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Budget Commander Builds: Tannuk, Memorial Ensign

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Previews for Edge of Eternities have come and gone, and this set is giving big Space Epic energy. In recent sets we've participated in a murder mystery, watched a spaghetti western and even explored the various worlds of a beloved JRPG franchise. It just makes sense that we would explore the space between worlds in the MTG universe.

Tannuk, Memorial Ensign

The first legendary that really jumped out at me as a brewer was Tannuk, Memorial Ensign. Tannuk is a 2/4 Kavu Pilot creature that costs 1RG. Their ability is nice and simple, play a land, ping your opponents. If you do it twice, you draw a card. It's a clean and easy way to deal damage to the board consistently, and I knew I had to put something together for him.

Crucible of Worlds
Exploration

Landfall or Lands Matter decks are all over the place in Commander, so an archetype already existed for Tannuk, but I knew I wanted additional restrictions on the list. It's super easy to reach for Crucible of Worlds, Exploration or Fetches when you want extra landfall triggers, but I felt like Tannuk was lined up perfectly for a budget deck. At the time of this article's release the deck included cost less than $25.00 excluding basic lands. Let's take a quick look:


Sabotender
Spitfire Lagac

Tannuk's ping damage is going to be our primary win condition. We care about it so much that we've added redundancy with cards like Sabotender and Spitfire Lagac. With a robust ramp package we're putting at least two lands into play a turn, getting a bevy of triggers and securing an additional draw from Tannuk.

Nahiri's Lithoforming

As all Commander players know, making sure your deck has ample draw is critical. We're playing some classic draw spells like Harmonize, but we can generate some additional advantage and get creative with cards like Nahiri's Lithoforming. Trash a few lands, draw a few cards and then put some more lands in play. We'll successfully score additional triggers from Tannuk as well.

Snake Umbra
Keen Sense

Two other cards to highlight with Tannuk and the deck's draw package are Snake Umbra and Keen Sense. Both of these cards act as functional copies of Curiosity in our deck and every ping that we dole out turns into additional value in our hand. These were the first two cards I thought of when I read Tannuk for the first time.

Rampaging Baloths
Avenger of Zendikar

Our secondary win condition is to pivot to a token deck. We've included landfall staples like Omnath, Locus of Rage, Avenger of Zendikar, and Rampaging Baloth to fill our board to protect us from a big attack or turn the tables on our opponents and crash in with an Overrun effect. These creatures partner excellently with our robust ramp package, generating bigger and better creatures for us to secure an additional avenue to victory.

Cleansing Wildfire
Tectonic Reformation

There are a handful of niche cards in the deck we can review too. Cleansing Wildfire lets us trade one of our lands for an additional landfall trigger and some card draw. Worldsoul's Rage will allow us to turn our excess mana into a removal spell and then recover any lands that ended up in the graveyard. If we have a card like the aforementioned Worldsoul's Rage or Splendid Reclamation in our hand we can use Tectonic Reformation to turn each of our lands into a ramp spell by cycling them away.

Tannuk has a lot of build potential across any budget. Given the consistent ping damage that he offers we could easily give him infect with a Grafted Exoskeleton and put a 10 land clock on the game. You could pad your life total with a card like Basilisk Collar. How would you build Tannuk? Thanks for reading!

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