“I really thought I buried this place, but I should’ve know better.”
Art:Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter
by Anna Steinbauer
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
I have truly come to love this deck; at first and on paper, I had my doubts; as someone who has covered a vast majority of the +1/+1 counters commanders, I wasn’t sure how I felt about this deck. Well, after a ton of testing games, I was convinced and shown that my first impression was wrong; this deck is awesome! While it plays more like a traditional ramp deck, Jiang allows us to speed out huge Eldrazi and artifacts with ease and just take over the game. I have been having a blast with this deck, while it is different and a little non-traditional it is a really good time. Without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter Big Mana Counters!
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Why Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter?
Jiang is a huge part of our deck and a large reason why the deck can execute its gameplan so quickly. We absolutely don’t need them, but with so many small early-game creatures that can easily get or give counters, it turns our board into an absolute mana machine; with that mana, we can transition very quickly and nicely to our huge end-game creatures and fill up the board with some real-deal threats. In my testing, Jiang often died a lot, but since we have a lot of mana production, even without him, it was quite easy to get them back into action. Jiang is a wonderful and strong piece of support for the deck and should be kept on the field as often as we possibly can.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is Pauper EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, Pauper EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Savage Ventmaw
Record against Savage Ventmaw 3-0
Our early game and overall mana ramp allow us to win this matchup pretty easily. They have a decent amount of ramp, too, but nothing close to the mana production that we have; if we get ahead and begin to drop big creatures, there isn’t much they can do outside of hitting us with their commander. I like this matchup a lot.
Jasmine Boreal of the Seven
Record against Jasmine Boreal of the Seven 4-0
I love this matchup for our deck, this is a deck that is trying to do things similar to how we are in terms of dumping out creatures and being efficient in combat, while we don’t have a ton of ways to remove their commander outside of combat we just stick to our gameplan and do what we do best, ramp into huge creatures. When we drop something like a Rust Goliath
or Hand of Emrakul
, there just isn’t very much they can do against us. I like this matchup a lot.
Grumgully, the Generous
Record against Grumgully, the Generous 3-0
It’s pretty much a mirror match for our deck; this is another deck we just like to outmuscle; while they may build up a board with more creatures, they almost never have creatures as big as ours. This is a deck we typically just ramp hard against and then just run over; in testing, I had no problems taking over the board and outmuscling them.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Zada, Hedron Grinder
Record against Zada, Hedron Grinder 0-3
Zada is really fast and just too fast for us; while they don’t do a ton until the Zada turn, it can be really tough for us to defend that as, by that point, we are usually just getting to a good place, and that either gets wiped away or we just simply die at that point. Zada is a really rough matchup, if we have an amazing hand and can drop a huge Eldrazi like Ulamog's Crusher
very early we have a chance but that certainly is easier said than done.
Balmor, Battlemage Captain
Record against Balmor, Battlemage Captain 0-3
Balmor dishes out damage at an alarming rate! And that makes this matchup truly tough for us; combine amazing strengths in combat with a lot of bounce spells and counterspells, and there isn’t much we can do against them without help from our opponents. This matchup is really and I had no success against it in testing.
Mayhem Devil
Record against Mayhem Devil 0-5
I tried, I really tried to beat this deck but after five games I had no success, this deck is just set up and built to be very good against us, they have the edge in pretty much all ways, and they can easily ruin our board presence and kill our planeswalker in the early-game and have the removal in the late-game to destroy our huge creatures if we can even get there. Another horrendous matchup for the deck.
Strategy Overview:
Always Be Ramping:
We pretty much always want to be ramping. To do this, we keep hands with small creatures that give themselves or other creatures counters so we can cast bigger spells and use our speed to our advantage, and once we have that advantage, never let it go by dropping huge creatures onto the board.
Save that Protection:
We do have some protection spells in our deck, but overall, we are quite limited in what we can do against single-target removal; because of this, I typically treat everything that isn’t our huge creatures as nothing more than fodder; if they die, they die, and that’s a risk I’m willing to take! All jokes aside saving our protection for our end-game creatures is a strategy that worked really well for me while testing this deck.
None of the early creatures matter:
While we would obviously like to have all of our early-game creatures survive it just isn’t realistic, and once we start getting close to seven or eight mana where most of our big creatures reside it really doesn’t matter what happens to the creatures that helped us get there, Ill block with them, sacrifice them to cards like Fleshbag Marauder
anything to keep our big guys alive.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
We cant start this discussion without mentioning the lifeblood of our deck, which is our early-game creatures like Bond Beetle
, Dauntless Survivor
and Iron Apprentice
, these cards aren’t great at combat but what they shine in is when combined with Jiang, and we are able to have four or five mana on the third turn, this speed allows us to be uber aggressive and put a ton of pressure on our opponents, in just a couple more turns we can drop some of our huge creatures like Rust Goliath, Hand of Emrakul or Ulamog's Crusher which is a pretty crazy creature to have on turn four or five. Since we produce a ton of mana one of our coolest endgame creatures is Nyxborn Hydra
, which can get insanely out of hand, whether we Bestow it is typically reliant on if we already have a big creature, if I already have a Ulamog's Crusher out I typically bestow it. Bestowing it and getting the trample and reach is quite nice; the trample is definitely nicer than the reach, but hey, we will take it! There are a ton of different cases where Bestow is better than just casting it, but that is certainly very game-dependent. Beyond that synergy and our overall gameplan, we have so much utility and support for the overall +1/+1 strategy like Scrounging Bandar
, which is a great way to spread the love and interacts very well with our proliferation effects like from Pollenbright Druid
. We also have Duskshell Crawler
and Longshot Squad
, which are great ways to make our creatures hit like a tank and actually allow us to be able to deal with flying creatures! Now for some of my favorite cards in the deck, like Ivy Lane Denizen
,. This card is just straight-up awesome; it makes all of our cards bigger and works perfectly with Jiang.
Instants:
Protection and combat tricks, oh my! That is the main theme of our instant package and one of the best parts of our deck, whats the point of having huge creatures to drop without that? Big Play
is one of the few ways we can deal with a flying creature and being able to put this on one of our bigger creatures offensively is great as well, Green certainly isn’t known for its combat tricks so we can often catch our opponents by surprise with pretty much all of these. I have been a huge fan of Cosmic Hunger
since this card can target Planeswalkers, which, since they are legal for this month, are floating around the format like crazy; who ever knew that green Planeswalker removal at common! They almost never expect Snakeskin Veil
or Tamiyo's Safekeeping
which are both awesome ways to ensure our end-game creatures can survive and inflict absolute terror on our opponents.
Sorceries:
We have some great early-game ramp like the very popular Cultivate
and Kodama's Reach
, which are just great efficient ramp spells and help us get ahead quite a bit. I also love Scale the Heights
. This card really is the whole package for our deck: a +1/+1 counter, some ramp, and card draw for only three mana; if we could run like twenty copies of this card, we absolutely would. Beyond that, we have some really awesome cards at sorcery speed like Smell Fear
and Horrific Assault
, which are both effective removal spells for our deck, something that is decently uncommon within green. I’m also in love with Soul's Might
, which is an amazing way to end a game and perfect for a huge bomb-like Rust Goliath. Our sorcery package and spell package are quite small in this deck but provide a lot of options for us, often allowing us to catch our opponents by surprise.
Artifacts:
Our artifact package is pretty unremarkable but actually has a decent amount of ramp/card draw I especially like Letter of Acceptance
providing some ramp for the early turns and can easily be cashed in later for a card, card draw is quite valuable at any stage of the game but is great to have after we dump our hand which is why are also running Wedding Invitation
and Spare Supplies
. Artifacts don’t play a huge role in our deck but they provide a nice piece of support for the overall gameplan.
Enchantments:
Forced Adaptation
and Predatory Hunger
not only fulfill the requirement for our mana ramp, but they can both get out of hand as the game goes on, something like predatory hunger on an early-game creature can get ridiculously big and provide a nice threat to our opponents in just the first few turns. Speaking of the first few turns, we do have some nice mana ramp that helps with the overall gameplan, like Grafted Growth
and New Horizons
, which can help us get our mana to those higher numbers and more importantly the early-counters can help once Jiang comes out. Probably my favorite enchantment in this deck is Snake Umbra
. The buff doesn’t really matter to us, but this can be a consistent source of card draw for the deck, which is something we absolutely need for the deck, mono-green can be rough sometimes.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We can ramp really quickly, beyond traditional ramp like Elvish Mystic
. Pretty much all of our small creatures help us ramp if they have counters like Bond Beetle can act the same as most of our mana dorks. - Once we get our huge creatures out we are quite hard to stop, we have a few ways to protect them from removal and we are great at ramping our big creatures out early.
- Since we ramp so much we are able to slam huge creatures decently early, which can put a ton of pressure on our opponents and allow us to close out games quite early.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We are quite weak to removal-heavy decks, as it can be hard to build up enough of a board to follow the overall gameplan.
- We often take a lot of early damage from aggressive strategies, and while we do have an early-game board presence, we rarely want to block with them.
- We are in mono-green so drawing cards beyond our draw for turn can be tough, while we do have ways to do it, like Citanul Woodreaders and Spare Supplies, if we don’t draw them we can often feel slow and sluggish on those turns.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I really enjoy this list; while my initial impressions were that this was just a worse version of a +1/+1 counters deck, after a ton of testing, I realized that while it shares a lot of similarities, it actually plays much closer to a ramp deck, which makes this deck pretty strong and unique. I have been having a ton of fun with this deck, and I absolutely recommend this deck. Stay tuned and Tap IN!