Commander Deck Tech: Soul of Windgrace
For this week's article I was dead set on another Dominaria United Legendary Creature even though Warhammer 40k just came out. Since Warhammer 40k is a stand alone Commander product I decided to not cover the set. When going through all the different Legendary Creatures in Dominaria United I felt like most of the uncommons weren’t exciting enough to build a deck around. The best mono colored Legendary Creature I already have covered. So that left all the gold Rare and Mythic Creatures. Jodah seemed like it would be fun, but I’ve done several five color decks. I ended up Landing on a new reiteration of Lord Windgrace in Soul of Windgrace. The deck is based around acceleration, Landfall, and Land manipulation.
Looking at Soul of Windgrace we can see that he has an enter the battlefield trigger which lets you put a Land from your graveyard into play tapped. He also triggers this same ability when you go to attack with him. Then we have three mana activation abilities that all involve discarding Lands. We can discard a Land to: gain 3 life, draw a card, or give Windgrace himself indestructible until the end of turn and tap him.
Looking at the acceleration in the deck we are running nine cards that accelerate without many stipulations. These consist of: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Harrow, Kodama's Reach, Rampant Growth, Three Visits, Birds of Paradise, Ignoble Hierarch, and Lotus Cobra.
There are also several cards which allow you to play extra Lands during turns, but those have the stipulation of you having extra Lands in your hand or on top of your library. The cards that allow you to play extra Lands during your games are: Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Courser of Kruphix, Cultivator Colossus, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Oracle of Mul Daya, and The Gitrog Monster.
We also have several other spells which help you search for Lands to help the curve or to potentially start a damage or Landfall combo. Cards like Expedition Map and Realms Uncharted can help you get to Wasteland, Strip Mine, or Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage.
We also have an interesting interaction with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Dread Presence.
We can potentially just win with cards like Field of the Dead and playing Lands all game. But you can maybe combo off with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. Although Scapeshift is not in the list we have several other ways to get lots of Lands into play potentially bolting your opponents to death. We can also copy the Valakut and potentially have 3 of them in play at once.
We run a couple of tutors in Demonic Tutor and Dig Up with the cleave ability. You may end up using the Dig up to just grab a Land in some situations as well. There’s also a few pieces of spot removal as well as a Damnation to help keep your opponents Creatures at bay.
In the beginning I thought that this type of deck would not want anything to do with a Fog. However, going through cards to add I ran into this really interesting card which should be fantastic in this build.
A card which can and will lock opponents out to infinitely fogging. You have several ways to play extra Lands, and play Lands from your graveyard. We can cast Constant Mists and buy it back by sacrificing any Land. Then playing that Land from the graveyard or just playing 2+ Lands per turn. Another thing we can do with it is Fog to save other opponents. So if you were playing in a head hunter Commander game you could potentially keep all your opponents from dying to the other opponents ensuring that you can get all the kills and headhunter prizes.
As for winning most of the games, that should be done with our Creatures. We are running eight different Landfall Creatures or Creatures that trigger an ability when a Land comes into play. These consist of: Avenger of Zendikar, Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcer, Moraug, Fury of Akoum, Omnath, Locus of Rage, Rampaging Baloths, Scute Swarm, Tireless Provisioner, and Tireless Tracker. We also run Titania, Protector of Argoth and The Gitrog Monster which trigger abilities when a Land is put into your graveyard.
We also can't forgot Wrenn!
Both Wrenn and Six, and Wrenn and Seven help add to the overall theme of this deck and do it very well. Maybe in the future we will see some more Wrenn planeswalkers?
One other thing to keep in mind with this deck is the ability to infinitely destroy Lands within the mana base. I’d check with your group of players or your local community to make sure no one is going to get super upset if you lock them out with infinite Land destruction. There’s a bunch of different ways to do it in the deck but it's mainly Ramunap Excavator and Crucible of Worlds plus Strip Mine, Wasteland, or Ghost Quarter.
The biggest questions I had when designing this deck was the mana base. The mana base definitely would be a ton better with the three on-color dual Lands. I wanted to do this a little more budget friendly and decided to not put them in. However, if you don’t have a budget you should definitely be playing the OG dual Lands. After playtesting a bit some of the Lands may need to be switched out. I’m mainly worried about the several non-color Lands that just produce colorless. I did about 40 test hands and only 2 looked bad or like they needed to mulligan.
I hope this Soul of Windgrace build gives you some fantastic ideas on where to start with your own build!
Until Next Time,
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