I.  Introduction

We are going to do something a little different this column.  I was recently contacted by Silencer over on the EDH Forums, who noted that he was a fan of the series (thanks Silencer!) and that he had just played an epic game that he wanted to share.  He sent me a copy of his decklist, video of the replay, his notes about the game and some images to look over.  The game and deck were interesting enough that I decided to go ahead and write up a report.  I know I said that I wanted to avoid writing about color combinations that I had already done, but rules are made to be broken!

II.  The Deck:  Overflowing with Mana

First, let's look at Silencer's general:

Once flipped, Sasaya has a very potent ability.  If you manage to cast Sasaya on turn 4, then flip her on turn 5 while dropping a Forest each turn, that's 25 mana on turn 5!  36 mana on turn 6!  That's some crazy mana production right there.

Flipping Sasaya requires some unusual deckbuilding and mulliganing measures though.  In order to insure that you do get 7 lands in your hand, you basically need a lot of lands in your deck.  If you are only packing 40 lands, that's not nearly enough.  Also, since you want to make your mana by playing Forests, make sure that you don't go overboard with the non-basic lands.  I've seen these types of decks with up to 70 lands.  However, once flipped Sasaya becomes Sasaya's Essence, and the payoff is huge.  You can start generating stupid amounts of mana real quick.  Is the payoff worth it?  I say yes.  Let's take a look at the decklist:

Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant

A Commander Deck by Silencer

Creatures 1 Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant 1 Darksteel Colossus 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 1 Fa'adiyah Seer 1 Hermit Druid 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth 1 Krosan Tusker 1 Magus of the Library 1 Oracle of Mul Daya 1 Silklash Spider 1 Sundering Titan 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre 1 Wolfbriar Elemental 1 Yavimaya Elder 14 cards Other Spells 1 Armillary Sphere 1 Goblin Cannon 1 Oblivion Stone 1 Rings of Brighthearth 1 Sensei's Divining Top 1 Staff of Domination 1 Storm Cauldron 1 Teferi's Puzzle Box 1 Abundance 1 Sylvan Library 1 Constant Mists 1 Realms Uncharted 1 Rending Vines 1 Sprouting Vines 1 Ancient Stirrings 1 Break Asunder 1 Gelatinous Genesis 1 Journey of Discovery 1 Life from the Loam 1 Mulch 1 Tooth and Nail 21 cards

Lands 1 Bant Panorama 1 Bazaar of Baghdad 1 Blasted Landscape 1 Drifting Meadow 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Eye of Ugin 38 Forest 1 Ghost Quarter 1 Ghost Town 1 Grasslands 1 Island of Wak-Wak 1 Jund Panorama 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea 1 Mountain Valley 1 Naya Panorama 1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds 1 Petrified Field 1 Polluted Mire 1 Reliquary Tower 1 Remote Isle 1 Slippery Karst 1 Smoldering Crater 1 Tectonic Edge 1 Terrain Generator 1 Terramorphic Expanse 1 Thawing Glaciers 1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale 1 Tranquil Thicket 65 cards

It's strange to me to see such a short deck list.  And only 35 non-land cards.  Let's take a closer look at some of the cards:

Land Fillers

Storm Cauldron, Abundance, Sprouting Vines, Journey of Discovery, Life from the Loam, Armillary Sphere, Fa'adiyah Seer, Hermit Druid, Krosan Tusker:  So the thing about this deck is that you don't necessarily want to drop your lands directly in play.  You want them in your hand to flip Sasaya.  Each of these cards can put lands directly into your hand.  The All-Star here is Life from the Loam.  So many of your lands either cycle or sacrifice to find lands that there are usually a bunch of lands in your graveyard.  LftL automatically grabs 3 new lands in your hand, getting you that much closer to 7 lands in hand.  Storm Cauldron can easily get Sasaya to flip in the late game, and has the added ability to screw up control players.

Cyclers

Tranquil Thicket, Drifting Meadow, Polluted Mire, Remote Isle, Slippery Karst, Blasted Landscape, Smoldering Crater, Ancient Stirrings:  Hold on to these lands until you flip Sasaya, then cycle them to find threats.  Get them back again with  LftL.  Pretty simple stuff.  You obviously don't really ever want to play them, as they won't help you out once Sasaya is flipped, and most of them pretty much tap for colorless in your deck.  If you have Rings of Brighthearth out, each of these will draw you two cards instead of just one.  Ancient Stirrings acts essentially the same as a cycler, so it goes here.

Tutors

Eye of Ugin, Tooth and Nail, Realms Uncharted:  Once you get Sasaya flipped, you are going to have mana to start dropping some bombs.  Eye of Ugin and Tooth and Nail can both tutor up your Eldrazi and other big beaters.  There are plenty of different options in the deck for Realms Uncharted to look up that can help provide answers as well.   Silencer's basic tutor package is Eye of Ugin, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Petrified Field and Bazaar of Baghdad.  As for Tooth and Nail, according to Silencer he doesn't search up Emrakul unless he's playing against dedicated control decks.  Of course, if you play with this deck it's entirely up to you what to grab.

Finishers

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Gelatinous Genesis, Wolfbriar Elemental, Darksteel Colossus, Sundering Titan, Goblin Cannon:  Obviously these cards are how you win games.  The Eldrazi are all huge and difficult to deal with.  Gelatinous Genesis and Wolfbriar Elemental can spit out a metric ton of tokens.  One thing Silencer found out was that the limit to the amount of wolf tokens you can create is 50.  Goblin Cannon is a little used card that can take out at least one player.  Just remember to maintain priority when you activate it the first time.

Removal

Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre,  Break Asunder, Rending Vines, Sundering Titan:  Not a whole lot of removal in the deck, but the removal either comes with a big body or the ability to cycle.  Actually the deck plays more as an aggressive deck, meaning that it wants your opponents to deal with your threats, rather than the other way around.

Draw & Smoothing

Staff of Domination, Abundance, Sylvan Library, Teferi's Puzzle Box, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Magus of the library, Bazaar of Baghdad, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea:  Not a whole lot of straight card draw here, but all of this stuff is useful.  The Staff can fulfill a variety of functions with enough mana.  Abundance and Sylvan Library combine to draw 3 cards a turn.  Abundance also works well to make sure that you get enough lands to flip Sasaya, and if Sasaya is already flipped, will make sure that you draw some action instead.  Teferi's Puzzle Box is an interesting choice.  It can let you get rid of an all land hand for new cards, mess with control players, and is just plain fun.

Defense

Oblivion Stone, Constant Mists, Silklash Spider, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale:  So sometimes you are going to need to play defensively.  You can blow up the world with Oblivion Stone.  You can fog a bunch with Constant Mists, and since you play with so much land you should be able to keep it up a while.  Opposing flyers can sometimes be a problem, and Silklash Spider does a pretty good job against those.  And Tabernacle handles creature rushes pretty well.  The best part is, when one of your Eldrazi gets sent to the graveyard, you can reshuffle the cards that you've used back into your library and use them again!

Special mention should go to Rings of Brighthearth, as it works with just about every permanent in your deck.  You double your cycling, fetchlands, SDT, and more. 

So the gameplan with a decklist like this is to cast Sasaya early and flip her as fast as possible.  This requires aggressive mulligans.  If you have more than 2 non-land cards in hand, they need to be able to get you more lands, or cycle into more lands, or at least be draw spells in some way so that you can flip your Commander.  However, you obviously don't want to mulligan more than once, because it will be that much harder to get 7 lands in hand.  This is the rare deck where you want to keep a 7 land hand.  A good portion of the cards and lands can cycle, so after you flip Sasaya, you can start cycling and looking for threats.  Obviously you want to play your Forests, and keep your cycling lands in hand so you can get rid of them once Sasaya is flipped.  According to Silencer, you can flip Sasaya by turn 5 the majority of the time.  Once flipped, you can start casting massive threats on turn 6, and sometimes on turn 5, such as Eldrazi or Wolfbriar Elemental for a ton of tokens.

In the late game, you can have over 50 mana at a time or more.  With that much mana you can draw and cycle through a bunch of your deck to find your threats.  Since you are playing Eldrazi, every time they get destroyed you can shuffle your graveyard into your library, then cycle through your deck again to find your threats.  You are also able to rebuild quickly after Wrath effects

The deck seems pretty resilient.  Due to the high amount of cyclers and ways to fill your hands with lands, you can flip Sasaya more than once if it gets destroyed.  However, it's a little more complex than it looks.  The mulliganing decisions aren't going to be what you are used to, as well as some of the other in game decisions.  With a little practice, though, you can get the hang of it.  A couple of cards aren't in the deck due to Silencer's card availability, including better fetchlands, Dark Depths, Strip Mine, Wasteland, the Snow land package, and Undiscovered Paradise.

As far as weaknesses, the deck does rely on Sasaya a lot.  However, due to the amount of cycling and draw, many times it's possible to get Sasaya back if she has been tucked.  In addition, because the deck can start spitting out massive threats as early as turn 5, you are going to be target number one, and the rest of the players are going to gang up on you.  Obviously try and take out the control players first.

III.  The Game:  Fight!

This is actually a pretty epic game.  It seemed like someone always had an answer, and ended with someone calling their shot.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Since I'm not the one that was playing, the terminology is going to be a little bit different, but the format will be the same.  Let's take a look at the opponents:

This looks like a pretty controlling group.  Everyone is playing blue.  Merieke has the ability to steal your biggest threat, and if you only have one, Thrax can attack you and make you sacrifice.  Momir can tutor up answers as needed.  This should be interesting.  Sasaya wins the roll.  Here is his opening hand:

Sprouting Vines, Krosan Tusker, Hermit Druid, Rending Vines, 3 Forests

Not the best opener, but has the ability to get lands into hand.  Sasaya keeps.  For this game, S = Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant, T = Thraximundar, MrB = Merieke Ri Berit, and MV = Momir Vig, Simic Visionary.  Since I didn't play this game, it's not going to have every detail, but you should definitely get the gist of things.

Sprouting Vines, Krosan Tusker, Rending Vines, Constant Mists, Oblivion Stone, Tranquil Thicket, Bazaar of Baghdad,
Polluted Mire, 4 Forests

Very interesting.

Everyone's favorite Sphinx.

Useful planeswalkers.

Gotta love some recursion in Red.

Old school.  And can take out Emrakul.

Another way to deal with Emrakul.  Remember to come prepared.

IV.  Conclusion

Silencer told me that shortly after this game, he made a couple of changes to the deck.  He took out Goblin Cannon and three Forests for Eternal Witness, Deserted Temple, Diamond Valley and Horizon Canopy.  Witness gives some recursion and is one of the creatures he typically searches for with Tooth and Nail.  Deserted Temple helps with additional mana generation and tutoring with Eye of Ugin, and also provides an infinite mana combo with Rings of Brighthearth, a flipped Sasaya and 4 Forests.  Horizon Canopy is another cycler, and Diamond Valley helps against theft and preventing Sasaya being tucked.

There are a couple more cards that may be worth including, depending on how you want to run it.  Planar Portal is a good way to tutor up threats andanswers, and another answer card to consider is Terastodon.  Other large threats for the insect enthusiasts out there include Killer Bees and Unyaro Bees.  Athough they probably aren't as good as the Eldrazi, you can make them ridiculously huge.  Seek the Horizon and Gaea's Bounty are additional cards that can help you get to 7 in hand.  Weird Harvest has the possibility of tutoring your threats from your deck, and Mind's Eye can be additional card draw.

So there you go.  A good mono-green deck that seems like it can definitely hold it's own against control decks, and has the possibility of pushing out huge threats as early as turn 5.  There is a good amount of clicking going on when you are cycling through stuff and using LftL, but it's worth it.  Hope you guys enjoyed this look at an interesting deck.

Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO