Black Panther, Wakandan King "Landman is a Terrible Superhero Name" - Plot Twist #25
Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it'll tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense of the types of stories we're looking to tell.
Last time, we built our first deck deck featuring a Secret Lair commander: Wolverine, Best There Is. The deck sought to fight our opponents' faces and burn them out with direct damage in the process. We're continuing down the road of Marvel and Magic this week with a look at another commander from the Marvel superdrop: Black Panther, Wakandan King. This Selesnya commander is the also last of the ten two-color pairs to be featured on Plot Twist!
While I'm not a huge Marvel fan, I'm pretty sure the original Black Panther is my favorite Marvel movie I've seen, so there's definitely a strong appeal to build around this particular commander for me.
How Does Black Panther Work?
Black Panther, Wakandan King has first strike and two novel abilities that caught my attention. The first, Survey the Realm, allows us to add a +1/+1 counter to target land we control whenever Black Panther or another creature enters under our control. Notably, this ability does not turn the land into a creature, unlike spells with awaken, so we can effectively 'store' these +1/+1 counters for later on a land in order to later animate the land or move them using Black Panther's third ability.
Mine Vibranium allows us to pay to move all +1/+1 counters from target land we control onto target creature. If one or more +1/+1 counters are moved this way, we gain that much life and draw a card. There are couple of interesting things about this ability: the first being that while we have to control the land, we don't have to control the creature that Black Panther, Wakandan King's ability targets.
Since we can activate Mine Vibranium at instant speed, we can use it to buff an opponent's creature to do lethal commander damage, for example. That'll definitely be a neat political move we can pull off from time to time, but probably not something we'll want to do often. The second thing that's worth noting is that we can only move +1/+1 counters with Mine Vibranium, so we can't use it to remove the ice counters off of Dark Depths or move a shield counter from Diamond City onto one of our creatures.
It's a little unfortunate because there are lots of lands that enter with strange counters that could be fun to move around at instant speed.
If we pop over to Black Panther's EDHREC page, we can see that brewers so far are all in on the tokens and +1/+1 counters themes. Token-makers, like Secure the Wastes, Primal Vigor, Felidar Retreat, Jacked Rabbit, and Doubling Season, are all showing up in more than 49% of the more than 1,400 Black Panther, Wakandan King decklists at the time of writing, for good reason.
These cards all create a lot of +1/+1 counters off of Survey the Realm triggers from a single card that we can later use Mine Vibranium to move onto our commander or another creature that manages to slip through.
They're also running plenty of cards like Karn's Bastion, The Ozolith, Kami of Whispered Hopes, and Evolution Sage to keep the +1/+1 counters flowing.
But this is Plot Twist, where we try to do something unexpected with our decks. That's why this week, we're going keep those +1/+1 counters on our lands and try to win with them instead.
Doing the Twist
"But why, Jeff?" I hear you asking, "Why would we want to keep all those +1/+1 counters on our lands?" Because this week we're going to lean heavily on creature-lands, like Crawling Barrens, Mutavault, and Restless Prairie, to put those counters to work while avoiding our opponents' board wipes.
Plus, we're running spells like Kamahl's Will, Rude Awakening, and Sylvan Awakening so that we can turn all of our lands into creatures at once to suddenly present a lethal force of attackers.
We've got a few tricks up our sleeve, like Tomik, Distinguished Advokist, Wilderness Reclamation, and Blossoming Tortoise, to ensure we get the most out of our creature-lands, too.
Let's Start with Ramp
You could claim that this week's deck is a 'lands' deck, though it's certainly different than our "The Forests Fight Back" deck or our Naya Urborg Lands Deck from a few weeks back. We're running 40 lands this week, plus some modal dual-faced cards, like Bala Ged Recovery and Ondu Inversion, which is a bit higher than we normally have in a Plot Twist deck.
We're also running quite a few lands that enter tapped, so we'll need to make sure we're able to play an extra land or two each turn to stay ahead of our opponents. We're leaning heavily on cards like Burgeoning, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Exploration, Loot, Exuberant Explorer, and Wayward Swordtooth to minimize the impact of all of our enters tapped lands since we can play two or more lands per turn.
Case of the Locked Hothouse is an interesting recent version of this effect that we can turn into card advantage simply by hitting our land drops.
To help us get even further ahead on our land drops, we have a handful of nonbasic ramp spells in Hour of Promise, Open the Way, Sowing Mycospawn, and Ulvenwald Hydra.
Since lands are sort of the crux of our deck, we're going to be relying on these cards pretty heavily to help us find Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth, Pit of Offerings, Field of the Dead, Talon Gates of Madara, Dryad Arbor, or whatever utility land we happen to need in any given moment.
It's also worth taking a moment to talk about just how nuts Ashaya, Soul of the Wild is as a 'ramp' spell in combination with Black Panther, Wakandan King (or just about anything if you've ever played with Ashaya before).
Since Ashaya turns all of our creatures into Forests as they enter, they can add the +1/+1 counter from Black Panther's Survey the Realm ability onto themselves or any other creature we control, and since our creatures are all Forests, they can tap for , provided they aren't summoning sick, to pay for more creatures to generate more triggers with Black Panther, helping us 'ramp' even more.
It's a neat little interaction that makes my head spin. Oh, and of course there's Ashaya's awesome interaction with Ondu Inversion to consider as well, allowing us to destroy all of our opponents' creatures while keeping our land-creatures alive. Overall, we're in a great position to not only reliably hit our land drops, but also play more than one land a turn when we need to.
Turning Our Lands into Creatures
Once we've ramped to our heart's content and hopefully placed a bunch of +1/+1 counters on our lands with Black Panther, it's time to start turning those lands into creatures to close out the game. Our decklist this week is running 15 lands that can either turn themselves into creatures or, in the case of Dryad Arbor, are already a creature natively.
We prioritized lands with lower costed activated abilities that make them into lands, like Treetop Village and Forbidding Watchtower, over more expensive creature lands, like Cave of the Frost Dragon and Soulstone Sanctuary so that activating our creature lands doesn't tie up our mana every turn.
Only playtesting will truly tell, but it seems like the best creature lands are poised to be Blinkmoth Nexus, Inkmoth Nexus, Mutavault, and Mishra's Factory since they can turn into creatures for only .
All of these lands only produce colorless mana themselves, though, so we have to strike a careful balance between having plenty of creature lands and being able to reliably produce both white and green mana to cast our spells.
Of course, that's not the only way to turn our creatures into lands. Kamahl's Will, Rude Awakening, and Sylvan Awakening can all turn all of our lands into creatures at once. Casting Kamahl's Will on an opponent's end step in order to turn all of our lands into creatures AND fight a problematic creature on their board will be an amazing play since we'll then get to untap with our lands-turned-creatures ready to rumble into the end zone until the next end step.
Sylvan Awakening is cheap enough that we should be able to cast it and attack in the same turn, while Rude Awakening is probably only worth casting for its entwine cost so that we can untap all of our lands as it resolves and then attack with them. In any case, we'll be living the dream just about any time we're able to attack with all of our lands at once because that's 'the thing' that this week's deck wants to do.
Cosmium Confluence splits the difference acting as a caves-only ramp spell and/or a way for us to turn our caves into creatures. We have a handful of ways to turn a single land into a creature in Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Sage of the Maze, and Waker of the Wilds. Waker of the Wilds seems particularly great in our deck because we can often activate it for since our lands will already have +1/+1 counters on them thanks to Black Panther, Wakandan King.
Depending on what we draw to turn our creatures into lands, we can either spread the +1/+1 counters around our lands and go wide or pile them up on a single land like Treetop Village to go tall.
Okay, but You Can't Just Tap Out Every Turn...
You've probably already noticed that this week's decklist is going to be very mana-hungry. That will be somewhat alleviated by our ability to ramp and play multiple lands per turn, but if we have to commit three to five mana a turn to activating creature lands, we'll have a hard time keeping pace with our opponents. That's why this week we're running a ton of ways to untap our lands.
Seedborn Muse is the gold standard here since we'll be able to untap all our permanents on each player's upkeep, funneling that extra mana into Crawling Barrens, Loot, Exuberant Explorer, or even Black Panther, Wakandan King as we like.
Wilderness Reclamation, Sword of Feast and Famine, Nature's Will, Innocuous Researcher, and Bear Umbra each give us a more limited number of untaps of our lands, but if we're able to connect with our land creatures and get them all to untap once, that should be more than sufficient.
In addition to giving us extra mana, these effects give our creature lands pseudo-vigilance so we can use them as blockers as well if we need to. While Innocuous Researcher's ability to untap our lands might seem like a downside since it prevents us from casting spells until our next turn, it doesn't stop us from activating the many abilities of our lands and creatures or drawing extra cards with the Clue tokens it produces.
Nature's Will allows us to not just untap our lands, but also to force our opponents to interact with us before combat in case their lands get tapped down, allowing us to dodge counterspells in our post-combat main phase or removal in our end step.
By getting to untap all of our lands an extra time, we'll be able to lean into our creature-lands while also reliably casting Black Panther, Wakandan King or whatever other spells we need.
Powering Through to Victory
This week's deck is poised to grind out lots of value with Landfall triggers and the like, but we need to be ready to turn the corner and start closing out the game some time. We have a trio of staples in Avenger of Zendikar, Kamahl, Heart of Krosa, and Scute Swarm, each of which can win the game for us if left unchecked.
Liege of the Tangle can turn all of our lands into Elementals with power and toughness 8/8 if it deals damage to an opponent. Sometimes we'll turn all our lands into creatures with Liege of the Tangle only to get blown out by a board wipe before our next turn, but that's the sort of memorable game we live for on Plot Twist either way.
Baru, Fist of Krosa can give our creatures trample and +1/+1 whenever any land enters the battlefield and seems poised to shine here just like it did in Plot Twist #6. Bristly Bill, Spine Sower is another excellent mana sink for our extra mana, but we'll have to time it correctly because Bill only doubles the +1/+1 counters on creatures specifically.
A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure
This week's deck did not disappoint with the gems it uncovered on Scryfall. Blossoming Tortoise does just about everything this deck wants to do: ramp, reduce the cost of activated abilities on our lands, and give our land creatures +1/+1. Embodiment of Insight giving our land creatures vigilance and turning our lands into creatures for a single turn is huge.
I think Embodiment of Insight might be a contender for best card in the deck, but I'd love to hear about your experiences with it in in the comments below. I recently added Fecund Greenshell to my Secret Commander: Wild Pair deck from Plot Twist #17 and have been super impressed so far. It looks poised to draw cards, ramp, and close out games in this week's decklist as well.
Innocuous Researcher is mostly in our deck to untap our lands at the end of our turn, but don't sleep on its Parlay effect as a way to draw a lot of extra cards when we sink our extra mana into the Clues it generates.
Sage of the Maze can turn our lands into creatures or generate two mana AND you can tap a Gate to untap it. Equipoise is a really interesting removal/stax piece, allowing us to phase out our opponents' creatures, lands, and artifacts if they have more than us.
Notably, we get to choose which lands, creatures, and artifacts phase out. Ideally, we'll phase out our opponents' blockers so we can attack in with our creature lands, getting an untap trigger from Nature's Will or another effect in the process. Lastly, I want to call out Tomik, Distinguished Advokist as an all-star in this deck because it protects our lands from removal.
Normally, lands are hard for our opponents to interact with, but having one of our creature lands die to Doom Blade would feel particularly bad.
We also came across some really interesting lands as well this week. Lazotep Quarry can turn our deserts into copies of creatures in our graveyard to rebuy an Avenger of Zendikar or Ulvenwald Hydra if we need to and is one of several reasons we're running multiple Deserts in our manabase. Riftstone Portal can fix for both and if we can find a way to get it into our graveyard and has my mind whirring with potential for future deck ideas.
It might be a reason to add Crop Rotation to this deck all by itself. I'm very curious about how Pit of Offerings will play out. It isn't quite as strong as Scavenger Grounds or Bojuka Bog, but getting three cards from ALL graveyards is usually more than enough interaction and being able to tap for multiple colors of mana shouldn't be overlooked.
Finally, I want to draw your attention to Sunken Citadel as a land that generates two colored mana to pay for the activated abilities of our other lands. Lands that tap for two mana are always deceptively powerful in mana-hungry decks like this one.
Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:
Roll the Credits
I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Black Panther, Wakandan King. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.
You can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I've been tinkering around with my Signature Ikra/Bruse Secret Commander Wild Pair Deck lately, and really enjoying looking back at the deck now that I've gotten quite a few games under my belt with it.
I'm constantly toying with new ideas like this Mono-Green 'Reanimator' Deck and Colorless Combo deck and would love to hear your thoughts on them there.
For those of you who are interested, here's a full list of all ten two color pairs that we've featured on Plot Twist:
Azorious: Haytham Kenway - Plot Twist #13
Dimir: Nashi, Searcher in the Dark - Plot Twist #19
Rakdos: Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate - Plot Twist #23
Gruul: Muerra, Trash Tactician - Plot Twist #14 and Wolverine, Best There Is - Plot Twist #24
Selesnya: This week's decklist!
Izzet: Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot - Plot Twist #9
Boros: Aurliea, the Law Above - Plot Twist #3
Orzhov: Sorin of House Markov - Plot Twist #12
Golgari: Vraska, the Silencer - Plot Twist #8 and The Swarmweaver - Plot Twist #18
Simic: Vannifar, Evolved Enigma - Plot Twist #1 and Omo, Queen of Vesuva - Plot Twist #11
Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.
