It's been over a month now since the wonderful Commander 2016 product brought us the ability to make non-jank 4 Color decks. That time has been filled with much testing, and lots of heartbreak over my first 4 Color love (RIP Breya). The deck I want to share with you all today is one I've been working on for the majority of that time. It's been through several iterations before coming to rest at the current build, which I believe to be the strongest variant of this deck.
On here, my handle is Myojiin, on the PlayEDH Discord my handle is Dandelion, and as a part of the Laboratory Maniacs (a competitive EDH Youtube Series you can find here!) I am Dan. Resident Karador and Thrasios player, doing my best to leave my mark on this format I love so much. While Boonweaver Karador was my first deck, Doomtide Thrasios will forever be my baby. I've played some Zur, I've played some Jeleva, I've played some JVP, but none of it really clicked for me. I never found the combination of things that I just always enjoyed doing in a game, like I had in Karador. So I set to brewing as soon as Thrasios was spoiled. My first iterations of the deck were an attempted mashup of Boonweaver Karador and Doomsday Zur. It was nonsense. Powerful enough to win games, but with the most atrocious variance. So that was slowly tweaked and scrapped and molded into what I would like to present to you today: Doomtide Thrasios.
This deck may be for you if:
You love intricate combo decks a'la Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge or Zur the Enchanter
You want diverse win conditions that play well together
You like to actually use your commander(s)
This deck may not be for you if:
You always want to grind out games and win by attrition
You dislike casting lots of spells and tracking mana and storm count
You like short turns
You feel bad when your opponents just sit and watch you combo, non-deterministically
Why These Partners
In this Color
What makes these two particular partners the best? There are certainly other options, given that Tymna and Ravos both provide the same color combination and Kydele does the same with Thrasios. So is there a reason that the current two are helming my deck? Well yes, there is. Without giving too much more away, Thrasios is irreplacable, and by far the most powerful of the Partner commanders printed for multiplayer EDH. Occupying two of the three strongest colors of EDH, Thrasios also adds the utility of an infinite mana sink to our command zone options. Not only that, but a mana sink that does not require particular colors! While that isn't as important for this particular build, any decks aiming to go infinite as much as possible, likely through use of the Monolith combos (Grim Monolith and Basalt Monolith + Power Artifact or Rings of Brighthearth), will love the outlet for that colorless mana.
In the other half of our command zone, Tymna takes the role of second fiddle. She is not a combo piece of any sort, and in fact, is nearly the opposite. She acts as a value engine for us. So Dan, you might say, why not run Ravos then? He's got flying, he can regrow your creatures, and he's even an anthem! What makes Tymna better? Well, intrepid reader, Tymna costs three. That's very achievable for us. The other (and actually important part) is that Tymna can draw us cards. She can bridge us to the late game by acting as a Phyrexian Arena or better for us, while also snipping bits off our opponents life totals. In addition to acting as a value card, you can even use her to open up Doomsday piles! So yes, Tymna is certainly my pick of the two Therosian Partners.
For this Archetype
There are a bunch of different storm decks. Heck, there are a bunch of different styles of storm deck, with multiple variations within them. You have your primarily Doomsday decks like Zur or Leovold, you have your spell-slinging nonsense like Jeleva or Sidisi, you've got Paradox Engine shenanigans like Breya or Thrasios/Vial Smasher, and you've got creature based stuff which is completely different and I really don't need to bring up. It would probably take a full article to even begin to go into the details (that we just don't have yet) comparing all of these decks. So here's a spark notes based on what I know of the decks and what some people from our Thrasios Discord have chimed in.
They're all great. Compared to Zur, we're a hair more variance dependent on our fastest kills, but we're also better equipped to play a long game thanks to our green. Leovold is already pretty slow for a Doomsday deck, so we're all around better outside of the one-two punch of Leovold into Teferi's Puzzlebox. Jeleva is about half this list, and storms a bit better as it's optimized for that. We have better backup plans and more grindy lines. Sidisi is just more amplified betters and worses than Jeleva. Breya (while also a Doomsday deck) can be an eggs commander like cobblepott is working on. I haven't really gotten to see this in action much, so I honestly couldn't tell you. Thrasios/Vial Smasher is a great (maybe even one of the best) Paradox Engine builds out there, but in my opinion, is too heavily reliant on the one win condition it is optimized for. It will become apparent that I love to diversify my win conditions, because I don't want to fall prey to incidental, or single target, removal. Eventually we'll have a better understanding of this deck and can elaborate more, but for now, that's all you get!
Deck History
This deck sort of has two separate histories. The first steps this deck took were in my attempt to merge Boonweaver combo with a Doomsday deck, which can be found here. Honestly, it wasn't bad. It was a bit gimmicky, but I really learned the value of playing a deck with multiple distinct routes to winning. This deck seeks to emulate that power, but in a much cleaner and more streamlined form. So I scrapped the Boonweaver package, dropped out the majority of the hatebears, and began to move the bulk of the deck towards Jeleva Slim, which is Reversemermaid's cleaned up Jeleva Storm list. The history of Jeleva is kind of the side history of this deck, as optimizing a low to the ground, spell-slinging deck was a lengthy process which I had no part in. I merely benefited from the results, and used them to inform my decision making for this deck here!
Not a terribly long history, but, to be fair, the Commanders have only been in print for like three months. There isn't a whole lot of iterations this deck has been through yet! Stay tuned for more in the future, as any major changes made will be updated in this block as well!
I want to start with the decklist. Well, I say start but I already typed out some stuff above, but you know what I mean. Sporting an average converted mana cost of 1.88, we clock in extremely lean, and very mean. We're packing nearly as low a CMC as traditional Doomsday Zur lists, despite playing some stronger cards (in my opinion).
There are a several distinct ways of winning the game with this deck. If you are familiar with competitive EDH, some of them may have jumped out at you already, but I'm going to take the time to explain in detail how they each work, and go over some of the interplay between the combos.
One of the more common cards to see play in competitive EDH, Doomsday is an incredibly powerful card, allowing you to stack the perfect five cards as your deck, and (ideally) win the game in the same turn. Doomsday is also, in my opinion, the most difficult card to play in EDH due to the myriad of possibilities in Doomsday "pile" construction. In general, Doomsday will allow you to assemble some method by which to cast Laboratory Maniac and then draw a card once you've emptied the final cards from your meager library. Common cards to see in these piles include Gitaxian Probe, Yawgmoth's Will, and Lion's Eye Diamond with some of the most effective ways of "opening" the pile being casting a Gush for its alternate cost post-Doomsday.
Doomsday is a card I like to try and use when I'm winning as soon as possible. When people are less prepared to defend the graveyard, the majority of YawgWill piles open themselves up to you, and people often will have tapped out for ramp where they would normally be keeping a Blue up for Swan Song/Flusterstorm. It usually isn't too difficult to set up for an early Doomsday, as you just need a draw spell, and ideally two Islands in play. If you're not going off early, I highly recommend caution with this line, as you don't get many second chances. Pick spots where others have just tried to combo off, or where someone has tapped out and exhausted multiple resources on other things. If you cast Doomsday, you're generally winning or losing on the spot. There aren't many alternatives.
More often seen in Vintage, but no stranger to brews in cEDH is the Bomberman Combo (or mostly it). The way this particular combo works is by using Auriok Salvagers' ability to return a Lion's Eye Diamond from your graveyard to your hand for less mana than that Lion's Eye Diamond produces. Each iteration of Cast, Activate, and Return will net us W, which we can repeat arbitrarily, repeat but filtering white into every other color, and then have as much mana as we want of every color. This is very beneficial, as Thrasios, Triton Hero has the wonderful ability of drawing our whole deck if we have that much mana. From here we can win by casting a Laboratory Maniac and drawing another card with Thrasios.
This is something you want to make sure never to try and do when there is a Trinisphere or Sphere of Resistance type card in play, as the combo only works if Lion's Eye Diamond is free. The biggest benefit of this is that the two cards only require a total mana investment of 3W to be able to go off, assuming they are in your hand, and 4WW assuming the LED is in your graveyard. This is not a whole lot compared to the critical mass of Islands and cards that High Tide requires, and is far less colored mana dependent than Doomsday. So in games where you ramp out with a lot of colorless mana, this is a great way to close things out if you have ways to access the two cards.
High Tide. This card is the other backbone of some of the strongest cEDH decks. High Tide on its own is a reasonably powerful "ritual" effect that can generate us quite a lot of mana normally. We don't do normal, however. We abuse, and we do so with some of the most broken spells ever designed. Time Spiral was somehow signed off on. Why R&D thought taking Timetwister and saying, "What if we just made it not cost any mana?" was ok, I will never know. But not only is it free most of the time, but when our lands tap for 2+ mana, it even produces mana. Frantic Search is another card that allows us to net mana. Throwing all these cards around at once generally ends up with a bunch of mana, and a bunch of fresh cards with which you can probably cobble together some sort of win condition. Likely via Aetherflux Reservoir and such nonsense.
Going off with High Tide is some of the most fun you can have in Magic, in my opinion. You can cast a whole bunch of spells repeatedly, draw a load of cards, and fumble around until you blast everyone with the Reservoir or accidentally Bomberman/Doomsday/Manual mode your LabMan. It's a great time. This is a bit lower on the list of strategy priority, as it requires a bit more setup than the other. That being said, it is also the most resilient, as the setup enables you to prepare for disruption. High Tide countered? No problem, cast it from your graveyard with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy or Yawgmoth's Will. Know your opponent has multiple counterspells? Lead with your Frantic Search and follow it up with the Grim Tutor or Time Spiral you really wanted to stick. Lots of the spells you need are cheap or even free, so picking what you want to play around is a bit easier through this path.
This is fairly straightforward. Cast it, draw a bunch of cards, taking care not to kill yourself in the process (I like to try and go no lower than 5 life, but feel free to dip even lower, though you'll potentially just die), and then do something to win. This card turns into autopilot if you can respond to it by holding priority and casting Angel's Grace since then you can draw your entire deck, go to like -120 life, and win by dropping some moxen and artifact ramp and casting Laboratory Maniac and a draw spell. That Wizard does some work in this deck. Of note, when you are at 0 or less life, you cannot pay costs requiring life. So alternate casting Force of Will or Gitaxian Probe is not legal.
Commander Play
Thrasios is awesome at finishing off Doomsday piles. If you set up a Bomberman combo as your first two cards you can cast him, draw the rest, and then win with Laboratory Maniac. OR you can use an Aetherflux Reservoir if (for some bizarre reason) you can't get a LabMan win off. Generate a ton of storm off of casting the Lion's Eye Diamond, make the mana, draw some cards, and lazer everyone in the face after you cast the Diamond a couple more times. That, in and of itself, is the second best interplay in the deck. Bomberman combo can enable an easy way to create arbitrarily high storm and do the whole Reservoir thing. As I said. Even outside of these combo turns, Thrasios can prove useful. He's a great mana sink in the late game that basically guarantees live draws, as your scry first will likely let you hit gas every time. And if you want ramp, well the lands go straight into play!
Now Tymna, on the other hand, is a wonderful addition to our grind package. In slow games with Leovold out, we're likely going to be drawing 2-3 cards a turn without the help of Sylvan Library and such nonsense. You're not necessarily looking to get into that position, but if someone starts locking the game out by turn 4, you're happy to jump on that train and stall hard and draw cards. She also has the ability to open Doomsday piles, regardless of your life total, since she has lifelink. And can conceivably work as a draw 2, or even 3 depending on the stage of the game!
We're running a fairly standard land package for a High Tide based combo deck. 28 lands is sufficient for our purposes, with the vast majority being Islands of some flavor or another. As a 4 Color deck, we can run the full complement of Fetch Lands (eg. Flooded Strand and Verdant Catacombs), having multiple targets for each. This is a huge boon for the consistency of the deck. While initial lists omitted Savannah, having the ability to cast Angel's Grace off of your Arbor Elf came up too often to be able to continue, so we now sport the full compliment of original dual lands. We also run all of the shock lands that are Islands, to help High Tide and our consistency with fetches. Outside of the fetches and duals, we run the two best 5 Color lands in Command Tower and Mana Confluence. These are great for almost every scenario outside of High Tide games, and to balance that out, we run 6 Basic Islands and a single Snow-Covered Island as a mise against opposing Extraplanar Lens "tech."
Ramp
Despite being a solidly UBx(x) deck, we are still running green, the biggest draw of which is the fantastic ramp offerings. We don't run all the mana elves possible, as we are base UB, but the dorks that can produce those colors are perfect for us. This is where Deathrite Shaman, Birds of Paradise, Arbor Elf, Noble Hierarch, and Elves of Deep Shadow come in. Carpet of Flowers, while not being a dork, is also a fantastic addition to this style of deck.
We also run a fairly typical package of artifact ramp in Azorius Signet, Chrome Mox, Dimir Signet, Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond, Mox Opal, Simic Signet, Sol Ring, and Talisman of Dominance. Among these, Mox Opal might be the strangest to see alongside relatively few artifacts. Generally, it will be able to function properly as a ramp spell, but the tipping point of my decision to include it was due to Angel's Grace + Ad Nauseam turns, wherein I need every piece of free mana I can find to be able to drop the Laboratory Maniac and a card draw spell. Multiple other signets were excluded, since I have not found them to be as necessary. We are most able to utilize UB and UG in terms of colored mana combinations, as combo turns rely heavily on UB (for Ponders and Demonic Tutors), and protective/ramp turns rely reasonably on UG (for Flusterstorm and Nature's Claim).
Protection and Removal
Our protection is generally good on both defense and offense. We run Delay, Flusterstorm, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Mental Misstep, Negate, Pact of Negation, Remand, Swan Song, and sort of Angel's Grace (though this one is more generally offensive, it can be used to blank a player's Aetherflux Reservoir kills, Laboratory Maniac wins, and such things as that). We are not running Counterspell as we don't really need more protection than we already have, and I've found Arcane Denial to be much friendlier to our mana when we're trying to protect our combo.
We don't run too much removal, as we are a combo deck. That being said, there are some obviously problematic permanents people can have in play that just need to be dealt with. To that end, we run Abrupt Decay, Chain of Vapor, Nature's Claim, Swords to Plowshares, Into the Roil, and Toxic Deluge. These are the best of the best at what they all do. While we are able to effectively navigate many hate permanents by switching strategies, if there is just too much gunk from that Teferi, Temporal Archmage gumming up the board, Abrupt Decay, Chain of Vapor, and Nature's Claim can handle it. That Karador, Ghost Chieftain guy gettin you down with an Iona, Shield of Emeria naming blue? Swords that Angel! Is Edric, Spymaster of Trest just kinda doin his thing? Toxic Deluge for, like, 3 and he'll be crying until you combo off at your leisure.
Tutors
Told you. Next section and everything. So we've got 11 in total. Dark Petition, Demonic Tutor, Grim Tutor, Imperial Seal, Muddle the MixtureLim-Dul's Vault, and Vampiric Tutor all grab us whatever we want. They're the best of the best, you play them, and you be happy about it. Just pay attention to casting Dark Petition so that you don't accidentally Time Spiral away your graveyard before casting it and sit there, disappointed, when you realize you don't have Spell Mastery, and thus no way to cast that Doomsday or Necropotence you found.
We run a fairly robust draw package. We have the usual cantrips in Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, plus Impulse. These are great early game to smooth out draws, mid-game to dig for action, and during combo turns to fuel storm count and cantrip away.
There is Noxious Revival which kind of counts? It's sometimes closer to a tutor depending on what stage of the game we're in, but it does get us the right card most of the time.
High Tide
The nature of splitting up cards into 'function' like this is that there will be cards that count in multiple categories, which, philosophically, is part of what makes a good deck good. That being said, here are cards I feel are most critical to list as part of the High Tide combo shell.
Initially, this was one of the primary paths to victory, utilizing cards that have since been cut from the list. After extensive testing, this has proven to be the weakest of the combo lines, and has been relegated to primarily support. High Tide turns are still often important, but you don't manually storm off enough to win with Aetherflux Reservoir. It is for this reason that Candelabra of Tawnos and Turnabout have been cut.
Game.
Doomsday
So the first step of using this package is to cast, you guessed it, Doomsday. And you'd better have a draw spell of some sort in hand. The best of which are Gitaxian Probe and Gush. Many piles will also use something like Lion's Eye Diamond along with Yawgmoth's Will to cast the aforementioned Maniac. Then do your best impression of drawing another card, and guess what?
Game.
Bomberman
For those of you unfamiliar with this particular combo:
Cast Auriok Salvagers
Cast Lion's Eye Diamond
Activate Lion's Eye Diamond for WWW
Activate Auriok Salvager's ability to return Lion's Eye Diamond to your hand
Repeat Steps 2 through 4 until you're weak at the wrists
Make other colors
Cast Thrasios and draw your deck
If you've gotten to this point, just do literally anything I already talked about to win. It's real easy.
Game.
The Partners
So these two have a lot of different purposes. The usual joke is that Thrasios is for winning and Tymna is for WB, but that's not entirely true. While Thrasios is the stronger of the two for his ability to act as an infinite mana sink and draw your entire library, Tymna proves very useful whenever the game grinds to a stall. We don't usually have a ton of beaters lying around, but our dorks or Thrasios can get the job done most times.
Then there is Thrasios himself. Draws our deck. Enables us to win with Bomberman into Laboratory Maniac. He's a cool Merfolk. Just don't cast him too early and get next leveled by the guy playing Gilded Drake.
Stax matchups generally hinge on what pieces your opponent gets into play quickly. Due to our variety of avenues for victory, we can pivot between strategies reasonably quickly, but it is most effective to identify the best route early and move toward it. If you see an early Sphere of Resistance, then High Tide is usually out, and you want to try and move towards Doomsday with a couple extra mana rocks. Either that or burn a tutor on a Chain of Vapor to pursue the other routes.
If you see Cursed Totem or Linvala, Keeper of Silence, then usually High Tide and Doomsday are going to be open, with Bomberman being shut off. Depending on your opponent's play, you might be able to see whether or not they're leaving up removal mana or counterspell mana, so you can choose between the two possbilities.
And if someone drops a Rest in Peace, well, it'll suck either way, but High Tide into Reservoir, or at the very least lots of mana for Chain of Vapor into another strategy is your best bet. R.I.P. sucks.
Spell Based Combo
These are all going to be hard fought races. I firmly believe that we have the strength and speed to race them, should we open up with a good hand. Even with an average hand, we will be able to match these decks blow for blow. We run very similarly to Jeleva when firing on High Tide cylinders, and we run very similarly to Zur when firing on Doomsday Cylinders. The biggest distinction is that, despite keeping pace with these titans of the format, we play a much stronger long game. If Zur's inevitable Necro can be answered, or that combo turn thwarted, we will outdraw, out ramp, and outpace either of these two decks. And if we can do that, we can leave Jace, Vryn's Prodigy or Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder in the dust.
Creature Based Combo
Obviously Hermit Druid isn't a legal commander, but that category of decks can be anything from Scion of the Ur-Dragon led to something helmed by Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. Those decks are some of the harder ones for us to interact with if they can get a fast Hermit Druid. We obviously have multiple counterspells, of which you might want to leave mana up for. Same with our variety of removal spells. With a good hand, Hermit Druid won't be a problem, but they've got a lot of inevitability. Often it is easiest to try and snipe their first tutor and then combo. The same holds true of Prossh and other Food Chain lists like General Tazri and sort of Derevi, Empyrial Tactician though she's usually much staxier.
These decks falter somewhat to the first removal spell, since they don't frequently have much stack interaction, especially if you're going with a Swords to Plowshares or Nature's Claim instead of a Chain of Vapor. Kick out their ankle real fast at the start and you should be good to go.
So these decks are probably one of our weaker matchups, in my opinion. Karador is so good at slipping a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Eidolon of Rhetoric into play before we can necessarily even prepare for it, while following it up with a fast Gaddock Teeg or Iona, Shield of Emeria while we're backpeddling. Unlike the creature based combo decks (by that I mean more dedicated combo, not the half midrange stuff that Karador does), these decks have a pretty easy time dropping the next piece of the puzzle into play while we try and sweep the leg before they get going.
Since they don't rely on a single hatebear very much, our targeted removal spells are not at their best. Any resources we dedicate to trying to trade one for one will not be well spent. Try and pivot around their plays, or if necessary, burn a tutor on Toxic Deluge and hope that they overextended some. Every now and then their pieces will just line up wrong, and you can stomp them. But don't count on it. Make your own openings, bait them into tutoring the wrong card, and then hit 'em with a left hook.
Parting Thoughts
I have been having so much fun with this deck. In my mind, and from my experience, it gives me aspects of both of the highest quality spellslinging decks by offering complex lines of play that can easily diverge and cross between each other. It gives me long and thought-provoking turns, either in the tank for Doomsday, or branching paths with spell sequencing on High Tide routes. It also has the easy mode hands that just go off on turn two with protection that everyone likes every once in a while. You get to play creatures that work towards a long game, like Leovold, but still run Ad Nauseam will with full ability to draw 24 cards and throw together a victory. It has something for so many styles of play, and with the possibility of being tweaked to favor any of the possible routes, you can modify it to fit your needs.
I hope that you have all gained something from this meandering through my first reasonably successful cEDH brew, and will maybe take it yourself and show me how it can be improved. I am happy to receive whatever feedback you have to offer, both about the deck and about this guide. Thank you for your time!
High Tide has proven to be unreliable as a manual mode to storm off, and has shown to excel at being a setup and support line. To this end, High Tide specific cards have been removed, and Doomsday strengthening cards have been added. Dramatic Scepter combo has also been added, given how easy it is to trigger. To clean this line up, another mana rock has been added as well, along with a tutor for either half of this combo. Finally, Notion Thief takes the place of Leovold, further strengthening the other lines, and slightly speeding up the deck. We lose the ability to grind as well with Leovold, but we don't have much choice there.
This is aimed at smoothing out some awkward Ad Nauseams and cleaning up our mana. Hierarch is a blue source to unwastefully cast High Tide, and a white source to cleanly cast Salvagers without blowing a whole Carpet activation or burning an Island. Delay swapping for Arcane Denial is mostly to just prevent my opponents from drawing into more counterspells. It's functionally a 1U hard counter for this deck anyway. Into the Roil gives us an additional card to pile with Intuition for both creature and noncreature removal, while also remaining cheap on the mana and Ad Naus counts, and giving us some utility for card draw.
Abrupt Decay Two mana isn't fun, but this fantastic piece of removal hits almost every possible card we care about, while remaining uncounterable. One of the nicest additions from adding Green, Abrupt Decay is premium removal that is going to be your go to answer when you have the mana to spare.
Ad Nauseam While I did say I'd discuss every single card, this one speaks for itself. Given our very nice average cmc, this card will draw us (on average) more than 20 cards. If we can't combo out after drawing 20 cards, we're in over our head, honestly.
Angel's Grace One of the few mediocre cards in this deck, it does little to nothing in most situations, but it is part of the two card combo with Ad Nauseam that allows us to draw our entire deck, and likely win via Laboratory Maniac.
Brainstorm A premium draw spell. The usual legacy interaction with fetch lands applies, allowing you to draw three fresh cards and shuffle away the clutter from your hand. Card selection at it's finest.
Cabal Ritual One of the most powerful ritual effects in magic, this is a net 1 at worst, and a net 3 at best. Those are pretty good numbers when you're comboing off. While it is obviously best to try and save this to cast with Threshold, this card can also function as a sort of filter spell, turning a single black mana and any other into the correct mana to cast Doomsday, which is sometimes relevant.
Chain of Vapor While the honor of most complicated card in competitive EDH is frequently handed out to Doomsday, Chain of Vapor is certainly a contender. On the surface, it is a bounce spell not too dissimilar from Unsummon. Digging deeper, there are some fun tricks you can pull, as the chain effect is part of the resolution, not the casting. Because of that, you can target your own thing, and then once the window to counter it has passed, sacrifice a land and bounce the real threat. Further up and further in we have ramp potential, bouncing net positive mana rocks and saccing your tapped lands to pay for it. I am no master of this card, but as I learned recently from bolsheviktory, I really ought to start looking at nasty situations within the mindset of 'how can Chain of Vapor save me.'
Dark Ritual One mana, makes three. That's a plus two. Also casts Doomsday really nicely. Yeah. Fun one.
Delay My good friend Sigi extolls the virtue of this card over Arcane Denial. On the surface, they both fill similar roles. They are 'hard' counters for 1U each with their own unique effects. Arcane Denial has had multiple reddit threads written about it, debating whether or not the card (dis)advantage is worth utilizing it for. Where Delay shines is in combo decks like this. We usually don't let the game last another two turns. So Delay becomes a true hard counter for 1U. Pretty sweet right?
Dramatic Reversal Helps out on storm turns if you need it, but mostly here to Imprint onto Isochron Scepter with the goal of producing infinite mana to win with Thrasios.
Eladamri's Call This is a weird card to play in a mostly spell based combo deck. Especially when the only real targets for it are Leovold, Emissary of Trest and Auriok Salvagers. Oftentimes that is enough, though. Leovold has sprung out of Conspiracy 2 and dumped on the Magic community in every format he is legal in. In cEDH he is extremely effective at slowing down a lot of powerful effects. While he doesn't interact well with Necropotence or Ad Nauseam, he does crush wheel effects, which strongly stifle setup turns. In the other mode, this card fetches one half of our most efficient combo, with Auriok Salvagers. This card is very powerful in many cases, and despite so few targets, is rarely a dead draw. Finding and putting into play either of those two previous creatures is a strong play, and oftentimes, you will be able to get there not long afterwards.
Enlightened Tutor Usually this will grab ramp (in Carpet of Flowers, Mana Crypt, or Lion's Eye Diamond), card advantage engines (in Sylvan Library or Necropotence), or a finisher (in Aetherflux Reservoir or Candelabra of Tawnos). While not the best tutor spell in the deck, it's quite versatile, and frequently a good draw.
Flusterstorm An incredibly powerful counterspell, capable of functioning as a hard counter on storm turns on either offense or defense. Pay attention to the fact that this only counters Instants and Sorceries. Nothing else. That comes up reasonably often, so try and remember that. As long as they don't stifle the trigger, their spell is probably hitting the bin, unused.
Force of Will A free counterspell. It sucks to have to exile a blue card, and the alternate cost can't be paid if you're at negative life totals (I totally haven't tried to do that after an Ad Nauseam/Angel's Grace turn.....), but it's a free counterspell, so it's worth playing.
Frantic Search One of the very balanced cards printed with the Urza's block "free" mechanic. Frantic Search is here to dig hard on combo turns, and act as a ritual effect with High Tide active. Since our Islands make more than a single mana each, tapping three and then untapping them can net us mana with every cast.
Gush The theme of free stuff is strong in this deck. Gush is well known in Vintage and cEDH for its utility in opening and finishing Doomsday piles. I won't talk too much about it here, given that Steve Menendian filled most of a book with discussion on this card, but it's good. Use it to start Doomsday piles, and to finish games with Laboratory Maniac. It's great.
High Tide A decent ritual on its own (especially when you manage to cast it off of a non-Island blue source), this card shines when combined with effects that untap your lands. When paired with Time Spiral, Candelabra of Tawnos, or Turnabout, this card enables you to generate absurd amounts of mana, and finish through some Aetherflux Reservoir storm kill, or combo out with Doomsday or Bomberman. It does require significant distortion of the manabase, to exclude just about any non-Island lands possible, but given that this deck is base blue anyways, and we get to play with all 10 fetchlands, the changes aren't really a detriment.
Hurkyl's Recall Another card with dual utility. This can function as a board clear against all of the stax pieces that Teferi throws in your face, or it can function as an insane ritual on High Tide turns with multiple net positive mana rocks and Candelabra active. Two mana is decent, and it is blue, so it's easy to cast. Overall, a very solid inclusion. Though you should try and watch the spots you target yourself, so that you don't do it right after casting your Aetherflux Reservoir, and burn four mana for nothing. Not that I've ever done that...
Impulse Not an amazing card. It's decent selection, and we have a high enough density of powerful cards that we can usually find something better with it. It serves a purpose as a tiny piece of the glue holding this combo machine together. Nothing too fancy, but solid.
Intuition A tricky card to resolve, Intuition can be made easier by applying a few heuristics, like I mention above. Card purpose redundancy is the biggest part of making effective Intuition piles. That's why some of the most recent changes to the deck were made, to incorporate easy three ofs for functional construction.
Lim-Dul's Vault This card is a pain to resolve in paper sometimes... A certain someone neglected including it just because he was too lazy to actually bother. That's not a good reason, honestly. At worst, this card is a virtual second copy of Vampiric Tutor for one more mana. Sometimes it can be even better than that, but I wouldn't count on it. It gets the job done pretty well.
Mana Drain The strongest of the Counterspell variants, Mana Drain is one of the best cards to resolve the turn before you try and win, to stifle someone elses win attempt. Protecting yourself and getting a nice little ritual to start your next turn off is just gravy. Double blue, while not hard for the deck to achieve, does require some planning if you want to do other stuff in the same turn.
Mental Misstep 27 cards in this deck are currently one drops, and the equivalent is true of most other decks. This is a free counterspell for a solid 25% of the format. That's pretty great. No additional investment, just a good, clean counter.
Muddle the Mixture This is a conditional counterspell that also tutors for a plethora of cards in our deck, but was added with the intent of finding either half of the Dramatic Scepter combo.
Mystical Tutor Snags us some great stuff. High Tide, Ad Naueseam, Doomsday, almost half the deck is targets. It is an additional copy of so many critical cards that you're never going to really be sad to see it, especially when combined with the amount of cantrips we can play for one or less mana.
Nature's Claim This is one of those nice redundant pieces of removal for noncreatures. Kills just about all of them. Winter Orb getting you down? Claim it as your own (they can have four life back). Chain Veil about to win the game on the Teferi players board. Oops! I broke it! Here's some life? Great card. Only downside is it's green and not blue.
Negate Most of the cards people card about in cEDH are noncreatures. 1U to counter any of them is great rate. Sign me up!
Noxious Revival This is an interesting card. It serves a couple of purposes. In the early game, it can enable your next draw to be the land you need, or the tutor you want. In the mid to late game, this can insulate you, in a small way, from graveyard hate. It can also act as a micro Demonic Tutor, rebuying any of the multiple cards you have (tried to) resolve(d) earlier on.
Pact of Negation Free counterspell. Perfect on your combo turn if you don't care about the next upkeep. Not so great on turn two when someone tries to go off and you'll die if you stop them. Try and use it well, and for goodness sake, don't forget to pay for the trigger!!!
Remand This card's slot is often filled by Unsubstantiate instead. There's a few key differences that I think make Remand better in this deck. First off, we have loads of creature removal for a combo deck, so an additional flex piece is oftentimes less important. Second, if we're most likely to be using it for the counterspell aspect, and neither hard counters, the one that cantrips is certainly going to be more effective for what we want. So I'd say that if we don't really care about having yet another piece of creature removal, we should stick to the card that draws us into more action.
Swan Song Another one mana counterspell, that has the ability to counter most relevant cards. The biggest loss you'll find yourself facing with this card is the inability to counter artifacts, but usually you can tag something else to keep the artifact elsewhere. This counterspell has the most problems in long and grindy games, as the 2/2 token has flying. So if you do stop someone with it, you can expect someone's (probably yours you dunce) Ad Nauseams to get a lot worse as the game progresses.
Swords to Plowshares One mana to exile just about any creature. With basically no downside. Yeah. Best your mana can get.
Turnabout This is a card that oftentimes doesn't get played in decks similar to this. For example, in reversemermaid's Jeleva Slim list, there is no copy of Turnabout. It is a high cost, both for your life total via Ad Nauseam, and for your manabase, at four. However, I do really appreciate having a copy of this card on turns where I try to High Tide out and kill with Aetherflux Reservoir. The mana this card can net you is ridiculous, and often enough to fuel the rest of your combo turn. Eventually, this is something that will likely get cut to slim things down, as Mind's Desire was, but for now I believe it's worth the spot.
Vampiric Tutor A one mana, restrictionless tutor. Nothing much to see here folks. Move along.
Worldly Tutor Another one mana tutor, but far less ubiquitous in storm decks. Nigh unplayable in most. This card shines for the same reasons that Eladamri's Call does. Differences being that this card can function on turn 1 to set up a turn 2 Leovold, whereas Eladamri's Call puts things directly in your hand, and so is useful to close out a High Tide chain by Bombermanning off.
Sorceries
Dark Petition Five mana sucks, and while it isn't usually going to cost you the full five since you'll likely have Spell Mastery, this card hurts to flip off an Ad Nauseam. It is, however, a restrictionless tutor that virtually costs two mana, with a hidden upside of being able to filter double black into triple black, if you're having trouble casting Doomsday. All in all, great card.
Demonic Tutor The real version of the card above. Two mana, grab anything you need, without restriction. Fantastic card, and one of the strongest in all of Magic. We play it, and we love it.
Doomsday If you haven't noticed yet, there's a bit of a theme with these Sorceries. They are heavy hitters. Doomsday has the dubious honor of being widely considered one of the most complicated cards in Magic. There are countless possible ways to resolve it, most of which result in failure. An expert of Doomsday (definitely not me!) will almost always be able to thread the needle of card and mana efficiency versus protection and interaction. Frequently used to set up a Laboratory Maniac kill, our deck is capable of utilizing Bomberman or Aetherflux Reservoir in these piles as well. Sometimes we can even use all of them in the same pile!
Gitaxian Probe Free card draw. Combos most effectively with the card directly above, but also works very well with things like Worldly Tutor/Mystical Tutor/Vampiric Tutor/you get the picture. In your opening hand, it kinds sucks because of the uncertainty associated with not really knowing what one of the cards in your hand is, but it can still work. If you're winning the game/opening a Doomsday pile and you don't absolutely have to see their hand, target yourself so someone doesn't give you the old 'bad manners scoop' and lets your finisher fizzle.
Grim Tutor Honestly, this card sucks. I hate it. 1BB to cast a Demonic Tutor that also eats up three life? That's two cards off Ad Nauseam! I'm not a fan. That being said, it's a restrictionless tutor that puts the card in our hand. It gets the job done, but we don't have to like it.
Imperial Seal Also pretty mediocre. At least this is only a wrong speed Vampiric Tutor. One mana is solid, top of the library stinks when it's Sorcery speed, but it's good enough to make the cut. One mana is one mana, after all.
Merchant Scroll Most likely grabs High Tide of Gush. Blue Instants encompasses most of our Instants. A restrictive tutor, for sure, but puts it in your hand at the very least. Mana cost is pretty easy too. Not a great card, but, again, good enough. Remember that heavy hitters thing from above? I was kidding. This is where Instants go to die.
Night's Whisper Doomsday is predicated on the ability to count to 6. Night's Whisper provides us with another draw 2 with which to add to our count. This is also a solid draw spell on setup turns, netting +1 cards.
Ponder A nice one mana cantrip. Great for early game card selection, pretty good at combo turn spell selection, and building up your storm count. Also opens Doomsday piles and ends the game reasonably efficiently for Laboratory Maniac. B+
Preordain Like Ponder, but a "bit" better at finding a specific card you're looking for. Scry before you shuffle with a fetch land or something, if at all possible? Please? For me?
Time Spiral Remember how Timetwister is part of the 'Power Nine?' You know what would be awesome. If we made it free. What's that? You're saying it might be too good? Ok, how about we make it able to abuse lands that make more than one mana? Sure. Gigantic ritual with High Tide, Timetwister thrown in there? Sign. Me. Up.
Timetwister Oh hey, that thing we just mentioned but less breakable. Awesome to cast on turns one or two after you dump your mana rocks. Also pretty awesome on High Tide turns to draw a fresh seven and keep slinging those spells. 10/10.
Toxic Deluge Sometimes you're playing a gentleman's game of Magic, slinging spells and countering that stax players garbage, and you realizes there's something at the table with power and toughness. And you look around trying to figure out what's happening, and you realize there's been a Yisan player in the game. The Whole Time! Weird! Guess I can toss out a Deluge to get back to the part where he wasn't there.
Windfall More refills. This one gets better with Ad Nauseams. Three mana to restock is good enough to make the cut. It also can play well with Yawgmoth's Will since you don't have to lose your graveyard like with Twister or Spiral. Totally worth the spot it takes.
Yawgmoth's Will Oh hey that card I just mentioned. Super powerful. You can replay lands, tutors, cantrips, whatever. Combos very well with Doomsday, Laboratory Maniac, and Lion's Eye Diamond. Combos absolutely terribly with Auriok Salvagers and Lion's Eye Diamond. Funny how that goes.
Artifacts
Aetherflux Reservoir Kaladesh has brought storm decks in EDH one of the most wonderful toys we've seen in a long time. Aetherflux Reservoir completely altered how we can play. We no longer have to end a long combo chain with our win condition. We don't even have to play it the same turn we want to win (though it is advisable)! The only flaw this card has is that our win condition is subject to normal forms of noncreature removal as well as things like Cursed Totem or Phyrexian Revoker. So you trade some good for some bad. In my opinion, it is a far better card to play than Tendrils of Agony.
Azorius Signet Another two mana rock, this one casts Angel's Grace. So it's fine. This is just to help out the Dramatic Scepter combo.
Candelabra of Tawnos Nets you a ton of mana when High Tide is active. For the same reason Frantic Search and Time Spiral are insane, this card is as well. Even better because we can untap it with Turnabout, bounce it to reset it with Chain of Vapor or Hurkyl's Recall, and just go nuts. While this is certainly a big ticket card, the power level justifies it.
Chrome Mox Net positive mana rock. Great. Try not to burn something too important under it. A card like Lim-Dul's Vault is often a solid Imprint.
Dimir Signet Not net positive, but filters other colors into our two best. Very solid on combo turns, and a decent early game ramp.
Isochron Scepter A wonderful card, this allows us to get a lot of casts off of our myriad of 2 cmc or less Instants. The best is Dramatic Reversal. With any nonland permanents that add up to 3 or more mana between them, we obtain unbounded mana, allowing us to draw our deck with Thrasios and win however we please. It's a low cost and compact combo that has little to no deckbuilding constraints and downsides. It was silly of me not to be running it to begin with.
Lion's Eye Diamond Most often we're honestly just comboing out with this card, but it works very well if activated in response to our own tutor or Ad Nauseam. Make sure not to use this in conjunction with Yawgmoth's Will unles absolutely necessary.
Lotus Petal Net positive mana rock. Ish. Doesn't stick around, but can often give you that last bit you need on combo turns, or set you up just right with a Sylvan Library or Leovold on turn one.
Mana Crypt Net positive mana rock. Only makes colorless, which honestly isn't great. But it's +2 compared to the other +1s so it's totally worth it. Great with signets or talismans.
Mox Diamond Net positive mana rock. Has to pitch a land, which can get awkward depending on your draw, but still very powerful. Usually this card is useless if you Bomberman off and draw your deck with Thrasios, because you can't draw any lands that way. Very powerful opener, and very powerful off of Ad Nauseam.
Mox Opal Now of all the artifacts, this is an interesting and debatable include. With only eleven other artifacts, ten of which we'd normally expect to have, this is certainly debatable. The point of this card is for draw-your-deck turns. We need every source of free mana we can find to be able to cast Laboratory Maniac and draw a card with our library empty. Usually it isn't necessary, but if we've ramped hard and drawn our deck with Ad Nauseam and Angel's Grace early, we need as many free sources as exist.
Simic Signet The better of the two signets we play, when we're ramping early. This can cast a dork and a cantrip, which is awesome. It can also cast a counterspell and a removal spell, which can come up. Much worse on combo turns, as green mana is basically useless, but at least it has the ability to filter a black to a blue.
Sol Ring Net positive mana rock. This one doesn't kill us in 15 turns though. It's good. Not great. Definitely worth it.
Talisman of Dominance A solid card. Ramps up to our combo mana, and doesn't have to use our life. I like it. I wouldn't play any of the others, but this one works well on combo turns for the ability to filter CC to U or B.
Enchantments
Carpet of Flowers Now this is a ramp spell. For a single green, we can usually generate another mana that turn, scaling every turn from two until, like, five. All for that one measly green mana. It helps power out really early Ad Nauseams, with the downside being that you have to main phase them.
Necropotence Three black mana to grab the best seven of your top 25 to 30? Sounds like a solid rate. It's certainly not the best of the lot, but it's usually a game ending spell, albeit on the turn after you cast it. Lion's Eye Diamond with care if you have this out.
Sylvan Library One of the best grindy value engines in EDH. If we have to play through a slow game, I always want to be the guy with the Library. Usually I'm gonna pay the full eight life, but even if it's just an overcosted Mirri's Guile, it's still good.
Creatures
Arbor Elf Here we begin to show off the dork suite. You'll notice that they all have the ability to make non-Green colors of mana. This is important for this deck, because green mana sucks. We don't want it. We want that green to enable us to produce real mana, like blue, or black. Arbor Elf does require us to have a Bayou in play to get black mana, but Bayou is almost an Island anyways, let's be honest.
Auriok Salvagers The MAN in BOMBERMAN. Yeah, he does the combo thing. Sucks otherwise though.
Birds of Paradise This little birdie makes them all. It's probably the best of the dorks. Awesome turn 1 play.
Deathrite Shaman Since I already handed out the best dork title to the chirper above, this mini wannabe planeswalker will have to settle for second best. Contextually, he's fantastic as a dork in a fetch heavy environment. We can facilitate that with our 10, but it often needs more. His other role is as graveyard hate. Gains us some life, eats up our opponents, and snags those pesky cards like Life From the Loam or Laboratory Maniac?
Elves of Deep Shadow Makes black mana. Check. Costs a life to do so. Scratch off the top smidge of that check, but it rounds up to good enough.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy This little guy is great early game to smooth draws, and awesome mid to late game to let us double cast a High Tide and go absolutely insane with mana. An important thing to note about the old JVP is that he doesn't give you flashback. He lets you cast from your graveyard as if it were your hand. This means you can pay alternate costs. You can bounce two Islands to Gush, you can exile a blue card from your hand a pay a life to Force of Will, etc. He works like Yawgmoth's Will, not like Past in Flames. And that is a big distinction.
Laboratory Maniac Feel free to read the textbox. . . We're done here.
Leovold, Emissary of Trest A hatebear in dedicated combo? Dan, have you lost your mind? To that I say, yeah probably. This is the most bizzare inclusion, but it works. With our green cards like Sylvan Library, we can grind out a lot of value over time. Same thing with Tymna and Thrasios (holy cow Dan, you mean Tymna does things and Thrasios isn't just a combo piece??). We can play a long game better than any combo deck in the format because of our engines. Leovold gets us into a position to do that. He's a must answer card for the majority of decks, and even the ones he doesn't straight hose he still slows down. Getting into that sort of game isn't ideal, since I'd rather have just won, but if we need to, we can absolutely do it.
Noble Hierarch Doesn't make black?? Well it makes blue, which is good. Casts High Tide, Auriok Salvagers, or Angel's Grace without burning valuable Island real estate. And technically it has Exalted too, whatever that does.
None right now folks! Maybe we'll find something eventually, but none of the current options are really where the deck wants to be.
Lands
Fetch Lands No, I'm not going to justify including all 10 fetch lands because the reasoning is the same for all of them. Nothing builds a more consistent manabase than fetches, duals, and shocks. We're in four colors, so we need every single fetch we can get our hands on. When using these, try and prioritize cracking red fetches for the corresponding blue dual land first, and other reasonable fetches for the harder to grab duals second.
Bayou Not something you want to be fetching when you're moving towards High Tide, but a necessary evil for Arbor Elf function, and virtually a blue dual land.
Breeding Pool Shock lands aren't the most fun to have to grab, but this is an Island that also produces green mana, so it's great with High Tide, great with Arbor Elf, and pretty solid overall!
Command Tower This, and similar cards, are the necessary evils to hold together a four color deck. It's not an Island, which sucks. But it makes every color of mana, which is sweet. Try and save this bad boy for casting High Tide or Auriok Salvagers or something!
Hallowed Fountain Like Breeding Pool, but a Plains not a Forest. Consistency. Woo.
7x Island These make blue mana, so clearly they're great. This is one of the biggest warps to our mana that High Tide causes. We're a four color deck, and we're running even more basic Islands than the Precon!! That's because blue is the best color. And High Tide is totally worth it. Not something we want to be fetching when possible, but always solid draws.
Mana Confluence It's like Command Tower, but far worse. But, we are running four colors, so we ought to run this for consistency. Try not to use it when you don't have to?
Savannah Lets us cast Angel's Grace off of an Arbor Elf. It came up often enough that we needed to add it. Sucks, but there it is.
Scrubland Now this card just sucks. I run it in Karador, and I can't recall ever even wanting to fetch it in that deck either. But for similar reasons, we need it here. This turns on multiple fetch lands to grab us black mana that wouldn't be able to otherwise. Avoid it where possible!
Snow-Covered Island For that "sneaky" chump running Extraplanar Lens in their Teferi list. Now we can make UU too!
Tropical Island One of the most fetched for lands on turn one, Tropical Island can cast all our dorks, and makes wonderful mana with High Tide! You'll play it, and you'll love it!
Tundra Not as good as Tropical Island, but still pretty solid. Not the first one you want to be grabbing, but definitely above Scrubland!!
Underground Sea Great card. Super high priority land in most hands. Maybe not turn one, since turn one often wants green mana, but very likely going to be the next land you find.
Watery Grave Like Underground Sea, but hurts a bit more. Similar situation to Breeding Pool (duh). Certainly good enough to make the cut.
You're going to want Paradox Engine in this deck for sure.
My gut feeling is that if you can afford to buy Leovold, Emissary of Trest, then you might as well just have him as your commander instead. Sure you remove white from the deck, especially Bomberman, but I'm not sure how good that it's anyway. You have to be sure in your decision to throw away what cards you might have in hand to go for it.
Out of interest, what exactly makes you think that this list is budgeted in any way? This is obviously a cutthroat list that is meant to be played at the highest levels.
On a different note, I wholeheartedly disagree that this deck needs Paradox Engine. It's currently not built in a way that supports the Engine well, and even if it were, I am pretty much sure that this build would still be better than one with Paradox Engine in it.
Out of interest, what exactly makes you think that this list is budgeted in any way? This is obviously a cutthroat list that is meant to be played at the highest levels.
On a different note, I wholeheartedly disagree that this deck needs Paradox Engine. It's currently not built in a way that supports the Engine well, and even if it were, I am pretty much sure that this build would still be better than one with Paradox Engine in it.
Hey Ozzsome, welcome to MTGSalvation! Nice to get the very post of a person for a reply Let me word this another way then. Leovold, Emissary of Trest is a better commander for cutthroat games. What I was getting at that for other people who would want to put a deck like this together then Thrasios and Tymna seem like legit alternatives, for budget purposes. But Myojiin has Leovold already, so I personally would do the swap.
Hey Darren! I've played both with Leovold Doomsday lists and against them, with this and other decks. Asserting that Leovold, Emissary of Trest is a better commander for cEDH games would be incorrect. He is a different commander, though there are a lot of similarities between the decks. Leovold has the lights out punch of Teferi's Puzzle Box, whereas we have Bomberman. Leovold is really good at starting out with ramp and then denying the opponent resources by wheeling to restock, but Thrasios plays a much better storm game with High Tide. We're faster, as we're really more similar to Jeleva than we are to Leovold.
This deck is in no way a budget compromise of a Leovold list, as this plays a different game. We storm better, Doomsday weaker, and grind just as hard but in different ways. Having played both decks, I firmly believe this to be the superior of the lists in my current meta, which is comprised of Teferi Stax, Food Chain Prossh, Food Chain Tazri, Yisan, Edric, Derevi Prison, Brago Stax, Yidris Storm, Jeleva Storm, Doomsday Leovold, Doomsday Zur, and Tasigur Control. These decks are all optimized lists, and would easily push out something that is merely a 'budget' version of a stronger deck.
But don't take my word for it, throw it together and take it for a spin yourself. If you would prefer not to, in the near future we will have several gameplay videos featuring this deck against multiple cEDH lists. Check back in a bit over a week if you'd like to see the first!
Honestly, that seems wrong. How is leo better, not just different? Would you mind justifying to me why you would swap? you loose bomberman, a large part of Dandy's combo.
Loosing the mana outlet is the opposite of gas aswell
Honestly, that seems wrong. How is leo better, not just different? Would you mind justifying to me why you would swap? you loose bomberman, a large part of Dandy's combo.
Loosing the mana outlet is the opposite of gas aswell
Sure. The text on Leovold is "Each opponent can't draw more than one card each turn." and "Whenever you or a permanent you control becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, you may draw a card.".
In a deck that has draw 7 cards; Time Spiral, Timetwister, Windfall the ability to mind twist opponents while filling up your hand is incredible powerful. Plus Leovold just stops natural strategies of opponents trying to draw multiple cards, which lets face it, is a main way of winning in Commander, or any format for that matter. That's why Leovold is played in Vintage and Legacy, extremely high power-level.
Myojiin has already pointed out that he/she plays a Leovold deck, so I can understand having fun with new partner commanders. I play Thrasios + Tymna as combination partners myself. I have tremendous success and fun with it. But I'm going to stick to my statement however that Leovold is more impactful than Thrasios + Tymna offers.
Bomberman is a two card combo for infinite mana, with a down side that you need to discard your hand. There are other two card infinite mana combos, with no downsides, so you could alter your deck to still contain infinite mana with other cards. Now the main draw back is the Thrasios is actually your win-condition. So I will concede that with infinite mana, Thrasios + Tymna is better. Quite often when you have infinite you can go off with card draw naturally and if you run Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Thrasios main, then you have a good chance of having or drawing into those.
The other combo you lose out on by not having white is Angel's Grace + Ad Nauseam. But I personally would be fine with that, as Angel's Grace is a dead card as a draw without the Ad Nauseam and Ad Nauseam by itself is a fantastic card.
So what I have personally have done, is weigh up the the impact that Leovold can offer versus the win-condition of Thrasios for the most competitive deck. Like if I was going to a tournament I personally would go with Leovold with this deck type build.
...Angel's Grace is a dead card as a draw without the Ad Nauseam...
This particular point I strongly disagree with. Angel's Grace is certainly most effective when paired with Ad Nauseam, but it is not a dead card on it's own. Against many fast combo decks that win with Laboratory Maniac, it is easily able to be one of the strongest protection cards. If someone resolves Doomsday, Angel's Grace is as good as a Player Kill Spell assuming I have the mana up. They can go through their motions, get LabMan into play, and then not win when I respond to their final draw spell with something as uninteractive as Angel's Grace. While still not as broadly applicable, Angel's Grace does have uses besides the AN combo.
...Angel's Grace is a dead card as a draw without the Ad Nauseam...
This particular point I strongly disagree with. Angel's Grace is certainly most effective when paired with Ad Nauseam, but it is not a dead card on it's own. Against many fast combo decks that win with Laboratory Maniac, it is easily able to be one of the strongest protection cards. If someone resolves Doomsday, Angel's Grace is as good as a Player Kill Spell assuming I have the mana up. They can go through their motions, get LabMan into play, and then not win when I respond to their final draw spell with something as uninteractive as Angel's Grace. While still not as broadly applicable, Angel's Grace does have uses besides the AN combo.
Way too narrow a use, that if they resolve Doomsday. You're way better off with some other form of disruption for general use in that particular situation. If people are winning on the spot, quite often they have their deck in their hand through some infinite or access to some crazy amount of antics through their graveyard, so stopping them with Angel's Grace will be a stretch at best. The "win" part is usually just the last part of a bunch of powerful things, in which case they can just stop what you're doing to disrupt.
I just want to point out something - all the top doomsday commanders have a way to generate card advantage. Jeleva grabs free spells, Zur grabs Necro, Thrasios and Tymna draws cards. Leovold does absolutely nothing when you're behind.
I've played with and against Leovold, and the biggest problem everytime is that once you ramp and lose the counter war over the first wheel, you're often left to the mercy of your top decks. By the time you find that second wheel, Leovold would have been dealt with, or other players would have already won. Remember, Leovold stops wheels, but doesn't do anything against Necro or Ad Nauseam. And the player resolving Necro or Ad Nauseam will most likely find a way to deal with leovold too
Leovold is definitely not a deck I'd bring to a competitive table - for its colors, the commander simply does too little to assist your own game plan. Stalling your opponents doesn't matter if you can't capitalise on it.
hey Myojiin what do you think about an oath of druids package in this deck?
yes this would need to cut 7 creatures:
Hey! I've actually tried several different Oath of Druid builds, and this is 100% not one I really want. I've always used it to try and assemble Bomberman, and this is definitely the color set to do it in, but this deck is so much stronger and faster and less gimmicky than that would make it. The elves really do provide a lot of quality mana acceleration that rocks can't do for the same cost. While I could find arguments to cut JVP and Leovold, I would almost never want to cut LabMan. He really does make Doomsday a lot better.
Making a Dramatic Scepter totally spell reliant version of this could work, though, I personally just don't like getting rid of all of the mana dorks and Leovold to enable a spell that hasn't shown to be very good for me in testing. I would definitely encourage you to try it, though. I can help you tweak it if you want to PM me a decklist!
Hey, so sorta. Mostly no, but a bit yes. I firmly believe there is no strongest deck, as everything is super meta dependent. That being said, I've had a ton of success with this deck in a diverse enough meta to say it has game against everything, and I've had a ton of fun playing it. So in that sense, yeah I think it's the best. It's good enough that if you enjoy this style of play, you'll be able to win a fair amount and have fun doing it. That is how I would define the "best" deck, honestly. Nothing is going to reasonably win more than 25-33% of the time, but if you can hit that mark and have fun, it's the best for you.
The most competitive deck I own is Skuloth's Zur Doomsday deck. You made a strong case that Leovold is inferior to this deck. Can you compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses between your deck and Skuloth's including favorable matchups? In particular, does either deck perform better against stax and/or prison strategies?
I only have some minor experience playing with Skuloth's list, so I can't be 100% confident about a comparison, but I can certainly give some impressions. Zur is such a strong deck because of the sheer inevitability of the combo. It's not the fastest deck in the format, but it is fast enough to keep up. It draws its power from being able to basically guarantee you a turn 4-6 win off the back of Zur swing for Necro. Even if you keep a hand of just straight acceleration, you can likely win on turn 4. This deck does not have that guarantee of a clock. We draw a lot of power from Tymna or Thrasios over the course of a long game, and can facilitate that with Leovold, but we can't just swing and surprise Necro to win. We have to build to it. That being said, if you can prevent the casting of Ad Nauseam/Doomsday and remove Zur before the first attack, the deck struggles to keep going, from what I have experienced. We have much more resilience for win attempts 3+ than Zur does, and I think our attempt 1 can be just a smidge faster. Against sphere effects, Zur probably has the edge because Necroing for a win will generall set you up to deal with the sphere and then kill, without being too stymied by them. We don't have that luxury. Against any other prison effects, I feel we are the stronger deck, as we have a better grindy game thanks to our green cards and Tymna. Hopefully that helps answer some of your questions. There will be a Laboratory Maniac Deck Tech featuring this list soon, so that should have some additional explanations, and maybe help answer lingering questions! Feel free to ask more on here, though!
My initial impression was that Necro was a primary wincon in Zur. Skuloth posted this on his Zur Doomsday page on tappedout.com
"I very rarely actually fetch necropotence.
And when it is fetched I usually transition into a slower combo role since necro slows our kill down considerably and going all in can be instant death very easily.
Generally grabbing 5-10 cards a turn, which rarely results in me wanting more than 7 of the total cards available to me."
I asked for clarification. Skuloth responded:
"I would say I go for necro in less than 25% of the games I play. And the majority of those games dont involve big activations of necro. Its simply too much of a risk. Wheels are incredibly popular in this format, and people will be sitting on answers for you since you telegraphed the win very hard. Ive found that activating necro to refuel vs win has been a better line overall."
He does use Zur to tutor for Dentention Sphere and Grasp of Fate to deal with stax effects. This increases the number of games he uses Zur. Still, Ad Nauseam is his primary wincon.
I hope you continue to use Doomtide Thrasios for the edh game videos. You guys put out a first rate product.
Is the deck playable without Candelabra? And if so what would you replace it with?
Also could paradox engine work in something like this?
Thanks for taking the time to respond!
Is the deck playable without Candelabra? And if so what would you replace it with?
Also could paradox engine work in something like this?
Thanks for taking the time to respond!
The deck is certainly playable without Candelabra, the High Tide into Aetherflux line is just much harder to achieve without it. Still doable though. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'd replace with it. Some kind of efficient draw filtering spell I think. And Paradox Engine could work, but it's not really needed with the main lines we take, so it's pretty bad as a splash card since it makes Ad Nauseam somewhat worse. In a list dedicated to some kind of Paradox Engine combo, I'm sure it would be just fine. This isn't quite that deck, though.
Could Reality Spasm work as a one shot Candelabra? I mean there is magus of the candelabra as well but hes rather bad.
Reality Spasm seems worse than Magus of the Candelabra I think, because of our ability to use Candelabra multiple times in a turn. Theoretically, you can Turnabout on creatures if you have a couple dorks and the Magus and get a similar effect.
Mental Misstep requires inclusion in literally every competitive list that can run it. So many of the most powerful cards cost 1 mana that countering one for free is a must have. I would never exclude Misstep, as the 'situation' it is most useful in is when your opponents are casting 20+% of their deck.
It's been over a month now since the wonderful Commander 2016 product brought us the ability to make non-jank 4 Color decks. That time has been filled with much testing, and lots of heartbreak over my first 4 Color love (RIP Breya). The deck I want to share with you all today is one I've been working on for the majority of that time. It's been through several iterations before coming to rest at the current build, which I believe to be the strongest variant of this deck.
On here, my handle is Myojiin, on the PlayEDH Discord my handle is Dandelion, and as a part of the Laboratory Maniacs (a competitive EDH Youtube Series you can find here!) I am Dan. Resident Karador and Thrasios player, doing my best to leave my mark on this format I love so much. While Boonweaver Karador was my first deck, Doomtide Thrasios will forever be my baby. I've played some Zur, I've played some Jeleva, I've played some JVP, but none of it really clicked for me. I never found the combination of things that I just always enjoyed doing in a game, like I had in Karador. So I set to brewing as soon as Thrasios was spoiled. My first iterations of the deck were an attempted mashup of Boonweaver Karador and Doomsday Zur. It was nonsense. Powerful enough to win games, but with the most atrocious variance. So that was slowly tweaked and scrapped and molded into what I would like to present to you today: Doomtide Thrasios.
The Deck
I want to start with the decklist. Well, I say start but I already typed out some stuff above, but you know what I mean. Sporting an average converted mana cost of 1.88, we clock in extremely lean, and very mean. We're packing nearly as low a CMC as traditional Doomsday Zur lists, despite playing some stronger cards (in my opinion).
Let's Talk Strategy
There are a several distinct ways of winning the game with this deck. If you are familiar with competitive EDH, some of them may have jumped out at you already, but I'm going to take the time to explain in detail how they each work, and go over some of the interplay between the combos.
Getting Down to Minutiae
Archetypal Matchups
Parting Thoughts
I have been having so much fun with this deck. In my mind, and from my experience, it gives me aspects of both of the highest quality spellslinging decks by offering complex lines of play that can easily diverge and cross between each other. It gives me long and thought-provoking turns, either in the tank for Doomsday, or branching paths with spell sequencing on High Tide routes. It also has the easy mode hands that just go off on turn two with protection that everyone likes every once in a while. You
get to play creatures that work towards a long game, like Leovold, but stillrun Ad Nauseam will with full ability to draw 24 cards and throw together a victory. It has something for so many styles of play, and with the possibility of being tweaked to favor any of the possible routes, you can modify it to fit your needs.I hope that you have all gained something from this meandering through my first reasonably successful cEDH brew, and will maybe take it yourself and show me how it can be improved. I am happy to receive whatever feedback you have to offer, both about the deck and about this guide. Thank you for your time!
-Dan"Always rips it off the top"delion
Episode 3 of the Laboratory Manics via the PlayEDH Discord
Episode 4 of the Laboratory Manics via the PlayEDH Discord, a Cautionary Tale
Episode 5 of the Laboratory Manics via the PlayEDH Discord
A Laboratory Maniacs Deck Tech featuring Yours Truly
Appendix A: Single Card Discussion
My gut feeling is that if you can afford to buy Leovold, Emissary of Trest, then you might as well just have him as your commander instead. Sure you remove white from the deck, especially Bomberman, but I'm not sure how good that it's anyway. You have to be sure in your decision to throw away what cards you might have in hand to go for it.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Out of interest, what exactly makes you think that this list is budgeted in any way? This is obviously a cutthroat list that is meant to be played at the highest levels.
On a different note, I wholeheartedly disagree that this deck needs Paradox Engine. It's currently not built in a way that supports the Engine well, and even if it were, I am pretty much sure that this build would still be better than one with Paradox Engine in it.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
This deck is in no way a budget compromise of a Leovold list, as this plays a different game. We storm better, Doomsday weaker, and grind just as hard but in different ways. Having played both decks, I firmly believe this to be the superior of the lists in my current meta, which is comprised of Teferi Stax, Food Chain Prossh, Food Chain Tazri, Yisan, Edric, Derevi Prison, Brago Stax, Yidris Storm, Jeleva Storm, Doomsday Leovold, Doomsday Zur, and Tasigur Control. These decks are all optimized lists, and would easily push out something that is merely a 'budget' version of a stronger deck.
But don't take my word for it, throw it together and take it for a spin yourself. If you would prefer not to, in the near future we will have several gameplay videos featuring this deck against multiple cEDH lists. Check back in a bit over a week if you'd like to see the first!
Loosing the mana outlet is the opposite of gas aswell
In a deck that has draw 7 cards; Time Spiral, Timetwister, Windfall the ability to mind twist opponents while filling up your hand is incredible powerful. Plus Leovold just stops natural strategies of opponents trying to draw multiple cards, which lets face it, is a main way of winning in Commander, or any format for that matter. That's why Leovold is played in Vintage and Legacy, extremely high power-level.
Myojiin has already pointed out that he/she plays a Leovold deck, so I can understand having fun with new partner commanders. I play Thrasios + Tymna as combination partners myself. I have tremendous success and fun with it. But I'm going to stick to my statement however that Leovold is more impactful than Thrasios + Tymna offers.
Bomberman is a two card combo for infinite mana, with a down side that you need to discard your hand. There are other two card infinite mana combos, with no downsides, so you could alter your deck to still contain infinite mana with other cards. Now the main draw back is the Thrasios is actually your win-condition. So I will concede that with infinite mana, Thrasios + Tymna is better. Quite often when you have infinite you can go off with card draw naturally and if you run Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Thrasios main, then you have a good chance of having or drawing into those.
The other combo you lose out on by not having white is Angel's Grace + Ad Nauseam. But I personally would be fine with that, as Angel's Grace is a dead card as a draw without the Ad Nauseam and Ad Nauseam by itself is a fantastic card.
So what I have personally have done, is weigh up the the impact that Leovold can offer versus the win-condition of Thrasios for the most competitive deck. Like if I was going to a tournament I personally would go with Leovold with this deck type build.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
This particular point I strongly disagree with. Angel's Grace is certainly most effective when paired with Ad Nauseam, but it is not a dead card on it's own. Against many fast combo decks that win with Laboratory Maniac, it is easily able to be one of the strongest protection cards. If someone resolves Doomsday, Angel's Grace is as good as a Player Kill Spell assuming I have the mana up. They can go through their motions, get LabMan into play, and then not win when I respond to their final draw spell with something as uninteractive as Angel's Grace. While still not as broadly applicable, Angel's Grace does have uses besides the AN combo.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
I've played with and against Leovold, and the biggest problem everytime is that once you ramp and lose the counter war over the first wheel, you're often left to the mercy of your top decks. By the time you find that second wheel, Leovold would have been dealt with, or other players would have already won. Remember, Leovold stops wheels, but doesn't do anything against Necro or Ad Nauseam. And the player resolving Necro or Ad Nauseam will most likely find a way to deal with leovold too
Leovold is definitely not a deck I'd bring to a competitive table - for its colors, the commander simply does too little to assist your own game plan. Stalling your opponents doesn't matter if you can't capitalise on it.
Hey! I've actually tried several different Oath of Druid builds, and this is 100% not one I really want. I've always used it to try and assemble Bomberman, and this is definitely the color set to do it in, but this deck is so much stronger and faster and less gimmicky than that would make it. The elves really do provide a lot of quality mana acceleration that rocks can't do for the same cost. While I could find arguments to cut JVP and Leovold, I would almost never want to cut LabMan. He really does make Doomsday a lot better.
Making a Dramatic Scepter totally spell reliant version of this could work, though, I personally just don't like getting rid of all of the mana dorks and Leovold to enable a spell that hasn't shown to be very good for me in testing. I would definitely encourage you to try it, though. I can help you tweak it if you want to PM me a decklist!
Thank you for your time and consideration.
"I very rarely actually fetch necropotence.
And when it is fetched I usually transition into a slower combo role since necro slows our kill down considerably and going all in can be instant death very easily.
Generally grabbing 5-10 cards a turn, which rarely results in me wanting more than 7 of the total cards available to me."
I asked for clarification. Skuloth responded:
"I would say I go for necro in less than 25% of the games I play. And the majority of those games dont involve big activations of necro. Its simply too much of a risk. Wheels are incredibly popular in this format, and people will be sitting on answers for you since you telegraphed the win very hard. Ive found that activating necro to refuel vs win has been a better line overall."
He does use Zur to tutor for Dentention Sphere and Grasp of Fate to deal with stax effects. This increases the number of games he uses Zur. Still, Ad Nauseam is his primary wincon.
I hope you continue to use Doomtide Thrasios for the edh game videos. You guys put out a first rate product.
Also could paradox engine work in something like this?
Thanks for taking the time to respond!
URThe Joy of Painting with Nin, the Pain Artist!UR
The deck is certainly playable without Candelabra, the High Tide into Aetherflux line is just much harder to achieve without it. Still doable though. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'd replace with it. Some kind of efficient draw filtering spell I think. And Paradox Engine could work, but it's not really needed with the main lines we take, so it's pretty bad as a splash card since it makes Ad Nauseam somewhat worse. In a list dedicated to some kind of Paradox Engine combo, I'm sure it would be just fine. This isn't quite that deck, though.
URThe Joy of Painting with Nin, the Pain Artist!UR
Seems situational.
Reality Spasm seems worse than Magus of the Candelabra I think, because of our ability to use Candelabra multiple times in a turn. Theoretically, you can Turnabout on creatures if you have a couple dorks and the Magus and get a similar effect.
Mental Misstep requires inclusion in literally every competitive list that can run it. So many of the most powerful cards cost 1 mana that countering one for free is a must have. I would never exclude Misstep, as the 'situation' it is most useful in is when your opponents are casting 20+% of their deck.