Tatyova Elemental Tribal Commander Deck Guide

Tatyova, Steward of Tides | Illustration by Lisa Heidhoff

One of the beautiful things about modern Magic is that the sheer volume of cards means you can build a deck that does just about whatever you want. To that point, many of the most common archetypes are “solved,” in that the most optimal choices have been made apparent by the community. Obviously, the more colors and spells you have access to, the easier it is to build , say, an elemental deck. Any of the legendary Omnaths are great commanders for these decks, and the 5-color Horde of Notions is the most popular on EDHREC by far.

They say restriction breeds creativity, though, so what better way to silo ourselves into an interesting challenge than by playing only Simic for our elementals deck? In fact, let’s take it a step further and slam a lands subtheme in there while we’re at it.

Searching for an elemental deck without an Omnath? Are you dying to try to force a creature type onto a commander? Do you just like some old-fashioned Simic nonsense? Then let me introduce you to this Tatyova, Steward of Tides elemental deck!

The Deck

Blossoming Tortoise | Illustration by Simon Dominic

This Tatyova, Steward of Tides deck works as a mix between a landfall deck and an elemental-land-creatures deck. I know, it’s a mouthful. It might sound like we’ve spread our strategy too thin, but the Venn diagram showing the cards these archetypes share in blue-green decks is basically a circle.

Like many Simic decks, we’ll capitalize on playing the two best colors by tutoring a ton of lands to the field and drawing a ton of cards; a sure-fire way to put us in a winning position. Once we hit seven lands, Tatyova, Steward of Tides comes alive and starts animating those lands into an army of creatures. Alongside a few standards for typal decks (Coat of Arms and the like), we’re running a smorgasbord of lord effects for both elemental and land creatures, plus some extra land-animation sources.

The Commander

Dominaria United’s Tatyova, Steward of Tides lives in the shadow of their former self. Original Dominaria’s Tatyova, Benthic Druid is a powerhouse of value stapled onto a 3/3 uncommon body. Our Tatyova is cheaper than the old version, but it wasn’t like 5 mana was that hard to hit in a green deck anyway.

Both Tatyovas’ landfall effects (unkeyworded on ours because of the seven lands restriction) are great value – where they really compare lies in their actual outcome. Dominaria Tatyova does one of the best things in the game – drawing you cards to keep you in the game. While powerful, old Tatyova doesn’t necessarily win you the game immediately. New Tatyova, however, generates flying 3/3 land creatures with haste; enough of these hit the field and you’ve suddenly got lethal on the board, with the evasion you need to connect.

Landing Lands

The first thing we need to get Tatyova, Steward of Tides online is seven or more lands on the field. Luckily, we’re playing green! The best color for tutoring up lands! Let’s take a look at some key ramp spells.

The absolute best turn-1 play for our deck is Burgeoning. This 1-mana enchantment guarantees we drop basically every land in our hand immediately. In a 3-player pod, dropping this on turn one means you’ll (most likely) have the opportunity to play three more lands before your second turn, and you’ll drop the rest basically upon drawing them.

Next are a handful of elementals that fetch or draw us into more lands. Risen Reef is our number one lands creature. Anyone who played Standard during 2019 remembers the absolute scourge of Risen Reef decks in that format. Whenever another elemental enters the battlefield, Risen Reef nets you a card on the field or to your hand. Suffice to say we’ll be casting quite a few elementals, and we can repeat this process over and over with Zendikar's Roil as long as we hit lands off the top of our library. Parcelbeast works similarly, albeit costing a mana and a tap.

We have two options for hitting a lot of lands all at once, and those are Scapeshift and Awaken the Woods. Note that if we have seven lands already, Tatyova can make each of those dryads into 3/3 elementals as they hit the field. In addition, if we tutor up seven lands with Scapeshift, Tatyova’ll change all seven-plus of those new lands into 3/3s with flying and haste, ready to dump 21 damage right into someone’s face.

Finally, there’s the typical package of ramp and land tutors you’d expect from any self-respecting green deck. We’ve no less than 10 instants and sorceries that fetch lands in one way or another, the most important of which are Sylvan Scrying and Expedition Map. Both of these tutor up any land from our library, letting us grab Arcane Lighthouse, Inkmoth Nexus or Field of the Dead when we need them, some of our best utility lands.

Awakening Lands

Tatyova, Steward of Tides will produce quite a few elemental land creatures on its own, but there’s no reason we can’t help it along with a few more sources.

Three of our four planeswalkers animate a land in one way or another, with Nissa, Worldwaker’s ultimate ability working as another Scapeshift all while ticking up and making 4/4 land creatures. Kamahl's Will works in a cinch, but we’ll mostly be looking to use it as creature removal, since our lands are typically stronger with Tatyova.

Embodiment of Insight is a little expensive at 5 mana for what basically amounts to another Tatyova, Steward of Tides effect, but the vigilance anthem really fixes the problem of using your mana sources for combat. Flipping Titania, Voice of Gaea into Titania, Gaea Incarnate gives us access to a 4-mana 4/4 elemental land creature, though it’s a heavy investment and most of its value lies in being a huge vigilance/trample/reach/haste creature.

The top-end for our land reanimators is Kamahl, Heart of Krosa. Kamahl’s activated ability is great; it’s cheap and grants that land creature indestructible. But its triggered ability is what really goes off: A free Overrun every turn transforms us from a threat to a victor.

On top of that, Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi targeting an Inkmoth Nexus is one of the funniest ways to win the game. Finally, situations where Liege of the Tangle doesn’t win you the game are few and far between.

Terra Firma

Creature-fying our lands is risky business. Suddenly, we’re at risk for losing our mana base in combat or worse, to a board wipe. We’ll need to protect and buff our land creatures before they can be removed.

Sylvan Advocate and Earth Surge are two strong anthem effects that’ll take our 3/3 fliers up to 5/5, more than enough to start swinging with wild abandon.

Coat of Arms and Heirloom Blade are both great typal staples, as their effects are generic enough to slot into any creature archetype.

Ultimately, we should expect to lose some lands to combat or creature removal. Luckily, green has easy access to effects that let us replay lands from our graveyard. Two of our Titanias, Titania, Protector of Argoth and Titania, Nature's Force, can return lands from the graveyard, with a little bonus as well.

Ancient Greenwarden is both a top-end beater elemental, a source for land recursion, and doubles our landfall triggers. That’s not just Tatyova, either! Double triggers from Roil Elemental, Avenger of Zendikar and Zendikar's Roil really accelerate this deck.

Assistant Sediment

Not every card in this deck is an elemental. I know, I’m sorry, too. Some of these non-elementals were just too good to give up, and synergize so well with our land creatures we’d be fools not to include them.

Tireless Provisioner is just plain good in this deck. Playing multiple lands per turn makes this elf a Lotus Cobra, but better because we can hang onto the Treasure tokens.

Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir doesn’t make a land into an elemental, but it does the important job of turning our land creatures into saboteurs that draw us cards whenever they connect with an opponent, something that’ll be very easy considering the evasion granted to our creatures by Tatyova’s flying anthem.

Blossoming Tortoise isn’t an elemental, but it does have a land creature anthem and reduces the activation cost for Inkmoth Nexus, Castle Garenbrig, and the like.

Finally, we’re of course running the other Tatyova, Tatyova, Benthic Druid. Replacing a land in your hand and gaining 1 life for every land drop is a huge boon, and quickly gets out of control with any of our ramp spells. Besides our commander’s twin, Distant Melody is the best way to refuel our hand.

The Mana Base

The most important part of our elemental-lands deck is the lands, of course. We’re running a massive 40 lands in this deck to compensate for the high number of tutors, ramp, and additional land plays present.

Our ramp package includes a lot of familiar faces: Rampant Growth, Farseek, Three Visits, Nature's Lore, Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Harrow and Roiling Regrowth, while Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are our only mana rocks. We’re not running any mana dorks, since we want to focus entirely on getting as many lands on the field as we can.

The Strategy

Like many a-Simic deck before it, this Tatyova, Steward of Tides wants to rush to seven lands as quickly as it can, then drop its commander and, you guessed it, continue to play lands. If we could get every single one of our 40 lands on the field, we still won’t be happy.

With so many lands, getting an opening handful of them is very probable. The key will be keeping a hand with a lot of lands, but some way to drop them immediately. It’s hard to turn down a turn-1 Burgeoning, or a Growth Spiral and Explore at the same time. Do some quick math with each hand to discern just how soon you can hit seven lands, and mulligan accordingly.

That said, the first few turns for this deck should look remarkably similar. Drop a land, pass. Drop a land, cast Explore, draw a card and drop a land, pass. Cultivate, drop the land it fetched you, pass. Bam! Turn 4 and we’re already at 5 mana before our land drop!

Six lands is usually the best time to play Tatyova, Steward of Tides. That leaves you with enough open mana to Arcane Denial or Negate any immediate removal it draws, and guarantees the next land you play will trigger and create an elemental.

Once Tatyova’s on the field, your focus switches to digging for a Field of the Dead and a Scapeshift effect or Inkmoth Nexus and some way to buff it up. Either of these, combined with the sheer volume of lands you’ll have in play, should be enough to finish out any game.

Don’t be afraid to use your lands to chump block opponents along the way. Ancient Greenwarden and others can help you recur them, and those lands don’t cost you any mana to play!

Combos and Interactions

This Tatyova, Steward of Tides deck has one interesting combo and one confusing interaction I’d like to highlight.

The first is Tatyova and Risen Reef. While Tatyova, Steward of Tides can really go off with Risen Reef, the combo isn’t infinite without some way to filter the top of your library. Combined with a Field of the Dead or other landfall effect, it can generate so much advantage that you’ll basically have won, though.

Secondly, I want to call attention to how multiple base-power-and-toughness modifying effects are resolved. Things that modify the base power and toughness of a creature are applied in timestamp order, meaning the most recent to resolve takes precedence. If you have Nature's Revolt on the field, and then play a land and trigger Tatyova, Steward of Tides, the static effect of Revolt makes the land a 2/2 when it enters the battlefield, and then Tatyova’s ability goes on the stack and resolves, making it a 3/3. This timing is important when considering cards like Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi, which will change any already 3/3 elemental land into a 0/0 with nine +1/+1 counters on it. However, you can always play another land, re-triggering Tatyova, and target that 0/0 land, making it a 3/3 and keeping its counters.

Rule 0 Violations

I don’t see anything glaringly apparent that could fall into the “this is so salty I don’t want to play against it” territory here! Maybe once we come around to accepting that all Simic decks are toxic no matter what, but it’ll be a while before my campaign for that really takes off.

Budget Options

For its cheapest printings this deck’s singles come to about $250. That’s pretty steep to purchase all at once, but there are some easy cuts to drop the overall price of this deck substantially.

Burgeoning is a whole $20 right now, but it can be swapped out for Exploration and will net you about the same amount of value over the course of a game.

Field of the Dead and Inkmoth Nexus are the two most expensive lands in this deck, and while they’re integral to the game-ending strategies presented here, there’s no reason you can’t shave another $40 off this deck’s price and just run two more basic lands.

Other Builds

This is an admittedly odd Tatyova, Steward of Tides deck. By restricting ourselves to an elementals-focused deck, we’ve moved away from the traditional Tatyova decks that go all in on landfall. These decks trade in our typal spells and cards for more general land “goodstuff” like Cultivator Colossus and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath.

Wrap Up

Risen Reef | Illustration by Johan Grenier

We quote him a lot here at Draftsim, but one of the most salient things Mark Rosewater has ever said was “restriction breeds creativity” (note: I’m not attributing this quote to him, he just says this all the time on his Blogatog). In this Tatyova, Steward of Tides deck, we took a “solved” archetype like landfall and grafted it onto an elemental deck, and we’ve made something truly unique because of that!

What are some other off-archetype builds you’d do with Tatyova, Steward of Tides? How does the DMU Tatyova stack up against the DOM one? Let me know in the comments, or over on Draftsim’s Twitter/X.

Thanks for reading, happy ramping!