In my earliest years playing Magic, the elder dragons of Legends simply blew me away. I've talked about it time and time again, but it's really hard to overstate the impact that they had to someone as young as I was at the time. While competitive players were blowing minds with Tolarian Academy and Memory Jar decks, I was downright enamored by cards like Arcades Sabboth, Palladia-Mors, and Nicol Bolas. I'll never forget the first time my friend Zach introduced me to them from his older brother's collection or the time soon after when I went to a local game store and bought a few for my typical five-color newbie deck.

A few years later, Invasion came out and with it came a new set of legendary dragons. Darigaaz, the Igniter was the face of the set and one I quickly fell in love with. All of them ended up being well loved creatures and were by and large far more powerful than the Legends originals. Each was highly playable with an excellent effect, with only Treva being a bit mediocre and Dromar being risky as it was fairly easy to bounce itself in the process. Rith, the Awakener proved a mighty tournament card (and I already wrote about a Classic Commander deck featuring her) and both Crosis and Darigaaz have become excellent casual favorites.

Imagine my surprise then when we got five other legendary dragons resembling the Invasion ones in Planar Chaos a few years down the road! Seeing the first rumblings of those cards - namely with the preview of the prerelease promo Oros, the Avenger - was mind blowing. They continued to be for some time after and made for excellent Commander choices as the format gained popularity. It's no surprise therefore that they were easy inclusions in the original Commander 2011 precons.

Interestingly enough, those decks were my first real experience with several of these dragons including my personal favorite: Teneb, the Harvester. It's funny that Teneb was introduced to me for Commander by these precons, yet I still feel an urge to write about it for Classic Commander, which is specifically meant to predate those precons. The reality is, though, building and playing Teneb still primarily used the classic cards more than the new cards created for the format, so the general feel is still intact.

Let's check out a list!

Classic Teneb | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Teneb, the Harvester

• Creatures (27)
• 1 Angel of Despair
• 1 Avatar of Woe
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Body Snatcher
• 1 Creakwood Liege
• 1 Cunning Lethemancer
• 1 Doomed Necromancer
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1 Elvish Piper
• 1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
• 1 Hell's Caretaker
• 1 It That Betrays
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Karmic Guide
• 1 Nath of the Gilt-Leaf
• 1 Oona's Prowler
• 1 Reya Dawnbringer
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Spiritmonger
• 1 Sun Titan
• 1 Utopia Tree
• 1 Woodfall Primus
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Liliana Vess

• Instants (6)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Entomb
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Return to Dust
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (13)
• 1 Beacon of Unrest
• 1 Beseech the Queen
• 1 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Buried Alive
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Life's Finale
• 1 Maelstrom Pulse
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Reanimate
• 1 Tooth and Nail
• 1 Vindicate
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Animate Dead
• 1 Hibernation's End
• 1 Hunting Grounds
• 1 Marshal's Anthem
• 1 Mirari's Wake
• 1 Necromancy
• 1 Pernicious Deed
• 1 Phyrexian Arena

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Birthing Pod
• 1 Coalition Relic
• 1 Golgari Signet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Selesnya Signet
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (37)
• 5 Forest
• 5 Plains
• 7 Swamp
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 Brushland
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Fetid Heath
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Grand Coliseum
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Murmuring Bosk
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Twilight Mire
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 1 Vivid Marsh
• 1 Vivid Meadow
• 1 Wooded Bastion
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

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I fell in love with Teneb quickly due to my love for reanimation strategies. Be it Commander, Cube, or even Constructed play, I sure do love me a good Reanimator deck. Teneb really plays into this well, offering a method of getting back not only your own powerful creatures, but your opponents' as well. On its own, that should be enough to say what the goal here is: get Teneb on the board quickly, connect with it, and revive a ton of creatures.

Of course, the best way to do this is to utilize creatures in your own graveyard. After all, it's easier to fill your graveyard with powerful creatures if your deck is primarily built with the reanimation angle in mind. Breaking out cards like Entomb, Buried Alive, and Oona's Prowler all help get you there easily. If those fail, you can always use cards like Birthing Pod and Hibernation's End or even Elvish Piper to churn them out of your hand.

The card quality for reanimation targets might look a little tame in this day and age. Sure, cards like Elesh Norn, Sheoldred, Avenger of Zendikar, Woodfall Primus, and It That Betrays all see play in Reanimator decks, though they've also been a bit outclassed by many modern options. That said, when on earth was the last time you saw an Angel of Despair, Reya Dawnbringer, Spiritmonger, or, heck, even an Avatar of Woe? Back then, Akroma, Angel of Wrath and Spirit of the Night were some of the bigger and better targets you could hit, even, and were in the initial list before I started making cuts. In Classic Commander, this is the kind of stuff you got, thankfully while the quality of reanimation targets has improved over the years, none of these cards are slouches either.

There's no shortage of solid reanimation options either. A lot of the usual suspects like Reanimate, Animate Dead, and Necromancy are here, as are a bit less remembered cards. Doomed Necromancer was great back in the day, as was Hell's Caretaker. It's a bit difficult to make some serious use of Hell's Caretaker's Recurring Nightmare-esque ability, but there's a couple options with the help of cards like Solemn Simulacrum, Karmic Guide (also a reanimation effect), Wurmcoil Engine, and the aforementioned copies of Woodfall Primus, Avenger of Zendikar, and Angel of Despair. If you can get any of these going, you can rapidly start out valuing your opponents with ease. Cards like Body Snatcher, Beacon of Unrest, and Marshal's Anthem will also help bring back your creatures.

Now comes the real question, though: how do you fill up your opponents' graveyards the best? There are not too many cards that do this efficiently all the time, but there's still a couple good options at our disposal. Cards like Cunning Lethemancer, Liliana Vess, and Nath of the Gilt-Leaf all make your opponent discard cards at regular intervals. These are your bread and butter for this strategy. It's also possible to use board wipes and a handful of removal spells to get more creatures into the yard. Life's Finale is particularly effective here, as it not only allows you to blow up the board, but also lets you pick out the three best targets from an opponent's deck to put into their bin. And if you really want to get the train rolling, just make use of Geth, Lord of the Vault's reanimating ability, which will also fill your opponents' graveyards in the process.

What you get is a very potent way to play Commander if you're a reanimator fan. Once you get the ball rolling and Teneb comes down, you can start stealing tons and tons of creatures to use against your opponents. There's plenty of ramp in the deck too, so not only can you get to Teneb quickly, but you should be able to hit your other fatties with no problem. Like many Classic Commander lists, it's a powerful list that can still manage to hold its own quite effectively against many modern decks. Give it a try for yourself at your next Commander night, and you'll see that the old necromantic ways are still as strong as they ever were.

Paige Smith

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