MTG Salvation

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I want to build a similar deck but without the infinite loop combos.

Thanks for the pretty much making a list of the best toughness/cc & ability walls out there. It's a good place for me to start.

Intruder Alarm is probably a better option than Reversal/Scepter, just sayin'.

No problem. I've actually been testing out a more casual budget list that focuses more on the Aggro plan but still has the Paradox Engine combo lines. I personally prefer having some sort of combo line available to me so that I can close out the game after going back and forth with my opponents for a while. The list without the combo pieces is shown below. Check it out!



EDIT: I edited the OP decklist as well to remove cards to get it to the 100 card limit and to add in some cards that are more synergistic to the deck or simply better.

I've been playing a a similar deck, but I also run Aluren and Intruder Alarm.

Aluren and Cloudstone Curio is an auto win, and Aluren is just a great way to navigate mana for your walls by itself.

I think its a mistake not to run Eerie Interlude and Ghostway. They have been my best draws most games. They give you a confidence that you can get value out of your walls early game, as you need to potentially still cast your walls, without Arcades in play. Then later in the game you can navigate around board wipes AND get lots of card draw.

Another card to protect Arcades could be Shalai, Voice of Plenty.

@LouCypher
Intruder Alarm is a card I've mostly forgotten about, honestly. I don't like that it helps my opponents' mana dorks, but it's a fine inclusion as an additional combo piece.

Quote from darrenhabib »

I've been playing a a similar deck, but I also run Aluren and Intruder Alarm.

Aluren and Cloudstone Curio is an auto win, and Aluren is just a great way to navigate mana for your walls by itself.

I think its a mistake not to run Eerie Interlude and Ghostway. They have been my best draws most games. They give you a confidence that you can get value out of your walls early game, as you need to potentially still cast your walls, without Arcades in play. Then later in the game you can navigate around board wipes AND get lots of card draw.

Hmm, this is a great suggestion. Since most of the creatures in the deck are right at the Aluren limit, this seems like an incredible card. I'll be finding a slot for it definitely, since it actually makes an aggro plan viable. I'll just have to be careful about how much it helps my opponents as well.

In regards to the Flicker effects, I'm having trouble finding room for all the cards and strategies I think should be in the deck. I agree that Flicker effects are particularly strong with Arcades, I just don't know what to cut at this point.

EDIT: Village Bell-Ringer will be the card to go in place of Aluren. Aluren is just too strong with what this deck is trying to do and with Cloudstone Curio in play you can infinitely draw your deck with two walls and Arcades in play. I'm going to be tweaking the list even further, to see if I can tighten up some slots for more Defender creatures and better removal.

Quote from umtiger »

Another card to protect Arcades could be Shalai, Voice of Plenty.

Great suggestion! It's something worth considering, since this deck favors creatures over artifacts like Lightning Greaves, and the shroud being given to you is not inconsequential. Overall, I think I like the haste and equip 0 cost of the Greaves better than Shalai.

Quote from benjameenbear »

In regards to the Flicker effects, I'm having trouble finding room for all the cards and strategies I think should be in the deck. I agree that Flicker effects are particularly strong with Arcades, I just don't know what to cut at this point.

All thye combos lead to you drawing as much of the deck as you want, so it's actually win conditions that you can cut. Just pick one, or even none. What?

Remember infinite is infinite.

The thing is that once you draw your deck, your hand looks like this Cyclonic Rift, Arcane Denial, Mana Leak, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Negate, ...

With Mnemonic Wall and Beast Within you can turn all opponents lands into creatures, then the Cyclonic Rift will leave opponents with no mana.

Aura Shards will remove all the artifact and enchantments to speed up the process of zero permanents in play for opponents..although you don't need this either as Mnemonic Wall and Beast Within can do the same thing with any permanent.

Because attacking with defenders will be lethal damage to ALL opponents, you can actually just pass the turn and kill people on the attack.

So there is actually no need for "win conditions", I don't run any and crush opponents the above methods.

Quote from darrenhabib »

Quote from benjameenbear »

In regards to the Flicker effects, I'm having trouble finding room for all the cards and strategies I think should be in the deck. I agree that Flicker effects are particularly strong with Arcades, I just don't know what to cut at this point.

All thye combos lead to you drawing as much of the deck as you want, so it's actually win conditions that you can cut. Just pick one, or even none. What?

Remember infinite is infinite.

The thing is that once you draw your deck, your hand looks like this Cyclonic Rift, Arcane Denial, Mana Leak, Mana Drain, Counterspell, Negate, ...

With Mnemonic Wall and Beast Within you can turn all opponents lands into creatures, then the Cyclonic Rift will leave opponents with no mana.

Aura Shards will remove all the artifact and enchantments to speed up the process of zero permanents in play for opponents..although you don't need this either as Mnemonic Wall and Beast Within can do the same thing with any permanent.

Because attacking with defenders will be lethal damage to ALL opponents, you can actually just pass the turn and kill people on the attack.

So there is actually no need for "win conditions", I don't run any and crush opponents the above methods.

This is a great insight, comrade. I guess all the other win conditions I've put in the decklist are a little extraneous, huh? This is really great feedback, and I'll definitely be editing my list to streamline it and include your suggestions here.

The decklist will be updated sometime tomorrow.

Also Eternal Witness is the alternative card for Mnemonic Wall for this type of plan, and you also use it with Eerie Interlude and Ghostway for renewable value and board wipe evasion. Make sure you find a slot for Eternal Witness.

[EDIT]
I don't like Jungle Barrier, Tree of Redemption, Junktroller, they are just way too slow, plus won't work with Aluren.

I found another delightful discovery for the deck: Wall of Resurgence. Being able to animate your land base into hasty lands enables some really good synergies with Intruder Alarm and makes Temur Sabertooth + Village Bell-Ringer go infinite. It also opens up another infinite combo of having super huge and hasty lands to go for an alpha strike right on your turn.

Reality Shift pairs well with the Beast Within loop to deck your opponents as well.

I'm on the fence between Ghostly Flicker vs. Eerie Interlude/Ghostway. I think it comes down to what is more common in your playgroup: mass removal or spot removal. For the general Competitive Commander metagame, spot removal and counterspells are the primary means of removal whereas Toxic Deluge is kind of the only Wrath effect that is consistently played. Ghostly Flicker also has the outlier chance of going infinite with Gilded Lotus + Eternal Witness/Mnemonic Wall + Sunscape Familiar. Considering the playgroup that I play with most commonly, which has more mass removal than a general cEDH meta, I think I'll be using Eerie Interlude since it does help my board escape most wraths.

I still like Jungle Barrier because it draws cards without Arcades in play and becomes a Mulldrifter with Arcades in play. I also like Tree of Redemption for the chance to one-shot a player potentially, as long as they have less life than you. Junktroller is pretty decent graveyard hate, but Eternal Witness is more useful to the deck overall.

I added Gyre Sage in place of Mox Diamond because it has more synergy with the deck and can scale in mana production as we execute our primary game strategy.

So the overall changes are, to the best of my memory:


The updated decklist looks something like this now:

There is also Wall of Kelp + Axebane Guardian + Intruder Alarm for infinite mana/walls. As you are generating mana/walls, you can cast Arcades, the Strategist then draw your entire deck and win.

@th3shinigami
Duh. Included because I forgot about this combo completely while I was dreaming up Paradox Engine combos.

-1Thraben Gargoyle
+Wall of Kelp

Decklist is updated as well.

Quote from benjameenbear »

I still like Jungle Barrier because it draws cards without Arcades in play and becomes a Mulldrifter with Arcades in play. I also like Tree of Redemption for the chance to one-shot a player potentially, as long as they have less life than you. Junktroller is pretty decent graveyard hate, but Eternal Witness is more useful to the deck overall.

Wall of Resurgence is a good one, reminds me of the days of Jeskai Ascendancy and using man lands to combo off. Will add it to my deck.

I would definitely take out all the comes into play tapped lands (expect he conditional ones): Desert of the Indomitable, Seaside Citadel. I'd play a City of Brass and/or Arid Mesa, Scalding Tarn instead.

You really want a few more counterspells for competitive games.
Pact of Negation goes in all combo decks.
I'd add Disdainful Stroke and Flusterstorm as well.

Cards I'd still remove are Jungle Barrier and Tree of Redemption. Tree of Redemption is not Tree of Perdition. Are you getting the two confused? Tree of Redemption only effects you.

As you pointed out in cEDH often it's only Toxic Deluge that you run into, and a big reason for this can be Gaddock Teeg. So you might want to replace Fell the Mighty with Slaughter the Strong.

Too be honest the Whir of Invention is looking a bit dubious in this particular deck as a tutor. That would be the other card I'd remove for a counterspell.

Currently, is the defender count high enough to fall back on the aggro plan?

As a player who might be interested in putting a commander deck together, would this be a good place to start?
From the looks of it i own most modern legal cards and can probably replace the legacy staples that are in this deck for the time being.
Also could someone give an estimation on the completed cost of the deck?

Quote from SmauG »

As a player who might be interested in putting a commander deck together, would this be a good place to start?
From the looks of it i own most modern legal cards and can probably replace the legacy staples that are in this deck for the time being.
Also could someone give an estimation on the completed cost of the deck?

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/ is your friend for pricing, use this tool to enter in decks https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tools/deck_pricer#paper

However it's about $336 WITHOUT the lands.

The lands however are valued at $1,805, because of the revised duels and Gaea’s Cradle.
If you remove thse then you are looking more like $392 for the land base.
So that would be $750 all up, if you replaced those mega expensive lands with some alternatives.

Is it a good place to start for Commander? From your signature you seem to like creature decks, so it definitely not a bad place to start.
What I personally like about the deck, is that your Commander (Arcades) is not a huge priority for opponents to remove, so he tends to stay on the battlefield more than higher tiered decks. Plus the defenders do mean that you have defence up in more casual games. Quite often if your are one of these higher tiered decks, that have very few creatures, then you can get picked on and just killed via combat damage. It does happen.

But there are plenty of creature decks, so just depends how cheap ($) and how powerful you want your deck to be?

@untiger
At the last count, I see that there are 30 creatures with Defender and the Wall of Kelp to make more. I think that's pretty sufficient to be able to consistently draw off of Arcades' trigger. Generally, you want at least a quarter of your deck to have the Defender key word so that you can benefit from running Arcades as your Commander. So, in my opinion, I think that there are enough creatures with Defender currently in the deck that the Aggro plan is viable.

@SmauG
I think that Arcades is a pretty decent place to start. You can build him REALLY budget if you want while still having a strong game plan and combo potential. You don't need Aluren or some of the other more expensive cards in order to build an effective list. I posted an Aggro list earlier in the thread that is more budget but still effective. darrenhabib gave a great reference there and I'd also recommend posting the decklist in MTGSalvation's Deck Builder tool. It will give you a CMC breakdown of your deck as well as a Cost Analysis for it as well.

@darrenhabib
Tree of Redemption can easily become a 0/32, depending on your life total. And between fetches, pain-lands, and some preliminary Aggro that we can employ, it becomes really easy to tap him on the End Step before your turn, make him a one-shot kill for an opponent, and then turn him sideways on your turn. The ability actually exchanges your life total with the Tree's toughness. I don't think I'll be cutting this Tree for that reason, in addition to being a 0/13 beater for the Aggro plan.

Whir of Invention is a card I go back and forth on in my head. Its sole purpose usually is to find Cloudstone Curio, which is one of the linchpins of this deck, or Paradox Engine. Both artifacts are massively useful and are integral to several combo lines. The other tutors in the deck are more creature-centric, and I think that the instant speed abiity to Chord in the combo piece you need during an opponent's end step is too powerful to pass up. I'll keep it in the decklist for a little while longer and see how it performs.

Jungle Barrier will probably go in favor of Disdainful Stroke. The Stroke hits a lot of HIGHLY relevant cards in a cEDH game: Arcum Dagsson, Ad Nauseam, Paradox Engine, The Gitrog Monster, Captain Sisay, Teferi, Temporal Archmage, Time Spiral, etc. Flusterstorm is definitely a worthy inclusion, but my current playgroup is a little Storm lite at the moment, so I don't need it in my current list at this moment.

Great point about Fell the Mighty. I like that it's a one-sided Wrath effect for us, because we will nearly always be targeting a 0 power wall with it. Slaughter the Strong is... gah, I have mixed feelings about it. You'll probably be able to leave each opponent with most of their mana dorks, which is NOT good for slowing down their tempo. And right now many of the cEDH decks I see (and personally play against) use low-power creatures to generate value or execute their combos. This slot is definitely up in the air, in my opinion. It could easily become a different removal piece or Rest in Peace/[CARAD]Stony Silence[/CARD]. I'll go back and forth on that.

The mana base is pretty easy. With the removal of the Desert, I'll need to remove Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs too. Part of building a standard mana base usually includes one of the Shard/Wedge tri-lands, so that's an easy switch too.

I'll look at the decklist again and make some changes.

Quote from benjameenbear »

@untiger
At the last count, I see that there are 30 creatures with Defender and the Wall of Kelp to make more. I think that's pretty sufficient to be able to consistently draw off of Arcades' trigger. Generally, you want at least a quarter of your deck to have the Defender key word so that you can benefit from running Arcades as your Commander. So, in my opinion, I think that there are enough creatures with Defender currently in the deck that the Aggro plan is viable.

So the combo plan makes it so that you haven't used the aggro route thus far?

That's correct. The version of Arcades I'm playing is still running under the radar at the moment, but the Aggro plan is a really solid backup strategy in the case that you can't draw a combo piece or are otherwise unable to win on the spot. Having a (functional) 4/4, a 7/7, and a 5/5 attacking you each turn puts a lot of pressure on opponents, and that's just three creatures. One of the decklists I'll be posting on the main page is an Aggro strategy with some Stax pieces instead of counter-magic. Bant, as a shard, has a great color scheme and you can go in a ton of different directions with Arcades. Think about an Arcades Stax Aggro deck. Playing a Winter Orb while you have a field of huge walls that are ready to attack is no joke. I'm still fleshing that one out a bit, but it might even be better than the combo version.

Quote from benjameenbear »

Tree of Redemption can easily become a 0/32, depending on your life total. And between fetches, pain-lands, and some preliminary Aggro that we can employ, it becomes really easy to tap him on the End Step before your turn, make him a one-shot kill for an opponent, and then turn him sideways on your turn. The ability actually exchanges your life total with the Tree's toughness. I don't think I'll be cutting this Tree for that reason, in addition to being a 0/13 beater for the Aggro plan.

I personally don't think you're ever going to connect with it, so unless you are below 13 life, I wouldn't see much benefit from this card. Feel free to keep it in, but I'm sure you'll find your kill ratio with it is going to be low to none.

Whir of Invention is a card I go back and forth on in my head. Its sole purpose usually is to find Cloudstone Curio, which is one of the linchpins of this deck, or Paradox Engine. Both artifacts are massively useful and are integral to several combo lines. The other tutors in the deck are more creature-centric, and I think that the instant speed abiity to Chord in the combo piece you need during an opponent's end step is too powerful to pass up. I'll keep it in the decklist for a little while longer and see how it performs.

It's a great card, but all your artifacts are mana rocks, and it's the UUU that is the biggest concern. But it's not incorrect to play it, and just personally think it's going to be hit and miss when you do get to use it. Another Gaddock Teeg victim, but can't completely make a deck around one card opponents might play

Great point about Fell the Mighty. I like that it's a one-sided Wrath effect for us, because we will nearly always be targeting a 0 power wall with it. Slaughter the Strong is... gah, I have mixed feelings about it. You'll probably be able to leave each opponent with most of their mana dorks, which is NOT good for slowing down their tempo. And right now many of the cEDH decks I see (and personally play against) use low-power creatures to generate value or execute their combos. This slot is definitely up in the air, in my opinion. It could easily become a different removal piece or Rest in Peace/[CARAD]Stony Silence[/CARD]. I'll go back and forth on that.

My build actually has Stony Silence and Null Rod, as it's mana creatures that are my mana ramp (only Mana Crypt and Sol Ring I play).

You're right about Slaughter the Strong is not going to hit the mana dorks in cEDH. Fell the Mighty at least has the potential to knock those off. You do play a few off defender mana dorks yourself, so can also get punished, but I do think the deck needs at least one mass removal, so many games you are wishing for something like that.

So the only other cards that I swear by are Captain Sisay and Brago, King Eternal. At the same cost as Tree of Redemption you can get win conditions. You do have to wait a turn for both, but once online they do broken things.

Captain Sisay can of course get Paradox Engine, but often it's also Gaea’s Cradle. However it's much better in my deck as I have 7 legendary cards to fetch.

Brago, King Eternal is blink on a stick and will take over the game quickly.

Both these guys are Tier 1.5 cEDH commanders for good reason, and even in your 99, can be hard to beat.

If aggro isn't going to factor into your main plan A (combo) or plan B (which seems to be value) , then there's absolutely no point in playing Tree of Redemption.

I feel like the suggested Brago would give you way more mileage.

I feel this thread missed a great opportunity and could have been called "off-the-wall combos"

With all the discussion of aggro vs combo-centric builds and big gaps in budgets, figured I would drop my build here. It is not built for cEDH, rather, it was build as a more middle ground deck to play in friendly, yet semi-competitive games vs the likes of tier 2 and 3 commanders with okay builds. My version of Arcades lies more towards the aggro side, but definitely includes combo stuff in case Arcades gets hated out or the game starts to stall. I've played in about 5 matches now and won all of them vs things like Ezuri elves, Zurgo voltron/control, Kruphix control/combo, etc.

The deck is fairly budget, without really being too intentional. The manabase is pretty functional without the need for ABU duals or Gaea's. Strong consideration was given to running Teeg in the 99 because he doesn't really affect a whole lot of big cards in the deck, while hosing control pretty well (I ultimately decided against it because he can mess with some of my boardwipes though).