Hello dear reader, welcome back! What a wild year for commander it’s been. The bans, the shift of power, the chaos! If only you could have seen it coming… What if you had such power? The power to divine the future? To prevent your own woe, or capitalize on drastic changes? If such power tempts you, read on, dear reader, as I know who can teach you. Join me as we dive into the Universes Beyond to seek the foresight of the Galadhrim Elves’ co-ruler, Galadriel of Lothlórien. What, you might ask, does she foresee?
Lands.
Lots and lots of lands. And all manner of bugs and beasts that go with them.
Galadriel allows you to Scry 3 if the Ring temps one of your creatures other than her. More importantly, she lets you reveal the top card of your library whenever you scry. If you reveal a land card, you can put it on the battlefield tapped. This second will be the primary build around for today’s deck tech.
To build around this ability, we’ll aim to build a non-infinite combo that revolves around landfall triggers. The idea is to play cards that create creatures on landfall in combination with cards that scry when creatures enter your battlefield. Play a land, get a creature, get a scry trigger, reveal a land, repeat as much as you can.
A simple example of this is Scute Swarm and Season of Growth. In combination with Galadriel, these three cards together are almost guaranteed to have you play every land in your deck, get countless scry triggers and have an army of scutes to boot. We’ll have to be careful with our fragile board state, either protecting it with counter magic or making immediate use of it with haste enablers.
Let’s dive in!
The Game Plan
The Ideal Win Condition
The ideal win condition is to execute a combo that allows us to play all the lands in our deck and creating a flood of hasty scute bugs to swing at our opponents. If you manage to resolve Galadriel’s trigger with a Scute Swarm on the board and some way to scry when creatures enter, it is almost impossible not to play each of your lands and have potentially a billion scute bugs. No exaggeration. If you get 30 lands out you’ll have 1,073,741,824 bugs. With 32 lands, you’ll have more bugs than the dollars that film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy grossed worldwide!
If you have the set up for this loop, you want to be able to execute it and win on the same turn. Keep some counter magic handy, some instant speed draw ready, or try and start the loop at the end of the player before you’s end step.
When you kick the loop off, you will have enough scry triggers to go through your entire deck basically infinite times. This allows you to pick which card is on top. Instant-speed card draw can get you something like Concordant Crossroads which you can then use to swing out. Special shout-out to Council’s Deliberation, a flavor win that is perfect in this deck. Play it early, then when you’re in a scry loop you can choose when to exile it from your hard to draw a card.
There are plenty of instant draw cantrips or lands that can draw at intant speed as well!
You could also play Crashing Drawbridge and Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots as an alternative way to give all your creatures haste. The greaves/boots are worth playing in the deck anyways, as your commander serves as the gas to your deck, so might as well protect her.
Landfall Creature Scry Loops
The challenge with the Ideal Win Condition is that, at the time of writing, there are only 3 cards that scry when creatures enter in Simic colors. Those are Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, Season of Growth and Sylvan Anthem. The Anthem only triggers off green creatures but that won’t be a problem in this deck. Of these options, two are enchantments, which are not tutorable in Simic colors. Elrond can be found by a plethora of green or elf tutors if you choose to run them. You can run cards like Tooth and Nail to get both Elrond and Scute Swarm out at the same time. Or play Shared Summons to get them both in hand, though you are telegraphing heavily you’re about to go for the win. Point is, it’s not guaranteed that you will get these cards quickly. So you’ll need to lean into Scry magic synergies to dig through your deck while protecting yourself.
There are more cards that create creatures off of landfall. While none are nearly as efficient as Scute Swarm, the rest help you at least establish a board presence and can help you accelerate your land base and dig through your deck. The relatively new Springheart Nantuko is an excellent backup plan. Being a Bestow creature that you could put on another one of your token generators. Doing so once or twice could get you to a decent enough Scute Swarm impression. Remember, Springheart always at least gets you a 1/1 insect!
Other token generators include Rampaging Baloths, Sporemound and Zendikar’s Roil. Avenger of Zendikar is a good include as a secondary win con. Although he doesn’t generate more tokens on landfall, he will get you a bunch at once. If you’ve got scry dudes out, then they’re likely to be pretty beefy pretty quick.
Loop Support
There are a handful of cool things you can do to keep the loop going or keep the mana flowing while you scry for lands. First of all, there are a handful of lands that scry when they enter. Play them all. Nothing like having your lands give you more lands.
There are lands that can help you Scry in a pinch. Not totally necessary to play, but they tend to be budget friendly. Many lands you’ll play in this deck will actually come from Galadriel’s scry triggers. This makes playing taplands less of a sin than it normally is.
Lastly, there are cards that turn your scry-loop mana-positive immediately. Lotus Cobra and Nissa, Resurgent Animist give you mana whenever lands enter under your control. While pricey, Nissa also doubles as a way to hunt for Elrond for the Ideal combo. Tiller Engine and Spelunking make it so all of your Galadriel Lands enter untapped instead, giving you access to immediate mana now or on future turns. Finally, our boy Kenessos, Priest of Thassa lets us dig one deeper when scrying. This significantly increases our chances of making those sweet free drops.
Play Style & Alternate Win Conditions
Ramp
One nice highlight about Galadriel is that she lets you play scry instead of traditional ramp spells. This frees up 10 or so slots players typically reserve for ramp to lean more into your commander’s game plan. I do recommend a high number of lands in this deck. If you can stay between 40-45 you’ll more consistently hit those free scry lands.
Card Draw
You should plan to run a fair amount of big burst card draw. Being that we’re hunting for combo pieces with access to big mana, big splashy card draw is perfect for the deck. Blue Sun’s Zenith, Stroke of Genius, Tidings, etc are good examples of this. Lost Isle Calling is a flavorful card in this deck and can serve as burst draw and an extra turn spell. This card can also end up as a dead card as it does nothing until you activate its 6 mana ability. A bit of a shame but, you’re unlikely to have more than one scry matters deck, so give this card a try and see if it works for you.
Other than big bursty draw, the one mana blue scry cantrips are decent includes, particularly Opt as it is an instant. Thirst for Discovery is nice here since you’re more likely to have lands you can pitch from your hand. Otherwise, you don’t need a ton of mid-level draw, you should focus on scrying to sculpt your hand and get free lands. Shoutout to Tatyova, Benthic Druid though, getting us a card with every land drop! Good luck managing those triggers if you get the Ideal Win Con though.
Early/Mid Game
To start the game out, you should fill your deck with a fair amount of one or two mana permanents that can scry on turn 3 when Galadriel hits the board. Examples include Mazemind Tome, Sigiled Starfish, Lothlórien Lookout, or Season of Growth. If you can’t scry immediately when Galadriel hits the board, there’s no reason to cast her turn 3 and risk her being removed or board wiped. You can cast other value pieces until you can both get Galadriel out and scry on the same turn.
This deck is really aiming to get lands and get creatures from lands, so your early and mid game is going to be threat management and repeatable scry. You’re not likely to pose a threat early but you should consider counter magic to prevent someone else from getting too far ahead. You’re going to want to channel ‘but I’m just a little bean!’ energy until that bean sprouts into a swarm of scutes.
Late Game
At the late game, you’re most likely to find yourself in one of three scenarios:
1. You hit ideal win condition and you won
2. You have a big board of creatures and a ton of mana and trying to grind to victory
3. Just having a lot of lands trying to hold on as someone else has pulled far ahead
To solve for #2, you can consider classic green finishers like Overrun or Craterhoof Behemoth. Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, while slower, can also turn your excess lands into creatures to swing with.
For #3, you can try big mana Simic finishers and/or add a few extra board wipes. Something like Doppelgang can desperately try and steal someone else’s game plan, you can Miracle a Devastation Tide at instant speed similar to how you might float Concordant Crossroads to the top of your deck, or something more straightforward like Evacuation.
You are in blue though, so play some of the counterspells or bounce spells that also scry to slow your opponents down while maintaining your own momentum. This way you hopefully don’t find yourself in position 3 very often. Bane’s Contingency, Condescend, Dissolve, Fading Hope, Glorious Gale, Shower of Arrows, Soothing of Sméagol, Voyage’s End all come to mind.
End Step
Thanks for reading! Hopefully this guide gave you the foresight required to build the deck. If all goes well, you’ll be telling your friends “Don’t get Mad, get Ga-lad!” and “Scry me a river” in no time!
Check out a sample deck here: https://archidekt.com/decks/9858030/galadriel_of_lothlorien