Unsavory Deeds 2: Benalia Drift [EDH]

[Oversoul]

Back in 2020, I build a lands deck helmed by Torsten Von Ursus. Of course, I had no idea that we'd later get a new version of Torsten, one that actually makes sense as the commander of a land-themed deck. Continuing my gradual progress on eventually building EDH decks helmed by every one of the original 55 legendary creatures and every one of the 20 "legends retold" from last year, here's the sequel to "Unsavory Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." All my best cards for a lands deck are already in my Titania deck, and I'm keeping that deck together for now, so this one has to make due with what I could find in my collection.

Commander:
1 Torsten, Founder of Benalia

1 Abundance
1 Academy Rector
1 Arid Mesa
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Beast Within
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
1 Castle Ardenvale
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Conduit of Worlds
1 Crop Rotation
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Crystal Vein
1 Divine Visitation
1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
1 Earthcraft
1 Eldritch Evolution
1 Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
1 Elvish Reclaimer
1 Emergence Zone
1 Emiel the Blessed
1 Endurance
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Esper Sentinel
1 Eternal Witness
1 Field of the Dead
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Flooded Strand
4 Forest
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Generous Gift
1 Genesis
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Greater Good
1 Harrow
1 High Market
1 Kami of False Hope
1 Karmic Guide
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Life from the Loam
1 Lotus Field
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Luminous Broodmoth
1 Manabond
1 Marsh Flats
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mondrak, Glory Dominus
1 Parallel Lives
1 Phyrexian Altar
4 Plains
1 Regrowth
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Reveillark
1 Riftstone Portal
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Savannah
1 Seasons Past
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Serra Ascendant
1 Skullclamp
3 Snow-Covered Forest
3 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Sol Ring
1 Solitude
1 Spike Weaver
1 Splendid Reclamation
1 Spore Frog
1 Springbloom Druid
1 Strip Mine
1 Sun Titan
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
1 Teleportation Circle
1 Temple Garden
1 Terastodon
1 Timeless Witness
1 Tragic Arrogance
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
1 Winds of Abandon
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Zuran Orb

1 Bala Ged Recovery
1 Finale of Devastation
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Wayward Swordtooth
1 Yavimaya Hollow

 

[Oversoul]

This deck won its first game, although I wasn't really impressed. Basically, Gaea's Blessing saved my bacon against the mill player, then my creatures won out in combat.

 

[Oversoul]

Played another game with this deck. I lost, but I also kinda-sorta threw the game early on by using Enlightened Tutor to fetch a Manabond that I never actually needed for the rest of the game. If I'd grabbed Sylvan Library instead, I wouldn't have been stuck in topdeck mode. My opponents avoided killing my commander, and although I started to build an appreciable board state, I didn't have a way to stop from having my life drained away by a Pitiless Plunder loop that another player set up.

 

[Oversoul]

Testing this deck brought me to an awkward conclusion. I find that I often get stuck with no way to kill my own creatures, especially my commander, and am stuck hoping that my opponents will do the job for me. The deck has awesome sac outlets, but they all get put on the bottom of my library by Torsten's ability. So I need more sac outlets, and preferably sac outlets that Torsten will put into my hand instead of back into my library. Well, it just so happens that I just put my only copies of both Diamond Valley and Miren, the Moaning Well in my Otharri deck. Seriously. Oops. At least there's High Market. In fact, High Market is actually superior for my purpose with this deck. I'm adding three more sac outlets, one of them a creature, for good measure. Here are the changes.

-1 Knight of Autumn
-1 Wayward Swordtooth
-1 Bala Ged Recovery
-1 Finale of Devastation
-1 Swords to Plowshares
-1 Yavimaya Hollow
+1 Endurance
+1 Mondrak, Glory Dominus
+1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
+1 Greater Good
+1 Eldritch Evolution
+1 High Market

 

[Oversoul]

High Market is so good here! Why didn't I think of it earlier? My opponents slowed me down a bit with removal on stuff that scared them, such as Field of the Dead and Crucible of Worlds. They didn't get rid of my Skullclamp or my Parallel Lives, which meant that High Market on Torsten generated an army of tokens and all the card draw I'd need to loop through Terastodon recursion enough times to blow up all their lands. This deck isn't as fast as my Titania deck, but it is more broken once it gets going.

 

[Oversoul]

Won another game, with my opponents collectively agreeing to concede. Although I like this deck, has the problem that once it gets going, it takes over games with progressively longer and more complicated turns. So it's a success story, but one that I should probably bring to a close. I was excited to set up Life from the Loam + Manabond engine, but I didn't even really need it. Skullclamp was the boogeyman of this game, but I hardly even used it.

 

[Oversoul]

-1 Abundance
-1 Castle Ardenvale
-1 Concordant Crossroads
-1 Conduit of Worlds
-1 Crucible of Worlds
-1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
-1 Eldtritch Evolution
-1 Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
-1 Esper Sentinel
-1 Field of the Dead
-1 Fiend Hunter
-1 Forest
-1 Lotus Field
-1 Parallel Lives
-1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
-1 Serra Ascendant
-1 Snow-Covered Forest
-1 Snow-Covered Plains
-1 Sol Ring
-1 Splendid Reclamation
-1 Sylvan Library
-1 Teleportation Circle
-1 Timeless Witness
-1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
-1 Winds of Abandon
+1 Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward
+1 Aftermath Analyst
+1 Ancient Tomb
+1 Cataclysm
+1 Cataclysmic Gearhulk
+1 Crashing Drawbridge
+1 Diamond Valley
+1 Disciple of Freyalise
+1 Fauna Shaman
+1 Horizon Canopy
+1 Lazotep Quarry
+1 Lumra, Bellow of the Woods
+1 Miren, the Moaning Well
+1 Ramunap Excavator
+1 Realm-Cloaked Giant
+1 Restoration Angel
+1 Shifting Woodland
+1 Silverback Elder
+1 Ulvenwald Hydra
+1 Wasteland
+1 Weathered Wayfarer
+1 World Shaper
+1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

 

[Oversoul]

So, I put together a new version of this deck this morning. I kind of want this to be one of my long-term decks. We'll see if that feeling lasts now that I have it together again. But I knew I could improve it. The plan is to keep running with this deck and testing it until I get some sense for where more revisions might need to be made. But I think the new starting point is pretty good.

I played this deck for my first game today. I had a bit of a slow start, but an Austere Command from one of my opponents wiped the board of creatures, which bought me some time. Another opponent countered Torsten, which annoyed me at first, but I quickly found a line to deal with that. I turned Shifting Woodland into a copy of Torsten, then sacrificed it to Diamond Valley. Ulvenwald Hydra fetching Gaea's Cradle, I had enough mana to use Lazotep Quarry on the commander in my graveyard. Another board wipe, this time Toxic Deluge, took out all of the creatures again, but I used the mana from Gaea's Cradle to recast Torsten from the command zone. This quickly led to a couple of Manabond turns, which gave me enough mana to totally take over the game.

 

[Oversoul]

Despite Weathered Wayfarer and Azusa, I didn't really pull ahead at first in my game tonight. But once Mirari's Wake stuck, I was able to have this deck explode. Divine Visitation made Torsten's death trigger super-dangerous for my opponents. But then I hit an infinite loop anyway.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck again today for yet another win. Well, I was aiming for more consistency, and I succeeded there. Leveraged an early Knight of the Reliquary to set up for a couple of possible lines. Opponents got rid of my Survival of the Fittest, Spore Frog, Ashnod's Altar, and Zuran Orb. But I protected myself with Glacial Chasm while using Torsten and World Shaper to ramp like crazy.

 

[Oversoul]

This deck continues racking up wins. I brought it out for the final game of Wednesday night. Apparently I'd been told "No board wipes" by the manager at the LGS, but I never heard that! One of my opponents had Forced Fruition and was digging for an Underworld Dreams effect to kill the rest of us. Another opponent had something like 30 saproling tokens and was in the process of making them grow bigger at an alarming rate. I had cards in my hand that might let me deal with either opponent, but not both. Well, there was a card that would shut them both down for a while, but not really slow me down very much. So yeah, I did it. I put Cataclysm in the deck, and now I've finally cast it.

Some people don't like Cataclysm in EDH. Too bad. It's in my deck. I don't like Farewell, and those players run Farewell. They get what's coming to them. No mercy for the guilty. Anyway, I immediately brought all of my lands back (Aftermath Analyst) and proceeded to kill two of my opponents (one was already down to 1 life and another couldn't survive against two swings from Lumra). As the store was about to close, my last opponent realized that he couldn't get through my Glacial Chasm anyway, and I showed him the cards I'd use to make 14 4/4 flying attackers on my next turn, so he scooped.

I might be tempted to run Cataclysm in more of my decks.