It's almost become a meme these days, but in many ways Commander has become somewhat of a rotating format. With every set released aimed more and more at Commander - and more sets than ever releasing - there's no lack of new options to try and new cards to add into decks. Not only does that mean super-powerful auto-includes like Opposition Agent or Hullbreach... but there's always new niche stuff that fits into some wacky brew you've got lying around.

I'm also not someone who likes to take apart their decks. I have an old Sharuum the Hegemon list I haven't taken apart despite rarely playing it and updating it even less. Plus the whole concept of a six-mana commander that mainly serves to combo-kill people hasn't exactly aged well - it's a scary deck but not a particularly powerful one in 2021; the format has caught up to commanders like Sharuum. So it sits.

With so many options for new stuff, I tend to get paralyzed by choices and I'm slow to pull the trigger on building a new deck. But Archelos, Lagoon Mystic caught my eye when it was released. I didn't have any other Simic deck but I'd been beaten down by the powerful and familiar combination of ramp and card draw many times. Archelos allowed me to play the newest silly cards from Commander Legends and the fact that Archelos provided its own unique spin drew me in.

After many, many months of tinkering, I'm finally pretty happy with my list and want to share it. Let's start with the Commander

Archelos, Lagoon Mystic Commander

There's essentially two halves to this turtle. Let's start with the backend, the Frozen Aether portion of the card. Frankly, there's not too many tricky things to do with this end, but it's a great addition to the package. With the right manipulation, you can ramp like crazy while you slow your opponents down by at least a turn - or more in the case of a fetchland like Misty Rainforest.

Now, making everything enter tapped won't exactly win you many friends at the Commander table, but the good news is that the aggro tends to get taken out on the Turtle, which is fine as you can recast it when needed and you're very likely to get at least some value out of it before it bites the dust. If the player to your left can't get rid of Archelos immediately, they're likely to leave it be so it at least messes with the next player in line too. That's a fun prisoner's dilemma in itself, especially when you're the prison warden watching safely from your throne of untapped permanents.

That said, we do need to get our Archelos tapped to enjoy the benefit, and casting Archelos just to pass the turn and let your opponents benefit first is a recipe for disaster.

Enter vehicles.

I'll also throw Honor-Worn Shaku here. It's not a vehicle, but it accomplishes the same purpose: tapping your Archelos the turn it comes into play. The Omenkeel is the best of the bunch, ensuring you land drops while giving you a perfect outlet for an early Archelos. I almost never play an Archelos without a way to tap it like Retreat to Coralhelm if I can help it - it's better to wait to cast your commander than run it out just to benefit your opponents shortly before they Swords it and leave you wanting.

Breaking Symmetry

Let's move on to the more interesting part of the commander: "other permanents enter the battlefield untapped."

Back when Archelos was a bit newer, our own Stephen Johnson experimented with the deck and everything that played nicely with the Turtles clauses, from Assassinate to Murderous Compulsion and so on, and was left wanting more. As he put it, "I think I just built myself a precon."

I had the same frustrating experience with my first iterations. And therein lies the biggest lesson I learned with the deck:

Lean into the commander's strengths, but only in ways that make sense if you never cast your commander.

That may seem counterintuitive - the commander is the point, right? - but it actually has some similarities to the Sharuum deck I mentioned earlier. Sharuum has a bunch of cards that really only work well with Sharuum itself - or more specifically combo-ing with Sharuum. Disciple of the Vault and Bitter Ordeal are neat cards, but they're functionally useless unless you're already doing something broken with your six-mana commander. Similarly, playing a bunch of cards that only work when everything goes right with Archelos just isn't consistent enough - a couple of removal spells and your deck is suddenly full of clunky, situational cards.

So I started cutting the cute synergy cards, and leaned more into cards that function fine when Archelos is in the command zone but really pop when you actually do have Archelos in play. This significantly upped the floor of the deck, while retaining its high ceiling.

That leads us to ramp. It's the natural fit for Blue-Green decks, and Rampant Growth and its dozens of variants get downright broken when your lands enter untapped, all the way up to turning Reshape the Earth into a ramp spell (and win condition thanks to the million Zombies that arrive with Field of the Dead).

Lotus Field and bouncelands are similarly nutty. Not only do they serve as ramp "spells" hidden away in lands in conjunction with your commander, but in a world of double-faced cards like Agadeem's Awakening, Bala Ged Recovery, Sea Gate Restoration and so on, bouncelands go from being a liability to one of the best parts of an Archelos deck.

Continuing on with the land theme - and this is absolutely a lands deck - Bojuka Bog and Zagoth Triome are normal EDH cards but get really nutty with Archelos in play, as does Myriad Landscape. Elvish Reclaimer is always a strong early play and sets up Cabal Coffers, but it's downright dirty with the Turtle in play, while Mystic Sanctuary works exactly the way you hope it does. With Life from the Loam at its core the deck presents a ton of threats from its manabase, including everyone's favorite 20/20 via easily-accessible Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage/Vesuva.

Throw Amulet of Vigor into the mix, by the way, and you can be off to the races as early as the second turn. I've never had a Commander deck where sequencing was more fun or more important. One card you'll notice missing is Sol Ring, as my playgroup banned it and Mana Crypt a while back (and we've been very happy with the result).

How to Win with Archelos

There are some really cool lines in this deck. Sure, we can ramp out Archelos on turn 3, but I usually set up for the first few turns and then play it on turn 4 with a land drop so I can start doing something silly like Crop Rotation into Lotus Field into additional ramp spells. Once you start a chain like this, you can really explode on the fourth or fifth turn of the game, and then even if Archelos gets nuked you've set yourself up to take advantage of the big-mana cards in the deck.

And there's plenty. There's the usual suspects like Torment of Hailfire and Rise of the Dark Realms and Expropriate (and Reshape the Earth is a fun win condition), but the Sultai color combination also gets us one of my favorite win conditions in Magic:

Archelos doesn't do anything another commander deck can't do: it ramps, but it's not the best ramp commander. It staxes opponents, but it's not the best stax commander. You're certainly not killing anyone with commander damage. But it does a lot all at once, and the more I've tuned my list to the commander, the more I've developed what plays out like a truly unique commander experience. I love what it does to games in my group, and it's my favorite take on the ubiquitous ramp archetype.

Archelos EDH | Commander | Corbin Hosler

• Commander (1)
• 1 Archelos, Lagoon Mystic

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Apex Devastator
• 1 Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Elvish Reclaimer
• 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Opposition Agent
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Risen Reef
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Sepulchral Primordial
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1 Thrasios, Triton Hero
• 1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
• 1 Wood Elves

• Instants (11)
• 1 Assassin's Trophy
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Chord of Calling
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Fierce Guardianship
• 1 Growth Spiral
• 1 Mana Drain
• 1 Realms Uncharted
• 1 Swan Song

• Sorceries (17)
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Explore
• 1 Expropriate
• 1 Hour of Promise
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Reshape the Earth
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Sea Gate Restoration
• 1 Three Visits
• 1 Torment of Hailfire
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Villainous Wealth

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Mind's Dilation
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Retreat to Coralhelm
• 1 Shark Typhoon
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Search for Azcanta

• Artifacts (8)
• 1 Amulet of Vigor
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Golgari Signet
• 1 Honor-Worn Shaku
• 1 Orb of Dreams
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Smuggler's Copter
• 1 The Omenkeel

• Lands (36)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Bayou
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dark Depths
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Field of the Dead
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Lotus Field
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Temple of Malady
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Zagoth Triome
• 1 Snow-Covered Forest
• 1 Snow-Covered Island
• 1 Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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