Into the Vault: Rograkh Silas Renn Farm Deck

Written by Christian Gil Portugalisa

        Good morning to all of you. I've seen a lot of people sharing their amazing Commander Legends pulls. Unfortunately, Commander Legends is delayed in my area. I am definitely excited to get my hands and open a box when it arrives. For today's topic, I want to delve into the more competitive side of Commander with partner commanders Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh and Silas Renn, Seeker Adept.

The Commanders

 

         Etched Commanders are awesome and both are available in Commander Legends. The MVP of the deck is Rograkh. For 0 converter mana cost (CMC), we can play him on turn 1 and still have mana open to do other things. This is critical since we have cards that need one of our commanders to be on the battle field for us to play them for free. I've chosen Silas Renn as the partner for the color identity as well as his ability to return artifacts into play. The last part is not as critical for our game plan however it can help us in a pinch when needed.

How the Deck Wins

        This deck is designed to be one of, if not, the fastest farm deck variant in the current metagame. For those of you who are not familiar with farm decks, the idea is to quickly cast either Ad Nauseam or Peer into the Abyss to assemble our winning combo. Generally, farm decks use Tymna, the Weaver as the card draw element and partnered with either Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder or Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper to mitigate the life loss from Ad Nauseum or Peer into the Abyss.

 

        One thing we need to consider when building around Ad Nauseum is that, we lose life based on the converted mana cost of the cards we reveal from the top of the library. Since we want to draw as many cards as we can to get to our wincons, I've designed the deck so that the average converted mana cost is 1.84 without lands and as low as 1.32 with lands. This means that on average, you can draw as many as 25 cards once Ad Nauseam resolves. Now that you have all the cards you need, how do you actually win?

        This deck revolves around 3 specific combo win conditions. The first wincon is Thassa's Oracle and either Tainted Pact or Demonic Consultation.

   

        Since the banning of "Flash", not the mechanic but the card, more and more people are now leaning towards this combo as their primary win condition. We are no different. When Thassa's Oracle enters the battlefield, we can look at the top X cards of our library where X is our devotion to blue. If Thassa is our only blue permanent then X is 2. If the number of cards on the top of our library is equal to X or less, then we win the game. This combo is so strong that even if our opponents remove Thassa, we can still win because of Tainted Pact or Demonic Consultation.

        You might be wondering, when is the right time to cast Tainted Pact or Demonic Consultation? The perfect time is when Thassa's Oracle just entered the battlefield and his trigger is on the stack. This way we can exile your library and then win with Thassa.

        The second combo is with Underworld Breach, Lion's Eye Diamond and Brain Freeze

   

        When I design commander decks, things that I consider is that individually, the cards need to be strong on their own unless they have a specific purpose. If our first attempt at Ad Nauseam does not work, we can use Underworld Breach as a recursion effect and have another go at Ad Nauseam. Combine Underworld Breach with Lion's Eye Diamond and we can now add as many mana as we need whose only limitation is the number of cards in our graveyard. Since we are casting Lion's Eye Diamond multiple times in one turn, we can then cast brain freeze and either target ourselves or our opponents and mill their entire library. As long as our opponents does not have a way to shuffle their graveyards back into their library, when they draw a card during their turn, they will lose the game.

        The third combo is Doomsday.

        This combo is a bit trickier to pull off and requires a lot of commitment. That said, this is a very satisfying combo to play. When we cast Doomsday, we can then search for five cards from our library and graveyard then exile the rest. We can then arrange these cards in any order and will become our library for the entire game. This means, without our opponents doing anything, we can essentially lose within five turns. So why play the card? We'll, we won't need five turns because we will win in one. A pre-requisite for casting Doomsday is to be able to play one card draw effect. Once we can do that, our chances increase dramatically. But what five cards should we be looking for?

   
 

        This is our go to pile. Please note that the last two cards can be any counterspell we want. First we play a draw effect allowing us to get Gush into our hands. We then tap two islands and return them to our hand and to pay for Gush's alternate casting cost. We can then draw into Gitaxian Probe and Thassa's Oracle. If we do not have a counterspell available on hand, we can cast Gitaxian probe to draw the needed counterspell. Since we still have two blue mana we can now cast Thassa's Oracle and win the game.

Too Fast, Too Furious

        This deck is designed to be fast. It may even be faster than Sonic the Hedgehog. Since we can play Rograkh on turn one, this allows us to have our free spells ready to interact.

   

        We also want to make sure that we can cast our Ad Nauseum as soon as possible. We will be playing all of the zero and one cost mana rocks at our disposal. Aside form the mana rocks, we are also playing the following mana accelerators. With Rograkh on the battlefield, you can sacrifice him to get a ton of mana and you can even cast Peer into the Abyss as early as turn two.

   

Make it or Break it

        When playing this deck, it is important to have an explosive hand. What we are looking for are fast mana and at least one tutor effect to get Ad Nauseam out as soon as possible. We do not want to be playing the defensive role since the longer the game goes, the harder for us to catch up with the rest of the pod. While our opponents are still preparing their boards, we should be asking ourselves, can we combo off now?

Conclusion

        If YOLO (You Only Live Once) is your motto in life, this might be the deck for you. This deck can catch opponents off guard and can win very early. When you bring this deck out, your opponents will need to keep interaction up. If they do not, you can just win. This deck also plays with Opposition Agent and Hullbreacher which means, your opponents need to watch out or they might just get caught in your web.

The Decklist

 

Creatures (6)
1 Dockside Extortionist
1 Hullbreacher
1 Opposition Agent
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Thassa's Oracle

Sorceries (13)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Doomsday
1 Gamble
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Infernal Plunge
1 Jeska's Will
1 Peer into the Abyss
1 Rite of Flame
1 Unearth
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Wheel of Misfortune
1 Windfall

Instants (29)
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Brain Freeze
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Culling the Weak
1 Dark Ritual
1 Deadly Rollick
1 Deflecting Swat
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Dramatic Reversal
1 Fierce Guardianship
1 Flusterstorm
1 Force of Negation
1 Force of Will

1 Gush
1 Intuition
1 Mana Drain
1 Mental Misstep
1 Miscast
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Pact of Negation
1 Predict
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Snap
1 Swan Song
1 Tainted Pact
1 Unsubstantiate
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Winds of Rebuke

Artifacts (19)
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Arcane Signet
1 Chrome Mox
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Jeweled Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Amber
1 Mox Diamond
1 Mox Opal
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Springleaf Drum
1 Talisman of Creativity
1 Talisman of Dominance
1 Talisman of Indulgence
1 Wishclaw Talisman

Enchantments (3)
1 Mystic Remora
1 Rhystic Study
1 Underworld Breach

Lands (28)
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Badlands
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 City of Brass
1 City of Traitors
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Fiery Islet
1 Flooded Strand
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Glimmervoid
1 Island
1 Luxury Suite
1 Mana Confluence
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Morphic Pool
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Underground Sea
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volcanic Island
1 Watery Grave
1 Wooded Foothills