(Sakura-Tribe Elder | Art by Carl Critchlow)

One With Nature

Hell0! Welcome back to Nearly Identical, a series where I look at two commanders with similar designs and archetypes, find out what separates them, and help you find your next commander! Today, we're looking at two mono-green Landfall commanders that turn our creatures into forests: Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and Yedora, Grave Gardener.

Green is the color known for ramping and getting a lot of lands into play. If we include cards with Landfall, then we can use our Rampant Growth to trigger effects like Rampaging Baloths. But what if our creatures were lands? Ashaya and Yedora have the unique ability to turn our creatures into forests. With Ashaya, creatures will become forests when they enter. And with Yedora, when a creature dies, it comes back faced down as a forest. Both are great at triggering Landfall abilities.

Today, I want to look at these two and find out how we can make them unique from one another. For Ashaya, I want to fill the board with token creatures we create through landfall triggers. And for Yedora, I'm leaning into the sacrifice theme and to potentially combo off with our commander. But first, what cards do we want in a landfall theme?

Rampaging Baloths is a great payoff for playing all our lands. As our creatures become forests, we'll fill the board with 4/4s and take over the game from there. Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar will be a massive threat with how many lands we'll have out on the board. Not only that, her last ability allows us to return creatures to our hand that we want to recast. This is especially useful in Yedora, as we can recur the creatures that have died and turned into forests.

Doubling our mana from Nissa, Who Shakes the World already sounds good, but when all our creatures are forests, she allows us to generate an absurd amount of mana. Now with that out of the way, what cards are we including in our Ashaya deck?

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Strength of the Wild

Avenger of Zendikar is a classic finisher in landfall decks, allowing us to go wide with several Plant Tokens equal to the number of lands we control. The more lands we play, the bigger our Plant army grows. Conversely, Oran-Rief Hydra goes tall with each land we play. Since our commander turns each creature we play into a forest, Oran-Rief Hydra will be a massive problem for our opponents.

Ancient Greenwarden doubles each of our landfall triggers while also allowing us to play lands from our graveyard. It's an excellent enhancer to our strategy while being a big blocker against annoying fliers. This deck seeks to take advantage of Ashaya's second ability, but what about that first ability?

Ashaya grows with each land we have in play, making cards like Traverse the Outlands a powerful spell in our deck. Being in mono-green, we can run as many basic forests as we want, so we shouldn't fail to find 10+ forests when Ashaya is large. On top of getting a lot of landfall triggers, the lands we get will feed more into Ashaya's power and toughness. Last March of the Ents, on the other hand, will draw us cards equal to Ashaya's power. Getting to put any number of creatures onto the battlefield sounds great already, but when each of them comes in as forests, it won't act too differently than Traverse the Outlands.

Now we get into our wincons: Overwhelming Stampede will see Ashaya's power and easily make our board of creatures a lethal threat. While combat is one way to win, we should also take advantage of how much mana we'll be able to produce. While difficult, it's always worth trying for a Helix Pinnacle win. This becomes feasible with how many lands we'll have in play, but also with mana doublers like Leyline of Abundance and even mana triplers like Virtue of Strength. Or, you can simply produce infinite mana with Ley Weaver, which can untap itself now that it's a land.

And here's the deck!

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Tending to the Dead

Now let's see how what creatures we want to sacrifice in Yedora.

It's poetic that Sakura-Tribe Elder not only leaves a forest where it dies but also becomes one. He's a great card to play early and gets better in the mid-to-late game when Yedora is out. A portion of this deck has creatures with abilities that sacrifice themselves, usually, these are utility effects like Haywire Mite or tutors like Magus of the Order. Each of them become forests, giving us more value than just the one-time effect. Others are capable of being reused over and over again.

Yedora synergizes perfectly with the Morph mechanic. Because the creature is face down, you can still pay its Morph cast to flip it face up and trigger the effect again. Nantuko Vigilante is one such example. All we need is a way to sacrifice it. For one green, we can sacrifice any creature to Evolutionary Leap. The creature we sac turns into a land, and we can dig through our deck for more threats. But what do we do once all our creatures have become forests?

Unlike Ashaya's ability, the face-down creatures are no longer creatures. It'll be hard to keep up blocks or attack when we keep sacrificing creatures, that's why we need effects like Jolrael, Empress of Beasts that'll turn all our lands into 3/3 creatures. We'll create an army at the press of a button and quickly overrun our opponents. Thelonite Druid has a similar effect while also being a sac outlet.

While we run the risk of our lands dying once we've animated them, we don't have that problem with Sylvan Awakening. Our lands will be indestructible and protect us from our opponents trying to swing in for lethal. Combats great and all, but Yedora has other, more effective ways to win.

Combo. I haven't played against a Yedora deck yet, but going through their EDHREC page, this is a combo commander. With Yedora out, Life and Limb and a sac outlet, we can infinitely sacrifice our creatures. All we'd need is a payoff. Blasting Station will shoot down the table for infinite damage. Or we can mill everyone out with Altar of Dementia. And this works with any permanent that turns our forests into creatures like Ambush Commander. There's not one specific combo we're going for, any combination of land animator (with static ability) + free sac outlet will get us there.

Now let's check out the deck!

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Friend to the Trees

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild has almost 2,000 decks on EDHREC. At the time of its release, Ashaya was a fairly unique take on the landfall strategy, turning each creature you play into lands. However, following the Zendikar Rising set, we got Yedora, Grave Gardener in the Commander 2021 release. On EDHREC, Yedora has 2,400 decks. While not wildly more popular than Ashaya, the fact that both came out relatively close to one another shows players have gravitated more toward Yedora.

Yedora is a potent commander with numerous ways to combo with them. They become an engine that goes infinite with any free sac outlet. Ashaya also has combo potential with creatures like Ley Weaver to make infinite mana. Both are powerful commanders and it just comes down to the ways you want to win.

Let me know which commander you prefer! Would you rather win with a large Elemental or win by turning all your lands into creatures? Let me know down below and I'll see you next time!

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