Red Turban Rebellion [EDH]

[Oversoul]

I guess I just got tired of winning or something. This deck is pretty bad. I was going through the commander options from the new set and trying to brainstorm ideas for a new deck. I don't have a concrete rule that I always build a deck with one of the commanders from a newly released set, but I have generally been following that pattern for a while now. I was a bit stuck, then I took a look at "Rebellion Rising" preconstructed deck. Otharri cares about rebels? How delightful! So I took some of the stuf from the precon, threw in a bunch of old rebels and a handful of support spells. Now here we are. Will this deck win any games? Perhaps not. But if it does, then it'll be glorious.

Commander:
1 Otharri, Suns' Glory

1 About Face
1 Akroma's Will
1 Amrou Scout
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Anointed Procession
1 Arcane Signet
1 Arid Mesa
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Ballista Squad
1 Bladehold War-Whip
1 Bound in Silence
1 Buried Ruin
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Children of Korlis
1 Cho-Manno, Revolutionary
1 Defiant Falcon
1 Defiant Vanguard
1 Diamond Valley
1 Eldrazi Monument
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Flawless Maneuver
1 Generous Gift
1 Glimmer Lens
1 Goldwarden's Helm
1 Heartstone
1 Heartwarming Redemption
1 Hexgold Hoverwings
1 Hexplate Wallbreaker
1 Intangible Virtue
1 Jor Kadeen, First Goldwarden
1 Karn's Bastion
1 Kemba's Banner
1 Lawbringer
1 Lightbringer
1 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
1 Mana Vault
1 Marsh Flats
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Mirror Entity
7 Mountain
1 Neyali, Suns' Vanguard
1 Nightwind Glider
1 Outrider en-Kor
1 Pious Warrior
14 Plains
1 Plateau
1 Prosperous Partnership
1 Ramosian Captain
1 Ramosian Commander
1 Ramosian Lieutenant
1 Ramosian Revivalist
1 Ramosian Sergeant
1 Ramosian Sky Marshal
1 Reconnaissance
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Resistance Skywarden
1 Reveille Squad
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Seize the Day
1 Shield Dancer
1 Sol Ring
1 Springleaf Drum
1 Strip Mine
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Talisman of Conviction
1 Task Force
1 Taurean Mauler
1 Thermal Glider
1 Thought Vessel
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Thrilling Discovery
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Whipcorder
1 Windswept Heath
1 Worthy Cause
1 Wrath of God

1 Barbed Batterfist
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Dragonwing Glider
1 Fabled Passage
1 Flooded Strand
1 Goldwardens' Gambit
1 Grim Monolith
1 Hexgold Halberd
1 Jeska's Will
1 Mirran Bardiche
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker

 

[Oversoul]

To my surprise, the first time I played this pile, it actually won the game. My opponents couldn't stop Otharri, and I proceeded to pick them off one by one. As the game ended, I had 42 rebel tokens on the field.

 

[Oversoul]

I bought a copy of Whipcorder, then remembered that Outrider en-Kor and Bound in Silence existed. I don't have a ton of experience with this deck, so making cuts wasn't easy, but I decided to cut the maindeck's sole non-rebel creature. Now my Ramosians have three more potential targets!

-1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
-1 Grim Monolith
-1 Mana Vault
+1 Outrider en-Kor
+1 Whipcorder
+1 Bound in Silence

This is exactly the sort of change that I eschewed in my deckbuilding last year, and I wanted to course-correct that for my EDH decks in 2023. Woo hoo! I rule.

 

[Oversoul]

This deck handily won a second game. Not statistically significant, but I'm kind of bewildered just the same. I took the "Rebellion Rising" precon, which isn't the strongest precon ever, and basically just cut some generic cards and the go-wide soldier token subtheme for more of the "For Mirrodin!" equipment and a bunch of the old rebels. This deck shouldn't be that strong. I'm convinced that this deck really isn't that strong. But both times I actually took it into real games, it dominated.

 

[Oversoul]

Win streak broken. I chose to play this deck because it's a "modified precon" and one of my opponents was also playing a "modified precon." I had some misgivings, because I added lots of old rebel creatures and the original "Rebellion Rising" is pretty different from my version. It turns out that my worry was unfounded and should have gone in the other direction.

For those who are unfamiliar (and this being the CPA, I guess that might actually be most of you), the "Planar Portal" precon from 2021 was helmed by Prosper, Tome-Bound. The deck is pretty unique as far as these precons go, with unprecedented emphasis on exiling your own cards and then playing them from exile. Right out of the gate, Prosper rose to become one of the most popular commanders (currently the eighth most popular commander of on EDHrec). While the original precon has some strong cards anyway, the deck I ended up facing looked more like just a regular Prosper deck. There wasn't really anything that the rest of the table could do to keep up with this deck. Might as well have been an archenemy game. The guy who played the deck seemed genuinely surprised, and I've got to give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck again and beat all three opponents to death with rebel tokens. One opponent kept blowing up my equipment, but none of them could find a way to kill my whole army.

 

[Oversoul]

I'm using Jeska's Will in my Zirilan deck now, and I'm too lazy to switch it around between decks...

-1 Jeska's Will
+1 Seize the Day

 

[saprolingtoken]

This deck is sweet. I just like that the commander is strong, you have to build around it, but it scales pretty well into the game and it has built in recursion. That you can run actual Rebels from Masque block is really sweet. Love it.

 

[Oversoul]

Thanks. This deck started out just because of a confluence of two things.

1. I wanted to build at least one deck with a commander from the new set. So I was browsing my options.
2. I'd been thinking about potentially building a deck helmed by Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero. Seeing rebels in one of the precons, I figured that the precon warranted a closer look.

When I saw Otharri's abilities, I was intrigued. Figured it would be an easy deck to build and something I could dismantle or rework later. Didn't occur to me at the time how much I'd like this deck. Probably keeping this one around long-term now.

 

[saprolingtoken]

I was already sold on the art and I like the playing RW EDH decks because it feels like I have to be a bit more creative in deckbuilding, that it's a sort of "underdog" color combo and it will fly under the radar at the table a bit, no pun intended.

 

[Oversoul]

Kept a one-land hand, then proceeded to stomp everyone else at the table with a second turn Otharri (Sol Ring into Fellwar Stone into Reconnaissance to start with, then I drew another Plains and one of my opponents gave my Fellwar Stone access to red mana).

 

[Oversoul]

Some more revisions. So, I definitely pulled Task Force from my bulk boxes along with other rebels when I built this deck, but I honestly can't remember whether I omitted it deliberately to eschew comboing with it or whether I actually just didn't think of that at all. Doesn't matter. I'm bringing in Task Force and some cards to go with it. The "For Mirrodin!" equipment are cool and in a different sort of Otharri deck I might be inclined to run even more of them, but this deck is leaning more on the old Ramosian rebels. So here are my latest changes.

-1 Barbed Batterfist
-1 Dragonwing Glider
-1 Hexgold Halberd
-1 Mirran Bardiche
-1 Goldwardens' Gambit
-1 Bloodstained Mire
-1 Fabled Passage
-1 Flooded Strand
-1 Wooded Foothills
+1 Task Force
+1 Heartstone
+1 Springleaf Drum
+1 About Face
+1 Worthy Cause
+1 Buried Ruin
+1 Diamond Valley
+1 Karn's Bastion
+1 Miren, the Moaning Well

 

[Oversoul]

I think that the new changes are probably improvements, but my most recent game went poorly. One opponent had Dissipation Field, so attacking him with my rebel tokens would have been bad for me. Another player had a deck that immediately dished out substantial commander damage against me with Slicer, Hired Muscle. And then I had an opponent that was reanimating Massacre Wurm, so my 2/2 rebel tokens became a liability. I might still have turned things around, but I got manadrowned following a Blasphemous Act and picked off before I could find a way to rebuild my board state.

 

[Oversoul]

Well, I need to get some more games in with this one. Haven't gotten much chance to test out the changes except Springleaf Drum, which is great here. Lost my most recent game trying to spread pressure across all three opponents, but I should have known to take out the Gix player before it was too late. Stupid Gix.

 

[Oversoul]

I don't think I've said so yet, and I've only ever run the card in two decks so far, but Prosperous Partnership is becoming one of my all-time favorite cards.


Despite getting a bit manascrewed, I had enough for this baby, which kept me in the game. My opponents gave me an opening and I used Akroma's Will to suddenly go for the kill on all three of them. Had just enough power to close the game out on that turn. Akroma's Will is powerful and the whole EDH community has caught onto that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. We know. But Prosperous Partnership? What a card!

 

[Oversoul]

Finally got to see Karn's Bastion do its thing with Otharri. Unfortunately, I did lose my most recent game in the end, but two of my opponents struck me as dangerous targets that I'd need to eliminate before they got the tools to stop me, and I couldn't take both out. Killed one, then died to the other. At least the deck went down swinging.

 

[Oversoul]

Prosperous Partnership works its magic again! Along with Springleaf Drum, I was able to get enough mana to cast Otharri and commence the beatdown. Hexplate Wallbreaker gave me extra combats, which helped Otharri catch up from the late start. An opponent needing to leave abruptly for out-of-game reasons pretty much sped up my clock on killing the rest of the table.

 

[Oversoul]

Ouch. Piloted this deck twice last night and never had access to red mana. Got trounced in one game. Another one sort of collapsed prematurely because the player who was close to probably winning ran out of time and had to scoop in the middle of his turn. The two of us left after that decided we'd rather try to build another pod for a new game rather than playing out the mess we found ourselves in. So I lost one game for real and effectively would have lost the other.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck again last night. Wiped out all three of my opponents with glorious rebel combat damage. They all built up board states that could potentially threaten me, but a couple of key draws ensured my victory. Reconnaissance let me go all-in on attacks while maintaining defense. An early Ramosian Lieutenant into Lin-Sivvi let me set up a play in which I used Whipcorder to tap an opponent's only blocker, attacked him with Task Force, fetched Outrider en-Kor, then used About Face to one-shot the player. Fetching Neyali to boost Otharri's tokens eliminated another opponent, and my final opponent couldn't muster enough blockers to save himself on my following turn.

 

[Oversoul]

After mulliganing one-land hands away twice, I kept a two-land hand. I didn't draw a third land for a long time, but got enough artifact mana to actually play some cards. I tried to juggle offense and defense with my constrained resources. Eventually, I got a couple more lands. It was a pretty good game that looked like it could go anyone's way at various points. Ultimately, I was able to use Flawless Maneuver to protect my creatures from a board wipe. That gave me the opening I needed to swing for lethal with my big army of rebel tokens.