I thought the meld cards from The Brothers’ War were really cool, and was particularly excited about Titania, Voice of Gaea because I love green, so it didn’t take long for me to pull together a deck with Titania at the helm.
I Am Titania
Titania, Voice of Gaea a reasonable, if a bit boring, Magic: The Gathering card. It’s a 3/4 with reach for three mana, and whenever one or more land cards are put into your graveyard from anywhere, you gain two life. Like, the designer put a gate on that lifegain ability so that you couldn’t mill yourself for a bunch of lands to gain a bunch of life unless you could do it one land at a time.
I guess they wanted to ensure that the focus for deckbuilding excitement was that last paragraph where you have four or more land cards in your graveyard and both own and control Titania, Voice of Gaea and a land named Argoth, Sanctum of Nature in order to meld them into Titania, Gaea’s Incarnate. Now, the melded card is something to strive for. Vigilance! Reach! Trample! Haste! Power and toughness equal to the number of lands you control, and when it enters the battlefield, you return all land cards from your graveyard to the battlefield! That there is what you call a beating.
But wait, there’s more: for four mana you can put four +1/+1 counters on a target land you control and it becomes a 0/0 Elemental creature with haste (and is still a land). So, if you’ve got enough mana, you can either convert multiple lands into 4/4 Elementals, or make one land into an 8/8 or 12/12 Elemental.
So, to unleash all this awesome sauce, we only need to do two things in addition to casting our commander: get four lands in the graveyard, and somehow find Argoth, Sanctum of Nature and get it onto the battlefield. Luckily for us, green has plenty of ways to do just that!
Titania Stuff
First off, I wanted to have some other Titania goodies, like the original version of Titania, Protector of Argoth. I have lands that sacrifice so help populate the graveyard for my commander’s trigger, so having Protector of Argoth churn out 5/3 Elemental tokens along the way is sweet. It’s also a way to get Argoth, Sanctum of Nature back in case it ends up in the graveyard. The new Titania, Nature’s Force makes Elementals, does some milling, and potentially lets you play Forests from your graveyard.
I strongly considered running Titania’s Song from Antiquities, but I really like Staff of Titania, and giving that up along with all the other artifacts in my deck didn’t seem worth the flavor win.
Land Search
The next things I put in the deck were a bunch of ways to search up Argoth, Sanctum of Nature, including one of my old favorites, Ulvenwald Hydra. It’s an awesome flavor win to include Titania’s Command, which can fetch up Argoth as well as provide another mode of utility. I especially appreciate the graveyard hate that can sometimes be clutch in a game of Commander.
Lands in the Graveyard
Getting lands into the graveyard is an important part of activating our commander’s meld trigger, with Realms Uncharted being an excellent way to ensure we’re putting two lands in there; as an instant, it can make for a surprise if your opponents aren’t expecting you to be able to meld.
I definitely love the fetchlands from Streets of New Capenna here. They sacrifice and search for a basic Forest when they enter the battlefield, so even if your opponent is playing a card that makes nonbasic lands enter the battlefield tapped, you can still use the ability right away. These are awesome to bring back from the graveyard when Titania melds with Argoth since they’ll enter the battlefield, fetch up some Forests, and then go back to the graveyard to count towards lands there in case Titania dies and comes back later. Plus, the extra landfall triggers synergize nicely with other cards.
Life from the Loam, Ramunap Excavator, and Perennial Behemoth are here to get back Argoth in case it ends up in the graveyard (say, Titania dies in a battlefield sweeper). Noxious Revival is my emergency button in case Argoth ends up in the graveyard during another player’s turn and somebody tries to exile my graveyard; I’ll happily pay two life if I’m tapped out to rescue that crucial part of my gameplan!
Lands Matter
I’ve a bunch of other cards that care about lands, especially landfall-style triggers like Avenger of Zendikar, Tireless Tracker, and Tireless Provisioner. Multani, Yavimaya’s Avatar and Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcerer are Elemental creatures that can get huge with all the extra lands that should be sprouting up on my battlefield. Blackblade Reforged can double up that advantage on these two legendaries as well as my commander too.
Hormagaunt Horde is a grindy value engine for a deck that can reasonably expect to have a bunch of mana available; once you get to six mana, you can get the ravenous draw trigger, and when it inevitably dies, you can bring it back whenever you play a land if you want to pay for it.
Special Lands
Some other special lands sacrifice for effect to help build up your land count in the graveyard. Mirrorpool is one of my all-time favorite cards (ask me about the Mirrorpool dance) and is a sneaky way to protect your melded Titania, Gaea Incarnate from an exile effect. With something like Swords to Plowshares on the stack, activate Mirrorpool and target Gaea Incarnate to copy it. The legend rule happens, so keep the copy and sacrifice the original Gaea Incarnate, putting Voice of Gaea in your command zone and Argoth into your graveyard. Then the copy’s “enters the battlefield” trigger can bring Argoth back to the battlefield to meld again later if necessary!
High Market is another way to help ensure Gaea Incarnate doesn’t get hit with an exile effect.
Removal
I’ve included a good amount of quality green removal here, including the criminally underplayed Ezuri’s Predation, which can come online relatively quickly with all the land ramp in this deck. With Gaea Incarnate potentially being a massively huge creature with trample, Ram Through can sometimes be a green Fireball directly to someone’s life total at instant speed.
Manglehorn has become a staple in many of my decks, mainly as a way to blunt the effectiveness of Treasure tokens in decks that want to generate a ton of Treasures and go off with some sort of combo.
I’ve got a Jumpstart 2022 version of World Breaker and I really love that art and was happy to have a home for it here. If World Breaker ends up in the graveyard, it’s another sneaky way to up the number of land cards in the graveyard at instant speed with its activated ability.
Card Draw
Card draw is the lubricant to any good Commander deck, and luckily green offers a bunch of good stuff. Sylvan Library as raw card draw is rather expensive on the life total, though my commander can offset that life with lands going to the graveyard. But what’s even better in this deck is how much shuffling you do searching up lands, which can reset the top of your library a bunch if there are cards that aren’t helpful and not worth paying life to clear off the deck. Rishkar’s Expertise should be able to draw quite a few cards, given how big a lot of our Elementals can be.
I’ve been slotting Zenith Chronicler in a lot of my monocolor decks lately, and I think it’s an awesome way to offset the inherent advantages that multicolor decks have in terms of card selection, even if it will result in your opponents drawing cards too.
You may have seen me mention my love of Mighty Servant of Leuk-o, which has overperformed every time I’ve played it. If you haven’t tried it out yet, and you have a deck with many creatures, give it a whirl!
Interaction
A lot of my interaction, such as Tamiyo’s Safekeeping, involves protecting Argoth from exile effects when it’s been melded with Titania. I also have Endurance in the deck as another way to protect Argoth from being exiled with my graveyard if it’s in there. Homeward Path and Brooding Saurian and in the deck to counteract steal effects; I’d hate to jump through all the hoops, only to have someone take my commander and bash my head in with it!
Empress of Beasts is some spicy tech to get lands into the graveyard and punish control decks who rely on battlefield sweepers a bit too much—give them a heads-up that their lands will become 3/3 creatures until the end of the turn if they cast that Wrath of God for the third time! Also, with the number of lands that I can get onto the battlefield, it can just flat-out be a win condition sometimes.
Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus is even more spicy new tech for the deck! Not only does it double the size of our large, trampling Elemental monsters, but its ability to sacrifice two other creatures for potentially zero mana is yet another way to protect my melded commander from an exile effect.
Mana Ramp
In addition to all the land search I mentioned earlier, I’ve got even more mana ramp for the early-game, in part to ensure I can do the land search that much sooner. Liquimetal Torque is something I try to slot in all my green decks to turn my artifact removal spells into creature removal spells if I need it.
The Deck
Okay, here is the full decklist:
Creatures (28)
Lands (19)
Spells (52)
Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:
What must-have cards might I have missed including here? Do you have Commander decks featuring the meld mechanic?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
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