Legends Legends - Adun Oakenshield

Welcome again to Legends Legends! Today, we're digging up the graves of one of Magic's most iconic creature types, the Lhurgoyf, and brewing a Jund deck around these oddball card-type-counters. Our commander this week is Adun Oakenshield, one of four Jund-aligned legendary creatures in 1995's Legends set.

The 'goyfs care about the number of card types in our graveyard, but not necessarily the total number of cards in our graveyard. Can we go for quality over quantity with our self-mill strategy? Let's find out!

General Thoughts

Adun Oakenshield is a three-mana 1/2 Human Knight. His activated ability allows you to pay three mana and tap him to return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand. I don't believe the concept of milling yourself into cheating out powerful cards from your graveyard was as prolific in the 90s as it is today, but Adun Oakenshield would have been my go-to if Elder Dragon Highlander was around back then. 

Oakenshield's value lies in his repeatable effect; though costly compared to something like Tortured Existence, his small body and expensive ability make him seem unthreatening on the battlefield. We'll use this to our advantage to mill through our library at top speed before using our commander to pull our Lhurgoyfs out of our graveyard.

Once we've assembled all nine card types in our graveyard, we'll swing in with an army of 9/10 Goyfs, confident in our ability to return them to play should they be destroyed.

Milling and Card Types

There are nine card types that the Lhurgoyf creatures count when determining their power and toughness. These include the obvious ones, like creature, enchantment, land, instant, sorcery, and planeswalker. The release of the battle cards added another type to the list, and a little-known fact is that kindred (formerly tribal) counts as a separate card type despite not appearing on any card by itself. The trick to this deck will be milling the specific card types we need to maximize our Goyfs' stats.

Surveil makes it easy to see what we're about to mill into, so the simple Sinister Starfish makes a great starting point. The three dual-colored surveil lands in our color identity work great, too.

We aren't too overly concerned with milling the wrong cards, per se, since Adun Oakenshield makes it easy to return any Goyfs we accidentally mill away. Instead, we'll often be focused on filling our graveyard as quickly as possible with cards like Mesmeric Orb, Crop Sigil, and Nyx Weaver to get the milling started early (also note that Nyx Weaver has two card types to count towards Delirium and our Goyfs' power/toughness). 

Ripples of Undeath gives us another passive mill effect each turn, with the option to to return one of the cards it mills. Usually, we'll use this to grab a noncreature card we need, since Adun can return any of our critters by himself.

Bramble Familiar and Monster Manual are two more excellent ways to fill our graveyard and fetch those Goyf creatures back into our hand. With Court of Bounty, we have quite a few sources for playing those Disentombed creatures to the field without wasting any mana on them.

Smuggler's Surprise and its modal options have made it one of my new favorite green cards; we can use it defensively to surprise an opponent with two Goyfs from our hand as blockers, respond to board wipes, or just to fill our graveyard in a pinch.

Angel of Suffering is the hot new kid on the block when it comes to rattlesnakes in Commander. Once our opponents have seen our gameplan, they'll be incredibly reticent to swing at us when they know that any damage that would make it through will just further stuff our graveyard with goodies.

Milling directly from our library isn't the only way to fill our graveyard. Often, we'll want to discard a specific card type; that's where Liliana of the Veil and Lord Windgrace come into play. Anyone who played in the Standard of Lilianna's day remembers how punishing that consistent discard effect can be, and Lord Windgrace incentivizes us to discard our land cards, traditionally difficult to get out of our hand and into the graveyard.

Tortured Existence lets us swap a creature in our hand for one in our graveyard, keeping the same number of creatures in our graveyard while also granting some staying power to our key Lhurgoyf creatures.

Perhaps I've buried the lede here, but our absolute number one best way to mill a massive amount of cards each turn is Hermit Druid. With only 11 basic lands in our deck, we can feasibly mill ten or more cards each time we activate the druid. 

Finally, we're replacing the traditional removal and interaction spells in this deck with more thematic mill-based spells. Drown in Filth might be a downgrade to a Terminate, but the extra mill makes it worth it here. The same goes for Break Down the Door and Drag to the Roots.

Goyfs

The meat and potatoes of this deck are the Lhurgoyfs, those weird-looking creatures with a graveyard affinity that, to my knowledge, are completely unique to Magic. The name was invented when the original Lhurgoyf was printed back in Ice Age because "it sounded Scandinavian."

Besides their namesake, we're running every other Goyf we could possibly fit in this deck, including several of the subpar ones! Detritivore is probably our worst Goyf, but that doesn't mean it's useless. Commander decks run quite a few nonbasic lands, and many players will fill their own graveyard with nonbasic fetchlands and the like without the help of our Detritivore.

Mortivore also runs the risk of coming into play as a nothing sandwich if there aren't enough creatures in graveyards, but that's where our list of weak Goyfs ends.

The infamous Tarmogoyf is the classic two-drop from the Goyf-deck's heyday in competitive Magic, making it a great early play that'll grow incrementally as the game progresses.

Polygoyf is perfectly designed for multiplayer Commander games, allowing us to threaten the entire board with just one creature.

Pyrogoyf throws a Warstorm Surge on all of our Goyfs, an effect that'll just get better and better as the game drags on.

Barrowgoyf, however, has got to be my favorite in this deck. Not only does it have two great keywords in its rules text, it also actively mills us into more Goyfs or more card types in our graveyard. It's like a pseudo-Lord for our Goyfs!

Necrogoyf has an oppressive discard effect that's sure to punish our opponents and benefit us as we pick and choose exactly which card types we need to pitch to fill out our 'yard.

Nethergoyf's best quality is its dirt-cheap mana cost. While the option to escape it from our graveyard is useful, we're better off keeping cards in our graveyard and using Adun Oakenshield to Disentomb it should it suffer some perilous fate.

Even though we're running a measly nine Goyfs, there are two important cards we can use to stretch that number. The first is Tarmogoyf Nest, which does exactly what you'd think it does: spit out Tarmogoyf tokens for two mana and a tap.

The second is one of my favorite new cards, and indeed, one of the staples holding this deck together. Disa the Restless not only creates more Tarmogoyf tokens, she also pulls any milled Goyfs right out of the graveyard and onto the battlefield. 

Finally, don't forget our Altar of the Goyf, which, in addition to granting an exalted-style buff to a creature, also counts as a two card types when it hits the graveyard.

Delirious Returns

With so many cards going to our graveyard, we'd be foolish not to include some Delirium and general self-mill synergy spells. 

Duskmourn's Winter, Misanthropic Guide has got to be one of the most punishingly designed legendaries in recent memory. We should hit seven card types in our graveyard in no time, and soon our opponents' maximum hand sizes will be effectively zero.

Syr Konrad, the Grim helps us put some damage on the board while we're busy milling ourselves, and also acts as revenge against the inevitable Bojuka Bog someone will aim at us.

Deadbridge Chant, Liliana, Death's Majesty, and Animate Dead can help us return important non-Goyfs from our graveyard to the battlefield.

Budget

This Legends Legend is on the more expensive end to build, due in part to the steep cost of Adun Oakenshield himself (~$80) and our expensive mana base. If you're looking to save a buck or two on this deck, consider cutting Hermit Druid and several of the more expensive shocklands and other nonbasics.

Adun Oakenshield Deck List

Wrap Up

The Lhurgoyf has always mystified and enraptured me. What is that thing? Why does it look like that? When will we get some lore explaining where the Goyfs come from, or what they're doing on multiple planes? These are questions that'll remain unanswered until we see an announcement for Secret Lair: Goyfs.

This Adun Oakenshield Commander deck shines a spotlight on those lanky monsters and makes them the center of attention. Alongside Adun, the Goyfs have a consistent source of recursion for themselves and anything else we mill into our graveyard. 

What are your favorite Goyfs? Does Adun Oakenshield work at the helm of this self-mill deck? And how's our spread of card types? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Thanks for reading!