MTG Salvation

When you look at this card Zurgo Helmsmasher you probably see a deck with a bunch of equipment and/or extra combat step cards and/or double strike cards, you know something that goes really fast. This is not that deck in the slightest.



The deck stalls, taxes, disrupts, pains, destroys and bides its time.

Sometimes it wins by a hilarious Starfield of Nyx Enchantment swing, sometimes Liliana's Caress + Exquisite Blood are both on field when a Wheel resolves or sometimes Zurgo decides to lay that final haymaker blow when someone is within that 7(or 14 with a charm) sweet spot.

So far it has been a bunch of fun to play because it is not what anyone ever expects when I pull a Zurgo out of the box. Nowhere near done and any suggestions are welcome as I continue to cut things and tune the rhythm.

Never made a Mardu deck before don't know I why I love these 3 colors. (Exquisite Blood + Manabarbs may just be my favorite thing in all of magic)

I run a more typical Zurgo voltron deck, but exploring the possiblities of the enchantment route has occured to me as well.

Here are some suggestions off the top of my head:

- No Mercy tells everyone to leave you alone.

- Death Pits of Rath works rather well with Pestilence and Lightmine Field (though it might help to have Zurgo out on the field as well to make sure you can keep pestilence going)

- Powerstone Minefield can be used as a less effective 2nd lightmine field, but I feel this is more of a meta choice.

- Karma could be hilarious with Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth and Exquisite Blood.

- Sanguine Bond creates an infinite loop with Exquisite Blood, but some people don't like winning with infinite combos.

- Price of Glory can be a huge thorn in a control deck's side and effectivly shuts down Prophet of Kruphix as well as Seedborn Muse

- Leyline of the Void hoses graveyard strategies while keeping your graveyard intact for starfield.

- Koskun Falls offers more redundancy to a pillowfort strategy, but requires you to have a creature out to keep it going.

- If you cast Pithing Needle and name Lethal Vapors it can create a soft lock preventing your opponents from casting any non-indestructible creatures until they find an answer, but make sure you play the needle before you cast lethal vapors so an opponent can't activate the enchantment's ability with the needle on the stack.

- Academy Rector can search up any enchantment you might need.

- Curse of the Nightly Hunt and Grand Melee can encourage your opponents to build up damage on eachother if your pillowfort is big enough. It could be funny with Mystic Barrier as well.

- Stranglehold is just really good and hoses a lot of builds.

- Rule of Law shuts down a lot of combo/storm decks.

- Possibility Storm I find is a really fun card if you build around it and can completely ruin other players' plans.

- Darksteel Mutation shuts down a lot of commanders.

- Vow of Duty, Vow of Lightning & Vow of Malice can be great political tools.

- Waste Not seems like an important missing piece from your discard suite.

- Greed and Necropotence are pretty powerful card advantage engines.

- Opalescence is a second less powerful Starfield of Nyx.

- Wound Reflection, Furnace of Rath, and Dictate of the Twin Gods can exponentially increase the damage output of Manabarbs. Wound reflection also can double the damage output of all of your "lose life" effects such as Liliana's Caress.

And although I know you said this wasn't voltron, I feel that I must mention that it can be really fun attaching Assault Suit to Zurgo and then handing him off to your opponents to build up commander damage on each other.

Humility would be a perfect fit...

Even though it is a great card, I personally would leave humility out of any list that has Starfield of Nyx since it becomes a big rules headache. Whenever humility turns into a creature it suddenly becomes subject to it's own ability, which causes it to lose all abilities and become a 1/1 creature, but since it then has lost all of its abilities there is nothing that keeps it from regaining them and its abilities come back and again it turns all creatures into 1/1s and makes all creatures lose their abilites which turns itself off again. It will keep on doing this on, off, on, off thing, and becomes a strange infinite rules loop that I have no idea how to solve and would therefore try to avoid it altogether

I see where your coming from...but you won't always have Starfield of Nyx and you decide when and how you play it out. I think that Humility is just such a blowout, that the risk is well worth it.

Humility makes Zurgo a 1/1 vanilla creature and would defeat the purpose of attacking with him.

Out: Crawlspace
In: Stuffy Doll

Quote from DarklingScribe »

I run a more typical Zurgo voltron deck, but exploring the possiblities of the enchantment route has occured to me as well.

Here are some suggestions off the top of my head:

- No Mercy tells everyone to leave you alone.

- Death Pits of Rath works rather well with Pestilence and Lightmine Field (though it might help to have Zurgo out on the field as well to make sure you can keep pestilence going)

- Powerstone Minefield can be used as a less effective 2nd lightmine field, but I feel this is more of a meta choice.

- Karma could be hilarious with Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth and Exquisite Blood.

- Sanguine Bond creates an infinite loop with Exquisite Blood, but some people don't like winning with infinite combos.

- Price of Glory can be a huge thorn in a control deck's side and effectivly shuts down Prophet of Kruphix as well as Seedborn Muse

- Leyline of the Void hoses graveyard strategies while keeping your graveyard intact for starfield.

- Koskun Falls offers more redundancy to a pillowfort strategy, but requires you to have a creature out to keep it going.

- If you cast Pithing Needle and name Lethal Vapors it can create a soft lock preventing your opponents from casting any non-indestructible creatures until they find an answer, but make sure you play the needle before you cast lethal vapors so an opponent can't activate the enchantment's ability with the needle on the stack.

- Academy Rector can search up any enchantment you might need.

- Curse of the Nightly Hunt and Grand Melee can encourage your opponents to build up damage on eachother if your pillowfort is big enough. It could be funny with Mystic Barrier as well.

- Stranglehold is just really good and hoses a lot of builds.

- Rule of Law shuts down a lot of combo/storm decks.

- Possibility Storm I find is a really fun card if you build around it and can completely ruin other players' plans.

- Darksteel Mutation shuts down a lot of commanders.

- Vow of Duty, Vow of Lightning & Vow of Malice can be great political tools.

- Waste Not seems like an important missing piece from your discard suite.

- Greed and Necropotence are pretty powerful card advantage engines.

- Opalescence is a second less powerful Starfield of Nyx.

- Wound Reflection, Furnace of Rath, and Dictate of the Twin Gods can exponentially increase the damage output of Manabarbs. Wound reflection also can double the damage output of all of your "lose life" effects such as Liliana's Caress.

And although I know you said this wasn't voltron, I feel that I must mention that it can be really fun attaching Assault Suit to Zurgo and then handing him off to your opponents to build up commander damage on each other.

Love all the suggestions thanks.

I like Death Pits of Rath over No Mercy for the reasons you listed also I plan to add Pyrohemia at some point.

Powerstone Minefield is probably a good substitution because getting hit by single 2/2 is more typical when I play this deck than armies of tokens staying on the board.

Karma is funny and would be funny with those other two exact cards but outside that

I had Sanguine Bond in the deck and I already took it out because that card is a boring do nothing by itself.

I forgot about Price of Glory I need to add one of those.

Leyline of the Void is a weird one because I am not sure if I need the extra GY hate

Not enough creatures for Koskun Falls

I have never had anyone pay the Lethal Vapors effect so it is fine for now

Academy Rector is a budget thing atm as is Stranglehold

I like the forced combat stuff so I may have to look into that.

Rule of Law is trying to squeeze its way into the deck.

I just played a game where an opponent played a Possibility Storm followed by me sticking Painful Quandary off another enchantment and I should probably look to adding that.

Waste Not wasn't in the deck because the first draft had Burning Sands so the zombies were more hindrance than help but I should look into it again.

Necropotence fails me more than it works for me so I already cut it.

Opalescence doesn't actually do the bit of Starfield that I like more.

Out of all the doublers I would probably take Wound Reflection first.



I have been thinking about Humility and if I can grab one I will probably give it a shot, it hurts everyone else much more than it does me.

I was also thinking about a dumb pair interaction of Transcendence & Form of the Dragon

And even Enduring Ideal (if I did this I would probably add a few of the good Constellation creatures)

Upgrade moving more towards what I think the deck will end up as.

More Draw, More Tax and limit, less bodies, more wipes and some insane haymakers.

Transcendence and Form of the Dragon don't work as you think (I'm only assuming this because I think you're under the impression that Form of the Dragon helps against Transcendence's life loss clause but it doesn't).

Per the rules, whenever a player's life total "becomes" a number or value, the amount needed to become that total is either lost or gained. For example, a player at 40 life gets targeted by Magister Sphinx. Technically, that player loses 30 life, they don't have their life "become 10". The same for doubling life or halving life. If your life total gets doubled, you gain the same amount of life you have. If your life is halved, rounded down or rounded up, you lose per the required number.

That being said, if you have Form of the Dragon and Transcendence in play, you essentially gained life and would not drop to 5 life (net life). Transcendence's life loss/gain clause is not a replacement effect. So, if you had 20 life, you'd lose 15 to Form of the Dragon (go down to 5 life) then you'd gain 30 life back due to Transcendence.

I didn't know that about the set life rules that is cool thanks.

Updated:

In: Academy Rector
Pyrohemia
Tragic Arrogance

Out: Megrim
Killing Wave
Blasphemous Act

And some basic lands got an upgrade.

Absolutely loving how this thing plays.

Have the latest changes you've made been considerable or has it just ironed out some kinks in the deck? Cuz the Æther Flash + Death Pits of Rath combo is a brutal one now as it was back in the day (yeah, I played a BR deck that was just brutal thanks to that). Adding the fact that you got Pyrohemia and Pestilence and you got a nice, reusable creature wipe suite.

It mostly just ironing out cards I don't enjoy drawing.

The one thing I want to try is Spreading Plague since all my creatures either are indestructible, do their thing with Haste (and are indestructible when I cast them) or want to die anyway.

I have also considered backing off the discard / wheel side of the deck for something else but I am not yet sure what that is (maybe Repercussion more global damage + Self Looting)

The more I mull that around in my head the more it makes sense, it also ties into so many more of the cards in the deck and opens up more answers and removal, which is something apparently I can not go without.

The list I am thinking is:

Repercussion
Blasphemous Act (I know I just removed, live and learn)
Anger of the Gods
Slagstorm
Chain Reaction
Inferno
Faithless Looting
Tormenting Voice

maybe

Destructive Force
Daretti, Scrap Savant

If you get rid of the wheels, add cards like Aurelia, the Warleader and Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. Notice that Gisela doesn't give doublestrike, she doubles the amount of damage given. So Zurgo with doublestrike effectively quadruples his attack, instantly KO'ing anyone hit by him. Having an extra combat phase doesn't hurt either with Aurelia. I understand you wanna keep it light on creatures, but these angels do help you take it up a notch.

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight makes a bunch of sense as the bomb the deck drops out of nowhere.

The good thing about Gisela is activating Pyrohemia and Pestilence one mana at a time. Notice that she prevents damage rounded up. So any 1 damage dealt to any of your creatures is essentially prevented. That basically makes the boardwipes one-sided.

Half considering Kormus Bell for when Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is out.

Or even Ankh of Mishra to combat the heavier ramp.

Sorry for the necroposting, but since I've start playing Zurgo and EDH, I would like to exchange opinions with some of Zurgo's players.

Why reiterate over reverberate? Why not playing Sunforger? I know that you dont want to play a Zurgo voltron style but tutoring an R or W instant could be of a big help. Same for Enlightened tutor since you play alot of enchant?