Pauper Commander - Tatyova, Benthic Druid
Tatyova, Benthic Druid by Mathias Kollros
Once again, I'm here to explore the top commanders in pEDH. Last week, we checked out Soulherder, an incredibly powerful blink commander. This week, we're exploring the lands archetype with a commander that pulls weight even in regular EDH: Tatyova, Benthic Druid.
She does one very basic, very power powerful thing: for every land you play, she grants you a life, and more importantly, a card in hand. That card in hand could potentially be another land, another chance to draw a card. If you can keep the cycle going, you've got very powerful engine.
That's what our deck is going to be built around: drawing out our turn as much as possible and playing land after land. The longer we go for, the more we can do the next turn, and there's even an exciting combo we can implement in the deck!
The lands theme is a well established archetype in EDH that's been receiving support since the beginning of the game. There are so many cards that fill it, enough that the theme has its own subtypes: graveyard land decks, toolbox land decks, Landfall decks, or just generic ramp decks are all easily built. And of course, this means that there are plenty of common cards for us to work with. Building a powerful deck with Tatyova, Benthic Druid won't be a problem at all.
There's a few goals we need to evaluate and tackle properly. First, we know that Tatyova draws cards when we play lands, so how do we maximize the amount of them we can play? There's generic ramp, obviously, like Rampant Growth and Explore.
We want a ton of this, because these cards are, simply put, very good. Cultivate and Kodama's Reach are the next clear picks, then Nature's Lore, Farseek, and Three Visits. Edge of Autumn and Search for Tomorrow are underrated versions of Rampant Growth that can be even better than the original at times. Finally, Harrow lets us transform one land into two, which can be very advantageous at times.
Of course, the thing you'll notice is that those all fetch lands from within our library, but Tatyova draws cards, and if we have too many lands in our hand, they're useless. So how can we play more than one land a turn? If we were playing EDH, we'd use a card like Explore or Azusa, Lost but Seeking to let us play additional lands every turn, but we're in Pauper, so we have to use another set of cards instead. Luckily, Skyshroud Ranger is almost as good as Explore. (And a lot cheaper!) Walking Atlas, Sakura-Tribe Scout, Scaled Herbalist, and many others all do the same thing. The only downside to these cards is that they're rather fragile, but that never stopped anyone from playing Azusa, so why shouldn't we play Llanowar Scout? If you ask me, these cards should show up in regular EDH lists.
All these cards do a fantastic job of putting lands on the battlefield, and we've certainly got a card advantage engine going, but of course, we have to ask how we win the game. Simply having more cards and more mana is kind of a game-winning strategy on its own, but we eventually have to translate that to damage.
To achieve that goal, I've included a few cards that turn lands directly into power and toughness. Canopy Baloth and Adventuring Gear create a +2/+2 buff for every land we play, numbers that will quickly add up as our deck goes off. Windrider Eel and Wave-Wing Elemental do the same thing, but they come with evasion as a bonus; even better!
Territorial Scythecat is the best of the bunch, however, because the counters stick around, even though it's only a +1/+1 buff for every land. Then, you have Sporemound, which creates a token for every land. In other words, there are plenty of ways to make our lands hurt.
Finally, we have the combo that I mentioned earlier. It's a strange one that involves our commander and three other cards. The first of the three is a group I already mentioned, the creatures that tap to put a land from our hand onto the battlefield. Easy enough to find, we have a ton of them in the deck. Then, we have the land that they're putting onto the battlefield, Mystic Sanctuary. It's a pretty iconic land, banned in both Modern and 60-card Pauper, but we're allowed to play it here, and we're gonna take full advantage of it.
If we have three Islands on board, (shouldn't be a problem,) then we can return an instant or sorcery to the top of our deck. Which card would that be? Tidal Bore. For no cost other than returning an Island to our hand, we can tap or untap a creature.
At this point, the combo is fairly obvious, but I'll explain it to you anyways. We tap a Skyshroud Ranger to put Mystic Sanctuary on the battlefield, which triggers its own ETB ability, and Tatyova. We stack the triggers so that Mystic Sanctuary puts Tidal Bore on top of our library from our graveyard, then Tatyova draws it to our hand. Then, we simply cast Tidal Bore by returning Mystic Sanctuary to our hand, untapping the Skyshroud Ranger, and resetting the cycle.
This combo achieves two things. First, we gain infinite life with Tatyova, and then, if we have a Landfall creature, like Sporemound, we get infinite triggers on that as well. Essentially, we win the game.
To find this combo, we have a couple of cards. First, we need to get Mystic Sanctuary, and thanks to the fact that it's an Island, it's a pretty simple task. Farseek will do the task, and even though the text on Spoils of Victory says basic land, the oracle text actually says Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, or Forest, meaning it can fetch the Sanctuary.
Or we can just use cards that get any land, like Expedition Map, Crop Rotation, or Reap and Sow. Simple task. Getting Tidal Bore is a bit harder, as the only cards that can find it in our colors are Merchant Scroll and Muddle the Mixture. Unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do about that and we just have to hope we draw into either Tidal Bore or its tutors.
Our odds aren't low, thanks to Tatyova's ridiculous ability, but it's impossible to guarantee anything.
And that's what an average Tatyova deck should look like. If you're getting into the more competitive side of Pauper, there's another combo that involves Ghostly Flicker and Archaeomancer, but when you include the tutors to find those cards, the deck becomes less of a Landfall deck and more of a combo deck. Even without the combo, however, Tatyova is more than powerful enough to dominate games. There's a reason she's at the top of the Pauper meta.
