Chulane is a powerful commander that generates tons of value. After a couple of turns with him on the board, you will have so many creatures and lands on the battlefield, you won’t even know what to do with it all.
The first things I needed to find were some mana dorks to get Chulane out early. This form of ramp will continue to generate value later on since they count as casting a creature spell. The cheaper we can go on these the better, since later on we will want to drop as many creatures onto the board in a turn as possible. Cards like Birds of Paradise and Avacyn’s Pilgrim go even further and fix our mana.
The next thing I wanted to add was plenty of cantrips. Drawing plenty of cards will ensure that we often have lands to place onto the battlefield with Chulane’s ability. Just like the mana dorks, they’re best if we can play them on the cheap. Two mana is the best we can do for the most part, go much higher and there will be a serious slowdown on our ramp/draw fiesta. Whitemane lion is a particularly exciting inclusion, letting us use Chulane’s draw/ramp ability as often as we like for only two mana!
Now that we have plenty of cards, lets get greedy and get even more. You can never have enough lands in your hand to put onto the battlefield. Most of these are aimed at taking advantage of our creature heavy deck. If you get a card draw engine like Guardian Project down along with Teferi’s Ageless insight, you are already drawing 4 cards every time you play a creature! Combined with the mana we get from land drops as well as a possible Lotus Cobra, this can get out of hand real fast. In a good way.
Since we’re generating so much value every time we cast a creature spell, I then needed spells that were either cheap to cast, or would make my other creatures cheaper, thus adding to the endless value! Anything that refunds your mana spent such as Peregrine Drake, Cloud of Faeries, or even Memnite are at the very least a free creature with Chulane on the board, but most likely you will be getting even more value out of them.
Okay, so we have all the creatures and lands in the world, big whoop. Now let’s put some real power in here! These cards are here to take advantage of our huge mass of creatures and lands coming onto the board. We can turn our army into an unstoppable horde with boosts like Cathar’s Crusade and Mirror Entity, or simply make them hard to block with Champion of Lambholt. Rampaging Baloths and Primeval Bounty will quickly generate a daunting boardstate, and give us more creatures to pump up. The only thing to be mindful of here is cramming too many payoffs into the deck. Adding a moderate selection of these will keep our deck fast and synergistic, while still dumping out loads of value. Don’t forget that we have plenty of card draw to find them!
We’ll want to protect our commander to ensure our success. Giver and mother of runes are great because they provide commander protection while being very cheap to cast, but it’ll take it’ll take a either a counterspell or some indestructibility to protect our entire board. Mystic Snake and Frilled Mystic have the added bonus of being a counterspell that procs Chulane’s draw ability!
These cards fit in with our creature-heavy deck, or are just generally good to have. Deafening Silence will be absolutely brutal to any creature-light deck, but will almost never effect us. Collector Ouphe can also slow down our opponents as well as Gaddock Teeg. However, keep in mind which enchantments you are playing, as Gaddock Teeg can be our own detriment as well.
And of course, you can’t run a three color deck without some mana fixing lands. Keep in mind that modal double-faced cards only count as their first side while in your hand, so cards like Sejiri Shelter have to be played as a land with your normal land drop.
That about wraps it up for our favorite cards to play in EDH with Chulane! We’re currently working on a budget version of this deck to include in our Custom EDH Decks collection for sale, so check back for that soon!
