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I recently purchased the "Exit From Exile" preconstructed commander deck to play with a friend I met in Cuba who has never played commander. I purchased this deck so that I could have a lower powered deck to compete with his, and also because I think the commander of this deck, Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald, could be fun (but not overpowered) when upgraded.
Normally when building a deck, I start from scratch, but I think that making sequential improvements to the deck will allow me to practice a different kind of deckbuilding. My plan is to play several games with the deck essentially un-upgraded, except for swapping out some of the terrible land cards, and then make a few changes each week as I feel out how I feel about some of the cards. There are lots of cards I would never include in a deck normally, so it will be interesting to see if I am surprised by any of them. I'll also have to decide what kind of deck I want to make, with a commander as open-ended as this, I have lots of options available.
- Grumgully, the Generous
- Hornet Queen
- Return of the Wildspeaker
- Sakura-Tribe Elder
- Sweet-Gum Recluse
- Volcanic Torrent
I've really been enjoying playing this deck, and in the last week and a half I've been thinking more about how to specialize the list. Grumgully and Sweet-Gum Recluse are both powerful cards, but tracking tokens and counters at the same time is somewhat difficult, and I find that I am often able to overwhelm my opponents with sheer numbers, and so adding a few +1/+1 counters to my wolves is of questionable impact. I think if Sweet-Gum Recluse were reprinted with less-disgusting art I would consider adding it back in.
Hornet Queen adds powerful blocking capability to my deck, and fuels big Shamanic Revelations and Collective Unconsciouses, but I want to keep my deck's mana curve down as much as possible so I don't strand cards in exile because I can't afford to cast them. And my Commander makes enough tokens for my liking anyway.
Return of the Wildspeaker's more powerful mode rewards you for having a single high-power creature, which this deck lacks. Quantity-based card draw, like the aforementioned Shamanic Revelation and Collective Unconscious, are far more powerful in this deck. I also think I could find more powerful overrun effects as well.
Sakura-Tribe Elder is another piece of turn 2 ramp that doesn't help me get my commander out a turn faster, so it's cut.
Volcanic Torrent is too unpredictable. With an empty hand, it's not possible to guarantee that it will do enough damage to actually destroy many, if any, opposing creatures.
+ Chord of Calling
+ Deflecting Swat
+ Eternal Witness
+ Fires of Yavimaya
+ Rob the Archives
+ Slate of Ancestry
+ Veil of Summer
Finding myself frequently with an abundance of wolves, Chord of Calling's convoke ability should allow me to frequently pay less than market rate for a powerful creature from my deck.
As my friends have gotten more used to playing aginast Faldorn, she is becoming a removal magnet. Deflecting Swat and Veil of Summer can join Heroic Intervention in keeping her alive.
Valakut Exploration has been moderately powerful, and does give me a chance to use cards like Eternal Witness to get expensive cards back later in the game if I accidentally exiled them too early.
Fires of Yavimaya: Haste is good.
It's a kind of surprising mistake that I added Reckless Impulse before Rob the Archives, considering Rob the Archives has a much higher ceiling.
Slate of Ancestry combines perfectly with effects like Conspiracy Theorist and Containment Construct, as well as having a large board of 5+ creatures frequently. As luck would have it, I have both. I forsee this being a very powerful card draw engine.
I ended up cutting every single card on the sus cards list (except the planeswalkers, so far) but I also cut four land cards to bring the number of lands in the deck down to my liking. I think the preconstructed decks have a lot of extra lands in them to prevent newer players from being discouraged by drawing hands that can't play their big expensive cards, and precon decks have a lot of expensive cards in them. So by cutting a lot of the top end of my mana curve, I can afford to bring down the number of lands as well.
- Forest x2
- Mountain x2
- Embereth Shieldbreaker
- Explore
- Lovestruck Beast
- Managorger Hydra
- Cultivate
- Kodama's Reach
- Izzet Chemister
- Terramorph
- Sarevok's Tomb
- Bloodbraid Elf
- Arasta of the Endless Web
- Durnan of the Yawning Portal
- Journey to the Lost City
- Ignite the Future
- Natural Reclamation
- Primeval Bounty
- Aurora Phoenix
- Dream Pillager
- Sandwurm Convergence
- Greater Gargadon
+ Birds of Paradise
+ Elvish Mystic
+ Fyndhorn Elves
This is pretty simple. Dropping one of these on turn one allows me to play my commander on turn two.
+ Chaos Warp
+ Heroic Intervention
+ Nature's Claim
In general, I felt the deck was lacking for cards to play that interact with my opponents somehow. Nature's Claim and Chaos Warp can stop important cards my opponents use to disrupt me, and Heroic Intervention can protect my offensive capabilities when someone plays a board wipe.
+ March of Reckless Joy
+ Conspiracy Theorist
+ Containment Construct
+ Reckless Impulse
+ Sylvan Library
+ Birgi, God of Storytelling//Harnfel, Horn of Bounty
+ Valakut Exploration
These are all cards to facilitate playing cards from exile that I feel are much better than some of the more expensive cards included in the deck. Conspiracy Theorist and Containment Construct could push the deck into a discard-focused role, which I am interested in testing out. Sylvan Library pulls double duty, allowing me to draw extra cards when I need to, and also to set up the top of my deck to make sure I always exile the right cards. I imagine I will play Harnfel over Birgi about 99% of the time, but her horn is incredibly powerful in this deck, especially with either of the aforementioned Conspiracy Theorist or Containment Construct. I'm not convinced that Valakut awakening is going to be a superstar, but I had one and wanted to try it out. Unlike outpost siege, it could potentially not trigger once I run out of lands to play, but it does synergize well with Wooded Foothills and Escape to the Wilds.
+ Circle of Dreams Druid
+ Collective Unconscious
+ Harvest Season
+ Shamanic Revelation
I've found myself amassing giant wolf armies very easily, so these cards are some payoffs for having lots of creatures.
+ Impact Tremors
+ Purphoros, God of the Forge
+ Witty Roastmaster
Pretty simple, when the wolves from my commander enter the battlefield, these cards give them an immediate payoff.
+ Anger
+ Goblin Anarchomancer
+ Regrowth
+ Worldly Tutor
Anger is a great card to discard to my commander, although not with Conspiracy Theorist or Containment Construct on the battlefield, giving my wolves haste is very powerful in a deck that wants to do a lot of attacking. Goblin Anarchomancer makes nearly every spell in my deck cost less, something that is important for getting key cards out of exile before I lose access to them. I have several high value creatures in the deck, and because the front side of Harnfel is a creature, I can find it with Worldly Tutor as well, so I anticipate this being a high value inclusion. Regrowth is kind of questionable, because I think my main problem will be stranding powerful cards in exile, not the graveyard, but it's a very good card so I'm fine to try it out.
That's it for the first round of cuts and additions, and I decided to do a little calculation to confirm that I was right to cut some lands.
Average Mana Value of cards being cut (excluding lands): 4.45
Average Mana Value of cards being cut (including lands): 3.70
Average Mana Value of cards being added: 2.54
The mana curve of my deck will be lowered significantly, and several of the inclusions are exclusively mana producing cards as well. I'm interested to see if it will still feel like I have too many lands, because I am playing more mana production in this deck than almost any of my other decks.
- Temple of Abandon
- Highland Forest
- Game Trail
- Temple of the False God
- Mossfire Valley
- Myriad Landscape
- Ash Barrens
- Blighted Woodland
This is pretty basic. I don't have to play with "enters the battlefield tapped" lands to know that they are bad. Mossfire Valley doesn't technically come into play tapped, but also can't be used to make a turn 1 play. Cards like Ash Barrens and Blighted Woodland can be replaced with a basic land easily, and I have no use for colourless mana. It should be illegal to include Temple of the False God in preconstructed decks, this card is really bad and there's probably a million new players who have been stuck on four or less lands and this useless thing in play.
+ Fabled Passage
+ Stomping Ground
+ Wooded Foothills
+ Rootbound Crag
+ Spire Garden
+ Forest
+ Mountain x2
This is also very straight forward. Unlike Game Trail, Rootbound Crag is very likely to come into play untapped if it's not in my opening hand and Stomping Ground always comes into play untapped if I need it. Wooded Foothills allows me to fetch my duals with basic land types (Cinder Glade and the aforementioned Stomping Ground), and Fabled Passage almost always fetches an untapped land when needed, or can find a tapped land when it doesn't matter. Even though I think the deck runs way too many lands, I added in the four extra basic lands to keep the deck as close to how I purchased it as possible.
I am also keeping a mental watchlist of cards that I anticipate cutting at some point for various reasons. Cards on this list are some combination of not good enough, not matching the deck theme, and/or not cards I enjoy playing with.
These are lands I would also not normally play with, but that I don't feel are never-includes like the ones I swapped out already. Kessig Wolf Run is really good in decks that like to make one creature really large and attack for damage, but this deck will be making tons of tiny wolves, so it seems like a weird inclusion. Castle Embereth is a much better ability in this deck. Raging Ravine is too slow for this format, lands with abilities like this are essentially only good as mana sinks in faster, one-on-one formats. Gruul Turf can be okay if you don't have a play the turn you put it down, but in general I try to play lands that enter the battlefield untapped.
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These cards all function to add to my mana production in various ways, but aside from explore, they cost more mana than my commander, which I generally try to avoid. Explore is a decent card, but I'd probably rather play Rampant Growth.
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These cards are all included to allow you to cast cards from exile, but I think these are all too slow and/or expensive for what they give you.
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These cards all simply cost too much mana. I want my cards to be low to the ground, so I can cast multiple from exile each turn to add to my wolf army. These cards would take an entire turn to play, and in most cases do not add that much power to my turn. Aurora Phoenix and Bloodbraid Elf could be decent if it were possible to build a deck focused around Cascade, but that isn't possible right now; there are simply not enough good Cascade cards.
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These cards have nothing to do with the deck's theme. Arasta ability to make a token army might synergize with any Overrun effects I have in the deck, but I would rather focus on making my commander make tokens, rather than rely on my opponents casting spells.
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Durnan has a very powerful ability, but it requires me to attack with a 3/3 with no other abilities. I imagine this being very difficult by the time turn five rolls around but we'll see.
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I hate planeswalkers. Although Vivien is amazing for this deck.
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I hate rolling dice.
I played about five or six games with the deck yesterday, and was equal parts surprised by how well the deck functioned but also not surprised that all of the cards I thought would be bad were indeed bad.
The deck churns out wolves way more consistently than I thought, and I played one game with an early Warstorm Surge (thanks to Mosswort Bridge) followed by a Passionate Archaeologist that allowed me to kill all my opponents creatures and deal lethal damage to one player in a single turn. Xenagos the Reveler was another stand-out card, it turns out having a Gaea's Cradle on a planeswalker's plus loyalty ability is really good. I activated his ultimate once and was disappointed however.
I didn't win a single game, of course, because the deck still has a ton of bad cards in it, and runs out of steam pretty quickly once you have to rebuild one or two times, but it performed surprisingly well. I would definitely recommend this deck to someone who is learning to play commander, it was fun as well as being decently powerful for the price point.
- Raging Ravine
- Gruul Turf
- Kessig Wolf Run
I should have saved myself the trouble and cut these in the first place. I did have one game where I ended up with a managorger hydra with more than 30 power, but it already has tramble so Kessig Wolf Run was pointless even in that scenario.
+ Rockfall Vale
+ Mountain
+ Forest
I forgot to add Rockfall Vale yesterday, and I'd rather have basic lands that come into play untapped and produced coloured mana. My feeling right now is that the deck is going to lean pretty heavily into wanting red mana, but we'll see how that pans out in the future.
All the cards on the original sus cards list remain, and there are four additions:
These cards are all too slow. Cultivate and Kodama's Reach are too slow to allow me to cast my commander on turn 2, Natural Reclamation is incredibly overcosted to allow for a large cascade range, but I'd rather have something guaranteed and cheap like Nature's Claim. Izzet Chemister takes at least a full turn cycle to cast one card, and is a removal magnet if there ever was anything good in my graveyard to exile. The one time I drew it, late into the game with lots of stuff in my graveyard, it was too slow to get anything out before the game ended.