God I Love Eating Dirt
Land destruction…for card advantage? Outlaws of Thunder Junction's Desert Bloom Commander Precon puts a unique twist on land destruction, or maybe it would be more appropriate to call it land sacrificing with how the deck is played? Semantics aside, your lands will hit the graveyard, and you will be fairly happy with it. This precon cares about getting value from sending lands, especially deserts, into the graveyard, turning basic lands into utility lands!
This archetype of deck is by no means common, and as such upgrades for this deck aren’t at the top of market watchlists. But don't let that dissuade you, cheap doesn’t mean low impact. And with 31 swaps under $50, this precon can really hone in on some of its strengths. But with such a novel concept for a deck the commanders must also be unique in what they do, so let's look at the options the deck comes with.
Yuma, Proud Protector is the face commander of this precon and is also my personal choice for a deck where lands matter. Yuma Addresses my personal biggest gripe with a deck a large amount of lands: dead land draws. Yuma turns these lands into another draw, and even a 4/2 if the land happens to be a desert. The high mana cost may be off putting, but this deck has plenty of ramp, some of which put in double work in getting out your commander by pitching a land in the process. By late game you can use your abundance of mana, sacrifice tapped lands for a further discount, and then bring back the lands on a later turn with the heaps of recursion in the deck. This commander has in my opinion the most going on out of the three and the most consistent use of all of his abilities. With this in mind, it makes it easier to build not around the commander, but beside them. Yuma wants lands in play to sac, and deserts in your yard through any means necessary. The most practical way to go about this is by playing and sacrificing lands. If this is already the game plan, it only makes sense to lean into landfall triggers and ways to play more lands.
Another new printing for this deck is Kirri, Talented Sprout, touted as the secondary commander for this deck. I’ll be honest, the card is pretty neat, and some good support for plants and treefolk. However, for the purposes of this deck, I don’t see it making it out of the 99, or really even in this 99. The buff to plants and treefolk feels like it would fit better in a dedicated tribal deck, or at least following a commander that makes plants a bit more consistent than even Yuma. And while the recursion is good, we sometimes want lands in our graveyard, so the must trigger can hurt sometimes. It's a similar reason undergrowth recon didn’t make the cut either.
Last but not least, we have good Ol’ Hazezon, Shaper of Sand seeing his first reprint since his print debut in Dominaria United (No, original Hazezon Tamar, Reserve List cards get no reprints, back to the dungeon with you.) Hazezon’s abilities unfortunately just fall a bit short of being the pilot of the deck here. Desertwalk would take some setup to guarantee to take effect, better odds in draft than commander. And while he allows you to replay sacrificed deserts from the graveyard, he doesn't have a way to guarantee they get there. He fits a lot better in the 99 here as a way to replay lands and benefit from DesertFallTM.
Deserting the Desert
To make room for improvements, we must part ways with some of the original decklist:
First and foremost in a lands deck, let's talk lands. I cut 9 lands total from the list of 40, but put 6 back in (including an MDFC). 7 total basics were cut to make room; this led to Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds to be cut due to lack of basics, the double landfall just wasn’t alluring enough. Sunscorched Divide was dropped due to the deck being already heavily green favored, so a white/red land did not feel crucial to keep. Without going in depth on every individual choice, the cuts can be boiled down to cards that either got upgraded, felt too slow, didn’t have enough of an impact to want to keep, or felt too inconsistent in being useful.
Falling…
Starting off our additions are some creatures with solid landfall triggers.
Felidar Retreat and Rampaging Baloths both offer more creatures to fill your board, and Felidar beefs them up and lets them swing and block with vigilance. Emeria Shepherd provides some recursion for nonland permanents, because let's be honest, we have enough land recursion. Geode Rager might make some people angry, but it can also get the heat off our back with some good old fashioned infighting among your enemies (bonus points if you can trigger it 3 times).
…Down…
But we also need ways to cheat more lands into play.
Pir’s Whim can be used as a neat politicking trick to make some friends…or make some foes, ramping friends and setting foes back a permanent, the flexibility of ANY land card is not lost in this deck. The same goes for Crop Rotation, which puts a land in our yard and also fetches any land (this will be relevant in a bit). And while Spelunking does not let you tutor a land, it still lets you put another land down from your hand outside your government allotted land-per-turn. And while we aren't running caves, I’d be hard pressed to be upset with missing out on 5 life when now all my other lands come in untapped.
…an Ascending Escalator
Hey, if you can't cheat out your lands, sometimes you got to play them yourself.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking ups your land per turn limit to 3, a level 2 Druid Class takes it up to 4, Mina and Denn, Wildborn, brings the total up to 5! What will you do with all these available special game actions? Play from your graveyard? Use a bounceland 5 times a turn? Use landfall like it was never designed to be used? Druid Class at level 3 gives a solid lumbering landmass to beat face with as well, and Mina and Denn, Wildborn can bounce a land to make sure all that damage goes somewhere productive,
Lands to Consider
Now if lands matter so much in this deck, it only makes sense to upgrade some lands as well.
Starting off are a set of bounce lands to play for tempo or bounce themselves if we don't have enough lands in hand to maximize our increased lands per turn limit.
On top of the bounces we have Riftstone Portal, a land that wants to be in our graveyard to begin with and mana fixing our lands for green and white. (Shame that there isn't a full cycle of these lands). We also run Bala Ged Recovery as a recursion spell we can in turn recur by casting as a land from our graveyard through means like Ancient Greenwarden, and in turn bounce to our hand with any of our several land bounce mechanics.
Running it Back
Speaking of recursion, we want to make sure we have more ways to recur our lands and other cards, especially if we plan on sacrificing lands for card draw or the such.
Life from the Loam and Aftermath Analyst has the added bonus of putting more cards in the graveyard. Life from the Loam can also be used to strictly mill, as it is an “up to” value of lands to return. Worldsoul’s Rage doubles as a mana sink to deal tons of damage, or return tons of lands at the same time. Yedora, Grave Gardener is a unique form of recursion. Non-token creatures come back as forests; notably, they return from the graveyard, so they will in fact trigger landfall and enter the graveyard. Once again bouncing lands to get back nonland cards are applicable here just like Bala Ged Recovery.
Lands to the Slaughter
If we want lands to be sent to the graveyard, we might as well have them go out swinging.
Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor not only has landfall which can buff other creatures, but also lets you animate a land per combat with trample. You are likely either going to get some damage in, kill some creatures, or lose a land. None of which would really bother you. Wrenn and Realmbreaker on the other hand fixes mana colors, animates lands until your next turn, mills with a return policy, and if you can get off that -7 ultimate, gives you infinite recursion for the rest of the game, no strings attached. While not animating your lands, Zuran Orb is an instant speed sac outlet for lands, something that can be useful right before resolving a World Shaper death trigger to hit a magnitude 9 amount of landfall triggers.
Deed to the Property
All of these land synergy cards are great, but why does it matter unless you can get though the cards in the first place.
Augur of Autumn offers card advantage in the form of seeing the op of your deck, something which can be changed by searching your library in any number of ways. But the ability to play lands and sometimes creatures from the top almost makes it seem like you have an extra card in hand at all times. Wrenn and Seven offers card advantage in the form of adding lands to hand and other cards into the yard that may or may not be eligible to return later. You can 0 Wrenn to dump all your lands in hand onto the field, -3 him to put down a swinger or blocker, and the rare ultimate can put all those permanents milled from earlier back into your hand.
Bounce Lands (not to be Confused with Bouncelands)
You can only fit so many lands into a deck and still have an interactive deck. To supplement playing out of the graveyard, we also run a few cards that let you bounce your lands back to hand.
We take a look at Mina and Denn, Wildborn again, which was mentioned earlier, as well as Living Twister who can also discard a land for 2 damage, which may also create a 4/2 when our commander is out and we discard a desert.
Get Off my Property
This deck cares about lands and keeping our graveyard healthy and intact. So we need to make sure no one tresspasses on our property. Pesky static cards like Dauthi Voidwalker, Zo-Zu the Punisher, and Rest in Peace need to be removed, and graveyard hate activated abilities like Tormod’s Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, and Relic of Progenitus can be reacted to.
Generous Gift lets us remove the static effects; Blessed Respite lets you react to graveyard removal by shuffling into your deck, and it also doubles as a fog. Elixir of Immortality might seem excessive knowing we have a Perpetual Timepiece in the deck already, but the opportunity to re-use it makes it a great inclusion.
Infinite Value Engine
Last but farthest from least…
Kodama of the East Tree could have been mentioned with the cards that let you drop more lands, but that would be doing Kodama a disservice. Lands have a converted mana cost of 0, so its ability lets you put down an extra land when you put down any other permanent. Obviously you can drop other permanents with this ability as well if they fit the bill. But why is Kodama getting his own section? Well, that's because with the help of a land bouncing ability, he can go infinite with two cards included in the precon (and one we added.) Scute Swarm, Omnath, Locus of Rage, and Felidar Retreat create tokens, which, coincidentally has a CMC of. If you play a bounceland, you trigger Kodama, the landfall and the bounceland. You can order it so the first Kodama trigger is ignored, the land bounces, then a token is created. This token triggers Kodama, which lets you put down that bounceland we just returned… have the land bounce itself… resolve a landfall… make a token… repeat. Infinite tokens, infinite landfalls, infinite enter the battlefield triggers. Without a bounceland, you can replace it with an untapped green land and Living Twister. Tap the land, to bounce itself using Living Twister in response to the Kodama trigger so you have a land to drop. WIth cards like Spelunking a tapped green land can be used and with a Riftstone Portal in the yard any land can be used.
Our Mountain of Inclusions
Wrap Up
After taking out more than a few cards and making some upgrades with some clear intention, we now have a pretty solid grasp on our game plan. We want to ramp out early; guarantee our commander gets out and has lands to chew through. +land drop cards, ramp spells, a bit of mill and a heavier land to non land card ratio in hand can help this. Getting a boardstate down is our second priority. If we have lands and our commander, we can start making tokens and really start drawing into our value engines. As soon as we can reliably start hitting multiple or consistent land drops with a landfall engine on board is when this deck really starts making waves.
That is it for now folks. Be sure to check out our Magic the Gathering Collection