MTG Salvation

Hey everyone, I'm looking to start building a deck based around being highly explosive, albeit to an individual player. I'm after a deck that gives people an excuse to change deck/commander after their deck won on turn 3, as they would be in fear that my deck could instantly knock that player out of the next game turn 3-5 after seeing what they can pull off. Most Commanders generally considered tier one combo out on turn 3-4 (turn 4-6 if messed with or stalled) so the criteria would be the following:


-Needs to kill a single player via aggro by turn 3-4 (or turn 4-6 if slowed down / disrupted)
-needs to win without combo preferably (not too big of an issue, just that my meta finds combo somewhat boring unless it was unexpected)
-preferably has some degree of control until the burst insta-kills someone.
-would prefer to stay away from blue (im that "blue guy" in my main playgroups and i'd prefer to break away from that stigma)

Examples of commanders that i can think of would be things like xenagos, god of revels infect, skithiryx, the blight dragon burst and rafiq of the many burst control. My girlfriend has been playing kaalia of the vast since it got spoiled, so she's out too. Anywho, all of your combined knowledge far supersedes mine, therefore I ask you all, which commander fits the bill for the "single target burstiest competitive commander"?

Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas Equipment can be really fast especially landing a mana rock and a sword on curve.

Also Karlov of the Ghost Council can be speedy given the right early turns(a Soul Sister accelerates him to the stratosphere)


Although I don't see it possible in the number of turns you are specifying for decks that don't use combo.

Krenko, Mob Boss gets my vote. Goblinaggro is nothing to laugh at with that lil' guy. Although turn 3 might be somewhat pushing it for a non-combo version.

Edric could probably somewhat fit in the theme. Not the fastest of decks but lots of disruption.

In general killing before a combodeck goes off is a tall order for an aggrodeck and when you do you most probably have expended most of your resources meaning yo are rather irrelevant taking both you and the comboplayer out of the game.

Some kind of a controlbuild could probably be a better choice, that makes it easy to direct the hate at the correct player(s).

xenagos aggro can do a pretty good job of taking out one or two players by turn 4 or 5. It's quite capable of a turn 4 win, actually. My favorite is turn 3 xenagos into turn 4 malignus. You can run some of the larger infect guys if you wish. I've managed to clear a table of 5 players with xenagos aggro before (courtesy of a hydra omnivore and an extra combat). plushpenguin has a nice list for it, but there are a few others that have been good in the past. I think silenacio also had one that was focused slightly different but also quite effective?

That is what I designed my Xenagos to do. It's fragile but very explosive and wins by turning dudes sideways (usually). It sounds perfect for what you want to do.

I'll add another vote for Xenagos, God of Revels, as I've gone from a near-empty board to a win seamlessly on more than one occasion. Throw in enough extra combats and trample and Xenagos can carry any number of beaters to a bursting win.

I've lost a lot of games to Aurelia, the Warleader, but she might be too expensive if you're looking for those really fast wins.

My buddy plays her control + effects that abuse her trigger. Extra combat spells, Strionic Resonator, double strike, a few equipments like Sunforger. Its surprising how quickly he can go from "buuuh im not doing anything" to one shotting people. And if another flying critter gets in your way you just remove it with your R/W nuking suite.

I'd probably recommend the infect version over the one I have.

If you're looking for speed kills, just keep in mind that even the really good decks can't get its crazy nonsense going quickly all the time, and neither can the build I use.

The infect variant would probably be better due to having more redundancy in the ideal sequence it tries to achieve, but has fewer tools devoted to trying to keep itself gassed.

For something to achieve that goal - kill one person and one person only, by combat - Xenagos is probably the best bet. And build like this, it will not be very good at winning. Also, it will be very inconsistent, as are all decks trying to win before Turn 6. But, ramping Xenagos into Berserk into some other doubler will get the job done.

Also, Kalemne is really good against passive players. If you ramp hard enough, you might be able to access enough things like Brute Force in time.

I would have to vote for animar, soul of elements.

From the Animar decks I've been exposed to, it is always a turn-1 mana-dork, turn-2 Animar, turn-3 the deck goes a little crazy.

Skittles?

All the artifact manas, Howl from Beyond effects, and he comes with built in haste and evasion.

Quote from ClockCode »

I've lost a lot of games to Aurelia, the Warleader, but she might be too expensive if you're looking for those really fast wins.

My buddy plays her control + effects that abuse her trigger. Extra combat spells, Strionic Resonator, double strike, a few equipments like Sunforger. Its surprising how quickly he can go from "buuuh im not doing anything" to one shotting people. And if another flying critter gets in your way you just remove it with your R/W nuking suite.

I'll give Aurelia another vote. In one EDH game, the guy with her accelerated into Aurelia on what must have been turn 4 or 5, soulbonded her to Silverblade Paladin, and equipped Umezawa's Jitte. I, uh, lost that turn.

Well I've been nuked pretty fast by Xenagos, God of Revels when I kept a suboptimal hand.

One of the fastest noncombo decks I ever saw was Rafiq. And it had the resilience to finish off the table.

I would second Rafiq of the Many particularly if you can fill it with swords.

Teysa, Orzhov Scion combos out turn 3 or 4 and kills the whole table in a sacrifice combo theme. Atleast my deck does. I can't use it very often in my meta because it's so consistent, helps that the average CMC of the whole deck is 2.1 or so.

Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest is very bursty as well, since he can provide DS not just to himself but also other creatures.

My relatively budget (before Tarkir block) Scion of the Ur-Dragon deck (don't have a list) could win as early as turn three.