Jenny FlintJenny Flint | art by Syd Mills

Welcome back to Bottom of the Barrel! This is a series where we pick a theme from EDHREC and look at the “bottom of the barrel.” This means that we look at the least played color-combination and pick a commander in those colors to brew a spicy new deck around!

It’s likely that this commander has not been considered for this theme before, and that’s the point! This allows us to play around with themes that we enjoy while keeping our decks unique and interesting.

Our theme for today's edition is: lifegain. This theme is very common in Selesnya and Orzhov colors (green and white; black and white, respectively), but today we're going to try something new.

According to EDHREC, the least played color combination for the "lifegain" theme is Temur (Green, Red, and Blue), so that's where we'll start. Looking at our options, I ultimately settled on an underrated Doctor Who partner pair: Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra.

At first glance, this doesn't look like a "lifegain" commander, but Madame Vastra's ability to create Food tokens shouldn't be understated, and Jenny Flint's ability to pump up her partner is just a sweet bonus.

Madame Vastra's Food generation will be our primary source of lifegain from the command zone, but we have plenty of spicy includes for the 99 to ensure our life total remains high while crushing our opponents.

Category #1: Ways to Gain Life

Having access to green allows us to play well-known cards like Essence Warden, Courser of Kruphix, and Elder Gargaroth, but we also have the ability to include cards that are seldom seen in commander in 2024.

Cards like: Horizon ChimeraHorizon Chimera benefits us from drawing cards; Lifeblood HydraLifeblood Hydra gives us a huge beater that can turn into lifegain and card advantage later on; Candy TrailCandy Trail allows us to set up our draws in the early turns while providing a way to draw a card later; Scavenged BrawlerScavenged Brawler is a great attacking threat that can distribute its abilities from the graveyard; and Sproutback TrudgeSproutback Trudge is a huge threat that we can cast over and over again.

Category #2: Benefitting From Lifegain

The most obvious lifegain payoff comes in the form of Aetherflux ReservoirAetherflux Reservoir, and while that is included in this deck, there are a few other cards that are much more interesting. For example, Trudge GardenTrudge Garden can turn our lifegain into 4/4 trampling beasts; Assemble the EntmootAssemble the Entmoot can create 3 huge treefolk; Fortifying DraughtFortifying Draught could potentially knock out an opponent out of nowhere; Azor's GatewayAzor's Gateway can generate TONS of mana; and Marina Vendrell's GrimoireMarina Vendrell's Grimoire acts as a "We Have Lich's Mastery At Home", drawing us cards for the amount of life we gain.

Category #3: Finishers

While Aetherflux ReservoirAetherflux Reservoir is a great finisher in this deck, my personal favorite way to close out a game is with Blossoming Bogbeast.

This deck also includes a spicy lifegain-centric combo: Sporeweb WeaverSporeweb Weaver plus Blazing SunsteelBlazing Sunsteel.

Outside of being a combo piece, Sporeweb Weaver is an amazing blocker that creates a saproling when its dealt damage, but with Blazing Sunsteel you can choose to deal damage to any target.

This means we can target the Sporeweb Weaver, and if it's equipped with the Blazing Sunsteel, we rinse and repeat the process. Deal a damage to the Sporeweb Weaver, gain a life and create a saproling, deal another damage to the Sporeweb Weaver, etc.

The important thing to note with this combo: it is not infinite unless Sporeweb Weaver has indestructible! 

Category #4: Our First Secret Spice = A Secret Commander?

As always, we have some "secret spice" for this deck, but today's "secret spice" acts a "secret commander" of sorts. Allow me to introduce you to Soulgorger Orgg.

This card seems strange, right? Losing all but 1 life seems extremely risky, but that's what makes it fun! This card allows us to repeatedly gain a ridiculous amount of life, all while providing a sneaky way to win.

We can get the Orgg's "leave the battlefield "trigger in two ways:

1. Bouncing it to our hand with Temur Sabertooth.
2. Sacrificing it with cards like Greater Good or Momentous Fall, and then recurring it with cards like Resurrection Orb or Mimic Vat.

While this might sound cool, we aren't only looking at the Orgg's ability to gain us life. When we're at 1 life, we can pull off some really sneaky things. Things like: swapping life totals with Soul Conduit or doubling our card draw and lifegain with Phial of Galadriel.

Category #5: Our Second Secret Spice = Coin Flips?

Our second "secret spice" for this deck exists in the form of a game: a Game of Chaos. This card is a little ridiculous, especially considering that if you lose a flip your "game" is over, but if you can win a few flips in a row, this could be the most efficient lifegain spell in the entire deck.

Even though this is isn't super reliable, it will definitely create some memories at the table.

This brings us to the end of our second edition of Bottom of the Barrel! I hope you enjoyed exploring a lesser-played color-combination in the world of lifegain, and hope you’ll take my ideas to brew your own craziness in the world of Temur lifegain!

Check out my decklist below!

Nick Benstead

Nick is a full-time educator of America's youth, teaching them to love stories, and write for expression. Outside of teaching, his life is steeped in Magic the Gathering, whether it be through playing commander with his fiancee, or coming up with wacky brews to take to Friday Night Magic at his local game store.