{"ops":[{"insert":"Tevesh-Thrasios is a pretty unusual Commander Combination for cEDH. The following header will point out why playing Tevesh-Thrasios is a realy good option for the Command-Zone, explain the strategy of the deck, compare it with other (similar) decks and strategies and describe the usual mulliganning and gameplan.\n\nThe Commanders:\n\nThrasios, Triton Hero: Usualy partnered with Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh or Tymna the Weaver, Thrasios is arguably one of the most potent Partner-Commanders in cEDH. His activated ability is a solid value engine offering mana and card advantage on the one side and an outlet for infinite mana on the other side. I think there's not much more to say about Thrasios. He has taken his place in the current meta.\n\nTevesh Szat, Doom of Fools: As mentioned a realy unpopular Partner Commander but still a solid one. Tevesh's +2 ability creates 2 0/1 Thrull tokens, which we use as bodies for our Gaea's Cradle Strategie (the main strategy of the Deck). The +1 ability let's us sacrifice a creature and draw either 2 or 3 cards. To be fair the cost of 5 mana to cast Tevesh is an issue. While it's not worth it to cast Tevesh early (with some exceptions), once we have cradle or other potent mana sources, it's a valid option to cast him (and making mana is the thing this deck is realy good at). The ultimate ability however doesn't matter in 99% of the games but the few times i was able to steal all my opponents commanders it was totaly worth it. :D\n\nBut why not...\n\nTymna the Weaver: The one Commander this deck has to defend itself against the most is definitely Tymna. And to be fair it's pretty hard to stand the ground. The additional white in the identity offers silence effects. On the other side an additional colore brings issues with consistency and Mana fixing. Also most of the Tymna-Thrasios Decks follow a more combo based strategy than this decklist. Of course it's possible to follow the same lines (Devoted Druid etc) but i think the Cradle Storm Variant is more consistent and harder to interact with. \n\nSo in particular i think this deck has a different competitor on the Commander front:\n\nRograkh, Son of Rohgahh: This is where it gets interesting. Our Decklist is in big parts pretty similar to the currently most played strategies in Rograkh-Thrasios Decks. We follow a heavily Cradle-focused strategy with a lot of untappers and our main combo line is the same as Rog-Thras Decks use. The reason to play Tevesh over Thrasios is pretty simple: the color. Rog-Thras Decks play Rograkh mainly becaus of it's 0-mana cost not for color reasons. There are few red cards that really help the strategy of the deck and free interaction and a free body for cradle are the only good arguments for rograkh (but they are in fact pretty strong ones as the meta results show). Tevesh on the other hand brings black into our gameplan. Tutors are some of the most efficient ways to make a deck more consistent and thats a really important thing if your heavily invested on a single card (in this case Gaeas Cradle). Also black brings rituals (like red) and some decent on board interaction to remove the biggest threats for our game.\n\nThe strategy: As mentioned we focus on Gaeas Cradle and the main goal is to get as much mana as possible as quick as possible. Mana lets us use our main value engine Thrasios and the green x-tutors we use to get situational pieces or enable our combo.\n\nThe mulligan: in our opening hand we want to see (creature based) mana advantage, value engines like Rhystic Study or Mystic Remora, interaction to stay alive and/or a way to find Gaeas Cradle. The list also shows the priority of these factors. Mana advantage is most important and so on.\n\nThe combos: \n1. Oboro Breezecaller Line: Our main Combo for infinite mana is based on the creatur Oboro Breezecaller. For 1 and a blue we get a 1/1 moonfolk wizard with \"2, return a land you control to it's owners hand: untap target land\". We can use this ability to make a shit ton of mana with gaea's cradle. This alone is (with enough creatures on the battlefield) semi-infinite with thrasios because his abilities will propably bring more lands into play, that we can use to activate the ability again. The last piece of the puzzle is another land: Talon Gates of Masara lets us put itself onto the battlefield from our hand for 4 mana with its own ability. So this is how it works: we need oboro breezecaller plus 5 other (so a total of 6) creatures, Gaeas Cradle and Talon Gates of Madara in play. We tap Cradle for 6 green and Talon Gates for 1 colorless mana. We use 2 of the mana and bounce talon Gates to activate breezecaller, untapping Cradle. We use 4 of the 5 mana left to bring back Talon Gates into play from our hand and repeat the progress netting one green mana every time. Once we have a shit ton of green mana we can use the second ability of talon gates to filter this mana into mana of any color.\n\n2. Eternal Witness - Snap: Our backup combo for infinite mana uses Gaeas Cradle as well. We need Eternal Witness, 4 more creatures (so now just 5 creatures) and Gaeas Cradle as well as one more land that can produce blue mana in play. We tap Cradle to produce 5 green mana and tap the other land to produce blue mana. We spend 1 and blue to cast snap from our hand bouncing eternal witness to our hand and untapping cradle and the land. Now we use 3 more mana to cast Eternal Witness which on etb returns Snap to our hand from the graveyard. Now we repeat the loop netting one mana of our choice (green or blue) each time. Once we have enough mana we can use the snap to untap black lands as well so we get access to each color.\n\nWhat now?\n\nOnce we have infinite Mana we can activate Thrasios as often as we want putting as much of our library to our hand as we need. We put all lands into play tapped.\n\nThe win: \n\n1. OBM: Our winning combo is focussed on Orcish Bowmasters. We cast it, than bestow Springheart Nantuko on it. Now we can make as many copies of OBM utilizing the Landfalls of our Breezecaller Loop as we need to ping our oponents to death with the etb triggers of Bowmasters.\n\n2. Finale: Simple but effective. Casting finale of devestation (3 untapped, non summoning sick creatures needed) with x equals 1000 should kill your opponents.\n\nBut why not:\n\nOther combos: keeping the number of combos and slots to enable them low helps us playing ienoigh interaction to stay alive and all the important (creature based) value and mana engines we need. More combos just make the deck inconsistent so we focus on combos that just follow our main startegy bringing no unnessessary bad cards to the deck. \n\nAs we speak of bad cards:\n\nThassa's Oracle Combos: An often asked question is why the deck isn't on Thassa's Oracle and its package. The simple answer is: we don't need it. Thoracle itself is a bad card and once we have our library in hand we can utilize the staples we play to win the game. Demonic Consultation is a pretty good card in the right deck but tutoring with it loses our game more often than in other decks because we're too depended on certain cards. You could consider playing Tainted pact as a Tutor without the Combo but i cut the whole package and didn't miss it. We can use the 3 slots better.\n\nI hope this helped you understanding the deck and it's philosophy.\nGreetings Phoenix.\n"}]}