Commander 2019 Deck-building Challenge

[Morganator 2.0]

At this very moment, players are hard at work brewing with the newest commanders from C19. The members of Deckstats are no exception, so I'm making a competition of it.

Rules are simple. For this competition, you must build a deck around one of the new legendaries that were released in Commander 2019. But, each of these commanders have a restriction as to what you are not allowed to do. This is to test your creativity, instead of just copying another list. The restrictions are:

Atla Palani, Nest Tender: You are not allowed to use only 2 creature in the deck... Or just three creatures... Actually you know what, you must have at least 10 creatures.
Anje Falkenrath: No cards with Madness.
Chainer, Nightmare Adept: No other cards that let you return creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield.
Elsha of the Infinite: No Sensei's Divining Top.
Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero: No cards that return creature(s) from the graveyard to the battlefield other than Gerrard.
Ghired, Conclave Exile: No other cards that make creature tokens.
Greven, Predator Captain: No Voltron theme.
Grismold, the Dreadsower: No cards that sacrifice creatures.
Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer: No cards with Morph.
K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth: No Doomsday.
Marisi, Breaker of the Coil: No other cards with Goad.
Pramikon, Sky Rampart: No other walls allowed in the deck.
Rayami, First of the Fallen: No creatures with any of the keywords on Rayami.
Sevinne, the Chronoclasm: No cards that have Flashback.
Tahngarth, First Mate: No Voltron theme.
Volrath, the Shapestealer: No cards with infect or that give infect.

I will be judging the decks this time, based on the following criteria.
Adherence: Did you follows the rules that I set for the commander of your choice? I'm going to be very strict on this. If you need something clarified, you can send me a message.
Creativity: Show me something I haven't seen before. Make it a unique deck, a powerful deck, or a weird deck.
Effectiveness: Treat this deck like you're actually going to play it one day. Be sure to include a strong land base, good mana ramp, card advantage, and removal.

You are allowed a 300 word description for your deck to explain how to play it and what the game-winning interactions/combos are. Any comments after that will also count towards your 300 word limit. Once you have submitted the decklist, you are not allowed to edit it. This contest will run until August 23 (Commander 2019's release date) but I can extend this if requested. Once the contest closes, I'll spend no more than a week to cast my judgments. I'll also see if I can get Nils to give out some Karma rewards. You guys like that right?

[CleanBelwas]

This sounds sick. I'm totally in.

Can we do more than one?

Also, are there budget restrictions?

[TempestGuy]

Roar Dinosaurs Rule!!!!!!   




Commander- Atla Palani, Nest Tender

1 Fellwar Stone
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Ancient Amphitheater
1 Kazandu Refuge
1 Naya Panorama
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Play of the Game
1 Cultivate
1 Rampant Growth
1 Fumigate
1 Austere Command
1 Phyrexian Rebirth
1 Chain Reaction
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Divine Reckoning
1 Cleansing Nova
1 Titanic Ultimatum
1 Huatli, Radiant Champion
1 Commander's Sphere
1 Boros Signet
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Gruul Signet
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Sol Ring
1 Wakening Sun's Avatar
1 Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
1 Gishath, Sun's Avatar
1 Thundering Spineback
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger
1 Raging Swordtooth
1 Runic Armasaur
1 Snapping Sailback
1 Territorial Hammerskull
1 Silverclad Ferocidons
1 Huatli, Warrior Poet
1 Domri, Chaos Bringer
1 Trapjaw Tyrant
1 Xenagos, the Reveler
1 Sunder Shaman
1 Gruul Guildgate
1 Gigantosaurus
1 Kinjalli's Caller
1 Drover of the Mighty
1 Somberwald Sage
1 Knight of the Stampede
1 Boros Guildgate
1 Atzocan Seer
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Etali, Primal Storm
1 Selesnya Guildgate
1 New Horizons
1 Polyraptor
1 Regisaur Alpha
1 Verdant Sun's Avatar
1 Temple Altisaur
1 Nikya of the Old Ways
1 Otepec Huntmaster
1 Bellowing Aegisaur
1 Forerunner of the Empire
1 Goring Ceratops
1 Kinjalli's Sunwing
6 Mountain
6 Plains
8 Forest
1 Thunderherd Migration
1 Raging Regisaur
1 Join Shields
1 Colossal Majesty
1 Seal Away
1 Savage Stomp
1 Conclave Tribunal
1 Rhythm of the Wild
1 Sigil of the New Dawn
1 Guildmages' Forum
1 Desert of the Indomitable
1 Sheltered Thicket
1 End-Raze Forerunners
1 Wayward Swordtooth
1 Burning Sun's Avatar
1 Song of Freyalise
1 Atla Palani, Nest Tender
1 Ixalli's Keeper
1 Colossal Dreadmaw
1 Relentless Raptor
1 Cherished Hatchling
1 Raptor Companion
1 Bonded Horncrest
1 Shake the Foundations
1 Wilderness Reclamation
1 Dinosaur Stampede
1 Rile
1 Ice Floe
1 Traveler's Amulet
1 Ixalan's Binding
1 Commune with Dinosaurs
1 Battle Mastery
1 Thrash of Raptors
1 Sun-Crowned Hunters
1 Sun-Crested Pterodon
1 Sun-Collared Raptor
1 Snubhorn Sentry
1 Shining Aerosaur
1 Ravenous Daggertooth
1 Ranging Raptors
1 Needletooth Raptor
1 Grazing Whiptail
1 Charging Monstrosaur
1 Cacophodon
1 Belligerent Brontodon
1 Ancient Brontodon
1 Overwhelming Stampede
1 Looming Altisaur
1 Spike-Tailed Ceratops
1 Pillar of Origins

[robort]

This should be fun because my playgroup suggested a commander type sealed league based apon this set. So why not kill 2 birds when making the same deck

[Morganator 2.0]

Can we do more than one?

Also, are there budget restrictions?

You are welcome to do more than one (don't let me stop you) but I will only be judging the first one that gets submitted.

There are no budget restrictions, and I won't judge the deck differently if you happen to be missing a really good expensive card. I'm looking for creative decks that are built well, not perfect.

[MisterDalek]

https://deckstats.net/decks/100593/1383578-semi-budget-atla-palani?lng=en

I made an Atla Palani deck primarily because I feel like it's by far the most minor restriction. I'm going to be totally honest here, I feel that there exists a great disparity in the challenge presented for each of these commanders, with atla being by far the easiest. This can be proven simply by going to edhrec and checking the type distribution in the decks there; edhrec showed, when I last checked, that Atla Palani decks run on average 27 creatures. Beyond that, only 12 out of 194 decks ran under 10 creatures, meaning that almost every deck there could be used for this challenge. Similarly, though to a lesser extent, very few K'rrik decks seem to be running doomsday, with only 27% of the 154 decks running the card. These examples stand in great contrast to some of the other challenges here, with myself finding the greatest issue with Rayami. The challenge would simply result in a normal sultai deck with Rayami serving as graveyard hate, exiling creatures so they don't hit the graveyard.

This is not to say that none of these ideas were good. I felt that the restrictions based on commanders like Ghired and Tahngarth were interesting as they changed the way the decks would be built around them without fundamentally rendering the commander useless. However, this doesn't really matter when these other restrictions exist as they, making the competition much less competitive than it could have been.

In total honesty, while I have enjoyed challenges on these forums in the past, I feel the bar has really been lowered on this one, with the challenge either being nonexistent in the cases of commanders like Atla and K'rrik or just resulting in uninteresting decks in the case of commanders like Rayami.

/rant

[Morganator 2.0]

Yeah, I knew this was going to be a problem. I tried to go with the most common style that I saw the deck being built, and eliminated it. This turned out to be easier for some commanders than others, because if you can't play them the most common way, how else do you do it?

Which is where the creativity aspect comes in. Show me something new, that others haven't done already. The more unique your deck is, the higher I'll rate it. If you're going to build a K'rrik deck like what you've seen on EDHREC, that's fine, but it's not very creative.

[Shredwick]

I might participate with Chainer

[Red_Wyrm]

In the case of Chainer, can we use a card like living death that technically returns cards from exile to the battlefield, or since the idea is it returns cards from the graveyard to the battlefield, with a few extra steps to make it work properly, means we cannot use it?

Anje Falkenrath: No cards with Madness.
Chainer, Nightmare Adept: No other cards that let you return creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield.

Also With the egg lady, I forget her name, does she count as a creature, meaning nine more creatures, or do you want 10 plus her?

Atla Palani, Nest Tender: You are not allowed to use only 2 creature in the deck... Or just three creatures... Actually you know what, you must have at least 10 creatures.

[CleanBelwas]

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Egg Lady is her real name in the lore. Atla Palani is just what her friends call her, but when her mum gets mad and uses her full name, it's "Egg Lady, get down these stairs right now!"

[Morganator 2.0]

In the case of Chainer, can we use a card like living death that technically returns cards from exile to the battlefield, or since the idea is it returns cards from the graveyard to the battlefield, with a few extra steps to make it work properly, means we cannot use it?

No Living Death, sorry. The point is to get rid of Reanimation as a main theme, and instead only use Chainer for reanimation.

Also With the egg lady, I forget her name, does she count as a creature, meaning nine more creatures, or do you want 10 plus her?

10 creatures, plus her.

[dexflux]

Time to brew. Still torn between Pramikon and Marisi for this challenge. Both have interesting angles of messing with the table.

[Xaarvaxus]

https://deckstats.net/decks/127587/1383692-anje-flashback-spellslinger?lng=en

For kicks did an Anje deck without madness and used flashback cards for value that have been discarded with her to draw.  Could probably use a ton of tuning as I didn't include stuff to use multiple times to dig, etc.

[CleanBelwas]

https://deckstats.net/decks/132604/1384570-grimsold-wither

The idea of this one is pretty straight forward and based off an old Slimefoot Deck I built, which was a lot of fun to play.

We want to make a lot of Saprolings (but no Tendershoot Dryad. We want them to stay weak and easy to kill).

We focus on Saprolings because a) they're easy to make a lot of and b) Grismold, the cutthroat, blood artist etc. don't care what they are, but Slimefoot does.

Once we've reached a critical mass of Saprolings, we want to wither the board with a Nausea style effect and kill them all en masse (careful with Massacre Girl here though).

Then, we want contemplate our life choices as we try and manage all the triggers we get from everything dying. Card draw, drain and gain, treasure tokens. It's all a big, glorious mess.

[Slappy T-Rex]

https://deckstats.net/decks/116466/1383691-k-rrik-life-gain-demons

This deck is built to take advantage of K'rrik's phyrexian mana ability. To support that, the deck has a lot of life link/life gain cards to fill up the health tank, which should let us cast a lot of spells quickly.

The deck has the usual life gain win cons: Vampires, Aetherflux Reservoir, Sanguine Bond and Defiant Bloodlord being the biggest threats. But that's all smoke and mirrors to hide the real purpose of the deck.

The deck is designed to get demons into play and then win with Liliana's Contract. There is a ton of card draw and many tutors to search up demons and Liliana's Contract. K'rrik should allow us to play those expensive demons much faster than usual by paying life, and Vedalken Orrery and Emergence Zone should let us get our cards out right before our upkeep, to make it a lot harder for other players to disrupt our plans.

The ramp is all colourless mana, because we'll be paying for black mana with life. There are also protection cards to keep K'rrik safe and lots of graveyard recursion if our demons end up in there.

The deck has 32 lands (including Emergence Zone and Westvale Abbey), but I think that should be enough considering how much card draw there is.