Mina and Denn 1.0 — Toolbox Build (EDH / Commander)

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlackestMagic/permalink/2026828674303200

On TappedOut (with more accurate card versions): http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/mina-and-denn-10-toolbox-build

This fully foiled-out, tricked-out deck evolved (amazingly) from a slightly jokey Stonebrow, Krosan Hero list (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/20-09-14-stonebrow-krosan-hero), my first attempt at a consciously designed EDH deck. I'm posting it now for posterity, before I retire it in favor of a newer, more focused build. (Everything is foil if possible; everything is prerelease or promo if possible unless I truly prefer one of the set arts or the promo versions aren't foil; and the Taiga is FBB French because I like the umlaut lmao.)

I really love this type of shell that has the ability to go for a fast, explosive win at the Spike table—Tooth and Nail for Zealous Conscripts and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, or just Genesis Wave for 20+—but can also play a long, grindy game of engine-building and incremental value when you're just having fun with friends and want to experience fresh, wacky game states.

I had originally developed a "trample tribal" list around Stonebrow, and over time I gradually powered up the deck with all the best tutors, mana sources, and general enablers in RG, focusing especially on a Survival of the Fittest package—(Squee, Goblin Nabob, Anger, Genesis, Seedborn Muse, Yeva, Nature's Herald, Soul of New Phyrexia) and some spicy silver bullets (Riftsweeper, Loaming Shaman)—which comprised an engine that would allow me to basically cast any creature from my deck, graveyard, or even exile at any time. The "God" board state would be Survival, Sneak Attack, and Cloudstone Curio, allowing me to pretty much pay only RG (x2 or x3 if Riftsweeper and/or Loaming was needed) to ETB any creature from any zone, as many times as I could pay for—which can also produce infinite (or arbitrarily massive) mana with Krosan Restorer since getting Anger and Threshold are almost effortless.

From there, I concluded that this disgusting engine was being wasted on such a silly aggro general, so I searched Gatherer for generals that would serve better as enablers for this big-mana, tutor-engine, goodstuff-toolbox approach. Oath was pretty recent at the time, and lo and behold, Mina and Denn, Wildborn turned up as my clear option for an all-around Big Good Effects strategy, and I had always loved the idea of building a Turboland deck ever since I'd read about the old Extended Exploration + Horn of Greed decks as a teen. I populated the deck with Exploration effects, reoriented it around Landfall-ish triggers and Crucible of Worlds abuse, and was rewarded not long after with foil Horn of Greed and Burgeoning in CN2—followed later by Nissa, Vital Force, as well as the best new card the deck could have possibly received, Ramunap Excavator, a Crucible that can be fetched with basically any search effect I run.

There are some other cute interactions that I really enjoy, like the way Woodland Wanderer allows you to jump back and forth between different points in your Birthing Pod chain (and find anything from Eternal Witness to Reclamation Sage to Krosan Restorer to Loaming Shaman to Courser of Kruphix to Ramunap); the type-diversity on cheaply fetchable bodies like Dryad Arbor, Solemn Simulacrum, and Courser that makes it relatively easy to hit Delirium so that Burning Wish can become a Traverse the Ulvenwald for almost any card in the deck; or the general way that even a 10-card wishboard (technically the tournament-legal size) allows me to squeeze in a range of options that are fairly conditional but potentially game-altering, from the subtle Mogg Infestation to the supremely unsubtle Insurrection. When an answer isn't needed, Living Wish grabs Oracle of Mul Daya by default—which is a tough card to justify moving to the board, but doing ao enables me to get a Courser effect and/or an Exploration effect with pretty much any tutor I draw into.

Have fun finding the other wild interactions here. Some cards are shipping out the door, while others are being ported back over to the Stonebrow deck, which I've intentionally rebuilt as a more casual, lower power-level, less tutor-dense option for playgroups that hate super degenerate plays. In the meantime, I'm rebuilding this list into an even more all-in Turboland shell that's lower on creature count, aiming to just consistently generate cartoonish amounts of mana and draw triggers, and Spike games into the ground with one of a few closers that basically end any game they resolve in. Fun!