Homer, the Hermit Commander Deck Guide

Homer, the Hermit | Illustration by Christina Kraus

Thanks to my Vorthos heritage, I’m a certified Mystery Booster Commander Edition enjoyer. There’s so many neat and fun designs in that set, and I keep finding ones I overlooked the first few times I’ve dug into them.

But one fella that immediately caught my attention was Homer, the Hermit. Really? Crabs, lobsters, nautiluses, starfish, and trilobites, eh? I swear, Wizards likes to stick Easter eggs into its products; you can’t convince me that Taeko, the Patient Avalanche wasn’t a hint about TMNT, and Homer looks like a sneak peek at our first entirely underwater set.

Let’s see if life is better down where it’s wetter, and explore the cards Homer, the Hermit can leverage before Nauctis drops and the tides shift.

The Deck

Sigiled Starfish | Illustration by Nils Hamm

This deck combines all of Homer, the Hermit’s themes for a hybrid of a Sultai () lands matter and a multi-typal build. There’s a surprising amount of mill among these benthic invertebrates, which pushes the deck into a land reanimator deck.

In terms of power level, this deck sits in Bracket 3, between its Game Changer (Crop Rotation) and the strength of Sultai lands as an archetype. There’s even stronger cards that can push it further, including Roaming Throne, Burgeoning, and Scapeshift.

The Commander: Homer, the Hermit

Homer, the Hermit is a Sultai () landfall commander with a multi-typal twist: It mills players based on the twice the number of crabs, lobsters, nautiluses, starfish, and/or trilobites that you control. The and/or is important so that shapeshifters and other creatures with multiple types don’t supercharge the deck.

The beauty is that Homer targets any player, and any number of them. Depending on how you build the deck, you can mill yourself, mill your opponents, or both at different times of the game.

Lands, Lands, Lands

This deck is host to a whole ecosystem of cards designed to get you playing extra lands, whether from your hand or your graveyard, and benefiting from them with landfall abilities.

As you should expect, there’s a healthy number of Rampant Growth variants, but the Harrow variants add lands to the graveyard to reanimate later.

Icetill Explorer mixes Exploration with Crucible of Worlds, two cards that are also in the deck, and it stocks your graveyard when your lands enter. Spelunking is such a good enchantment for land decks, and it’s even more important if you cut expensive lands.

Your commander isn’t the only landfall miller in the deck, either. Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab join in on the fun, while Iceberg Cancrix is similar but only cares about your snow lands.

Through Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait and Tatyova, Benthic Druid, your land drops restock your hand. Lotus Cobra is another landfall staple that makes any lands that enter tapped less of a tempo loss.

Ancient Greenwarden staples the Crucible of Worlds ability to a creature and serves as a trigger doubler for all your landfall abilities. Now Homer mills for four times the number of eligible creatures you have; with just your commander, the Greenwarden, and two other type-matched creatures, your land drops mill for 12 cards each. Yarok, the Desecrated serves as a second doubler for your landfall triggers, though other creatures have enters abilities it can double, too.

Aftermath Analyst’s activated ability is one of your premium mass land reanimation abilities. Treat it more like a 6-drop than a 2: Don’t waste it in the early game unless you’re in a bind, and don’t be afraid to mulligan it away. You’d rather cast Splendid Reclamation, but Analyst's milling and reanimation sometimes tips you over the edge.

Hedge Shredder is just such a cool card. Your mass reanimators are good for huge landfall triggers, but this vehicle takes any lands you mill and puts them onto the battlefield for immediate value. It fits perfectly with the low-power benthic invertebrates, since you only need 1 power to crew it.

Miller Time (Enjoy Responsibly)

No self-respecting mill deck leaves home without Bruvac the Grandiloquent. This deck doesn’t use it to its fullest extent since there aren’t as many infinite combos as you might expect, but there’s still The Water Crystal as mill support.

Phenax, God of Deception turns all your creatures into toughness-based Grindclocks, and it shows how Bruvac is oddly at home with crabs as a creature with high toughness. Nice to have something to do when the board starts to stall out, especially without sweepers. You can also activate the ability at instant speed, so you can keep your blockers and use them to mill after the last combat phase before your turn.

I haven’t included as many non-creature mill cards as you would in a pure mill deck, but I really like Kitsune's Technique. You have multiple 0-power creatures that are excellent bait to enable its sneak cost, though you should be able to ramp into the full mana cost. Singularity Rupture, Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital, and Fractured Sanity also represent a lot of milling potential.

Mirelurk Queen can give anyone two rad counters, another card that you might aim at yourself early and your opponents late. It benefits from grindier games, since it gives you at most one card per turn.

Utility

Many of the creatures I haven’t brought up by name are likely to be replaced once Nauctis hits shelves, but there’s still important role-players among the crabs, lobsters, et al, whether for utility or just plain fun.

Chomping Changeling is a type-fixed Reclamation Sage. Its pal from Lorwyn Eclipsed, Mutable Explorer, would be better in a deck that can sac and reanimate it, but here, it’s both a body and a land thanks to the Mutavault token (which also carries the relevant types!)

Crabomination’s enters ability steals opposing card and denies them two others, which is a great way to disrupt someone’s scrying or Brainstorming. Only one of Uchuulon’s types is supported here, but it has the potential to become a shoal of crabs in a hurry if nobody deals with it.

Rikala, Homarid King is here for the fun factor, but it also ramps you when the tides are right (I know, I know).

Maskwood Nexus is more of a mana sink that pumps out shapeshifter tokens than a type fixer. Springleaf Parade serves a similar role; you want to pump out a bunch of type-fixed creature tokens before you play your lands for turn and mill everyone with Homer.

Scuttletide’s discard outlet converts lands into board presence, and it eventually becomes a crab anthem.

The Mana Base

Lands decks need, well, lands, and they form the core of this mana base. The lands themselves shouldn’t be much of a surprise, with fetches to trigger landfall abilities more than once in the same turn, an assortment of duals and tri-landss to flesh out the colors (fetchable, or with an easy enters untapped condition), and snow basics because of Iceberg Cancrix.

Bojuka Bog and Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital are the only utility lands.

The Strategy

This deck wins primarily through milling; commander damage and regular combat damage are out of reach. You’ve got a few combos with Bruvac the Grandiloquent, but no tutors to assemble them. Your best bet is to focus on Homer’s landfall trigger.

While you might be tempted to mill just yourself to start, it’s in your best interest to make it symmetrical. There’s only a small handful of mass land reanimators, so while I really want to see a Splendid Reclamation win the game for me, the odds aren’t as high in the average game.

No matter what, you want to fill your board with creatures and lands. Don’t worry about having too many lands in the early game, since discarding lands also sets up your graveyard for mass reanimation.

This deck doesn’t have the most interaction to protect from graveyard hate, so keep that in mind as a sort of phantom clock. You can’t stifle an opponent’s Bojuka Bog, so don’t spend too much time on setup if you can get some value out of your graveyard.

Combos and Interactions

The deck has a few infinite combos to mill your opponents all at once instead of relying on Homer’s gradual mill. None of them are easy to hit without tutors, but the combo with Bruvac the Grandiloquent and Singularity Rupture also needs Bruvac to be indestructible, which only Heroic Intervention can do in this deck.

Another Bruvac combo involves Kitsune's Technique and has no other prerequisites. It takes an opponent out of the game immediately, so it’s best used against your biggest threat, especially if they get arrogant and tap out. Nothing humbles you like going from the Bolas to first out in a snap. Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital’s adventure also does the trick, but because it rounds down, it’s only a sure thing when your opponent has an even number of cards in their library.

Rule 0 Violations Check

This deck shouldn’t run into too many problems during a Rule 0 conversation. It has a few potential combos, but they aren’t easy to assemble without tutors. And the moment your opponents see your commander, they should know it has at least some amount of milling.

Budget Options

The land base is one of the most important parts of a landfall deck, but you get away with a few swaps. You can replace the pricier fetch lands with the likes of Hobbit Hole. The bounce lands (Dimir Aqueduct, etc.) are also worthwhile considerations, since bouncing a land resets it for another round of landfall triggers. And if you drop Iceberg Cancrix, you don’t have to invest in snow basics.

Bruvac the Grandiloquent has no real substitutes. Exploration is one of the best extra lands cards out there, but you can replace it with Exploration Broodship.

Many of the lands-matter cards are in demand for decks across the archetype (Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Ancient Greenwarden, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Icetill Explorer, etc.). They’re hard to replace because they’re so good at what they do, but you could pick just one or two and downgrade the others to stuff like Scute Swarm (not as good unless Maskwood Nexus is out, but hey, it’s board presence). Either that, or you’ll have to be opportunistic and watch for price drops or reprints.

Phenax, God of Deception isn’t the most important piece of the deck, so you can swap it out for another on-type creature or another landfall ability. Glacierwood Siege is a cheap 3-drop that gives you redundancy for your Conduit of Worlds, and you could lean on spells like Explore to fill in some gaps.

Other Builds

Sultai lands is a well-developed space, so there’s ample cards that maximize your landfall triggers. Since you can use Homer’s trigger to mill just yourself, you can use it in a first phase to mill yourself and stock your graveyard with lands, then use some mass land reanimation once your invertebrates are out on the field and aim Homer’s trigger at your opponents.

You could cut any pretense that you’ll mill your opponents and focus on self-milling, using alternate win conditions for an empty library like Jace, Wielder of Mysteries or Laboratory Maniac to claim victory. Or, go all-in on milling your opponents out instead; this build has a stronger typal focus, so it leaves aside classic mill cards like Traumatize and Maddening Cacophony, which means it also leaves aside many Bruvac combos.

Commanding Conclusion

Iceberg Cancrix | Illustration by Jenn Ravenna

I love a commander that supports weird creature types, and Homer, the Hermit has dug into the archives while previewing one of next year’s exciting sets. I’m really curious what Wizards will do with the types that Homer cares about in Nauctis, but I hope they keep at least a base level of synergy and mechanical identity: big butts, with a skosh of landfall and milling.

Would you like us to revisit this deck once Nauctis: The Sunken Realm releases, either as a total rebuild or an in-house upgrade guide? How would you build Homer, the Hermit with the card pool we have now? Let me know in comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord. For more from us, check out our newsletter, The Daily Upkeep.

Until next time, stay crabby!