MTG Salvation

Hello Guys,

I have been going through my binder and found Keranos, God of Storms and I was wondering if I can use him as the commander in a deck. The first idea would be to use him for a spellslinger type of deck but that would be very similar to my favorite Noyan Dar, Roil Shaper deck. Anyhow, I wanted a new experience for me and something unconventional but still fun. I'm not a fan of hypercompetitive decks, so I might opt for a few stupid blunders here and there from time to time.

The Deck



The gameplan for this deck is as follows: (card list is outdated but the steps are still true w/ step 1 being optional)
1. Set-up defense
- Kami of the Crescent Moon, Howling Mine, etc.
- Propaganda, Collective Restraint, Crawlspace, etc.
2. Dig for combo pieces
- Dig Through Time, etc.
3. Combo and go for the win
- Infinite Dudes
- Infinite Mana
- Storm

The Combos

Infinite Mana:
1. Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake
2. Peregrine Drake + (Archaeomancer/Scrivener/Mnemonic Wall) + (Ghostly Flicker/Displace)
3. Turnabout + Reiterate
3. Nivix Guildmage + Turnabout + 8 mana

Infinite Dudes:
1. Pestermite + Splinter Twin
2. Intruder Alarm + Peregrine Drake + Splinter Twin = infinite hasty drakes and mana

Storm-ish:
1. Infinite Mana w/ Ghostly Flicker, etc. + Brain Freeze/Altar of the Brood(Mill) OR Comet Storm/Fireball/Searing Touch(Burn) OR Capsize(One-sided Upheaval)
2. Infinite Mana + Blue Sun's Zenith = mill one player out
3. Infinite Mana + Blue Sun's Zenith + Words of War = burn everyone

That's all I can think from the top of my head right now. Would love to see more but I might dilute the combos too much.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. What cards can I change? Which do not synergize well with the other cards? Again, the bottomline of this deck is to have fun. As to who is having the fun, it's up to you. Thanks!

A few cards that are strong in this deck that you might want to include:

• Snapcaster Mage and Torrential Gearhulk are extremely powerful cards that will let you reuse your spells. And since your deck is full of them, I think they'd be great.
• Past in Flames: If you're trying to storm people out, I think this might help.
• Evacuation is a strong card to stall opponents, doubly so since you do not depend on your creatures, and the creatures you do run generally have ETB effects.
• Muddle the Mixture is a good counter spell that does double-duty as a tutor when needed.

Keranos, God of Storms is a neat card; however, it feels slow for the type of gameplan that you have (combo). Have you considered running a commander in the same colors that is a combo piece by itself, Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind? With him as your general, you further threaten to combo whenever you want when you pair your general with either Curiosity or Ophidian Eye.

Finally, some of the cards I find lackluster in your list are ones that slow down the entire table - it will make you a target for them. Were I running this deck, I'd replace some of those effects (Smoke, Crawlspace, War's Toll) with further removal, maybe Comet Storm or Wash Out.

Anyway, good luck with the deck!

Quote from Outcryqq »

A few cards that are strong in this deck that you might want to include:

• Snapcaster Mage and Torrential Gearhulk are extremely powerful cards that will let you reuse your spells. And since your deck is full of them, I think they'd be great.
• Past in Flames: If you're trying to storm people out, I think this might help.
• Evacuation is a strong card to stall opponents, doubly so since you do not depend on your creatures, and the creatures you do run generally have ETB effects.
• Muddle the Mixture is a good counter spell that does double-duty as a tutor when needed.

Keranos, God of Storms is a neat card; however, it feels slow for the type of gameplan that you have (combo). Have you considered running a commander in the same colors that is a combo piece by itself, Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind? With him as your general, you further threaten to combo whenever you want when you pair your general with either Curiosity or Ophidian Eye.

Finally, some of the cards I find lackluster in your list are ones that slow down the entire table - it will make you a target for them. Were I running this deck, I'd replace some of those effects (Smoke, Crawlspace, War's Toll) with further removal, maybe Comet Storm or Wash Out.

Anyway, good luck with the deck!

Thanks! To give my thoughts on some of your suggestions:
1. As much as I'd want to include Snapcaster Mage and Torrential Gearhulk, they are currently out of my budget range. What do you think about Goblin Dark-Dwellers though? Pretty much restrictive as to what it can flashback, doesn't have flash, but is pretty much cheap compared to the first two options.
2. It's too bad that I just traded my only copy of Past in Flames. How about Mizzix's Mastery as a not-so-similar-but-kinda-similar effect? I kinda like the way the deck goes from either storm count = 0 to infinite storm count. It makes games much faster during goldfish sessions (I'm one of those guys who really dislike durdly infinite combos).
3. The list is already running Evacuation
4. That is actually a good idea. I have no idea how I missed out on Muddle the Mixture when I am trying to run whatever tutor I can find in the colors (except for Gamble of course).

I have run Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind in her own deck but it draws a lot of hate early on and the table just kills me early on. I tore the deck apart to run Jhoira of the Ghitu Dragonstorm w/ basically the same wincon as Niv-Mizzet, but that deck drew a lot of hate too even without the Obliterate+It that Betrays combo.

The reason why I chose Keranos, God of Storms as the commander is that it goes way under the radar for my playgroup. An option would be Mizzix of the Izmagnus (more probable, makes the combo a lot faster) or Tibor and Lumia (for some janky board wipe when I try to combo off Turnabout+Reiterate).

I might include Wash Out in the list for some more added giggles. Do you think there are other combos I can run for infinite storm/mana? Or do I just run protection for the combos instead?

Thanks for the suggestions and keep them coming! I'm looking forward to all your thoughts before I put the deck together.

I did some tests on the deck and have found out that the infinite mana combos occur in roughly 7/10 games, provided that there aren't a lot of blue players around.

I updated the original list since I found some cards to be lackluster and just didn't do anything at all. Here is the changelog:

Cards Removed

• Sulfuric Vortex - didn't find the need to cast this thing at all
• Archmage Ascension - while being able to tutor for our combo pieces might be nice, this thing just gets blown up the turn it lands on the table
• Reiterate - rather pricey so I went to the next best thing to still be able to pull the combo off, Nivix Guildmage
• Collective Restraint,Meekstone,Smoke,etc. - slowing down the game and protecting myself from creatures just doesn't sit that well with the type of game the deck is playing
• Firemind's Foresight - a very costly tutor, replaced with multiple cheap filtering spells to get the combo pieces faster

Neat Inclusions

• Repercussion - with this card, I can ping any creature w/ Keranos for 3 and hit its owner for the same damage as well, though it won't be counted as commander damage
• Chain Reaction/Mizzium Mortars - damage to creatures also translate to damage to players, so damage-based board wipes can easily kill opponents, *cough* Blasphemous Act *cough*
• Wash Out - more board wipe is always helpful
• Careful Study,Frantic Search,Impulse,etc. - cheap card filter spells to help us dig through our library
• Nivix Guildmage - the hair got me, 'nuff said
• Vandalblast - just to satisfy the people asking me "why do you not play any artifact hate in red?"
• Mystic Speculation - scry is very nice to combine with Keranos, increases storm count with buyback and doesn't mill you out, unlike Whispers of the Muse

Underperformers

• Goblin Dark-Dwellers - flashing back a card is nice, if and only if it can help us tutor (Mystical Tutor/Long-Term Plans/Dizzy Spell/Muddle the Mixture)
• Altar of the Brood - aside from the infinite dudes/flicker combos, this card doesn't help much at all
• Brain Freeze - see notes for Altar of the Brood

I'm thinking of including Anger of the Gods somewhere in the list since most of the annoying utility creatures are at toughness 3 or less.

I would have tried Goblin Dark-Dwellers, shame it hasn't performed for you. I think Mizzix's Mastery has potential as a game-ending bomb.

In terms of the commander choice, I understand. You might consider Arjun, the Shifting Flame as another option - he doesn't seem too imposing, but he'd help you dig for your combo pieces.

Let me know how Anger of the Gods performs, I've definitely considered adding that card in EDH and there are times where I wish I added it.

I don't know if I'm cutting Goblin Dark-Dwellers out already. In some cases, it has performed wonderfully in conjunction with any Archaeomancer variant and Ghostly Flicker-type effects. Flashing back cantrips helps to assemble the combos a bit faster.

But then again, since this is a straight-up combo deck, Arjun, the Shifting Flame might be a better choice than Keranos, God of Storms. I haven't tested him though but I'm guessing it's very easy to assemble combos with him especially with all the cantrips present in the deck. I'll give him a chance and see how effective he is in the long run

Since the deck has moved to a more instant and sorcery heavy kind, I'm kinda leaning back on adding Guttersnipe in. I'm also thinking of adding some kind of game-winning combo in the Gibbering Fiend + Splinter Twin + Intruder Alarm variety.

Other options for Gibbering Fiend include the following:

• Sparkmage Apprentice
• Keldon Marauders
• Inferno Titan
• Ghitu Slinger
• Noggle Hedge-Mage
• Fanatic of Mogis
• Keldon Champion

...and so on...

Anyway, that might be pulling the deck's direction a bit too far in one direction so I might remove some of the "storm" spells I have.

I have tried and tested Anger of the Gods primarily against a Roon of the Hidden Realm deck, an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite deck, and a Nath of the Gilt-Leaf deck. While it plays stellar against Roon, it has difficulty keeping up against Elesh Norn and her multitude of anthems (Coat of Arms, Cathars' Crusade, etc.). So much so that her soldier tokens got way bigger than what can be handled by just Anger of the Gods. The Nath and Elesh Norn decks just lost a lot of life to a flashbacked Anger of the Gods (via Goblin Dark-Dwellers) with Repercussion on board though. All in all, it was a good test though Keranos has showed how slow he really is in the long run. Will be doing more tests when I have more time.