Ele-Mental (EDH / Commander) [Revisão 95]

I love my WUBRG elemental tribal with Horde of Notions. This is probably my favorite deck I own.

The Vibe

Horde of Notions is at face value an elemental value pile. "Omnath Tribal" even, in it's brazen desire for maximum value. Interaction with other decks exist, but is relatively under-emphasized. It seeks to ramp like crazy and do very little for the first usually four or five turns before cranking things to ten.

Horde of Notions is not necessary to win. In fact there are times where the reanimator aspect of the deck is functionally obsoleted by more value-oriented pieces already on board. It does however provide great mid-to-late-game options. In the midgame it can push high-cmc creatures ahead of curve by casting from the graveyard, as well as provide a high level of inevitability to the more potent threats in-deck. Most pieces here are oriented somewhere on a spectrum of recursion to explosiveness with some exceptions. A high focus on mill allows for the occasional high-cmc, high-impact elemental to wind up conveniently in the graveyard for use later in the game. Alternatively, landfall / ramp can let the pilot cast those elementals from hand.

I personally opted to keep the deck relatively thematic, which means a couple of things: no non-elementals, low emphasis on artifacts, high emphasis on natural or primal concepts, and cascade (which I feel is a fundamental primal / elemental concept). For those more competitively inclined this might be a point of adjustment for altering the playstyle, but I prefer the deck to play less optimally and with some novelty.

The Mode of Operation

This deck seeks longer-form games. This deck will easily lose to fast or aggressive decks, as it usually cannot make much happen until turn 5 or 6. This means boardwipes are extremely valuable. It is worth destroying serious threats just as your opponents are spread the thinnest.

The first portion of the game is usually spent slowly ramping towards larger plays in the mid to late game. Useful early setup pieces like graveyard / draw engines are also worth getting out just as soon as ramp. There are slow fetch lands in the deck (I am not a rich person) with one faster dual land for those interested (stomping ground) that they can all get. Color fixing is a huge deal as Horde of Notions and it's reanimate ability require all colors of mana at once.

The Main Cast

Risen Reef is the star of the show. This is simply fact. A lot of creatures either depend on or are significantly enhanced with the presence of this 1/1 creature. It is ludicrous levels of value in a way that is hard to describe. Every elemental cantrips, including evoke. Landfall triggers are laughably easy, as you get them from just playing creatures. This guy does so much: if you aren't tutoring for this, it's probably because you can't.

Omnath, Locus of Rage is the big game-ender. Landfall: create an army is difficult to ignore, especially for opponents. The incidental lightning bolt from each elemental just seals the deal with this guy.

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild is another key player in the landfall side of the deck, but actually has a lot going for her beyond that. A lot of the conditions on effects specify nonland permanents, which is pretty funny when your opponent's cyclonic rift wipes only your opponents' board states. It also evades Yasharn, Implacable Earth's "sacrifice nonland permanents" clause as well, which is kind of neat for all two of the effects in the deck.

Maelstrom Wanderer is considerably different than a lot of the other creatures in this deck, in that it doesn't really care about sticking around on the board most of the time. It's haste enabling is great for ending games, but the most important part of it is definitely the whole "Cascade, Cascade" part. What is really interesting is that Horde of Notions explicitly casts creatures from the graveyard, which allows you to potentially get a lot of cascade triggers.

Yarok, the Desecrated and his pal Ancient Greenwarden both provide a similar function in-deck, which is to say pour gasoline on the fire of the most powerful aspects of this deck. Landfall triggers are the essential part of most all of the big finishers, and so doubling them is just more finisher. Yarok has the bonus ability of doubling creature ETBs, but Mr. Greenwarden can also actually accomplish this if your creatures happen to also be lands...

Roil Elemental is the very alternative finisher this deck can deploy. Unlike Omnath, Locus of Rage, this creature seeks to create an army out of your opponents creatures. This is quite useful when your opponent has bigger, scarier creatures than you do. This guy is surprisingly capable of really swinging those longer games in your favor, especially if your opponents have only a couple large deterrent creatures.

Omnath, Locus of Creation is ultimately just a super-value-piece. Getting WURG for two landfalls in a turn is incredibly powerful, gaining life with good consistency is really good for stabilizing slow / aggressive games, 4 damage to opponents is admittedly somewhat underwhelming but can be very decent at times. This guy feels great to have on-curve, and enables a lot of explosive turns.

Yasharn, Implacable Earth is not actually a game-ender or a value piece like the rest of the team. He is a pure hate boar (hah) intended to slow down or stop your opponents game plan. We don't rely on paying life or sacrificing many nonland permanents, and so are able to largely play without him impacting much. His ability to keep other players honest can really matter sometimes.

Titania, Nature's Force is a creature I do not yet have experience with. I re-added Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth specifically to help her get more forest landfall, but I imagine she can be quite powerful in the deck, acting as a more conditional version of Omnath, Locus of Rage. She also feeds the reanimator theme whenever elementals die, which is a neat synergy. Genuinely unsure how powerful she is right now.

Other Relevant Permanents / Spells

Awakening kicks ass. It may untap absolutely evertyhing, but when you can cast elementals from your graveyard each turn it somehow doesn't make you feel so bad.

Song of Creation is cool and probably not actually as strong as I feel like it is. You can draw a ton of cards on a good turn, but having to discard hand on end step is a bit of a bummer. Luckily you can cast a lot of your creatures from the graveyard to get the card train started again, so it is a relatively safe thing to just play out.

Jarad's Orders really does only one thing: gets Risen Reef to Hand, Omnath, Locus of Rage to graveyard. Also consider Maelstrom Wanderer to grave, if cascade is on the menu.

Warstorm Surge is really powerful since we are tending towards abusing Omnath Locus of Rage in this deck. Incidentally, a lot of our other creatures are also really big, which is a nice touch.

--

Winning

After we play out half the lands in our deck the courteous thing to do would be to end the game afterwards. There are plenty of ways to do so, and I wanted to outline a couple of ways to win that are entirely in-deck:

Omnath, Locus of Rage + Risen Reef: The go-to combo of this deck is continual landfall that creates a massive army to swing at people. This will usually play out all the lands in your deck with Yarok, the Desecrated or Ancient Greenwarden, which is a cool thing to do.

Jegantha, the Wellspring + Warstorm Surge + Maelstrom Wanderer + Horde of Notions: If you can assemble this, then congrats you can loop Jegantha from your graveyard over and over again. If you want to win with this combo, you can use some means of doubling the Warstorm Surge ETB, or use Omnath, Locus of Rage's on-death lightning bolt ability. While this may seem impactical (and it kinda is) if you have drawn through a lot of your deck you can sometimes get here pretty quickly.

There are others, but these are the more "straightforward" approaches that can occur naturally through the game. They use generally useful pieces to good effect.