Readers!

I don't want to seem like a one-trick pony or anything, but lately I have been overcome with the urge to both do something fairly new and original with the Jumpstart commanders but also having that thing be the same thing every time. I don't think that's a problem if YOU don't think that's a problem. Besides, we are doing something new - I have made lots of landfall decks, but it has been a VERY long time since I made one where Squandered Resources was THIS good. Yes, I just made a landfall deck with Isu and another landfall deck from Jumpstart might bore you, but while Isu was a deck that sneaks up on opponents with its landfall shenanigans, there is another Legendary creature in Jumpstart 2k22 that is begging for a landfall deck. Will people be ready for it? Yes. Are we going to build the deck anyway because it might be resilient enough to stop them from stopping you? Also yes. We're going to build the deck that we wanted The Gitrog Monster to be but with a commander that looks much more unassuming until it's too late. Be honest, you knew this article was coming the second they gave us a Crucible of Worlds on a stick. I give you our next project - Zask, Skittering Swarmlord.

Some obvious uses for Zask are to build some sort of recursion engine with cheap or ETB insects. You'll treat your graveyard as a second hand. However, being able to play lands from your graveyard means you could build a deck with no insects and still have a decent time doing a bad impression of Lord Windgrace. Instead, I want to lean hard into getting value from hitting multiple landfall triggers a turn very reliably because we have a Ramunap Excavator in the command zone. We will certainly use Insects in the deck because there are a few like Hornet Nest that are too tempting not to play with, but we are going to use landfall to get a lot of lands in the mix and eventually into play as a means of giving us a lot of mana because we're a deck that has an easy time finding Rogue's Passage and our commander also, conveniently, has invented some sort of bug-based firebreathing. I imagine Zask grabbing your opponent by the shoulders and spitting 21 damage worth of acid onto them until they melt like an Indiana Jones villain. I kind of made myself sad with that visual, why don't we move on?

There are 204 cards in Magic with the type "Insect" and 128 Shapeshifters. Zask builders have lovingly pared that list of Insects down to a handful and some of them work as well in our deck as they would in a traditional Zask deck. Some Insects would be filler in our deck compared to how well they work in a stock standard Zask deck, but some cards work even better for what we're trying to accomplish. Cards like Nantuko Cultivator and Spring-Leaf Avenger actually work better in our deck than a stock deck and they solve significant problems a deck like this faces - what happens if you can't get the card you need out of the graveyard and how do we keep our hands full? Spring-Leaf Avenger made me want to look at Insects that had good ETB abilities, especially if we can give them Flash somehow and play them from the 'yard, giving us two hands' worth of cards to vex our opponents with. If we're doing ETB stuff with our creatures, cards like Avenger of Zendikar get a ton better. The ETBs and landfall triggers are sure to give us a ton of value and with a plan as simple as "Make your commander big then end a person" I think we're going to be able to go pretty fast without the opponents knowing what we're up to. Here's how I'd build the thing.

Swarmlord by the floor boards of a Ford Taurus | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Zask, Skittering Swarmlord

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Augur of Autumn
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
• 1 Blightbeetle
• 1 Canoptek Scarab Swarm
• 1 Canoptek Tomb Sentinel
• 1 Caustic Caterpillar
• 1 Circuit Mender
• 1 Devouring Swarm
• 1 Duskshell Crawler
• 1 Elvish Reclaimer
• 1 Haywire Mite
• 1 Hornet Nest
• 1 Hornet Queen
• 1 Kazandu Nectarpot
• 1 Kraul Harpooner
• 1 Masked Vandal
• 1 Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest
• 1 Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
• 1 Ramunap Excavator
• 1 Realmwalker
• 1 Scute Swarm
• 1 Springbloom Druid
• 1 Spring-Leaf Avenger
• 1 Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1 Timeless Witness
• 1 Tireless Provisioner
• 1 Turntimber Sower
• 1 Virus Beetle
• 1 Wood Elves
• 1 World Shaper

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Grist, the Hunger Tide
• 1 Nissa of Shadowed Boughs

• Instants (14)
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Rampaging Growth
• 1 Realms Uncharted
• 1 Tamiyo's Safekeeping
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary
• 1 Boundless Realms
• 1 Culling Ritual
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Dread Return
• 1 Finale of Devastation
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Reshape the Earth
• 1 Splendid Reclamation
• 1 Worm Harvest

• Enchantments (9)
• 1 Aluren
• 1 Burgeoning
• 1 Crawling Infestation
• 1 Crawling Sensation
• 1 Druid Class
• 1 Exploration
• 1 Greater Good
• 1 Retreat to Hagra
• 1 Retreat to Kazandu

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Cloudstone Curio
• 1 Erratic Portal
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (38)
• 6 Forest
• 6 Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Command Beacon
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dakmor Salvage
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 1 Emergence Zone
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Nurturing Peatland
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Prismatic Vista
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Swarmyard
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Wasteland
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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This looks like a riot! I deliberately never built a The Gitrog Monster deck because it seemed like such a boogeyman. However, this deck is capable of some of the same explosiveness without them clocking you as a landfall deck until it's too late. The more Insects you play, the more you obscure your plans. I played as many as I could but still had to resort to a lot of non-Insect creatures, which is fine. I like the landfall package and the fact that if all you want to do is find Rogue's Passage and play a bunch of extra lands, this deck does it no problem. You should be clobbering people with your commander in no time.

That said, if you ARE really all-in on your commander, you could easily cut the 6 worst creatures in the deck and add a few backgrounds, pieces of equipment, cards like Guardian Augmenter (the 101st card, hated to cut it) or even something that rewards your demi-tribalism such as Haunted One. You can really go a lot less toward landfall and more toward making your commander a lethal threat that can go from 5/5 to 21 power before anyone can react. I'd add Heroic Intervention, Swiftfoot Boots, and a few more cards to make sure you protect your investment. Your commander costing seven then nine then 11 to bring back is basically prohibitive and hampers your ability to bring lands back so you want it in play. My solution was to fish it back from oblivion with Command Beacon.

What do we think? Not enough Insects? Too many lands (you're wrong). Not enough utility lands? Can't find Helm of Possession? Well, to that last point, you want Insects to die sometimes and we have two Altars, so Helm is actually better in this deck than in most and I want to run it in everything, so find a cut for it and you have my full, enthusiastic support. Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing this on social media, you know who you are. Until next time!