Making Magic in the Arena - Temur Reclamation

Sometimes, it's not enough to just control the board and wait for a power creature to end the game. One might not want to just ramp all day while locking the opponent out of card draw and instant speed spells, but nor do they wish to be aggressive.

And in a situation like that, there's really only one thing left to do: Generate an absolutely enormous amount of mana and bump it all into a gigantic spell to instantly finish off the enemy.

You can find the decklist here.


Obviously, with the word reclamation in the name of the deck, our goal is to abuse Wilderness Reclamation to generate large amounts of mana that we can either dump into our win cons to close out the game, or otherwise keep mana open so we can react to our opponent's plays without sacrificing tempo.

Our two ways to transform all of that excess mana into a win are both Hydroid Krasis and, more importantly, Expansion//Explosion. While we can't take advantage of the extra mana from Reclamation with the Krasis directly, we can dump all of our mana into it and untap all our lands before our opponent goes so we can respond with our instant speed answers.

Expansion//Explosion, specifically the Explosion half, and be abused with Wilderness Reclamation. When the turn comes to an end, each instance of Reclamation on the battlefield places a trigger on the stack. Before any one of them resolves, we can tap all untapped lands, then tap them again for even more mana. Doing this between resolutions allows us to dump all of that basically free mana into a huge Explosion, if not for game than for a second wind to keep us going.

But aside from that, most the deck is wired to either churn through our deck or address major threats as they arise. In terms of removal, we have Scorching Dragonfire to exile a problematic creature or planeswalker, and Brazen Borrower to bounce back key tempo pieces to disrupt our opponent's plans, the latter being a useful body we can flash in as needed. And for board clear, we have Storm's Wrath, which only allows us to take care of enemy planeswalkers if they become an annoyance.

And nearly every other card in this deck is some form of deck thinning, mostly at instant speed. Opt, Omen of the Sea and Growth Spiral all allow us to draw cards with the former two letting us scry and the latter giving us ramp. While Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath isn't instant speed, he too allows us to draw cards while ramping, with an additional life gain. If we ever manage to pay the escape cost (which is likely), we can start using him to either close the distance or the game.

Lastly, just like in our Azorius Control deck, Thassa's Intervention allows us to counter big plays our opponents make, or spend a bunch of mana at the end of our turn to dig deeply through our deck for any two cards we need.

Overall, this has been one of my favorite decks to play. There's something inherently fun about creating a ton of excess mana and then dumping it into huge effects. If you're bored with whatever you're currently running, this one's worth a shot.