PokeDecks: Tatyova, the Ludicolo

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A Flame of Any Color Burns as Bright

One of the topics du jour is signature decks for content creators. Over the next few articles, I'm going to discuss the various PokeDecks that came from my former signature deck, Simic Burn.

Like the Klothys Enchantress deck from last week, Simic Burn showed my affinity for colorshifting strategies, something I share with the illustrious Philomene Gatien, of Do Your Worst fame.

Check out her version of Simic Burn!

As for mine, well...it is my most popular deck on Moxfield, but, sadly, it no longer exists in physical form:

One the decks born from its ashes, however, is my Tatyova, Benthic Druid!

Simic Burn, helmed by my all-time favorite goofball commander, Vorel of the Hull Clade, was one of the first decks I built when I developed an online presence. When I made the tough call to take the deck apart, I wanted to replace it with a deck that would occupy a similar place in my heart. Luckily, Fox happened to post a number of pre-altered cards, one of which had one of my favorite Pokemon on it!

Ludicolo is fun, silly, and always makes me smile with its crazy antics and dances. There are few feelings more cathartic than watching that silly pineapple duck dancing over the bodies of its enemies, and this deck embodies that spirit wholeheartedly. Lands go up, lands come down, cards are drawn... all very Simic stuff.

And then come the massive burn spells.

Did I lose you?

Tatyova's Abilities

Tatyova draws cards and gains life every time a land hits the battlefield under my control. Ordinarily, this is used to trigger other Landfall abilities, stacking advantage like a Rube Goldberg machine. In this deck, however, there are other uses for the cards and life. The synergies with Landfall and card draw are potent, though, and the more lands we can amass, the bigger the burn spells!

Summer Bloom gives a burst of land drops, making a potent early play and a way to use the extra lands that are drawn through draw spells and through Tatyova's own ability. The more lands I play, the farther Tatyova digs, finding even more lands.

Manabond is a risky extra land spell, but it doesn't have to be used if the hand is strong. If it's not, however, I can put all of the lands in hand out in order to draw a bunch of cards. Those cards will then have to be discarded, but the life buffer will still apply, which is important when the burn spells can also hit me.

Rites of Flourishing is secretly the best card in the deck. It draws extra cards, plays extra lands, and helps the table, keeping pressure off of me. There are benefits to presenting as a Group Hug deck!

Ludicolo's Moves

The next challenge is to figure out how to cross the IP from Pokemon to Magic. Ludicolo is a silly Pokemon, one that thrives in the rain and dances to keep the rain going. When it's raining, Ludicolo does extra damage and can pull off crazy sweeps!

Hurricane is the card the deck is named for. While the deck does the land dance of playing lands, drawing cards, and hitting more lands, it's secretly stockpiling two major resources that make the deck a burn deck: Hurricane hits all players for X damage, so we need our life total padded; and X is the amount of mana paid, so we also need excess mana. Thankfully, our commander provides the life gain and our extra land drops provide the mana to make it rain like a Hurricane!

Squall Line is a functional reprint of Hurricane, making it easier to draw a copy of the effect. It is also an instant, which enables it to be played on other players' turns. This is particularly important, as the spell requires tapping out, which can be dangerous to do. In fact, a big Squall Line into a bigger Hurricane can sweep the table!

Borrowing the East Wind is, unfortunately, quite expensive, but a vital card to the deck functioning. It's another universal burn effect, but it doesn't hit fliers like the others do. It does hit creatures with horseback, however relevant that happens to be. Still, having another functional reprint makes the deck function much more fluidly.

The Perfect Fusion

Arguably, the most difficult job is to fuse together the commander and the Pokemon. With all of this damage flying around, we need a way to not die to our own Hurricane effects. Tatyova herself provides a lot of the life buffer, but we do need some more help to break parity. Thankfully, we can run some of these effects as a reskinned version of Rain Dish, Ludicolo's ability that restores Hit Points in the rain.

Ivory Tower gains life each turn equal to the amount of card in hand beyond four. As long as the hand is being kept full, the life keeps going up, helping to provide the buffer needed to keep amassing lands until the Hurricane-fueled sweep is ready.

Speaking of gaining life every turn, Venser's Journal gains life the same way Ivory Tower does, but it includes the first four cards. It also removes the hand size restriction, so even more life can be gained.

Primal Command is a neat card that can shuffle the Hurricanes back into the deck, search out Meloku the Clouded Mirror, Viseling, or Psychosis Crawler for additional burn, or provide a seven-point life buffer; it can even blank an opponent's topdeck in a pinch!

The deck functions beautifully: draw cards, play extra lands, gain life, and use the lands and life to sweep the table, just like a Rain-Dance-Fueled, Rain-Dish-enabled Ludicolo sweep.

How does Tatyova stack up to my original Vorel?

And how do either of them measure up to Philomene's Simic Burn?