Sift Through Sands - Kangee and Ruhan

Giant's Grasp

| Art by Ilse Gort

Head in the Clouds

Hello, Magic fans! Enjoying the delights of Dominaria United? The cards in Legends sparked a lot of inspiration for decks when I was getting into Magic, and seeing a healthy number of them reappearing with an updated power level is so exciting! Dominaria definitely has that "classic Magic: the Gathering" feel, and what's more classic than tribal decks? In this week's Sift Through Sands, we'll be looking at two combat-focused tribal decks: Kangee, Aerie Keeper

Our Picks

Kangee and Ruhan aren't the most popular choices for tribal decks, each representing a large tribe with few commanders. Kangee comes as a janky late drop pump spell, boosting our Birds to lethal damage, while Ruhan's chaotic attacks give us a dangerous early threat in a tribe that tends to be high mana value. Birds and Giants alike want to amass a force of dangerous creatures, with our Birds getting incrementally more threatening, while our Giants are bombs for later in the game. Let's start with Kangee!

Playing Kangee

The objective of this deck is to play Storm Crow

Our best Birds come in the form of legendary creatures, with Commander Eesha

Being so focused on creatures, our deck utility comes with wings. Aven Mimeomancer

The Birds here want to win by building up a low-mana-cost force and boosting them, which works well early game. Ruhan, unlike Kangee, doesn't have as many early game threats. However, the critical setup needed to keep us in the game comes in our first few plays, especially when our curve is high. Let's take a look at our list:

Playing Ruhan

Giants they might be, and giants they are. With their size comes a mana value weight that we need to consider, especially with our lack of reliable land-based ramp. However, Preordain

Our support Giants are important plays. Aegar, the Freezing Flame

We want our Giants to hit hard and to make the ground quake as we cast them. Realm-Cloaked Giant

Tribal Quest

Tribal decks can be multifaceted, with some leaning towards thematic combo decks and others being a variety of aggro strategies. In each of our decks, we need to have a tribal glue to support the shortcomings of picking from a narrower field of creatures. The following cards are in both lists:

As neither of our lists include green, and both need lots of mana to work well, many of these cards work to get us that mana. Outside of our rocks, Herald's Horn

That's all for now! Now that we're through, I want to hear about your tribe of choice, and I want to know why you like it! Did you think about building Spike tribal like a younger me? What do you think makes tribal decks so endearing in this complicated game we play? Let me know in the comments and I'll see you around. Thanks for reading!