Legends Legends - Sol'kanar the Swamp King

The time has come! We've waded through enough six-mana vanilla legends that we can move on and play something fun again! This time around, we're digging into Sol'kanar the Swamp King

How can we build around Sol'kanar to get the most out of his swampwalk effect? Today, on Legends Legends, we take on The Swamp King on his home turf.

General Thoughts

Sol'kanar the Swamp King

Obviously, Sol'kanar excels into other black decks, which works out great in this format. It's few and far between where you sit down for a Commander pod and no one's running black. On the off chance that you end up at a table of entirely Talrand, Sky Summoner

Playing Black in Blue and Red

Really, this Sol'kanar the Swamp King

If we need a more permanent solution to swampification, consider Blanket of Night

I want to call out three more cards in this section: Thrull Wizard

Big Swamp Energy

We won't stop once we've got all those Swamp

Cabal Coffers

We're running Burnished Hart

Once we've accumulated all that black mana and damaged our foes repeatedly with our Dread Presence

Finally, if we can keep the mana up for our Dash Hopes

Life Gained, Life Loss

With all that mana, you bet your butt we're casting a lot of black spells, and each one of those will trigger Sol'kanar and gain us one life. One measly life doesn't seem like much, but we can use other triggered effects in tandem with Sol'kanar to turn this middling effect into a game-ender.

The first and most glaringly obvious inclusions in this category are Sanguine Bond

Well of Lost Dreams is amazing lifegain synergy for any deck without access to white. It gets us that much-needed draw power to keep our hand full while also giving us an excellent outlet for all that extra mana we're generating.

Witch of the Moors is our main recursion effect, but the consistency with which we'll trigger it makes me feel alright with it as our only source.

Just in case Sol'kanar the Swamp King's effect alone isn't enough, we're running two more sources for a similar effect in Staff of the Death Magus and Demon's Horn. We've also got additional sources of lifegain in Whip of Erebos, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Bontu's Monument, and Syphon Soul.

What do we do with all that extra life? Spend it, of course! We don't have to go over cards like Bolas's Citadel and the havoc it can cause, but also consider how many cards we'll be able to draw with our Greed when we have 100 life and 100 black mana available.

Other uses for our huge life total include, but are not limited to, using it as a buffer for our symmetrical board wipes, like Crypt Rats and Pestilence Demon.

Drowned in the Swamp

So, how does this deck actually win? There are a few options.

The first, and arguably easiest, is a commander damage win from Sol'kanar. Most players are running black (this is a fact, don't look it up), but even if they're running mostly nonbasics, we can still give them a Swamp with any number of Evil Presences or Dream Thrushes present in our library. We can slap Shade's Form on Sol'kanar to speed up the clock on our opponents, potentially getting each player in one swing.

We've also got no shortage of life drain effects that'll happen fairly passively for us throughout the game. By just building up to Sol'kanar with Enduring Tenacity, Marauding Blight-Priest, and Starscape Cleric, we can churn out value from our commander's static ability while we focus on protecting him.

Finally, we can always use any of our big, thematic beaters to Timmy our way to victory. Swampwalking Wrexial, the Risen Deep can potentially cast some black spells from our opponents' graveyards (triggering Sol'kanar and all of our life-drainers), and Pestilence Demon and any of our Shade creatures make excellent dumps for all of our extra black mana. Of course, I don't have to explain how Exsanguinate and Corrupt play into this deck.

Mana Base

This deck needs to hit a swamp every turn at least, so we're running a critical mass of 37 lands, 20 of which are basic Swamps! This is a great chance to pick your favorite Swamps from across your MTG career and stock your deck full of them. 

Besides our 37 Swamp and Swamp-adjacent lands, we're running the standard package of mana rocks, minus most of the multicolor ones you'd typically find in a Grixis deck. This means we have Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Charcoal Diamond, but no Signets or Talismans. Take a closer look at the deck list and you'll see why: the only red pip in our entire deck's converted mana cost comes from Sol'kanar the Swamp King himself, and there are a mere five blue pips from Dream Thrush, Wrexial, the Risen Deep, Spectral Shift, and Mask of Riddles. 

Sol'kanar the Swamp King Decklist

Budget

This deck has an estimated cost of about $293. That's on the expensive end for a Legends Legend, so let's take a look at some budget options.

Ancient Brass Dragon is the most expensive card in our deck, followed shortly by Cabal Coffers. The former is just a big, expensive rare I have lying around, and can easily be replaced with something as simple as a Grave Titan for a top-end beater. The latter is a little harder to go without, but we could swap in an Expedition Map and use it to find Cabal Stronghold every time.

Wrap Up

Sol'kanar the Swamp King is one of my favorite Legends Legends yet. He's a hilarious surprise when he hits the field and is followed by an Evil Presence or Contaminated Ground, and he inspires looks of awe and confusion as he runs out a Kormus Bell for some reason. 

How do you like Sol'kanar? Should this deck run more red spells? How would you build around the newer Sol'Kanar the Tainted? Also why is "'Kanar" capitalized on the new card, but not so on the old one? What gives! Let me know in the comments!

As always, thanks for reading!