The Top Shelf

Chulane Steals the Show! (Commander)

Eric von Allmen

06 Sep 2020 - 15 min read

Welcome back to another article in The Top Shelf series, where we look at a casual build and cEDH build for one commander. After a raucous romp with Syr Carah a while ago, I think it’s time to chill out a bit. I’ve come prepared this week, I’ve done my research, and I’ve even planned both decks before starting the article! Cue applause. Thank you, thank you… but in all seriousness, let’s get right into it. This week we’ll be staying on Eldraine and looking to Chulane, Teller of Tales as our commander. By the way, did you know it’s pronounced ‘Hull-an’? Told you I did my prep work this time.

Chulane was designed to support the soft reboot of the Brawl format and he certainly has the power to do so. His triggered ability helps you keep your hand full and your mana base growing, while his activated ability can help protect important creatures or repeat powerful enter the battlefield (ETB) effects. When looking at the casual list I realized I was putting a lot of creatures into the deck to maximize these ETBs. This made me curious… Do I have enough creatures and other permanents to build a Primal Surge deck? The answer is I can certainly try! Meanwhile, for the competitive deck I was able to find an incredible primer for the iCameo (an abbreviation of the deck’s wincons) build written by the user Joking101 that helped inspire this article. iCameo is an adaptive combo build that uses Chulane’s triggered ability to nearly deck itself then win through combat damage.

If you want to cut straight to the cEDH portion of the article, click HERE .

Otherwise, let’s jump right in with our casual Primal Surge deck.

Joking101’s Primer

casual build

Chulane Surges In!

This deck will run you right around $250. I think this deck is actually a great example of how I want my casual decks to play. They should have a solid game plan, multiple win conditions, and should feel cool to pilot. During testing for this, I felt like I nailed all those aspects. I think I was aided in no small part by the star of the show: Primal Surge . This card is not just powerful and cool, and to use it to its full advantage we have to succumb to one of the most stringent deck building restrictions this side of Companion: don’t include any other instants or sorceries in your deck. “Why would I ever do that Eric?” Well, I’ll tell you. This will allow us to dump every other card left in our deck straight into play. Then, we immediately go for the win with cards like Thassa’s Oracle or Laboratory Maniac provided any of our other creatures’ ETBs let us draw a card. (This is where cards like Mulldrifter and Mentor of the Meek can really shine.)

The unfortunate thing about this game plan is that short of Ring of Three Wishes it’s pretty hard to tutor for Primal Surge . So, we may end up drawing some of our key creatures before we find it. In order to help assuage this potential issue, we’ve peppered in some other win cons that work well with Chulane and our current shell. Eldrazi Displacer and Deadeye Navigator to generate infinite mana with Peregrine Drake or Palinchron . If we have infinite mana with Palinchron in play we can cast Chulane, Teller of Tales , if he isn’t already on the field, then bounce and replay Palinchron until we draw any of Destiny Spinner , Helix Pinnacle , or Primal Surge .

If either of your Lab Man effects are still in the deck then you can just keep drawing until you win (Remember to actually play the creature before you try to draw the final time… I mean, like you wouldn’t forget, you’re cool. I’m just warning everyone else). If those have been removed or are sitting in your hand, Destiny Spinner can make some pretty threatening lands. This is doubly effective if we just cast Primal Surge and have literally all our enchantments and all our lands in play. Alternatively we can pump all that mana straight into Helix Pinnacle and pass, hoping to win on our upkeep.

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

So, take these protection spells with you! Having a five mana commander and a ten mana win condition is… bold, to say the least. We can’t just sit there hoping everyone will be nice and let our terrifying spells resolve. So, we have to find some creative ways to counter spells or delay our opponents without instants or sorceries. A few creatures are just counterspells, see Mystic Snake and Frilled Mystic , but they’re a little on the pricey end CMC-wise. Fortunately for us, they come with a body and if we have Chulane out they draw us a card and can even ramp us. Ashiok’s Erasure doesn’t have the benefits of being a creature, but is very effective at protecting us from common spells like Counterspell or Swords to Plowshares . If we are going for a power turn or trying to win, it may be worth it to look to Grand Abolisher as a more definitive way to deny interaction.

We don’t always want to be quite so reactive though. Sometimes it’s much better to go and blow up people’s stuff before they start causing us problems. Caustic Caterpillar and Reclamation Sage both help us hate on artifacts and enchantments. We can even bounce Reclamation Sage with Chulane to get repeated benefit out of its effect. Terastodon can also help clean up noncreature permanents, but that still leaves us lacking in terms of ways to kill our opponent’s threatening or high value creatures. To resolve this problem we can run cards like Banishing Light and Journey to Nowhere . Calix, Destiny’s Hand can let us exile even more creatures under our enchantments. Repeatable removal tied to this ability is important for us given how limited removal can be without instants and sorceries.Some cards in a similar vein to this, but much better for targeting commanders are Song of the Dryads and Imprisoned in the Moon . These enchantments prevent our opponents from returning their commander to the zone. From here let’s move on to look at some of the more staple cards in our colors and how we can use Chulane to add some unique elements to our build.

Rewriting a Classic Story

Primal Surge doesn’t just limit our removal and control tools. Value generation and ramp often come from instants and sorceries, so we still need to find some cheeky workarounds in that category. The deck is full of low cost creatures, so we should be able to cycle through those pretty quickly given that each of them is a cantrip when Chulane is in play. Beast Whisperer lets us double up on drawing whenever we cast a creature and with cards like Abundance we can also maximize the value of each draw. Aid from the Cowl is another great enchantment for value maximization. As long as you’re using Chulane’s bounce ability, your deck is all permanents so it’s either a permanent into play or free ramp every turn.

Coiling Oracle is a great card for us whether it’s acting as draw or ramp. But there are more consistent cards for ramping I’d like to look at. Wood Elves is an obvious one, it allows us to fetch forests, so we can even grab a few of the dual lands we managed to sneak into the budget. In a deck like this Springbloom Druid is Harrow on a stick and can put in some solid work for us with a few bounces. Avatar of Growth and Solemn Simulacrum both help keep the lands coming so that we can thin our deck and make sure we have all the right colors. Obviously we’re going to be running mana dorks, but I don’t think we need to discuss Elvish Mystic for the 100th time, no matter how much I want to.

Once Upon a Time (Mulligan)

Let’s make sure you get your tale off to a proper start with a good first hand. For our game plan if you have a hand that is even marginally keepable with Primal Surge , you should keep it. In most hands you’ll want to have a few lands and a few other pieces of ramp. We’ll be able to hit the gas pretty well once we get Chulane out onto the field, so keeping a hand full of pretty small creatures or mana dorks isn’t actually that hurtful. Chulane is a prime target for removal, so we should prioritize any hand that includes either protection or a secondary engine we can use to bait removal or keep things going if Chulane doesn’t work out. Removal is always nice to have, but we definitely want to get off the ground and get the ball rolling as quickly as we can. Drawing into interaction later can be better than sitting on it early, but that also depends on the speed of other decks at your table. In a more aggressive pod it can be worth it to keep a few pieces of interaction and wait to play Chulane until you can really get the engines going. The full decklist for this build can be found below.

Full Decklist

For now though, let’s continue on to Act II of our story, with the cEDH build of Chulane, Teller of Tales . For this list we will be going forward without any budget restrictions and strictly aiming to create the most powerful deck we can. Again, this list was inspired by the iCameo primer from the user Joking101.

cEDH build

What is this, a Marvel Movie?

Chulane, Teller of Tales has such a ridiculously good triggered ability, that combos so easily, the competitive deck requires an acronym to understand the path to victory. iCameo represents the primary cards that allow us to reach the end state of our game plan. The cards in iCameo are Intruder Alarm , Cloudstone Curio , Aluren , Mana Breach , Earthcraft , and Overburden .

These six cards represent our main path to victory. Our goal with these is to constantly bounce creatures that allow us to keep drawing and replaying the same cards. All of our combos start with casting Shrieking Drake , Whitemane Lion , or having Cloudstone Curio in play and casting one mana dork with another in play already. We’ll always target the creature we just played with the bounce, or the other dork for Curio lines, and have Chulane draw us a card and put a land into play. We can continue to pay for this process by profetting mana from tapping the creature before it’s bounced and untapping a land with Earthcraft . Alternatively Intruder Alarm and any mana dorks will have the same effects. From here we can repeat whatever sustainable loop we find ourselves in. We want to draw almost our entire deck, ideally put all our lands and enchantments into play and swing out with either Finale of Devastation or Destiny Spinner .

Choose Your Own Adventure

The key to an adaptive deck like this is to be well, adaptive. When piloting the deck we are constantly evaluating whether this is the time to be proactive or reactive. We have a lot of great mana ramp and acceleration like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Priest of Titania that can help push us toward our game plan. But we also get to run cards like Mana Drain and Force of Will . The adaptability and game sense required to play this deck honestly is a big part of why I enjoy it. I even patched things up with the Azorius Senate just so that I could run Lavinia, Azorius Renegade . I think of her as our anti-Kinnan. She pumps the brakes for others in the same way he stomps on the gas for us. Much like Lavinia, Collector Ouphe and Drannith Magistrate are two great cards for a deck like ours, which is happy to spend resources to slow down the game and relies very little on artifacts. Any of your favorite hate bear style cards can easily slot into this deck if you find that these aren’t working well in your meta. What matters is that when you need to, you can slow other players down and bring the game to your tempo.

Pumping the breaks and going slow is cool and all, but have you tried going really fast? It’s also pretty sick. With a five mana commander we can’t get too trigger happy and need to be very careful about when we play him, but in the right pod we can definitely fall into the most aggressive position drawing into one of our combos very early with the right start. We have the ramp to get our mana in place very quickly with the number of dorks we’re running. Once that is all setup, we can quickly find our winning cards with tutors like Enlightened Tutor , Sterling Grove or Trophy Mage . We can even find Whitemane Lion , Earthcraft , and Overburden by transmuting Muddle the Mixture . Once we have one of the enchantments or artifacts that we need, Ranger Captain of Eos , Recruiter of the Guard and Worldly Tutor can help us find the last pieces we need to close out the game.We run Crop Rotation just in case we don’t have the right lands or need Gaea’s Cradle in order to actually have a profitable loop.

What Do We Say to the God of Death?

Please take a seat for this next part, I have some unfortunate news for you all… the other players at the table are trying to kill us. I know, I know, it’s terrible. Take all the time you need to process. Due to the fact that we aren’t just trying to turbo out a win con, we are probably going to need to stop them from killing us before we can actually win. So, we’ll be running some ways to protect ourselves just in case. Angel’s Grace and Teferi’s Protection can save us in the case of a single burst of damage or some powerful targeted hate. Angel’s Grace can even save us from needing to use an early Pact of Negation . If we can see a power turn coming we don’t always have to be quite so reactive though. Silence is a great card that we can use to proactively shutdown someone’s turn before they even try to go off or we can use it to protect ourselves as we look to end the game. Even further in the proactive direction are cards like Rest in Peace or Linvala, Keeper of Silence which we can use to preemptively shut down some of our opponent’s win cons.

Epilogue (Mulligan)

Let us conclude the story of Chulane, Teller of Tales with a wrap on how to best start a game. Given that this deck has a high density of combos, tutors, and draw we can actually afford to be just a bit less choosy with our opening hands. We really need to start the game with a strong ramp opener though. That part of our game plan is pretty immovable. From there your mulligan diverges based on the other decks at the table. Often you might look around and feel like you’re playing one of the slower decks at the table. In that case, you should prioritize keeping control and stax pieces. You still need enough draw to get your own game plan into action down the line, but stopping others from snatching the game right away can often be key. I am fortunate enough to have some friends who believe that a fourway stax mirror is peak Magic, so we can also end up in the most “aggressive” position at the table in some scenarios. In those situations we should focus more on some of the protective cards I highlighted earlier. If we have the gas to win, we need to make sure those pesky control players and other player’s stax pieces don’t get in our way. The full deck list is linked below. I’ve included some other ways to win the game in the side board and have a full write up of each win condition in the primer. I’ll see you next time!

Full Decklist

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