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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plus, we're running spells like Kamahl's Will

We've got a few tricks up our sleeve, like Tomik, Distinguished Advokist

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

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

Case of the Locked Hothouse

To help us get even further ahead on our land drops, we have a handful of nonbasic ramp spells in Hour of Promise

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

It's also worth taking a moment to talk about just how nuts Ashaya, Soul of the Wild

Since Ashaya turns all of our creatures into Forest

It's a neat little interaction that makes my head spin. Oh, and of course there's Ashaya's awesome interaction with Ondu Inversion

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

We prioritized lands with lower costed activated abilities that make them into lands, like Treetop Village

Only playtesting will truly tell, but it seems like the best creature lands are poised to be Blinkmoth Nexus

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

Sylvan Awakening

Cosmium Confluence

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

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

Wilderness Reclamation

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

Nature's Will

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

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

Liege of the Tangle

Baru, Fist of Krosa

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

This week's deck did not disappoint with the gems it uncovered on Scryfall. Blossoming Tortoise

I think Embodiment of Insight

Innocuous Researcher

Sage of the Maze

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

Normally, lands are hard for our opponents to interact with, but having one of our creature lands die to Doom Blade

We also came across some really interesting lands as well this week. Lazotep Quarry

It might be a reason to add Crop Rotation

Finally, I want to draw your attention to Sunken Citadel

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

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.