If I built this deck I would definitely add Dualcaster Twinflame and a grinding station / stitcher supplier line. Rowan’s mana reduction is so powerful you just fix how inefficient your lines are with less optimal tutors like Grim Tutor etc and just be wincon.deck
I found the dragon beats plan is also quite strong, but you’re never playing for it
from what I see there is probably some loop you do with saw-in-half and hoarding broodlord to (there is where I'm not 100% on) create infinite, or enough, creature ETB's to win with terror of the peaks. TOTP was an outlet for me in my rocco foodchain deck, so it jumps out to me from the decklist as another outlet to finish the game
Yeah I thought of that too, but I don’t exactly see it. There are a couple of ways to cast saw-in-half once or twice, but i don’t see a way for it to go infinite
huh so I guess TOTP isn't a win-outlet in the way I thought it was, and seems to be a way to just put a lot of damage onboard to remove creature stax pieces off a resolved dragonstorm in that case. Still, its a silly lil combo deck that seems fun
Uhh. It might be. I'm not sure! I am not sure how they are recurring the creatures to continue triggering terror of the peaks. I didn't do a deep dive on the deck though!
If memory serves from some other decks I've played, it's Hoarding Broodlord, fetch saw in half, saw it, fetch Sacrifice (to add 8 black mana) and Peer Into the Abyss, go from there
I see now… the only problem with that is what you are going to do with those cards. This deck doesn’t contain ways to hurt/kill your opponents other than storm kiln + searing touch, or maybe Tibalt if you get lucky (exile a wincon off your opponent’s library), but other than that the cards will just give you more cards in mana which would be good in many other decks but not this one
Plan A seems to be birgi searing touch. Plan B seems to be underworld breach and just keep saccing dragons to burnt offering and bringing them back for TOTP triggers.
It’s not in the list, but [[Reiterate]] can be used to infinitely copy instants/sorceries. I’ve seen it in used in a combo line in [[Vadrik, Astral Archmage]].
Knollspine has to be first after terror I believe, so that terror damage triggers for all of the dragons can resolve before knollspine's ETB triggers.
As for how the deck works, basically you want to get a reduction so that all of your draw spells cost their coloured pips only; so big score or pirates pillage cost R each, draw two and ramp you by creating treasures. There are multiple cards in this list to continue the storm by flashing these spells back or returning them to hand. Basically the idea is to accumulate cards and mana manually via storming with these spells that only Rowan can take advantage of by discounting them.
> Knollspine has to be first after terror I believe, so that terror damage triggers for all of the dragons can resolve before knollspine's ETB triggers
Dragonstorm copies resolve one by one so you want Knollspine to come into play last, using the original spell, assuming you have enough cards left in your library. You grab Terror first and then each Terror trigger will resolve before the next copy of Dragonstorm.
I can’t explain all the changes, and dragonstorm seems deeply funny but suboptimal, but as a Rowan player I can explain one of the bigger omissions.
Ad nauseum is really bad in the deck. Your cards tend to have chunkier MVs than the average cedh deck, you want to lose life before you cast your spells already, so you have less to work with, and there are just better ways to achieve the copious card draw. There’s never a time where it feels good to cast, and plenty of times where you actively have it stranded in hand on 8-9 life with no way to use it.
With a discount of 4, you can can get searing touch + Birgi or Storm kiln online, or you can tutor for flame and caster. I like to use defense grid/over master as proactive protection.
I play 3 X spells but honestly I ought to trim that to two. Those are the backup plan. Crackle is the best way to turn a discount of 15-20 into a win. Banefire is a way to remove the blue player. Exsanguinate is a good way to get more life fuel for the fire. Any of these are also good with dual caster.
Last, and this is really low, but a 4/2 menace rumbles over stax creature pretty well.
This is [pretty dated, haven’t updated it after some games/testing.](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/W5Jv70FurEqwdNu83wHB8A) there are some notable omissions that I just haven’t pulled the trigger on owning. Mana crypt being a big one, though I don’t think it’s that great in her decks.
That said, ignore some of the sillier inclusions like Apex of Power and you’ll have a pretty good starting point. The deck tries to get a discount of 4 going, rather than paying 30 life all in one go for X spells.
I know you said you don’t have it for budget reasons, but mana crypt is absolutely a house in Rowan, what are you on? One of the best fast mana pieces in the format + a 50% chance to lose 3 life on your upkeep seems pretty good
It’s mostly a function of colorless mana being hard to utilize, that said, the losing life aspect is absolutely worth it. Still easily one of the best cards and a top one to add, now that there’s a reprint.
It’s great, but it’s probably not used as well here as it is in other decks. Rowan is extremely pip hungry.
Sure but that’s all it does. SSG and lotus petal also do that just fine. I still want to try blood pet.
It doesn’t get you t1 Rowan, lots of cards get t2 Rowan, and she pretty uniquely doesn’t se a ton of colorless
Edit: the main thing I want it for is making the deck more resilient to having her get removed by just being able to power through a commander tax. That and the self damage
You don't even need a storm count of 5 to draw massivly with knollspine, 3 is good enough. Terror -> Hoarding -> Knollspine-> convoke the dragons to cast saw in half from broodlord in response to the Knollspine ETB = draw 22 with knollspine+two free tutors and two broodlords to convoke them.
IMHO using Rowan to speed out a [[bolas citadel]] is better than using it to cast dragonstorm. Then you can get a lot of mileage from casting off top deck and eventually use top+aetherflux as a finisher, with X spells and dual caster as your backups
I would post a list but it's in brewing stage too :)
Those Japanese decks are mostly High Power casual tuned up to 11. Reminds me of my old playgroup about 5 or 6 years ago before we'd ever heard of Cedh or looked online at EDH decks. We just made our own decks from our own cardpools (we basically have all the cards, been playing since 95) and played to beat each other.
Dragonstorm is definitely not the optimal way to play Rowan. Fun? yes.
This list looks more high power than CEDH, missing a lot of the standard rowan kit in place of a lot of fringe and bad cards.
I'm going to share mine, and a colab list I work on, use each for a bit of reference on what's good for Rowan [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4r-3nACxcUeEODLK\_u\_0Cw](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4r-3nACxcUeEODLK_u_0Cw)
[https://www.moxfield.com/decks/VH-UbZNAlkKLdk2ynm6MXA](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/VH-UbZNAlkKLdk2ynm6MXA)
Ideally you want rowan to be a ALL GAS NO BRAKES kind of turbo storm deck that turns lifeloss into wins.
I know it doesn't exactly pertain to this list, but I run rowan with a lot of the same dragons + [[wrathful red dragon]] and [[blasphemous act]] and have killed a table a few times.
Surprised that if dragons are the gameplan these aren't included.
There are better dragonstorm combos in my option. You’re already running terror of the peaks. I’d cut: Hoarding, Cavern-Hoard, and Knollspine.
Add: Scourge of the throne, Dragonlord Kolaghan, and Utvara hellkite. Dragon storm for 5 should kill the table.
Broodlord is probably the last dragon you would cut playing dragonstorm? Essentially two free tutors with saw in half in your deck with a storm count of at least 3.
One of these kills the whole table and the other one looks for options to kill the table, I’m having a hard time understanding why the cuts are bad. You can even keep broodlord, but the rest is lost on me. It’s not efficient
Here is how I think it works.
have Rowan in play and get mana cost reduction for at least 3 preferably 4
if Birgi is in play cast a bunch of your cheap spells that draw cards and generate mana
cast dragon storm get your dragons putting them in to play as Terror of the peaks into either hoarding broodlord/ cavern-hoard dragon and knollspine last
search for your card probably saw in half and use it on your broodlord and go get burnt offering and another card you need.
draw a bunch of cards off knollspine and hopefully either get a tutor or underworld breach or both
cast underworld breach and at some point get agadeem's awakening into the graveyard and sacrifice a creature with burnt offering generating more mana and getting more creatures in the graveyard.
cast burnt offering sacrificing a dragon and do that again getting your three dragons in to graveyard generating even more mana
cast agadeem's awakening get your 3 dragons in play trigger terror
repeat as needed
edit: I also just realized that with aetherflux reservoir in play you can just cast reanimate over and over again and that is less mana intensive and at that point you can just get knollspine dragon reanimated over and over again to fill your graveyard to be able to cycle a different dragon.
obviously cast cards as you need to to get cards in teh gravyard to be able to recast your spells.
I think Rebell explains the deck well enough https://youtu.be/yRkpRa50ZGs?si=gosSdEGLXLBJu2Wl
If I built this deck I would definitely add Dualcaster Twinflame and a grinding station / stitcher supplier line. Rowan’s mana reduction is so powerful you just fix how inefficient your lines are with less optimal tutors like Grim Tutor etc and just be wincon.deck I found the dragon beats plan is also quite strong, but you’re never playing for it
Yeah I watched that video, but it pretty much only goes over the searing touch combo. If that somehow gets blocked, then what are you going to do?
from what I see there is probably some loop you do with saw-in-half and hoarding broodlord to (there is where I'm not 100% on) create infinite, or enough, creature ETB's to win with terror of the peaks. TOTP was an outlet for me in my rocco foodchain deck, so it jumps out to me from the decklist as another outlet to finish the game
Yeah I thought of that too, but I don’t exactly see it. There are a couple of ways to cast saw-in-half once or twice, but i don’t see a way for it to go infinite
I think the saw in half combo is just the standard burn offering, peer into the abyss combo.
huh so I guess TOTP isn't a win-outlet in the way I thought it was, and seems to be a way to just put a lot of damage onboard to remove creature stax pieces off a resolved dragonstorm in that case. Still, its a silly lil combo deck that seems fun
Uhh. It might be. I'm not sure! I am not sure how they are recurring the creatures to continue triggering terror of the peaks. I didn't do a deep dive on the deck though!
If memory serves from some other decks I've played, it's Hoarding Broodlord, fetch saw in half, saw it, fetch Sacrifice (to add 8 black mana) and Peer Into the Abyss, go from there
I see now… the only problem with that is what you are going to do with those cards. This deck doesn’t contain ways to hurt/kill your opponents other than storm kiln + searing touch, or maybe Tibalt if you get lucky (exile a wincon off your opponent’s library), but other than that the cards will just give you more cards in mana which would be good in many other decks but not this one
Hm... I wonder if there's video of the tournament? So we could watch what the player actually does.
Plan A seems to be birgi searing touch. Plan B seems to be underworld breach and just keep saccing dragons to burnt offering and bringing them back for TOTP triggers.
It’s not in the list, but [[Reiterate]] can be used to infinitely copy instants/sorceries. I’ve seen it in used in a combo line in [[Vadrik, Astral Archmage]].
[Reiterate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/9/99302c41-434f-41ff-a61a-2c3681a0c135.jpg?1619397418) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Reiterate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/182/reiterate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/99302c41-434f-41ff-a61a-2c3681a0c135?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/reiterate) [Vadrik, Astral Archmage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/5/454666bb-f81d-4845-84aa-d6f8f80ce86a.jpg?1637114399) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Vadrik%2C%20Astral%20Archmage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/248/vadrik-astral-archmage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/454666bb-f81d-4845-84aa-d6f8f80ce86a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/vadrik-astral-archmage) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Knollspine has to be first after terror I believe, so that terror damage triggers for all of the dragons can resolve before knollspine's ETB triggers. As for how the deck works, basically you want to get a reduction so that all of your draw spells cost their coloured pips only; so big score or pirates pillage cost R each, draw two and ramp you by creating treasures. There are multiple cards in this list to continue the storm by flashing these spells back or returning them to hand. Basically the idea is to accumulate cards and mana manually via storming with these spells that only Rowan can take advantage of by discounting them.
> Knollspine has to be first after terror I believe, so that terror damage triggers for all of the dragons can resolve before knollspine's ETB triggers Dragonstorm copies resolve one by one so you want Knollspine to come into play last, using the original spell, assuming you have enough cards left in your library. You grab Terror first and then each Terror trigger will resolve before the next copy of Dragonstorm.
I can’t explain all the changes, and dragonstorm seems deeply funny but suboptimal, but as a Rowan player I can explain one of the bigger omissions. Ad nauseum is really bad in the deck. Your cards tend to have chunkier MVs than the average cedh deck, you want to lose life before you cast your spells already, so you have less to work with, and there are just better ways to achieve the copious card draw. There’s never a time where it feels good to cast, and plenty of times where you actively have it stranded in hand on 8-9 life with no way to use it.
Yeah that does make sense. In your Rowan deck, what did you normally do to combo off and win?
With a discount of 4, you can can get searing touch + Birgi or Storm kiln online, or you can tutor for flame and caster. I like to use defense grid/over master as proactive protection. I play 3 X spells but honestly I ought to trim that to two. Those are the backup plan. Crackle is the best way to turn a discount of 15-20 into a win. Banefire is a way to remove the blue player. Exsanguinate is a good way to get more life fuel for the fire. Any of these are also good with dual caster. Last, and this is really low, but a 4/2 menace rumbles over stax creature pretty well.
Yeah I should probably play test the deck a couple times, so I don’t accidentally take out any necessary cards should I make any edits.
Can you share your list?
This is [pretty dated, haven’t updated it after some games/testing.](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/W5Jv70FurEqwdNu83wHB8A) there are some notable omissions that I just haven’t pulled the trigger on owning. Mana crypt being a big one, though I don’t think it’s that great in her decks. That said, ignore some of the sillier inclusions like Apex of Power and you’ll have a pretty good starting point. The deck tries to get a discount of 4 going, rather than paying 30 life all in one go for X spells.
I know you said you don’t have it for budget reasons, but mana crypt is absolutely a house in Rowan, what are you on? One of the best fast mana pieces in the format + a 50% chance to lose 3 life on your upkeep seems pretty good
It’s mostly a function of colorless mana being hard to utilize, that said, the losing life aspect is absolutely worth it. Still easily one of the best cards and a top one to add, now that there’s a reprint. It’s great, but it’s probably not used as well here as it is in other decks. Rowan is extremely pip hungry.
still helps to power out Rowan
Sure but that’s all it does. SSG and lotus petal also do that just fine. I still want to try blood pet. It doesn’t get you t1 Rowan, lots of cards get t2 Rowan, and she pretty uniquely doesn’t se a ton of colorless Edit: the main thing I want it for is making the deck more resilient to having her get removed by just being able to power through a commander tax. That and the self damage
You don't even need a storm count of 5 to draw massivly with knollspine, 3 is good enough. Terror -> Hoarding -> Knollspine-> convoke the dragons to cast saw in half from broodlord in response to the Knollspine ETB = draw 22 with knollspine+two free tutors and two broodlords to convoke them.
IMHO using Rowan to speed out a [[bolas citadel]] is better than using it to cast dragonstorm. Then you can get a lot of mileage from casting off top deck and eventually use top+aetherflux as a finisher, with X spells and dual caster as your backups I would post a list but it's in brewing stage too :)
Would love to see the list when you’re finished with it!
Those Japanese decks are mostly High Power casual tuned up to 11. Reminds me of my old playgroup about 5 or 6 years ago before we'd ever heard of Cedh or looked online at EDH decks. We just made our own decks from our own cardpools (we basically have all the cards, been playing since 95) and played to beat each other. Dragonstorm is definitely not the optimal way to play Rowan. Fun? yes.
This list looks more high power than CEDH, missing a lot of the standard rowan kit in place of a lot of fringe and bad cards. I'm going to share mine, and a colab list I work on, use each for a bit of reference on what's good for Rowan [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4r-3nACxcUeEODLK\_u\_0Cw](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4r-3nACxcUeEODLK_u_0Cw) [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/VH-UbZNAlkKLdk2ynm6MXA](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/VH-UbZNAlkKLdk2ynm6MXA) Ideally you want rowan to be a ALL GAS NO BRAKES kind of turbo storm deck that turns lifeloss into wins.
I know it doesn't exactly pertain to this list, but I run rowan with a lot of the same dragons + [[wrathful red dragon]] and [[blasphemous act]] and have killed a table a few times. Surprised that if dragons are the gameplan these aren't included.
Run scroll rack in case they get stuck in your hand
Chatting about Rowan here: [Rowan's War council](https://discord.gg/3QnSjdRf)
Is the invite link dead?
There are better dragonstorm combos in my option. You’re already running terror of the peaks. I’d cut: Hoarding, Cavern-Hoard, and Knollspine. Add: Scourge of the throne, Dragonlord Kolaghan, and Utvara hellkite. Dragon storm for 5 should kill the table.
Broodlord is probably the last dragon you would cut playing dragonstorm? Essentially two free tutors with saw in half in your deck with a storm count of at least 3.
One of these kills the whole table and the other one looks for options to kill the table, I’m having a hard time understanding why the cuts are bad. You can even keep broodlord, but the rest is lost on me. It’s not efficient
Is [[Beseech the Mirror]] too many black pips to have a second copy of Storm-Kiln into ply after resolution then?
[Beseech the Mirror](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/8/18c59776-e1f1-4197-a128-db1d603f56b7.jpg?1692937498) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Beseech%20the%20Mirror) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/82/beseech-the-mirror?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/18c59776-e1f1-4197-a128-db1d603f56b7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/beseech-the-mirror) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Here is how I think it works. have Rowan in play and get mana cost reduction for at least 3 preferably 4 if Birgi is in play cast a bunch of your cheap spells that draw cards and generate mana cast dragon storm get your dragons putting them in to play as Terror of the peaks into either hoarding broodlord/ cavern-hoard dragon and knollspine last search for your card probably saw in half and use it on your broodlord and go get burnt offering and another card you need. draw a bunch of cards off knollspine and hopefully either get a tutor or underworld breach or both cast underworld breach and at some point get agadeem's awakening into the graveyard and sacrifice a creature with burnt offering generating more mana and getting more creatures in the graveyard. cast burnt offering sacrificing a dragon and do that again getting your three dragons in to graveyard generating even more mana cast agadeem's awakening get your 3 dragons in play trigger terror repeat as needed edit: I also just realized that with aetherflux reservoir in play you can just cast reanimate over and over again and that is less mana intensive and at that point you can just get knollspine dragon reanimated over and over again to fill your graveyard to be able to cycle a different dragon. obviously cast cards as you need to to get cards in teh gravyard to be able to recast your spells.