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Magic: The Gathering’s Eldrazi hit the scene for the second time in the span of a year with Modern Horizons 3’s Eldrazi Incursion Commander precon, hot off the tail (tentacles?) of the Eldrazi Unbound precon from Commander Masters. Between its unique take on a five-color colorless deck and an impressively powerful and confusing face commander, it was the easy standout from its product line-up.
Ulalek, Fused Atrocity got a lot of attention with the release of the precon, but Eldrazi Incursion’s backup commander promotes a different style of Eldrazi gameplay altogether. With an emphasis on preserving your Eldrazi Spawn and Scion tokens, Azlask, the Swelling Scourge takes the eldritch horrors in an unusual direction.
Ziatora’s Proving Ground
The Commander
Most Eldrazi decks arededicated to fast rampin service of huge battlecruiser creatures, but Azlask, the Swelling Scourge advertises something a little more nuanced for the creature type. Azlask asks that you forego the top-end Eldrazi that you typically see in these decks, and insteadhone in on the Eldrazi Spawn and Scion tokensthese decks tend to generate.
Spawn and Scions are usually just speedbump tokens that are meant to be used as one-off ramp tools to get to your more expensive plays, butAzlask wants you to keep those tokens around. Doing so will give you more fodder forAzlask’s activated ability, turning those critters into mini annhilating titans on their own.
The balance comes from stocking up experience counters. To get experience counters, Azlask needs to be around to see other colorless creatures die. The easiest way to do that is sacrificing one of the aforementioned tokens, but doing so reduces the number of creatures that benefit from Azlask’s ability.There’s a push and pull between sacrificing and preserving these tokens.
Note that Azlask cares only if a colorless creature dies, not an Eldrazi specifically, soartifact creatures that sacrifice themselves can be a huge boon to the deck. Additionally, the five-color activated ability pumps all your creatures. Only the Spawn and Scions get Annihilator 1, but everything getsthe power and toughness bump.
If you have the mana to activate Azlask’s ability multiple times, each creature will get pumped for each activation, and multiple instances of Annihilator will all trigger separately.
The Strategy
There are three main goals for this deck. First is to amass as many Spawn and Scion creatures as possible. Second is striking a balance between how many you’re willing to sacrifice for experience counters while maintaining enough board presence to win a game. And third, is going for the kill with your tiny annihilators.
Play Eldrazi, build up experience, make a huge attack– that’s the plan.
This runs contrary to how a lot of Eldrazi decks tend to play. Most Eldrazi strategies want to convert all their mana resources intohuge game-ending plays, but this deck doesn’t actually have that many large top-end plays.Conserving your mana-producing tokens is key, and you really only want to sacrifice them to cast spells that replace them with more Spawn and Scions.
Azlask is not the type of commander you want to run out as soon as you can. Since it builds up experience counters by seeing other colorless creatures die,you should build up a board first, then cast Azlaskonce you have a few on-demand ways to build up experience. Thankfully Azlask also generates an experience counter if it happens to die, as well.
If a board wipe causes Azlask to die at the same time as some other colorless creatures, it will produce an experience counter for each colorless creature that died alongside it.
Important Interactions
Creature types matter for this deck. Azlask’s affinity towards Scions and Spawn creatures usually means the tokens you’ll be creating, but there are some ways to amplify the typal part of your strategy.Changelings count as both relevant creature typesat all times, and Maskwood Nexus turnsallcreatures you control into the corresponding types.
There’s an interesting dynamic between Azlask and the other experience counter creatures present in the deck. Since experience counters go on the player, not the creatures,each experience counter creature essentially helps the others. It doesn’t matter which one made the experience counters; they all benefit from them.
Ezuri, Claw of Progress is basically present to build up experience for Azlask, and it’ll make experience every time one of your Eldrazi tokens enters play. Meren of Clan Nel Toth gains experience when you sacrifice those tokens, and evenreanimates creaturespretty consistently. Minthara also creates experience when you sacrifice Eldrazi, and can provide a nice board pump to boot.
Mirror Entity is basically a back-up win condition, as it often isin token-based decks. If you’re able to’t stick Azlask on board, Mirror Entity gives you an alternative ways to filter all your mana into making your army of Eldrazi creatures huge. They’ll gain all creature types too, so they’ll benefit from any Eldrazi-related effects you have on board.
Budget Considerations
The presented Azlask list aims for a mid-power casual experience, with plenty of potential to increase the power level of the deck, or decrease accordingly.
As it stands, this list foregoes many of the most powerful Commander staples for a more unique casual deck, thoughAzlask’s color identitymeansyou have access to literally anything you might want to play.
Budget Increases
The easiest way to increase this deck’s overall power and consistency is with fast mana. There’s already a decent helping of that, but you could easily add Mana Crypt and Ancient Tomb to bolster the manabase. Smothering Tithe is also a consideration if you want access to more ramp.
Blue stapleslike Cyclonic Rift, Mystic Remora, and Rhystic Study could all make the cut, though you run the ‘risk’ of making your deck feel more similar to other existing decks. That’s not an issue for many players, but you might want toavoid cards like this if you’re attempting to maintain a novel experience.
A five-color commander also gives you access to allthe best free spells in Commander. Force of Negation, Deflecting Swat, and Deadly Rollick are some of the top-tier options, though they’re not exactly budget-friendly options. Flawless Maneuver also works well in a creature-based deck, andit’s much more affordablethan other free spells.
And finally,you’re able to overhaul the colored portion of the manabase. This list currently runs the cheaper Battlebond lands with a few Triomes and expensive colorless lands, but you could easily convert this to a fetch land plus shock land manabase, and even add in original dual lands if you have them.
Remember that the deck has a colorless mana component that you need to fulfill. However you adjust the manabase, keep a healthy number of lands that tap for colorless mana.
Budget Decreases
Increasing the power level of the deck is the easier part; it’s much harder to find budget cuts. The manabase currently features Ugin’s Labyrinth and a few pricey Triomes. Feel free to cut those for cheaper lands of your choice.More of the Modern Horizons 3 Landscapes won’t hurt, and Painlands like Llanowar Wastes can fix your colors while also tapping for colorless mana.
Maskwood Nexus, Roaming Throne, and Black Market Connections are all generically powerful typal cards that cost anywhere from $7-$35 depending on the card.These can be subbed out forinexpensive typal support cardslike Herald’s Horn, Kindred Discovery, or even Pillar of Origins for additional ramp.
Ugin’s Binding is also fairly expensive, and while it’s excellent in the deck, it’s far from necessary. You can swap it out for your board wipe of choice, butuniversal board wipes aren’t really what this deck’s interested in. Avoid the usual staples like Blasphemous Act or Toxic Deluge, and opt for conditional board wipes like Kindred Dominance or Crippling Fear.
