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Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a legendary knight witch named Xboox. She was known for her exceptional skills in both magic and combat. Xboox was not like any other witch; she possessed the ability to transform into a fearsome knight whenever she wanted. Her story began when she was just a young girl. Xboox, raised by her wise grandmother, learned the ways of magic from an early age. She was always curious and eager to explore her powers.

Of course, “going infinite” with this card is pretty trivial. It’s actually kind of fine as a creature that can attack. Funny things happen when you give it lifelink, but that’s just part of the fun!

The very first card I paired with Wood Elemental when coming up with this deck was World Shaper, a creature who both self-mills and returns all lands to the battlefield when it dies. There are a few reasons for this first, making all your nontoken creatures lands can protect them from a lot of the most common removal spells, giving you a bit more breathing room to build up your board presence for the payoff.

She was always curious and eager to explore her powers. As she grew older, Xboox realized that she had a unique affinity for both spells and swordsmanship. Driven by her desire to protect the weak and uphold justice, Xboox made it her mission to become a knight.

I Tried To Make A Commander Deck With The Worst Card In ‘Magic: The Gathering’: Wood Elemental’s Pity Party Deck Tech

Wood Elemental, Magic's worst, most useless card. Let's make him work.

Brian Snõddy/Wizards of the Coast

The other day on the PlayEDH Discord channel, we were talking about one of the worst cards in Magic's history, Wood Elemental.

Wizards of the Coast

Wood Elemental is a three generic, one green Elemental creature who, on top of that already kind of steep casting cost, requires you to sacrifice any amount of untapped Forests. Wood Elemental then enters the battlefield with power and toughness equal to the number of forests you sacrificed. That means, if you want a 2/2 Elemental with no useful effects, you have to spend four mana and sacrifice two lands. It's not just bad, it's infamously bad.

And yet, while thinking about Wood Elemental, that little, annoying, obtuse bit of my brain was like "no, Joe. You have to make this work somehow." I wanted to embrace Wood Elemental and try and build a Commander deck that plays to its… well, not strengths, exactly. But I wanted Wood Elemental to be a driving force in a deck somehow.

This isn't a deck I ever recommend you build. It's expensive, and it has a Wood Elemental in it. For the money you're spending on this you could make a deck that is so much better in every way. But if you were wanting to surprise your opponent by having Wood Elemental actually be an integral part of a game of Commander, then it's your money.

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The Commander

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild

Wizards of the Coast

Unfortunately, Wood Elemental isn't a Legendary creature and so we can't run it as our Commander. Instead, I chose the Zendikar Rising legendary Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. There are a few reasons for this: first, making all your nontoken creatures lands can protect them from a lot of the most common removal spells, giving you a bit more breathing room to build up your board presence for the payoff.

Secondly, Ashaya turns creatures into Forests. Wood Elemental only cares about how many Forests you sacrifice. With this, we can somewhat offset Wood Elemental's awful casting costs by sacrificing creatures instead of precious lands, potentially turning it into a nice and chunky creature with less of the pain.

A great card to include in any mono-colored Commander deck is Commander's Plate. It gives the equipped creature protection from white, black, blue and red, all colors which have much better removal than green. Either attach it to Ashaya to keep everything you own as a land, or throw it onto other key parts of the deck, like Nyxbloom Ancient, and you'll be laughing all the way to victory.

The Strategy

There are two elements of this deck: land recursion, and landfall. The plan is to dump a load of land into our graveyard, bring it back, and trigger lots and lots of landfall effects in order to win the game. It's not the smartest or most technical of win conditions, but we're playing green. Slow and stompy is what gets results here.

Ramping and Drawing

Before we get to dropping lands off in the graveyard, we need to find them. Fortunately, green is the best color for ramp. The classics like Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Sakura Tribe-Elder, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Azusa, Lost But Seeking work well enough here. Boundless Realms lets you double your basic lands, and Burgeoning ensure you're always keeping up with your opponents whenever they play lands.

Magus of the Candelabra

Wizards of the Coast

The problem with things like Dryad and Azusa is that you need to have found the land already in order to play them, and so we need lots of draw outlets as well. First, make sure you have a Reliquary Tower (or something like a Thought Vessel) to prevent us needing to discard cards, and then go wild with thinks like Return of the Wildspeaker, Rishkar's Expertise, Shamanic Revelation, The Great Henge, Garruk's Uprising and Regal Force.

Wizards of the Coast

We will be intentionally blowing up our own lands quite frequently, so any way we have of eking out extra mana from the few we keep is always a plus. Nyxbloom Ancient triples the mana any source produces, and Magus of the Candelabra lets you pay X mana to untap X amount of lands. Put the two together, and you're untapping triple the amount lands you pay into the Magus and getting infinite mana!

Land Destruction

Next, we need ways to get lands into the graveyard. This is where Wood Elemental comes into play: with just one creature, you could dump every land you have on the board into your graveyard, ready for it to be brought back again a moment later. There are also lots of good ramping cards that require you to sacrifice your lands, such as Crop Rotation, Harrow, Roiling Regrowth and Springbloom Druid. The most powerful cards for this in this deck, though, are Scapeshift, which lets you sacrifice any number of lands, and Natural Balance, which can also significantly slow down other players who have been ramping better than you.

Wizards of the Coast

Don't forget there are lots of lands that sacrifice themselves or others, too. The usual trio of Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds and Fabled Passage always work well, but also the likes of Myriad Landscape, Ghost Quarter, Lotus Field and Blighted Woodland are good picks as well.

Land Recursion

We've dumped as many lands as we need into our graveyard, but the real trick is in getting them all back again.

Crucible of Worlds

Wizards of the Coast

There are two schools of thought for this component of the deck: first is the slow-and-steady route, where you pick one or two lands out at a time in order to manage your mana while also triggering landfall effects as you go. Crucible of Worlds is the classic for this, but also Ancient Greenwarden, Life from the Loam and Ramunap Excavator.

The second approach is to take your graveyard, flip it upside down, and dump it all straight back onto the board at once. If the last few cards are a paced, thoughtful response, this is the one you pull at the last moment to hopefully win the game or pull you back from the brink. The very first card I paired with Wood Elemental when coming up with this deck was World Shaper, a creature who both self-mills and returns all lands to the battlefield when it dies.

Wizards of the Coast

But it's not just World Shaper who can do this. The Mending of Dominaria puts your table on a timer, with its last chapter pulling all your lands back, while Splendid Reclamation does it at sorcery speed. With the three of them sat in your deck waiting to be played, there's no reason why you couldn't do more than one of these sacrifice-dump cycles in a single game.

Landfall

This where the real threat of your deck comes in. We want maximum value, and so for each land you put onto the battlefield, we want a whole load of other effects to trigger.

Wizards of the Coast

First, that Ancient Greenwarden we use to play lands from the graveyard is an absolute beast, as it doubles any other landfall effects when they trigger. Baru, Fist of Krosa gives all your green creatures +1/+1 and Trample until the end of turn for each Forest that cames into play, and Tireless Tracker gives you a few Clue artifact as an extra draw engine.

Wizards of the Coast

But the real heavy-hitters in this category are Scute Swarm, Rampaging Baloths, Sporemound and Zendikar's Roil. Dumping 10+ lands back into play when these are out will make a ridiculously large number of green creature tokens that can then be buffed up with Baru on a later turn to finish your board off. It's this wave of tokens which justifies the inclusion of Heroic Intervention, as it can protect you from the board wipe that is inevitably coming your way once you pop off like this.

Removal

We can't just quietly sit and build up our landfall triggers, we need ways of dealing with our opponents at the same time.

By far the biggest threat to our entire strategy are graveyard-wiping effects, and the most popular of those is Tormod's Crypt. With that in mind, a few ways to remove artifacts and enchantments is a good idea.

Wizards of the Coast

Beast Within is the go-to mono-green removal, as it can target any permanent and replace it with a 3/3 green Beast token. Reclamation Sage is also a good shout here, as its enter-the-battlefield effect can destroy a target. The problem with both of them is that there's nothing stopping your opponent from triggering a Tormod's Crypt in response, meaning you'll want to get rid of it before filling your graveyard if at all possible.

Kogla, the Titan Ape is also a great removal creature. It fights a target when it enters the battlefield, and then destroys any artifact or enchantment whenever it attacks. It's reusable removal combined with decent damage, and, with Ashaya, even counts as an extra land.

Wizards of the Coast

A somewhat expensive choice is Meteor Golem. It costs seven generic for a 3/3 artifact creature, but it can destroy any nonland permanent an opponent controls when it enters. While seven generic is a lot for removal, with the amount of ramp we're doing it isn't unreasonably expensive (especially if we get out Nyxbloom Ancient/Magus of the Candelabra infinite mana engine going!).

Finally, I decided to include Ram Through and Ancient Animus. We're going to have a lot of big creatures, many with trample, making Ram Through a no-brainer. Ancient Animus, on the other hand, is a slightly weird choice. Fighting is more risky than just dealing damage, as it puts us in harm's way for deathtouch, reduces our blocking power, or even opens us up to spells that destroy creatures that have been dealt damage this turn.

The only reason I've included Ancient Animus in this is that it's a way to pop World Shaper in a pinch. Trade it with an opponent's creature and you'll bring all your lands back, triggering all that sweet, sweet landfall.

Finishers

If your tokens can't win the game on their own, there are a few finishers that can help you out.

Wizards of the Coast

Seeing as we're going to have a lot of creatures and turn them into lands with Ashaya, Blackblade Reforged is definitely an equipment to consider. Either attach it to Ashaya for three generic and get a very big Commander, or put it on a creature with trample (like Rampaging Baloths, Rampaging Brontodon, Nyxbloom Ancient or Craterhoof Behemoth (who also has haste) to just punch a hole straight through your opponent's defenses.

Finale of Devastation

Wizards of the Coast

Finale of Devastation is a classic finisher that fits nicely into this deck. Plug in as much mana as you can afford (which, with Nyxbloom Ancient, will be a lot) and you'll not only bring back any creature you want from the graveyard, you'll also give everything you control +X/+X and haste until the end of the turn. Craterhoof Behemoth? Avenger of Zendikar? Rampaging Brontodon? It almost doesn't matter, as it's the buff we're giving creatures already on the board that is the true damage.

If you're feeling extra fancy, and have the mana to burn, why not combine Finale of Devastation with Genesis Wave? You'll be pulling a load of your most powerful creatures out your graveyard with Genesis Wave, then giving them haste and +X/+X with Finale of Devastation.

The Full Decklist

You can read the full decklist either below, or fully tagged and labelled on Moxfield.

She trained tirelessly, honing her skills in combat and refining her magical abilities. Xboox sought the guidance of the best swordfighters and scholars of the realm, always eager to learn and improve. After years of arduous training, Xboox finally achieved her goal. She became the first knight witch in the history of the land. Her dual nature, capable of casting powerful spells and wielding a sword with unmatched precision, made her an unstoppable force on the battlefield. Xboox soon became a legendary figure, feared by her enemies and respected by her allies. Her fame spread far and wide, and tales of her heroic deeds echoed throughout the land. She was often called upon to handle tasks that required both magical prowess and combat expertise. However, Xboox did not see herself as a hero but a guardian. She used her powers to protect the innocent and fight against the forces of evil. It was her sense of justice and unwavering determination that set her apart from others. Throughout her journey, Xboox faced numerous challenges and encountered powerful adversaries. Yet, she never wavered in her quest to bring justice to the land. Her bravery and compassion inspired many, and even the most hardened hearts would tremble at the mention of her name. In the end, Xboox's story serves as a reminder that true power comes from within. Her ability to embrace both her magical and knightly sides made her an extraordinary force for good. Xboox's legacy as the knight witch will be remembered forever, a testament to her indomitable spirit and her unwavering commitment to justice..

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