Readers,

I was preparing to write another article in this series by thinking about the things I like to do in each color in a 75% context. I like White decks to play Kismet effects and in general slow things down so that the player farthest ahead can be caught. In Red, I like to Threaten their creatures and, if possible, not give them back alive. In Black I like to kill and Reanimate their creatures and use them against them. In Blue I like to steal their stuff. But what about in Green? Green is almost always the engine that makes the other colors go when I build a deck. Green is easily the best color in Commander but I have really struggled to isolate what I like about it in a 75% deck. I asked myself if what I liked to do with Green was simply "make mana" and that answer didn't really satisfy me.

But why not? Isn't making mana enough? After all, making mana is how we play our spells and playing more spells usually means we win, provided the spells are good enough. Mana also gets us toward the most 75% way to win with a Green deck there is.

There are ways to interact with Helix Pinnacle, it takes a long time to get 100 counters, everyone sees it coming and gets more aggressive in response - it's a great card. Injecting a subgame into a game of Magic throws people off of their own game and they may commit resources they would normally use to win to instead stopping you from winning your subgame, which may not even function like a main plan. Mana that was going to go to waste at the end of the turn instead gets funneled into making your Doomsday clock get 1 second closer to midnight but you can still, you know, play a regular game of Magic. I've had Helix get Cyclonic Rifted at 100 counters, I've lost it to Cleansing Meditation and Merciless Eviction and I've been straight dogpiled by people for playing it. I've also won my fair share of games with this card. Thinking about making a ton of mana in the context of this card existing reminds me that you can make a deck that makes a ton of mana and jam this in there to make the games where you draw it that much more exciting.

I don't want to be a Pinnacle deck so I won't be tutoring for it or running cards that are only good with Pinnacle, but I also won't be afraid to really lean into a strategy that allows me to generate a ton of mana a ton of different ways. We'll have to find creative ways to use it, but that's fine. I also don't want this to just be an Omnath, Locus of Mana deck so I needed to think of some way to generate mana using unconventional sources. Doubling Cube and Heartbeat of Spring are cute, but I kind of liked the idea of using a ton of expendable dorks to tap to Cryptolith Rite and sac to Ashnod's Altar. I looked at every Mono-Green commander in Magic's history for an answer and found one in the very latest set. It may not be obvious, but my mana-flood commander wasn't going to be an Elf, a Druid, or a Shaman. It was going to be a Spider.

Relying on our opponents to do things for us isn't exactly the smartest idea, but our opponents are going to have to play Instants and Sorceries to win the game because it's hard to out-creature a Green deck. When they do, we're going to capitalize by doubling or quadrupling our token output capabilities and then putting those tokens to work in our mana factory, Cryptolithing Rites, Crafting Earths, Hierophanting Citanuls, and a fourth thing. We can sac the Spiders for mana when they're too tired and desiccated to slave away in our mana sweatshop. If you're starting to feel bad for the little critters, I'm going to go ahead and remind you that spiders are nightmare creatures that terrify small children for fun and that Arasta looks like someone photoshopped Iggy Pop's head onto the monster that tried to kill Frodo Baggins. I'm not saying to kill Spiders because they eat pest insects by the truckload but I would suggest that we don't have to feel bad for the indentured servitude we're going to impose on theoretical card game token spiders because nightmare scenarios are exactly the karma that these bug-suckers deserve. I can feel you pulling back so I'm going to stress one more time that these are pretend spiders.

We're going to want mana sinks beyond Helix Pinnacle, but since we will have a lot of tokens, we'll be able to go wide and therefore ways to boost power and toughness of our tokens will get the nod. We'll have cartoonish amounts of mana once we get going so we'll need ways to keep our hands full and we'll want to be able to bring things back from the dead. Green does all of this well. A spider's work is never done, so Awakening and Seedborn Muse will make their toil eternal, threatening to give me mana on every upkeep to fuel the mana machine or just store it in our Omnath for future nefarious purposes. Other mana dorks will get us started in the early turns and we will run other ways to make tokens. How could you not run Squirrel Nest in a deck with Earthcraft? Those tokens may seem puny but with Champion of Lambholt around, it's never too late to join the fray and make the squad unblockable. This is going to be a lot of fun, and it's going to make them think twice about countering our spells. Here's what I think the deck should look like.

Getting Arasty in the Pasty | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Arasta of the Endless Web

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Ant Queen
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Champion of Lambholt
• 1 Citanul Hierophants
• 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1 Elvish Mystic
• 1 Essence Warden
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
• 1 Karametra's Acolyte
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Manglehorn
• 1 Omnath, Locus of Mana
• 1 Ramunap Excavator
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Renata, Called to the Hunt
• 1 Runic Armasaur
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Seedborn Muse
• 1 Silklash Spider
• 1 Squirrel Wrangler
• 1 Thunderfoot Baloth
• 1 Wolfbriar Elemental

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Garruk Wildspeaker

• Instants (9)
• 1 Arachnogenesis
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Return of the Wildspeaker
• 1 Return to Nature
• 1 Second Harvest
• 1 Sprout Swarm

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Finale of Devastation
• 1 Genesis Wave
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Parallel Evolution
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Skyshroud Claim

• Enchantments (13)
• 1 Awakening
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Concordant Crossroads
• 1 Cryptolith Rite
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Earthcraft
• 1 Growing Rites of Itlimoc
• 1 Helix Pinnacle
• 1 Kenrith's Transformation
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Primal Vigor
• 1 Squirrel Nest
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Bow of Nylea
• 1 Coat of Arms
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Helm of the Host
• 1 Skullclamp

• Lands (37)
• 29 Forest
• 1 Castle Garenbrig
• 1 Dust Bowl
• 1 Field of Ruin
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Swarmyard

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The absolute last cut I made to the deck was Utopia Mycon, a card I really wanted to showcase. Ultimately, we have way too many different kinds of tokens to make Mycon work, even in a deck with Doubling Season. If you've never seen that card, it does a lot of work and if you're not running it in Slimefoot, the Stowaway make room.

This deck feels like it wants one more big, dumb artifact mana dump like Rocket Launcher or something, but playing around with it will bear that out. I like how many mana dumps there are but I think we could always use some more. Remember, we're not tutoring for Helix Pinnacle, but we may Genesis Wave into it.

Speaking of Genesis Wave, you may want to run some way to not get Rifted out of the game - but all of the cards that prevent that are sort of non-bos with our commander so you may just want to run that risk. If you Genesis Wave for enough to lethal the table, you may get Rifted and that's fun, too, as long as that doesn't make the game take an extra 20 minutes. No deck is without weakness, especially 75% ones.

Early you'll want to start getting lands and mana dorks out and then shift to making use of the tokens you're granted. Cast your commander early and as often as necessary. Get those spiders weaving you some mana. Speaking of Mana Web, I considered it but I'd rather they were free to play lots of Instants and Sorceries on other people's turns so I decided against it. Root Maze, Collector Ouphe and Hall of Gemstones are all in my "test board" for the deck, though, in case you need some help bringing the table in line, provided someone else gets into an early lead besides you.

Once you have some creatures amassed, try to go wide. Keep using your dorks to churn out more dorks with cards like Ant Queen and Sprout Swarm then use your mana to dump into Kamahl, Fist of Krosa or Genesis Wave to finish them off. Craterhoof Behemoth is in the deck but you're not going to Green Sun for him in my build - feel free to include that in yours. By the time you have that much mana, you'll find a way to win.

I have a few cards that sac lands that are too good not to play like Constant Mists and Squirrel Wrangler, so I included Crucible of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator. That's going to help with Avenger of Zendikar and it lets you be really aggressive with Dust Bowl. Ultimately, though, we're going to try dumping our mana into our creatures. Feel free to experiment with Nylea, God of the Hunt or some other creature-based mana dump.

This deck will need tuning but right now it's a fun way to take advantage of how much mana Green can make easily and how other colors love to play spells and give us tokens. Want to try going even bigger? Mana Reflection, Nyxbloom Ancient, Doubling Cube and Zendikar Resurgent are all cards. You have a lot of options for where to spend your big mana, and I'm just happy you chose my build.

That does it for me! Join me next week where I'll be thinking about what I like to do in other colors and finding ways to get it done. We're getting close to Ikoria spoiler season, so keep your eyes peeled for our take on that. Until next time!