Dear Azami: Streamlining & Strategizing

It seems my month away from Dear Azami has been an interesting one. Last week Cassidy struck a nerve when he mentioned he was the softer and fluffier half of our dynamic duo—there was a significant amount of interest in a harder strategy tack in the Commander format, where the “social contract” feels sometimes like it crowds out any competitive deckbuilding. I’m entirely down with hardening the strategic content this week and building a more internally consistent and streamlined deck that doesn’t have rough edges and fluffy bits, so we’re going to build with that in mind this week instead of going with what we tend to see when we’re just playing for fun.

We can aim to go down that path without going too far down it that we violate the social contract, though I have found when a deck gets too streamlined I lose interest and put the deck down. Once the puzzle is “solved,” I’m less interested, which is the story of my on-again, off-again relationship with Animar, Soul of Elements and streamlining a deck that gets meaner as it gets honed.

It’s been a weird month away for me. If anything, it feels like two months instead of just three weeks between this column and the last one I penned here for Dear Azami, but that’s National Novel Writing Month in a nutshell for you. The commitment to write 50,000 words in a month is a difficult one, and the challenge of course leaves me feeling exhausted and worn out but also stronger for having done it. It teaches discipline and ups the level of your skills as well; I’ve found I’ve advanced more as a writer of fiction through NaNoWriMo than in the remainder of the time in which I’ve been working on my novel.

But in my time away these past few weeks I’ve been playing NaNoWriMo on Insanity level, using that kick in the seat of my pants to finish a nonfiction piece I started six months ago about the modern tools of the financial services sector. And if you think National Novel Writing Month is hard for fiction, that pales in comparison to what it takes to make that same amount of progress when you have to have research and notes and can’t just write in a ninja attack to get the story moving forward. Nonfiction is a different beast entirely, and I found I was consulting notes and fact checking research for two hours in order to get every one hour of writing in, so November was a long month indeed for me—maybe just due to the lack of sleep.

But with the very tail end of that book near at hand—the first draft may even be completed by the time this goes live, though I have to do a firm edit as soon as it is—sitting down and gaming hard with a streamlined deck that we build strategically is easy by comparison even if it is “hard” compared to the gentler and more forgiving style we usually use here on Dear Azami. I just wrote a twenty-page chapter explaining in detail how the Federal Reserve system works; I think I can handle this week’s Intet, the Dreamer deck. (Though explaining the Fed did make me lament that we can’t just write in ninja attacks . . . )

Starting with the base of the deck, the commander isn’t a firm strategic fit, but with only a few options for these colors, we can’t really expect to find the perfect commander for your concept. While Riku of the Two Reflections might work better with the spell-based aspects of the deck, this is really a land-based deck, turning the “typical” idea of ramp-ramp-big stuff on its ear since the point of the ramping is to fuel your kill cards. You want to throw them at people’s heads with Borborygmos and Seismic Assault, not cast twelve-drops or end with big sorceries as we see more commonly as the same old Commander decks degenerate into the same old ramp plan.

That basic core of your deck is solid, and mostly you just want to build to be better at it—maybe diversify your kill cards so you’re not always just pitching lands at your opponents’ heads and thus always trying to do the same stuff and vulnerable to opponents who try at least halfheartedly to stop you. There are benefits to be gained from taking a different angle at least sometimes, and we can do that without needing to violate the spirit of your plan. You like the way the deck works, so we’ll try to hone it rather than build it out much further.

We do want some more answers, but from my perspective it looks like what we really need is more card drawing. With almost 50% lands in the deck, your draw step can leave you with a lot of empty cardboard, so mana flooding is more likely for you to encounter and requires some additional deck manipulation so that you’re more likely to draw through any thick pockets of lands. We can do some of that within the land base itself, but it’s going to take some additional space among the rest of the deck as well to get to the right density that lets us manipulate the deck and play appropriately.

To get there we’re going to end up cutting a few lands. I find without a dedicated and obnoxious deck like Azusa, Lost but Seeking tends to become there are real diminishing returns to adding quite as many as you have here. I start with 35-27 as the base for common builds that don’t require a different number, and while your build is playing more for a specific reason that furthers the deck’s overall strategy, I want to cut the number down to 44. That’s still four lands out of your first nine cards and a solid density when you start using Oracle of Mul-Daya and Future Sight to play free lands every turn as you draw through your deck.

Beginning at the beginning, let’s restructure the mana base:

OUT: Tectonic Edge, Transguild Promenade, Halimar Depths, 1x Mountain, 2x Island, 2x Forest

IN:

Temple of Mystery, Temple of Abandon – Halimar Depths’ ability to manipulate the top three cards is okay with your commander out or a Future Sight effect, but I don’t like it quite so much without shuffle effects like fetch lands to clear the top of your deck. I much prefer scrying once with the option to put a bad card on bottom so that you get to the good stuff faster. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re dual lands in addition to fixing your draw a little.

Remote Isle, Slippery Karst, Smoldering Crater – Cycling lands are very high powered with Life from the Loam, and the experience drawing two of them instead of drawing one is very different as you actually start to get ahead on cards instead of just make land drops for free. Given that, adding the other three on-color cycling lands (sorry, Blasted Landscape—you’re not quite good enough this time) will both supercharge your most powerful effect and help moderate your draw step.

Scrying Sheets – We’re already focusing on manipulating the top of the deck as a subtheme, and I want to build that out a little bit further basically for free since we’re doing so in your mana base. For the minor cost of swapping the basics lands out for Snow basics, we get access to a bonus quasi-ramp, quasi-card draw effect that is quite potent. It compares surprisingly favorably to Thawing Glaciers, which is basically the best land possible for your deck already, so the switch is definitely worth it. You’re going to hit two times out of every nine just flipping blind, and with anything to set it up so that you have information (as your deck has a considerable chunk of) this can turn into a free extra land put directly in play each turn.

Mouth of Ronom – Going Snow also gives us access to a creature removal effect that counts as part of your mana base, which like Barbarian Ring you can recur turn after turn to work it harder. You noted you were light on creature-control effects in the deck, and this one’s a free addition.

We also have to swap your basics for Snow basics, so 4x Mountain, 7x Island, and 10x Forest become 4x Snow-Covered Mountain, 7x Snow-Covered Island, and 10x Snow-Covered Forest. Three slots have been opened up by reducing your land count from 47 to 44, and we’re going to add two of them back in as creatures when we get to the tail end of the deck. One will get added in the next section as we look at your noncreature spells next. I have no cuts to make from the artifacts, but we are going to cut ten cards from your base of spells as we streamline the deck to function most effectively.

OUT:

Firemind’s Foresight – This is a bit loose for a seven-mana spell; by the time we get to spending that kind of mana, I want a bit more out of it than drawing three specific cards in a fairly narrow band. It feels to me like this is mostly here to tutor up Lightning Storm, a counterspell, and a Mystical Tutor to get Life from the Loam. I think we can do better with the slot even if we have to spend more mana to do it. This is a little too narrow for my tastes and gets cut as we streamline here.

Crop Rotation – Without a card like Gaea’s Cradle or Cabal Coffers that is far, far better than any other land in your deck, I don’t really see this being worth the space. A Trinket Mage to get your Expedition Map would give you the same tutoring ability, as would Sylvan Scrying, without having to sacrifice a land to do it. As good as Glacial Chasm is at protecting you from attack, I don’t see this saving you in combat if anyone at all has a Strip Mine effect anywhere, so if the trick was to use this at instant speed instead I’d rather look at an actual Fog for consideration in its stead.

Training Grounds – You have only a few creatures this actually works with to reduce a cost on, and we can do better by having a card that is more tightly aligned with the working of the deck.

Blasphemous Act – While it’s true this will often cost just the one mana to have a sweeper-like effect, I would rather play a card that negotiates less and affects more in this slot. Starstorm is already doing a lot of work in this same space and has the benefit of being an instant, but having more instant-speed play is preferable to even big and cheap sorcery-speed stuff. A lot of things can go wrong between your untap steps; after all, not just one but three players go after you’ve passed the end of your turn, and big hasty problems have been known to appear pretty consistently in this format. I put a lot of weight on being accessible at instant speed so that the strategic option is retained, and that is worth considerably more to me than the discount you’ll expect to get on Blasphemous Act.

Decimate – This is cuter than it is effective. Yes, it gets four cards for the price of one and someone will always have a Top you can point this at without anyone caring, but not being able to kill a creature that needs to die because no one has an enchantment makes me just wish this were a more flexible card every time. It’s only a four-for-one if the cards you killed were any good; value just because it claims to be value only counts if you kill real cardboard.

Delay – As counters go, I think we can do better even without resorting to needing the second color of mana that would go with Counterspell or Mana Drain.

Krosan Grip – This is an excellent combo breaker, but the importance of that is directly related to how popular blue decks are in your area metagame and how many artifact- and/or enchantment-based combos you run into. The modern trend in printing high-power creatures has made it more likely that the combo piece you need to interact with is a creature card, so this has been dropping in importance for me lately; I find myself taking it out more and more often these days as I find myself facing down a Reveillark based combo or something obnoxious relying on Melira, Sylvok Outcast. As good as I remember this being a year ago, the tendency for it to not stop the problem has increased lately, so I’m cutting it for something a bit more flexible even if it is less final.

Overwhelming Intellect – This isn’t a counterspell in your deck; it’s a card-draw spell that needs to have a fancy target on the stack to work, and I’m going to cut out one of the hoops you have to jump through and just play a bigger card-draw spell in its stead. This is one of those cool-feeling plays, but it’s not an especially effective one—six is a lot to keep up waiting for the right condition to happen, and the more threatening commanders from the new set all have pretty low power. It feels like a bummer to have to use this on Jeleva being cast for the fifth time and overpay on your Exclude.

This is another “old favorite” I’ve grown despondent about in recent months because it works less and less frequently as envisioned after the most recent set of printings for Commander. And I find with it not working quite right as often as it used to I really start to resent the “noncreature” clause. You can at least Desertion that nasty Tooth and Nail that will otherwise have your number; Overwhelming Intellect just does nothing and is sad.

Rapid Hybridization – I am a strong advocate of cheap pinpoint removal. I’ve told people to add this card for exactly this reason lately, as having access to both this and Pongify gives blue the strong ability to kill a creature for cheap with no questions or negotiating. One-mana removal is huge in Commander because you can still do powerful things proactively on your turn with almost all your mana and have the ability to interact on an opponent’s turn very easily, so I am a huge fan of this card in theory.

It’s just that in practice the one-mana removal is best when you’re playing more removal overall. You need to have the core complement of sweepers and mass removal in place before the pinpoint removal is super valuable because of how cheap it is. With so few slots dedicated to removal, we really need to focus them on flexibility and broad application, so we’re going to tighten these slots up.

Turn // Burn – Getting cut for the same reason as Rapid Hybridization. Yes, this can be a two-for-one or kill pretty much any creature for five mana, but we can do more for less mana and really need flexible sweepers before the pinpoint removal starts to be valuable to us.

Adding back in, we are not going to make the first “very obvious” addition. While Scroll Rack fits the top of your deck-manipulation theme very strongly, like Halimar Depths it’s not quite as good without plentiful access to shuffle effects for free as you play your game normally. We’re not going to add it just because it can be good with Intet, as dropping Scroll Rack next to your commander will worsen the “realization” effect you’d already noted where opponents who have figured out the basic shape of your endgame decide you’re too dangerous to let live even if you are a fluffier bunny than they think you are.

Commander doesn’t really have “innocent until proven guilty” here; twitch reflexes do apply, and the table talk of “hey, guys, he’s winning” is a surprisingly valid argument when you’re playing free spells of your choice and sculpting the perfect hand. No one makes the mistake of leaving the guy with Scroll Rack and Future Sight in play, and in fact I start to think of that as the forbidden two-card combo you are aiming to avoid even though they themselves don’t actually kill anybody. Setting up a whole pile of free cards a turn by sculpting the top of your deck with Scroll Rack is just obnoxious and better not done.

IN:

Seer’s Sundial – Horn of Greed is a key way to supercharge your deck, and while Seer’s Sundial costs mana to use unlike Horn of Greed, you’re not allowed to play two copies. Literally anything that acts even close to the same way is going to be very good in your deck, and Seer’s Sundial is a strong card for your plan even if it won’t get immediate respect since it’s sort of a niche addition that people don’t see often. Niche though it may be, the niche it specializes in is the niche your deck inhabits, so it’s a strong addition to your overall plan of action.

Druidic Satchel – Druidic Satchel does basically everything I want to do in the game of Magic; I have a recurring fascination with the card. It helps clear lands off the top of your deck so you draw more spells, and when it isn’t giving you a free land every turn, it makes up for it by still giving you something worthwhile for your mana. Alongside a Future Sight effect or anything else that lets you know and manipulate what’s on top of your deck, it can help clear lands off the top so you keep playing spells.

It’s strong by itself at providing a free land turn after turn since almost 50% of your deck is lands, that same effect helps make sure you draw spells more often while you’re at it, and it strengthens your best cards considerably as well. Druidic Satchel is awesome alongside Future Sight effects, letting you keep playing more spells by clearing a land off the top when you’ve already played all of them that you’re allowed to for the turn.

Oblivion Stone – We need a bit more removal, and this wipes the board at instant speed even though as an artifact you have to play it at sorcery speed. It helps that it can also preferentially leave cards in play on your side of the board so it can be a sweeper with discretion instead of just a blunt object.

All Is Dust – Given that some of the most important permanents for you to keep in play are your Crucible and Horn of Greed in the first place, this also can show a bit of discretion as we use it to wipe the board. It also has the advantage of being really savvy at getting cards off the table; you can regenerate from many sweeper effects or be indestructible and avoid them entirely, but being chosen for sacrifice is much harder to work around. We needed more solid mass removal, and now we’ve added it even if we have to pay more for it than the cards we took out.

Exploration – You basically gave me permission to tell you to add this before, and as a preview of the creature section, Skyshroud Ranger will be cut because it’s not quite effective enough at what we want it to do. Exploration has the advantage of working with the cards that let you play off the top of your deck, so it’s more potent than the cards that are restricted to working only off lands actually in your hand. It’s a simple card with a simple effect but is the right card for the job you’re asking of other cards, so we’ve cut them and added it in their stead.

Arcane Denial – Our replacement counterspell of choice, Arcane Denial kills the spell dead unlike Delay, which can leave it hanging for three turns and potentially become a problem again since your deck doesn’t have the fastest kill mechanism by a longshot. I also much appreciate a cantrip when the time is right, and a counterspell that solves a problem but gives you a card back to work with is a considerable value as far as I am concerned.

Chaos Warp, Beast Within – Having added stronger sweepers, we do want solid pinpoint removal spells, and we want them to be as powerful and as flexible as possible while still being cheap. At three mana you have two cards that can basically remove any permanent from play—one leaves the same 3/3 you already accepted from Rapid Hybridization but can handle any non-exotic problem, while the other handles even some of the exotic problems (like indestructible permanents) and leaves a chance of something off the top of your opponent’s deck.

Even if it gives them something considerable, as a rule it’ll be something different you have to worry about and won’t be tapped and attacking you, so as far as problems go it could be worse. Whatever your trouble was, it’s solved now. Being able to hit noncreatures is important even though I do find more combos to be based around creatures these days.

Constant Mists – And the best way to answer creatures is to effectively ignore them. This is the card I imagine Crop Rotation wanted to be in your deck, setting up to keep a Glacial Chasm in play and your butt covered but without the need to keep a specific permanent in play around Strip Mines, Wastelands, Dust Bowls, Ghost Quarters, or Tectonic Edges that are common inclusions in opposing mana bases that could just blow you out.

Basically nothing interacts with Constant Mists—Skullcrack, Flaring Pain, and countermagic are your options—and you’re quite solid at getting enough lands into play that you just don’t care. That it happens to also cost two so you can transmute Muddle the Mixture for it just makes it all the more potent to include since you have multiple ways to tutor for it and put it to work. Your opponents who realize you’re up to no good and take you out before you’re ready? This manages them with no problem turn after turn.

Survival of the Fittest – It’s true you’re not really a creature deck, but when we’re discussing streamlining the deck so it works more consistently and building up the best strategic options, if you’re playing green and have creatures this is the kind of card you have to explain its absence rather than its addition. Adding this requires moving your creature base around a little bit, which I’m happy to do, but just being able to trade in a late-game Frontier Guide to draw Magus of the Future or whatever happens to be the right card for the moment makes it a solid addition even without a toolbox package. And innocent though it may seem, any creature being potentially a Groundskeeper is a pretty big deal for you with how the deck is built so far . . .

Spitting Image – You’re adept at putting lands into play and have a good number of cards designed to put them back in your hand after you’ve ramped into them. Spitting Image lets that pay off with board dominance—you can cash in the resource you’re most skilled in generating for copies of whatever the best creature in play is right now over and over again thanks to retrace. I’m a little surprised nothing with retrace was here already, so I’m pleased to get to rectify that shortcoming as we build your deck out further. It doesn’t hurt that in addition to being very powerful it’s also fluffy bunny fun that will keep everyone having a good time by keeping the game interesting; people will enjoy losing to this card dominating them in a way they wouldn’t normally to your Seismic Assault effects.

Moving on to the creature spells, we’re going to make three cuts and then fill in five slots since we’ve got two floating around unfilled still from paring down the mana base a little. I said I wanted some card drawing but haven’t finished providing it despite the strong additions in the artifact section—adding one creature that provides a solid chunk of card drawing would give us several cards that potentially gain access through Survival of the Fittest since you can also Muddle the Mixture for it and Mystical Tutor for Muddle the Mixture if the card you’re getting pays you back for the lost card advantage.

We’re at a pretty decent spot as far as where I wanted to be strategically: more cycling lands and scrying lands to keep the deck flowing, more cards that build an advantage by pulling lands off the top of your deck one way or the other, and if you get a Future Sight effect into play you’re very likely to keep it rolling thanks to how the deck is set up now. I still want another solid finisher, and having it be creature based but not “just” Borborygmos is important. If someone is hosing your graveyard so the Life from the Loam recursion doesn’t work or is hiding behind an Ivory Mask effect, you still want to be able to take them out. And a creature-based sweeper would be pretty sweet too, as other than Roil Elemental we’re kind of leaving “interacts with your opponent’s creatures” out entirely.

OUT:

Skyshroud Ranger – Being able to put a land into play from any zone with your land drop is just stronger than this ability, and with as many Oracle or Future Sight effects as you have going here that is going to consistently come up. I’m not even sure this is the creature version I’d want first—Budoka Gardener is compelling since while it is one mana more to cast it is also a huge threat machine when it flips.

Greenseeker – I think you mostly want this to discard lands and get something for free while you have Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam working, and I don’t think it does a very compelling job of it. We’re going to invade its space very shortly with a card that works well alongside those cards while netting card advantage, which is a serious bonus to add on.

Patron of the Moon – Of all the things you want to be doing once you’ve picked your lands up, putting them back into play wasn’t really on my radar. I guess this is good next to Meloku, letting you make more tokens by putting the lands back into play turn after turn, but “your deck” is good next to Meloku so I don’t think this is pulling its weight here.

IN:

Hermit Druid – Add one mana to your Greenseeker and give up the right to decide which basic land you’re getting and you can get rid of the “Spellshaper” part of the card too—Hermit Druid just does it, no discarding a card needed. With 21 basics this should only go about four cards deep each time it is used, and for each basic you flip over you should also flip a nonbasic that you could then play with Crucible or return to hand with Life from the Loam. And should you ever use Hermit Druid when you’ve drawn Praetor’s Council, well, let’s just say it is pretty disgusting and leave it at that. Hermit Druid can also mill you to that Life from the Loam instead of just work well alongside one; if you don’t already have the Loam but use this a few times, you’ll potentially flip Life from the Loam and get access to even more resources while you’re at it.

Genesis – The same of course is also true with flipping Genesis—when you’re milling yourself lightly for fun and profit, putting Genesis into your graveyard gives you recursion turn after turn and adds a new aspect to the deck. You can now just mill heedlessly and expect to get something worthwhile for your effort eventually, whether it’s being able to buy back spent creatures or potentially recurring lands without ever needing to actually draw the right spell to do so. This also turns your Survival of the Fittest from tutoring to card advantage, as you can set up Genesis for one additional mana the first time you use Survival and gain some grindy long-game advantage as you play your normal game.

Avenger of Zendikar – Yes, I know it ‘ boring and more than a little trite at this point. But you excel at putting lands into play in great quantity, which means a lot of Plant tokens that then become quite large before they attack. It doesn’t have to be the most interesting at its job; it just needs to do it well—and that it does. Considering that you’re not going to follow that up with Gaea’s Cradle or Craterhoof Behemoth, your Avenger will still be kind of quaint by comparison to the people who set up to abuse it. You are just trying to attack people for lethal honestly, not five hundred points at a time. You’re already poised to use it at a very high power level; I would say we need not shy away from it just because it has been done to death.

Myojin of Seeing Winds – So this was the huge card-drawing spell I was thinking of when I put Survival of the Fittest in; you’re quite good at getting fifteen or twenty lands into play, but you need something to pay you back once you’ve done that. Removing the Divinity counter and drawing a card for each one of those lands you’ve put into play on the pretty cheap is a serious level of card drawing, and with the build as we presently have it, you can potentially do it multiple times a game (not that this is really necessary; I’d like to think one “I draw twenty” is enough). This just hanging out alongside Borborygmos is a serious threat to anyone below Commander’s starting 40 life given you draw a land in four out of every nine cards.

Alexi, Zephyr Mage – Even a streamlined deck can do with a goofy addition or two, and Alexi is ours today. Spellshapers are something you are going to be quite good at activating on the cheap—you generate lands for nothing and turn them back into cards in your hand readily enough—and Alexi’s ability to offer serious board control once you untap with her is pretty astounding. Instead of unsummoning a little, Alexi basically overloads Cyclonic Rift turn after turn if you need her to, which gives you a potent additional board control tool that had otherwise been lacking. That it does so while you play a card even the most well-versed Commander player will have to read, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

Putting it all together, we get the following decklist:

Intet, the Dreamer

Sean McKeown

Test deck on 12-08-2013

Commander

Creatures (21)

• 1 Alexi, Zephyr Mage
• 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
• 1 Uyo, Silent Prophet
• 1 Hermit Druid
• 1 Myojin of Seeing Winds
• 1 Terravore
• 1 Genesis
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Yavimaya Elder
• 1 Groundskeeper
• 1 Soramaro, First to Dream
• 1 Intet, the Dreamer
• 1 Magus of the Future
• 1 Baloth Woodcrasher
• 1 Frontier Guide
• 1 Grazing Gladehart
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Roil Elemental
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Borborygmos Enraged

Planeswalkers (1)

• 1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

Lands (43)

• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 1 Slippery Karst
• 1 Remote Isle
• 1 Smoldering Crater
• 1 Barbarian Ring
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 4 Snow-Covered Mountain
• 7 Snow-Covered Island
• 10 Snow-Covered Forest
• 1 Glacial Chasm
• 1 Mountain Valley
• 1 Gruul Turf
• 1 Izzet Boilerworks
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Mouth of Ronom
• 1 Scrying Sheets
• 1 Tolaria West
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Temple of Abandon
• 1 Temple of Mystery

Spells (35)

• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Soothsaying
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Exploration
• 1 Horn of Greed
• 1 Regrowth
• 1 Burgeoning
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Seismic Assault
• 1 Starstorm
• 1 Future Sight
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Trade Routes
• 1 Sprouting Vines
• 1 Survival of the Fittest
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Muddle the Mixture
• 1 Perilous Forays
• 1 Lightning Storm
• 1 Rites of Flourishing
• 1 Spitting Image
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Quest for Pure Flame
• 1 Explore
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 All Is Dust
• 1 Realms Uncharted
• 1 Praetor's Counsel
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Druidic Satchel

And putting it all together, we have a pretty solidly streamlined deck—it has a clear plan and doesn’t overrely on things going exactly as it might like in order to work. While you do use your graveyard a fair bit over the course of a game since most of what you’re trying to pull out of your yard is “just” lands, you won’t be singled out for graveyard hate as much as a dedicated recursion strategy like Karador would be. Since you work out of multiple zones, you don’t even need your graveyard to play right; it just makes it much easier if yours is left alone. We’ve considerably built up your ability to defend yourself from random beatdown—you can turn your land ramping into late-game defense with Constant Mists, and we’re playing more and better sweepers now than we had been before and more powerful pinpoint removal as well.

We’ve also greatly streamlined how well you can churn for resources when you have a Future Sight effect in play thanks to working in more cards that interact with your top-of-the-deck subtheme. We did so without going broken on anyone—no Scroll Rack + Future Sight combo here basically winning the game by itself while your opponents yawn and watch—we just happen to be better at plucking lands off the top of your deck, so we’ll reveal more spells off the top more often and get to both build your mana up for cheap and play more gas over the course of a turn.

Admittedly, we’re potentially terrifying the opponents in a brand-new way; as much work as I’ve tried to put in so far to reform Hermit Druid’s image, people still expect Hermit Druid to be in a zero-basics deck, not a double digit-basics deck, so there will be a bit of challenging people’s conceptions of what is going on when they see it. And admittedly, killing people with Avenger of Zendikar is pretty boring at this point even if your deck is especially good at doing so, but when you’re playing a card like Perilous Forays, I can’t really resist the temptation to go a little bit crazy with that token generator on your behalf. I’d probably have cut it if I didn’t add the Avenger.

We’ve added more recursion as well so you’ll still have valid plays to make over the course of a long game instead of get punished for the fact that nearly half of your deck is made of lands; in a long game without considerable card drawing, you’re an underdog so we added a fair chunk more draw-manipulation cards to help draw spells and some high-powered card drawing while we’re at it. And thanks to Survival of the Fittest and the multiple ways you can find it, we have a mass multiplier effect where we’re now considerably more likely to draw the right creature for the job when we need it since you have not just every copy you started with but also Survival itself, Muddle the Mixture to find Survival, or Mystical Tutor to find Muddle the Mixture as well.

Where before you were relying on just drawing right, with one addition you’re now four times more likely to draw the right creature at the right time than you were before even though you’re not a very creature-based deck and certainly aren’t playing the array of answer cards that normally serve alongside Survival of the Fittest as its usual toolbox.

It should still have all the charms that you appreciated it for in the first place but will be better able to hold up to stiff competition in a long game and can even strategically dominate a more typically combat-oriented deck by locking down the battlefield in a tactical fog and going over the top with Seismic Assault type effects one player at a time.

And the “engine” cards that lie at the heart of your basic plan to generate resources and thrive in the middle stages of the game were filled out to the best of our ability, with another effective copy of Horn of Greed at your disposal, and you have the ability to turn all those land cards back into fresh cards in hand after the fact through a Survival of the Fittest, which serves to make that specific card—Myojin of Seeing Winds—four times more likely to appear over the course of a game than just adding one copy would imply. The deck has a functional plan and even uses Trade Routes better now than it did before—another solid creature with landfall goes a long way, as does adding Survival of the Fittest so that stimulating landfall is more valuable now than it was before.

We haven’t changed the speed of the deck—it’s still the slow-building ramp-based deck it was before. No quick combos got added, and we streamlined for efficiency and resilience, not speed. We have however greatly increased the chances that you’ll live long enough to reach that slow-building place of power against opponents presenting a variety of threat types thanks to greatly increasing the number of cards that interact with diverse types of permanents instead of only working within a narrow band.

As always, for participating in this week’s edition of Dear Azami, you will receive a $20 coupon to StarCityGames.com. I did unfortunately overshoot the $100 mark you gave me for what you expect would be reasonable to want to build into the deck; we’re at $150 assuming you have to pay for all of the Snow basics and $135 if you do not. Adding $15 just in basic lands is a bit of a weighty proposition, but I think gaining another land that functions as removal that can be recurred and another element that pulls lands off the top of your deck and puts them into play will be worth the expense to go Snow in this case.

Breaking it down by prices, we see the following for the cards considered for inclusion today:

And with this deck put to rest far better than we received it with a fairly light touch needed to get it there, I feel a sudden hankering to build up my old Animar deck again and stomp some faces very, very efficiently (but totally fairly—no infinite combos or two-card insta-kill tricks, just reduced prices on awesome creatures). There is something about the RUG color combination that is just so appealing even as you build one of them on such a very different axis than another. Those colors just feel right and play well together, and it’s always awesome to see old Draft decks (hi, Alexi + Groundskeeper!) show up a dozen years later in a new Commander build.

I think the only person who’d appreciate this more than me is Brian David-Marshall, who is known to love a Groundskeeper more than any other thing, but unfortunately he favors a straight-up Simic build and will never know the joy of Groundskeeping back the lands Borborygmos throws at the opponent’s face.

I’m going to keep trying to build in more hard strategic content in the coming weeks, and that may even culminate in a mailbag column of my own similar to Cass’ article from last week. So if there are any particular hard-strategy questions or comments that you aren’t seeing addressed anywhere in our willfully fluffy bunny Commander format, please feel free to direct them in the comments below, and I’ll continue digging into harder Commander strategy in upcoming weeks. I was ready to jump into it at full speed this week, but I feel like I only got about half as deep into it as I wanted to for my first week back from my brief stint away. Getting my feet back under me after National Novel Writing Month kicked my butt seems to have been harder than expected.

So let me know what’s on your mind, and I’ll be back in two weeks.

— Sean McKeown

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 Daniel’s Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck or Levi’s Avacyn, Angel of Hope 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!

Like what you’ve seen? Feel free to explore more of Dear Azami here! Be sure 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! Follow Cassidy on his Facebook page here or check out his Commander blog GeneralDamageControl.com!