I've always liked the idea of playing draw-go decks, but never really liked the hardcore control path they usually fall into. Surrak Dragonclaw seems like a pretty good base for such a deck, being both incredibly efficient mana-wise, and having a nice body to smash peoples' faces in with the pseudo-haste you get from playing him end-of-turn. At the very least him + Kessig Wolf Run will be a nice and accessible finishing strategy.
I've been doing lots of looking around, but I'm wondering if I'm missing anything really sweet for this deck that doesn't make any of the top50 lists.
Just to be clear, I'm looking to build a deck where everything is instant-speed. Maybe a few things can be sorcery speed if they're really cheap to cast or if I absolutely need them to fill holes in the deck (like Blasphemous Act). I'd love to hear peoples' suggestions.
Edit - Here's the decklist that I have so far. Mods can feel free to move this to the appropriate forum if they like.
In no particular order:
I mashed together a quick list and took it for a spin the other night (I'll post the list when I have time), and as I expected, the largest weakpoint to the deck was dealing with giant value engines that flood opponents' boards with junk.
I'm only running Cyclonic Rift, Evacuation, and Blasphemous Act for sweepers, one only one of those deals with noncreatures. I could add Perilous Vault I guess, but it's kind of disappointing that I have to rely on sorcery speed junk. It's either that or just pro-actively break peoples' toys whenever they start to get value engines going, which seems a little exhausting to me.
What sort of value engines are we talking about? Back to nature seems like a pretty decent enchantment sweeper and creatures can be deal in many ways. There aren't really any instant speed artifact sweepers.
The deck that I was having particular difficulty with was the Meren of clan nel toth precon with a few cards modified, but there were other situations in which players were filling their board up with stuff and the only thing really protecting me from getting wiped out was the threat of combat tricks (though to be fair, the next match I won almost entirely off the back of Illusionist's Gambit, so it's not like the rattlesnake isn't there).
It probably doesn't help that the only graveyard-hate that I could find worth running was boring ol' relic of Progenitus.
Precon Meren folds pretty fast to just killing her couple of times. If she dies even once paying 6 mana for a creature that says "when etb, do nothing". She also doesn't have late game like dredge karador.
Adding some fogs (or other ways discourage attacks) and some sort of recursion helps a long way. Outside of reap there isn't much instant recurion so you might want to consider adding cards like eternal witness, skullwinder and archaeomancer.
Interesting. I'm in the middle of a rebuild of my Surrak deck and was thinking the same thing... All instant speed. Part of that would include creatures with Flash (Since Surrak says they cannot be countered.
You could of course run Leyline of Anticipation, Vedalken Orrery,Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and Alchemist's Refuge to help your other stuff get flash too. Each of those is absolutely phenonemal when paired with Seedborn Muse to boot. In addition, a decktype like this NEEDS creature hate. There's always Evacuation, and on the sorcery side of things, you've got your Chain Reaction, Ezuri's Predation and Devastation Tide. Curse of Swine (Or Baconize, as I prefer to call it) helps in dealing with problematic recursive creatures.
I do fear that you'll always need to have some sorcery speed stuff going on in the deck to make it viable. That said with Seedborn Muse you can circumvent the main downside (That of having to spend your mana and not hold it open) enabling you to keep going and hide behind counterspells and other instant speed tricks.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Interesting. I'm in the middle of a rebuild of my Surrak deck and was thinking the same thing... All instant speed. Part of that would include creatures with Flash (Since Surrak says they cannot be countered.
Actually, all of those cards made it in my initial draft
The more I think about it, it seems to me the main problem is simply a very narrow pool of cards to choose from. It makes me wish the card had White in one of those colors, since white has access to so many cards that can cause a massive board state shift (rout, white sun's zenith, heck even instant-speed artifact/enchantment removal in fracturing gust is absent in Surrak's colors!). Of course, Surrak comes with a very real threat of general damaging someone out in two or three turns out of nowhere, but with almost no ability to clean the board or flood the board at instant speed, as I mentioned above, the majority of my defense is the imaginary wall of Bad Things that could happen to you if you attack me. And if someone calls my bluff, I'm toast.
Since the issue is card selection however, I have a feeling this archetype will become stronger as more Commander sets come out. A lot of my card selections ended up being from the last two sets, so I get the feeling that next year's set will also contain a fair amount of goodies for me as well. I don't mind my deck being weak either, it's just that, as far as fundamental flaws are concerned, having both poor board presence and poor board control make it difficult to make up that difference in other areas.
I really like Inferno and never knew it existed. I particularly like it over Fault Line because it hits those flying demons and sphinxes, and I like it over Starstorm because it hits players, and therefore planeswalkers.
I took the deck for another spin earlier this week, it felt a bit better this time when there was a hardcore control player keeping things in check. Perhaps the main weakness is simply when everybody's vomiting their decks on the board and nobody's playing cleanup duty. In most decks you can compete by also vomiting your deck on the board, with this deck you're in a rough situation unless you have one of those three super combat tricks ready.
I think I'm going to bite the bullet and go against my "no tutor" policy for Intuition and Mystical Tutor. There are a lot of awesome silver-bullet cards in the deck that I'm often finding myself wishing I had in my hand to turn someone's play totally around on their head (such as, wild ricochet or Gather Specimens in response to a particularly nasty effect, or sometimes a surprise time stop when the opponent thought his spell was uncounterable).
I've been doing lots of looking around, but I'm wondering if I'm missing anything really sweet for this deck that doesn't make any of the top50 lists.
Just to be clear, I'm looking to build a deck where everything is instant-speed. Maybe a few things can be sorcery speed if they're really cheap to cast or if I absolutely need them to fill holes in the deck (like Blasphemous Act). I'd love to hear peoples' suggestions.
Edit - Here's the decklist that I have so far. Mods can feel free to move this to the appropriate forum if they like.
In no particular order:
1 Word of Seizing
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 commandeer
1 boon satyr
1 desertion
1 wild ricochet
1 voidmage husher
1 fleetfeather cockatrice
1 illusory ambusher
1 winged coatl
1 spelljack
1 beast attack
1 vivid grove
1 volcanic offering
1 krosan grip
1 sprout swarm
1 great oak guardian
1 relic of progenitus
1 fact or fiction
1 simic signet
1 chord of calling
1 beast within
1 void grafter
1 cloudthresher
1 bounding krasis
1 time stop
1 briarhorn
1 harrow
1 elephant ambush
1 gruul signet
1 gather specimens
1 armillary sphere
1 prophetic bolt
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 expedition map
1 chaos warp
1 maze of ith
1 wayfarer's bauble
1 reclaim
1 Dig Through Time
1 Evacuation
1 Commander's Sphere
1 Panglacial Wurm
1 Seedborn Muse
1 darksteel ingot
1 izzet signet
1 Illusionist's Gambit
1 Reins of Power
1 Plagiarize
1 mystic snake
1 sensei's divining top
1 aethersnatch
1 opportunity
1 mizzium meddler
1 blasphemous act
1 overwhelming intellect
1 momentous fall
1 stroke of genius
1 sol ring
1 search for tomorrow
1 blue sun's zenith
1 mirror match
1 draining whelk
1 cyclonic rift
1 command tower
1 frontier bivouac
1 minamo, school at water's edge
1 simic growth chamber
1 ancient tomb
1 kessig wolf run
1 yavimaya hollow
1 vivid creek
1 lumbering falls
1 mosswort bridge
1 reliquary tower
1 Vivid Crag
1 Yavimaya Coast
1 Skaarg, the Rage Pits
1 izzet boilerworks
1 opal palace
1 vesuva
5 mountain
5 forest
5 island
1 temple of the false gods
1 spinerock knoll
1 gruul bounceland
I also recently discovered Burn Away. Looks like a great solution to graveyard shenanigans, I'll have to pick one up and find some space for it.
Hang on....
To the OP, what are you going to do about ramp? There isn't much instant-speed ramp beyond Harrow.
I'm only running Cyclonic Rift, Evacuation, and Blasphemous Act for sweepers, one only one of those deals with noncreatures. I could add Perilous Vault I guess, but it's kind of disappointing that I have to rely on sorcery speed junk. It's either that or just pro-actively break peoples' toys whenever they start to get value engines going, which seems a little exhausting to me.
One option would be to play something like alchemist's refuge
It probably doesn't help that the only graveyard-hate that I could find worth running was boring ol' relic of Progenitus.
Adding some fogs (or other ways discourage attacks) and some sort of recursion helps a long way. Outside of reap there isn't much instant recurion so you might want to consider adding cards like eternal witness, skullwinder and archaeomancer.
My immediate thoughts go to:
Alchemist's Refuge might be decent too.
Good luck!
I write EDH articles on EDHREC and MTGCasualPlay. I hope you like them!
EDH DECKLISTS
RGWUril, the Miststalker WBRKaalia of the Vast Sunforger WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUGDerevi, Empyrial TacticianWUBRGSliver Queen EDH
UB Wrexial, the Risen DeepWU Hanna, Ship's NavigatorWGSigarda, Host of Herons EnchantressWULavinia, of the Tenth
RRPurphoros, God of the ForgeBBChainer, Dementia MasterWWEight-and-a-Half TailsUUMuzzio, Visionary ArchitectGGJolrael, Empress of Beasts
BGVhati il-DalRWTajic, Blade of the LegionUBRZurgo HelmsmasherUBDaxos the ReturnedWBKarlov of the Ghost CouncilWUBruna, Light of Alabaster
RWAurelia Angel Tribal URJhoira Chaos Deck UGVorel +1 Counters BRGProssh Tokens
UBRGwendlyn Discard EDH URG Surrak Dragonclaw UBLazav Mill EDH WUBrago Flicker EDH Deck
I do fear that you'll always need to have some sorcery speed stuff going on in the deck to make it viable. That said with Seedborn Muse you can circumvent the main downside (That of having to spend your mana and not hold it open) enabling you to keep going and hide behind counterspells and other instant speed tricks.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Actually, all of those cards made it in my initial draft
The more I think about it, it seems to me the main problem is simply a very narrow pool of cards to choose from. It makes me wish the card had White in one of those colors, since white has access to so many cards that can cause a massive board state shift (rout, white sun's zenith, heck even instant-speed artifact/enchantment removal in fracturing gust is absent in Surrak's colors!). Of course, Surrak comes with a very real threat of general damaging someone out in two or three turns out of nowhere, but with almost no ability to clean the board or flood the board at instant speed, as I mentioned above, the majority of my defense is the imaginary wall of Bad Things that could happen to you if you attack me. And if someone calls my bluff, I'm toast.
Since the issue is card selection however, I have a feeling this archetype will become stronger as more Commander sets come out. A lot of my card selections ended up being from the last two sets, so I get the feeling that next year's set will also contain a fair amount of goodies for me as well. I don't mind my deck being weak either, it's just that, as far as fundamental flaws are concerned, having both poor board presence and poor board control make it difficult to make up that difference in other areas.
Lavaball Trap is another decent option.
I took the deck for another spin earlier this week, it felt a bit better this time when there was a hardcore control player keeping things in check. Perhaps the main weakness is simply when everybody's vomiting their decks on the board and nobody's playing cleanup duty. In most decks you can compete by also vomiting your deck on the board, with this deck you're in a rough situation unless you have one of those three super combat tricks ready.
I think I'm going to bite the bullet and go against my "no tutor" policy for Intuition and Mystical Tutor. There are a lot of awesome silver-bullet cards in the deck that I'm often finding myself wishing I had in my hand to turn someone's play totally around on their head (such as, wild ricochet or Gather Specimens in response to a particularly nasty effect, or sometimes a surprise time stop when the opponent thought his spell was uncounterable).
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