After the last few articles where we didn't try to win... let's try to win again.

One of the newer additions to my regular playgroup showed me his Prosper, Tome-Bound deck recently. He made a point of saying he's been giving himself a challenge recently: no infinite combos in a deck.

He had a turn one Sol Ring into Sensei's Divining Top.

The deck was quite strong. The table had to turn on him completely to keep the extra spells in check, and it cost us a lot of resources to do so. It was fun, too - lots of fun cards, tons of interaction, and (as promised) not a single infinite combo.

It was, however, a reminder to me we all come at Commander from different perspectives, sometimes wildly different. Fellow Commander writer here on Cool Stuff Stephen Johnson regularly talks about how he doesn't have cEDH decks himself but plays with those guys so he wants strong decks which might be able to hang with them. I don't think I've ever played against a true cEDH deck, and I regularly run decks which don't have win conditions. I literally just wrote a whole series about actively not winning, and putting an infinite combo into one of my decks is a rare choice, not something I need to keep myself from doing.

This next round of decks isn't going to be a batch I'd recommend Stephen take to his cEDH tables. This series is for kitchen tables only, one for big swings with massive creatures and fun interactions which make the table laugh as they try to figure out how to survive. We're not going to counter any spells or combo off or anything like it. We will attack, we will play more creatures, and we will attack again. WE ARE NAYA.

We're going to start with this Angel, and let's see if we can keep it under $150.

Of course, we're going to play a ton of multicolored creatures. We might lose a little bit (no Acidic Slime or Reclamation Sage) but I suspect we can make up for it in fun. The greatest part is we get to Gravedigger all our multicolored creatures as long as Rienne is on the battlefield. There are multiple ways we could try to break this, but rather than do that, why not just have some fun? Let's go with some big dudes which matter on the battlefield (particularly when they enter or die), some ramp, and a few cards which, if they resolve, should end the game?

Green gives us the ramp, of course, but much of it is for basic lands, so we're going to run a fairly high number of them: 21, to be exact. The other 19 help us fix, mostly; some cheap duals like the relevant Temples, the triple Jungle Shrine, Command Tower, and Ancient Ziggurat for all the colors, a Reliquary Tower for the occasional time we draw like 20 cards, and a Rogue's Passage to sneak damage in past a bevy of blockers or a 47/47 or something. Grand total: 40.

The deck is mana hungry, though, so Sol Ring is a given. Tome of the Guildpact is a bit expensive, but it will draw us a lot of cards by just sitting there. We have a few Sorceries which get us two lands, and the rest are creatures which put lands on the 'field. We're probably going to spend our first four turns playing lands and ramping, so it's good to have a fair number of ramp spells to make it likely we'll see one or two.

Devotion to Multicolored creatures keeps us from running stuff like Soul of the Harvest or Drumhunter, both of which would offer some incidental and fairly regular card draw. Garruk's Uprising is an Enchantment, so we get that, and besides, it gives all our stuff Trample, which is awesome. We've also got Life's Legacy, which is neat 'cause we'll just get the creature back in our hand, and Rishkar's Expertise, which gives us a free cast when we play it. Lurking Predators is too funny not to include, and with 43 creatures in our deck we'll hit nearly half the time. One nice thing about a recursive Commander like this is we get some nice card advantage just because so often when our stuff dies, we get it back, which is almost like drawing free cards.

(One sidenote: if Rienne is on the battlefield and the board gets wiped but not Exiled, we still get all our creatures back to our hand. As they die, Rienne will see them die and cause the "return to hand at the beginning of the next end step" trigger to happen. So Rienne will go to the Command Zone but everything else will be back in your hand, ready to be replayed.)

We're mostly threats. Of our 43 creatures, only six of them are mono-color, so 37 of them are recursive threats in our deck. Most of them are big enough to be relevant, and all of them have an ability worth having. Yasharn, Implacable Earth helps smooth out our mana, nerfs sacrifice decks, and is a 5/4 with Rienne out. Sumala Woodshaper digs for a creature. Good-Fortune Unicorn buffs up our guys even more. Godsire makes huge tokens which get Rienne's bonus. Atla Palani, Nest Tender will flip us into free creatures, eventually. We've got all the Liege creatures which will buff up many of our guys. Omnath, Locus of Rage even makes multicolored tokens!

We are a bit thinner on answers. We're running no hard removal. We have a few creatures that fight or throw damage around when they enter and the like, and we have a couple of creatures which destroy something when they enter the Battlefield, but this deck isn't about stopping other people or worrying about its own life total. It's about spitting out a massive board and swinging for the fences.

The final thing we're going to do is one big final push. This means we get to run one of my favorite cards of all time: Titanic Ultimatum! Because we can't run like six copies of the Ultimatum, we're also running Earthshaker Giant, End-Raze Forerunners, Overwhelming Stampede, Overrun. (I'd probably run Triumph of the Hordes, but it pushed us over budget and some people don't like the Infect win-con.)

$150 Rienne | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Rienne, Angel of Rebirth

• Creatures (42)
• 1 Archon of Valor's Reach
• 1 Arcus Acolyte
• 1 Atla Palani, Nest Tender
• 1 Balefire Liege
• 1 Blade Historian
• 1 Bloodbraid Elf
• 1 Boartusk Liege
• 1 Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Conclave Guildmage
• 1 Dauntless Escort
• 1 Dragonlord Atarka
• 1 Earthshaker Giant
• 1 End-Raze Forerunners
• 1 Enlisted Wurm
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Foundry Champion
• 1 Gahiji, Honored One
• 1 General Ferrous Rokiric
• 1 Godsire
• 1 Good-Fortune Unicorn
• 1 Gruul Ragebeast
• 1 Juniper Order Ranger
• 1 Karametra, God of Harvests
• 1 Knight of Autumn
• 1 Knight of New Alara
• 1 Knotvine Mystic
• 1 Leinore, Autumn Sovereign
• 1 Meglonoth
• 1 Omnath, Locus of Rage
• 1 Ondu Giant
• 1 Phylath, World Sculptor
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 1 Radha, Heart of Keld
• 1 Ravager Wurm
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Sumala Woodshaper
• 1 Tolsimir Wolfblood
• 1 Ulrich of the Krallenhorde
• 1 Vithian Renegades
• 1 Wilt-Leaf Liege
• 1 Yasharn, Implacable Earth

• Instants (2)
• 1 Momentous Fall
• 1 Naya Charm

• Sorceries (10)
• 1 Circuitous Route
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Life's Legacy
• 1 Migration Path
• 1 Overrun
• 1 Overwhelming Stampede
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Soul's Majesty
• 1 Titanic Ultimatum

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Garruk's Uprising
• 1 Lurking Predators

• Artifact (3)
• 1 Dragon Arch
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Tome of the Guildpact

• Lands (40)
• 11 Forest
• 5 Mountain
• 5 Plains
• 1 Ancient Ziggurat
• 1 Blighted Woodland
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Cinder Glade
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Overgrown Farmland
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rockfall Vale
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple of Abandon
• 1 Temple of Plenty
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Temple of Triumph
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

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Doesn't get more straightforward than this. Play lands, play creatures, attack. Get the creatures back, play them again, attack some more. Should be fun.

The deck comes in (at the time of this writing) at $147.58. A few cards would probably make it a bit better but pushed the budget over $150; specifically, I want Dragonlord Dromoka, Sigarda, Host of Herons, and Craterhoof Behemoth (or maybe Kamahl, Fist of Krosa). Additionally, Sneak Attack might be a fun addition, if you're in to that sort of thing.

I'd love to hear about the power level you play! Let us all know in the comments. Are decks like this even playable for you? Are combos the normal way for games to end with your playgroup? How do you feel about face-down tutors?

Thanks for reading.