EDH Decks: Tasigur (Patreon)

Looking back through my Patreon archives, I realized that I never completed my series of posts highlighting my EDH decks. So here's another one. As a reminder, the previous decks were Hazezon, The Locust God, Animar, and Rasputin.

So for the next deck I'll share, the Commander is Tasigur. You probably know this card well, but just in case, here it is:

The philosophy for this deck was pretty simple. I had a bad habit of always putting too many strong cards in my Commander decks. So I gave myself the restriction to only use black-border cards with the old card frame. I also had a few Alpha/Beta cards that were sitting in my binder, so I wanted to find a deck to utilize them in. This was around when Time Spiral Remastered had been released, and Tasigur was the perfect combination of colors to fit with the cards I wanted to use. Here's the deck I put together:

So how does this deck work? Most of the time it does a lot of durdling while I play sweet BUG cards. If I want to actually win, it can create infinite mana in a few different ways. For example, if I attack with an Argothian Elder or a Krosan Restorer with threshold, I can then use my own Maze of Ith to untap it. I can then use the creature to untap the Maze of Ith and an additional land. Since I'm still in my combat phase and the creature is still technically attacking, I can untap the creature again with Maze of Ith and continue the loop to make infinite mana (it's especially nice that Maze of Ith can be used both as protection and also in combos). Pennin's Aura can similarly make infinite mana with these creatures as well. Either way, the mana can be used with Tasigur to draw my whole deck, allowing me to win with Laboratory Maniac, Stroke of Genius, or whatever.

Besides doing lots of durdling and sometimes making a bunch of mana, the main point of the deck is to play sweet old cards. Here are the Alpha/Beta cards in the deck

I still don't understand how WotC made the blacks so deep and satisfying in these cards. They must have been using some sort of magical ink. The Regrowth looks especially nice in the way it glows. Honestly though, not all these cards are super practical. The Control Magic and Terror are underpowered by today's standards, and the Tranquility actually destroys a lot of my own cards. But I like these old cards so much, I can't help but include them.

I've had all these cards since I started playing Magic, back around when Ice Age was released. I particularly remember trading for the Birds of Paradise. I used to play at a shop called Place to Play, which was in Willow Glen (a neighborhood in San Jose). Brian Weissman would actually play there from time to time (probably one of the earliest "famous" Magic players). Anyway, there was a guy there who was always a sore loser, and he was particularly mad after getting mana screwed in the finals of a Type II tournament. So he started angrily trading away the cards in his deck! He looked through my binder and offered me his Beta Birds of Paradise for my Orcish Squatters (a random rare from Ice Age). Now, I'm not one to take advantage of people, but he was in his twenties and I was only 15 at the time, and kept insisting on the trade, so I figured it was fair. And that's how I got one of my most beloved Magic cards.

Another fun story about this deck are the foreign black border dual lands. I have a bunch of these that were mostly obtained around 1997-1998 at a shop called Metro Comics in Santa Barbara. They would regularly have dual lands available for $10 to $20 (depending on if they were white or black border and the condition). This wasn't cheap for me at the time, so I would probably only get one each month or so. But that's how I got most of my dual lands.

Another, another fun story about this deck is how I obtained the Mox Diamond. I was a freshman in college, so I didn't have a car at the time. My girlfriend and I took the bus downtown on a Saturday to go to the nearby outdoor mall. As we were walking around, we passed a video game store (perhaps a Gamestop?), and I noticed they were selling Stronghold packs. This was surprising because Stronghold wasn't supposed to be released for another couple weeks. Anyway, I couldn't resist picking up a couple of packs, and when a cracked the packs as we took the bus back to campus, I opened the by far most anticipated card in the set: Mox Diamond! I tried to explain to my girlfriend how amazing this all was. I'm not sure if she totally understood, but she could definitely tell I was excited.

There are so many memories built into a deck like this. Just scanning through the pictures now, the Dark Ritual and Demonic Consultation are from a Necro deck I used to play. The Llanawar Elves, Fellwar Stone, and Sylvan Library are from an Erhnamgeddon deck. The Mana Drain and Mana Crypt were in a very early RUG Type I deck I used to play (Serendib Efreets, Kird Apes, etc). The Yawgmoth Will and Vampiric Tutor were from mono-black control decks I used to play around 1999 (you could actually play 4 Dark Ritual and 4 Yawgmoth Will in Standard at the time!) Even, the City of Brass is from when 5-color black used to be a popular deck (somewhere around 1997-1998). One of the most amazing things about Magic is how the cards can instantly transport you to a different time and place with the memories the cards represents.

Since I've built this deck, WotC has been much more aggressive in printing cards with old frames. You would think this is a good thing for me, but the whole point was that the old frame was supposed to be a deck building restriction! The problem is that this feels less and less like a restriction as more old frame cards become available. So I've been reluctant to update this deck very much. That said, I'll need to replace that Mana Crypt before I take this deck out again (couldn't they at least leave the Book Promo version unbanned?)

That's all I got to say about this deck. Here are some close ups of the cards if you want to check them out a little better:

Phew! That ended up a little longer than I was expecting. Hope you enjoyed another look at one of my decks. Thanks for reading!