly, Hermit Druid provides a lot of resources. That it also helps fuel Life from the
Loam doesn’t hurt either, and there are some corner-case interactions (like making Praetor’s Counsel even stronger) that aren’t quite why we’re playing the
card that will really contribute here as well. My favorites all come from clearing junk from the top of your deck – only seeing useless cards with Sylvan
Library and Sensei’s Divining Top? Bin ’em and look at new cards. Nothing floating to the top for Oracle of Mul Daya? Change what’s on top! Avenging Druid
and Hunting Cheetah are here to serve the same purpose and with much the same corner-case interactions, except they don’t rely on basic lands and
they put the land directly into play to boot! We aren’t really using our graveyard so they aren’t especially dangerous for our opponents, because we’re
keeping things on the right side of fair even as we play good cards to good effect, we have just a few cards that reference the graveyard so we don’t
really care of an opponent gets nervous and exiles stuff we’ve flipped over with any of these cards.

The last addition, Realm Seekers, is surprisingly potent in this deck – but that’s because it will both be reliably huge and doesn’t actually have
the word ‘basic’ written in there like most people would assume. Since both of our contributors added Gaea’s Cradle we’ll have at least one obviously
high-powered land to get, and we’re able to put multiple lands into play a turn if we want to, so this creature will actually be able to do a ton of work
for us besides just attacking and blocking as a really big monster – not that that’s a bad thing, because I’ve never seen this card be less than a 10/10
for six.

The final five slots are going to be chosen with that Survival of the Fittest in mind, in addition to a more-general desire to be able to keep problem
permanents off the board. And while none of them will be truly inspiring card choices, they function very well at what they do and will help put those
needed finishing touches on the deck:

Kozilek is there as much for the trigger as it is for the text, though I do especially love the “draw four cards” part that’s not actually the trigger I’m
talking about. When playing a deck with Survival of the Fittest, I find it incredibly important to include at least one legendary Eldrazi in my deck in
order to be able to shuffle my graveyard back into my deck on command – and Emrakul’s banned, so the choices are this or Ulamog. For Aren’s build of the
deck, intended to pressure opposing manabases a lot more than I particularly want to, Ulamog might actually be a better fit – the trigger doesn’t draw
cards but it does achieve his objective, and the indestructible creature is much more likely to survive to swing and annihilate someone.

I consider that unpleasant so I go with Kozilek, content that drawing four cards is a good ability to have… and dying to Doom Blade is a feature, not a
bug, I want my opponents to be able to stop their own impending feel-bad moments by pointing a removal spell at monsters with annihilator. I don’t want
that trigger to happen often and it’s not why we’re including the card, so Kozilek is the right fit.

Woodfall Primus is there as the ‘biggest’ version of the Acidic Slime trigger, while Reclamation Sage is included as the mana-efficient version for when we
want to Survival up that effect and are constrained on mana. Our middle-of-the-range effect is actually Mold Shambler instead of Acidic Slime; that extra
mana allows us to hit planeswalkers in addition to the other three permanent types, and that’ll come up often enough to be worth it even if the body isn’t
as good on defense as an Acidic Slime is.

The last slot goes to the least-interesting creature we could possibly add here, Avenger of Zendikar, which is both generally boring in the format and immensely powerful – but we’re already so well-optimized to maximize it that it feels like it would be wrong to snub it just to snub
it.

Putting it all together, we get the following:

Titania, Protector of Argoth

Sean McKeown

Test deck on 11-30--0001

Commander

Creatures (24)

• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Hermit Druid
• 1 Budoka Gardener
• 1 Squirrel Wrangler
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Yavimaya Elder
• 1 Hunting Cheetah
• 1 Avenging Druid
• 1 Groundskeeper
• 1 Sylvan Safekeeper
• 1 Woodfall Primus
• 1 Tilling Treefolk
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Mold Shambler
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Realm Seekers
• 1 Reclamation Sage

Planeswalkers (1)

• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter

Lands (40)

• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 1 Gaea's Cradle
• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 1 Slippery Karst
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Yavimaya Hollow
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 18 Snow-Covered Forest
• 1 Dust Bowl
• 1 Blasted Landscape
• 1 Terminal Moraine
• 1 Petrified Field
• 1 Mouth of Ronom
• 1 Scrying Sheets
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Bant Panorama
• 1 Jund Panorama
• 1 Naya Panorama
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Myriad Landscape

Spells (34)

• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Exploration
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Burgeoning
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Staff of Domination
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mind's Eye
• 1 Sunstone
• 1 Harrow
• 1 Zuran Orb
• 1 Survival of the Fittest
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Greater Good
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Akroma's Memorial
• 1 Edge of Autumn
• 1 Scapeshift
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 All Is Dust
• 1 Realms Uncharted
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Asceticism
• 1 Praetor's Counsel
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Druidic Satchel
• 1 Primeval Bounty
• 1 Strionic Resonator
• 1 Coercive Portal

Because of the convoluted nature of working with two submissions at the same time, it doesn’t make sense to even try and keep track of prices – which is a
Good Thing (TM) because those prices would undoubtedly be quite high since we’re talking about cards like fetchlands, Survival of the Fittest, adding an
Eldrazi, et cetera. Both Aren and Remco will receive a $20 coupon to the StarCityGames.com Store in thanks for their participation this week, and I fully
expect both of them to customize their decks back a bit from here as well – while I couldn’t conscience the cards that were adversarial to
opposing manabases, that was a factor Aren was quite interested in, so I wouldn’t be surprised if those fetchlands stayed as land-destruction effects and
the other couple of ‘mean’ cards stayed too, putting that side of the deck back on track while keeping the rest of my shifts away from the token/”doubling”
cards because the rest of those additions were all streamlined in a way that will still improve the deck on those other lines too. And I definitely, definitely expect Remco to still play that sweet Korean Lotus Vale even though I don’t think the card’s that relevant to what we’re doing here –
I, too, can be swayed to the reasoning of playing sweet foreign cards because they’re awesome, but I wouldn’t want to play it myself and wasn’t going to
tell Aren to add it to the deck too. I worked on their two decks together to find a “general case” decklist that met in the middle and played well – but
I’m not trying to shoehorn two distinct people into one decklist and expecting them to both fit happily.

As we put this one to rest, I’m content that the final product is sweet enough that I want to consider giving it a try (… though, sadly, I will have to
do so Cradle-less since I haven’t been of a mind to hold onto all of my overpowered and expensive cards after taking Too-Broken Animar apart…) and it hits all of the right notes for
optimizing its unique and interesting commander. And we have two more unique commanders we’re specifically looking to work on over the next few weeks –
we’ve covered Feldon of the Third Path, Stitcher Geralf, and now Titania, Protector of Argoth out of the five Commander 2015 decks, and if you
have a Ghoulcaller Gisa deck or a Jazal Goldmane deck on your mind, now would be an ideal time to submit it to us and potentially snag a $20 coupon to the
SCG Store for your trouble!

Want to submit a deck for consideration to Dear Azami? We’re always accepting deck submissions to consider for use in a future article, like Michael’s Stitcher Geralfdeck or Brandon’s Feldon of the Third Path deck. Only one deck
submission will be chosen per article, but being selected for the next edition of Dear Azami includes not just deck advice but also a $20 coupon to StarCityGames.com!

Email us a deck submission using this link here!

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