Green as a color in Commander is a curious thing, as its power inverts as you travel up the power curve within the format. At lower brackets, Green is able to make use of two of the most standard, strong components of traditional ‘Battlecruiser’ Commander, being land ramp & the chunkiest value creatures. Further on, the strength of these facets dwindles, as you find fast mana in non-Green colors, combos and tutors that need not just lands and creatures, and finally, the necessity of on-stack interaction. Yes, if your aim is to slam the biggest, fattest Dinosaurs and crunch the table’s bones, you’re better off doing so without someone hanging a proverbial Thassa’s Oracle of Damocles above your scaled neck.
Yet while Green indeed makes the best use of land ramp, it also has access to a type of ramp that isn’t available without it, via its suite of land-enchanting Auras. These oft-neglected means of ramp put quite a few eggs in one basket, but at the same time still see play in enchantress-style strategies. Have you considered Fortifications, though? Fortifications are an Artifact subtype that was introduced with a single card, Darksteel Garrison, in Future Sight, and only received its second member in Fallout. Combining all of these ways to suit up a land with a Commander that does the same in their own way, we can do more than merely cast a Nature’s Lore—we can storm off in Monogreen.
In this edition of Commander Focus, I’d like to take a look at Harold and Bob, First Numens, a Commander you almost certainly already forgot, and how to get the most out of Magic’s rarest subtype.
“It’s an Aura Enchantment”
Harold and Bob made their debut in Magic’s Fallout set, within The Wise Mothman’s precon. At first glance, this parasitic FEV-tree is unremarkable, with a decent enough profile for swinging or blocking in the early game, and some truly odd text on its death trigger. If you can manage to burn the metaphorical oasis, wink wink, you’re rewarded with the ability to make a Forest you control tap for 3 mana and provide 2 rad counters. This is no slouch, given the fact that it’s essentially adding an extra 2 mana with every tap, and even without shenanigans this can quickly generate a huge mana advantage during the course of a normal game. H&B also bear a resemblance to another card that’s quite tough to cast outside of Monogreen, the once-staple in 60 card formats, Old-Growth Troll; these are each cards you want to kill exactly once, and thus don’t want to go all-in on an aristocrats strategy, but instead play a select few cards that kill a creature for added effect, which I’ll cover later on.
The key here, however, is that H&B and his old-growth buddy each add separate text to the Forest itself, rather than simply adding mana when it’s tapped normally. These effects don’t stack, but do function with a variety of cards that help your lands tap for even more mana when used to produce it. Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth, and Overgrowth are prime examples, which each greatly increase our capacity to produce mana with a single land. This can be coupled with any number of untappers, such as Arbor Elf and Portent Tracker, to compound our advantage and secure a truly heinous amount of Green mana. The best part? For each of these styles of effect, you have 6+ options, meaning that consistency is not an issue when it comes to this part of your strategy.
Fortify and Irradiate
If we’re tapping and untapping our lands all willy-nilly, though, what’s another way we can ‘land Voltron’, as it were? In the same way creatures have equipment and auras, lands likewise have an artifact type that pairs with your land enchantments: Fortifications. With only 2 members in its subtype, this is a critically endangered species of card, but our two options, Darksteel Garrison and mtg_card]C.A.M.P.[/mtg_card], are no slouches. Each of these cards provides some upside when their fortified land is tapped, each growing a creature in some way, and C.A.M.P. giving us a Junk, which is functionally an extra card. Better still, Garrison even protects the land it’s attached to, meaning we don’t need to worry as much about errant Strip Mines! This is one of those rare decks where it makes a shocking degree of sense to play Fortifications, and that alone is going to draw curious eyes from your opponents.
As far as ways to actually get H&B dead in order to kickstart our engine, Monogreen presents some interesting problems. We don’t want to be an actual aristocrats deck, as our sacrifice outlets are probably a little too inefficient for not killing all that many creatures, yet still the Treefolk Mutant must die. Enter cards like Flare of Cultivation, Eldritch Evolution, Primal Growth, and more. These one-time sacrifice outlets are exactly what we’re after when it comes to putting H&B on a land, as instead of requiring we continuously feed creatures into the woodchipper to extract value, for a one-time payment of our commander, we get the full effect with upside. Still, a few cards like Birthing Ritual and Birthing Pod are good enough and easy to set up such that we can kill H&B the turn they come down regardless.
Once our commander is dead, however, let’s not forget that H&B also gives us the gift of two rad counters. These mill us for a card apiece at the beginning of our precombat main phase, pinging us for each nonland before potentially going away. Notably, regardless of the number of rad counters you have, it’s resolved as a single trigger, meaning you can’t for example use Glowing One to counteract your damage—you’d already be dead. We’ll touch on it later, but we aim to mill our entire library via radiation, so instead we’re playing The Golden Throne and Strong, Brutish Thespian as failsafes in the case that we fly a bit too close to the sun. These are expensive, but do exactly what we need to, and it’s not as though Green (especially here) has an issue with overcosted core pieces.
Tap Shoes for Druids
I’ve explained the core of the deck, from suiting up our lands like Voltron commanders, to untapping them and milling ourselves, but what’s the endgame here? The answer comes in the form of two main cards, and a few spare contemporaries: Sword of the Paruns and Umbral Mantle. Each of these allows us to untap the equipped creature for 3 mana, and if they’re untapping a land enchanted by H&B, this repeats ad infinitum. That alone doesn’t win us the game (but does give us oodles of radiation), but as soon as you slot in any of our Auras that allow the land to produce an extra mana or something else of value, the combo goes to 11. In the case of Umbral Mantle, as well, the creature it’s equipped to gets infinitely large, making it the better option for a few reasons we’ll discuss shortly.
Now, in going infinite like this, you are almost always going to be dead as soon as the rad counters kick in next turn, which means you either need to win on that turn (something we can do, but hilariously don’t always, given we often perform this loop on an opponent’s end step), or stop ourselves from dying, and win once our library is in the graveyard. That can be achieved by way of our fortifications + Sword of the Paruns, or just Umbral Mantle, alongside Miren the Moaning Well or Diamond Valley. Moreover, if we have infinite mana, we can also gain infinite life by way of the fetchable Sapseep Forest, untapping it instead of the H&B land once mana is no longer an issue. Neither of these actually win the game, however, so how do we get to the finish line?
First, if we have a sacrifice outlet and Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth, we can simply kill her, flip over her land side, untap it, and transform her back, which is an incredibly novel way to use the card. We could also turn our lands into infinitely large creatures by way of Destiny Spinner or Wakeroot Elemental, who can each even enable the combo with enough mana available, equipping the untap equipment onto the animated land already enchanted with Harold and Bob. All of this pales in comparison to my favorite endgame piece, however, the uniquely good Mariposa Military Base. This is a colorless land that can tap to draw a card for 5 mana, reduced by your rad counters. Given we’re almost always going to be sitting at anywhere from 8 to infinite rad counters, this is functionally a land that says “{T}: Draw a card”, which isn’t just a way to finish games, but a tremendous value piece in the meantime as well.
Unless you’re winning the game, until that point untapping your lands can have diminishing returns; the difference between an extra 2-4 mana with some radiation on the side, and 6+, isn’t all that much on other players’ turns. Being Monogreen, we have by far the worst reactive suite of cards in the game, meaning we need other things to be doing on opposing turns. While Urban Burgeoning, Quest for Renewal, and Seedborn Muse are great here, we need more to do with them than simply hold up mana to cast Instants. That’s the beauty of Mariposa Military base, then, as it’s going to draw you ~2-4 cards every turn cycle if your engine is online. This gets even more out of hand when we look at one of the best new cards for this deck, Steward of the Harvest. What if every single one of your creatures were Mariposa Military Base, or perhaps Deserted Temple? While not a tool you want to access early, given how it can lock away vital lands, things quickly get absurd with Steward on a wide enough board.
Aside from all of the above, we also have a few 3+ card combos such as any of our double untappers such as Magus of the Candelabra alongside Maze of Ith and an enchanted land, or multipart lines including Shigeki, Jukai Visionary and looped Early Harvests. In short, it’s unlikely you’ll be winning the same way twice, especially given that many of the actual wincons aren’t tutorable in our color. You’ll need to think on your feet when staring at available tools.
Graveyard Roots
While we’re often thinking about rad counters in the binary of ‘will this amount kill us instantly’, it’s worth remembering that you will be milling a substantial amount of cards throughout the course of the midgame, meaning good recursion is greatly enhanced here. Unlike a lot of Monogreen decks, H&B turns on threshold easily, meaning Krosan Restorer is even better here, not to mention the ease at which we Descend. Bygone Marvels is almost always a 2 mana draw 3 for us, often getting back crucial combo pieces, and there are few decks that make as good a use of Matzalantli, the Great Door as us. Just imagine untapping The Core twice during a turn! Better still, if we’re enchanting lands and untapping them, and already have a filled yard, why not make a few Tarmogoyfs with Tarmogoyf Nest? These can be great blockers, but also have the means of getting out of control with a haste enabler like Concordant Crossroads.
Two lands in particular are likewise important once our graveyard is brimming with valuable targets, being Echoing Deeps and Shifting Woodland. Deeps is important for its ability to become a card like Mariposa Military Base if we’ve already put it in the bin, but also to copy our sacrifice lands, those that gain us life, and more. As for copying non-lands, Shifting Woodland is a menace, being able to stack its triggers like Mirage Mirror in order to serve as one or more combo pieces once Delirium is enabled. While we lack a Battle (Although Invasion of Ikoria wouldn’t be a bad inclusion), the rest of the deck is fairly distributed between the card types, including the Planeswalker Nissa, Who Shakes the World as a mana generation piece. This all means that Shifting Woodland is often the second or third land you’re tutoring, if given the choice, because of its versatility. Walk-In Closet//Forgotten Cellar rounds these off, not only acting as a better Crucible of Worlds, but also a Green Yawgmoth’s Will later-on.
Beyond merely putting stuff into the graveyard, we also have phenomenal ways of getting it out, with my favorite of the bunch being the underrated Rofellos’s Gift; given we’re only playing green, for a mere 1 mana, this can usually get back 3+ of our 18 total enchantments, many of which can win the game in concert with other cards. In comparison, Dryad’s Revival is less impressive, but can get any card (including things like Shigeki or Bygone Marvels), when in the graveyard itself. This is vital if we plan on winning after going to 0 cards in library by way of radiation, as while we don’t immediately die by drawing from an empty library, the only means of obtaining advantage after a huge mill is from the graveyard. Finally, lest we forget, Life from the Loam is a truly unfair Magic card, even moreso if one of the cards in your yard is Bosejiu, Who Endures, the absolute king of Green interaction.
Example Decklist: Harold & Bob Go to White Castle
As one can likely glean from my previous articles, I have a fascination with subpar Monocolor Commanders, and that’s no different with Harold and Bob. The limitations that come with having only one color, and trying to do something in that color not often seen (How many Monogreen twiddlestorm decks do you see? Selvala doesn’t count.) is almost always hugely rewarding. As a brief aside, this Commander has fewer than 100 decks on EDHREC at time of writing, and I’ve yet to meet someone who even realized he existed, outside of some vague memory of the Mothman precon. To me, that elicits a reaction of both concern and excitement—the glut of new Legendary Creatures in these Universes Beyond products leads to the vast majority going forgotten, but that itself represents a huge opportunity for brewers.
That being said, I don’t think Harold is underplayed, necessarily; he’s got a niche effect with a weird means of enabling it, in a color that traditionally doesn’t need it. If H&B became a land itself upon death, I think more people would know the Commander as a means of triggering Landfall in an aristocrats deck, but because he’s neither cast as an enchantment, nor becomes a land himself, the effect lies in a limbo between common deck archetypes. In being so, though, you get to experience a rather unique form of ramp, combo, and mill that all plays with a shocking smoothness given its jank exterior; examining the deck from both a power and budget perspective, if you cut away cards like Earthcraft and Diamond Valley (both annoyingly good and on the Reserve List) you’d be left with a fairly budget strategy at its core. These Auras and untappers aren’t pricy, and nor do you really need cards like Urza’s Saga or Field of the Dead, as the degree to which they’re improving your game isn’t all that much higher than simply increasing your density of enablers. Notably, however, you absolutely must keep all but one of your Forests as Snow-Covered Forests, as two of the vital 2-mana untappers, Sculptor of Winter and Rime Tender only untap Snow lands (The one that isn’t Snow would be as an extra name for Field of the Dead, if that is in the list). That’s a minor thing, in the grand scheme of the budget, but still bears repeating.
This is a great deck at a lower price & power level, a prime candidate for underexplored Commander Night picks, and unique design gurus. The more you shave from the list’s expensive cards, the more you’d likely find it powerful among peers, as doing everything it does with a single color and mostly commons/uncommons allows you to lean on the unexpected nature of Harold and Bob to win more games.
An Introduction to Combo
My main pitch for this list and Commander choice specifically stem from the opinion that it’s a perfect deck to introduce a playgroup to combo strategies, especially if they’re nervous about the subject. This is not a very powerful deck in the context of broader Commander options, and is built to be bracket 3, but given how telegraphed and interchangeable many of the pieces are, it can still threaten the game without being too fast. A Monogreen all-in Commander deck benefits from its lack of inherent protection, without counterspells or means to tutor backups, and the clock you’re often putting yourself on by virtue of the rad counters can allow aggro decks to threaten your life total in a meaningful way. That’s not to say the deck is bad—far from it—but it is designed to not only test the skill of the pilot, but also ease your pod into more combo-centric Magic.
None of the combos in this deck are just A+B, like Demonic Consultation and Thassa’s Oracle, and the puzzle of putting together a winning line makes this a favorite for me to break out at the start of a Commander night. If you have a playgroup that turns their nose up to combo, give this a shot, and you might just find their opinions far warmer on Harold and Bob’s messy pile than any number of other plug & play wincons. You will almost always be better served, at a glance, by playing a Commander your opponent have never heard of, than one they have; that novel nature of getting a game in against the unknown is precisely why the wide cardpool matters, and your buddies will appreciate seeing this mangled mutant tree across from them instead of The Wise Mothman.
Until next time, chug that RadAway.
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