EDH Decks: Hazezon Tamar (Patreon)

Here's the next post in my Commander decks series. You can see the previous discussion on The Locust God deck here.

This is actually my only Commander deck that doesn't have blue in it (yup, I'm one of those people). It's an enchantment-themed deck headed by the legendary Naya creature Hazezon Tamar.

Here's the whole deck:

The basic idea of the deck is to use enchantments to protect myself while I generate a lot of mana and draw cards, play Hazezon to make a bunch of tokens, and then attack or sacrifice the tokens for the win.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, the most important aspect of a Commander deck for me is that I have sweet cards that I enjoy playing, and that the deck as a whole has a unifying aesthetic. This deck hits three main aspects that make me love playing it.

1. Richard Kane-Ferguson. Back when I first started playing Magic, RKF had some of the most iconic art style of any artist in Magic. His creatures in Legends truly looked mythic and legendary. So when I started building Commander decks, I knew I had to build one around an RKF card. Every time I cast this card it takes me back to when I first started playing and puts a smile on my face. The other day I was playing this deck at my local gaming shop, and my opponent actually asked me why do I play this Hazezon when I could play the new version which is cheaper and better. I'm not even sure that's true, but my response was simply, have you looked at the art on this version?!

2. Green-white cards with white borders. I'll admit I'm somewhat of a snob and all my other Commander decks are fully black border. This is the one deck I allow myself to play white border cards. This is inspired by the first competitive deck I used when I started attending tournaments, which was a green-white Erhnamgeddon deck (basically drop Llanawar Elves and Erhnam Djinn early and then play Armageddon to lock your opponent out). Being a kid at the time, I definitely wasn't picky about whether I was playing black or white border cards. The Sylvan Library here is probably the same one I used in that deck. For quite a while I actually used Ice Age basic lands to hearken back that original deck as well, because those were my lands of choice back then. Eventually though I realized that Alpha/Beta lands are just superior and made the switch. Finally, note that the Sol Ring is not from Revised but instead Foreign White Border (FWB). I think FWB is pretty underrated. They look way better than Revised because they have richer colors and the bevel of the card frame isn't cut off. FWB should get more love.

3. Enchantment them. My love for Verduran Enchantress and enchantment theme decks goes way back, so time for a little detour. It all started with a book called "Totally Unauthorized Magic: The Gathering."

Just looking at this book, you might think it's some sort of scam ("The unbeatable deck can be yours!"). But in actuality, it was a goldmine of information. Each chapter was written by a different author who presented their favorite deck. And even though it was focused on Type I (now Vintage), the deck building and playing principles were revolutionary to me. For example, there's a chapter by Brian Weissman presenting how he developed one of the most famous decks in Magic history, simply known as The Deck. Brian then lays out the theory of "card advantage," something we take for granted now but I had never heard of before. Other chapters talk about the concept of tempo advantage.

Anyway, the chapter that really caught my attention was Mark Chalice's Vercursion deck, which you can see here:

The basic idea was to create a draw engine with Verduran Enchantress and copying it with Dance of Many. You then churn through the deck, playing Timetwister over and over again by getting it back with Forgotten Lore and Regrowth, playing all the lands in your deck using Fastbond plus Zuran Orb, and making effectively infinite mana with Mana Flare and Candelabra. You typically win by casting a huge Braingeyser or Fireball on your opponent, or taking enough mana burn and then switching life totals with Mirror Universe. It would often win on turn three or four, and in many ways it's the predecessor to what we know as Storm today, but way before Storm existed. And I was completely enchanted (get it?!) by this deck.

Sorry for the long story, but this was part of my original motivation for building this Commander deck. I guess I could have built it to be more like the Vercursion deck, but I don't really like playing solitaire in Commander. I feel guilty when everyone has to just watch me play the whole time!

Over time, WotC has printed more and more cards for the enchantment archetype, which has made it almost too easy to build this deck (for example, Sythis). I've tried to resist making this deck too cookie cutter. Hopefully by using a somewhat unusual commander for this archetype, I can keep it from becoming too stale. I also like how including red allows me to consider a wider variety of cards compared to many green-white enchantment-themed decks.

Here's a close up of the cards in the deck:

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy hearing about my decks like this. Let me know if you have any questions, thoughts, comments, or whatever!