Commander Deck Of The Week: D&D’s Doric, Nature’s Warden

Last week, I talked about my long history with Dungeons & Dragons, and how I snap-jumped at the opportunity to order the Secret Lair for the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.  The cards shipped out surprisingly quickly, and in the article, I shared the first deck I pulled together from the new legendary cards, built with the chonky Dragon Themberchaud as the commander. 

Commander Deck Of The Week: Secret Lair “Secret Card” Themberchaud!

But if you know me, you know I can’t resist a cool green card, so this week I want to share my second new deck, built around Doric, Nature’s Warden!

Forests and Overruns

Subtly, one of the best of the numerous abilities on this card is the enters-the-battlefield trigger. Searching your library for a Forest card and putting it on the battlefield tapped means you’ve paid for half the commander tax if someone removes Doric from the battlefield. If you have another land to play the next turn, you can just recast Doric and do it all over again, which makes Doric what I often call “relentless” and might mean that opponents will choose to point precious pinpoint removal spells towards other creatures and leave Doric alone.

Of course, what we really want to do is attack with Doric and pay the trigger cost to transform her into Doric, Owlbear Avenger!  Yes, she becomes a Bird Bear, which is an awesome creature type. A 6/6 with vigilance and trample is a formidable attacker, but the Owlbear’s triggered ability is eye-popping: other legendary creatures you control get +2/+2 and gain trample until end of turn.  This is basically most of an Overrun you get for just the transformation cost, assuming you’re running enough legendary creatures.

I was pretty sure I’d be able to fill out a lot of the deck with good to great green legendary creatures, and I’m happy to report that, yes, it’s quite easy to do!  In fact, while cutting the deck down to 100 cards, I even had to leave more than a few on the sidelines.

Here’s what I ended up pulling together:

Legendary Creatures

I’ve got a ton of legendary creatures here up and down the mana curve.  I even filled out the high end of the mana curve because my commander ramps and green’s got plenty of other ramp options. My heart smiles whenever I can legitimately run The Tarrasque in any deck, and I was thrilled to do it here. Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus is often going to be lethal with Doric out there, but keep in mind that Zopandrel triggers at the beginning of combat, before we’re able to transform into the Owlbear Avenger.

I was happy to slide Anara, Wolvid Familiar in the list, which will help Doric attack into an otherwise lethal battlefield. Saryth, the Viper’s Fang will give all your tapped attackers deathtouch, which combines quite nicely with Doric giving all your creatures trample: deathtouch means just one point of damage is considered lethal to each blocker, and all the remaining damage – including the +2/+2 from Doric – tramples through. Notably, Doric has vigilance and won’t benefit from the deathtouch, but I’m more than happy to accept hexproof for Doric from Saryth instead.

I was happy to throw in the sweet combo of Yedora, Grave Gardener and Multani, Yavimaya’s Avatar.  Whenever another creature dies, Yedora will bring it back to the battlefield facedown as a Forest.  When Multani, Yavimaya’s Avatar dies, you can use its ability from the graveyard to bring it back to your hand, returning two of those Forest creatures to your hand!

Shigeki, Jukai Visionary won’t let you bring back legendary cards from the graveyard for its channel ability, but being an early legendary creature seems worth being a bit powered down in this deck.

I played Vorinclex in the Magic Arena Early Access event for March of the Machine, and the card was impressive. Its front side was nice enough, with the triggered ability searching up two Forests to put in your hand, attached to a 6/6 body with trample and reach.  But if you get a chance to use the activated ability to transform into The Grand Evolution, things get wild!  Bring back the two best legendary creatures in the graveyard, distribute seven +1/+1 counters among any of your creatures that likely have trample with Doric, and then the final ability to give all your creatures the ability to fight, and then exile and bring back as Vorinclex?  This is everything you could possibly want in a green-heavy, creature-centric deck!

Legends Matter

Reki, the History of Kamigawa is all about being in a deck like this, drawing you a card whenever you cast a legendary spell.  A huge amount of my deck is filled with legendary creatures, and I have a few other legendary permanents that will draw an extra card too, such as one of my all-time favorite cards Blackblade Reforged, which is just going to be bonkers in this deck with tons of legends and trample.

Kolvori, God of Kinship’s activated ability is raw card advantage, since it will likely hit something each time, and it’s no slouch on the battlefield if you control at least two other legendary creatures.

Trample Enhancers

In addition to Saryth, I wanted a few other ways to give a creature deathtouch to combo with Doric’s trample.  Basilisk Collar gives it to one creature – and lifelink! – while Bow of Nylea gives it to all your attackers. Bow also offers a Swiss Army knife of abilities to suit a variety of situations.

Eater of Virtue is a legendary card for Reki, and if the creature it’s equipped to has trample or deathtouch – or both! – when it dies, you can exile it and bestow those abilities to the next wielder of the blade.

Card Draw

Green has a lot of great options for card advantage, and I’ve got a lot of them here to help refuel my hand with gas in the face of expected battlefield sweepers that will otherwise put a damper on my gameplan. Since Doric wants to attack early and often, Tome of Legends deserves its slot. I played Tribute to the World Tree in the Early Access event, and it was very impressive as a card draw engine, so I’m happy to slot it into any heavy green Commander deck.

I rarely play with tutor effects outside of lands, but I made room in the deck for Summoner’s Pact mainly to go find Reki if I’ve got a couple of cheap legendary cards in my hand and want to rebuild after a battlefield sweeper.

Removal

Putting so many legendary creatures in the deck made it tough to find room for enough removal spells, but luckily I was able to double-dip with Glissa Sunseeker to take down artifacts; Arashi, the Sky Asunder to take down flyers; and Kogla, the Titan Ape to fight and then start munching on enchantments and artifacts.

With Doric’s ability to pump creatures and give them trample, Ram Through’s “Fireball” mode is going to be fully unlocked for much of the game.

Interaction

Commander’s Plate will hopefully protect Doric from a lot of removal, and I’ve got Avoid Fate and Tamiyo’s Safekeeping as other ways to protect Doric or other important cards.  Legendary creatures Yeva, Nature’s Herald and Surrak, the Hunt Caller provide some nice resilience to battlefield sweepers by giving your creatures either flash with Yeva or haste with Surrak.

Mana Ramp

Lastly, more mana ramp!  Even though Doric provides mana ramp, Doric also sucks up two mana each turn you want to attack (which means almost every turn), so I still want to develop my mana with other cards. I get to double-dip with legendaries Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood and Rishkar, Peema Renegade!

The Deck

Okay, here is the full decklist:

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

What must-have cards might I have missed including here?  Will you be getting this Secret Lair, and if so, which of the cards will you be building Commander decks around?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews. 

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.