Tishana Tokens

Traffic was insane tonight so I decided to brew a Tishana, Voice of Thunder deck for standard while driving. She’s the most difficult legend to cast from Ixalan, requiring 7 mana to bring down. The upside though is that you have no maximum hand size which is relevant to her ability of drawing you cards equal to the number of creatures you control.

  

Tishana resembles an old Simic legend known as Prime Speaker Zegana. Though Prime Speaker Zegana prefers to have one huge dude and to draw more cards, Tishana prefers a merrier crowd and draws you cards based on how huge the party is.

Unlike the BW and Abzan tokens deck that uses Hidden Stockpile and Anointed Procession, I will stick with Tishana’s roots and use merfolks to generate tokens thanks to Deeproot Waters. Never underestimate the hexproof that these’s 1/1s have. They cannot be disabled by Earthshaker Khenras and Ahn-Crop Crashers which can be relevant against aggressive Ramunap decks.

Playing green instead of black or white also gives us access to Growing Rites of Itlimoc, which received all the raves as the new “Gaea’s Cradle”. It’s actually a solid card because it helps us dig for creatures and find Tishana, and once we get to flip it we start generating a ridiculous amount of mana.

Going wide is only as good as your ability to block profitably and get damage through. Thanks to Herald of Secret Streams’s ability, we can effectively use Ridgescale Tusker to give all our dudes +1/+1 and make them unblockable.

Ridgescale Tusker is actually better here than Verdurous Gearhulk because it gives everybody else a +1/+1 counter, regardless how many creatures you have. Verdurous Gearhulk is limited to 4 targets and is susceptible to Abrade and Appetite for the Unnatural.

Going back to Growing Rites of Itlimoc, what do we do with large amounts of mana apart from casting Tishana? Well why don’t we cast Nissa, Steward of Elements with 20 loyalty counters and start playing every single card from the top of your deck? Or why not play a 10/10 Walking Ballista to shoot down anything down including your opponent?!

Worth mentioning is that Nissa, Steward of Elements is my favorite planeswalker because the combination of her ability is oozing with synergy and her ultimate, though not backbreaking, can steal some games if the opponent is not careful and does not leave thopters behind to block.

Enough talk, let’s take a look at my Tishana Tokens deck!

Artifact & Enchantments: 7

4 Deeproot Waters
3 Growing Rites of Itlimoc

Spells: 2

2 Reason // Believe

Planeswalker: 2

2 Nissa, Steward of Elements

Creatures: 26

4 Walking Ballista
4 Merfolk Branchwalker
4 River Sneak
3 Kopala, Warden of Waves
4 Vineshaper Mystic
2 Herald of Secret Streams
3 Ridgescale Tusker
2 Tishana, Voice of Thunder

Lands: 23

4 Glacial Fortress
4 Botanical Sanctum
2 Irrigated Farmland
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Island
4 Forest
1 Plains

Sideboard: 15

4 Spell Pierce
3 Negate
3 Sunscourge Champion
3 Dusk // Dawn
2 Cast Out

A surprise white splash on the lands should not slow us down so much in exchange for a more diverse sideboard to beat decks that run bigger creatures. Dusk // Dawn is great in our deck because it can resurrect majority of our creatures including Tishana, while killing almost everything else.

Cast Out is our catch-all sideboard against artifacts, enchantments or planeswalkers. We will also run a light counter suite specifically against sweepers. Spell Pierce helps us early against Fatal Pushes, Shocks or Sweltering Suns, while Negate is there to catch Settle the Wreckage, Fumigate and Hour of Devastation.

Sunscourge Chamption is our sideboard against Ramunap Red, its a great 2/3 body that gains us 2 life the first time, and a whopping 4 life when eternalized. It’s also another creature we can bring back with Dawn.

That’s it for now, feel free to test drive this brew and let me know what you think by leaving a comment below!

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Cheers,

Vanson