Can We Build a Deck of Only Legends? | Jodah, The Unifier Deck Tech

Jodah, the Unifier | Illustrated by Ryan Pancoast

Jodah, the Unifier | Illustrated by Barbara Rosiak

Hello, everyone! Welcome to BathroomBrews. In this week's installment, we're throwing our budget out the window, mostly because I can't build this deck on a budget: Jodah, the Unifier Oops, All Legends. Every card in the deck is legendary, including the lands. That's right. It's a 100% legendary deck. No basics. No fetches. No Sol Ring. Nothing! If it isn't legendary I don't want it. 

You might be thinking: how the heck does this work? Oddly, it works kinda well. Let's jump into it! 

Mana Fixing

The Dorks

First, we need to fix our mana. It turns out that having a bunch of mono-colored lands isn't great for a WUBRG deck. Wrenn and Realmbreaker is a three-mana 'walker that turns all our lands into every basic land type. Generally, I'd avoid this card, but in this specific deck, it's acting like a Chromatic Lantern. We also have Esika, God of the Tree, Inga and Esika, and Katilda, Dawnhart Prime to turn all our creatures into mana dorks. Katila only turns our Humans into dorks, but half of our creatures are Humans, so it's fine. Finally Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea and Zaxara, the Exemplary are just mana dorks, plain and simple. There's also Jenson Carthalion, Druid Exile, to filter mana, and Jegantha, to add five colors. 

The Artifacts

For mana rocks, there's Mox Amber, The Celestus, Phial of Galadriel, and Timeless Lotus. We can also steal our opponents' land with Realmbreaker, the Invasion Tree. Otherwise, we're at the mercy of the lands we draw. 

Card Draw

Card draw is surprisingly great in the deck because tons of legends have card draw tacked on, like Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, Reki, the History of Kamigawa, and Shanid, Sleepers' Scourge, just to name a few. Obviously, we have The One Ring, because it's insane, along with Toski, Bearer of Secrets, to let us draw on combat damage, and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath as a Growth Spiral on a body, while The Kenriths' Royal Funeral is card draw and cost reduction for our legends. Finally, Mirror of Galadriel is repeatable card draw for as little as zero mana.

Legends Matter

The Good Stuff

Having five colors gives us access to some great legendary matter cards, and with Doctor Who precons, we've gotten some great options. Alistair, the Brigadier gives us 1/1s whenever we cast any spell in our deck, and we can pay eight mana when we attack to get a second Coat of Arms. The Fourth Doctor acts as pseudo card advantage, letting us play any card from the top of our library. Sisay, Weatherlight Captain is a great tutor on a stick for our legends. And of course, we have the goodest boy, Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful. This pup grows whenever a legendary permanent enters the battlefield, including our 39 legendary lands.

Recursion and Cheating

Samwise Gamgee gives us Food tokens we can use to recur our legendary threats. There's Kethis, the Hidden Hand that lets us play legendary cards from our graveyard, including lands, and Djeru and Hazoret lets us cast any legendary creatures we hit from their ability for free, which is every creature we hit. 

Legendary Tokens

I included Cadric, Soul Kindler, which acts as a Bramble Sovereign for our legends and is insane with The Master, Multiplied, which prevents us from saccing those token copies. To help with card draw, Jo Grant gives all of our cards cycling for two and a white, which is actually pretty powerful with all of the legendary lands we run, and Ratadrabik of Urborg gives us nonlegendary tokens of our legends when they die. 

Despite its mana cost, I also included Helm of the Host. I've also thought about adding Godo, Bandit Warlord to have the instant win combo; while I don't have it currently in the list, if you do add it, I don't blame you.

Legendary Anthems

Heroes' Podium is another Coat of Arms effect for our legends and lets us dig for legends with any excess mana. This is probably one of the weaker cards in the deck, but I like the flavor. I'd cut this for Godo. There's also Day of Destiny and Flowering of the White Tree to buff our legendary creatures. 

Legendary Instant and Sorceries

We even have legendary instant and sorceries. The only legendary instant is Isildur's Fateful Strike. For four mana, you destroy a creature and rip cards from your opponent's hand. As for sorceries, we have Karn's Temporal Sundering for extra turns, Primevals' Glorious Rebirth to bring back all our legends, Urza's Ruinous Blast to exile the board, and Yawgmoth's Vile Offering to reanimate any creature and destroy another. 

The Personal Touches

The rest of the legends, aside from the lands, are whatever you love the most. I just loaded it up with legends I enjoy. I added Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes because they're insanely powerful and fun. There is Azusa, Lost but Seeking because I have a pretty version of her and we have a lot of lands. Garth One-Eye gives us a Black Lotus token. Iroas, God of Victory helps with our main win condition of beating face. Kenrith, the Returned King is a great value creature with tons of abilities. Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin can make a ton of goblins thanks to all the anthems in the deck. And Sakashima of a Thousand Faces becomes whatever legendary you want. 

The Legendary Lands

Now for the fun part: the lands. There are a total of 39 lands, and none of them are basics, so if you have a Blood Moon in your group, I'd avoid playing this against it. The first two I added were Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth. These will fix us for black and green respectively. There is also a cycle of old lands from legends, which are famous places in Magic: Urborg, Tolaria, Hammerheim, and Pendelhaven. Sadly, Karakas is banned, otherwise it would be here. In addition, I added the five mono-color Champion of Kamigawa lands plus Hall of the Bandit Lord. And of course, I added the new Kamigawa lands, like Boseiju, Who Endures and Takenuma, Abandoned Mire. Finally, Lord of the Rings gave us The Grey Havens, Rivendell, The Black Gate, Mount Doom, Mines of Moria, and Barad-dûr.

While not technically lands, I also added some of the Ixalan enchantments that flip into lands. Originally I had all of them in the deck, but cut them down to the best of the bunch, in my opinion: Growing Rites of Itlimoc, Hadana's Climb, Journey to Eternity, and Profane Procession.

Do you want more non-budget fun decks like this? Should I try to make this a budget deck but maybe add some basics? Let me know your thoughts down below.