Theros: Beyond Death was released a couple of weeks ago, and I was finally able to get my hands on some of the new cards. My best pull was probably the Nyxbloom Ancient, which I already knew I wanted in a new deck. There are still other cards from the set I would like, but I managed to snag some cool cards. Each time a new set comes out I tend to look at the new legendary creatures for potential brews. This time around there weren’t too many creatures I saw being good commanders, rather better in the 99 of other decks. However, one of the new Gods from the set caught my attention, and being in colors I haven’t brewed around much, I decided it would be my first project. Behold, Klothys, God of Destiny:

Klothys is a God, so it already comes pre-equipped with two lines of text that apply to all other Gods as well. Each of the Gods are Legendary Enchantment Creatures along with being Indestructible and requiring a devotion threshold before becoming a creature. What makes Klothys unique is the fact that she does some nice things whether or not you can actually attack with her. Each precombat main phase we get to exile a card from a graveyard. This is great for multiple reasons, but having built in graveyard hate is amazing to break up many of the meta’s shenanigans. You can target your own graveyard if necessary, but we’ll typically be using this ability against opponents. When we exile land cards, we get either a red or green mana. Any other card type gains us two life along with dealing each opponent 2 damage. It’s great value for only three mana. Over the course of the years I have notice a bunch of cards in the Gruul colors that I just haven’t found a place for, and Klothys inspired me to fit most of them in. Green wants to ramp and draw us cards, while red wants to burn our opponents out. So my brain immediately goes towards lots of ramp to feed X spells. While the green X spells are mostly creature based, the red X spells can be potential game finishers, especially when we have a ton of mana to dump into them. First let’s take a look at our ramp packages.

BIG Mana:

These are the general ramp spells and creatures that will help us to produce big amounts of mana. Though there are many other options aside from Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach and Rampant Growth, I chose these because they are lowest curve and most reliable. Farseek is another I typically run but because we are only playing two colors and you can’t tutor for green it amounts to a mountain tutor and I’m okay without it. We also like that Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach both put a land card in our hands, mainly because we are including multiple cards that allow us to drop extra lands per turn. Burgeoning will allow us to play lands on opponents turns as well, and the Great Henge is a busted artifact when you are playing big creatures. Playing it for only GG will allow you to tap it for two immediately, and any creatures you cast come in with a +1/+1 counter and draw you a card. Nyxbloom Ancient is a new card from Theros that won’t instantly give you infinite mana, but you can definitely make a ton of it more quickly with him on the field. There are some typical mana dorks that tap for mana, and then there’s both of the Radhas that can produce extra mana when attacking. Mina and Denn along with the Dryad of the Ilysian Grove will allow us to play extra lands and of course the Sakura Tribe Elder can be sacced to grab a basic. Next let’s take a look at our big mana spells/creatures and support for that theme.

X Marks the Spot:

Here we have a selection of Hydras with X in their casting cost. When we have the ability to pump out a bunch of mana, these can hit the battlefield with rather large power and toughness. For the most part they enter with X counters on them but then some will do some extra things, but I’ll leave it to you to read the cards. When it comes to X cost spells, we’re running a selection of deal X damage to multiple or singular targets. I’ve tried to include only those that have the ability to hit our opponents directly, though some can also target their creatures or in the case of Earthquake, all non-fliers and all players, which we’ll have to be careful with. For additional support for this theme, I’ve also included Rosheen Meanderer who taps for four colorless to use towards X spells, and Gargos, Vicious Watcher who reduces our costs for Hydra Spells by four as well. Lastly, Unbound Flourishing is an enchantment that doubles the amount of X when casting creature spells (so our Hydras are doubly huge) and also when we cast big X damage spells, we’ll get to copy that card, so sometimes this could be a two for one finisher! Here are some supporting cards and my reasoning for their inclusion:

Supporting Cast:

Courser of Kruphix doesn’t let us play additional lands, but other creatures we have in the deck do. Still, if you have the ability to play lands off the top of your library, you can then keep some in your hand for Burgeoning or other triggers. Arasta is a nice creature that gives you free blockers with reach (and we don’t have other flying creatures for those blocks either) when opponents cast spells. The new Nylea reduces creature costs along with some situational card draw. Questing Beast is just good value but it’s honestly only here because I pulled one from a pack and wanted to put it somewhere. Torbran allows all of our red sources to do extra damage, and though that’s mostly with spells, it still can help with the hurt. Xenagos the God can make one of our huge creatures even bigger each combat. He’s a big beater himself when he comes online. Rampaging Baloths have one of the best landfall triggers in the game and with our gameplan we should be able to make quite a few 4/4 beast tokens pretty quickly. I inlcuded Ruric Thar for the same reason as Questing Beast, but he’s also a big beater that punishes noncreature spells. And of course, no big beater green deck goes without a copy of Avenger of Zendikar. For enchantments, we have Cindervines, which also punishes the casting of noncreature spells, but also can be sacrificed to destroy an artifact or enchantment. Elemental Bond and Guardian Project help us draw cards each time we cast a creature, while Rhythm of the Wild gives our creatures either haste or more counters. Greater Good can help us to draw a ton of cards by sacrificing a creature with a bunch of +1/+1 counters on it. Overall I think the deck list is pretty solid, but I won’t know for sure until I test it out. Your mileage may vary. You can see the full decklist here.