cEDH is the biggest power level you can play Commander at. Whether you call it competitive Commander, cEDH, or Bracket 5, they all encompass the same thing. This is where the best of the best decks play. If you’re thinking about bringing a pet deck to cEDH, odds are, you’re coming in to lose the game. The cEDH metagame is incredibly tight and needs you to bring nothing but the best of cards.
In this overview, we will be looking at the Temur color pairing. There are various options for commanders. For this guide, we will be utilizing the partner pairing of Thrasios, Triton Hero. If you’re a fan of Temur, these two are the commanders you should be rolling up to your cEDH matches with.
If you’ve never played cEDH before, good news! We have a guide to help you transition from the world of casual Commander to Competitive Commander to get an idea of what you’re getting into if you’re brand new to cEDH.
Why Rograkh and Thrasios?
There are a handful of Temur options that see play in cEDH. Usually, they involve partners. Examples include Dargo, the Shipwrecker, Krark, the Thumbless, and Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator. However, none of these make the cut for this list. There are a handful of downsides to some of these commanders, and they are often more prone to slower starts and weaker early games, which can be a death sentence in Aggro metagames.
In many cases of the above partner commanders, the majority are partnered with Thrasios, Triton Hero. Thrasios is an incredible card, and acts as both a card advantage engine, a win condition, and a mana dump for infinite mana all in one card. For this deck, it’s partnered up with Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh. Rograkh allows you to get a commander on the battlefield on turn one, which instantly turns on multiple spells that can be cast for free if you control your commander, or cards that need a creature on the battlefield.
The Creature Lineup
This deck plays a handful of different creatures for various situations. As mentioned before, Mox Amber as well as interaction including Fierce Guardianship. The deck’s primary win conditions involve generating infinite mana, and Thrasios, Triton Hero is where you dump all that mana into. Thrasios lets you easily draw through your entire deck, enabling a ton of different lines to help achieve victory. Even if you’re not going infinite, Thrasios, Triton Hero is still a useful tool to dump mana into during slow moments to get to your key cards quicker.
You have various ways to ramp in the deck. Badgermole Cub earthbends a land, and lets all your mana dorks tap for an extra green mana. Pair this with both Enduring Vitality and Cryptolith Rite, and this makes all your creatures into mana dorks that can tap for two mana. You also have Birds of Paradise as a traditional mana dork, and The Cabbage Merchant as a way to create mana once your opponents start casting noncreature spells.
The deck also runs a lot of clone effects. Creatures such as Phyrexian Metamorph, Mockingbird, Clever Impersonator, and Flesh Duplicate encompass many of these. These creatures can enter as copies of any creature, not just your own. In some cases, they can copy other permanents, not just creatures. This lets you double up on your own creatures, or gain your own copies of certain permanents your opponents’ control that will help you advance your board state. It offers variety to potentially get a copy of a key card that was removed from play, or potentially to steal someone else’s win condition (such as a Thassa's Oracle.
Tutors
A downside to being in Temur colors is that you don’t get access to many great tutors. Perhaps the most important tutors are Sylvan Scrying and Crop Rotation since these let you fetch out any land card. These are nearly always getting Gaea's Cradle, as this is one of your main win conditions and main ways to make infinite mana. Otherwise, you’re tutoring for a utility land you might need for any given gamestate (such as Talon Gates of Madara, which is a combo piece).
In addition to land tutors, one thing that Green shines in is creature tutors. Your creatures are either utility cards to help you play the Midrange game, or cards that enable your infinite combos. Generally, this involves putting mana into an X cost. Your creature tutors include Invasion of Ikoria, Nature's Rhythm, and Chord of Calling. You do also have Green Sun's Zenith and Finale of Devastation, though these are more often used for closing out games as opposed to tutoring for a creature.
Utility Cards
The best part of running Rog-Thras is having access to a variety of utility cards. This allows you to easily pivot from Aggro to Midrange to Control. The strength of the deck comes from how versatile it is and how easily it can jump between playstyles. There is a toolbox of effects you can pull from to enable a ton of different playstyles.
The deck is in Blue, so of course you’re playing Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study for some draw power. You do want to discount Thrasios, Triton Hero‘s effect to make it easier to go infinite with. Both Training Grounds and Biomancer's Familiar help this, and can make it only cost one mana if you stack the two.
To help make sure your spells resolve, you have Hexing Squelcher to turn off the ability of your spells to be countered. This ensures you win every counter war, since your counterspells can’t actually be countered. The One Ring protects you for a turn cycle while helping you draw a ton of cards if you wind up in the grind game. Wan Shi Tong, Librarian grows in stats and draws you a card whenever opponents search libraries, one of the most common game actions in cEDH.
Growing Rites of Itlimoc is a backup card if you ever lose Gaea's Cradle access. Once you transform it, it acts as a second copy of it. You have access to Underworld Breach to replay and spells that got removed to try and combo off with them again, or, can be used as a win condition with Brain Freeze by constantly re-casting it. To allow for more uses of your permanents, Seedborn Muse lets you untap all your permanents with your opponents to always have mana access up, and allows you to dump mana into Thrasios, Triton Hero every end step to keep your hand full of interaction.
Infinite Mana
Gaea’s Cradle + Oboro Breezecaller + Talon Gates of Madara
Now onto the real meat: how to generate infinite mana. This is how you’re going to win the game, so this is the most vital part of this entire overview. The easiest way to generate infinite mana is going to be with Gaea's Cradle, Oboro Breezecaller, and Talon Gates of Madara. You do need at least six creatures in play, or else Gaea's Cradle won’t make enough mana for the combo. You basically loop the two lands with Oboro Breezecaller, using the mana generated from Gaea's Cradle to pay for the effect of Oboro Breezecaller and the effect to put Talon Gates of Madara onto the battlefield.
Once you have established infinite mana, you can start filtering that mana with
You can view the full step-by-step of the combo here.
Snap + Eternal Witness + Gaea’s Cradle
This combo is a bit more complex. To start, you need Gaea's Cradle to tap for at least five mana, and any land that can tap for a Blue mana. Cast Eternal Witness, making sure to leave a Blue mana and two Green mana floating. You can get back whatever permanents you want with this effect. Then, cast Snap, targeting Eternal Witness and leaving a Green floating. Untap Gaea's Cradle and whatever you used to generate the Blue mana. Repeat this loop, having Eternal Witness return Snap to your hand each time. A benefit of this loop is that it also builds up your storm count to win with Brain Freeze.
Valley Floodcaller + Earthcraft + Basic Land (Not Infinite)
A disclaimer for this is that this line does not generate infinite mana, just close to it. You make more mana the more copies of Valley Floodcaller you have. This can be done with your various clone creatures, which helps to not whiff, as you need to cast noncreature spells for this combo.
You want at least two copies of Valley Floodcaller when using this line. Otherwise, it’s not worth going down this line. To start, cast a noncreature spell, putting both Valley Floodcaller triggers on the stack. In response, tap your basic land, then, activate Earthcraft to untap the basic land. Do this one more time. Then, the first Valley Floodcaller will untap both of Floodcallers, with one trigger of them still on the stack. Do the same thing with your basic land. This nets you a total of four Blue mana. You can keep doing this so long as you have noncreature spells to cast. This is why it’s a good idea to enchant the basic land with Wild Growth to make even more mana with it. Each extra Floodcaller you have, that’s two extra mana you can get. You can dump that mana into Thrasios, Triton Hero to try and draw into more noncreature spells.
Winning The Game
Now that you’ve generated infinite mana, it’s time to move to win the game. Firstly, dump all that infinite mana into Thrasios, Triton Hero. This puts your entire library into your hand, and lands onto the battlefield. Generally, you want Hexing Squelcher on the battlefield and Veil of Summer being cast so that none of your spells can be countered to ensure you can close out games without having to worry about counterspells.
The easiest win condition is with Finale of Devastation. Simply dump infinite mana into its X cost, to make all your creatures have haste and an infinite amount of power. You can use the aforementioned Talon Gates of Madara loop with infinite mana to phase out all your opponents’ battlefields so there aren’t any blockers.
Another win condition involves Faerie Mastermind and Green Sun's Zenith. With your infinite mana, simply activate
The final win condition is with Brain Freeze. You can generate an infinite storm count with the Eternal Witness loop discussed earlier while generating infinite mana. Or, you can keep recasting it with Underworld Breach with your graveyard full to mill all your opponents out of the game.
In Conclusion
For competitive Temur, Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh and Thrasios, Triton Hero is the best choice. You can make a ton of mana and have a win condition just sitting in your command zone. The deck in incredibly versatile and adaptable to any situation. It can win the game very quickly, or grind it out with counterspells.
The benefit of these partner commanders is that even though you’re missing out on the strength of black, you can take advantage of two of the best commanders in all of CEDH. They’re meta for a reason, and played in so many different pairings. For fans of Temur, they’re the best choice if you want a competitive Temur deck that’s both fun and viable in the hyper-competitive cEDH format.
Want to check out another cEDH deck? Then our Preston, the Vanisher cEDH deck guide will give you another option if you want to try your hand at something off-meta.
