Ishkanah Tribal

Like many who first saw Ishkanah, Grafwidow spoiled in Eldritch Moon, I thought this would not only be a challenging general to build around, but also a way to finally make a super-casual deck that I can bring out when I play with newbies. Some stipulations I gave myself include building only with 8th edition and newer cards, essentially making it modern legal (and original supplemental cards like Command Tower) as well as then forcing myself to run nearly every spider from those sets despite how terrible they are.

So, what do you do with thirty-odd crappy creatures? Aside from the few that are marginally playable (Silklash Spider won me a sixty-man pod in the Onslaught prerelease back in the day in Minneapolis) and the few that might drop into play early on the curve, like Gloomwidow, the rest belong in the trash; or, in this case, the graveyard!

Enter Spider Spawning...

As I said before, the spiders themselves are terrible. The fewer in the opening hand the better. The ideal sequence would be something like this:

Turn one: Forest (Vessel of Nascency if you have it or Ash Barrens)
Turn two: Swamp, activate Vessel of Nascency (hopefully hit an artifact land to almost assure delirium. Otherwise cast one of the many other graveyard-filling sorcery/instants like Grisly Salvage or Mulch, etc.)
Turn three: land, Scout the Borders, etc. to add more spiders to the yard.
Turn four: land, Parallel Lives (the ideal play here, though obviously situational)
Turn five: land, Ishkanah, Grafwidow (with delirium)
Turn six: land, Spider Spawning
Turn seven: Ishkanah, Grafwidow's activated ability is online! (Don't worry about attacking unless you've got Coat of Arms or Beastmaster Ascension in play, just activate Ishkanah ftw!)

Alternative win con: Should Spider Spawning be insufficient, or the creatures removed from the yard, and assuming the rest of the yard is intact, Worm Harvest can create a similar army of creepy crawlies that also get pumped by Coat of Arms and other pumps. Dakmor Salvage is especially potent with this sorcery.

Post Script: Did you know there are spiders in the art on Primal Vigor!?

• EDH
• Commander
• Tribal
• spiders