Brewing Taii Wakeen, Perfect Shot in cEDH

Taii Wakeen, Perfect Shot

by David Auden Nash

It's no secret that it's hard out there for a Boros Commander in cEDH, with Winota, Joiner of Forces

Fortunately, Taii Wakeen

The trick is that you need the rest of the table to cooperate by giving you creatures with the right toughness to kill... except that's not quite true. First of all, Taii can draw cards even when you damage your own creatures, but also, you can use cards like Forbidden Orchard

Jumping through hoops to draw cards is pretty fun, but we're in Boros, so the real question is how we can convert those cards into a win. It's generally easier to generate infinite mana than to actually win the game, and this is where Taii's activated ability comes in. She doesn't exactly function as a combo piece the way Thrasios does with infinite mana, in that you still need another card, but if you activate Taii's ability with a lot of mana, then any card that deals damage will deal a lethal amount of damage, so the last piece of your combo can become any card that damages each player.

Taii Wakeen Damage-Dealers

I'm also including cards that can deal damage to multiple creatures or to creatures multiple times, which can net extra cards with Taii:

Additionally, Delney, Streetwise Lookout

A note on the cards chosen: you want cards that deal one damage or cards that deal X damage. Dealing more than one damage is redundant given that Taii's activated ability can always increase the damage for you, but it can never reduce it, and being able to draw off killing one-mana creatures is important. Fear, Fire, Foes!

Left to their own devices, your opponents are unlikely to give you a lot of creatures with the same toughness that you can kill all at once, which is why you need to take matters into your own hands with cards that make tokens. Fortunately, you don't really care who gets the tokens, and if anything, it might be better if your opponents get them, since some of your cards don't damage your own creatures. To enable card draw from your damage spells, you have the following efficient ways to make a lot of tokens:

Taii Wakeen Token-Generators

I'd like more of these, but I can't think of any cards that are comparably efficient; if you know of any, adding more would likely help the deck a lot. My editor, Jake FitzSimons, also happens to be working on Taii Wakeen at the moment and he suggested Young Pyromancer

Additional Burn Spells

Burn spells that only hit one or two creatures are a lot better than usual, even though they're not real card advantage engines. Still, cheap removal that draws cards is powerful, so the deck does want to play some extra burn spells and also doesn't want to play removal that can't draw cards, like Swords to Plowshares

That leaves this removal package:

I think these cards are good in the deck, but not essential to the gameplan, so if I were looking to make room for something else, I'd consider cutting one of these.

Fast Mana

Because this deck can draw a lot of cards and needs to be able to try to win quickly, it has to play a lot of fast mana to try to chain cards together. Like most cEDH decks, I included the typical fast mana cards (Lotus Petal

Boros Interaction

Red and white are limited in their ability to interact on the stack, but you do get a little bit:

Silence

This isn't really a Stax deck, but there are a few cards that are just good enough:

High Noon

The primary reason I like High Noon

Boros Tutors

The tutor options are limited for Boros, but there are a few good ones:

Sevinne's Reclamation

I also like Lightning Greaves

It's common for decks with red and white to play extra turn effects, like Final Fortune

Moreover, if you cast Angel's Grace

Lands That Synergize with Taii

Forbidden Orchard

Over all, I think it's really cool that there's a cEDH Boros commander that revolves around spells more than creatures as a contrast to Winota. I think it can be hard to play this kind of gameplan without blue, and I think this deck will often struggle against true turbo decks, but it could have very good matchups against most green decks or other decks that rely on keeping creatures on the battlefield, like Yuriko, Magda, Winota, and Najeela. 

You can also view this list here.