Ninety-Four Percent Lands [EDH]

[Oversoul]

I don't do gimmick decks often enough anymore. So here's one! The whole gameplan here is to use some sort of fetchland to trigger landfall twice in the same turn, which should guarantee that my commander can find Thicket Elemental, which gets kicked and finds Cultivator Colossus. From there, I just flood the battlefield with my copious lands and attempt to use Field of the Dead to overwhelm my opponents. This may or may not work. Either way, 85 90 94 out of 100 cards here are lands.

Commander:
1 Nissa, Resurgent Animist

1 Ancient Tomb
1 Bant Panorama
1 Blasted Landscape
1 Blighted Woodland
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
1 Castle Garenbrig
1 Cavern of Souls
1 City of Traitors
1 Crawling Barrens
1 Crystal Vein
1 Cultivator Colossus
1 Demolition Field
1 Desert of the Indomitable
1 Dread Statuary
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Fabled Passage
1 Field of Ruin
1 Finale of Devastation
1 Flood Plain
16 Forest
1 Gaea's Touch
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Ghost Town
1 Grasslands
1 Havenwood Battleground
1 Hickory Woodlot
1 Hollow Trees
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Jund Panorama
1 Jungle Basin
1 Lotus Field
1 Lotus Vale
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain Valley
1 Mutavault
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Naya Panorama
1 Petrified Field
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Rude Awakening
1 Rushwood Grove
1 Scorched Ruins
1 Slippery Karst
15 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Stalking Stones
1 Strip Mine
1 Terminal Moraine
1 Terrain Generator
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Thicket Elemental
1 Throne of Makindi
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Treetop Village
1 Underdark Rift
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Vesuva
1 War Room
1 Warped Landscape
1 Wasteland
1 Wastes
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

1 Timeless Witness
1 Abundance
1 Manabond
1 Sylvan Library
1 Conduit of Worlds
1 Beast Within
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Life from the Loam
1 Regrowth
1 Zuran Orb
1 Desert Twister
1 Seasons Past
1 Splendid Reclamation
1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
1 Bonder's Enclave
1 Buried Ruin
1 Cradle of the Accursed
1 Dark Depths
1 Desert
1 Drownyard Temple
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Emergence Zone
1 Field of the Dead
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Homeward Path
1 Maze of Ith
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Sunscorched Desert
1 Treasure Vault
1 Urza's Saga
1 Dunes of the Dead
1 Island of Wak-Wak
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Pendelhaven
1 Yavimaya Hollow

 

[Oversoul]

I tried this deck out and pretty quickly realized two things.

1. Cultivator Colossus is not an elemental. I'd gotten it mixed up with Endurance in my head at some point and didn't think to check the card's subtypes until I was in an actual game. Oops. This makes me look pretty foolish, but is actually of almost no consequence in the long run. More on that in a moment.
2. I could and should run more lands here. 85% seemed too ambitious at first, but this actually plays a lot like my old Fluctuator deck. Each land in my hand can keep the chain going with Cultivator Colossus even if I topdeck a non-land. So really I should make the non-land parts of the engine as compact as possible, because this deck has the potential to be way more consistent than I initially assumed.

As for my blunder with the subtypes on Cultivator Colossus, Thicket Elemental exists and lets the combo work for the same amount of mana. Problem solved.

 

[Oversoul]

-1 Timeless Witness
-1 Abundance
-1 Manabond
-1 Sylvan Library
-1 Conduit of Worlds
-1 Beast Within
-1 Gaea's Blessing
-1 Life from the Loam
-1 Regrowth
+1 Blinkmoth Nexus
+2 Forest
+2 Snow-Covered Forest
+1 Thicket Elemental
+1 Gaea's Touch
+1 Desert Twister
+1 Rude Awakening

 

[Oversoul]

Fourth turn kill.

I went first turn Tranquil Thicket, then second turn Gaea's Touch. Third turn I cast my commander, but no one killed it or put any other obstacles in my way. They were still focused on building their own board states, laboring under the delusion that they'd have time. Fourth turn I used fetchlands to trigger Nissa and find Thicket Elemental, then kicked Thicket Elemental to dig up Cultivator Colossus. I hit 52 lands before eventually arriving at a hand with Seasons Past, Desert Twister, Zuran Orb, Splendid Reclamation, and Rude Awakening. That gave me enough to kill and recast the Cultivator Colossus and find Finale of Devastation, which I could easily cast for enough to kill my opponents with combat damage.

 

[Oversoul]

The scope of this deck has changed somewhat. My original idea was to use Cultivator Colossus to dump enough lands onto the battlefield that Field of the Dead could generate a deadly army. With 85 lands, there was some chance that this interaction would whiff, and I had some backups built in. I also had some backups in the event that someone managed to stop me. The idea was that I could churn through enough of my deck with Cultivator Colossus that I could then create a loop with Seasons Past, Zuran Orb, Splendid Reclamation, and Rude Awakening, reusing Desert Twister to blow up all opposing permanents while also gaining unbounded life and making an unbounded number of zombies. I think that sort of thing is cool. However, I don't think that this gimmicky deck is the home for such a combo. The odds are that if any opponent can stop me, then an opponent will stop me, and then I'll be stopped. It's too much of a corner case to build the deck with the plan in mind to fall back on something that I'd likely never draw.

What I can do with this deck is make it more consistent. Using Nissa to make mana and a fetchland to trigger Nissa's other ability, fetching Thicket Elemental, I can fetch Cultivator Colossus with 100% reliability. I can then draw Rude Awakening and Finale of Devastation. From there, I simply entwine Rude Awakening and follow it up with a big Finale of Devastation, swinging for lethal damage on all opponents. Nevermind infinite loops. This deck has been reworked to reliably hit a finite engine that can present lethal damage. It's a glass cannon, but that was always going to be the case. Essentially, this is the EDH version of my old Fluctuator deck with Haunting Misery. It's built to do one thing, and it does that one thing well. Opponents disrupt me? Then I probably just die. And since I think I've finally squeezed the count of non-land cards as low as I can (Gaea's Touch is awesome enough to keep in the deck), I'll update the deck's name to reflect that. We're now Ninety-Four Percent Lands.

-1 Zuran Orb
-1 Desert Twister
-1 Seasons Past
-1 Splendid Reclamation
-1 Arcane Lighthouse
-1 Argoth, Sanctum of Nature
-1 Bonder's Enclave
-1 Buried Ruin
-1 Cradle of the Accursed
-1 Dark Depths
-1 Desert
-1 Drownyard Temple
-1 Dryad Arbor
-1 Emergence Zone
-1 Field of the Dead
-1 Gaea's Cradle
-1 Glacial Chasm
-1 Homeward Path
-1 Maze of Ith
-1 Rogue's Passage
-1 Sunscorched Desert
-1 Treasure Vault
-1 Urza's Saga
+1 Castle Garenbrig
+1 Cavern of Souls
+1 Dread Statuary
+5 Forest
+1 Gemstone Caverns
+1 Havenwood Battleground
+1 Hickory Woodlot
+1 Hollow Trees
+1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
+1 Pendelhaven
+1 Scorched Ruins
+5 Snow-Covered Forest
+1 Throne of Makindi
+1 Underdark Rift
+1 Warped Landscape

 

[Oversoul]

After getting trampled to death, I switched in this deck so that I could return the favor. The same opponent whose creatures stomped me in my previous game was able to slow me down by a turn with Fire Prophecy on Nissa. But then he went shields down and my lands attacked for the win.

Going to keep tuning the lands for this silly deck.

 

[Oversoul]

Heh. The store was about to close, so I tried to bring this one to a quick game. One of my opponent had a pretty obnoxious Chulane deck, and he happened to have Force of Will for my Thicket Elemental. Then he looped Shrieking Drake and won with Thassa's Oracle. Boring.

 

[Oversoul]

Scored my first fourth-turn victory with this deck. The other players at the table figured we might not have time to finish a game before the store closed, so I brought this deck out, then immediately got Gemstone Caverns in my opening hand. Everyone laughed when the realized what my deck was built to do. Good times.

 

[Oversoul]

I got the weirdest hand I've seen this deck ever get. Opening hand had City of Traitors and Thicket Elemental, so it seemed keepable. Then I topdecked Cultivator Colossus. It was literally turn three Nissa, turn four unkicked Thicket Elemental, turn five Cultivator Colossus. So this created the illusion that I was playing a normal deck. And then Nissa's ability triggered and gave me away right before I executed the combo. My opponents, who hadn't seen the deck before, were confused, and then started cracking up. Pretty tough for a 94-land deck to convey the illusion that it's a normal monogreen creature deck, but my bizarre opening hand pulled it off.

 

[Oversoul]

Another stupid win for 94% Lands. Kept an opening hand that was just Fabled Passage, Petrified Field, and five forests. The fetchland made the hand keepable. Barely. My first topdeck was Castle Garenbrig, so my kill just sped up by one turn. This went off without a hitch (on my fourth turn), and my hapless opponents got to bear witness to this ridiculous gimmick of a deck.

 

[Oversoul]

Annoyingly, I didn't have a copy of Rushwood Grove. I have finally corrected this deficiency...

-1 Dunes of the Dead
-1 Island of Wak-Wak
-1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
-1 Pendelhaven
-1 Yavimaya Hollow
+1 Forest
+1 Jund Panorama
+1 Naya Panorama
+1 Rushwood Grove
+1 Terrain Generator

 

[Oversoul]

Made the mistake of playing this one in a "Kingdom" variant when I was the king. I was introduced to this as a way to make larger pods more dynamic. We had five players, and each one would take a random card. One player would be the king, revealing this at the beginning. That player would start with 50 life and would always go first. Two players would be bandits, and they'd win if the king was eliminated while either of them was still alive. Two players would be knights, and they'd win if the king won. One player would be the assassin, who would win in the old-fashioned way.

Didn't get off to an especially fast start, and it turned out that both blue decks were the bandits. Oh well.

 

[Oversoul]

-1 Forest
+1 Shire Terrace

This change is unlikely to ever matter, but I do want as many fetchlands as I can reasonably cram in here, just in case I don't get one of the good ones in my hand.

 

[Oversoul]

Hahaha. Second turn kill. I had Gemstone Caverns in my opening hand, so I was able to drop Ancient Tomb into Nissa right away. Opponent cast Eladamri's Vineyard, let me hardcast Cultivator Colossus. Hilarious.

 

[Oversoul]

Nissa strikes again! Gemstone Caverns, zoom. Gotta go fast.