MTG Salvation

I like to think we've all had one of these. You built a deck that wasn't designed to be competitive: Maybe it was a theme deck, or a janky tribal deck, or wanted to explore some obscure mechanic (5color Banding tribal?) or it was made to play around some suboptimal "pet" card or cards you happened to own.

And the darned thing wound up just winning a whole lot of games, contrary to your expectations. What was your deck and its mechanics?



In my case, I had an opportunity to trade a Past in Flames a few months ago straight across for the then-new Liliana, Heretical Healer / Liliana, Defiant Necromancer flippy planeswalker. I got her because I thought she was neat and I'd never used a Lili before (I don't have many Planeswalkers in my collection, and my local meta has an absolute "kill on sight" programming for walkers so they die instantly). So she sat in my box for a month or two until I realized that she was going to waste. I didn't have any decks that would like her as one of the 99 because I tend to run few creatures and no sac effects.

So I got it into my head to make my first mono-B deck using her as the commander. I gutted a retired Esper deck of its good black cards, pulled some good cards out of my Grixis sideboard, and then packed the deck with lots of random black stuff and sac outlets (Carnage Altar, etc.) I had laying around. Also jammed in pieces from a Bant proliferate/token deck that I retired like a year ago, like a Contagion Clasp. I basically built it to make use of odd cards I never run like The Chain Veil, Darkness, Undead Gladiator, Crypt of Agadeem, and Spread the Sickness. Its very creature heavy for me, with 28 critters in it.

The deck could best be described as:

Mono-B
Theme (all the Liliana-themed cards of value are in there, like her namesake creatures and the new Liliana's Indignation from SOI)
Skeleton and Zombie tribal with a splash of Demons.
Sac and Draw powered.
With Proliferate and Reanimate subthemes.

And the damned thing just wins games. The most expensive card in it is Cabal Coffers and it doesn't even use the good tutors. I land her Ultimate more often than not, then reanimate things like Magus of the Abyss, eat everyone's board, steal everything, and gank graveyards with Grimoire of the Dead and Rise of the Dark Realms. I built it to be a casual, fun deck without OP cards and people will scoop to it now. I'm baffled.

What was your big shock of a winner deck and how did it work?

I built a 5-color deck based on Homer's The Iliad using many of the gods from Theros block with Karona commanding (and representing Eris).

When ignored, it locks the board with enchantments and wins through card advantage, recursion, and unblockable gods.

I'm often surprised how consistently Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge wins despite being so utterly random.

I built the deck because I was tired of trying to make Grixis discard-punisher work* and wanted to do something fairly silly and random. Saw Jeleva, and the idea was basically 'rifle through the rare binders for instants and sorceries that would be cool since I can ignore the manacost, add minor support/protection, and go to town'.

The deck has no extra turns or tutors and no arranging of the top of my library (intentionally so), yet it somehow seems to get the solutions it needs... by doing the weirdest things allowed by instants/sorceries in Grixis. Again and again. By all sense it shouldn't feel so... consistent, dare I say.

*gave that deck (Gwendlyn di Corci) to my wife to tinker and pilot, and now it's a complete beast that creates fairly consistent hand-punisher wins. Go figure.

I have a heretical healer deck too, and it straight destroys despite being something i made on a whim. Its one of my favorite decks now, she is a baller commander.

The one that caught everyone including me off guard is a monogreen deck i made with sasaya, orochi ascendant. Ive hurricaned for thousands, drawn my deck, milled a table, and trampled with millions of damage. No clue why the deck does this more often then not, when on paper its adorable...

Toshiro Umezawa surprised me a bit. To be honest, there really aren't that many black instants that aren't removal, so I was a little hesitant on building it. I'm really glad I did. It was a blast to play and it won more than a few games in my playgroup. It's now my go to legendary to suggest when one of those "I don't know what to build" threads come rolling around. Fairly obscure, cheap to build, and puts in work.

Karador, Ghost Chieftain also surprised me a bit. I bought the precon when it came out and was the only person to play Karador instead of Ghave when my group was playing precons against each other. I knew it was really good when I read the card, but quite didn't realize how good. Winning nearly every game the deck is in, even against the far more competitive people in the group, is what showed me just how good it is. I've been pimping it out since then and I'll probably never dismantle it considering the at least a thousand dollars worth of cards in the deck at this point.

I'm rarely surprised since I always go into the deckbuilding process with a distinct theory/goal in mind, and don't often find myself discovering random synergies I hadn't thought of.

The notable exception to this was the Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck I recently built that, originally, was just a pile of solid creatures, token makers, and sac engines. There arn't all that many great instants and sorceries that fit into that narrow niche (prefering creature/enchantment based removal) and when all was said and done I ended up playing for a few weeks with a grand total of two non-permanents in the deck... without even realizing it.

It was an easy cut to add another utility option and throw in Primal Surge as a bonus win condition, even if losing tutors.

Karametra, God of Harvests. I built what I thought would be a fun, janky landfall deck, with a few creatures that bounced themselves for repeated castings in a single turn (eg Whitemane Lion). What I ended up with was, surprisingly, a combo deck that could frequently combo cards like Baru, Fist of Krosa and Avenger of Zendikar with many landfall triggers in a turn to create huge combat swings. Or get the five plains needed for Emeria, the Sky Ruin easily. Or make a huge Champion of Lambholt with repeated creature castings. It never goes infinite like most combo decks do, but I do think it still qualifies as a combo deck.

Happens quite often to me. Some have been dismantled since, others still kick.

First was Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius. I had bought the Daretti precon and decided to add Blue to it and go for a general Artifact sac-and-recur theme. Junk Diver, Myr Retriever, Trash for Treasure, all that kind of stuff. Turned out it went infinite a bit too easily and I ended up dismantling it as games started to become "My enemies taking down Niv...or lose." which isn't my idea of a fun game.

Grenzo, Dungeon Warden is another one. I built it with the intention to avoid the Doomsday stuff (And tutoring in general) and just power out fun stuff with some generic RB Goodstuff mixed in. Turns out that when you build to those strengths of Grenzo, you can get really aggressive early on with the help of the likes of Oona's Blackguard, Drana, Liberator of Malakir and Ignition Team (12/12 at turn 4? Sure.) or more controlling with Puppeteer Clique, Duplicant and Olivia Voldaren. The deck has become extremely resilient and can win in a plethora of ways, from Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion, to 5 Gray Merchant of Asphodels a turn, or a loop with Summoner's Egg, Epitaph Golem and whatever's in my hand + a sac outlet. Crazy stuff.

Finally, Jori En, Ruin Diver. I initially meant for it to simply be a "Draw cards and see where it goes" deck. And while it has troubles closing out a game, turns out that repeated castings of Cyclonic Rift into Time Reversal effects can get on the nerves of opponents pretty quickly. It also manages very well to keep a low profile early game while trying to keep fast starters in check, so it has no troubles making early allies...and once they realize what's happening, the Rite of Replication on Guttersnipe has already happened.

Definitely my Narset, Enlightened Master: I had originally just wanted an artifact deck that spits out all of my spare artifact rocks (like 20+) and has Tower of Fortunes and Predator Flagship, without bothering with a way to win.

Turns out that artifact mana with Narset's insane card advantage has a blitzkrieg effect, like Chip Kelly's offense: super quick bombardment of the board scares people despite its insane fragility to any artifact sweeper.

Quote from bauerskates »

Definitely my Narset, Enlightened Master: I had originally just wanted an artifact deck that spits out all of my spare artifact rocks (like 20+) and has Tower of Fortunes and Predator Flagship, without bothering with a way to win.

Turns out that artifact mana with Narset's insane card advantage has a blitzkrieg effect, like Chip Kelly's offense: super quick bombardment of the board scares people despite its insane fragility to any artifact sweeper.

Holy wow I came to this thread to say the same thing. I built a narset artifacts deck the moment she came out, because I thought it'd be super fun and I had no Jeskai commanders. I knew Narset would be stronk, which is why I thought having really janky artifacts would tone her down. Boy was I wrong.

Also my 5 color Horde of Walkers deck. I really had no clue what I was planning on doing, I just put 20+ walkers in the deck and a bunch of proliferate. I had no clue it was a combo deck. Nissa + Tezz + Chain Veil, Ral Zarek ultimate loops, etc... Really weird and complicated deck.

Feldon of the Third Path and Geth, Lord of the Vault. At one point I was focusing my entire collection on the Bant shard, because red and black were really unappealing to me. These two commanders surprised me when I played them, not because of their power but because of how fun they were. They were so fun I made a purchase order just for these two "boring" colors to fill out their decks.

My buddy built General Tazri that won almost every game that someone didn't draw a sweeper. Then when we wiped the board we stood a fighting chance, but Tazri was by no means out of the fight. Allies are so cheap that he could just spam a bunch of filler and recur the important ones like Sea Gate Oracle.

I have two decks that really surprised me with how well they did after i built them.

First was a 5 color Child of Alara "fun police" deck that is all instants and sorceries as well as land of course Basically i pile of removal spells and card advantage. And ive dominated quite a few games with it. Instant speed wraths along with big haymaker sorceries due to the amazing Alchemists Refuge.

The other one is a turbo fog lead by Tasigur, the Golden Fang,main win con is walkers. this one is called the Fog Friends. this deck style was always a desire of mine. always wanted to have a superfriends deck but never wanted the A-Typical 5 color goodstuff type and this was the deck design i settled on and this color combo has a great arrangement of protection and fog effects and tasigur potentially rebuying plansewalkers is pretty terrifying lol ive done crazy stuff with this deck and its a blast to play.

I have deck list for both of these right here on the forums if any one is interested! I enjoy this thread as a brewer lol

I've been pretty astounded at how brutally effective my Karlov deck has been. Landing a Soul Sister T1 to Karlov T2 makes for a Karlov that can often start one-shotting people pretty darn quickly, and if he's removed, he tends to rebuild really quickly as well.

My Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas deck has been able to secure a lot of wins, to my delight. Other players seem to gloss over her stats and/or don't care about Commander damage... until they die from it.

Krenko, Mob Boss really shocked me in terms of consistency and overall explosiveness. I originally built him to semi troll the table once in a blue moon, but he actually turned out to be borderline busted with little effort. I shudder to think what more tuned versions can do.

Titania, Protector of Argoth kind of threw me. I guess, I didn't really have many decks that could go all out with stuff like Zuran Orb. I also didn't realize how quickly 5/3 elementals would add up, or just how durable the deck could be in terms of wrath recovery.

A friend of mine runs an impressive Aurelia deck, and I'm consistently impressed at how far 'my general is basically two bolts and a Relentless Assault' can go.

feldon of the third path

this deck turned into some kind of mutant power house. its incredibly fun to pilot, and wins very consistently. it loses to rest in peace, but for the most part has been incredibly strong

My mono-blue Braids, Conjurer Adept went from, "Everybody will get stuff, but I'll get better stuff sometimes" all the way to "Seems like a casual table, can't pull this deck out." There were several surprising things learned along the way, like how insane Telepathy is in multiplayer, and I was one of the few people in my playgroup who understood why Trade Secrets was banned. Seriously, I cast that maybe 10-12 times and never lost one of those games...

But the really big surprise is the Kothophed, Soul Hoarder deck I made for my wife. I wanted to create something straightforward to help her get the hang of playing black, so the deck only has two focal points: gain life, and blow ***** up. Add in a light recursion element, and it is amazingly effective. We play it online all the time, and it has about a 75% win ratio in 4-player games.

I wanted to build an eldrazi deck, but the idea of building a colorless deck bores me. So I pulled out my old Rakdos, Lord of Riots and grabbed all my pingers and all my eldrazi, sleeved it up, and figured it would be a terrible deck that could be fun. I just wanted something linear and proactive.

Don't get me wrong, it is a horrible janky deck. If I can't keep Rakdos in play, I straight up lose, getting stuck with upwards of 60 mana of spells in my hand.

But, when people underestimate Rakdos or don't kill him on site, I just vomit eldrazi into play.
Add to it a few infinite combos and the deck is super consistent. As long as my general doesn't die.

Recently experienced this with my newly constructed Glissa, the Traitor deck. It works surprisingly good with Oblivion Stone and Execution or's Capsule and with a little dredge and deathtouch, it's quite competitive.

See decklist in sig for decklist.

The first time I played my Zada, Hedron Grinder deck against real people in multiplayer I won on turn 6.

Sen Triplets. Originally a pillow-fort life gainey deck with ability to pay around instants with the commander, I decided to throw in a bunch of Esper planeswalkers, the best creatures in that color (norn, sun titan) and a few "fun" enchantments (luminarch ascension

Deck is nuts. Who knew planeswalker ultimates actually did stuff.

The first game I played with this deck

It's not bad, but definitely not competitive. All I wanted to do was make 4-5 token copies of great whale. I ended up topdecking spitting image the turn after tutoring great whale, already had elemental bond in play, had some lands that tapped for more than 1 mana... Ended up making like 20+ whale tokens, tons of mana, haste from maelstrom wanderer, etc.

I built a Derevi, Empyrial Tactician bird themed deck when she first came out before i realized how busted she was. I maxed out the flavor even getting stuff like Carrier Pigeons and Sage Owl and of course Soraya the Falconer. It didnt matter how junky the creatures were, the twiddles off Derevi were absurd and the deck would always pull out wins. After winning 7 of its first 8 games i retired the deck.

Nissa, Vastwood Seer is a deck i built after getting her in the one draft i played of that format. I literally just jammed in every land matters green card i had and random green good creature like Hornet Queen and Avenger of Zendikar. The deck didn't even have sleeves for the first 3 months of its life because other than the general nothing was worth more than a couple bucks. Nissa didn't have the win ratio of Derevi but she is pretty much always in the game and a favorite in my group. We have 20+ decks to choose from but Nissa is always in the mix.

I have a Gabriel Angelfire deck that can work well at times, but requires several pieces to work as I intend it to. It revolves around banding and Gabriel's rampage. Since it requires my commander, a banding creature, something that grants trample, a lure effect and creature-heavy opponents it doesn't work as intended a lot of the time. I had to add a Beastmaster Ascension to help out. Many of my creatures are (very) sub-par and high-costed banders, so this route is much slower but works occasionally. Otherwise I'll chip away with my commander or something like Teeka's Dragon, lol.

Overall, I usually play the deck when I know it'll be a slower game.