Allies! (EDH / Commander)

We have Allies!
Compared to the 5c Sliver deck previously designed, this deck is meant to tackle 5c (on a slight budget) in a different angle. Thus, a majority of the non-land/non-ramp cards were selected to not duplicate what was selected in the Sliver deck.

This deck was built following a deckbuilding checklist: 45-50 mana sources (~36-37 lands, 10-13 ramp pieces), ~10 forms of card draw, 5-6 targeted removal spells, 3-5 boardwipes, and 25-30 cards for the bulk of the deck's strategy.

The deck sections are labeled with tildes to denote that within the deck there's roughly that number of cards within the deck, with some specific cards being highlighted in another section or being flexible pieces.

The main goals of this deck is to accumulate Allies and extract value from their ETBs/Ally scaling effects. Note: Every creature in this decks has the Ally subtype.
With General Tazri being a tutor from the command zone, we will almost always be able to grab the specific Ally that we will require and assemble our gameplan.

Deck Sections

• Win-Con Allies These creatures will be the main focal points for how this deck will aim to win, however each creature gives a different axis of approach to winning.
• Tutor-Target Allies Prioritize these Allies when you need to address specific situations.
• Core Allies These creatures form the main bulk of your Ally army and ETB density.
• Extra Allies These cards are not explicitly Ally creatures but do generate Allies for the board. These sources of Allies do not have any ETB effects explicitly, but can help generate ETB/Scaling value for your other Allies.
• Synergy These cards help your gameplan and support your Allies with synergistic tools.
• Ramp The ramp pieces in this deck are primarily budget pieces. There is a selection of both green ramp cards and artifacts to help with colour fixing.
• Targeted Removal Being in 5c we can use the a strong suit of removal pieces that the colours can offer us. These cards are all in-general flexible removal spells.
• Boardwipes A general selection of boardwipes intended for some synergy with the decks' intent.
• Graveyard Recursion A small choice of ways to recur our Allies back from the graveyard and reap their value once more.

Particular Cards to Note:

Ally ETBs scale with more Allies and copies. If you occur multiple allies onto the battlefield at the same time, any ETB effects will see each creature all at the once. Similarly with mass reanimation, and so the majority of the spells in the deck will be trying to exploit our creatures' value by recurring the ETBs multiple times.

Win-Con Allies
Hagra Diabolist - This creature can only have one opponent lose life per trigger, but multiple recurring triggers can quickly remove a single player, especially without needing to directly attack.

Halimar Excavator - This creature can mill any player based on your Ally count. This can quite quickly mill out a single player, but it can also be used to fill your own graveyard for mass-reanimation later (Note: The current deck list only has Living Death to reanimate from graveyard->battlefield en masse) Similarly, be cautious targeting a player who could exploit the mill value.

Kazuul Warlord - This creature lets your Allies grow tall. Most Ally ETB effects that accumulate +1/+1 counters will only grow an individual creature, but this creature will grow your (hopefully wide) board of Allies all together. Creature beat down can be facilitated with evasion present in the Core Allies.

Tajuru Warcaller - This creature is best when you've accumulated a wide board to overwhelm your opponents' blockers. Multiple +2/+2 triggers grows dangerously quickly, and can pull out a win on an unsuspecting defense. (Note: There is two Haste enablers within the decklist: Chasm Guide and Nahiri's Resolve.)

Turntimber Ranger - This card at first glance looks like just good Ally ETB value by providing wolves. Arcane Adaptation being on the battlefield will make your wolves be Allies. Turntimber Ranger notably says you may create a 2/2 green Wolf..... These two cards alone are a 2-card combo, of half of which you can always tutor from the Command Zone. Consider the other Win-Con Allies or Chasm Guide/Nahiri's Resolve or Kalastria Healer as ways to close out within the same turn once the combo is assembled.

Tutor-Target Allies
Bala Ged Thief - With a wide enough board (or enough ETBs) you can target remove problematic cards from an opponents hand. Ideally, you will want to use the discard at a time after a tutor or when you can empty out a hand.

Harabaz Druid - Your ideal way to crank out a vast amount of mana quickly and make many explosive plays in a turn. Likely your first or second card to tutor for if you have nothing in particular to grab.

Ondu Cleric - Lifegain does not always equate to winning, but with multiple ETBs and a wide army of Allies, this can quickly rack up life so you don't lose.

Sea Gate Loremaster - A priority tutor target to not only refill your hand, but also ensures your hand is stocked with many Allies to cast. Likely your first or second card to tutor for if you have nothing in particular to grab.

Tuktuk Scrapper - Artifact removal that can be tutored for, and also an Ally that can ping face equal to the number of Allies! Most players run Artifacts and this keeps Artifact decks in check.

Core Allies
Most Core Allies have an ETB effect that gives a Keyword ability until end of turn, or grows with a +1/+1 counter. Note these Keyword abilities are only granted until end of turn, and as a result should be prioritized to help with attacking.

Agadeem Occultist - This creature lets you reanimate creatures from your opponents graveyards.
Jwari Shapeshifter - This is an Ally copy creature. Be careful however! If your board is empty when you mass-reanimate or flicker all your board, this creature will have nothing valid to copy as it enters.
Kalastria Healer - This ETB effect doesn't target, and drains each opponent. While the effect itself is small, the drain slowly adds up!
Murasa Pyromancer - This creature can only target other creatures, but is a good way to ping down an opponents' board.

For quick reference:
Haste - Chasm Guide
Menace - Firemantle Mage
Indestructible - Hero of Goma Fada
Protection from Colour - Kabira Evangel
Double Strike - Resolute Blademaster
Flying - Seascape Aerialist
Lifelink - Talus Paladin

Extra Allies
None of these cards can be tutored with directly with General Tazri, but they can help you accumulate value by providing multiple Allies, either in a single cast or over multiple turns.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is a planeswalker that can protect itself or serve as an extra attacker. He is also consistent source of Allies/Ally ETB. However you can always cash him in early to get a permanent anthem effect for the rest of your game.

Synergy
Arcane Adaptation goes infinite with Turntimber Ranger, but otherwise does not do anything for the deck otherwise as every creature is already an Ally. If an opponent is playing another Tribal deck (like Slivers...) you can exploit any symmetric buffs that could be present...

Nahiri's Resolve is one of the few ways to give your creatures haste, and also serves to double your ETBs. This card acts by exiling your creatures and returning them on your next upkeep, which can protect them pre-emptively from a boardwipe. Remember, all your creatures returning will see each other ETB at the same time! You can always exile a selection of creatures your as opposed to your entire board, depending on how many blockers you want to leave behind for later or to scale up the number of ETBs you get on your next upkeep. Note: Your creatures will still return to the battlefield even if Nahiri's Resolve is removed before your next upkeep due to the delayed trigger ability bringing the creatures back.

Reflections of Littjara - If you get this enchantment down early enough, all of your ETB Allies will double up in their effectiveness, and leave behind bodies to further increase their effectiveness!

Rite of Replication - This card is not limited in targetting your own permanents, though with Allies, their ETBs scale very well with additional copies. Note the kicker cost can heavily swing a game in your favour if you target one of your Win-Con Allies as each copy will see the other copies at the same time.

Graveyard Recursion
Living Death - This is both a boardwipe and a form of graveyard recursion, so use the spell as necessary. However this spell can help our opponents if they have a filled up graveyard, but ideally we want to exploit the value of our dead creatures better.

March from the Tomb - This is a reanimation spell specifically for Allies! 5 mana for 8 mana worth of creatures can swing things quite well.

Boardwipes
Dusk // Dawn - This spell serves two fold in this deck. The creature base was explicitly designed to have a very small minority of creatures with base power greater than 2. Majority of the creatures have power 2 or less, and use ETB effects to grow larger, and these creatures can be recurred with the Dawn side as an added form of graveyard recursion.

Evacuation - As this spell returns all creatures to their owners hand, this deck will ideally exploit the ETB values from the bounce more effectively when re-building the board. This spell is also instant speed! This means it does not have to be relegated to your own turn...

Targetted Removal
This is a standard selection of instant speed removal spells, that can either handle most non-land permanents, or exile creatures if necessary.

Card Draw
Do not be afraid to use Fact or Fiction or Hostile Negotiations to fill up your graveyard if you know you have a reanimation spell to cast later! These two spells serve double duty in this deck for this exact intent! Both of these cards will (for the most part) draw 3 cards at instant speed!

Paradoxical Outcome - The return to your hand clause is meant to both fill your hand and exploit ETBs on a later turn. You can use this spell as an instant speed trick as well to save your board from removal!

Ramp
The ramp selection is budget based off the manabase, but is leveraging with tri-taplands.
Murmuring Bosk and the BFZ duals are in the deck as fetchable targets for Farseek.

The Maybeboard

The current Maybeboard features 6 Allies that you can swap in (for example the Extra Allies) that can adjust the ETB effects that are present in the deck's composition.
This deck can lean into different strategies: flickering/blink effects (Ex: Ghostway, Momentary Blink), reanimation (Ex: Rally the Ranks, Brought Back), or Panharmonicon tools (Ex: Panharmonicon, Yarok, the Desecrated) that can all be facilitated with additional cards.

Suggestions for the Maybeboard/Commentary:
The main concern for this deck is that its manabase is a bit too budget and features a lot of tap tri-lands. The ramp options also only grabs basic lands and is artifact based.

This deck has directions it can want to go down, and more than one option as a win condition but isn't necessarily focused on one thing only.
All the removal spells in the deck are general staples for their colour, but this also can apply against the creature base not running "value"-able staples.
It faces the weakness of being purely tribal, and every creature in the deck is an Ally.

Some test games will be necessary to see any iterations necessary.