Zada lets you tickle that Johnny itch of using terrible cards to great effect.
Mono-red storm is not a particularly common archetype.
Games will take no more than fifteen minutes until you start going off (or lose horribly).
Storming off has a variety of possible paths and requires vision and skill.
Goblins are cool!
How to Play
Ideal opening hands include a targeted cantrip, a ritual, a token producer, and one or two lands.
The first 1-2 turns should be spent attempting to play mana rocks. By turn 4 you should have a healthy amount of tokens (4-6). Now you can either wait for the blue player to tap out or you can just cast zada as soon as you think you can win.
A key point of playing this deck is to never play Zada until you are about to combo off. Just playing Zada and passing the turn will result in Zada returning to the command zone very soon.
This deck consistently goldfishes turn 3-4, but sometimes you get unlucky with your draws. In cases where you get mana flooded, mana screwed, have no ways to draw cards, no ways to make mana, etc...just try to get some incremental advantage (Kher Keep+Skullclamp, Scroll Rack) and make yourself appear very small. Complain about your garbage hand constantly. Do not be afraid to cast your targeted cantrips to only draw one card if you really need to hit something useful. You can recur spells.
Strengths & Weaknesses
THIS IS NOT A CASUAL DECK!
Zada will most likely not win very often at tier 1 tables. You just have so few outs to the popular stax cards and commanders in the format that you really will only win when you get the nut draws and no one has countermagic. However, in metas where people are playing midrange or control builds that are slow and value based (think casual-competitive), Zada can be a real pubstomper.
This deck has undergone a huge amount of changes in the last months and I have had difficulty updating this thread with the builds I test in multiple environments-- paper, Xmage, cEDH discord matches-- so I just updated it with what I consider the best list. Some of the various cuts and replacements have not been noted.
I acknowledge that there are other builds of Zada on the forums, but I believe no other version is as fast and greedy.
If you have any questions, advice, or criticism, comment below and I will try to respond to everything.
10/21/2016: I guess I missed that Spark of Creativity came out with Kaladesh. Swapped out Aleatory for creative spark. Aleatory is better for a value play to set up a following turn, but is far too slow.
2/23/2017: The gimmick finally dies. I'm removing cards that combo with desperate ritual and suck without it.
2/26/2017:
Didnt notice I was missing boiling blood! I have it in the paper version. Swapped Increasing Vengeance out for it.
4/08/2017:
Man oh man have I switched it up. We running kobolds now boys.
Essentially, combat as a win condition is unreliable and too slow for competitive metagames. As such, I have removed all combat related cards from the deck. The deck focuses much more on simply amassing a sizeable number of creatures quickly. The lower cmc makes the deck faster and more reliable when comboing off.
Kobolds, Memnite, Ornithopter, etc.: I have generally underestimated the power of free bodies on the board; playing with the kobolds has changed that.
Aetherflux Reservoir: Firestorm was a great finishing card, but the fact that it can be fizzled by removing any single one of its targets makes it too vulnerable. Also, Aetherflux Reservoir can win much quicker with less effort (and getting it counterspelled doesn't leave you without a hand.
Red Elemental Blast: This kills annoying permanents, which are more common at competitive tables than I would like. Better than Pyroblast because it can't be wasted on non-blue permanents if you are mindslavered. Some people run both but this build mainly about greed and speed.
Imperial Recruiter: It's a tutor for treasonous ogre! Fetching Magus of the Moon is not a terrible play either if you can't win soon and need to stop other people from doing so.
Magus of the Moon: Highly competitive decks are generally multiple colors of mana and play lots of nonbasics. This stops that pesky leovold player from shutting you out of the game turn 3. I play the magus over Blood Moon because I prefer the fact that the effect is on a creature more so than I value the fact that enchantments are harder to remove than creatures. It's also tutorable with Imperial Recruiter! Again, some people run both.
Why you would need 50 combat steps when they only untap once I don't know, but it's awesome!
The interaction is amusing, but pretty terrible considering you don't untap. Honestly I'm considering removing most of the combat wincons, as drawing into something like blazing shoal when you want crimson wisps or inner fire hurts pretty badly.
You might want to add Reverberate as another anti-counterspell. I'm not sure how much good Increasing Vengeance does you considering it only copies your own spells, while Reiterate and Dualcaster Mage both can copy your opponent's spells.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
You might want to add Reverberate as another anti-counterspell. I'm not sure how much good Increasing Vengeance does you considering it only copies your own spells, while Reiterate and Dualcaster Mage both can copy your opponent's spells.
First off, I'll agree with you on arcane spells. They were objectively terrible without Desperate Ritual or Path of Anger's Flame, and I would so frequently be stuck with trash like Strange Inversion in my hand (though a Doran deck has entered my meta now, making Strange Inversion almost good). I've taken them out.
Next, I do like the idea of a Paradox Engine package. Even though I'm taking out the arcane gimmick, having a crimson wisps underneath isochron scepter with a paradox engine should end the game 99% of the time. However, I would need to include both.
I do really like Paradox Engine so I'll spend some time playing without the arcane spells and decide what the weak links are. At the very least I want to try Paradox Engine in the deck.
On Reverberate: I honestly play the copy spells mostly with the intention of copying my own stuff. While copied cantrips aren't cast and therefore do not trigger zada, token-producers and mana rituals can be copied.
Also, Dualcaster Mage goes infinite with copy spells, which makes him have some utility as a win condition. I don't want too many spells that copy other things because they're dead by themselves. It's definitely not a bad suggestion though.
Do you think Goblinslide would have a place in your deck? That way, you can get tokens off each spell you cast. With the aforementioned Stick-Ring-Engine combo, you'll have mana open to pay for the Slide, and if you have even one other mana rock (say, a Fire Diamond, Pristine Talisman, or Mox Opal) you can get an arbitrary number of tokens off the Slide.
Of course, this is a general red artifact combo rather than something tailored to Zada's strengths, but once you have your massive Goblin token army you can then fire off a Brute Force or other red pump and go for the win, provided of course that having a million Goblins on the field isn't already enough.
The SRE combo also works well with Storm spells such as Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens, and requires less set up than Slide.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I used to run Goblinslide, but it felt too slow. The thing about the stick-ring-engine combo is that I'm worried it might be too Magical Christmasland-esque, but that's what testing is for. I don't run grapeshot because the storm count has to be obscenely high to win. If you get a storm count of 160 to nuke everyone, you can probably just win with something else.
I have found Overblaze to be Overkill (hehe) most of the time, and the siegegang commander win condition requires way too much work when firestorm and fiery gambit work just as well.
Imperial Recruiter is a great card, but I don't think there are that many targets in here. What would you fetch with it?
Boiling Blood is in my paper version; can't believe I forgot it!
I have always wondered why people put Kari Zev's Expertise in their Zada lists. I literally just realized that it casts a whole heap of free spells if you target Zada with it. That's *probably* really good, but I'll play with it a bit if it plays nicely with the mana curve.
Fateful Showdown is a wheel, so that probably goes is in somewhere.
Ignite Memories doesn't work on people with zero cards in hand, unfortunately. Too gimmicky.
I think I would almost always cast Devastating Summons as a "R, Sacrifice a land: Create two 1/1 Elementals." That's probably good enough (and would be a Kari Zev target).
Thanks for the feedback. Definitely extrapolate on your reasoning for Imperial Recruiter, e.g, what am I fetching.
Why Zada?
How to Play
Ideal opening hands include a targeted cantrip, a ritual, a token producer, and one or two lands.
The first 1-2 turns should be spent attempting to play mana rocks. By turn 4 you should have a healthy amount of tokens (4-6). Now you can either wait for the blue player to tap out or you can just cast zada as soon as you think you can win.
A key point of playing this deck is to never play Zada until you are about to combo off. Just playing Zada and passing the turn will result in Zada returning to the command zone very soon.
This deck consistently goldfishes turn 3-4, but sometimes you get unlucky with your draws. In cases where you get mana flooded, mana screwed, have no ways to draw cards, no ways to make mana, etc...just try to get some incremental advantage (Kher Keep+Skullclamp, Scroll Rack) and make yourself appear very small. Complain about your garbage hand constantly. Do not be afraid to cast your targeted cantrips to only draw one card if you really need to hit something useful. You can recur spells.
Strengths & Weaknesses
THIS IS NOT A CASUAL DECK!
Zada will most likely not win very often at tier 1 tables. You just have so few outs to the popular stax cards and commanders in the format that you really will only win when you get the nut draws and no one has countermagic. However, in metas where people are playing midrange or control builds that are slow and value based (think casual-competitive), Zada can be a real pubstomper.
Be on the lookout for the following commanders:
This deck has very little removal in order to maintain a high density of cards that contribute to the big combo turn. Consider swapping out a value piece or two for cards such as Vandalblast and Chaos Warp if your metagame has troublesome permanents (Humility,Night of Souls' Betrayal,The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale,Portcullis,etc.).
This deck has undergone a huge amount of changes in the last months and I have had difficulty updating this thread with the builds I test in multiple environments-- paper, Xmage, cEDH discord matches-- so I just updated it with what I consider the best list. Some of the various cuts and replacements have not been noted.
The decklist below is sorted by CMC.
1 Kher Keep
32 Mountain
CMC 0
1 Chrome Mox
1 Crimson Kobolds
1 Kobolds of Kher Keep
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Memnite
1 Mox Diamond
1 Ornithopter
1 Phyrexian Walker
CMC 1
1 Brightstone Ritual
1 Crimson Wisps
1 Expedite
1 Gamble
1 Mana Vault
1 Panic
1 Reckless Charge
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Renegade Tactics
1 Skirk Prospector
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Spark of Creativity
1 Tempt with Vengeance
1 Winds of Change
1 Accelerate
1 Battle Hymn
1 Chaotic Strike
1 Desperate Ritual
1 Dragon Fodder
1 Final Fortune
1 Grim Monolith
1 Helm of Awakening
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Iron Myr
1 Krenko's Command
1 Mogg War Marshal
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Ruby Medallion
1 Scroll Rack
1 Stun
1 Twinflame
1 Young Pyromancer
CMC 3
1 Boiling Blood
1 Dualcaster Mage
1 Fiery Gambit
1 Heat Shimmer
1 Hordeling Outburst
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Kari Zev's Expertise
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Mogg Alarm
1 Molten Birth
1 Phyrexian Altar
1 Priest of Urabrask
1 Reiterate
1 Seething Song
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Aetherflux Reservoir
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Inner Fire
1 Krenko, Mob Boss
1 Mizzix's Mastery
1 Past in Flames
1 Treasonous Ogre
CMC 5
1 Reforge the Soul
Commander (4 CMC)
1 Zada, Hedron Grinder
I acknowledge that there are other builds of Zada on the forums, but I believe no other version is as fast and greedy.
If you have any questions, advice, or criticism, comment below and I will try to respond to everything.
10/21/2016: I guess I missed that Spark of Creativity came out with Kaladesh. Swapped out Aleatory for creative spark. Aleatory is better for a value play to set up a following turn, but is far too slow.
2/23/2017: The gimmick finally dies. I'm removing cards that combo with desperate ritual and suck without it.
- Strange Inversion
- Unnatural Speed
- Into the Fray
Here's what will be replacing them:2/26/2017:
Didnt notice I was missing boiling blood! I have it in the paper version. Swapped Increasing Vengeance out for it.
4/08/2017:
Man oh man have I switched it up. We running kobolds now boys.
Essentially, combat as a win condition is unreliable and too slow for competitive metagames. As such, I have removed all combat related cards from the deck. The deck focuses much more on simply amassing a sizeable number of creatures quickly. The lower cmc makes the deck faster and more reliable when comboing off.
What was cut:
- all the combat related cards (Rush of Adrenaline, Brute Force)
- Goblin Dark-Dwellers
- Siege-Gang Commander
- Firestorm
- Some other stuff
Here's what will be replacing them:Why you would need 50 combat steps when they only untap once I don't know, but it's awesome!
The interaction is amusing, but pretty terrible considering you don't untap. Honestly I'm considering removing most of the combat wincons, as drawing into something like blazing shoal when you want crimson wisps or inner fire hurts pretty badly.
You might want to add Reverberate as another anti-counterspell. I'm not sure how much good Increasing Vengeance does you considering it only copies your own spells, while Reiterate and Dualcaster Mage both can copy your opponent's spells.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
First off, I'll agree with you on arcane spells. They were objectively terrible without Desperate Ritual or Path of Anger's Flame, and I would so frequently be stuck with trash like Strange Inversion in my hand (though a Doran deck has entered my meta now, making Strange Inversion almost good). I've taken them out.
Next, I do like the idea of a Paradox Engine package. Even though I'm taking out the arcane gimmick, having a crimson wisps underneath isochron scepter with a paradox engine should end the game 99% of the time. However, I would need to include both.
I do really like Paradox Engine so I'll spend some time playing without the arcane spells and decide what the weak links are. At the very least I want to try Paradox Engine in the deck.
On Reverberate: I honestly play the copy spells mostly with the intention of copying my own stuff. While copied cantrips aren't cast and therefore do not trigger zada, token-producers and mana rituals can be copied.
Also, Dualcaster Mage goes infinite with copy spells, which makes him have some utility as a win condition. I don't want too many spells that copy other things because they're dead by themselves. It's definitely not a bad suggestion though.
Do you think Goblinslide would have a place in your deck? That way, you can get tokens off each spell you cast. With the aforementioned Stick-Ring-Engine combo, you'll have mana open to pay for the Slide, and if you have even one other mana rock (say, a Fire Diamond, Pristine Talisman, or Mox Opal) you can get an arbitrary number of tokens off the Slide.
Of course, this is a general red artifact combo rather than something tailored to Zada's strengths, but once you have your massive Goblin token army you can then fire off a Brute Force or other red pump and go for the win, provided of course that having a million Goblins on the field isn't already enough.
The SRE combo also works well with Storm spells such as Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens, and requires less set up than Slide.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
I also recommend Imperial Recruiter if you have one.
Boiling Blood should be in here.
Kari Zev's Expertise, Overblaze (when comboed with Siege-Gang can get around opponents with Propaganda and what not up, and get around Fog, in addition to making all of your creatures KO), Fateful Showdown, Haze of Rage, Ignite Memories and possibly Devastating Summons should maybe also be in here.
Here's the link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autocardanywhere/eobkhgkgoejnjaiofdmphhkemmomfabg?hl=en
I have found Overblaze to be Overkill (hehe) most of the time, and the siegegang commander win condition requires way too much work when firestorm and fiery gambit work just as well.
Imperial Recruiter is a great card, but I don't think there are that many targets in here. What would you fetch with it?
Boiling Blood is in my paper version; can't believe I forgot it!
I have always wondered why people put Kari Zev's Expertise in their Zada lists. I literally just realized that it casts a whole heap of free spells if you target Zada with it. That's *probably* really good, but I'll play with it a bit if it plays nicely with the mana curve.
Fateful Showdown is a wheel, so that probably goes is in somewhere.
Ignite Memories doesn't work on people with zero cards in hand, unfortunately. Too gimmicky.
I think I would almost always cast Devastating Summons as a "R, Sacrifice a land: Create two 1/1 Elementals." That's probably good enough (and would be a Kari Zev target).
Thanks for the feedback. Definitely extrapolate on your reasoning for Imperial Recruiter, e.g, what am I fetching.
You don't need anything else.
Dualcaster Mage if you wanna go for the combo.
Any token makers if you need.
ETB abilities are also good with Twinflame and Shimmer.
Kari Zev's Expertise also goes great with Krenko.
I also believe that Firestorm and the Final Fortune effects are unnecessary. You already have enough haste outlets.
Finally, I believe a Goblin Recruiter (also fetchable with Recruiter) package could be really beneficial. Imagine searching up Goblin Ringleader, Krenko, Mob Boss, Goblin Warchief, Skirk Prospector, and Mogg War Marshal.
Here's the link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autocardanywhere/eobkhgkgoejnjaiofdmphhkemmomfabg?hl=en