Back in 1999, my parents signed me up for a bowling league at the local bowling alley. After all, this was the 90s and bowling was pretty popular, and it gave my parents a great way to let us burn some energy while they relaxed after a long work week. One day, a teammate came over where we were playing with a fresh booster pack of Magic cards, featuring the then-newest set of Urza's Legacy.

I got to watch him, enamored, as he opened the pack. I didn't know what the cards did, or how they functioned, but I remember the art for cards like Erase and Ghitu Slinger in awe. Then he opened a foil Sick and Tired and it blew my mind. He then told me there was a card shop attached to the bowling alley itself, and he bought the pack there.

Once I started to actually play Magic a few months later thanks to my cousin introducing me to it, I'd find myself going to that card shop every week. The owner, an older gentleman, was in the business of sports cards and didn't care for Magic, so he would just open packs, put the cards in a binder, and sell them for a quarter each. I'd eagerly ask to look through it every week. If I couldn't buy a booster pack, maybe I could buy a cool rare or two that I learned about in Scrye Magazine.

Then one week, I came in and saw an awesome Green legend starring back up at me in the binder: Multani, Maro-Sorcerer.

Scrye Magazine - along with similar magazines like InQuest - would have full listings of card values in each issue to tell you what your collection might be worth. I studied these over and over, and it made it easier to know which chase cards to look for at this local shop. It might seem funny now in the set that brought us such powerful cards as Grim Monolith and Palinchron, but at the time Multani was one of the top 3 rares of the set value-wise. So, when it showed up in this binder, I knew I had to have it. I handed the store owner a quarter, took the card home, and threw it straight into my five-color monstrosity of a deck.

For several years, Multani became a mainstay of my kitchen table Magic gameplay with my sibling. It was always fun to see how big it could get, and it would often prove even more fun if I could somehow wrangle a multiplayer game together. With time, it fell out of favor as I discovered things like FNM and the value of a good low-color count 60 card deck.

As the years have gone on, though, I've found myself always wanting to do something with this old favorite legend from my very earliest days with the game. As it happens, every now and then I also write about PreDH - the Commander variant that includes every set before Commander 2011. So, I've come up with a list and now that I have an opportunity to do so, I'd love to share it with you all.

Multani, Maro-Sorcerer | PreDH | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Multani, Maro-Sorcerer

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Baru, Fist of Krosa
• 1 Brawn
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Genesis
• 1 Heartwood Storyteller
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
• 1 Kazandu Tuskcaller
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Maro
• 1 Masumaro, First to Live
• 1 Multani's Acolyte
• 1 Ohran Viper
• 1 Oracle of Mul Daya
• 1 Priest of Titania
• 1 Primordial Sage
• 1 Regal Force
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Silent Arbiter
• 1 Silklash Spider
• 1 Steel Hellkite
• 1 Tajuru Preserver
• 1 Terastodon
• 1 Viridian Shaman
• 1 Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
• 1 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Wood Elves
• 1 Yavimaya Elder

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Garruk Wildspeaker

• Instants (4)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Naturalize

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Collective Unconscious
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Gaea's Blessing
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Nature's Resurgence
• 1 Overwhelming Stampede
• 1 Primal Command
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Tooth and Nail

• Enchantments (7)
• 1 Greater Good
• 1 Keen Sense
• 1 Lignify
• 1 Overwhelming Instinct
• 1 Primal Rage
• 1 Rites of Flourishing
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Crawlspace
• 1 Font of Mythos
• 1 Horn of Greed
• 1 Howling Mine
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Teferi's Puzzle Box
• 1 Ward of Bones

• Lands (37)
• 28 Forest
• 1 Jungle Basin
• 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Slippery Karst
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 1 Treetop Village
• 1 Wasteland

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When it comes to playing Multani in Commander, it's kind of a no-brainer. In a four-player pod, if everyone has a full grip of seven cards, Multani is a mighty 28/28. Your opponents can't interact with him and odds are good they also don't have a creature big enough to take him down in combat.

The card does present two problems, however. The first is that while Multani can be a 28/28 in theory, in reality he's usually coming down much later in your average game. Because of this, player have often played most of the cards in their hand which will make Multani far weaker, though still likely a big idiot that's hard to deal with. The more pressing issue, though, is that Multani lacks evasion of any kind. Worse still, thanks to his shroud ability (the pre-keyword version), you can't just give him evasion with the aid of an aura or equipment. So, how do we solve this issue?

The first problem, the cards in hand aspect, is a bit easier to solve. Mono-Green in this era wasn't the most well known for its proficiency in card draw. While in modern day Magic, we know this is as being a lot more commonplace, at the time it was far more of a rarity. Still, there were some pretty commonly used options that still show up to this day. For example, Rites of Flourishing and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea are very common in group hug strategies and they work great here.

Artifacts are also a huge boost here. The classic Howling Mine from all the way back in Alpha immediately comes to mind, allowing players to draw an extra card every turn. On the back end of PreDH legality also came the double Howling Mine that is Font of Mythos, which lets players draw two more cards a turn. Still want more? How about Horn of Greed, which will refill everyone's hand whenever they play a land? I left it out of the deck because I felt it was already full of strong options, but you can even use Temple Bell for some extra card draw as well.

One of my personal favorites with this package, though, is Teferi's Puzzle Box. These days, players vehemently loathe this card, as it often tends to be paired with cards like Notion Thief, Narset, Parter of Veils, and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse to make games absolutely miserable for the whole table. In the PreDH era, however, you didn't really have this outside of the rare player jamming Underworld Dreams and Spiteful Visions or, heaven forbid, Chains of Mephistopheles. In this era, it was more a disruptive element that changed up players' strategies every turn, which helps you here by potentially making it more difficult for opponents to play out their hands, thereby fueling Multani.

Also, while filling your opponents' hands turn after turn is a good way to make sure Multani is big, there's also some solid options for keeping your hand full as well. Even if your opponents end up hellbent, making use of something like Regal Force or Collective Unconscious can fill your hand in a single burst. Primordial Sage also excels here, giving you a replacement card draw any time you play a creature, which should be frequent given the number of them in the list.

So, now that card draw is covered, it's time to tackle the second problem: giving Multani evasion. This is something that proves to be a little bit trickier by comparison. Thanks to Multani's shroud ability, it's impossible to make use of any targeted evasion granting. This means you can't use an aura or equipment, nor can you make use of something like Elvish Herder to grant trample every turn. So then how do you give evasion?

The answer lies in utilizing effects that grant this evasion to all of your creatures and not just one. Unfortunately, this does have the downside of limiting the options for what kinds of evasion you can use. Anything that makes creatures unblockable is targeted and the only card that can grant flying en masse in Green's color identity is Skyshaper. That's not a particularly good option and as such leaves us with one realistic choice: trample.

Admittedly this isn't a bad option. Since the core concept of this deck is making Multani as big as possible and keeping him there, trample should usually be fine for ensuring damage can be pushed through. In total, there are only 15 realistic options and a handful of them (Stampede, Tribal Forcemage, and Tromp the Domains) are honestly too weak to be worth considering. Three of these provide the ability statically: Brawn, Primal Rage, and Roughshod Mentor. I only went with the first two of the three, mostly because Roughshod Mentor is costly mana-wise, but all three are fine options.

The other cards either represent one-time abilities or else abilities that can only be used at certain points. These are predominantly Overrun effects, which are always solid options for a Green deck packed to the brim with creatures. Given that cards like Overwhelming Stampede and Triumph of the Hordes can only be used once, I decided to just go with one of them here. I opted for Overwhelming Stampede since if Multani's big, it will make all of your creatures just as monstrous as he is. Who needs commander damage when you can just kill your opponents dead outright?

There are a few repeatable options, though. Kamahl, Fist of Krosa is the most obvious. This legend is an old-school favorite that just comes with the actual card Overrun stapled to it as an ability you can activate over and over again, so long as you have the mana. On a smaller scale, Baru, Fist of Krosa represents Kamahl's spiritual descendant and can usually grant an instance of trample every turn, provided you can play a Forest on each of those turns. Last but not least is Garruk Wildspeaker. This one is usually just going to Overrun once and call it a day, but the benefit of providing both ramp and tokens makes it an excellent option for any Green mage in this era.

Finally, there's one other thing that needs to be addressed. If you're filling up your opponents' hands so much every turn, how do you stop them from just killing you with all the stuff they're drawing? Well for one, I've often found the chaos to be its own sort of deterrent. Everyone gets to do their own thing and leaves you alone, opting to try racing out one another to see who can get ahead the most first. At some point, though, you will start drawing the ire of other players as your Multani gets bigger, so you need to be ready.

Generally speaking, the method here is taking the pillow fort approach. In other words: stop your opponents from attacking. To accomplish this, I'm using a handful of cards to slow the opponent down. Both Crawlspace and Silent Arbiter are about as good as you're going to get in Mono-Green, as they prevent you from being swarmed and instead allow you to only be attacked by minimal creatures. Silent Arbiter is also great with Multani and mass trample, as it makes the giant elemental even more difficult to contend with and will often end up with opponents taking massive life point swings in the process.

The other option is Constant Mists. This obnoxious card from Stronghold might be a little tricky to get your hands on, but if you can it makes it super easy to stop opponents from getting to attack. It also has the added bonus of helping you get a Forest into your graveyard to turn on Brawn. The other options I went with are far more painful to your opponents, but once again allow you to set up more efficiently. Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is a great way to make everyone at the table hate you, but in a way that allows you to push further. Similarly, Ward of Bones prevents your opponents from going off faster than you, ensuring that everyone has a modest board state for you to contend with over time.

While I think this deck still has more ways that you can improve on it, I think this is an awesome start for anyone wanting to pick up Multani as a commander. Not only is this a good starting point for PreDH, but many of these options still translate as being among the best that modern day Commander has to offer. That makes the deck easy to pick up and improve however you want so you can have the best time at your next Commander night.

And hey, if you don't want to try Multani, maybe try going back to that old legend you have fond memories of from when you were a kid. You might be surprised at just how often you can make it now in the world of Commander.

Paige Smith

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