Readers!

I bet you've been excited to see my take on Tatsunari, Toad Rider. I'm sure a lot of people expected me to cover it much earlier, but I wanted to get a few weeks removed from my original approach to brewing the deck because all of my ideas were, and this is going to sound obvious for lots of reasons, heavily enchantment-based. We're going to need a lot of enchantments to fill out this deck, certainly, but I did resolve to use a lot more Instants and Sorceries. It wasn't immediately obvious to me which Instants and Sorceries I should play in a deck like this - they don't give me a Keimi token or trigger his damage after all. There was one Sorcery I really wanted to use with Keimi, though, and trying to make it work led me down a path I haven't traveled much and led me to a much more satisfying final build.

The card that caused me to completely redefine my approach to the deck is one that might not look like a great inclusion in the deck at first glance though it's going to add to our Sorcery count in a big way.

If you could make 5 more copies of Keimi, you could dome everyone for 6 every time you played an Enchantment. Don't you want to hurt the table? There is a problem, however, and it's one we can't ignore. You can't make 5 extra copies of Keimi very easily, because it's legendary.

They don't want people doing what I want to do with Keimi because as those frogs pile up, every Enchantment becomes an existential threat to the board. Making Keimi legendary made sure you couldn't accumulate toads and vex everyone. However, while it's very inconvenient to copy Keimi a whole bunch of times, it's not impossible. Suddenly, I had an idea about how to build Keimi, and it didn't involve nearly as many Enchantments as you might expect me to run in a deck that basically begs you to run Enchantments. However, Tatsunari just demands that you cast a lot of Enchantments, but it doesn't demand that you include more than normal in your deck. Tatsunari cares so little about what the Enchantment does that we can get more cast triggers than we're used to while running fewer Enchantments to make room for more Instants and Sorceries. The secret is to use terrible Enchantments that don't do anything expect come into play and go away.

For two Green mana you can trigger Keimi or Tatsunari once and hit the table for as much damage as you have copies of Keimi. There is a list of bad Enchantments like this one whose sole purpose is to trigger your commander and his pet toad and you can play a lot of them, thereby freeing up space in the deck for Rite of Replication. First, though, we need to make sure Rite of Replication does something. We clearly can't cast it targeting Keimi because we'll only get to keep one copy. However, with one small modification.

Helm allows you to make a "clean" token that's not Legendary, and if you copied that token, you could make lots and lots of copies of Keimi. Once you get to 3 or 4, honestly, you're going to see people desperate to wipe the board, but with Tatsunari being your commander, getting him back will be annoying though not impossible. Good thing we're running Wild Growth and friends to ramp our mana and give us Keimi triggers.

It's not just Helm of the Host, though, we also have access to Double Major and Spark Double, two other copy effects that allow you to make a non-Legendary copy of a Legendary creature. Double Major can't copy Keimi but it can copy Tatsunari in a pinch, which gives you two triggers per enchantment.

Also, who says Keimi coming into play, realizing that he's in a Highlander scenario where there can be only one and fading from existence is a bad thing? We could make that work for us - getting triggers from Grave Pact and Bastion of Remembrance when those extra toads hit the bin. If you don't have a way to make Keimi legendary, making him die a lot can still be a good thing. Tatsunari won't be putting extra copies of Keimi into play if there is one already, but every clone or copy spell we play can give us those triggers. With 2 different ways to drain the table, there's no reason not to run Parallel Lives and friends because every additional token you make is either a Blood Artist trigger or you're making a bunch of non-Legendary copies because you drew Helm of The Host or, even better than that, an old friend from the first Kamigawa block.

Mirror Gallery was cool and exciting and with Mirror Box joining the party, we can get into all sorts of trouble with Keimi. Between our clone effects that remove the Legendary status of Keimi, Mirrors Box and Gallery and Helm of the Host, we don't have a TON of cards in the deck that make this run less like a fair version of the deck. However, we really only need to draw one of them, and with Black, Green and Blue involved, we have 3 of the 3 colors capable of drawing extra cards in Magic covered. We can play like a typical Enchantress deck, but once the clones are on line, Mana Bloom will be a lethal weapon. Let's look at this ridiculous list, shall we?

Tatsunari Toads | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Tatsunari, Toad Rider

• Creatures (22)
• 1 Archetype of Imagination
• 1 Argothian Enchantress
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Cryptoplasm
• 1 Destiny Spinner
• 1 Doomwake Giant
• 1 Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
• 1 Eidolon of Blossoms
• 1 Gloomshrieker
• 1 Grim Guardian
• 1 Herald of the Pantheon
• 1 Nylea's Colossus
• 1 Progenitor Mimic
• 1 Protean Thaumaturge
• 1 Sakashima of a Thousand Faces
• 1 Sanctum Weaver
• 1 Spark Double
• 1 Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1 Verduran Enchantress
• 1 Vizier of Many Faces
• 1 Weaver of Harmony
• 1 Zulaport Cutthroat

• Instants (5)
• 1 Cackling Counterpart
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Double Major
• 1 Fated Infatuation

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Quasiduplicate
• 1 Rampant Growth

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Blade of Selves
• 1 Mirror Box
• 1 Mirror Gallery
• 1 Sol Ring

• Enchantments (27)
• 1 Animate Dead
• 1 Binding the Old Gods
• 1 Copy Enchantment
• 1 Dictate of Erebos
• 1 Enchantress's Presence
• 1 Estrid's Invocation
• 1 Fertile Ground
• 1 Followed Footsteps
• 1 Grave Pact
• 1 Imprisoned in the Moon
• 1 Mirrormade
• 1 Mirror Mockery
• 1 Mystic Remora
• 1 Omen of the Sea
• 1 Oubliette
• 1 Overgrowth
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Shielding Plax
• 1 Shimmering Wings
• 1 Song of the Dryads
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 The Meathook Massacre
• 1 Utopia Sprawl
• 1 Whip Silk
• 1 Wild Growth

• Lands (37)
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deathcap Glade
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Opulent Palace
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Undergrowth Stadium
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Yavimaya Coast
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
• 1 Zagoth Triome
• 5 Island
• 4 Swamp
• 9 Forest

Buy This Deck Export text format

This list is pretty wild, frankly. It looks like a bit of a bad version of a dedicated Clone deck, but I think it's more than that. Here's what I think you could add if you wanted.

You can always add more clone effects, but I opted to add the ones that were the most repeatable. Followed Footsteps is one of the best auras to put on a non-Legendary copy of Keimi and it's going to give you a bigger bang for 5 mana than any other spell in the deck. Cloning something once is cool but cloning something every turn is even better, and it triggers Keimi and Tatsunari to boot. Quasiduplicate and Cackling Counterpart can at least be cast twice so they made the cut. More clones means adding worse clones, but only kind of. I just agonized over cuts so much I couldn't cut more even if the cards needed to be cut.

Drawing more than one token doubler card is not going to be great if it comes at the expense of being able to strip Keimi of his legendary status, but you could jam an Adrix and Nev in the deck as well as a Doubling Season if you wanted. You'd likely want to add more cards that make tokens, but with cards like Saheeli's Artistry, Mimic Vat and Mechanized Production, you could very likely make it worth it. I had way more ideas about what to add than what to cut so I abandoned this line of building and I think I have enough to make it work.

Whatever you like about this build and want to steer into, this is going to play like a regular Tatsunari deck until you have a great turn and make 4 copies of Keimi and threaten everyone's existence. Keep your plans a secret and don't let them figure it out until it's too late.

That does it for me this week, readers. Thanks for joining me and keep on me about adding more Instants and Sorceries. I added more than I usually add, but I cut as many as I usually cut to make room for more Enchantments, something I actually feel justified doing with this deck. Until next time!