For today's column we're going to be wrestling with a rather unexpected question.

What do you do with a mono-colored Legendary Creature that desperately wants to lead a multicolored deck built around a game changer?

I generally lean toward Bracket 2 Commander, so building around a Commander that desperately wants to run a game changer is a deviation from the norm. In a lot of pods and playgroups, the distinctions between Brackets are taken as guidelines to help ensure better games, rather than hard and fast boundaries. If this Commander isn't powerful enough to compete in Bracket 3, but has to play there because of a few cards I feel obligated to include, I may end up with a lower win rate.

In the long run, the goal is to have fun. Any wins I get should be all the more fulfilling. Maybe I'll even manage to put together a solid Bracket 3 deck.

Before we dig into this build let's take a look at what we're building around.

Emil, Vastlands Roamer is a 3/3 Legendary Elf Druid with some interesting abilities. Creatures I control with +1/+1 counters on them have Trample, and for I can tap Emil to create a 0/0 Green and Blue Fractal Creature token. I'll put X +1/+1 counters on it, where X is the number of differently named Lands I control.

My brewing habits for lower powered Commander are pretty simple. Pick a few themes, don't forget to eat my veggies (include ramp, draw, removal), and try to have fun. I don't expect this card to let me push up toward Bracket 4 power levels, so I'm going to stick to my guns and just try to have some fun with Emil.

Differently Named Lands

Paying five mana to tap and create a Creature token is a lot. However, if I've done a good job of running a wide assortment of differently named Lands, I should be able to make it work. Leaning into this ability means that I'm going to try to make the most out of that game plan. My mana base includes only seven basic Lands, 30 nonbasic Lands, and a bunch of modal double-faced cards (MDFCs) that can be played as a Land.

Field of the Dead is the card that has pushed me into building Emil as a Bracket 3 deck. This Land is powerful enough that it's on the Game Changer list, and it lines up perfectly with what Emil wants me to do. Whenever Field of the Dead or another Land enters the battlefield under my control, if I control seven or more Lands with different names I'll create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token.

I'm running two additional Game Changers in Crop Rotation, which will let me tutor a nonbasic Land directly to the battlefield, and Seedborn Muse, which untaps my permanents on each other player's untap step.

Leaning into a theme sometimes means playing some questionable cards. Fungal Colossus is a seven-mana 5/5 Fungus Beast that costs X less to cast where X is the number of differently named Lands I control. I can get a little excited about paying a single Green mana for a 5/5, but this isn't the kind of card that's going to have a big impact on the game.

I'm running a pair of four-mana colorless Artifact Creatures in today's list. Survey Mechan is a one-power, three-toughness Robot with Flying and Hexproof that has a sweet activated ability. I can sacrifice it to deal three damage to any target, and then have target player draw three cards and gain three life. That ability costs a whopping 10 mana, but will cost X less where X is the number of differently named Lands I control.

I'm also running Awakened Amalgam, a Golem with power and toughness equal to the number of differently named Lands I control.

There's no guarantee any of those cards will appear in a given game of Commander, so I also want to build around getting more out of Emil's activated ability.

Seedborn Muse deserves more than just a passing mention. This card is likely going to be the spinach to Emil's Popeye, letting me push my game plan into overdrive. I'll untap my permanents on each opponent's untap step effectively quadrupling the potential rate at which I'll be able to push out my Fractal Creature tokens in a four player game.

My other support cards are good, and often considered staples in certain types of decks, but they pale in comparison to what Seedborn Muse can do. Illusionist's Bracers will let me copy Emil's activated ability, giving me a second Fractal Creature token on activation.

Hardened Scales is also in the list and will give me an extra +1/+1 counter when that token enters play. Parallel Lives will double the number of tokens I make, but this deck's best support card might be Doubling Season. Getting twice as many Fractal tokens with twice as many +1/+1 counters is the kind of help Emil may need to keep up with Bracket 3 decks.

Fun With Fractals

This deck isn't focused on any one Creature type but I decided to lean into Fractal tokens as a subtheme. It's unlikely my Three Tree City is going to wind up making a ton of mana based upon the number of Fractal Creatures I control, but I still enjoy having a subtheme to focus on.

Ambitious Augmenter might not be the best turn one play in Commander, but this one-mana Turtle Wizard has the potential to get big and to give me a blocker after a board wipe. Its Increment ability will give it a +1/+1 counter whenever I cast a spell for which I spent an amount of mana greater than Augmenter's power or toughness. When it dies I'll create a 0/0 Green and Blue Fractal Creature token and I'll put Augmenter's counters on that token.

Additive Evolution is a five-mana Enchantment that will enter and make a 0/0 Fractal with three +1/+1 counters on it. At the beginning of combat on my turn I'll put a +1/+1 counter on target Creature I control and that Creature will gain Vigilance until end of turn. With Emil out, that means I can give a Creature Trample if it didn't already have +1/+1 counters on it.

I'm not running a lot of Equipment, but Fractal Harness deserves a mention. This Artifact costs and when it enters I'll create a Fractal token, I'll put X +1/+1 counters on it, and I'll attach Fractal Harness to it. That's not bad, but whenever equipped Creature attacks I'll double the number of +1/+1 counters on that Creature. With a modest equip cost of two mana, it might be worth just paying three mana to get this into play so I can equip it to a big Fractal token and have it double in size when it attacks.

Odds and Ends

I've got a bunch of seemingly random support cards that don't really fall into any particular theme, but which will be very helpful in making this deck run smoothly.

One of this deck's biggest issues is going to be speed. It's got a game plan that falls more naturally into Bracket 2, but with Field of the Dead it's going to be a Bracket 3 deck whether I like it or not. Part of the problem is that a ton of my Lands enter tapped.

To help with that I'm running Amulet of Vigor and Spelunking. The former is just an Artifact that will untap any permanent I have enter play tapped. The latter is an Enchantment that will have me draw a card and then put a Land into play from my hand. If I put a Cave into play I'll gain four life, but more importantly it will have Lands I control enter play untapped.

Giving my Creatures with +1/+1 counters Trample is nice, but giving them Trample and Deathtouch is even better. Bow of Nylea and Ohran Frostfang will both give attacking Creatures I control Deathtouch.

Bow of Nylea also has a modal activated ability that will let me put a +1/+1 counter on target Creature, deal two damage to target Creature with Flying, gain three life, or put up to four target cards from my graveyard onto the bottom of my library in any order.

Ohran Frostfang isn't nearly as flexible, but it will have me draw a card whenever a Creature I control deals combat damage to a player.

Card draw is one of the most important things to build into a Commander deck, so Terrasymbiosis should be worth its three-mana casting cost. This Enchantment will trigger whenever I put one or more +1/+1 counters on a Creature I control, and it will have me draw that many cards. That's amazing, but it is Limited to once each turn. Emil's activated ability can be done at Instant speed, so I'll do well to make a Fractal token on the end step before my turn. If I can draw a bunch of cards, that's even better.

Roam Those Vastlands

Building a mono-Green Commander deck with only seven Forests and little in the way of basic Land tutors was not what I expected to be doing this week, but here we are. While I feel like this deck is lacking something, I suspect this is just how it feels to be brewing outside of your comfort zone. I'm very comfortable brewing in Green, and I have a long list of staples I like to lean on, but this list has been very out of the ordinary.

You could easily run twice as many basic Lands and still have a playable Emil deck, but I like to lean heavily into whatever themes I'm building around. I expect that will make it easier to tap and create a really big Fractal Creature token.

I often swap a card into a list in the process of writing and this column was no exception. The last-minute addition to this list was Seedborn Muse, as my game plan can kick into high gear if I've got enough Lands and I'm untapping all of my permanents on each player's untap step. I figured I was already in Bracket 3 so I might as well play three Game Changers instead of just one or two.

Emil, Vastlands Roamer | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Emil, Vastlands Roamer

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Ambitious Augmenter
• 1 Ancient Bronze Dragon
• 1 Awakened Amalgam
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Canopy Gargantuan
• 1 Caustic Caterpillar
• 1 Champion of Lambholt
• 1 Disciple of Freyalise
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Forgotten Ancient
• 1 Fungal Colossus
• 1 Heartwood Storyteller
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Ohran Frostfang
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Seedborn Muse
• 1 Steelbane Hydra
• 1 Survey Mechan
• 1 Tangled Florahedron
• 1 Tireless Provisioner
• 1 Titania, Voice of Gaea
• 1 Ulvenwald Hydra
• 1 Vigor
• 1 Voracious Varmint
• 1 World Shaper

• Instants (8)
• 1 Archdruid's Charm
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Inspiring Call
• 1 Khalni Ambush
• 1 Return to Nature
• 1 Vastwood Fortification

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery
• 1 Bridgeworks Battle
• 1 Ezuri's Predation
• 1 Genesis Wave
• 1 Germination Practicum
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Splendid Reclamation
• 1 Sylvan Scrying
• 1 Turntimber Symbiosis
• 1 Wild Hypothesis

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Additive Evolution
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Hardened Scales
• 1 Paradox Zone
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Spelunking
• 1 Terrasymbiosis
• 1 Zendikar Resurgent

• Artifacts (9)
• 1 Amulet of Vigor
• 1 Bow of Nylea
• 1 Emerald Medallion
• 1 Fractal Harness
• 1 Idol of Oblivion
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 The Earth Crystal

• Lands (37)
• 7 Forest
• 1 Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
• 1 Blighted Woodland
• 1 Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Castle Garenbrig
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Demolition Field
• 1 Evendo, Waking Haven
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Field of the Dead
• 1 Forbidden Orchard
• 1 Hidden Nursery
• 1 Homeward Path
• 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Promising Vein
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Secret Tunnel
• 1 Snow-Covered Forest
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Three Tree City
• 1 Urza's Cave
• 1 War Room
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Buy This Deck Export text

This is where I usually discuss how you'd lower or raise the power level of a deck, and this week I've made it easy to drop this deck's power level. You simply need to drop out your game changers. One might think that automatically puts this deck in Bracket 2, but it's not that simple. Decks aren't Bracket 2 or Bracket 3 based solely on the number of game changers you run.

I think it should be easy to move this down into Bracket 2. Emil's already trying to win games off of a five-mana activated ability that drives you to build a pretty weird mana base for a mono-colored deck. I just don't know for sure without playing a few games whether you'll need to make further adjustments in order to really play a fair Bracket 2 game.

If you wanted to move this deck up in power, I don't think you'd be looking at more than just a high Bracket 3 deck. I think you'd want to be tutoring for Seedborn Muse. You could load up on some Stax effects and run cards like Hall of Gemstone and Collector Ouphe, but I'm not sure that's enough to make a big difference.

You might try to go for a combo game plan where you make a ton of mana and then untap Emil with something like Staff of Domination so you can build an arbitrarily large army of Fractal tokens.

Final Thoughts

I wasn't able to get this list into a game so I can't report on how it played. I suspect it will struggle against fast Bracket 3 decks, as Emil's game plan isn't likely to get online until the mid-game, and there are high Bracket 3 decks that can be pushing for a win by then.

Does that mean this is really a Bracket 2 deck in a Bracket 3 trench coat? Maybe. One of the problems with the Bracket system is that it is going to force some decks up into higher brackets when it's possible they're never going to be able to keep up with the other decks in those pods.

As I mentioned, you could always drop out the Game Changers. That kind of change will keep Emil from being able to really go crazy, but that's probably fine for Bracket 2 play. I suspect the reality is that we need to update the Bracket system so that Bracket 1 is moved down to Bracket 0 and we add more nuance to Brackets 2 and 3.

In the long run what matters is that you have fun. I suspect you could play this exact list in Bracket 2 pods and in 10 games you'd find that you aren't running away with games or creating a truly un-fun game experience for your tablemates.

You should absolutely explain that you are running a Bracket 3 deck and you should only play it in pods where folks don't mind that you have Game Changers. Lots of players are fine playing a Bracket 2 deck against a deck like this, but please don't fail to make it clear that you're running Game Changers. It's a big deal to some people even if you don't think it matters all that much.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!