By the way, I love that you're still tinkering with this deck. The thread has been a fun read to see how it's changed over the years. I like your style.
By the way, I love that you're still tinkering with this deck. The thread has been a fun read to see how it's changed over the years. I like your style.
I haven't played my version of your deck, I've mostly just finished holding it, so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems you have more than enough (wait, is that possible) card draw group hug. I would think Kami of the Crescent Moon is your weakest in that category. How often does he survive more than a round or two?
Also, I like Nahiri's Wrath for board control, but does it help you as much since it doesn't target players?
Vanish into Memory is a card I've never played but it's hard for me to see it be super strong when you already have a lot of other flexible options in the deck to do the same thing. Or is this one more about getting it into EotS?
I'm a huge fan of Cathars' Crusade though, so I'd love to see it stay in your list. It draws a ton of hate in my regular group because of how well I've utilized it.
I suppose Kami is the weakest of the Howling Mines, but I don't really spend much time rating them because I want them all!
Nahiri's Wrath isn't immediately on the chopping block mostly because of Barren Glory. I just really like winning with Barren Glory.
Vanish Into Memory got into the deck a long time ago (when making cuts was easy) as just a pet card of mine, but now I just love it. With a big enough hand, this deck often just needs to survive a turn to win, and Vanish Into Memory often does both those things for me. And also it has Precursor Golem to play with now for the "draw 9, discard 3" mode. And also I like messing with people who play hydras.
The irresponsible part of me is definitely wanting to cut a piece of removal and a land, but I really need to fight that urge.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Catching up on your build as I've been more focused on other builds of mine for a little while. I'm looking at trying some different options for my Zedruu build in the next little while. I love the Precursor Golem idea, and it got me wondering about Mirrorwing Dragon. It seems like it could be absolutely nuts in the same way the Golem is - in fact as each spell is copied, it would copy spells again for each golem you own. Could be an exponential mathematics option. Just wondering if you had considered it.
Catching up on your build as I've been more focused on other builds of mine for a little while. I'm looking at trying some different options for my Zedruu build in the next little while. I love the Precursor Golem idea, and it got me wondering about Mirrorwing Dragon. It seems like it could be absolutely nuts in the same way the Golem is - in fact as each spell is copied, it would copy spells again for each golem you own. Could be an exponential mathematics option. Just wondering if you had considered it.
Not to be super nerdy, but the fun of the precursor golem + copy spell math is that it's actually more extreme growth than exponential. Aiming a copy spell at Mirrorwing Dragon will double your creatures every time, doing math such that you'll have orinal creature count x 2^number of copy spells, which is exponential. Precursor Golem, because it triggers off of targeting any golem, does exponential copying in exponential iterations, so that instead of a*2^b style math, you get a*2^2^2^2^2^2... however many times you can cast the copy spell. So if you Stolen Identity the dragon, trigger cipher, and copy it with Strionic Resonator, you can get 8 Mirrorwing Dragons. If you do that same thing with Precursor Golems, you've got 2048 Precursor Golems before even counting vanilla tokens. Precursor Golem is a really mathematically stupid card.
That being said, I've made whole decks dedicated to radiating spells all over the place, and Mirrorwing Dragon is great when you build to support it, but it's way less likely to necessitate a supercomputer to keep up with the calculations.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Believe me, I know the feeling. Zedruu is the one deck I've not had the time to play or tweak for a while now and it needs love. I've used all of the sensible cards in my folder. Now it's time to get silly.
Time to report a quality game. The good news is I got to show off to new people! The bad news is, since I was doing goofy things and they knew each other and not me, they spent the game leading up to this bouncing things off of one another and letting me keep drawing cards.
I'm sitting at a few crossroads, I'm not entirely sure where to proceed.
1) I let Zedruu slide too far out of relevance in her own deck again. I need more permanents worth donating. First instinct is to bring back Paradox Haze (at least partially because I have a foil copy and it might be my favorite foil), but it got cut cause I was low on upkeep triggers, so I'd be looking to pull one of those in. Additionally, I'm intrigued by Blood Sun, the card that makes my mana base stronger while hurting most opponents even when donated and it cantrips on etb, so a pretty good deal. I wish I could declare it a combo piece and seal the deal, but I think that's beyond even me.
2) I haven't actually enjoyed Kiki-Jiki in action. Non-legendary creature I control is too narrow a subset too often. Luckily, I discovered that I can accomplish nearly all of what I wanted from Kik-Jiki with Dack's Duplicant, so I'm taking that for a spin. Fun interaction, Dack's Duplicant on Crystalline Crawler is a mana ritual. And with Dack's Duplicant, Unbender Tine, and Phyrexian Metamorph, I can make a Unbend a Goblin Welder to make a hasty, artifact Welder that can tap to sacrifice itself to loop back the Unbender Tine. There's a high probability here that Dack's Duplicant and Unbender Tine are in for a good while.
3) Adding 1 more infinite etb combo to the list sort of demands I keep another card that trigger on etb in the deck. There are only really 2 that get my attention: Cathars' Crusade and Outpost Siege. The Crusade has the cooler interaction with Crawler and Walking Archive and also adds more chance of Zedruu commander damage, but drops in value when I probably cut The Locust God. Outpost Siege gets bonus points for being an upkeep trigger and a card advantage machine, but is far less unique of an addition to the deck.
So I'm looking at adding Unbender Tine, Dack's Duplicant, an etb trigger card, Blood Sun, Paradox Haze, and something that triggers on upkeep.
6 cards I could cut: Sky Hussar and Nahiri's Wrath are gone, The Locust God probably, Mox Diamond (I too often don't have the extra land and Tine is a mana rock), Noyan Dar might not be doing enough now that Crystalline Crawler is the better Jeskai Ascendancy combo buddy, and probably Stolen Identity since I just cut all my flying creatures.
I think just in typing out my thoughts, I settled on Cathars' Crusade cause it just seems so much more interesting, but choosing that out of the 2 means I've really gotta find a good upkeep trigger to go with Paradox Haze. I could potentially regress all the way back to Wild Evocation, but I'd rather test drive a card I haven't played before.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Zedruu was my very first EDH deck when I bought the precon a long time ago before I went with Esper (and so on and so forth building more and different decks), and seeing this thread and the Arcane Zada thread makes me want to revisit that commander. I mention the Zada thread as well because of the card Precursor Golem, one I haven't played since standard with it and Venser in UW control. There's been a lot of toys released since then and this deck has so many wild interactions that looks quite fun to play around with.
Just wanted to say that this is a great thread and I hope to keep seeing you play around with the deck as the years go by.
I'm also a big fan of that arcane Zada deck. Besides this deck, I've also had arcane decks and Radiate decks over the years, and you can definitely do a good Zada impression with more colors. The downside is that you can't have Zada in the command zone, which can make it hard to explode as quickly as a pure Zada deck. But the sneaky upside of that style of deck is that it's built entirely on "when cast" triggers, which makes it really hard to stop once you're snowballing.
Precursor Golem can be really nutty here, and there are only a handful of cards in here meant to support it. Thinking about my experience with Precursor type effects elsewhere, there are almost too many new toys being printed so that the real challenge is cutting enough fun stuff to keep a competent deck underneath.
The real gem with Precursor Golem is Mirrorweave, making useless non-PG cards and tokens into PG, thereby greatly increasing the number of PG triggers you have for each cast. Anointed Procession helps out a lot too with the early copy effects so you have a decent number to begin the big copy phases. It's easy to get 20 or so Golem tokens with Anointed Procession and a single-copy spell like Cackling Counterpart. With Mirrorweave, that's an extra 20 triggers to copy Cackling Counterpart flashbacked or something more potent like Heat Shimmer (which gives all the copies haste for an alpha strike).
I need to play more with Mirrorweave anyways since it's such an unusual card and deserves love.
I enjoy reading your Barren Glory wins since it's a hard one to set up and pull off. Good job making that card usable.
The real gem with Precursor Golem is Mirrorweave, making useless non-PG cards and tokens into PG, thereby greatly increasing the number of PG triggers you have for each cast. Anointed Procession helps out a lot too with the early copy effects so you have a decent number to begin the big copy phases. It's easy to get 20 or so Golem tokens with Anointed Procession and a single-copy spell like Cackling Counterpart. With Mirrorweave, that's an extra 20 triggers to copy Cackling Counterpart flashbacked or something more potent like Heat Shimmer (which gives all the copies haste for an alpha strike).
I need to play more with Mirrorweave anyways since it's such an unusual card and deserves love.
I enjoy reading your Barren Glory wins since it's a hard one to set up and pull off. Good job making that card usable.
Cackling Counterpart is probably the best individual copy spell for Precursor Golem because it casts twice. For reference, a kicked Rite of Replication with 1 Precursor Golem and friends leaves you with 6 Precursors and 22 vanillas, cast and flashback Cackling Counterpart gets you to 8 precursors and 40 vanillas. Iteration is stronger than increased power. For that reason, you gotta have Eye of the Storm. A copy spell eaten by Eye of the Storm is hardly eaten at all. Other than 1 vanilla token, you essentially get 2 full casts plus whatever was in the eye to begin with.
Of course, that's a risky play cause Precursor Golem doesn't care who controls it, so if anyone has a spell to respond with, they'll get even more golems that you. Though that works out well for Mirrorweave: the useless non-PG creatures you mention includes your opponent's creatures, so even with only the golems on your side, you sneak a Mirrorweave into Heat Shimmer for like 2^20th attackers if your opponent's have that many creatures.
I've also pondered the effect of Fractured Identity with multiple Precursor Golems about, with a traditional 4 person table. It does explode the number of golems really fast, but they'll be spread out pretty much equally, so you need the immediate follow up to take advantage.
I think just in typing out my thoughts, I settled on Cathars' Crusade cause it just seems so much more interesting, but choosing that out of the 2 means I've really gotta find a good upkeep trigger to go with Paradox Haze. I could potentially regress all the way back to Wild Evocation, but I'd rather test drive a card I haven't played before.
Hey there tstorm823! First off, I want to thank you for writing this article and continuing the continued study of chaos. I have been 'studying' this deck for over a year now as I slowly collected the pieces, and truly appreciate all of the edits and work and explanations you give. Since I have been itching to play this deck for some time, I have been brewing myself and thought of some ideas to possibly help with the Upkeep triggers as it seems you plan on going that route:
*DISCLAIMER:
[Please excuse my poor post quality, as I do not have very many posts on here, although I will try to link the cards]
**SIDE NOTE:
For some reason, after learning about the card "Mirror of Fate" from your findings, I always think of the new Marvel Doctor Strange movie now with the way that Zedruu bends time and reality in this game in such a way like the Ancient One... "Welcome to the Mirror Dimension"
PRO
○ The tokens get haste, and can therefore be offensive or defensive. They are also good fodder targets for the Block + Donate trick you mentioned in combat.
○ These tokens can make Mirrorweave and Firestorm more effective
○ Survives board wipes, and creeps up on card advantage even without Cathars' Crusade
○ Can be donated to another player that was perhaps the underdog at the table to help not only bring them back into the game, but also have some fun in the red zone
CON
○ Is another 5 cost enchantment that is definitely slower than other cards unless left unchecked on board for a few turns.
2. Akroan Horse -- This is a classic card that my buddy had showed me in his Super Friends deck. His build restrictions in that deck were to not play cards that were very obviously dumb like Sphere of Safety or Propaganda as these types of effects make Superfriends decks less interactive. So, his solution to this restriction was to use cards such as Brimaz, King of Oreskos or Akroan Horse to generate tokens in a roundabout way that he could then block enemy threats with. I think it could be good for these reasons:
PRO
○ This card is a colorless card that can make it easier to cast with the Sol Ring mana and the like, but it also has the added benefit of being donated to someone right away due to its ETB, saving you precious colored mana.
○ Adds further synergy to Cathars' Crusade by giving you tokens to Block + Donate with
○ Can get absolutely bonkers with Mirrorweave during one of your opponent's turn to give you and everyone else an absurd amount of 1/1 White Soldiers.
CON
○ Can potentially give the wrong player too many tokens, depending upon meta
3. And now for my secret tech that I have been waiting to share with all of you on this thread: Delaying Shield. -- I found this card on the gatherer while brewing for enchantment cards for an upgraded version of my old Jenara, Asura of War enchantress deck with Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis at the helm. At the time of searching and mulling over which deck to make (I ultimately made both Kynaios AND Zedruu) I was intrigued at the new card from Hour of Devastation called Solemnity as I already have a foil Decree of Silence I would like to use at least once. Anyway, here is my short dissertation on the card:
PRO
○ Once this card enters the battlefield, it immediately affects the game and essentially says "your life total cannot change except at your upkeep when this enchantment triggers".
○ Replaces damage instead of preventing, and can therefore get around Banefire or similar effects that cause damage to not be able to be prevented.
○ Is extremely effective with Solemnity if you are using that card in your build.
○ Excellent donate target with Zedruu the Greathearted after a massive swing at your direction or after casting Firestorm targeting yourself if there happens to still be another player around.
CON
○ As of now, I am not sure there are any cons to this card with this commander, especially if you are looking for more upkeep abilities.
(STORY TIME)
I cannot express enough how good this card really is. I mean, when I first read it I had though I misread it, but then I read it again and fell in love! I actually played a game earlier today (the day I am writing this) and was able to save my life at instant speed due to Leyline of Anticipation from a turn six 43/43 Avatar Token that was attacking my open board thanks to my friend's lucky start and Ajani Goldmane.
The bonus was that I had enough mana to flash in Zedruu the Greathearted at the end of the player before mine's end step and donate the Delaying Shield to the Ajani player that tried to end my life in one fell swoop!
(END OF STORY TIME)
I have several other cards that are possibly good to use as well, although I would like to give everyone time to digest this larger post and listen to feedback on the ideas I have presented here. Thanks again tstorm823 for this wonderful deck! Everyone else, thanks for the comments and suggestions and helping keep the deck alive!
Cackling Counterpart is probably the best individual copy spell for Precursor Golem because it casts twice. For reference, a kicked Rite of Replication with 1 Precursor Golem and friends leaves you with 6 Precursors and 22 vanillas, cast and flashback Cackling Counterpart gets you to 8 precursors and 40 vanillas. Iteration is stronger than increased power.
Sorry for being dumb, but how does two copies of Cackling Counterpart net you 8 PC and 40 vanillas? First spell would target the 3 golems, one which make another 2 vanillas. Thats 2 PC's and 6 vanillas, right? In my mind, the flashback would get you to 4 PC's and 24 vanillas...
Cackling Counterpart is probably the best individual copy spell for Precursor Golem because it casts twice. For reference, a kicked Rite of Replication with 1 Precursor Golem and friends leaves you with 6 Precursors and 22 vanillas, cast and flashback Cackling Counterpart gets you to 8 precursors and 40 vanillas. Iteration is stronger than increased power.
Sorry for being dumb, but how does two copies of Cackling Counterpart net you 8 PC and 40 vanillas? First spell would target the 3 golems, one which make another 2 vanillas. Thats 2 PC's and 6 vanillas, right? In my mind, the flashback would get you to 4 PC's and 24 vanillas...
Cackling Counterpart is probably the best individual copy spell for Precursor Golem because it casts twice. For reference, a kicked Rite of Replication with 1 Precursor Golem and friends leaves you with 6 Precursors and 22 vanillas, cast and flashback Cackling Counterpart gets you to 8 precursors and 40 vanillas. Iteration is stronger than increased power.
Sorry for being dumb, but how does two copies of Cackling Counterpart net you 8 PC and 40 vanillas? First spell would target the 3 golems, one which make another 2 vanillas. Thats 2 PC's and 6 vanillas, right? In my mind, the flashback would get you to 4 PC's and 24 vanillas...
Precursor Golem triggers when any golem is targetted, so when you cast a spell targeting any golem with 2 Precursors, both of them trigger, and the spell gets copied for every golem in play twice. So the first trigger resolves and copies the spell for every golem, getting you 2 more precursors and some vanilla tokens, then the second trigger resolves and copies again for each golem that exists now, doubling again to 8 precursors. A third copy spell would get you to 8*2^8 precursors.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
I think just in typing out my thoughts, I settled on Cathars' Crusade cause it just seems so much more interesting, but choosing that out of the 2 means I've really gotta find a good upkeep trigger to go with Paradox Haze. I could potentially regress all the way back to Wild Evocation, but I'd rather test drive a card I haven't played before.
Hey there tstorm823! First off, I want to thank you for writing this article and continuing the continued study of chaos. I have been 'studying' this deck for over a year now as I slowly collected the pieces, and truly appreciate all of the edits and work and explanations you give. Since I have been itching to play this deck for some time, I have been brewing myself and thought of some ideas to possibly help with the Upkeep triggers as it seems you plan on going that route:
*DISCLAIMER:
[Please excuse my poor post quality, as I do not have very many posts on here, although I will try to link the cards]
**SIDE NOTE:
For some reason, after learning about the card "Mirror of Fate" from your findings, I always think of the new Marvel Doctor Strange movie now with the way that Zedruu bends time and reality in this game in such a way like the Ancient One... "Welcome to the Mirror Dimension"
PRO
○ The tokens get haste, and can therefore be offensive or defensive. They are also good fodder targets for the Block + Donate trick you mentioned in combat.
○ These tokens can make Mirrorweave and Firestorm more effective
○ Survives board wipes, and creeps up on card advantage even without Cathars' Crusade
○ Can be donated to another player that was perhaps the underdog at the table to help not only bring them back into the game, but also have some fun in the red zone
CON
○ Is another 5 cost enchantment that is definitely slower than other cards unless left unchecked on board for a few turns.
2. Akroan Horse -- This is a classic card that my buddy had showed me in his Super Friends deck. His build restrictions in that deck were to not play cards that were very obviously dumb like Sphere of Safety or Propaganda as these types of effects make Superfriends decks less interactive. So, his solution to this restriction was to use cards such as Brimaz, King of Oreskos or Akroan Horse to generate tokens in a roundabout way that he could then block enemy threats with. I think it could be good for these reasons:
PRO
○ This card is a colorless card that can make it easier to cast with the Sol Ring mana and the like, but it also has the added benefit of being donated to someone right away due to its ETB, saving you precious colored mana.
○ Adds further synergy to Cathars' Crusade by giving you tokens to Block + Donate with
○ Can get absolutely bonkers with Mirrorweave during one of your opponent's turn to give you and everyone else an absurd amount of 1/1 White Soldiers.
CON
○ Can potentially give the wrong player too many tokens, depending upon meta
3. And now for my secret tech that I have been waiting to share with all of you on this thread: Delaying Shield. -- I found this card on the gatherer while brewing for enchantment cards for an upgraded version of my old Jenara, Asura of War enchantress deck with Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis at the helm. At the time of searching and mulling over which deck to make (I ultimately made both Kynaios AND Zedruu) I was intrigued at the new card from Hour of Devastation called Solemnity as I already have a foil Decree of Silence I would like to use at least once. Anyway, here is my short dissertation on the card:
PRO
○ Once this card enters the battlefield, it immediately affects the game and essentially says "your life total cannot change except at your upkeep when this enchantment triggers".
○ Replaces damage instead of preventing, and can therefore get around Banefire or similar effects that cause damage to not be able to be prevented.
○ Is extremely effective with Solemnity if you are using that card in your build.
○ Excellent donate target with Zedruu the Greathearted after a massive swing at your direction or after casting Firestorm targeting yourself if there happens to still be another player around.
CON
○ As of now, I am not sure there are any cons to this card with this commander, especially if you are looking for more upkeep abilities.
Thank you for the comment! I appreciate the thought you put into it. I had to leave you to sit for a bit til I had time to make a good reply. To the cards you suggested:
3) Delaying Shield: this is the most interesting and powerful of the 3, but unfortunately it's not what I'm looking for. The ability to give someone a "gift" that just takes 1 player out of the game is something I deliberately avoid. When zedruu is a must-kill threat, you don't get to draw much, and I want to draw much. That being said, if zedruu isn't a premier threat at the tables you're playing at, no need to maintain that politicking.
2)Akroan Horse: it's not really a beneficial upkeep trigger since it triggers on your opponents upkeep. I'd have to enchant an opponent with Paradox Haze to make the two work together, and the end result is some soldiers floating around. I'd far rather play the 3rd option.
3)Assemble the Legion: is definitely on my short list. It does pop up in zedruu decks, stemming largely from the Pristaxcontrombmodruu decklist because it used Enduring Ideal as a win condition. That's not something I'm looking to go back to, especially given my desire to shuffle less, but that is a very Paradox Haze style. Assemble the Legion doesn't need all that though, it would be great with Cathars' Crusade.
I did a lap of all the cards that say upkeep on them to see what I could use:
Akroan Horse: mentioned above
As Foretold: feels a little too like Omniscience. I'm afraid of it Assemble the Legion: mentioned above Dimensional Breach: probably not good for making friends, but it is a way to take over a game with Paradox Haze or win with Barren Glory. Dominus of Fealty: the steal and donate is always fun, but that mana cost is rough Ephara, God of the Polis: card draw is nice, and I've got the flash to take advantage. Followed Footsteps/Mechanized Production: very slow and very fragile, but pretty darn powerful. Mirror-Sigil Sergeant: a pet card of mine, but again it takes a long time to have an impact. Rasputin Dreamweaver: doesn't do much with Paradox Haze, but it technically has an upkeep trigger. And it goes well with Venser and Vanish Into Memory and Leave and Mind's Desire and was a commander I once had a deck for.
So now I'm playing with a rotation of Assemble the Legion, Rasputin, Mirror-Sigil Sergeant, and Dimensional Breach to see if any leave an impact.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
So I noticed you used to have the Price of Glory/Sacred Ground combo in your deck. Did you ever toy with any other synergies or additions to that? It's my kind of jank but Sacred Ground is just too do-nothing right now. I found Impending Disaster which makes a great donate target with the Ground, and maybe Noyan Dar adds enough synergy that Sacred ground isn't just a dead card. What do you think?
Donating Impending Disaster is a better second synergy than I ever had going. When I added that combo, I was mostly just excited to find Zedruu made Barren Glory a valid infinite mana spout. I didn't really have it in the deck long enough consider what else it should do, mostly because I found out I could win with Barren Glory without the infinite mana in the first place.
Other than something like putting Stone Rain in Eye of the Storm, I'm not sure how else you make your opponents play land destruction to make Sacred Ground more relevant. You probably already have the best 2. If you wanted to play actual manlands and count it as protection for those, that would be an upside, but that's probably less relevant than the a 2 mana do-nothing enchantment can generate with zedruu.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
I stumbled into a combination of cards I like again. I want to type out how cause it's a good sample of how I usually pick cards to play in Zedruu.
I wanted an upkeep trigger so I read through all the games upkeep triggers. I liked Rasputin Dreamweaver cause I used to have him as a general and he's pretty stormy and goes well with Vanish Into Memory. In trying him out, I discovered that Phyrexian Metamorph on him makes 4 mana for 2 life. Since that just feels like half a combo already, I moved to consider including another way to bounce creatures so that I could turn it into a loop (one that would require me to donate Rasputin, no less). Thinking of ways to repeatedly bounce, I considered another card I've played in other decks, Cowardice, and some mental exercises assured me that Cowardice wasn't going to make a 4 card combo with Rasputin, if was going to do so with the cards I already play (more on that later). So then the question went back to what to do with the slot Rasputin was in, and I looked to combine the goals of having an upkeep trigger and making Cowardice a great addition, so I wanted an upkeep trigger that targeted. Only Dominus of Fealty fit that from my list I'd made, but jeskai colored upkeep triggers that target is a short enough list to dig into all the options again from scratch and I looked closer at something I had glossed over: Capricious Efreet. And as soon as I considered what this does if the targets get bounced by Cowardice, I knew I had to play it.
So, what are these cards I'm suddenly more excited about than the things I'm willing to cut:
Cowardice is a nutty card. In very much the same vein as Rest In Peace or Possibility Storm, this is another enchantment that just won't let people do the things they want to do, in this case target creatures. Anything that targets a creature turns into a bounce, and that's wonderful here. Relative to the average deck, this deck has very little desire to target its own creatures. Without much graveyard recursion, Zedruu is glad to downgrade people's removal to Unsummon. The first game I cast this in Zedruu, I had no creatures out to worry about and my opponents had Mother of Runes, Lightning Greaves, and Skullclamp already played. Had Cowardice not eaten an immediate Oblation, it would have ground that game to a halt.
But of course, I play cards based on what I can do with them proactively, so what's the combo this time? First, there's Warstorm Surge, so every creature becomes a bounce spell. And they can bounce themselves. Free creatures thus do infinite storm/etb which just needs a 4th card to win. So play Memnite (or Crystalline Crawler), target Memnite, bounce 1000 times, cast Mind's Desire/pump with Cathars' Crusade. If your free creature is Dack's Duplicant cloning Crystalline Crawler, you can cast it for 4, make 5 mana, then bounce it back to hand and have infinite mana. What else targets? Inferno Titan does. Bounce 3 creatures per trigger. If Infinite Reflection is on the titan before Cowardice is down, cast and bounce Memnite to kill everyone. But what else targets? Zedruu the Greathearted, of course. Back to that Dack's Crawler business, with those 2 together and Cathars' Crusade, Dack's Duplicant entering as a hasty clone of Crystalline Crawler generates 2 mana of any combination of colors, exactly what it takes to target with zedruu. Combine with the Warstorm Surge again, and that infinite mana combo from before turns into infinite damage to any targets. This combo nonsense brought to you by a card that also turns off a bunch of other people's infinite combos. Also, Unbender Tine fun.
So what about Capricious Efreet. Well, it brings along some more choas to start with. Nonland removal is pretty versatile. What was the Cowardice interaction I was inspired by, you ask? If a target becomes illegal, it chooses from the remaining targets, so if I target one of my creatures and one of their non-creature permanents, their permanent gets destroyed guaranteed. Don't you have to target 2 of their things? No, I don't. Just up to 2 targets. That seems rather narrow to be excited by 1 really minor interaction with another card, doesn't it? Not if the other card is Zedruu! Much like bouncing my creature makes it not a permanent I control, donating a permanent makes it not a permanent I control. If you target something with Capricious Efreet and then donate it in response, it can't destroy that anymore. You guarantee a kill on an opponent's permanent and you draw an extra card out of it. First game I got it out, I managed to clone it twice and basically hardlock an opponent. It was fantastic.
Add in the option to blow up a permanent I control guaranteed, and the 6/4 goes well with Warstorm Surge and Vanish Into Memory, and you can pull your target out of the options with Chaos Warp or Leave // Chance, and clones/Strionic Resonator letting you hit multiple things with 1 donation, you construct lines of play that are so precisely convoluted, I no longer care if they're good.
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Sorry it had taken me a while to respond, the holidays recently caught up with me and I will have to look over this and your most recent update about Cowardice.
Not sure how I oversaw the Upkeep Trigger with Akroan Horse, my bad! Out of what suggestions I did see you have, Rasputin Dreamweaver is one of my favorite Legends' Commander as well and have made previous blink decks with him, but thanks for the interaction with Cowardice and Phyrexian Metamorph.
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Why thank you!
I suppose Kami is the weakest of the Howling Mines, but I don't really spend much time rating them because I want them all!
Nahiri's Wrath isn't immediately on the chopping block mostly because of Barren Glory. I just really like winning with Barren Glory.
Vanish Into Memory got into the deck a long time ago (when making cuts was easy) as just a pet card of mine, but now I just love it. With a big enough hand, this deck often just needs to survive a turn to win, and Vanish Into Memory often does both those things for me. And also it has Precursor Golem to play with now for the "draw 9, discard 3" mode. And also I like messing with people who play hydras.
The irresponsible part of me is definitely wanting to cut a piece of removal and a land, but I really need to fight that urge.
Catching up on your build as I've been more focused on other builds of mine for a little while. I'm looking at trying some different options for my Zedruu build in the next little while. I love the Precursor Golem idea, and it got me wondering about Mirrorwing Dragon. It seems like it could be absolutely nuts in the same way the Golem is - in fact as each spell is copied, it would copy spells again for each golem you own. Could be an exponential mathematics option. Just wondering if you had considered it.
Not to be super nerdy, but the fun of the precursor golem + copy spell math is that it's actually more extreme growth than exponential. Aiming a copy spell at Mirrorwing Dragon will double your creatures every time, doing math such that you'll have orinal creature count x 2^number of copy spells, which is exponential. Precursor Golem, because it triggers off of targeting any golem, does exponential copying in exponential iterations, so that instead of a*2^b style math, you get a*2^2^2^2^2^2... however many times you can cast the copy spell. So if you Stolen Identity the dragon, trigger cipher, and copy it with Strionic Resonator, you can get 8 Mirrorwing Dragons. If you do that same thing with Precursor Golems, you've got 2048 Precursor Golems before even counting vanilla tokens. Precursor Golem is a really mathematically stupid card.
That being said, I've made whole decks dedicated to radiating spells all over the place, and Mirrorwing Dragon is great when you build to support it, but it's way less likely to necessitate a supercomputer to keep up with the calculations.
Start my turn drawing 6 because of a donated Walking Archive and Thought Reflection. I make 10 mana with my lands, untap with Turnabout, aftermath Leave // Chance to discard 8 and draw 16 cards. From them, I cast Rest In Peace, cast Mirror of Fate, tap my mana rocks for 2 more mana and play Mind's Desire with 4 copies of itself. Activate Mirror of Fate putting Mirror, Turnabout, and Leave // Chance in my library, resolve 3 copies of Mind's Desire, flash in Mirror of Fate with my Shimmer Myr and activate again to put Temporal Mastery and Temporal Cascade on top, then resolve the remaining 2 Mind's Desire copies. Turnabout my lands again for 10 more mana, Temporal Mastery to have an extra turn, Leave to bounce every permanent I own, cast Barren Glory from my hand, then Temporal Cascade to shuffle hands and graveyards in. Pass the turn to myself and win.
They declare that I bamboozled them. I take that as high praise.
The best praise a fella can get!
I love how crazy this deck gets.
1) I let Zedruu slide too far out of relevance in her own deck again. I need more permanents worth donating. First instinct is to bring back Paradox Haze (at least partially because I have a foil copy and it might be my favorite foil), but it got cut cause I was low on upkeep triggers, so I'd be looking to pull one of those in. Additionally, I'm intrigued by Blood Sun, the card that makes my mana base stronger while hurting most opponents even when donated and it cantrips on etb, so a pretty good deal. I wish I could declare it a combo piece and seal the deal, but I think that's beyond even me.
2) I haven't actually enjoyed Kiki-Jiki in action. Non-legendary creature I control is too narrow a subset too often. Luckily, I discovered that I can accomplish nearly all of what I wanted from Kik-Jiki with Dack's Duplicant, so I'm taking that for a spin. Fun interaction, Dack's Duplicant on Crystalline Crawler is a mana ritual. And with Dack's Duplicant, Unbender Tine, and Phyrexian Metamorph, I can make a Unbend a Goblin Welder to make a hasty, artifact Welder that can tap to sacrifice itself to loop back the Unbender Tine. There's a high probability here that Dack's Duplicant and Unbender Tine are in for a good while.
3) Adding 1 more infinite etb combo to the list sort of demands I keep another card that trigger on etb in the deck. There are only really 2 that get my attention: Cathars' Crusade and Outpost Siege. The Crusade has the cooler interaction with Crawler and Walking Archive and also adds more chance of Zedruu commander damage, but drops in value when I probably cut The Locust God. Outpost Siege gets bonus points for being an upkeep trigger and a card advantage machine, but is far less unique of an addition to the deck.
So I'm looking at adding Unbender Tine, Dack's Duplicant, an etb trigger card, Blood Sun, Paradox Haze, and something that triggers on upkeep.
6 cards I could cut: Sky Hussar and Nahiri's Wrath are gone, The Locust God probably, Mox Diamond (I too often don't have the extra land and Tine is a mana rock), Noyan Dar might not be doing enough now that Crystalline Crawler is the better Jeskai Ascendancy combo buddy, and probably Stolen Identity since I just cut all my flying creatures.
I think just in typing out my thoughts, I settled on Cathars' Crusade cause it just seems so much more interesting, but choosing that out of the 2 means I've really gotta find a good upkeep trigger to go with Paradox Haze. I could potentially regress all the way back to Wild Evocation, but I'd rather test drive a card I haven't played before.
Just wanted to say that this is a great thread and I hope to keep seeing you play around with the deck as the years go by.
Beating Face with Bane
Beatrice, the Golden Witch
Precursor Golem can be really nutty here, and there are only a handful of cards in here meant to support it. Thinking about my experience with Precursor type effects elsewhere, there are almost too many new toys being printed so that the real challenge is cutting enough fun stuff to keep a competent deck underneath.
Bonus points: the random card of the day is Rite of Replication.
I need to play more with Mirrorweave anyways since it's such an unusual card and deserves love.
I enjoy reading your Barren Glory wins since it's a hard one to set up and pull off. Good job making that card usable.
Beating Face with Bane
Beatrice, the Golden Witch
Cackling Counterpart is probably the best individual copy spell for Precursor Golem because it casts twice. For reference, a kicked Rite of Replication with 1 Precursor Golem and friends leaves you with 6 Precursors and 22 vanillas, cast and flashback Cackling Counterpart gets you to 8 precursors and 40 vanillas. Iteration is stronger than increased power. For that reason, you gotta have Eye of the Storm. A copy spell eaten by Eye of the Storm is hardly eaten at all. Other than 1 vanilla token, you essentially get 2 full casts plus whatever was in the eye to begin with.
Of course, that's a risky play cause Precursor Golem doesn't care who controls it, so if anyone has a spell to respond with, they'll get even more golems that you. Though that works out well for Mirrorweave: the useless non-PG creatures you mention includes your opponent's creatures, so even with only the golems on your side, you sneak a Mirrorweave into Heat Shimmer for like 2^20th attackers if your opponent's have that many creatures.
I've also pondered the effect of Fractured Identity with multiple Precursor Golems about, with a traditional 4 person table. It does explode the number of golems really fast, but they'll be spread out pretty much equally, so you need the immediate follow up to take advantage.
And watch out for Searing Blaze.
Hey there tstorm823! First off, I want to thank you for writing this article and continuing the continued study of chaos. I have been 'studying' this deck for over a year now as I slowly collected the pieces, and truly appreciate all of the edits and work and explanations you give. Since I have been itching to play this deck for some time, I have been brewing myself and thought of some ideas to possibly help with the Upkeep triggers as it seems you plan on going that route:
*DISCLAIMER:
[Please excuse my poor post quality, as I do not have very many posts on here, although I will try to link the cards]
**SIDE NOTE:
For some reason, after learning about the card "Mirror of Fate" from your findings, I always think of the new Marvel Doctor Strange movie now with the way that Zedruu bends time and reality in this game in such a way like the Ancient One... "Welcome to the Mirror Dimension"
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****** UPKEEP TRIGGERS ******
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1. Assemble the Legion -- I believe that you, or someone else has already mentioned the card Assemble the Legion but if you are considering adding back Cathars' Crusade and Paradox Haze, I have to say that this interaction seems quite good for several reasons:
PRO
○ The tokens get haste, and can therefore be offensive or defensive. They are also good fodder targets for the Block + Donate trick you mentioned in combat.
○ These tokens can make Mirrorweave and Firestorm more effective
○ Survives board wipes, and creeps up on card advantage even without Cathars' Crusade
○ Can be donated to another player that was perhaps the underdog at the table to help not only bring them back into the game, but also have some fun in the red zone
CON
○ Is another 5 cost enchantment that is definitely slower than other cards unless left unchecked on board for a few turns.
2. Akroan Horse -- This is a classic card that my buddy had showed me in his Super Friends deck. His build restrictions in that deck were to not play cards that were very obviously dumb like Sphere of Safety or Propaganda as these types of effects make Superfriends decks less interactive. So, his solution to this restriction was to use cards such as Brimaz, King of Oreskos or Akroan Horse to generate tokens in a roundabout way that he could then block enemy threats with. I think it could be good for these reasons:
PRO
○ This card is a colorless card that can make it easier to cast with the Sol Ring mana and the like, but it also has the added benefit of being donated to someone right away due to its ETB, saving you precious colored mana.
○ Adds further synergy to Cathars' Crusade by giving you tokens to Block + Donate with
○ Can get absolutely bonkers with Mirrorweave during one of your opponent's turn to give you and everyone else an absurd amount of 1/1 White Soldiers.
CON
○ Can potentially give the wrong player too many tokens, depending upon meta
3. And now for my secret tech that I have been waiting to share with all of you on this thread:
Delaying Shield. -- I found this card on the gatherer while brewing for enchantment cards for an upgraded version of my old Jenara, Asura of War enchantress deck with Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis at the helm. At the time of searching and mulling over which deck to make (I ultimately made both Kynaios AND Zedruu) I was intrigued at the new card from Hour of Devastation called Solemnity as I already have a foil Decree of Silence I would like to use at least once. Anyway, here is my short dissertation on the card:
PRO
○ Once this card enters the battlefield, it immediately affects the game and essentially says "your life total cannot change except at your upkeep when this enchantment triggers".
○ Replaces damage instead of preventing, and can therefore get around Banefire or similar effects that cause damage to not be able to be prevented.
○ Is extremely effective with Solemnity if you are using that card in your build.
○ Excellent donate target with Zedruu the Greathearted after a massive swing at your direction or after casting Firestorm targeting yourself if there happens to still be another player around.
CON
○ As of now, I am not sure there are any cons to this card with this commander, especially if you are looking for more upkeep abilities.
(STORY TIME)
I cannot express enough how good this card really is. I mean, when I first read it I had though I misread it, but then I read it again and fell in love! I actually played a game earlier today (the day I am writing this) and was able to save my life at instant speed due to Leyline of Anticipation from a turn six 43/43 Avatar Token that was attacking my open board thanks to my friend's lucky start and Ajani Goldmane.
The bonus was that I had enough mana to flash in Zedruu the Greathearted at the end of the player before mine's end step and donate the Delaying Shield to the Ajani player that tried to end my life in one fell swoop!
(END OF STORY TIME)
I have several other cards that are possibly good to use as well, although I would like to give everyone time to digest this larger post and listen to feedback on the ideas I have presented here. Thanks again tstorm823 for this wonderful deck! Everyone else, thanks for the comments and suggestions and helping keep the deck alive!
Sorry for being dumb, but how does two copies of Cackling Counterpart net you 8 PC and 40 vanillas? First spell would target the 3 golems, one which make another 2 vanillas. Thats 2 PC's and 6 vanillas, right? In my mind, the flashback would get you to 4 PC's and 24 vanillas...
Anointed Procession might be involved in the math too.
Beating Face with Bane
Beatrice, the Golden Witch
Precursor Golem triggers when any golem is targetted, so when you cast a spell targeting any golem with 2 Precursors, both of them trigger, and the spell gets copied for every golem in play twice. So the first trigger resolves and copies the spell for every golem, getting you 2 more precursors and some vanilla tokens, then the second trigger resolves and copies again for each golem that exists now, doubling again to 8 precursors. A third copy spell would get you to 8*2^8 precursors.
Thank you for the comment! I appreciate the thought you put into it. I had to leave you to sit for a bit til I had time to make a good reply. To the cards you suggested:
3) Delaying Shield: this is the most interesting and powerful of the 3, but unfortunately it's not what I'm looking for. The ability to give someone a "gift" that just takes 1 player out of the game is something I deliberately avoid. When zedruu is a must-kill threat, you don't get to draw much, and I want to draw much. That being said, if zedruu isn't a premier threat at the tables you're playing at, no need to maintain that politicking.
2)Akroan Horse: it's not really a beneficial upkeep trigger since it triggers on your opponents upkeep. I'd have to enchant an opponent with Paradox Haze to make the two work together, and the end result is some soldiers floating around. I'd far rather play the 3rd option.
3)Assemble the Legion: is definitely on my short list. It does pop up in zedruu decks, stemming largely from the Pristaxcontrombmodruu decklist because it used Enduring Ideal as a win condition. That's not something I'm looking to go back to, especially given my desire to shuffle less, but that is a very Paradox Haze style. Assemble the Legion doesn't need all that though, it would be great with Cathars' Crusade.
I did a lap of all the cards that say upkeep on them to see what I could use:
Akroan Horse: mentioned above
As Foretold: feels a little too like Omniscience. I'm afraid of it
Assemble the Legion: mentioned above
Dimensional Breach: probably not good for making friends, but it is a way to take over a game with Paradox Haze or win with Barren Glory.
Dominus of Fealty: the steal and donate is always fun, but that mana cost is rough
Ephara, God of the Polis: card draw is nice, and I've got the flash to take advantage.
Followed Footsteps/Mechanized Production: very slow and very fragile, but pretty darn powerful.
Mirror-Sigil Sergeant: a pet card of mine, but again it takes a long time to have an impact.
Rasputin Dreamweaver: doesn't do much with Paradox Haze, but it technically has an upkeep trigger. And it goes well with Venser and Vanish Into Memory and Leave and Mind's Desire and was a commander I once had a deck for.
So now I'm playing with a rotation of Assemble the Legion, Rasputin, Mirror-Sigil Sergeant, and Dimensional Breach to see if any leave an impact.
Other than something like putting Stone Rain in Eye of the Storm, I'm not sure how else you make your opponents play land destruction to make Sacred Ground more relevant. You probably already have the best 2. If you wanted to play actual manlands and count it as protection for those, that would be an upside, but that's probably less relevant than the a 2 mana do-nothing enchantment can generate with zedruu.
I wanted an upkeep trigger so I read through all the games upkeep triggers. I liked Rasputin Dreamweaver cause I used to have him as a general and he's pretty stormy and goes well with Vanish Into Memory. In trying him out, I discovered that Phyrexian Metamorph on him makes 4 mana for 2 life. Since that just feels like half a combo already, I moved to consider including another way to bounce creatures so that I could turn it into a loop (one that would require me to donate Rasputin, no less). Thinking of ways to repeatedly bounce, I considered another card I've played in other decks, Cowardice, and some mental exercises assured me that Cowardice wasn't going to make a 4 card combo with Rasputin, if was going to do so with the cards I already play (more on that later). So then the question went back to what to do with the slot Rasputin was in, and I looked to combine the goals of having an upkeep trigger and making Cowardice a great addition, so I wanted an upkeep trigger that targeted. Only Dominus of Fealty fit that from my list I'd made, but jeskai colored upkeep triggers that target is a short enough list to dig into all the options again from scratch and I looked closer at something I had glossed over: Capricious Efreet. And as soon as I considered what this does if the targets get bounced by Cowardice, I knew I had to play it.
So, what are these cards I'm suddenly more excited about than the things I'm willing to cut:
Cowardice is a nutty card. In very much the same vein as Rest In Peace or Possibility Storm, this is another enchantment that just won't let people do the things they want to do, in this case target creatures. Anything that targets a creature turns into a bounce, and that's wonderful here. Relative to the average deck, this deck has very little desire to target its own creatures. Without much graveyard recursion, Zedruu is glad to downgrade people's removal to Unsummon. The first game I cast this in Zedruu, I had no creatures out to worry about and my opponents had Mother of Runes, Lightning Greaves, and Skullclamp already played. Had Cowardice not eaten an immediate Oblation, it would have ground that game to a halt.
But of course, I play cards based on what I can do with them proactively, so what's the combo this time? First, there's Warstorm Surge, so every creature becomes a bounce spell. And they can bounce themselves. Free creatures thus do infinite storm/etb which just needs a 4th card to win. So play Memnite (or Crystalline Crawler), target Memnite, bounce 1000 times, cast Mind's Desire/pump with Cathars' Crusade. If your free creature is Dack's Duplicant cloning Crystalline Crawler, you can cast it for 4, make 5 mana, then bounce it back to hand and have infinite mana. What else targets? Inferno Titan does. Bounce 3 creatures per trigger. If Infinite Reflection is on the titan before Cowardice is down, cast and bounce Memnite to kill everyone. But what else targets? Zedruu the Greathearted, of course. Back to that Dack's Crawler business, with those 2 together and Cathars' Crusade, Dack's Duplicant entering as a hasty clone of Crystalline Crawler generates 2 mana of any combination of colors, exactly what it takes to target with zedruu. Combine with the Warstorm Surge again, and that infinite mana combo from before turns into infinite damage to any targets. This combo nonsense brought to you by a card that also turns off a bunch of other people's infinite combos. Also, Unbender Tine fun.
So what about Capricious Efreet. Well, it brings along some more choas to start with. Nonland removal is pretty versatile. What was the Cowardice interaction I was inspired by, you ask? If a target becomes illegal, it chooses from the remaining targets, so if I target one of my creatures and one of their non-creature permanents, their permanent gets destroyed guaranteed. Don't you have to target 2 of their things? No, I don't. Just up to 2 targets. That seems rather narrow to be excited by 1 really minor interaction with another card, doesn't it? Not if the other card is Zedruu! Much like bouncing my creature makes it not a permanent I control, donating a permanent makes it not a permanent I control. If you target something with Capricious Efreet and then donate it in response, it can't destroy that anymore. You guarantee a kill on an opponent's permanent and you draw an extra card out of it. First game I got it out, I managed to clone it twice and basically hardlock an opponent. It was fantastic.
Add in the option to blow up a permanent I control guaranteed, and the 6/4 goes well with Warstorm Surge and Vanish Into Memory, and you can pull your target out of the options with Chaos Warp or Leave // Chance, and clones/Strionic Resonator letting you hit multiple things with 1 donation, you construct lines of play that are so precisely convoluted, I no longer care if they're good.
Not sure how I oversaw the Upkeep Trigger with Akroan Horse, my bad! Out of what suggestions I did see you have, Rasputin Dreamweaver is one of my favorite Legends' Commander as well and have made previous blink decks with him, but thanks for the interaction with Cowardice and Phyrexian Metamorph.