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Doran, the Siege Tower

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Doran, the Siege Tower

At a glance

  • Commander: Doran, the Siege Tower
  • Colors: Abzan
  • Archetype: Abzan toughness-matters defensive control
  • Power tier: mid

Cards

The commander (real printed text)

Each creature assigns combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power.

That is the whole card. Read it carefully: Doran changes how creatures assign combat damage (toughness instead of power). He does not remove Defender, and he does not change power. So a 0/6 Wall of Tanglecord under Doran is still a creature that literally cannot attack — “Defender” means “can’t attack,” full stop, and Doran does nothing about that. The earlier build of this deck was built on a fatal misread that “walls swing for their toughness.” They don’t. They can’t.

What Doran actually does for us: he is a 5-toughness blocker that swings for 5 when he attacks, and he makes any non-Defender high-toughness body hit for its toughness (e.g. our 2/4 reach bodies trade up in combat). He is great defensive glue — but he is not an Overrun, and the walls are walls. This deck is therefore built honestly: a defensive wall fortress that wins by draining life and grinding the board with edicts, with Doran himself as the lone meaningful attacker.

Gameplan

  1. Early: drop cheap walls and defender mana-dorks (Wall of Roots, Overgrown Battlement, Axebane Guardian, Vine Trellis, Saruli Caretaker) to ramp toward Doran while building a board nothing can profitably attack through. The dorks scale off our Defender count, so the wall shell is the ramp.
  2. Mid: resolve Doran as a 2/5 anchor. He blocks everything and chips for 5 when there’s an opening. Meanwhile the drain engines come online — they ignore the board entirely and win from a stall.
  3. Late / inevitability: Crypt Rats is the real finisher — : deal X to each creature and each player`, fed with black mana, it doubles as a board wipe of opposing aggro AND a direct life-loss kill across the table. Back it with the repeatable drains (Archers’ Parapet, Creeping Bloodsucker, Vampire Neonate, Engine Rat) and the edict package strips the few threats walls can’t block (hexproof, evasion, single fat attackers).

Why these pieces (the honest engine)

  • Drain inevitability — the real win condition. Crypt Rats (X to all + all players), Archers’ Parapet (: each opp loses 1), Vampire Neonate (,: drain 1), Engine Rat (: each opp loses 2), Creeping Bloodsucker (upkeep drain), Cuombajj Witches / Skeleton Archer / Hired Torturer (pings), plus ETB drains Cauldron Familiar / Malakir Blood-Priest / Kalastria Healer. Across three opponents this adds up faster than it looks, and Crypt Rats closes from a board that’s otherwise locked up.
  • Pseudo-wipes that double as drain. Crypt Rats, Dry Spell, and Gangrenous Zombies each deal 1 (or more) to every creature and player. Our high-toughness walls shrug off 1 damage; opposing go-wide/aggro boards do not — and every activation also chips opponents’ life totals, feeding the drain plan. Wall of Hope and the lifegain duals offset the self-damage.
  • Edict + spot removal grind. Seven edicts (Cruel/Diabolic Edict, Geth’s Verdict, Devour Flesh, Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, Abyssal Gatekeeper) answer hexproof/evasive threats walls can’t target-block; nine clean spot pieces (Murder, Bake into a Pie, Deadly Derision, Grim Contest, Pillar of Light, Sungold Barrage, Disfigure, Tragic Slip) handle the rest. Grim Contest is toughness-based — our fat walls win those fights.
  • Reach matters. Deadly Recluse (reach + deathtouch), Archers of Qarsi, Consulate Skygate cover the air; fliers are the fortress’s main leak.

What was cut and why (fixing the misread)

  • Cut the entire “defenders attack” sub-theme — Drowsing Tyrannodon, Bristlepack Sentry, Glade Watcher all key off power, which Doran never raises, so they sat dead. Gone.
  • Cut Treefolk Umbra and Solid Footing — they grant the same assign-by-toughness rider but do not remove Defender (so a wall still can’t attack), and Solid Footing additionally needs vigilance, which nothing here grants. Dead riders. Gone.
  • Cut Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs — its ping needs a Desert; the deck runs zero Deserts. Strictly dead. Gone.
  • Cut Innocent Blood — a symmetric sacrifice in a creature-dense fortress hurts us most; it was being miscounted as a “wipe.” Gone.
  • Cut vanilla filler walls (Wall of Tanglecord, Carnivorous Plant, Gleaming Barrier, Pride Guardian) that did nothing but sit as 0-power Defenders with no drain or attack relevance.
  • Added real drain + sweepers: Crypt Rats, Dry Spell, Gangrenous Zombies, Cauldron Familiar, Vampire Neonate, Engine Rat, Malakir Blood-Priest, Kalastria Healer, Deadly Recluse — all verified common and in WBG identity.
  • Trimmed over-ramp from 12 dedicated sources to 10 (cut Manalith + Selesnya Signet) and put the slots into removal (Disfigure, Tragic Slip).

Role breakdown (actual counts — honest, matches the list)

  • Lands — 37: 19 nonbasic + 18 basics (7 Forest / 6 Swamp / 5 Plains). In-band for three colors.
  • Ramp — 10 dedicated: Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach, Farseek, Abzan Banner, Commander’s Sphere, Arcane Signet, Golgari Signet, Orzhov Signet, Mind Stone. Plus 4 Defender mana-dorks (Wall of Roots, Overgrown Battlement, Axebane Guardian, Saruli Caretaker) that ramp and wall.
  • Card advantage — 9: Sign in Blood, Night’s Whisper, Read the Bones, Elvish Visionary, Dusk Legion Zealot, Novice Inspector, Barrier of Bones (surveil draw), Mind Stone (sac-draw), Commander’s Sphere (sac-draw). Plus Disentomb/Raise Dead/Gatecreeper Vine/Floriferous Vinewall selection.
  • Spot removal / interaction — 16: edicts (Cruel Edict, Diabolic Edict, Geth’s Verdict, Devour Flesh, Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, Abyssal Gatekeeper) + targeted (Murder, Bake into a Pie, Deadly Derision, Grim Contest, Pillar of Light, Sungold Barrage, Disfigure, Tragic Slip). Removal-dense on purpose — this is a control/grind deck. (The drain pingers are counted under the drain engine, not double-counted as removal.)
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe — 3: Crypt Rats, Dry Spell, Gangrenous Zombies — all deal damage to every creature and every player, so they sweep opposing boards while feeding the drain plan; our high-toughness walls survive the 1-damage hits.
  • Drain / inevitability engine: Crypt Rats, Archers’ Parapet, Creeping Bloodsucker, Vampire Neonate, Engine Rat, Cauldron Familiar, Malakir Blood-Priest, Kalastria Healer, Cuombajj Witches, Skeleton Archer, Hired Torturer.

Manabase / fixing note

37 lands + 10 ramp/rocks + 4 dork-walls. Command Tower / Path of Ancestry / Abzan Banner / Commander’s Sphere / Arcane Signet all tap for any of WBG; Deceptive Landscape is the common Abzan tri-fetch; three guildgates + the tapped “Sands”/lifegain duals cover every color pair; Evolving Wilds / Terramorphic / green ramp grab basics. Slightly Forest-weighted because green is the ramp + dork color.

Pilot notes

  • Mulligan toward a dork-wall or mana rock plus a green ramp spell; you want a defensive board up early and Doran online turn 4-5.
  • Doran is a blocker first, attacker second. Don’t expect the walls to swing — they can’t. Win by draining.
  • Hold edicts for hexproof/evasive problem creatures; walls handle everything that has to attack into them.
  • Crypt Rats is your closer. Bank black mana and fire it for lethal-to-all-players once opponents are low from the drip; it also doubles as your reset button against go-wide.
  • Wall of Hope and lifegain duals buy back the life you spend pinging yourself with the symmetric sweepers.

Weaknesses

  • Board wipes hurt a creature-dense fortress — mitigated by recursion (Disentomb/Raise Dead) and the noncreature drain (Crypt Rats survives in hand; Archers’ Parapet etc. rebuild fast).
  • No clean asymmetric mass removal at common in these colors — the sweepers hit our board too, so we lean on high toughness to survive them.
  • Fliers chip us; reach is limited to Deadly Recluse, Archers of Qarsi, Consulate Skygate plus the pingers.
  • Clock is genuinely slow. This is a grind/drain deck, not a beatdown — against fast combo you rely on edicts + Bojuka Bog. Accept the slow clock; the inevitability is the drain, not combat.

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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