Commander Deck Tech: Jodah, the Unifier
This week I continue with another Dominaria United Legendary Creature that has been seeing a lot of popularity within my local play groups. Jodah, the Unifier is a five color Commander for a total of five converted mana. Playing five colors is usually cost intensive just because of the mana base. This one is even more so just because of the high amount of Legendary spells and Creatures that are included in the deck.
Essentially Jodah has a built in Coat of Arms just for you. Although the Coat of Arms is just for Legendary Creatures, we are going to make the most of it by playing mostly Legendary Creatures. Jodah also has an on-cast ability that says when you cast a Legendary spell from your hand you get to cascade for a Legendary spell of lesser converted mana cost. It's not exactly cascade but it is very similar. Cascade itself is a very powerful ability that even if you counter the spell cast, the cascade or ability of Jodah still happens. Your opponent will have to counter the free spell too in order to nullify both, or play something like a Trickbind to prevent the cascade ability.
In a nutshell we want to play some Legendary Creatures and mana acceleration in the early game to try and get Jodah out sooner than turn five. Once Jodah is in play we want to keep him protected so that we can take advantage of both the Coat of Arms for Legendary Creatures, and his cascading type ability. There are six cards in the build which help protect Jodah or bring him back for free if he dies. These cards consist of: Heroic Intervention, Teferi's Protection, Lightning Greaves, Rienne, Angel of Rebirth, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, and Saffi Eriksdotter. There are also a few ways to copy Jodah while negating the Legendary rule. This can be super powerful in this build because if you have two or three Jodah's in play it's like having that many Coat of Arms, and that many cascade for Legendary's each time you play a spell. We have Sakashima of a Thousand Faces and Helm of the Host which both negate the Legendary rule. You also have a fringe type of copy where if Sakashima of a Thousand Faces and Ratadrabik of Urborg are in play and Jodah dies you can make a copy of Jodah. There are a ton of other broken things the deck can do with multiples of the same Legendary Creatures, but your Commander is going to be the most broken.
To help get our mana base to where we have each color we are playing three mana ramp spells in: Nature's Lore, Three Visits, and Farseek. Note that this doesn't have to be basics but has to be a Forest Card etc. This means we can search up shocklands or triomes as long as they have that card type on them. My first draft of the deck had Rampant Growth and Cultivate, but those cards specify they have to be basic lands. This deck runs none. We also have a few mana rocks which help accelerate and correct our mana base in: Mox Amber, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Chromatic Lantern, and the newcomer Relic of Legends. Relic of Legends just seems amazing in this type of Legendary heavy deck where it turns most all of your Creatures into mana fixing. I really wish that they made it a Legendary permanent though, but it's fine the way it is. There are also a few non-Legendary Creatures which I threw in to help with mana acceleration. The traditional Birds of Paradise is a must and I also decided to throw in an Ignoble Hierarch and Bloom Tender.
For spot removal and wrath or evasion type effects we are running quite a bit less than most of my decks. There are seven spells which help deal with all kinds of boardstates or obstacles that we may encounter. These spells consist of: Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Cyclonic Rift, Anguished Unmaking, Void Rend, Yawgmoth's Vile Offering, and Urza's Ruinous Blast.
Our enchantments help with some card advantage and possibly some mana fixing. We are also running Rhythm of the Wild to make our Creatures uncounterable, and to give them haste. There's also a few planeswalkers I decided to add just for overall strength of the cards, but I'm anxious to play with Dihada, Binder of Wills.
There are going to be tons of crazy triggers and attack phases once we start getting several Legendary Creatures out. My top 7 powerful Legendary Creatures excluding Jodah are: Maelstrom Wanderer, Kenrith, the Returned King, Shanid, Sleepers' Scourge, Sisay, Weatherlight Captain, Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, Etali, Primal Storm, and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer.
The land base I tried to adjust based on the percentage of color symbols within the build. This is one area that may need some tweaking after playtesting. Also I may need to cut a few triomes/capenna lands for lands that don't come into play tapped. You could also make the deck better by running old school dual lands, but this deck is already pretty expensive as it is. I did about 20 test hands to see what the hands looked like and it was very surprising. It almost looked like I was playing a Commander cube type deck.
For those of you who have the funds or collection to build a Jodah, the Unifier deck I strongly recommend this one! It looks like a blast to play with plenty of different situations and board states that will pop up. I don't think it's an overpowered deck but has the ability to do many overpowered things.
I hope this build gives you some ideas on a direction to build your own five color Jodah, the Unifier Deck.
Until Next Time,
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