As the Final Fantasy set approaches, I've been trying to find interesting legendary cards to shine a spotlight on. With so many options, it's been a challenge to decide which ones to work on, but this week I decided to take my cue from a buddy of mine who helped to found our Thursday night Tabletop Simulator playgroup.

That group leans towards lower powered EDH but he managed to build a deck around today's commander that caught my attention and made me wonder what could be done with a slightly different focus. Today's column is a double feature. I'm going to give you a look at both a low and a mid-powered build for Sin, Spira's Punishment.

This Sultai Legendary Leviathan Avatar has flying and a pretty interesting party trick. Whenever Sin enters or attacks, I'll exile a permanent card from my graveyard at random. That means I'll probably want to play with separate stacks for my permanents and non-permanents, which will feel weird. It's worth it, as I'll create a tapped token that's a copy of the exiled card. If it's a land, I'll repeat the process, exiling another card at random and creating a token copy of it.

I should note that Sin can be built as something of an "Oops All Lands" deck with the goal of loading up your graveyard and then hoping to pull a huge number of them back out of the yard. Sin's trigger repeats if you hit a land. The process you're repeating includes that check at the end to see if it's a land, so if you've only got lands in your graveyard, you'd get them all back as tapped tokens!

An Oops All Lands deck would probably run well over 50 lands, but I'm not aiming to lean quite that heavily into lands for my build. My version of the deck will run more than I usually include, but not by a lot. I also want to be responsible and run my "fruits and veggies". That means lots of ramp, and a serving each of card draw and removal.

I'm going to lean into Landfall for my build, but my buddy Mike Gallagher decided to build a lower powered deck that might best be called...

Oops All Leviathans

I've been finding out lately that it's hard to build low powered decks. At least, it's hard for me to build low powered decks, but one way you can do it is by picking an odd or different angle for an otherwise normal commander. For Sin, Spira's Punishment, Mike was inspired by the commander's creature type line - Leviathan Avatar.

He actually titled the deck "Leviathan Gambling" and that might be more accurate than "Oops All Leviathans". You're not going to "oops" all your Leviathans into play, but you will be gambling when you randomly return a permanent into play with a Sin enter the battlefield or attack trigger.

If you are aiming to build a good or even a powerful deck, you'd purposely go after all of the best Leviathans you can find. Leviathans are generally big and cost a lot of mana, but if you're aiming to cheat them into play with a Sin ETB or attack trigger, you might be able to build a pretty decent deck.

Play enough of these bad boys and you can absolutely present a threat in a lower powered game. You tend to get more turns in lower bracket EDH games before things get serious, and you definitely have the time to ramp up to where you can cast a 7-9 mana creature. Sin costs a hefty seven mana, so you're going to need that time.

Mike decided playing good Leviathans wasn't enough, and I don't blame him. The fun in this build comes when you start playing not-so-good Leviathans and have to find ways to remediate the issues that come with them.

The most interesting thing about this list is that if you manage to put one of the less good Leviathans into the graveyard, you'll end up gambling to see if you get a good or a bad beastie with your Sin trigger. If it's a good one, like Charis, the Raging Isle, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one like either of the monsters shown above, you'd better hope you have a Stifle in hand so you can counter the trigger and not get hosed by your own deck.

This kind of madness isn't as fun against high powered or even strong mid-powered decks. The games might not last long enough for the deck to try to do its thing. In a lower powered game, it can be a lot of fun to play goofy decks that have the capacity to blow up in your own face.

Leviathan Gambling | Commander | Mike Gallagher

• Commander (1)
• 1 Sin, Spira's Punishment

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Adrix and Nev, Twincasters
• 1 Aethersquall Ancient
• 1 Amzu, Swarm's Hunger
• 1 Archipelagore
• 1 Breaching Leviathan
• 1 Charix, the Raging Isle
• 1 Eater of Days
• 1 Ertai Resurrected
• 1 Grozoth
• 1 Inkwell Leviathan
• 1 Jokulmorder
• 1 Kederekt Leviathan
• 1 Kheru Goldkeeper
• 1 Kiora's Dambreaker
• 1 Leviathan
• 1 Nemesis of Reason
• 1 Nimbus Swimmer
• 1 Overlord of the Balemurk
• 1 Pearl Lake Ancient
• 1 Runo Stromkirk
• 1 Segovian Leviathan
• 1 Serpent of Yawning Depths
• 1 Simic Sky Swallower
• 1 Sky Swallower
• 1 Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep
• 1 Stormtide Leviathan
• 1 Summon: Leviathan
• 1 Teval, the Balanced Scale
• 1 Thing from the Deep
• 1 Tormod, the Desecrator
• 1 Trench Gorger
• 1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

• Instants (7)
• 1 Bitter Triumph
• 1 Defabricate
• 1 Disallow
• 1 Repudiate // Replicate
• 1 Stifle
• 1 Tale's End
• 1 Trickbind

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery
• 1 Breach the Multiverse
• 1 Extract a Confession
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Incarnation Technique
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Open the Way
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Skyshroud Claim
• 1 Three Visits
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Whelming Wave

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Binding the Old Gods
• 1 Deadbridge Chant
• 1 Out of the Tombs
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Ripples of Undeath
• 1 Teval's Judgment

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Monster Manual
• 1 Palantir of Orthanc
• 1 Sonic Screwdriver
• 1 Urza's Incubator

• Planeswalker (1)
• 1 Ashiok, Dream Render

• Lands (36)
• 3 Forest
• 5 Island
• 3 Swamp
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 Blighted Woodland
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Hedge Maze
• 1 Homeward Path
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Undercity Sewers
• 1 Underground Mortuary
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
• 1 Zagoth Triome

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This deck did get into a game in one of our Thursday night Tabletop Simulator sessions and it was memorable enough for me to want to include it in one of my columns. Mike put out an impressive number of Leviathans and if I remember correctly he managed to dodge those bad triggers. I don't recall much more about the game, as it was weeks ago, but his army of Leviathans sure got my attention.

I am definitely curious about how an Avatar kindred deck might look, but I think Leviathans are way more interesting. I especially liked the inclusion of Runo Stromkirk, as I ran a Runo deck for a few years with a bunch of sea monsters in it.

Landfall Sin

I didn't look at Mike's list before assembling my own builld, as I was curious how different they would be. They both ended up being roughly the same cost, but with very different game plans. My goal is to squeeze as much landfall value out of the 99 cards in my library as possible. I didn't decide to run a deck with more than half lands, but running 40 feels like a lot to me.

I'm running a lot of fetch lands, along with a few creatures like Springbloom Druid and Sylvan Safekeeper, to put lands into the graveyard. Harrow, Entish Restoration, and Roiling Regrowth are in the list as ramp spells that will also help to fill up the graveyard. There may be no better option in all of Magic for putting lands into the bin than Scapeshift.

Scapeshift will let me sacrifice any number of lands and tutor up that many lands and put them onto the battlefield. I can float mana before doing that and if I've got Amulet of Vigor or Archelos, Lagoon Mystic in play, those lands will enter untapped. If I can follow that up with a Boundless Realms or get a bunch more lands back with a Sin, Spira's Punishment trigger, I could be making some serious mana.

Big mana begs for big spells, and there are few better big mana outlets than Genesis Wave and Villainous Wealth. The former will let me reveal X cards from the top of my library and will have me put any number of permanents with mana value X or less into play. Everything else goes to the graveyard.

Villainous Wealth will have target opponent exile the top X cards of their library and I'll be able to cast any number of spells with mana value X or less from among them without paying their mana cost. I won't get any lands, but I could get all kinds of other interesting stuff. If I'm up against a combo deck and my X is big enough, I might even hit a winning combo!

This deck is really about landfall triggers, and it's running nearly every decent landfall card I could think of. Incremental value is probably what I'll be getting most often, but this deck should be capable of occasionally having a single turn with a dozen or more lands hitting the field at once.

While a Lotus Cobra or Tireless Provisioner can help me generate extra mana for each landfall trigger, and cards like Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcerer, Rampaging Baloths, Springheart Nantuko, and Scure Swarm can grow me an army, my favorite landfall triggers will probably be from Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait and Tatyova, Benthic Druid, as they'll draw me cards.

Strangely, I'm more excited about some of the landfall cards I don't usually run.

Nissa of Shadowed Boughs is a planeswalker that gets a loyalty counter each time a land enters play under my control. Her +1 loyalty ability will untap one of my lands and can turn it into a 3/3 Elemental with haste and menace until end of turn. Her -5 ability will let me put a creature into play. Neither abiltiy is amazing, but I think she'll be fun to play with.

Roil Elemental is a 3/2 flyer with a landfall ability that will let me steal a creature. If I'm able to hit a dozen landfall triggers, that could be tantamount to casting a Mob Rule. If Roil Elemental leaves play I'll lose those creatures, but it's still a powerful ability.

The landfall creature that has most recently caught my eye is Mossborn Hydra. This lowly hydra starts with one +1/+1 counter but doubles its counters with each landfall trigger. A meager six landfall triggers will make it a 64/64 and probably able to kill someone who doesn't have enough blockers. Starting at 1, if you double its counters 12 times it will be a 4096/4096. That still pales in comparison to an attacking Jumbo Cactaur, but did I mention Mossborn Hydra has trample?

Landfall Sin | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Sin, Spira's Punishment

• Creatures (22)
• 1 Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait
• 1 Archelos, Lagoon Mystic
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Bristly Bill, Spine Sower
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcerer
• 1 Kheru Goldkeeper
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Mossborn Hydra
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Roil Elemental
• 1 Scute Swarm
• 1 Scythecat Cub
• 1 Springbloom Druid
• 1 Springheart Nantuko
• 1 Sylvan Safekeeper
• 1 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1 Timeless Witness
• 1 Tireless Provisioner
• 1 Ulvenwald Hydra

• Instants (16)
• 1 AEtherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Assassin's Trophy
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Entish Restoration
• 1 Harrow
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Moment's Peace
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Roiling Regrowth
• 1 Sultai Charm
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Tragic Slip

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Boundless Realms
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Genesis Wave
• 1 Last March of the Ents
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Reshape the Earth
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Scapeshift
• 1 Soul's Majesty
• 1 Tempt with Discovery
• 1 Traverse the Outlands
• 1 Villainous Wealth

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Retreat to Coralhelm

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Amulet of Vigor
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Desecrated Tomb
• 1 Seer's Sundial
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 The Great Henge

• Planeswalker (1)
• 1 Nissa of Shadowed Boughs

• Lands (40)
• 7 Forest
• 7 Island
• 7 Swamp
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deathcap Glade
• 1 Dreamroot Cascade
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Foreboding Landscape
• 1 Lotus Field
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Morphic Pool
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Shipwreck Marsh
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Undergrowth Stadium
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
• 1 Zagoth Triome

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Mike and I have some overlap. We're both running Parallel Lives and Kheru Goldkeeper. He's running a lot more fetches, including off color fetch lands. I'm running ways to untap lands that enter tapped, and more big ramp spells that can result in lots of landfall triggers.

Beyond his deep dive into Leviathans, Mike is doing a lot of things right with his list. I didn't put a lot of focus on self-mill, while he thought to run a bunch of cards that can incrementally mill him to help set up his recursion. I'm leaning more towards sacrificing lands, though I'll be happy to recur a creature that got blown up if that's what my random Sin trigger gives me.

Final Thoughts

I should thank Mike for letting me share his list with you today. He's a great tablemate and a great deckbuilder who consistently impresses me with outside-of-the-box thinking and innovative lower powered brews.

My lists tend to lean on familiar staples even though I've been leaning away from game changers of late. The way I look at it, you can always upgrade one of my brews by adding those in, but I've grown to think of game changers as playing EDH on "easy mode". There are absolutely times where I want to pull out a reliable deck (with game changers) and put an end to a long losing streak, but winning games with weaker decks is a more rewarding challenge than most players think it is.

As I wrap this up, I'm looking forward to diving into more Final Fantasy content in the coming weeks. I don't expect to have another "double feature" for you any time soon. I will do my best to find something fun to brew up as we move into June and immerse ourselves in another Universes Beyond Magic set.

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