Yasharn, Implacable Earth - How They Brew It
Michael CelaniJune 27, 2025
On this How They Brew It, Michael takes a group of unsuspecting adventurers into the land of Yasharn, Implacable Earth. Will they survive?
Yasharn, Implacable Earth | Art by G-host Lee
Peace ooooout, everyone! I'm Michael Celani, and I'm a Level 4 Plant Whisperer, which means I've become one with the mushrooms. You're here 'cause your company has paid us ten thousand dollars to take you into the wilderness, far away from civilization, so that you can de-stress and reconnect with nature.
Righteous! Now, let's all join hands and sing a Peter, Paul, and Mary song to cultivate our inner dandelion tulip blossom carnation spirits.
Whoa. Check it out, right in front of us! It's Yasharn, Implacable Earth! When this elemental oinker charges onto the field, he finds you a whole Plains and a whole Forest. That's some pig!
The Drawing Boar'd
Now, I know what you're worried about. Michael finally went off the deep end and built a stax list. But that's where you're wrong! I went off the deep end and built a stax list four years ago!
Naw, this ain't that. Some losers think that just 'cause Yasharn doesn't like blood rituals, he wants to vibe other sorts of authority-swinging, free-spirit-clamping spooks like Aven Mindcensor and Archon of Valor's Reach. But this pig ain't no cop; they're free spirit, and all they want is to give you more Plainses and Foresties.
Pictured: Plainses and Foresties
So let's help it out! We're gonna take Yasharn on a journey to the center of the spiritual universe, because every blink spell we send their way gets us more and more land cards in hand.
You might think that building a blink deck around the Boar is a waste of a command zone slot, but being on a forced nature retreat is all about shifting your perspective.
Flickering Yasharn is much like flickering Cloudblazer, but instead of drawing two random cards, we're always guaranteed two basic lands. That gives us a lot of consistency early on, because as long as we can cast Yasharn in the first place, we're getting those Forests — and let me tell ya, you can reach great highs with a fistful of trees.
Not only can we play those basic lands, we can also use them like regular cards that you can, like, throw away and stuff. Make tokens, draw cards, ramp to absurd degrees — now that's some pig thinking.
You Left Your Blinker On
But first thing's first: we have to find out who and what's sending Yasharn on their spiritual journey. Unlike many blink decks, which rely on spells that return their target instantly, we're out here in the wilderness to slow down.
We're focusing primarily on spells that return our creatures from exile at the next end step. Yasharn finds two lands every time they enter, so we're not in a rush to get their trigger multiple times in a single turn; in fact, that's usually bad, because we'd end up having to discard our excess lands with no payoff.
No, we want to slow down, and use spells that return from exile at the next end step. Slowing down and de-stressing comes with some major health benefits. For one, slow flickers let us respond to board wipes, because our creature won't be on the field by the time it resolves. Even better, plenty of slow flickers can target multiple creatures at once, so we can save an entire army with just one spell.
We can also flip the script and combine a board-wide blink with our own board wipe to take control of the game. Nothing demoralizes a group of try-hards like the ol' one-two Eerie Interlude / Farewell.
That's not to say that there's no room for a fast blink or two. It's almost impossible to justify cutting Ephemerate in any blink deck, since it gives us twice the spell per spell, and Emiel the Blessed is a fantastic payoff for all the mana we'll eventually have. Gilraen, Dúnedain Protector is the best of both worlds, and if we decide to slow down, we'll be rewarded with some extra counters.
A Big Pig Jamboree
It's not just Yasharn who's out here searching for spiritual enlightenment. There's tons of nature-teers around that are just like us, and they're going through their own quest for inner peace and also meatball sandwiches.
One thing you learn out here in nature is to stop focusing on yourself, and start focusing on the group. If you focus on only yourself when you're out in nature, you get eaten by bears.
Many blink deckbuilders are tempted to include creatures like Wall of Omens which draw you cards when they enter, because if you blink them, then you get to draw more cards. This is fine, but they don't do much other than draw you cards.
Instead, we're filling our deck with permanents like Welcoming Vampire and Enduring Innocence. Most creatures with great enters triggers are weak in combat to compensate, and that means they're often two power or less — exactly what Mentor of the Meek is looking for. We're effectively stapling on "draw a card" to the first creature we blink every turn with this strategy.
That won't help with Yasharn, of course; they bench too much. That's why we're including catch-alls like Soul of the Harvest, as well — to scoop up those corner cases, while still working on the smaller creatures. If we set up our engines well, we can use a blink to get a great trigger like Eternal Witness alongside two extra cards for our trouble.
Speaking of Eternal Witness, they thrive in an environment of mass blinks. They're able to recur the spell that blinked them, so we can cast our copy of Lae'zel's Acrobatics to our heart's content.
And, of course, we're going to leverage that blink to knock out some artifacts and enchantments, too. If you play lots of artifacts and enchantments out in nature, you get eaten by bears.
Let the Landfall When It Crumbles
But let's get real; we have this big, majestic oinker right in front of us, and we've got in the headspace to be one with nature. Let's get to work on using all those basic lands, shall we?
The plan: cast creatures that tap to put a land from our hand onto the battlefield. Extra land plays are great, but creatures like Llanowar Scout have a power that extra land plays don't: they let us put down lands at instant speed.
That'll trigger our Landfall permanents to create tokens, which are conveniently all two power or less. That lets us trigger our Welcoming Vampire and Enduring Innocence on multiple turns in the turn cycle, drawing us more cards.
Add in Drumbellower to untap all those creatures, and we can easily play four lands when it's not even our turn.
This is also the only deck ever made in the history of Magic that can realistically flip Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant. Having all our basic lands tap for five is going to make that Genesis Wave absolutely biblical in size.
They're Still Cards
We can absolutely play as many lands as possible to overwhelm our opponents with tokens, but a basic in the hand is worth two on the battlefield. They may be simple, but each Forest and Plains is a fully-fledged card in its own right. You can stack 'em, shuffle 'em, and, most crucially for our purposes, you can discard 'em.
Take a look at Ayula's Influence, a card that eats people with Bears. Discard one of those juicy basic lands that the Boar fetched and we get a free creature token — a free creature token that, conveniently, has only two power and can be generated at instant speed.
A nature ritual will put our token production on either hunny or cocaine, whichever bear-associated-substance punchline is funnier. If we manage to get Rite of Harmony and its flashback off in a single turn while Ayula's Influence is on the field, our opponents will have to pray we hit a dry pocket while we summon ursine after ursine.
If any of our stuff actually managed to die despite our abundance of blink effects, then Six will pick 'em back up for the itty-bitty additional cost of a land card from our hand. Wonder where we'd get one of those?
And if, for some reason, we don't need ten Plains in our hand? Don't worry, I've gotchu: Scroll Rack 'em away for real cards, then blink Yasharn to shuffle them all away. Brainstorm into a fetchland has nothing on this.
The Hills Are Alive
Oh man, I was not ready to be a Level 4 Tree Whisperer. I should not have become one with those mushrooms. It's feeling like the wilderness out here is alive, man, and I don't mean that in the literal sense of it being covered with living creatures, I mean like, rocks are moving, man. It's blowing my mind.
That's right, it's an old-fashioned How They Brew It turnabout, because I buried the lede that all this is because we're animating our lands. All of our lands. Thanks to spells like Sylvan Awakening, we can make all our lands creatures for a turn. Think about what we've set up so far, and the value immediately becomes clear.
Our mass blink spells now affect all our lands in addition to any creatures we want to reuse, so we're getting six or seven landfall triggers for free on top of our original payout. That's quite the score.
Did you know Natural Affinity affects all lands, not just our own? Tap all our lands, animate them, blink them out of existence, and then say Farewell to everyone else's creatures, including those land creatures we so graciously gave them.
Some of our landfall payoffs are board-wide buffs, like Felidar Retreat. Even without the blink, we can wipe the board to clear the field of blockers only to sucker punch our opponent with an entwined Rude Awakening into a land drop.
This all might sound like a lot of mana to pull off, but remember: we've been playing two or three lands per turn since the start of the game, and we've been drawing the cards to get our hand in the perfect state.
Or we could just cover 'em in bugs; I dunno, I'm not your dad.
Nature, Retreat
Well, it's been three weeks, and some of you haven't made it back. I told y'all, you have to use the buddy system or you get eaten by bears! Or maybe it was lions that eat you if you lose your buddy. I dunno, man, just make sure you don't piss off the hippos. Those guys are scary.
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