If you played Magic in its earlier days, you probably have a decent amount of familiarity with the various legendary creatures of Legends and Chronicles. To put it plainly, most of them were pretty bad with poor designs and generally forgettable. However, there were some that ended up being pretty cool! The original cycle of elder dragons - which includes the original Nicol Bolas - were classics that were basically the original namesake for the Commander format. I remember getting a lot of use out of neat cards like Rubinia Soulsinger, Dakkon Blackblade, and Xira Arien as well.

Despite these neat and interesting designs, these releases were flooded with tons of legends who were overpriced vanilla cards. If they weren't vanilla, they were as close to it as possible with a virtually unplayable ability or keyword. Some of them had this endearing look to them though, showing how the art really did a lot of heavy lifting early on. Sivitri Scarzam, Jasmine Boreal, and Ramirez DePietro all had this really cool, stylish look to them that was awesome to look at. It was just hard to do anything with them, which inspired a few newer revisits of some characters, like the Ghost of Ramirez DePietro.

There was one particular one that always stood out to me especially: Jedit Ojanen. The art and design had this fierce awesomeness in its simplicity and it just frankly looks badass. The problem is, though, it's a 5/5 for seven mana. It's even in White and Blue, which feels especially bizarre for a creature that's a cat warrior. Thankfully, though, a lot of other people clearly liked his design and he got another version in Planar Chaos called Jedit Ojanen of Efrava.

Talk about a glow-up! In the story, the original Jedit left his home in the forest to search the world for his father and get into various conflicts. There're a couple versions to this story, so his lore is a bit murky, but it explains and somewhat justifies his original color pairing. This alternate timeline one sees Jedit never leaving the forest and becoming incredibly territorial within it. The card is significantly better as well, while having a light nod to the original in having the same power and toughness here.

When I was going through cool old legendaries to write about for Classic Commander, the Planar Chaos version of Jedit seemed like an interesting one to write about. He struck me as more aggressive but simple while still maintaining a certain effectiveness. He makes a lot of creatures, after all, so it seemed like a good build-around. Let's check out a list!

Mono-Green Jedit | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Beacon Behemoth
• 1 Deepwood Elder
• 1 Dosan the Falling Leaf
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Frontier Guide
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Gaea's Herald
• 1 Genesis
• 1 Glissa Sunseeker
• 1 Hunting Cheetah
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Kazandu Tuskcaller
• 1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Mirri, Cat Warrior
• 1 Nacatl War-Pride
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Pride of Lions
• 1 Quirion Ranger
• 1 Regal Force
• 1 Scryb Ranger
• 1 Silklash Spider
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Terastodon
• 1 Uktabi Wildcats
• 1 Yavimaya Dryad
• 1 Yavimaya Elder

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Garruk Wildspeaker

• Instants (2)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Krosan Grip

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Overwhelming Stampede
• 1 Primal Command
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Waiting in the Weeds

• Enchantments (7)
• 1 Asceticism
• 1 Bear Umbra
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Gaea's Anthem
• 1 Mirri's Guile
• 1 Nature's Will
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Basilisk Collar
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Elixir of Immortality
• 1 Grafted Exoskeleton
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mystic Compass
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Shield of Kaldra
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Strata Scythe
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow
• 1 Sword of Vengeance

• Lands (36)
• 26 Forest
• 1 Havenwood Battleground
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 1 Treetop Village
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Wooded Foothills

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Right off the bat as I was making this deck, I started looking for cats that I could use in the list. My thought was to have it be something like Jedit and his cats as a theme. There were a couple cool cards I quickly thought of like Mirri, Cat Warrior and Waiting in the Weeds. They aren't super great or exciting, but they're cool and iconic and they make sense for a deck like Jedit. The problem was that once I started getting into these earlier sets for Classic Commander, I found that most of the Green cats of this era were actively bad.

Most of them were actually just expensive vanilla creatures that were fine enough in the days of Mirage block - at least from a casual stance - but wouldn't fly by the time of New Phyrexia. Even some of the ones you'd think are good, like Wild Nacatl, are very contextual and as such aren't good in a deck like this. What that meant is I couldn't use it as a theme and had to try something else. I kept a couple of the better cats, but there just weren't very many.

The other issue was that, once you remove that tribal aspect, Jedit is pretty narrow in what he can do. Thankfully, he's a pretty good beater and he likes to attack as well so you can fill up your board with tokens. So, I went with a slight voltron solution with a bunch of equipment to help him either get attacks through or otherwise better withstand blocks. There're also a couple cards here and there like Mystic Compass, Deepwood Elder, and Yavimaya Dryad that can get your opponents forests that allow you to get your attacks through. And if you want to keep him as a blocker as well, you can use various vigilance granting cards like Batterskull or Beacon Behemoth, or else untap it with a Quirion Ranger or Scryb Ranger.

If the voltron strategy fails, however, there's always the general Mono-Green Ramp good stuff style deck. Lots of good ramping effects - which are great here anyways since Jedit himself costs so much to get down - and a couple big haymakers to round it out like Avenger of Zendikar and Terastodon. The trick at the end of the day is try to get Jedit to get enough creatures that even if you can't take down opponents with him on his own, you can get in there with overrun effects like Kamahl, Fist of Krosa or Overwhelming Stampede. Remember, Classic Commander predates Craterhoof Behemoth by a year, so that's not available. Gotta make do with what you've got!

What you get is a pretty straightforward yet ultimately extremely fun deck for Classic Commander nights. If you want to upgrade it now as well, there's been a ton of pretty potent Green cats since this era, such as Feline Sovereign, Hungry Lynx, Keeper of Fables, Prowling Serpopard, Qasali Slingers, and the mighty Temur Sabertooth. Tons of great choices, and several great ways to play it. Regardless of how you play it, take Jedit for a spin at your next Commander night and have a great time as you do!

Paige Smith

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