For Christmas this year I've decided I want one of the 2015 Pre-constructed Commander decks.
Specifically, Swell The Host which is Commanded, primarily, by this guy:
Ezuri, Claw of Progress
If you want to see the full list you can check it out on the WOTC website here.
Before I take you through my thoughts and how I intend to customise the pre-con let's have a closer look at Ezui
He has a 4CMC casting cost which pretty favourable in my opinion and it both Blue and Green in colour.
I have never played or tried to construct a Blue/Green commander deck which is why this particular deck is the one I went for. Should prove fun to build and mean I have an excuse to buy plenty of singles.
Aside from being Mythic, Ezuri is also an Elf and a Warrior both of which have strong tribal themes.
Whenever I think of Elf Warriors I always think of cards like Bramblewood Paragon and Imperious Perfect
So there is plenty of scope to go tribal with Ezuri should you wish. However, I chose not to go down this route as you'll see.
What exactly does Ezuri do? So Commander 2015 introduced Experience counters. As there is no way to remove Experience counters, short of restarting the game, the number of counters you have will increase over time making the ability more powerful as the game progresses.
In Ezuri's case, it's important to note that he cannot place +1/+1 counters on himself. Also his ability triggers at the start of the combat phase.
So if you lay a 2/2 in your first main phase you'll gain an experience counter then at the beginning of the combat phase you can place a +1/+1 counter on that creature.
Finally, Ezuri is a 3/3 which is a reasonable body for his casting cost. He isn't going to set the world alight but then he is really only there to generate +1/+1 counters for us.
My first thoughts when looking at this card centred around a Voltron-esque deck. That is a deck where one creature is made to be very large via a combination of equipment, enchantments and counters. This creature is usually the commander but in this case, Ezuri can't pump himself.
I also wasn't going to go for huge amounts of equipment. What I first focused on was the. new to Commander 2015, keyword: Myriad
What does Myriad do?
Whenever it attacks, for each opponent other than the defending player, you may put a token that's a copy of that creature onto the battlefield tapped and attacking that player or a planeswalker he or she controls. Exile the tokens at end of combat.
So these are the three cards with Myriad. Blade of Selves, which is not part of the preconstructed deck, is the most interesting here as it's reasonably easy to equip it to a Hexproof, Unblockable creature and cause havoc with your opponents.
Keep in mind that Equipment and Enchantment bonuses and the like are not copied by the tokens so Myriad is of limited use when you start pumping your target creature.
Also in testing I found Caller of the Pack to be too expensive to cast. There were always other things I wanted to be doing. At the moment I'm keeping Broodbirth Viper but it would be better for the deck if it only had 2 power.
So Myriad is interesting but limited in its usefulness.
Whenever I play a Green deck that features +1/+1 counters there are certain cards that are auto-includes these are:
Doubling Season has the added benefit of doubling your counters and tokens if you choose to make any.
Hardened Scales while not as powerful as the other two is still useful enough thank you very much.
Primal Vigor is great but, it works for everyone playing so if you're playing against a token deck be wary of playing it.
One of the "best" cards to use with +1/+1 counters is Corpsejack Menace. Unfortunately for us, the Black in his casting cost puts him out of our reach. However, there are plenty of creatures within our colour range that do cool things with +1/+1 counters. One in particular stands out.
While we may not have access to Corpsejack we do have access to another card that is just as useful.
Vorel of the Hull Clade.
Note he isn't able to double Experience counters. However, he does double any +1/+1 counters we've already placed on a particular creature. He also triggers Ezuri to give us an extra Experience counter when he comes into play.
Before I continue I'd like to talk about regular expressions and searching on the Gatherer. If you search for "+1/+1 counter" in the Gatherer you'll quickly find it doesn't work. This is because the characters + and / do other things in the search field. To get around this you have to use a regular expression. Without going into huge detail what you use is this:
m/\+1\/\+1/
Knowing this can be extremely useful when searching for cards. If you click on this link you can see the results of my search for Blue or Green creatures that reference +1/+1 counters.
The first card that caught my attention was Algae Gharial.
The problem with Algae Gharial is that it had Shroud. This means I cannot target it with Ezuri. This then flagged up the fact I needed Hexproof but not Shroud.
Sometimes it's more useful to know what not to include that what you want to include.
The next creature I spotted on the list was Bloodspore Thrinax.
Just look at what he does. He is a 2/2 if you do not devour any creatures which would gain me an experience counter. You could then use Ezuri to place +1/+1 counters onto him.
The problem is that he then pumps other creatures as they enter the battlefield. This would negate Ezuri meaning you would never get another experience counter.
The question then to ask is: Does Bloodspore give more then Ezuri. The answer is yes and no because it's situational.
As I scroll down the list I dismiss quite a lot of what is returned and then stumble upon Bred for the Hunt.
This is perfect for my strategy of using unblockable creatures. It also very nicely gives me change to talk about card draw in this deck.
As you may know, if you've read previous articles on this blog, I'm a big advocate for increasing your draw capabilities without letting your opponents draw more cards.
Ohran Viper is great because nothing says get out of my way like Deathtouch. Although the card doesn't use that keyword the effect of its ability is still the same. Unblocked he gets to draw us a card. And he triggers Ezuri.
Zameck Guildmage can make use of the large number of +1/+1 counters we hope to have available by letting us remove one to draw a card. What's better is that it's reusable.
Kiora, the Crashing Wave's -1 ability very simply lets us draw a card.
Fathom Mage is probably the best draw tech we have in the deck. For every +1/+1 counter placed on the mage, we get to draw a card. Provided Ezuri is in play that should be at least 1 extra card on the turn it comes into play at the very least.
Cold-Eyed Selkie has Islandwalk which is a limited form of evasion but usually, you'll play an opponent or two running islands. The cool thing about this Merfolk is that you get to draw as many cards as damage dealt by the card.
Bident of Thasa, this is a functional copy of the effect we get from Bred for the Hunt but it doesn't need a +1/+1 counter either.
Ontop of this you may recall Broodbirth Viper from earlier in the article where Myriad is married to a drawing a card.
What I don't have much of, compared to the original pre-con deck, is enter the battlefield draw effects. There is no Mulldrifter in my deck for example.
The next creature to catch my eye was the Elusive Krasis
Although the Evolve mechanic is nice to have in this deck and will more often than not result in +1/+1 counters being added to the Krasis, especially as he has 0 power. It's the fact that he is unblockable that catches my eye.
Whenever I think of +1/+1 counters and unblockable creatures I can't help but to think of Champion of Lambholt. It's a key card in my Tiny Leaders deck; Marath, Will of the Wild
Using Ezuri's ability to pump the Champion helps to make any and all of my creatures unblockable. Perfect tech for this deck.
Of course, the poster-child for this deck, the one creature that can't be blocked and has Hexproof is Invisible Stalker
Thasa, God of the Sea also gives us the ability to make one of our creatures unblockable. She also lets us Scry every turn which is never a bad thing. Kaseto, Orochi Archmage also provides the same function. Note that there's no restriction on whether you control the unblockable creature or not so the ability can be used for political gains. Kaseto will also trigger Ezuri whereas Thassa will not.
If you can't be unblockable the next best thing is to have some kind of evasion, like Flying or Trample.
These two offer huge bodies to start with and both have Trample and Hexproof. They may not trigger Ezuri but they start big, get bigger and can't be targeted by your opponents.
Both these creatures have Flying and Hexproof. It's likely your opponents will have flyers or be able to block flyers so this isn't as useful as Trample. However, they both still have Hexproof and you can always give them Trample later.
Silhana Ledgewalker is an interesting option you could choose to add to your deck. Although not a creature that has flying, this creature can only be blocked by flyers. This has ramifications if an opponent plays Hurricane type cards. Silhana will still give us options.
Of course, we don't need our creatures to have Hexproof as we can always give it to them.
Mask of Avacyn, Swiftfoot Boots and Champion's Helm are to be found in most Commander/EDH decks as they're used to protect your Commander. As we are playing Blue and Green I have also opted to include Alpha Authority, Shielding Plax and Elgaud Shieldmate.
If we can give a creature Hexproof then we can also give them Trample or Flying. Or we could go really mad...
...and play Akroma's Memorial.
There are other ways to protect our creatures Nylea and her Bow for example.
If they make any sense in your deck I think it's always a good idea to play whichever Gods you can and the Bow of Nylea gives our creatures Deathtouch. Have a look at the Archetypes or Bellowing Tanglewurm for some more examples.
As much as we try and protect our creatures Hexproof isn't going to stop a Wrath of the God style board wipe.
Luckily we are playing Blue and so have direct access to any number of counterspells. Here are the ones I've chosen to go with:
These are just my choices and you can play whichever counterspells you like but you need to ensure you have a good chance of holding one.
Another great way to protect your creatures is with a personal favourite of mine; Vigor.
It would be great if we could permanently make our creatures Indestructible. As far as I can tell this isn't possible, however, we do have access to an instant which is, I think, worthy of inclusion in the deck, should you wish to add it. It's called Inspiring Call.
That could turn out to be a handsome number of cards you get to draw when you play it.
There are a large number of cards you could choose to add to this deck and a lot of that boils down to personal choice.
Any number of Hyrdas might fit in the deck but Kalonian Hydra appears to be one of the best fits. Gyre Sage and Sage of Hours are alternative uses of +1/+1 counters.
Sage of Hours can help you win the game, after all, who doesn't like extra turns. If you have 5 experience counters on Ezuri or a way of doubling +1/+1 counters the Sage will let you take infinite turns.
Plaxcaster Frogling gives temporary Shroud this is useful but be wary of using on an enchanted or equipped creature.
In any EDH deck you have cards that move you towards your goal of winning the game but you also have to deal with what your opponents are doing.
I've already mentioned the use of Wrath of God type effects. This is common in EDH games. However, playing Blue/Green means the best versions of these cards, usually found in Black and White, are denied to us. Having said that we are not without options.
Curse of Swine exiles creatures and that should be taken seriously even if you do have to give your opponents 2/2 tokens.
Cyclonic Rift when cast using it's overload cost is an awesome way of wiping out your opponents board positions and giving you a free run at them.
Displacement wave is great for dealing with tokens, especially when you're not playing any. Tokens have a CMC of 0 so you can cast it for UU and destroy them all.
Setessan Tactics is a little more targeted but it does give you the chance to choose the match-ups between your creatures and your opponents when they fight.
Polukranos can wipe out large swathes of your opponents creatures although he does tend to die in the process.
As well as these more broad spells and along side our counterspells we could do with some nice spot removal.
I particularly like the idea of Venser and Acidic Slime as they both trigger Ezuri. Venser it should be noted is more of a tempo card but it does mess with cards that say they can not be countered.
When you're playing Green you also get the ability to destroy artifacts and enchantments with ease. These three let you do it and also get to trigger Ezuri.
It's probably about time I mentioned searching your library. Although I am strong advocate of making sure you have plenty of ways to draw extra cards I can't deny searching your library for cards is key when playing with a 100 card singleton deck.
Three of these are creatures that can help you search for other cards. The deck doesn't contain any creatures with a CMC of 1 so Yisan, the Wanderer Bard has to be used twice before it becomes effective but it's still a useful card. The Command cards are so useful I recommend you try your best to buy one of each of them (they are a cycle of 5 cards).
With the exception of using mana rocks (artifacts that produce mana like Sol Ring) that just about sums up how I would go about building this deck.
The precon version of this deck is designed to let you go in one of several different ways when you choose to change it up. One of those, that I have completely avoided, is token generation. If you chose to go down that route then you have some powerful cards to consider:
These are just some of the creatures I picked out. You also have other spells to consider.
Parrallel Lives and some of the creatures I've shown above, like Mycoloth, will give you so many triggers for Ezuri you'll find it hard to keep track of them.
I also like the idea of copying existing creatures as tokens.
I hope that gives you some food for thought and wish you a merry Christmas and a fun-filled, Magic playing, New Year.
Phil
