“What is truth, but a survivor’s story.”
Art:Huatli, the Sun's Heart
by Lius Lasahido
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Huatli is a bomb of a commander; this card is awesome; I love the gameplay, and I love the style of this deck. I normally am not a huge Selesnya guy, but I have been having so much fun with this deck, and this is another planeswalker that I will keep built past Juanary and just rule zero it into my games, this deck is not perfect, and certainly has weaknesses like Huatli having to be on the field for the deck to function, we have a ton of mana production so recasting Huatli with commander tax is something we are able to do for a majority of the game, high damage as early as turn three allows us to be quite strong as well. This deck is just so awesome and I am ecstatic to showcase this one today. Without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Huatli, the Sun's Heart Huge Toughness!
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Why Huatli, the Sun’s Heart?
Huatli has an absolutely huge role in our deck, and by that I mean they are our entire deck, without them the deck doesn’t function, and we need to keep them on the field as often as we can, without Huatli we deal very unremarkable damage and our chances to win drastically go down, Huatli is the turn three cast in pretty much every single game. Luckily, with how many cheap creatures we have, we are able to have a pretty decent turn-three when we cast Huatli. If we can ramp and get her out early with cards like Wild Growth
, she needs to be the first thing we cast, Huatli is the card we need on the field at all times, and without her, it’s extremely tough.
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:
Trelasarra, Moon Dancer
Record against Trelasarra, Moon Dancer 3-1
This is a favorable matchup for us; while they get super scary in the late-game, we can often kill them before they get to that point. Combine that with their inability to deal with our Huatli outside of combat, and this is a great matchup for us.
Boldwyr Intimidator
Record against Boldwyr Intimidator 4-0
This is a great matchup for our deck; it usually takes a few turns for this deck to get going, and they don’t have a hugely prevalent early game. Because of this, we can easily just swing through with our big toughness creatures and hit hard. They also don’t have a ton of great ways to get Huatli off of the board. This is a great matchup for our deck.
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 4-2
This is actually a great matchup for our deck, cards like Palace Guard
and Wall of Glare
really shine in this matchup but even outside of those this is a pretty good matchup for our deck, we can gain quite a bit of life off of Huatli so their drain and gain doesn’t really affect us that much and we are pretty good at blocking most of their tiny creatures. This matchup is shockingly favorable for us, I only say its shocking because Arabella is a very strong deck.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Hellhole Flailer
Record against Hellhole Flailer 0-4
Just a horrible matchup for our deck, this matchup is nearly unwinnable for us without a ton of help from our other opponents. Their commander is great at taking out Planeswalkers, and they have a ton of sources of non-combat damage that can be redirected to Huatli. This is a bad one for us.
Korozda Guildmage
Record against Korozda Guildmage 0-2
This is another matchup where Huatli struggles to stay on the board, because of this, it’s just a rough matchup in this matchup I often find us dealing a decent amount of damage early but once they get their engine and token production going, they often don’t even need to go to combat to kill us with cards like Falkenrath Noble
.
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Record against Gonti, Lord of Luxury 1-3
Very rough matchup for our deck, they have so much removal and steal a lot of our cards, Gonti seems like he’s always re-ETB’ing and stealing more and more of our stuff, if they stumble in the early-game, you can absolutely take advantage and just beat them down but that doesn’t always happen, a winnable but rough matchup.
Strategy Overview:
Establish your board early:
Since we can get Huatli out on turn three and sometimes earlier with a turn one Wild Growth having an early-game board ready is key to winning the game, with super cheap cards that can attack big like Yoked Ox
and Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
which are great ways to set the tone and get some damage in early.
Be mindful of combat situations:
Because we need to keep Huatli on the field for the gameplan to work often, leaving back some creatures for blockers is absolutely worth it, Hualti is probably already going to die a lot through the course of the game, so saving her early deaths until we have more mana is a key strategy for the deck.
Protect your best:
We have a ton of really valuable creatures in our deck, and using our protection to save them from the litany of single-target removal in the format is key to winning the game and keeping our board presence strong. We arent super heavy on protection so using it wisely and for only the best of the best is a great way to stay in the game.
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 have so many awesome early-game creatures, and overall, our cost of creatures is extremely low, being able to have cards like Giant Ox
, Armored Armadillo
or Grizzled Leotau
that allow you to attack super hard, super early. Speed truly is the name of the game in this deck, a strong turn-one play and a strong turn-two play can allow for a very nice combat on turn three. I love Citanul Woodreaders
within the deck. I very rarely play this when it’s not kicked; the card draw is super valuable, and with all of the big toughness creatures we already have, it doesn’t really matter to have another four toughness creature on the board. We don’t really have any late-game creatures pretty much all of the creatures in our deck are huge attackers with Huatli out anyways, we do have some ones that are bigger than the others, like Looming Altisaur
, which is one of our biggest attackers and a card our opponents never want to see. Palace Guard and Wall of Glare are two of the best defensive / blocking creatures that we have and poise us to be quite well-positioned against aggressive decks or decks that want to fill the board with creatures. While they often die in these combats, being able to block everything allows us to take very little damage and, when combined with Huatli’s ability, positions us very well. Last but certainly not least, I want to focus on Village Bell-Ringer
, one of the few cards in the deck that doesn’t have high toughness; this card is great and often a surprise to one of our opponents when we drop it. My favorite way to play Village-Bell Ringer is to swing out and then drop this when an opponent swings hard at us because they think we are vulnerable.
Instants:
Combat tricks in this deck just feel so good! Being able to use interesting and wacky cards like Bar the Door
and Solidarity
, attacking with a ton of our creatures and casting one or both of these and killing an opponent is a very satisfying win for the deck! We have quite a bit of removal for being in Selesnya like Generous Gift
and Crib Swap
while we certainly aren’t as removal heavy as many other decks in the format being able to take out our opponents biggest threats is a good option to have. Since there are so many removal-heavy decks in the format we have protection like Snakeskin Veil
and Tamiyo's Safekeeping
, which is great against the crazy amount of single-target removal within the format. I’m also a big fan of Dawn Charm
. Sometimes, after we swing out, our opponents can hit really hard in combat, so being able to protect ourselves is key to staying alive. Dawn charm is also technically a counterspell, which is a very cool thing for white to do. It does have to target you, the player, which can make it much more narrow in how well it works, but it is still a great option to have.
Sorceries:
Steadfastness
is such a cool card that I have never even seen before I built this deck, but this card is awesome! In this deck, it’s essentially two mana for +3/+3, which, with a decently full board, allows us to hit like a truck. I’ve always been a big fan of You Meet in a Tavern
, but in this deck, more often than not, we use it for the creature selection, card draw, and card selection is not an easy thing to do in Selesnya so this is a great card to have. Another thing that Selesnya struggles with is removing artifacts and enchantments, but luckily, we have Fragmentize
and Atraxa's Fall
. There are a ton of artifacts and enchantments throughout the format, and being able to interact with them can slow our opponents down quite a bit.
Artifacts:
Just like every card type in this deck, we have more and more toughness boosts for our creatures like Slagwurm Armor
and Accorder's Shield
/Cathar's Shield
all of these are really cheap and easy ways to increase our damage a ton. Beyond that our artifact isn’t very interesting besides our card draw. Selesnya has a pretty tough time drawing cards, so being able to use Spare Supplies
and Selesnya Locket
as sources of card draw allow us to refill our hand, because of the lower overall cost of our deck we can dump our hand pretty quickly.
Enchantments:
We have a ton of auras mostly used to make our creatures bigger and better like Lumithread Field
, Spidersilk Armor
, and Fortifying Provisions
all of these are cheap ways to increase your damage, Spidersilk is especially good because without it we really can’t block any flyers at all. We have some ramp like Abundant Growth
and Wild Growth, Wild Growth is especially good because if we play it on turn one, we can get a turn two Huatli which is a great way to start off the game and have our creatures be ready to be strong attackers. In testing, I also loved both Eland Umbra
and Hero's Resolve
, which are both cheap and provide huge damage boosts, allowing us to have crazy combat. When you play cards with big toughness like Giant Ox and put either one of these on there, it gets crazy, and you can kill an opponent in just a few turns.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Many of our creatures are extremely cheap, and we can amass a pretty huge board quite quickly.
- Our great blockers are also great attackers.
- Huatli allows us to gain a lot of life and positions us well against aggressive strategies.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Control matchups are horrible for us, we often cannot keep Huatli on the field.
- The deck shuts down without Huatli.
- Since we start so early we are often targeted early as well.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! This deck is truly so much fun to play, and this is definitely in the top three of the Planeswalkers we’ve covered so far, I’m not surprised of been a big fan of Doran, the Siege Tower
in regular EDH and this deck just feels exactly the same, I love hitting with big toughness swingers! Stay tuned and tap in!