[SCD] Chulane, Teller of Combos (Let's Brew!)

[Hawk]

Chulane, Teller of Tales is our newest legend, previewed as a Brawl addition to standard. For commander, however, he is interesting.

- He generates tons of #value off of every creature cast. He's basically Glimpse of Nature on a stick/Beast Whisperer on a Commander, which can have a lot of power for an Elfball-style build. Suddenly you can slam a horde of one-drops and potentially just go off! Every mana dork is now a cantrip!

- He also lets you play a grotesque number of lands. That's a huge deal because it makes him a very powerful way to trigger landfall over, and over, and over, possibly generating tons of tokens off of Emeria Angel and Rampaging Baloths or tons of value alongside Retreat to Coralhelm or tons of life off of Courser of Kruphix or tons of mana off of Lotus Cobra.

- He's a natural leader for any deck hoping to use Portal of Sanctuary, Crystal Shard, and other such effects to rebuy powerful EtB triggers. He can bounce dudes himself (handy with vigilance, especially!), but loading up on cheaper ways to do that and then good EtB creatures like Coiling Oracle and Eternal Witness and Wood Elves and Reclamation Sage and etc ad nauseum seems stronk.

- It's also possible to go infinite with him in many ways. If you have a creature that recurs itself like Whitemane Lion, Shrieking Drake, Kor Skyfisher, Fleetfoot Panther,or Stonecloaker, you have a nice little engine - sort of like Explore with buyback for a very low cost, and mostly at instant speed. Shrieking Drake is actually "infinite if lucky" because the lands you play EtB untapped, which means as long as you keep hitting lands you can draw your entire library! But there's lots of ways to hedge that bet - you could get extra mana out of those lands thanks to Lotus Cobra, Mirari's Wake, Dictate of Karametra, Mana Reflection, and other such effects! Or you could lower your chances of "whiffing" with cards like Path of Discovery, Season of Growth, Cream of the Crop, Beast Whisperer, or Karametra, God of Harvests to see more cards or grab more lands. This can make your win with Drake more reliable, or allow you to more easily use one of the other mentioned creatures instead for redundancy.

- And of course, some "usual suspects" like Earthcraft, Aluren, and Cloudstone Curio + 0-cost creatures are bah-roken with him.

How do you plan to build with Chulane?

[Rasputin101]

A few that spring to mind are:
abundance to hit that ramp for every creature.
springbloom druid, for obvious reasons
Bounce lands are particularly good with this guy.
oboro breezecaller and gaea's cradle work nicely
trade routes with any landfall creature
Even roaring primadox could find a place here

[darrenhabib]

Well it's almost impossible to go wrong with this commander, and I feel like there has been a bit of a dumbing down in recent sets, with Yarok, the Desecrated also being an introductory to commander type print.

It's almost a case of "is there an interesting way" to build this commander.

Almost certainly one of the better ways is to use bounce creatures, and there are a lot of them, so it's finding the right number to play as they become redundant in multiples (unless removed).

Arctic Merfolk, Aviary Mechanic, Dream Stalker, Kor Skyfisher, Quickling, Shrieking Drake, Whitemane Lion are all two mana or less bounce to hand creatures.
As far as "top end" creatures like this, Temur Sabertooth, Tidespout Tyrant, Venser, Shaper Savant, Voidmage Husher are premium.

I would make sure that EVERY land in the deck provided the colors of the bounce creatures color requirement costs and that the absolutely come into play untapped. This is so essential to continuously being able to put all your lands into play off these types of creatures.
On this note, you might even be able to just focus on one color, so either pick the white bounce creatures, or just the blue ones, and this makes it potentially easy to make your land base all untapped lands of that color.

Additional angles are utilizing Quirion Ranger and Scryb Ranger to get value out of land drops and mana creatures. with Wirewood Symbiote filling a role with enough elves. I mean chances are you be playing a number of one mana elves to get the draw and land into play, so Arbor Elf, Boreal Druid, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Joraga Treespeaker, Llanowar Elves, at the very least.

As far as "winning" the game, It's pretty hard not to stumble onto some type of win condition given that you are drawing and putting exponential amounts of lands into play compared to your opponents.
I'm sure Avenger of Zendikar would be one, but you don;t even need to design much, just simply haveing enough value creatures in the deck is going to be enough to overwhelm your opponents.

I already mentioned in the preview thread that Meloku the Clouded Mirror or Storm Cauldron would be pretty great at mitigating these effects for yourself, and combine with Gaea's Cradle for realistically unlimited mana.

I do like Soratami Mirror-Mage as another bounce land and creature source.

Alright so these are the obvious cards to play, what interesting ways can he be built around?

[MRHblue]

BantGoodstuff.dec

Done. Yawn.

[Hawk]

Yeah, Chulane is going to lead to some boredom. I wonder if he'd be fun in Druid tribal? It'd be easy to chain off with Seton, Krosan Protector and enough lands that EtB untapped. There are at least 70 druids in this color combination that are 2 CMC or less (and can thus chain off without the help of any mana doublers or mana cost reducers), and a fair amount that would grant additional value. Eventually, you could cheerios into enough mana for Gilt-leaf Archdruid for the win. It'd still be stupid and liner, but at least it sounds stylish . A skeleton of a deck:

Dr. Druid

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander: 1

5 Chulane, Teller of Tales

Cheap Druid Cheerios: 30

1 Arbor Elf

1 Birchlore Rangers

1 Boreal Druid

1 Elvish Mystic

1 Elvish Pioneer

1 Fyndhorn Elves

1 Heritage Druid

1 Honored Hierarch

1 Joraga Treespeaker

1 Krosan Wayfarer

1 Llanowar Elves

1 Noble Hierarch

1 Universal Automaton

2 Bloom Tender

2 Channeler Initiate

2 Coiling Oracle

2 Devoted Druid

2 Elvish Clancaller

2 Gyre Sage

2 Harabaz Druid

2 Heart Warden

2 Hidden Herbalists

2 Ixali's Diviner

2 Leafkin Druid

2 Llanowar Druid

2 Paradise Druid

2 Priest of Titania

2 Quirion Sentinel

2 Steward of Valeron

2 Werebear

Enablers and Endgames: 12

2 Dramatic Reversal

2 Metallic Mimic

3 Cloudstone Curio

3 Herald's Horn

3 Seton, Krosan Protector

4 Beast Whisperer

5 Mirari's Wake

5 Gilt-leaf Archdruid

5 Kindred Discovery

5 Vanquisher's Banner

7 Akroma's Memorial

7 Kindred Summons

Approximate Total Cost:

That's only 43 cards, so even with 40 lands that leaves room to pepper in either more tribal stuff (for a more casual build) or tutors, draw, and counters (for a more competitive build).

[darrenhabib]

Yeah, Chulane is going to lead to some boredom. I wonder if he'd be fun in Druid tribal? It'd be easy to chain off with Seton, Krosan Protector and enough lands that EtB untapped. There are at least 70 druids in this color combination that are 2 CMC or less (and can thus chain off without the help of any mana doublers or mana cost reducers), and a fair amount that would grant additional value. Eventually, you could cheerios into enough mana for Gilt-leaf Archdruid for the win. It'd still be stupid and liner, but at least it sounds stylish . A skeleton of a deck:

That's only 43 cards, so even with 40 lands that leaves room to pepper in either more tribal stuff (for a more casual build) or tutors, draw, and counters (for a more competitive build).

Noble Hierarch and Grave Sifter for further Druid stuff.

One aspect I was thinking of, is that Chulane gets all the bonuses off cast triggers. So if stuff is countered it doesn't matter too much.
Unfortunately red and black have the best stuff for this in Nether Void and Planar Chaos, but there still is Ice Cave you can play.