Therefore, the fact that I don't have any turtle themed deck is a travesty. Unfortunately, all the options I can come up with for turtle-themed deck aren't actually that interesting to me.
I have arbitrarily decided that playing a pillow fort deck and "turtling up" doesn't count.
I don't find brewing tribal decks terribly interesting, especially under-supported tribes where you are basically forced to play every creature of the type ever printed just to hit a critical mass, and all your lords are just generic lords that work for every tribe.
There are 4 commanders that are also turtles, but none of them make interesting commanders in my eyes:
- Kogla and Yidaro: First of all, you can barely see the turtle in the art, which is bad enough, but also, wtf am I supposed to do with this? It has haste and 7 power, so it's a functional voltron commander, but it's just that, functional. Doesn't exactly get my creative juices flowing, especially when I already have a really cool voltron deck in Ebondeath, Dracolich. The other option is to build around the second option, the fight effect. but in gruul we don't have access to much in the way of flicker or bounce. Finally the discard ability is awfully tricky to make work when he starts in the CZ, we could make a deck with him as a "secret commander" in the 99, but the pay off is a cantriping removal spell.
- Archelos, Lagoon Mystic: This is probably the "best" option, just make it the EDH version of prime time (a modern deck that uses Amulet of Vigor + the Karoo lands to ramp out Primeval Titan). But it doesn't really map out well in EDH. You're much better off just ramping like a normal deck.
- Gorex, the Tombshell: I actually really like the design of this card, but I'm at a loss as to how to build him, do you discard creatures as fast as possible to get him out, so that you can... *checks notes* get back the cards you discarded? I suppose he'd be fine at the helm of a mono-black suicide list, where you just used him as a way to refuel if/when you run out of gas. If he had better stats you could probably go the voltron route and use the cost reduction to never pay more than for your commander, but at a 4/4 that's not worth it.
- Yidaro, Wandering Monster: I LOVE the design on this card, but using the cycling ability is just as clunky as using the discard effect of Kogla and Yidaro
To be clear, I fully understand that this is going to be B-A-D, the deck will need to run a critical mass of tutors for Yidaro, Wandering Monster, ways to recur him, and sacrifice outlets, on top of just having enough removal spells to still function as a control deck, and an 8/8 with trample and haste isn't even that good of a wincon, he's not actually our commander so we have to actually get all of our opponents to 0, we can't rely on commander damage.
However, unlike all of the other turtle-themed deck ideas I've come up with, this one DOES at least sound interesting.
So, I went on a pretty extensive search for commander options (I literally looks through all 694 commanders with red and black in their color identity) and here are the options as I see them:
- Valki, God of Lies // Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor/Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen: No real synergy with Yidaro, Wandering Monster, but they are relevant colors while dodging board wipes.
- Adun Oakenshield: probably the simplest option: : draw a card. Having acess to green cards also makes tutoring up Yidaro, Wandering Monster pretty trivial.
- Extus, Oriq Overlord // Awaken the Blood Avatar: You can cycle Yidaro, Wandering Monster whenever you are about to cast a spell in order to draw a card. Adds a lot of awkwardness in timing, but is much more mana efficient than Adun Oakenshield, while also giving us access to white, the best control color out there, plus the color of Astral Slide + Astral Drift.
- Gavi, Nest Warden: I don't think it's a good option but thought I'd bring it up. No black means that any recursion engines are going to be pretty bad. but we get to cycle Yidaro, Wandering Monster for free once per turn, and we get a couple tokens as well.
- Syrix, Carrier of the Flame: gives us a Lightning Bolt everytime we recur Yidaro, Wandering Monster, which isn't very good, but also isn't literally nothing.
- Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge: This would be a bit different than the other decks, the idea is that you would cast The Prismatic Bridge it would always grab Yidaro, Wandering Monster since that is the only creature in your deck, then once per turn you can bounce + cycle Yidaro, Wandering Monster and get it back again with Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge. I feel like Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge is (rightfully) hated, and your commander becomes useless after you've cycled Yidaro, Wandering Monster 4 times, but repeatable bounce engines are a fair bit cheaper than repeatable recursion engines, so you've got some things working in your favor.
What do y'all think? What's the least bad option of the options I've presented to you today?