Seton, Krosan Protector
The mystery of the druids
Here's another EDH list from when that was pretty much all the Magic I got to play. I don't remember any particular impetus for this list beyond wanting to build a mono green list. The first thing I built was Lady Zhurong stax, which I only played for one game. I actually won, but I still felt the idea just didn't come together all that well, so I went back to the drawing board. I've always thought Seton was cool, and I always enjoyed the elfball gameplan ever since my friend built a (semi-bad) version of Legacy Elves when we were in high school. So, I put this together over a couple weeks.
There's nothing really that special about this list. It's just, I think, a very well-optimized Seton deck. When I was playing this in paper, I didn't have Gaea's Cradle (as mentioned elsewhere, the people I played with were anti-proxy), but it was still pretty good. As it turned out, the deck was actually way too fast for that meta, and I easily won every single game I played with it. While I had a lot of fun doing 10-minute turn 4 solitaires, the rest of the group did not. So, I retired the list and eventually sold it, which I slightly regret (but only slightly). Maybe I'll build it in paper again some day. In the meantime, here's the list.
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Creatures (40)
1 Arbor Elf
1 Augur of Autumn
1 Beast Whisperer
1 Birchlore Rangers
1 Boreal Druid
1 Circle of Dreams Druid
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Devoted Druid
1 Druid Lyrist
1 Druid of Purification
1 Elvish Archdruid
1 Elvish Harbinger
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Elvish Pioneer
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Gala Greeters
1 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid
1 Heart Warden
1 Heritage Druid
1 Hope Tender
1 Ichneumon Druid
1 Incubation Druid
1 Joraga Treespeaker
1 Krosan Restorer
1 Krosan Wayfarer
1 Leaf Gilder
1 Leaf-Crowned Visionary
1 Llanowar Druid
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Llanowar Loamspeaker
1 Norwood Priestess
1 Priest of Titania
1 Realmwalker
1 Regal Force
1 Somerwald Sage
1 Treefolk Harbinger
1 Village Elder
1 Voyaging Satyr
1 Wirewood Elf
1 Wirewood Symbiote
Planeswalkers (1)
1 Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury
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Artifacts (6)
1 Endless Atlas
1 Jeweled Amulet
1 Skullclamp
1 Staff of Domination
1 Umbral Mantle
1 Vanquisher's Banner
Enchantments (6)
1 Aluren
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Holistic Wisdom
1 Kenrith's Transformation
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
Instants (5)
1 Beast Within
1 Crop Rotation
1 Nature's Claim
1 Vitalize
1 Worldly Tutor
Lands (31)
26 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 War Room
Sorcery (10)
1 Collective Unconscious
1 Genesis Wave
1 Glimpse of Nature
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Harmonize
1 Lead the Stampede
1 Mobilize
1 Natural Order
1 Shamanic Revelation
1 Sylvan Scrying
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Strategy
This is not an altogether complicated deck. You play your little dudes, who make mana so you can play bigger dudes, until you reach the crucial point of "shit dude, just swing." Ideally, turn 1 you play Forest and Llanowar Elves (or any of the other dudes that do the same thing), turn 2 you play another Forest and then Seton, and then turn 3 (or 4 or whatever) you go crazy. At some point not long thereafter you probably play Craterhoof Behemoth and win. Or, you make infinite mana, play Staff of Domination, and also win. There's also just Genesis Wave for your whole deck, which would presumably enable the prior two wincons. So, you know, aim for one of those. Hoof is the easiest.
Green isn't the very best color for card draw, but here it's pretty essentially for our "go crazy" turns so we're running everything we reasonably can, basically. The best is probably Glimpse of Nature. Since so many of our creatures are CMC 1, with Seton out they're basically mana- and card-neutral. If you can get another Glimpse effect (Beast Whisperer is primo), you're basically in fat city. You cycle through your deck, build up a board, and try to find your wincons. Vitalize and Mobilize are awesome reset buttons for your mana dorks, Regal Force and Collective Unconscious can easily draw you like 20 cards, and Natural Order is your get-out-of-jail-free (or end-the-game-now-please) card. Smaller card draws, like War Room, Sylvan Library, or Skullclamp can inch you forward to that explosive turn. But, really, this is not a deck that wins on inches by grinding out a victory. It's a combo deck that waits for its go-off turn.
Seton lets you get around summoning sickness and turns even non-dork druids into dorks. It's not impossible to win without him, but it's certainly much easier if you do have him. Thankfully, you make a lot of mana, so even if he gets removed you can usually get him back pretty easily. And, fortunately, while you're waiting for your combo turn, you do just have creatures to chump with if need be.
The most fun cards in the deck, in my opinion, are Aluren and Norwood Priestess. Aluren makes your combo turns the most insane shit you've ever seen - you'll be cycling through creatures at rates that shouldn't be possible. It is kind of a "win more" at times, but at least it's still a win. Norwood Priestess, rather than telling you how bald you are, lets you cheat out a fat boy. With Concordant Crossroads, it's especially good. With Vitalize or Wirewood Symbiote, it's even better! When I was building this deck, Priestess was like $70 in English, but I found a Japanese copy for about $8. I really only regret selling the deck because it meant I could no longer bask in my sick deal. On the other hand, selling it did help alleviate the embarrassment of spending any money at all on card games. So maybe things aren't so bad.
The one real strategy thing I can think to share is that, when you're doing your combo turn, you should wait as long as you can to play your land, in case you hit Gaea's Cradle or Nykthos as you're cycling. Obviously, having a land that taps for 25 is better than one that taps for 1. Of course, you can always grab it with Crop Rotation or tutor it with Sylvan Scrying. Just keep it in mind. I suppose I should say that you should also be careful to avoid getting into a situation where your Glimpse effects will make you deck yourself (the classic Cheerios problem). So, make sure before you try to cast Craterhoof that doing so won't make you lose.
Should I mention how the Umbral Mantle combo works? Is it possible that anyone reading this has no other means of figuring it out? Is it even possible that anyone will read this? Anyway, you put Umbral Mantle on a creature that taps for more than 3 mana, for instance Priest of Titania. Then, you can untap it with the mantle and tap it again, producing more mana than it costs to repeatedly untap it. Pretty crazy, right? Then you can dump all that mana into casting more creatures or, better yet, into Staff of Domination, draw your whole deck, gain infinite life, untap your entire board, tap everyone else's board, fuck bitches get money, etc. It's all very exciting.
I don't know what else to tell you. It's a green deck that wins with Craterhoof. I sincerely hope you can figure it out. Anyway, give it a shot and let me know how it goes.
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