G Tokens, W/G also tokens, and B/R graveyard shenanigans, it became pretty trivial to predict Trostani, Craterhoof, Damnation, Restoration Angel and a few other cards. I did NOT see Tarmogoyf coming, nor did I see such profound rarity shifts like Mortician Beetle all the way down to common, Goblin Assault to uncommon, or Seance being shifted to reprintable. Are you kidding me? My pet card got reprinted in this set? I feel like Punxsutawney Phil only except of a few more months of winter, we get a few more people on reddit accusing me of being the guy who said he was going to give people bitcoins to play Seance on the PT and burning a bunch of copies of the card. I would never burn my pretty Seances, not even to make money.

I kind of figured with populate plus tokens overlapping we would see Doubling Season (it’s possible, we got goyf!) and failing that, Parallel Lives. We didn’t, but it’s impossible to complain since the set is so ridiculous that it’s hard to even fathom being disappointed in this set. The third time seems to be a charm. However, I kind of expected to see Awakening Zone in the set and we didn’t, which is sort of surprising. Then again, if we’d gotten Awakening Zone we could easily have said “I kind of expected to see Assemble the Legion” or something equally “Waaaa, they folded my $100 bill lengthwise,” the kind of move this community is pretty good at. We didn’t get From Beyond in the set, which is fine with me because I have a lot of money tied up in copies of this card for the day when it’s as expensive as Awakening Zone is so I don’t want it to get reprinted. What I do want, though, is to play with it. So, let’s play with it. Let’s build a deck that maximizes From Beyond in honor of a card that’s similar to it not ending up in Modern Masters 2017. It was either this or build another Trostani deck and that got like 4 new cards since the last time I did that. Hard Pass. Let’s look at a deck that will benefit from some of its cards getting cheaper in Modern Masters 2017 and go R/G instead.

Thromok and Jarad at Ravnica ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Thromok the Insatiable

• Creatures (29)
• 1 Anger
• 1 Ant Queen
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Beetleback Chief
• 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1 Desolation Twin
• 1 Dragon Broodmother
• 1 Dragonlair Spider
• 1 Endless One
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Hornet Queen
• 1 It that Betrays
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1 Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1 Mitotic Slime
• 1 Mycoloth
• 1 Ogre Battledriver
• 1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Siege-Gang Commander
• 1 Skullmulcher
• 1 Tana, the Bloodsower
• 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
• 1 Ulasht, the Hate Seed
• 1 Wood Elves
• 1 World Breaker
• 1 Xenagos, God of Revels
• 1 Yavimaya Elder

• Instants (4)
• 1 Artifact Mutation
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Fresh Meat
• 1 Second Harvest

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 All is Dust
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Fungal Sprouting
• 1 Hull Breach
• 1 Insurrection
• 1 Release the Gremlins
• 1 Tempt with Vengeance

• Enchantments (14)
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Cryptolith Rite
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Earthcraft
• 1 Elemental Mastery
• 1 Evolutionary Leap
• 1 Fecundity
• 1 From Beyond
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Primal Vigor
• 1 Vicious Shadows
• 1 Warstorm Surge

• Artifacts (8)
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Gruul Signet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mage Slayer
• 1 Panharmonicon
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (39)
• 13 Forest
• 14 Mountain
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Gruul Turf
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Kher Keep
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple of Abandon

Buy This Deck

Once we have the tokens, we need a way to get ahead. The first thing I thought of was Cryptolith Rite and Earthcraft. As unimpressive as an Eldrazi Spawn or Scion might be at first, they’re even better when you can tap them then sac them for a ton of mana. Rite and Earthcraft keep us in business, making all of our tokens into mana producers, rocketing our Eldrazi out many turns early and turning our X spells into monster spells. We have ways to sac our creatures for more than 1 colorless which makes our Scions and Spawn better and our Saprolings much better. That helps our spells even more and lets us trigger things like Fecundity to keep our hand full. We don’t want to sac our tokens too much since they are best when they’re being devoured, so having multiple ways to turn them into mana is very helpful.

What do we think? Is this a durdle deck? Does it need something else? Did I cut your favorite card? Don’t see your favorite Eldrazi represented? Hit me up in the comments section! We’ll be getting Amonkhet spoilers sooner than you think but until then, we’ll be looking at ways to codify some of the things we’ve been doing in this series without realizing it and trying to make this deck-building ethos even easier to follow. Thanks for reading. Until next week!