General TazriGeneral Tazri | Art by Chris Rahn

She’s the first to do it, folks. Let’s talk about the first ever mono-white legend with a five-color identity: General TazriGeneral Tazri.

She was created with Commander loosely in mind, as Allies had been a popular creature type in original Zendikar block. Unfortunately, Battle for Zendikar block didn’t provide the oomph the creature type needed for Tazri to establish a long-term spot. She did briefly enjoy her time as a cEDH-viable Food ChainFood Chain commander, but has been otherwise largely irrelevant for the last decade.

Thanks to a major infusion of Allies from the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender set, it’s worth looking back on Tazri and asking the question: Is she worth a rebuild?

What Does General TazriGeneral Tazri Do?

General TazriGeneral Tazri is a five-mana 3/4 who has an enters ability and an activated ability. Her enters ability tutors for an Ally, and her five-color activated ability pumps the team for +X/+X, where X is the number of colors among Ally creatures you control (so the maximum is +5/+5).

A tutor in the command zone is something that risks a deck becoming repetitive, but this is a build veering away from combos. The Avatar: The Last Airbender set has multiple new Ally commander options in it.

Any of these could justify a whole deck unto themselves. I particularly enjoy how Aang and KataraAang and Katara and Mai and ZukoMai and Zuko reward you for waterbending or firebending, respectively, a fun way to interweave the set mechanic into the Ally theme.

However, the Ally creature type is found across all five colors. No one could be blamed for wanting to just run one deck; that’s where Tazri comes in. Plus, she can search up any of these to let you play them out!

Now, let’s talk Tazri.

Key Cards for General TazriGeneral Tazri

There are three key features of this Tazri deck: great Allies, enters triggers matters, and a solid typal glue.

First: Allies. They’re the main theme here. With 82 Allies that care about Allies in some way, shape, or form (29 of which come from the world of Aang and friends), there’s plenty to choose from. You could make two whole decks with no overlap and still not use all of them!

We’re not interested in that exercise (in this article), so instead we’ll need to consider what the creatures need to be able to do most of all.

Item one: card advantage. Allies are light on this one, but there are some good picks.

Item two: board state. Tazri’s activated ability goes from good to great when there’s a wide swath of creatures on your side of the battlefield. The aforementioned Aang and KataraAang and Katara and Sokka, Tenacious TacticianSokka, Tenacious Tactician contribute massively to this effort, but there are still others that help go wide.

Item three: breaking through. Even now, most of the creatures in the type run pretty small. The pump effect can help, but redundancy is key.

So, the army is rallied. Let’s look at a really common feature ripe for abuse: enters abilities, made better with a blink package. A lot of Allies have an enters trigger that then triggers whenever another Ally enters. There are trigger doublers like the original PanharmoniconPanharmonicon and the brand new Katara, the FearlessKatara, the Fearless.

Mass blink effects like GhostwayGhostway can set off a huge chain reaction out of nowhere, and being instants means they can double as board wipe protection. Repeatable blink engines like Airbender AscensionAirbender Ascension or the explosive Nahiri's ResolveNahiri's Resolve will crank out turn after turn of value. Any of these are gravy, but get two of these going and the army is going over the top.

Now a little extra dose of creature type reward cards. Sure, every Ally is innately a typal reward, but the creature type as a whole is lacking in draw effects and ways to go off.

Kindred DiscoveryKindred Discovery, Distant MelodyDistant Melody, and RealmwalkerRealmwalker won’t totally fix it, but they’re a really good start. The newly-minted Invasion TacticsInvasion Tactics will also be important (and unique to this deck). Likewise, Herald's HornHerald's Horn and friends will still need a FarseekFarseek package, but it can put it work.

Finally, two more members of the Commander 2017 cycle of spells: Kindred ChargeKindred Charge and Kindred SummonsKindred Summons both achieve similar aims as the blink spells in firing off a ton of enters triggers while also doubling our board presence. You might note that Kindred Charge has some difficulty with this iteration of the list: a high number of legendary creatures that will immediately die to the legend rule. However, they still hit the field and set off all the various “whenever an Ally enters” triggers.

How Does General TazriGeneral Tazri Win?

This is very much a go-wide aggro deck, supported by a unique version of card advantage with the various, repeatable enters abilities. Let’s break it down into rough game phases.

In the first phase, the deck is trying to develop. Play out at least one ramp spell and a couple of creatures. Ideally drop the commander on turn four and go tutoring. It’ll be important to consider board state and what’s in hand for this first run.

With a lot of noncreature spells in hand, Sokka, Tenacious TacticianSokka, Tenacious Tactician is a good run. Great Divide GuideGreat Divide Guide can provide a huge mana boost if the hand is ramp-light, whereas Murasa PyromancerMurasa Pyromancer is a good solution for troublesome creatures.

From there, it’ll be about developing the board state. The deck should have drawn into one of the enters matters cards by then, even just a mass flicker spell, to hopefully drum up some serious value and start putting pressure on opponents’ life totals. Those mass flicker spells are pulling double duty as board wipe protection, so don’t deploy them willy-nilly.

In this phase of the game, the Tazri targets can be more specific. If you’ve gotten Black Market ConnectionsBlack Market Connections down, Ondu ClericOndu Cleric will be massively useful for offsetting the life loss. If Airbender AscensionAirbender Ascension or Nahiri's ResolveNahiri's Resolve are going strong, then Aang, Airbending MasterAang, Airbending Master will be able to get up and running quickly.

With a solid board state, enter the endgame. One of the Kindred spells can usually put the deck in a winning position. It not, flicker General TazriGeneral Tazri or re-cast her to go find Tajuru WarcallerTajuru Warcaller and/or Aang and KataraAang and Katara. The latter is an army in a can and the former is a Craterhoof BehemothCraterhoof Behemoth with extra steps. If one of those has been used and board wiped, pick up an Ally that will get a missing color to maximize Tazri’s pump effect and start crashing in.

General Tazri Commander Deck List

And here’s our rebuild!

Conclusion

Once again, shout out to the average deck feature on EDHREC. It’s incredibly helpful as a tool in finding starting points or general trends. One analytical usage is to compare one specific version of the deck against the average. I generated this average decklist early on in spoiler season and used it to find out how much the new set may potentially influence upcoming Tazri decks and the like. With a quick use of the compare feature, I found that there was a 47% match between the decks, but I like digging into specific facets of the data to get the whole story. Lands take up a lot of space and averages can get weird.

The real “meat” of this deck is in its creature-base, and there’s a pretty big divide. I chose 20 creatures not featured in the average, 18 of which came from this set. Time will tell how many of those picks will end up becoming mainstays of a Tazri list!

Let me know in the comments how many of you are dusting off a Tazri deck, and how many of you only found out about her recently.