Against the Odds: General Tazri's Five-Color Ally Creatureland Combo Family Band Solution

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Feb 18, 2016

video Against the Odds

Hello everyone and welcome to episode twenty-three of Against the Odds. During last week's Against the Odds poll, Inverter of Truth once again jumped out to the early lead, only to be surpassed overnight by Genereal Tazri, who ended up winning by four percent of the 7,600 votes cast!

Building a General Tazri deck ended up being much more complicated than I though. I cycled through several potential builds that simply didn't capture the flavor of General Tazri. There was a White Black Lifegain Allies deck and a Five-Color Ally Aggro deck, but they didn't cut it. I finally realized the solution was to pull out all the stops and go deep. Really, really deep. As a result, we ended up with a deck I'm calling General Tazri's Five-Color Ally Creatureland Combo Family Band Solution.

We'll talk more about General Tazri in a minute. First let's get to the videos. A quick reminder. If you enjoy Against the Odds and other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up with the latest and greatest.

Against the Odds: General Tazri Intro

Against the Odds: General Tazri Games

The Deck

Probably the easiest way to explain the deck is with the help of the name, which believe it or not perfectly describes what we are trying to do (while also referencing one of my all-time favorite television shows). Let's break it down, one word at a time.

General Tazri's

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The namesake card in the deck, General Tazri does two important things. First off, she allows us to play a bunch of singleton Allies, since we can use General Tazri to tutor them up when the time is right. Second, she pushes us down the five-color path so we can potentially use the second ability.

Five-Color Ally

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Next we have six different singleton Allies, all of which have the rally mechanic. These are basically our silver bullets that we can tutor out with General Tazri. If we need to gain some life we search out Lantern Scout. If we need to get in some damage we search for Firemantle Mage or Resolute Blademaster. If we need to play defense we can use Hero of Goma Fada or Kor Bladewhirl.

Creatureland

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Since we are playing five colors, we get to play every single creatureland in Standard, giving us a total of 14 different lands that both fix our mana and can also attack and block. While having so many lands enter the battlefield tapped can make our draws a bit clunky, they synergize well with two Allies in particular.

Combo

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Mina and Denn, Wildborn and Sylvan Advocate are probably the two most powerful Allies in Standard. Both are essential to our creatureland combo package. Apart from being able to tutor for them with General Tazri, each Ally helps turn our various creaturelands into even more efficient threats. Mina and Denn, Wildborn allows us to play two lands each turn, which helps make up for having so many enter the battlefield tapped lands, while also protecting our creaturelands with their second ability. Meanwhile, Sylvan Advocate turns Shambling Vent into a 4/5 with lifelink, allows Needle Spires to hit for eight damage on an empty board, and makes Lumbering Falls a 5/5 with Hexproof, all while being an on-curve two drop.

Good-Time Family Band

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First off, Retreat to Emeria makes Kor Ally tokens, which means we can trigger the rally abilities of our Allies at instant speed with the help of a fetchland. It also generates a ton of value with Mina and Denn, Wildborn because we can not only play two lands each turn (letting us double-up on Retreat to Emeria triggers), but we can do this every turn, since if we ever miss a land drop we can use Mina and Denn, Wildborn to return a land on the battlefield to our hand. Pulling off this combo is a good-time, and over the course of a few turns makes a huge family band of tokens. Eventually, we kill our opponent by activating the second ability on Retreat to Emeria to make our band huge and attack for lethal.

Solution

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Solution actually has two meanings. First, it references our various interactive spells like Negate, Silkwrap, and Utter End, which are "solutions" to problem spells and creatures our opponent might play. Secondly, solution refers to how this crazy brew was the solution to the problem of how to build a General Tazri deck for Standard. Also, it could mean that our deck is so good we just solved the format, although this meaning seems less likely.

The Matchups

How good or bad a matchup seems mostly comes down to how much the opposing deck can punish us for exclusively playing lands that enter the battlefield tapped. We are almost never going to beat aggro decks. We are just too slow and clunky, especially considering we are behind the curve thanks to our creaturelands. We might occasionally have a shot against midrange decks, depending on the specific build. We blew out Mardu, but I can't image beating Abzan with any regularity. The good news is we likely have a good matchup against control because they can't punish our slow draws and they have a really, really hard time dealing with creaturelands. If there is one thing our deck has it's creaturelands.

The Odds

These were some of the weirdest Against the Odds matches I've ever played. We didn't even come close to winning a game through the first three matches, then suddenly we just destroyed a tier one deck in Mardu two games in a row, which I still can't believe happened. Overall we won 25% of our games and matches, which isn't the worst record for an Against the Odds, but I think this win percentage is a little deceiving. The percentage would likely drop if we continued to play the deck. Standard is just too efficient.

Vote For Next Week's Deck

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Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestion in the comments. You can reach me on Twitter (or MTGO) @SaffronOlive.