Tiny monsters with many heads

I've been challenged to put together a Tiny Leaders deck by one of my close Commander playing mates.

Tiny Leaders? What's that I hope some of you reading this are asking (unless you all already know about Tiny Leaders in which case skip the next bit.)

Tiny Leaders is a cut down variation on Commander.  It's a 50 card singleton format with a CMC of 3 limit for any card, 25 life and no Commander damage. It also has it's own ban list.


So the first of my 50 cards has to be my Commander. Looking through my collection I found I had a few possible candidates, but not that many:

Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, Lyzolda, the Blood Witch, Grenzon, Dungeon Warden and Teysa, Orzhov Scion.

I knew I had a strong chance of facing Ezuri so he was off the list, Yisan I felt was too limited by the 3CMC constraint. Jaya Ballard I was sorely tempted by but I wanted to play more than one colour and it's doubtful I'd be playing against blue too often. Lyzolda was one of my early Commaders in the full size variant and the kinds of cards I like to play with her all have high CMCs.  Teysa and Grenzo I could both get to work, Grenzo in a Goblin tribal deck with a low spell to creature ratio. Teysa using a lot of X casting token spells could also be made to work. But, none of these cards, much to my despair, really set my imagination alight and made me want to build a deck there and then.

So I did some homework and decided on a style of play I wanted to use in the format and then set about looking for a commander that might fit and came up with two, Marath, Will of the Wild and Animar, Soul of Elements.

My plan, as you maybe able to tell, is to use cards that focus on +1/+1 counters to make some really rather large creatures as soon as possible.

What it boiled down to in the end was cost; Animar, in the UK, retails for £13+ while you can pick up Marath for just shy of £2. So if I was missing any cards and needed to purchase more Animar would put a much bigger dent in my budget.  

So my Tiny Leader of choice became Marath, Will of the Wild.

Let's have a closer look at him:

 So he meets the 3CMC limit and it means I will be playing with Red, Green and White spells.

 He is an Elemental Beast, aside from being the requisite Legendary Creature, but I don't think that's going to matter too much. I'm playing a sort of tribal deck but not in his sub-types.

The amount of mana you spent to cast Marath equal to its converted mana cost. However, you also include any additional costs imposed for casting your commander from the command zone. So his casting cost would 3, then 5, then 7 etc. With each subsequent cast seeing him grow in size as well.

 This is the part that makes him so good with the right cards in play. He gets to choose what to do with his counters; kill something, boost another creature or just outright spawn a new creature.  It's the first two I'm interested in. Killing my opponent's Commander and/or boosting my own creatures.

The idea is to cast Marath early, dish out his counters either way and let him die so you can get him back into play, bigger and meaner than he was before.

But it's key not to forget that he can also target players and so is a handy kill-shot to have on the board.

It's important to note though that Marath has 0 power and toughness. So he has to be cast, if he enters play from anywhere else, say the graveyard, he would have no counters placed on him. Therefore, unless an effect like Mirari's Wake kept him alive then he would go straight back to the graveyard.

With the plan to play with +1/+1 counters next up in the process is to check the Gatherer for cards that meet our 3 main criteria.

1. They are with in a RGW colour scheme.

2. They have a CMC of 3 or less

3. They involve +1/+1 counters in some way.

If you click on the link above it'll take you to the results of that search.  A quick word about regular expressions and searching on the Gatherer. If you search for "+1/+1 counter" 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, as you can see in my search terms on the Gatherer is; 

m/\+1\/\+1/ 

Knowing this can be extremely useful when searching for cards.

The first card I thought of and the first name on my team sheet, to use the sporting phrase, was Gyre Sage.

The Sage works so well with Marath. Firstly play this turn 2, play Marath turn 3, Gyre Sage evolves. Next turn dump all of the counters from Marath onto the Sage. You can then use the extra mana to get Marath back into play or more usually cast something a touch more menacing which I'll come to in a moment.

Looking at the Sage we can't help but note that Evolve is one of those mechanics that works so well with Marath. Because Marath himself is set to die and return bigger he is almost always guaranteed to trigger evolve. However, there aren't that many cards that use the keyword and those that do are a mix of Blue and Green. So in the end of the four, in addition to the Sage, I could pick I chose; Experiment One and Renegade Krasis

The Experiment because it's useful to play turn 1 and the Krasis as he works very well with certain other creatures in the deck.

There's also another creature that has a non-keyword ability that works like Evolve but is much better and she was also an automatic on my list; Champion of Lambholt

Keep in mind that she doesn't need to attack so if you use Marath to put +1/+1 counters on her when she comes into play her ability may already make your creatures unblockable.

Speaking of Evasion, the deck as I ended up constructing it has little by way of flying or other types of evasion so it was important to me to add a couple of cards that would give me something along these lines more than just the Champion. Step forward Mother of Runes and Tuskguard Captain

The Captain gives most of your creatures Trample as most of them will have +1/+1 counters on them and he is a great way to use up spare mana but note it's at sorcery speed.  Mother of Runes is so much more than just a way to make one of your creatures unblockable, she can stop them being killed, enchanted, stolen etc given how cheep she is it would be rude not to include her.

Next up we have the heavy hitters of the deck and, wait for it, they are all.....Hyrdas.....yes you probably saw it coming but what better creatures to play with when you're messing with +1/+1 counters than Hydras? My choices are; Apocalypse Hydra, Mistcutter Hydra, Primordial Hydra, Protean Hydra, Savageborn Hydra and Vastwood Hydra.

 

There are a couple of others I could have chosen but these are my six beauties. I'm Not sure they need any individual explanation but playing one of these and then shifting more +1/+1 counters on to them make them a very potent very quickly.

I do have one more X creature in my deck and that is the venerable Mikaeus, the Lunarch. You just have to look at what he does to realise how useful he is in the deck.

I should point out he is one of the cards I'm awaiting delivery of which is why he is not in the group of cards already in my collection.

There are five more creatures in the deck, they are there for their individual utility but I suspect people would chose other cards over mine. Dwarven Miner because I suspect non-basic lands will be highly prevalent in this environment but he is is not among this list. Viashino Heretic because I love the idea of recurring artifact destruction. Qasali Pridemage because you never know when either enchantment destruction and/or exalted might prove useful. Ulvenwald Tracker because there's nothing like fighting one of your oppponent's creatures with Marath and then killing another as you remove his +1/+1 counters - more bang for your buck!

Lastly Scavenging Ooze because it does a great job of messing with graveyard shenanigans and also you can use him on your own commander he also has synergy with the rest of the deck.

 

That's my creature selection, Here are the spells I chose to accompany them. First up Hardened Scales because, with a few exceptions, it just makes all of my creature plays better.

Next up are two curses Curse of Predation and Curse of Stalked Prey and you know what Hardened Scales makes them better too. Of the too the Green curse is the better as it adds a counter as you declare a creature is attacking but both are strong in this deck.

I'm also playing Ion Storm because it's never a bad thing to have a way to make alternative use of the +1/+1 counters you have amassing on your creatures.

For direct damage I'm playing three spells which I think speak for themselves; Red Sun's Zenith, Mizziam Mortars and Comet Storm.

 With the exception of lone Planeswalker the three other spells that I am player are; Green Sun's Zenith, Solidarity of Heroes and Shattering Pulse.

Like the Red Sun the Green Sun is shuffled back into your library given you a reasonable chance, in a deck of less than 41 cards, you start with 7 and you won't be casting the Zenith until at the earliest turn 2 and your Commander starts in the Command zone, of seeing it more than once in a match.
Keep in mind though it's rubbish at fetching Hydras use it for the Champion of Lmberholt or the Gyre Sage as they make the most sense especially with the Champion's double Green in it's cost.

Shattering Pulse is a reusable Shatter, what's not to like about that. However, if I do replace any card in the deck it will probably be this.

Solidarity of Heroes with a Hydra or two on the board, not to mention most of the other creatures in the deck is a game breaker. Horrible in your starting hand but sweet on turn 6 or 7.

Finally the lone ranger of the deck; Domri Rade

All his abilities are highly usable in this deck and if you get 7 loyalty points on him it's game over.

A quick word about lands. The lands you use have to work to your budget. By all means use the most expensive lands you can get but remember there are some useful cheaper alternatives. If you want to know the lands you can use for any Commander then check out Manabase crafter. I genuinely don't make land choices without consulting it first.

Keep in mind that this deck, as I have constructed it requires roughly 55% Green, 35% Red and 10% White mana.

If you can afford Fetches and Shocklands then fine but if you can't then consider Copperline Gorge and Razorverge Thicket. On turns 1,2 and 3 they are as good as original duals but after that not so good as they'll come into play tapped. However I expect Tiny Leaders to be a fairly fast format so these should hit the sweet spot in both gameplay and price terms.

 If you can't afford the 3 Hybrid Filters, like Fire-lit Thicket, that this deck would want then, if you can, just get the thicket.

If you can't get that then maybe consider Sungrass Prairie and Mossfire Valley these are especially useful if you are playing any utility lands like Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion that tap for colourless mana,

If you are playing lots of basics, and I suspect a high number of forests wouldn't be problematic. Apart from playing Fertilid to fetch them for you you may also wish to consider the Checking Taplands; Rootbound Crag and Sunpetal Grove, personally I would avoid playing Clifftop Retreat as it doesn't check for Forests.

So that's my thoughts on my first Tiny leader deck, once I've assembled it I'll let you know how I get on in a future blog post and give my reasons for any changes I might make to it.

Phil