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By: Leviathan, Mike Morales
May 05 2015 12:00pm
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So yeah, it's been a while...

I don't really want to pile on with Version 4, but playing multiplayer games are not a fun experience anymore.  But I could deal with all that if there were no other issues.  Unfortunately the biggest problem is that Version 4 does not save replays of multiplayer games.  If you watch the videos below I explain my process, but the short version is that I don't have time to record live videos.  Without replays, I can only record sparingly.

On top of my issues with v4, I've just been really busy with real life stuff.  Finally, out of all the legendary creatures that have come out during the past year there has only been one that has made me interested in building a deck.  I dunno if I'm bored, burnt out or whatever, but most of the creatures were just boring to me.  But this one card seemed fun and right in my wheelhouse so I searched a while for it.  I finally got a hold of one, had time to put together a deck and record some videos, and here we are!

Check out what I put together:

Titania, Protector of Argoth
A Commander Deck

Creatures
1 Acidic Slime
1 Ambush Commander
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Bellowing Tanglewurm
1 Cartographer
1 Eternal Witness
1 Groundskeeper Lifeblood Hydra 
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Rampaging Baloths
1 Realm Seekers
Reclamation Sage 
1 Regal Force
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Squirrel Wrangler
Sylvan Safekeeper 
1 Tilling Treefolk
1 Yavimaya Elder
20 cards

Other Spells
[Artifacts]
1 Akroma's Memorial
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Druidic Satchel
1 Mana Crypt
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Seer's Sundial
1 Sol Ring
[Enchantments]
1 Burgeoning
1 Exploration
1 Greater Good
Lignify 
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
[Instants]
1 Beast Within
1 Constant Mists
1 Crop Rotation
1 Harrow
1 Nature's Claim
1 Realms Uncharted
1 Sudden Reclamation
[Planeswalkers]
1 Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Nissa, Worldwaker
[Sorceries]
1 Bramblecrush
1 Creeping Renaissance
1 Cultivate
1 Edge of Autumn
1 Explore
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Harmonize
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Life from the Loam
1 Natural Balance
1 Nature's Lore
1 Praetor's Counsel
1 Regrowth
1 Scapeshift
1 Shamanic Revelation
1 Sylvan Scrying
41 cards

Lands
1 Bant Panorama
1 Deserted Temple
1 Dust Bowl
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Jund Panorama
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Naya Panorama
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood 
1 Petrified Field
18 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Strip Mine
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Terminal Moraine
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Vesuva
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Yavimaya Hollow
38 cards

Sideboard
1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
1 cards
Rampaging Baloths

 

So I imagine it isn't all that interesting, and is actually pretty standard.  Titania is pretty straightforward bit I think I put a few of my own touches on her.

Deck Tech

First thing to know about this deck is that if you don't like Rampaging Baloths, you won't like this deck,  Basically your focus is going to be on ramping, picking up a bunch of fetch lands and recurring them, then smashing people with elementals.  If you're a guy who likes control decks this isn't a deck for you.

You main token maker is Titania, but that doesn't mean you can't have more.  Rampaging Baloths obviously makes an appearance, as does Avenger of Zendikar.  Getting all your tokens through defenses was an initial problem, but a combination of Akroma's Memorial, Bellowing Tanglewurm and the original Garruk's ultimate are all very helpful here.  I considered Champion of Lambholt, but she's only good before you get a mess of elementals, not after.

Being able to sacrifice lands at instant speed is helpful for defense, so I included everything from Sylvan Safekeeper to Constant Mists to Dust Bowl.  People were surprised I didn't include Zuran Orb, but honestly that card does not do enough to warrant inclusion.  If you wanted another free sacrifice outlet I would include Spitting Spider, because at least it would get rid of fliers.

zuran orb spitting spider
I think one of these is better than the other for this deck.  But still not good enough.

Aside from Safekeeper there are a couple of ways to get rid of a bunch of lands at once.  Scapeshift can go get you more fetch lands, while Natural Balance brings other ramp decks back under control.  Overlaid Terrain was a goofy option that you can play, but it just seemed too risky to me.  Unless you want to also run Concordant Crossroads as well, which I did not.

Since you're going to have a bunch of lands going to the graveyard, I figured some recursion would be helpful.  Aside from the standards such as Creeping Renaissance and Praetor's Counsel, Life from the Loam was an auto-include.  Sudden Reclamation was good due to being an Instant, but due to the low creature count you may not always get a creature.  Petrified Field was also extremely useful

The ramp is pretty unspectacular, but it does have a couple of cards that are helpful when Titania is out, such as Harrow and Crop Rotation, which almost always gets Gaea's Cradle.  There's not a whole lot to say about the card draw either.  Shamanic Revelation seemed like it would be pretty cool, but I never drew it.  Instead most of the time I would end up tutoring for Regal Force, he was pretty good for sure.

The land base actually provided a few problems.  I wanted as many fetch lands as I could fit, and I wanted at least 18 basics.  There were a couple of games where I was able to get all my basics out.  Therefore there wasn't room for many other specialty lands, but Strip Mine and Tectonic Edge, along with Gaea's Cradle all had to be in.  Even though I was running Loam I skipped all the cycling lands, but if there was a way to fit them in I would try to do so.  I had at least one game where they would have been helpful.

This isn't the most "competitive" deck.  Specifically, the removal suite is a little lacking.  While it does have Bramblecrush and Oblivion Stone, the deck lacks graveyard hate, creature kill, and protection from flying creatures.  Green does have answers to all of these, with Scavenging Ooze, Duplicant and all the anti-flying enchantments, but I found it was easier just to smash the people that were causing problems.  Even though I never faced a hard core control deck I assume something like that would give Titania a bunch of problems.

As it is, the deck did really well.  Let's see it in action!

Game 1

This is the second game that I played with the deck, and it did very well.  Admittedly the competition wasn't top tier, but there were 2 Child of Alara decks and those are always scary.  Plus I have no graveyard hate to deal with The Mimeoplasm.  However an early Mana Crypt helped me get out Titania quickly. Plus I was able to deal with Mimeo's Survival of the Fittest and one of the Children's Sterling Grove with Freyalise.  I was also able to Crop Rotation for Gaea's Cradle and continue drawing extra cards with Seer's Sundial.  When Mimeo used Hermit Druid to dump half of his deck into his graveyard, he became Public Enemy #1.  I cast Akroma's Memorial with 6 elementals in play, and Mimeo concedes.  The Child player with an enchantment theme is my next target, as the other Child player had mana issues, and I wipe them up.

Game 2

So in this game, the Krond player gets an early Ground Seal, which would have really screwed up my plans if the Ghost Council player hadn't used Serenity to get rid of it and slow down Darien and his mana artifacts.  Darien soon gets out his Commander as well as Catapult Master, which I don't like at all.  I get enough tokens on the table, along with Akroma's Memorial, to take out Darien, but he uses Angel's Grace to stay alive!

angel's grace
Pretty sweet for Darien decks.

So now he has 40 soldier tokens, but is only at 1 life.  Luckily Krond has Winds of Rath to blow up all creatures.  Despite a couple mis-clicks I am able to take out Darien shortly thereafter.  I cast Natural Order with Titania out in order to get a few more tokens, which makes Ghost Council concede.  Krond puts up a fight using his Commander to exile the Memorial, but I am able to generate too many tokens to quickly for him to stop me.

Game 3

So this is the first of 2 different 2HG games I played with RoyalAl, who is running Brago, King Eternal.  We are going up against Prossh and The Mimeoplasm, and Brago gets and early Jace, the Mind Sculptor to help him out.  I manage to ramp into a quick Titania, and am excited to cast my first Scapeshift with her out, getting a mess of elementals and fetch lands along with Gaea's Cradle, which also allows me to cast a large Realm Seekers.  Despite getting his Commander stolen through Treachery, Prossh manages to tutor for Damnation to stop my elemental horde, while also exiling my graveyard (that had Life from the Loam and a bunch of lands) with Bojuka Bog.  However with the amount of mana I have I'm able to recover quickly, getting Titania and another horde of elementals, while Brago gets out Sun Titan and Frost Titan.  The Mimeoplasm casts his Commander, but screws up somehow and doesn't exile any creatures from graveyards.  He quickly concedes, leaving his teammate out to get stomped.    

Game 4

In this 2HG game with RoyalAl, the Feldon player never really gets his mana going despite an early Sol Ring.  I get to ramping while Brago deals with Kemba's creatures with Parallax Wave, and deals with a problematic (Cathars' Crusde) by copying my Acidic Slime.  Kemba actually never gets any tokens made the whole game, which is rare for a Kemba deck.  I end up getting out Garruk Wildspeaker with Gaea's Cradle, a bunch of elemental tokens and Realm Seekers.  I also have Dust Bowl out to mess with their mana and make additional elementals.  It doesn't take much time before I use Garruk's ultimate to smash the other team.

So the deck did pretty well! I was happy with it.  Like I said if you wanted to make it more competitive you could add some more graveyard hate and ways to deal with individual creatures.  Another option is to run Living Lands type cards, making all your lands into dudes and use Titania's ability to deal with their deaths.  Of course, that idea is a little more risky.

Anyways I hope you guys enjoyed the vids.  Due to my schedule I'm not really sure when the next article will be, but hopefully it will be soon.  Until next time!

Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO
mrmorale32 at yahoo dot com
My Google+ page
My Facebook page

CONQUEROR & COMMANDER ARCHIVE

4 Comments

:) by Adam_the_Mentat at Tue, 05/05/2015 - 18:53
Adam_the_Mentat's picture
5

Always glad to see another Commander player embracing Argoth

I'm just super happy that by JXClaytor at Wed, 05/06/2015 - 06:30
JXClaytor's picture
5

I'm just super happy that Mike came back for an article. I had an empty spot in my heart waiting for him to come back! :D

Thanks man. Wish I could do by Leviathan at Wed, 05/06/2015 - 16:10
Leviathan's picture

Thanks man. Wish I could do more.

Great stuff. I definitely by olaw at Thu, 05/07/2015 - 05:34
olaw's picture
5

Great stuff. I definitely miss your articles.

I don't even play Commander but your articles always make me want to start. It's a shame that the new client has made things so difficult. Hopefully they will sort things out eventually.