Here we have that mechanic in a commander, and oh boy it's time to abuse it, hang on for the ride.
Naya "High Tide" Storm Combo
This is a deck that aims to produce massive amounts of mana and draw tons of cards, with also the ability to use Zacama, Primal Calamity powerful removal abilities to clear most if not all of the opponents boards. It's a storm deck that looks to draw and play most of your deck in a single combo turn. Because of Zacama incredible ability to untap lands, you will string together huge incremental gains in mana by recasting Zacama over and over again.
Mana Doublers
One key aspect to the deck are cards that at least double the mana produced from lands. There are 15 of them in the deck.
With Zacama untapping lands ability, you can cast them and actually gain exponential mana. The idea is to follow it up with preferably more mana doublers and big draw cards so that you can assemble a win within a single big turn.
It's important to understand how to get the maximum amount of mana from your mana doublers. With so many of them in the deck, the possibility of stacking multiple of them means that casting Zacama multiple times will generate exponential mana. You will be casting lots of the mana ramp cards in the combo turn as you get to untap them with casting Zacama again. You'll often have an extra 10+ lands in play by the end of when you fully combo.
Draw, Draw, Draw
There are a lot of draw cards in the deck that are centered around a creatures power and with Zacama at 9 power you have access to one of the bigger creatures in the game.
With at least one mana doubler you can get a storm strategy going. With drawing cards you can follow up with other mana doublers, then cast out Zacama again to have triple or more mana from lands. You have massive potential in this deck to chain off with drawing your deck and having unlimited mana.
Ramp, Ramp, Ramp
There is a lot of land ramp in the deck to try and reach thresholds as quickly to make Zacama untap land trigger as potent as possible. It's actually pretty hard to ever flood out or have too much mana in this deck as you can always sink your mana into Zacama abilities. Clearing your opponents boards is a very fine game plan on its own.
Boom, Boom, Boom
Even if you do not finish the game in a single turn, normally you'll do enough that you have mana to destroy all/most of your opponents non-land permanents. At that stage it's hard for them to play around Zacama because once you've got the mana base setup, even removing it for a turn is really only delaying the inevitable.
This deck also plays a major control role, if the beast is unleashed.
Consistency with Redundancy
The reason this deck is so good is that it has a lot of the same type of cards, so you are never waiting too long to draw and assemble a very broken engine. 15 mana doublers, 15 big draw cards and a bunch of mana ramp cards. These cards are always going to be part of your game. It's also very hard for your opponents to stop you altogether. Eventually with so many cards aligning you to a strategy, you'll find yourself with the opportunity to combo off in a single turn very consistently.
What makes Zacama so special is that there really is no other card quite like this Elder Dinosaur.
There are some commanders who have different activated abilities that can do similar control roles and there are other commanders that can untap lands (as activated abilities), but no others can do both.
- Breya, Etherium Shaper - Breya has three activated abilities, with two that are quite similar to Zacama targeting creatures for removal and also gaining life. Breya puts you into white and red (also blue and black), but not green.
She doesn't have the ability to remove artifacts or enchantments and requires additional resources to use the abilities in needing artifacts to sacrifice on-board. - Shattergang Brothers - In Jund, so no white but black instead but has a similar activation cost to remove artifacts and enchantments. However requires additional resources with needing the same card types to sacrifice.
Shattergang can also remove creatures on a different axis, by making opponents sacrifice their creatures which can line up well if they are a creature light deck or really badly against tokens, etc. No life gain however. - Gishath, Sun's Avatar - To the untrained eye some assume that these creatures are comparable but they don't actually share anything important in common, other than it can put you into the Naya color-pie. Sure they are both expensive beat-down creatures if you wanted to compare them that way but the ways you use these commanders is very different. Gishath ability leads itself into Dinosaur tribal nicely, where as Zacama doesn't care about it's own species, it would just prefer to eat them rather than team up with them.
- Teferi, Temporal Archmage - As far as actual deck approach, this is about as close as you'll get to this Zacama build. Teferi has the ability to untap lands/mana sources when you put him into play. Using High Tide, Extraplanar Lens, Gauntlet of Power, Caged Sun, with Islands leads into a very similar deck approach. Doesn't have the ability to remove permanents, gain life, and completely outside of the Naya colors however.
- Estrid, the Masked - Similar to Teferi in that you can untap lands the turn you cast it, if you have the support cards in enchant lands. Put's you into white and green as well if the colors were important to you.
- Patron of the Orochi - With haste can untap all your Forests once cast, leading into a similar approach to gaining lots of mana potentially. Only green however and without haste need to wait a full turn to get benefits. But actually Patron is one of my first commanders decks and honestly still one of my favorites. I build decks to do broken things and Patron is similar to Zacama in that you can do incredible things once you get to cast them at high mana costs (for commanders).
- Selvala, Heart of the Wilds - Another mono-green potential "storm" strategy. A very different approach however in that you will not be untapping lands but creatures instead. So your cards are not centered around mana doublers but big creatures for "power" and untapping creatures instead.
- Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder , Kess, Dissident Mage , Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge , Mizzix of the Izmagnus - With Zacama leading into a storm strategy, it's important to look at some other commanders that you might be looking to have "free" cost of spells. It's obviously a completely different approach but being able to chain big turns together has the same results.
The most notable thing about storm commanders in general is that they are mostly Grixis or Izzet , green is not part of their colors (Yidris is the exception). They all put you into blue however, the common color domination for typical storm.
For me personally Zacama is very near and dear to my heart as I've ventured into many realms with commanders and decks but I had never managed to find anything that made me proud to be Naya .
Typically Naya is known for combat and big creatures which doesn't always make for the most competitive decks.
But when the design for Zacama was spoiled, I couldn't believe that they put a typically "blue" ability in untapping lands (on enters the battlefield) which we have previously with Cloud of Faeries, Peregrine Drake, Palinchron into a non-blue legendary creature!
The flavor on this card is amazing, chaining together huge turns, blowing up all your opponents' permanents and even just the way this three-headed Dinosaur looks bad-ass means that if you're prepared to finally play a storm deck outside of blue, the extra reward of doing it in Naya feels second to none in terms of satisfaction.
- You like playing a storm strategy in very unlikely color combination.
- You like incredible turns where you get massive amounts of mana and card draw.
- You like being able to destroy opponents' permanents over and over.
- You don't like being all in on your commanders abilities.
- You don't like playing a solitaire turn to finish the game.
- You don't like relatively linear approach to winning.
- You have Deinophobia..oh yes it's real.
Storm archetype with in-built control
The deck is mainly a storm deck, which means that you're chaining together drawing lots of cards and generating lots of mana to be able to draw your deck and play out as many cards as you want, usually in a single big turn.
However unlike other storm archetypes usually behind Grixis colors, there is a huge element of control. Zacama, Primal Calamity abilities are the real deal. Often decks get locked out by certain cards on the battlefield. Zacama has this incredible ability to remove practically anything that would cause problems.
The general idea is to get enough lands into play to give yourself an opportunity to cast a mana doubler and then be able to cast Zacama, so that you have large amounts of mana to spend on preferably further mana cards and big draw spells.
You can easily combo off with about 5 lands in play. The more lands you have the better obviously, but most of my wins come from starting around the 5-7 land range. But by the end of your combo turn however don't be surprised if you have like 10+ lands in play due to the many land ramp spells.
Mana doublers are everything!
Really the key aspect to playing this deck well is to understand how to be patient with the mana doublers that also give your opponents mana in Heartbeat of Spring, Mana Flare, Overabundance, Vernal Bloom, Keeper of Progenitus, Zhur-Taa Ancient, Dictate of Karametra.
You should really plan to never play one of these symmetrical cards and just pass the turn. Giving your opponents the chance at first shot at the extra mana is usually a terrible idea. This will probably lead to busted plays by your opponents and perhaps locking you out because they are able to establish their own accelerated game plan before you.
If you have one of the mana doublers that only gives you mana then I'm much more inclined to play it out and hope that it remains in play until the next turn. Dictate of Karametra is the best early play mana doubler in your deck, as the ability to cast it before your turn allows you to have fully untapped lands to potentially combo off.
Often you will just play out your own non-symmetrical mana doublers as soon as you can cast them: Mirari's Wake, Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Mana Reflection, Zendikar Resurgent, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, Caged Sun, Nyxbloom Ancient.
Expect your first one to be removed before you get to untap with it. But we have 15 mana doublers, redundancy is the name of the game and you should have a follow up or at least draw into one within a few turns. Obviously it's nice if you have the mana to be able to play a mana doubler and then cast Zacama, but realistically for your early game you will probably only have enough to play one and pass the turn, hoping to untap with it in play.
With Zacama costing 9 mana, if you are playing out a mana doubler which effects all players then often the key is to have enough mana to cast out Zacama in that same turn, i.e. 5 untapped lands. A nice sequence is to play a second mana doubler before casting Zacama and then you only need 3 untapped lands to cast it.
If you're familiar with "High Tide" builds in blue, then this deck requires a similar approach to sequencing, where you are tapping the least amount of lands, while stacking mana doubler effects.
The deck is mainly green , mostly to make Vernal Bloom, Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Caged Sun a lot more efficient. For these same reasons Forests are super important to lands being played out so a lot of the lands are Forest type.
Zacama's activated abilities
I've mainly focused the game plan around the untap lands ability but Zacama activated abilities are really another important aspect of the deck. It's unusual to get a commander who can almost deal with any permanent on the board. You can afford to run less disruption by default as you have it on-tap from the commander zone.
There is an Oblation to deal with most permanents. There are cards that can be problematic like Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Pithing Needle, Cursed Totem, etc shutting down Zacama abilities.
If you fail to completely combo for the win, you should seriously think about using Zacama, Primal Calamity ability to remove the mana doublers which help opponents as well if you have played them out. It seems odd to have played them out only to remove them, but if opponents have full hands and seemed to have been waiting on mana for playing their hands then it can be very wise to remove them and try and use the control game instead. Really tough call, but you just have to go with your instincts during those fail to fire game.
Your early game is to ramp land as much as possible. So when mulling your starting hands, you really want a few of these, rather than keeping your late game cards.
Only 36 land in a deck that must hit land drops?
Well there are a number of cards which smooth out getting your land drops, but it must be noted that you will have games where you miss land drops. This seems insane right? However mixed with a lot of early land ramp you will find that on average you will be getting to the right threshold of lands consistently.
You can keep land light hands, with the intention of getting a bit get lucky with your draws. I've posted an example of a one land hand in which I was still able to win on Turn 4 just to show you to really look at starting hands in terms of potential.
Turn 1, fail to draw a land.
Turn 2, draw a Plateau. Suspend a Search for Tomorrow and cast a Farseek. We are well on course.
Turn 3, draw a Mountain, now we have everything to try and go off next turn.
Turn 4, draw another land and we have everything we need. Play out the mana doublers, play Zacama, and draw 9 cards.
There are a lot of land ramp spells and you're hoping to just keep consecutively casting these cards until you feel ready to try a big turn. You'll notice that I've really focused in on 2 mana or less land ramp spells so that you have the potential for a lot more early tempo to your plays.
Also you're happy if you just spend a turn using cards like Krosan Verge and Blighted Woodland to ramp during the early stages rather than committing anything to the board.
It must be noted that the 9 mana cost of Zacama alludes to it being a late game "haymaker", but in fact often I win through turns 4-7 with this deck.
As I pointed out you will often be able to go off with only 5-7 lands in play, so don't think that you need to ramp into a magical threshold of 9 lands to be able to do your thing.
Navigating around disruption is one of the hardest aspects of this deck. The way to look at this deck is that it's a 3 card combo deck. You need 1x mana doubler and 1x big draw, in conjunction with your commander to chain sequences that will often lead to winning the game that same turn.
You can afford to be a little less respectful of disruption because you have a lot of the same type of cards, so you have the ability to potentially follow up in following turns with another attempt at a combo sequence even if stopped initially. Other combo decks that rely on a very particular combination of cards cannot afford to really be disrupted because often those are they only cards in the deck that can do that ability.
You do have Silence, Grand Abolisher, Dosan the Falling Leaf to try and stop your opponents from disrupting your plans.
You will get some games where you can play Zacama and either have the option of chaining at least some sequence of value or using Zacama abilities to control some of the opponents' boards. Experience with opponents decks will help with this. For example I have decided to wait a turn to attempt to combo by using Zacama abilities instead to remove a couple of the most dangerous cards as they threaten to combo off as well.
You will get games where you flood out with mana so are able to play Zacama but not able to actually combo off. You can play these stalled out games, where you can remove your opponents permanents over the course of a couple of turns or sometimes all of them immediately if you have a mana doubler and then your opponents simply cannot play out anything, as you can remove them. "Oppressive" is the term opponents have used in this situation.
It's also difficult for opponents to time removal on Zacama when you have so much mana. After opponents' being locked down for a series of turns, I've had them try and force through getting a board presence by all opponents' committing playing out cards as much as possible. But often you can just cast out Zacama again and remove the permanents which threaten to change the game. Once this happens it really is hard for your opponents to gather up enough resources again to make an impact.
I have won games by simple attacking with Zacama over the course of turns, such is the power of Zacama activated abilities and his 9 power. This can be buffed by Mirari's Wake and Caged Sun to give you two attacks for commander lethal to shorten the clock.
Another major advantage of Zacama as your commander is that you really don't have to focus on protecting it outright to win. Unlike other decks where the commanders are central to remaining in play for a length of time, removing Zacama often just means you get to generate more mana. Therefore spot removal can be wasted on it. The exception is when you've calculated mana exactly for being able to cast a sorcery big draw card that relies on Zacama power and it gets removed in response.
I have played many stalled games where I'm top decking into finding a big draw card but have Zacama out and just remove opponents' key cards and they can't play out any of their permanent cards they draw because they'll just get instantly removed. It can be a control deck when you fail to find action cards.
Winning the game
However most of the time you are winning by combo with drawing as much of the deck as you want and having realistically infinite mana.
In the past I have run various different cards that deal damage to players like Rolling Earthquake and Conflagrate to burn players out.
Shivan Gorge was also another way to kill opponents' with infinite untaps combined with Sanctum of Eternity.
Currently the deck is using Finale of Devastation as the finishing blow. If it was cast earlier in the game then Underworld Breach gives you access to it again.
Simply cast out all your creatures, make them large enough to attack for lethal with haste, removing any blockers with Zacama damage ability.
Note that there is Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove that can make all your lands Forest.
Note that there is Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove that can make all your lands Forest.
Her -8 is unbelievable in this deck as you have so many Forests in the deck. There is very little chance your opponents' can stop you once you get this threshold.
Note that there is Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove that can make all your lands Forest.
Note that there is Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove that can make all your lands Forest.
Draw 7
Creatures with draw
There are two different ways to use Grothama, All-Devouring in this deck.
- Use Zacama deal 3 damage to creature ability to kill it with 9 damage, draw 9 cards.
- Grothama, All-Devouring is the same in that you'd have to wait to attack with Zacama for them to fight, but at least you don't have to connect with him. Weirdly enough the fact that it kills Zacama is a bonus in this deck, as you get to recast Zacama producing more mana if you have your mana doubler.
Even though it's a relatively hard card to get the draw, with Natural Order and Green Sun's Zenith, it's important to have access to at least one "green" creature for draw.
Miscellaneous card advantage
Any time you cast a spell that brings untapped land into play gains more value when you have mana doublers. With one mana doubler Nature's Lore and Three Visits are essentially "free" to cast as you'll immediately get 2 mana again.
Mana ramp
I often find that I play out a land pre starting to combo and this means that it doesn't matter how many cards you draw, if you want to put say Sanctum of Eternity to loop you normally can't. Dryad of the Ilysian Grove allows you to play out a utility land once you go off.
Artifact mana
The card draw could find you action cards in a pinch if you use it on your own permanents and it's an outlet for removing Zacama as well, if looking to recast for mana gain.
There are a number of removal options like this with Beast Within, Generous Gift, Chaos Warp in Naya and it doesn't make much difference which ones you choose for your own build.
Creatures
A big reason that Dryad Arbor is in the deck is so that you can search for it with a Forest fetchland and then sacrifice it to Natural Order for a quick start.
You can also use it as a win condition casting it for a large amount (literally hundreds of mana) and alpha strike your opponents', turning even your Dryad Arbor and Arbor Elf into lethal hits. Zacama of course clears the way of blockers.
There are not a lot of non-Forest lands in the deck, but as basically a free-roll in the deck you get more value out of some of the utility lands in the deck.
Of note you can tap fetchlands for mana if not wanting to sacrifice them for whatever reason.
There are is only one basic Plains and Mountain in the deck, but this is a reflection of wanting Forests and the fact that there is a heavy ratio of green spells. The Forest aspect is important for Vernal Bloom, Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Caged Sun so only having one of each is enough to make sure you can color fix on red and white with the basic land searches.
There are some cards that enable you to return a creature to hand. I'll start with the creature bouncers; Temur Sabertooth, Cloudstone Curio, Stormfront Riders and Aegis Automaton.
With enough mana you can cast Zacama, Primal Calamity and afford the bounce costs you can loop bouncing Zacama netting infinite mana from recasting.
Temur Sabertooth: You need 12 mana (produced from lands)
Stormfront Riders, Aegis Automaton: 15 mana (produced from lands)
Dust Elemental: 14 mana (produced from lands)
Cloudstone Curio requires that the creature you are costing will net you a mana. So for example you'd need 12 mana (produced from lands), if you were to use a 2 cmc creature for the infinite bouncing.
You can get Temur Sabertooth to combo with 6 lands in play with a mana doubler. With Stormfront Riders and Aegis Automaton you'll need 8 lands with a mana doubler.
Cloudstone Curio depends on the creature you are looping with, but at a minimum you'll need 6 lands with a mana doubler to combo with a 2 cmc creature.
As you can see the mana needs to be produced from lands. Artifact and creature mana will not help the combos. So with this in mind, the enablers in this deck are cards that let you produce at least double mana off your lands and land ramp.
Infinite Graveyard Bounce
My initial list played a graveyard recursion theme using the following: Enduring Renewal, Sigil of the New Dawn, Yomiji, Who Bars the Way or Conqueror's Galleon (transformed to Conqueror's Foothold) and a sacrifice outlet. The idea is to sacrifice Zacama, Primal Calamity with one these in play and let it go to graveyard so that it returns to hand.
The sacrifice outlets: Greater Good, High Market, Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar, Thermopod, Goblin Bombardment. You need to be able to produce 10 mana (from lands) for Enduring Renewal, 12 mana (from lands) for Sigil of the New Dawn, 16 mana (from lands) for Conqueror's Foothold and 10 mana (from lands) for Yomiji, Who Bars the Way.
Further Bounce
With Panharmonicon or Flameshadow Conjuring in play, creatures that bounce creatures as ETB effect can be copied so that both Zacama and the bounce creature can be returned to hand. As long as you have 1 more mana to cast both the Zacama and the bounce creature, you'll gain infinite mana.
I've chosen bounce creatures that are 4 or less mana, and "flash" ability is a bonus: Whitemane Lion, Stonecloaker, Fleetfoot Panther, Horned Kavu, Sparkcaster.
Even without Panharmonicon or Flameshadow Conjuring these creatures can potentially net you mana one time if you have a mana doubler and use it just to bounce Zacama once.
Erratic Portal, Decoction Module or Obelisk of Undoing with Paradox Engine can go infinite.
Snow Hound is another bounce card, but requires haste (each time) to work.
Food Chain
Food Chain does not go infinite with Zacama by itself, but can net you 20 plus mana. For example if you had 9 lands in play then you can cast Zacama and use Food Chain netting 8 mana. Each time you recast and then Food Chain it, you'll net 2 mana less (commander tax), so you can do it a total time in this instance of recasting 4 times, for a total of 20 mana. If you have a mana doubler then you'll have 80 mana with 9 lands in play. The downside however is that your commander will have a massive commander tax, so if you don't finish the game that turn and it goes back to the command zone, you'll struggle to cast it again.
+ Experimental Frenzy
+ Pir's Whim
+ Grothama, All-Devouring
+ Tooth and Nail
+ Seasons Past
Removed
- Carpet of Flowers
- Life from the Loam
- Basalt Monolith
- Dragonlord Dromoka
- Past in Flames
+ Conflagrate
+ Blighted Woodland
+ Fire-lit Thicket
Removed
- Pir's Whim
- Rolling Earthquake
- Exploration