Zetalpa, Primal Dawn Commander Deck Guide – Best Cards, How To Play

Zetalpa, Primal Dawn has become something of a meme among Magic: The Gathering players. It’s frequently reprinted, and despite its impressive stats and long list of keywords, has been supplanted by other, scarier mono-white commanders. However, with its inclusion in the Foundations Starter Collection, it’s also one of the best choices for your very first Commander deck.

A big Dinosaur with a nasty bite, Zetalpa can be a fin deck to build, and a harder one for your opponents to counter. Build up the enchantments and Equipment, and you’ll be slapping down the table in no time.

Zetalpa, Primal Dawn Commander Decklist

Zetalpa is a mono-white commander, meaning this deck can only use cards with colourless or white colour identity.

The Commander: Zetalpa, Primal Dawn

Zetalpa is one of the most ubiquitous white legendary creatures in Magic: The Gathering, with dozens of reprints since its debut in Rivals of Ixalan. While it’s often considered more of a chaff rare in a format full of better alternatives, with the right build Zetalpa can be a nightmare to deal with.

It’s the keyword soup in its rules text that helps secure Zetalpa’s position in so many decks. Flying, double strike, vigilance, indestructible, and trample all add up to make an intimidating creature, especially when it has 4/8 stats thrown on top of it. With so mcuh keeping it in play an dhelping it slip damage through, there’s one clear way to build Zetalpa: voltron.

Voltron is a deck that uses lots of Auras and Equipment to beef up a single creature until it can hit for massive damage, instead of going wide with multiple, smaller creatures. You often see it in red and white decks, but Zetalpa offers an interesting mono-colored way of playing the archetype.

Key Cards

All That Glitters, Ethereal Armor, And Thran Power Suit

As a Voltron deck, Zetalpa wants you to run all sorts of Equipment and Aura enchantments. With that in mind, having a way to cash in one the sheer number of these modifications with a scaling buff can be very powerful.

Ethereal Armor is the weakest of these three, as it only counts Enchantments and not Equipments.

All three of these cards give Zetalpa +1/+1 for each Aura or Equipment is attached to it. That means with just these three, you’ll be getting a +8/+8. And, of course, in Voltron deck, these are never going to be the only three you play.

Solid Footing And Gauntlets Of Light

As an 4/8, Zetalpa has a massive butt. But it’s also indestructible, meaning that toughness feels somewhat redundant unless you find ways to turn it into damage.

With Solid Footing and Gauntlets of Light, Zetalpa will be dealing damage equal to its toughness rather than its power, meaning it hits for eight at its base amount. There are cards in this deck that also buff your toughness, like Mask of Avacyn and Mirror Shield, which could be a quick way to get Zetalpa up to a toughness that’s lethal for your opponents if it hits.

Sram, Senior Edificer

It’s much more likely that Sram would be the commander for a Voltron deck,b ut even in the 99 he is a powerhouse of card value. This deck is full of Equipment and Auras, which Sram turns into much-needed card draw.

Card draw is one of white’s biggest weaknesses, as it usually needs you to either let an opponent draw, or limit itself to just one per turn. Sram has neither of these, and can be the engine that drives your deck long before Zetalpa comes out.

Sun Titan And Brilliant Restoration

The biggest downside of a Voltron deck is you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. Zetalpa is an incredibly tough basket to break, but if it does leave play you could lose a lot of Aura enchantments very quickly. Because of that, you need recursion.

Sun Titan and Brilliant Restoration are the two key recursion pieces in this deck, giving you a way to get easy access to your cards again once they hit the graveayrd. Sun Titan lets you do it consistently across turns, but Brilliant Restoration is an explosive card that could set you up for a win.

How To Play Zetalpa, Primal Dawn

As mentioned, this deck builds Zetalpa up as a voltron deck, where you’re buffing its stats up absurdly high. The goal is to take opponents out through commander damage, potentially in one attack.

In Commander, if an opponent takes 21 combat damage from a commander, they lose the game.

However, Zetalpa comes with a few issues to overcome. The first is mana cost, as Zetalpa is very expensive at eight mana, which forces you to run cards like Keeper of the Accord to ramp up your mana as quickly as white will allow.

You’re going to want to get Zetalpa out into play as fast as possible to ensure your opponents haven’t built up ways to block, so making liberal use of mana rocks like Sol Ring and Arcane Signet is more important here than it is in other commander decks.

The other problem is that, as you’ll only be building Zetalpa up very big, you’re a target for removal. Zetalpa’s vigilance allows it to block after attacking, but you’re still going to want to run other creatures, and especially tokens, to get around forced sacrifice. Make Zetalpa hexproof via Mirror Shield or Swiftfoot Boots to stop it from being exiled, as well.

If you need more drastic ways to save yourself, Teferi’s Protection is a great inclusion. You’ll not be able to hold off go-wide decks, so having a way to opt out of combat altogether until Zetalpa is ready to bring the beatdown is handy.

If you can afford it, or are lucky enough to own it,
Serra’s Sanctum
can provide massive amounts of mana. If you don’t have it, another Plains is fine.

Once Zetalpa is out, you’re going to be putting as many Auras and Equipments on it as possible. The goal is to get it up to at least 11 power, or 11 toughness if you’re running Solid Footing or Gauntlets of Light. That way, the double strike will mean Zetalpa is dealing 22 damage, which is enough to take out an opponent through commander damage.

Use cards like Sram, Senior Edificer and Puresteel Paladin to gain card advantage, refilling your hand with each Aura or Equipment you play. White isn’t the best at drawing cards, but making sure Zetalpa is a big threat before your opponents have time to remove it is vital to swinging.

This deck does run Worldslayer, a controversial card that destroys every other permanent in the game when the equipped creature deals damage. This includes lands, which is often not encouraged at Commander tables. You should check with your pod before running it, but as Zetalpa is indestructible, you’ll quickly be able to finish off your opponents through commander damage before they have a chance to rebuild.