Withered Recollections
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What's going on here?
I've been wanting a big-mana deck in my arsenal, and Golgari was a color pair I hadn't tried yet. Seasons Past is also one of my favorite Magic cards of all time, and I wanted to build a deck that was build to last to the very late game to fully abuse the advantage loop it represents.
Ideally the deck wants to ramp early and use removal to keep the board honest until your engine gets online. Then eventually just bury people underneath it.
Why Beledros Witherbloom?
I have a love for Elder Dragons, and I really liked the idea of having an Early Harvest sitting in my command zone for when it's time to "go off." It being able to churn out Pests to gum up the ground isn't bad either. That being said, there are certainly commanders who are potentially better suited to this build. The Gitrog Monster immediately comes to mind, however I find that he tends to put a target on my back and can too easily descend into combo for my tastes. Tasigur, the Golden Fang would not only give us access to blue, but is an additional recursion engine in the command zone. Mookie has a wonderful primer if you would like to see how something like this would look with Silumgar's favorite necklace at the helm. Finally, Sarulf, Realm Eater lends itself as being mass removal in the command zone but can be potentially too oppressive in its own right.
How do you actually win?
Exsanguinate and Torment of Hailfire are the easy win buttons here. Between all your ramp, the usual Cabal Coffers shenanigans, or even Beledros just randomly generating an extra 10+ mana minimum on its own either X-spell will end the game in short order. We do have Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar as a self-recursive backup plan as well, with Archon of Cruelty and Vilis, Broker of Blood I guess being an honorable mentions.
Oh, and Field of the Dead. That's here too.
What are some other considerations?
I currently have a stack of cards headlined by Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam if I decided I wanted to restructure a good portion of my manabase to maximize both of those cards. For win conditions, I currently have on my testing block Cultivator Colossus, Grave Titan, Portal to Phyrexia, and Ancient Brass Dragon. I'm also thinking of adding an extra tutor or two to help with setting up chains to get Seasons Past online earlier. Finally, Force of Vigor and Culling Ritual headline the list of alternative/additional removal spells I could swap in depending on performance.
