MTG Salvation

The Mule

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Introduction


When I saw the new commanders, I never thought I would be playing Yidris. Chaos, the archetype, was never one that spoke to me. So when I read that one of the commander 2016 decks would be chaos based I knew it wouldn't be one I would actually play. I'm not exactly sure what lead to be to build this deck, I remember wondering what he was capable of. It only took one game for me to fall in love with Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder.


Thesis:
This deck aims to have a turn 3 Yidris, cast many ramp spells, and then cast huge proactive spells. There are many one and two drop ramp spells that allow for a quicker deployment of our commander. If we are able to get the Yidris combat trigger, further ramp spells become card neutral. Getting free spells helps to mitigate some of poor quality of cards like Nature's Lore midgame. Once we have a large enough amount of mana we can cast our big spells. They become even more awesomer when they have cascade. Reactivity is not one of this deck's strengths. Being proactive is the number one goal here and adding counters or a large suite of removal is against the spirit of battle-cruiser Yidris.


Senergies and Tidbits:
Bow of Nylea is useful with our commander as Deathtouch + Trample allows for easy saboteur triggers. Trample states that once you assign enough damage to the blocking creatures to destroy them, the rest is dealt the blocking opponent. Deathtouch states that 1 damage is enough to destroy any creature damaged by a deathtoucher. This doesn't prevent Yidris from dying in combat but it does almost guarantee you can trigger him. Other uses of Bow of Nylea include putting spells to cascade into on the bottom of your library. This is mostly useful with specific CMC spells such as Ancestral Vision. As it is the only 0 cost card in the deck, any 1 CMC spell with cascade will automatically reveal that card.

Cost reduction mechanics are very useful with cascade and Yidris capitalizes on this quite well. Delve and the Urza's block untap x land spells can be very explosive with cascade. Generating lots of 'free' mana in one turn is one of the ways this deck can leverage tempo. Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Turnabout, Palinchron, and Time Spiral are a few options in this category.

Although my current build doesn't use any Doublestrike, the keyword is quite useful on Yidris. It goes nicely with Deathtouch and does in fact give your spells Cascade Cascade ala Maelstrom Wanderer. Cheap or permanent sources of Doublestrike are an excellent option with this commander.

Pitfalls and Shortcomings:
This particular build of Yidris is not meant to be powerful against the tier 1 commanders. I would not suggest this deck for competitive play and I would expect Yidris in general to be slightly too slow and fragile to be overly powerful.

My build is commander centered and therefor has all of the weaknesses those decks have. If you cannot give your spells cascade reliably, then this particular build becomes a good-stuff deck.





Maybe Board:

Changelog: