The deck tries to build up a defensive wall with creatures like fog bank and windborn muse. Then it puts out zedruu and starts giving people
enchantments that are useless, or if trying to build alliances, artifact ramp, or useful enchantments. It puts sunforger on zedruu and just starts controling the game with the sunforger package. It eventually finishes with the finishers listed below. It also has a few unfriendly donation targets listed below, for punishment.
I feel ya man, lower down my thread didn't get anything either. Can you give a bit about the strategy you'll use? Maybe separate the cards by their use or so on?
I've also got a sunforger package in mine I love. It's very, stay away from me, or you'll regret it. I suggest you take a look, I love sunforger, it could work in your deck.
Okay, thanks. I updated the list slightly and put down the main strategy. Also, I was running a sunforger package (listed in the OP). But I forgot to put sunforger in the deck. Now I feel dumb...
My favorite deck at the moment is Zedruu, and while I am not on an overly strict budget, I have nowhere near the resources that other EDH players have (I have a few fetchlands, one shock. Manabase wise, that's about it. Nothing before mirrodin). So, while some of my suggestions may be out of your price range, I suspect that most won't be.
That said, I have played around a lot with what I want Zedruu to do. I tried the very heavy "combo" (play kill card, donate it, repeat) aspect, but it got predictable enough that zedruu never lasted longer than a turn, which is frustrating and doesn't win often. I've settled into the control-mindset, with the main goal to just survive. However, Zedruu can still be political without any specifically political cards (I donated a windborn muse two nights ago so that the guy with the token army couldn't kill one of my allies, and he rewarded me with one-shotting the token player), so don't feel that you have to sacrifice the deck's theme to make it more powerful.
On to the card critiques!
Sunforger Package:
I actually don't run a sunforger package, but I've heard it suggested a lot, so it must have some validity to it. If it's working for you, great! Besides, I run a bunch of those cards anyway, just because they're good cards (Orim's Thunder, for example). However, I'm pretty sure you want some counterspells accessable through the sunforger, so maybe add an Absorb and something like it.
Win Cons:
Viscous Shadows: will this eventually kill your opponents? Yeah, probably. The problems with it are twofold. One, you don't really have control over when/how fast the damage is dealt, and two, its 7 mana. For a 7 mana sorcery-speed spell, you should be able to just win (see the one mana more Insurrection).
Psychosis Crawler: Excellent. One of my favorites, because it kills everyone at the same time.
Rite of Replication: Great! Doesn't have to be a win-con, but can if necessary. Also kills generals!
Storm Herd: Also love. The mana cost can be a bit high, but the life gain from Zedruu pretty much guarantees you're getting upwards of 40-50 tokens, which is plenty to win a game.
Hoofprints of the Stag: This is soooo sloooooow. Even if it just becomes 2W: make a 4/4, that's still not fast enough to truly be a "win-con" that you want. Just cut this one.
Inkwell Leviathan: I had Neumot, the Devastator in this slot, but it's pretty much the same thing. I cut it because I needed room, but it was a hard cut. I just don't think it's as fast as the other win-cons for the same cost, but if you like it I can definitely see the benefit of it.
Call of the Skybreaker: 5/5 flyings aren't going to kill players in EDH nearly fast enough. I'd just cut it.
The way I look at it, you don't really need that many win-cons. If you can establish control and donate some lands away with Zedruu, you should draw into what you need.
Donation Targets:
Steel Golem/Grid Monitor: I actually cut these (heresy, I know), for three big reasons. One, while they are quite a beating to the agro player, they don't actually stop you from dying to what they already have on the field. Two, they are creatures. If the player you donate it to wants to get rid of it, they'll just negotiate to swing into someone else's bigger creature to get rid of it. Third, if Zedruu gets killed in response to you casting these, you are absolutely screwed. (This happens with Pyromancer's Swath as well, but I feel the payout of destroy target hand is big enough to risk it).
Illusions of Grandeur/Delusions of Mediocrity: Both of these have the same problem: They don't do enough. Illusions is fine, i guess, but it'll give you a life swing and that's about it. Compare this to other donation targets (Pyromancer's Swath), which pretty much shut that player out of the game. Delusions is pretty awful because you have to waste a enchantment kill spell on it if you want the 10 damage. Now, if you are playing Venser, The Sojourner, then both of these cards are totally worth it, because you can keep repeating their effects almost for free. If you aren't playing Venser, you shouldn't be playing these two.
Taniwha: I tried it, just wasn't impressed. You have to wait a turn, because it phases itself out before it phases out the lands. Again, it can just be swung into another creature to kill it (though 8/8s aren't common, per say). Alternatively, it might just be coming your way each turn, which isn't pretty.
In my opinion, every Zedruu deck should run the trifecta of donation targets, which include: Pyromancer's Swath Statecraft Celestial Dawn
All three of these cards completely shut down decks that down't follow very specific guidelines (Celestial Dawn shuts down non-white decks, Statecraft shuts down agro decks, Pyromancer shuts down everything, but is more dangerous). Also, all three of them are enchantments, and are thus harder to get rid of once donated. Third, Celestial Dawn and Statecraft can be played beforehand without any negative effects (Pyromancer doesn't fit this, but again, is powerful enough to warrant inclusion). These are the only three true "donation" targets I run. I feel that they are powerful enough to just stand on their own.
I'm just going to go on to your deck now. First, however, out of the list of possible additions, I don't know most of them, but there are a good number I do, so here's what I think about them:
Paradox Haze: This one is a trap. Sure, you think of all the cards you could get from it, and sure, it's really cool, but it doesn't do anything. Don't run it.
Thieve's Auction: I love this card. Love Love Love. And I run it because of that. However, there are a good number of people where I play that hate it. Make sure you know your audience before going with it.
Rhystic Study: This one is dangerous. If your deck can back it, it's a great source of card advantage. However, it makes people mad, and mad people tend to want to knock you out of the game. So, the takeaway is that you shouldn't run this unless you're confident in your ability to repel intruders.
Other random things: Words of War>>>>>Words of Wisdom. One wins you the game when you're drawing 10 cards/turn, the other just gains you more life.
Vedalken Plotter = Political Trickery plus a free 1/1. I'd run both, along with shifting borders, mostly because un-switching lands is really really hard, so it gives you a consistent source of Zedruu-card advantage
Spell Crumple > Hinder in this scenario, given your use of wild research (which is THE BEST reason to play WUR anyway.). I run both anyway.
No Oblivion Ring? That should be in there, especially because it's donate-able. Take out Prison Term for it, because you can't donate Prison Term without the "You" in its rules text becoming your opponent, who will promptly move it away when possible.
The manabase is sort of hard to mess with on a tight budget, but one cheap and worthy addition is Mistveil Plains. It lets you recycle cards pitched to Wild Research at a really cheap cost.
I'm just going to list some of the cards I found when looking around for tech (many of which are quite cheap), but other than the critiques listed above, it looks pretty good! These cards below have served me well, so maybe they can help you as well.
Forbid: This is cancel on roids. Once your hand gets gigantic the buyback is almost negligible, which is crazy. To help getting to this point, also consider adding Reliquary Tower
Spiritual Asylum: This one I'm still testing, but it seems really good. It's like a lightning greaves for all of your creatures, and getting rid of it if you need to isn't hard. The one downside is it makes it hard to donate lands. Not sure if it warrants a spot, but definitely interesting.
Teferi's Moat: Really really good. I usually name green, just for the reason that the primeval titan has to swing at someone else each turn.
Island Sanctuary: This card is truly stupid good. The combination of 1) the mana cost (really low), 2) the fact that the ability is optional (you don't have to skip your draw after someone wrathed), and 3) it prevents attacks from creatures without flying or islandwalk, the latter of which is exceedingly rare, and creatures with the former don't have very high powers on the whole. The fact that Zedruu lets you keep drawing cards while protecting yourself is just gravy. <3.
A note on "Moat" style cards: A big thing to remember is that you don't want to prevent people from attacking in general, just attacking you. When no one can attack at all, the game stalls, and the easiest way to break the stall is to break the dam (read: you). When you can't be attacked, (or it's expensive to do so), people just shrug and direct their random early game attacks elsewhere.
So, good: Propaganda, Island Sanctuary, Teferi's Moat
bad: Magus of the Moat, Peacekeeper
Copy Enchantment: This card is my silver bullet. I've copied a Collective Restraint with it, making each creature pay 6 to attack. I've gotten an O-Ring with it to take out a troublesome permanent. It's even possible to copy a Celestial Dawn to lock out two players at once, which is pretty sweet.
Well, I hope this feedback has been helpful on the whole. Keep working with the deck! Zedruu's a great general, and UWR is a brilliant color combination.
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 False Prophet
1 Fog Bank
1 Gomazoa
1 Guard Gomazoa
1 Izzet Chronarch
1 Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
1 Mnemonic Wall
1 Psychosis Crawler
1 Taj-Nar Swordsmith
1 Vedalken Plotter
1 Wall of Glare
1 Windborn Muse
1 Akroma's Vengeance
1 Arrest
1 Collective Restraint
1 Condemn
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Empyrial Plate
1 Fabricate
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Faith's Fetters
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Hinder
1 Illusions of Grandeur
1 Insurrection
1 Island Sanctuary
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Legerdemain
1 Luminarch Ascension
1 Master Warcraft
1 Mirrorweave
1 Nevermore
1 Oath of Lieges
1 Oblation
1 Orim's Thunder
1 Phyrexian Rebirth
1 Political Trickery
1 Propaganda
1 Pyromancer's Swath
1 Reiterate
1 Rite of Replication
1 Shifting Borders
1 Spell Crumple
1 Spin into Myth
1 Statecraft
1 Storm Herd
1 Stranglehold
1 Sunforger
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Teferi's Moat
1 Temporal Isolation
1 Thieves' Auction
1 Time Stretch
1 Trade Secrets
1 Vicious Shadows
1 Wild Research
1 Wild Ricochet
1 Words of War
11 Plains
8 Mountain
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Boros Garrison
1 Azorius Chancery
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Kher Keep
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Homeward Path
The deck tries to build up a defensive wall with creatures like fog bank and windborn muse. Then it puts out zedruu and starts giving people
enchantments that are useless, or if trying to build alliances, artifact ramp, or useful enchantments. It puts sunforger on zedruu and just starts controling the game with the sunforger package. It eventually finishes with the finishers listed below. It also has a few unfriendly donation targets listed below, for punishment.
Sunforger Tutors:
1 Fabricate
1 Taj-Nar Swordsmith
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 Oblation
1 Condemn
1 Mirrorweave
1 Master Warcraft
1 Wild Ricochet
1 Reiterate
1 Orim's Thunder
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Time Stretch
1 Thieves' Auction
1 Viscious Shadows
1 Psychosis Crawler
1 Rite of Replication
1 Insurrection
1 Storm Herd
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Words of War
1 Luminarch Ascension
1 Pyromancer's Swath
1 Illusions of Grandeur
1 Statecraft
Feedback?
I've also got a sunforger package in mine I love. It's very, stay away from me, or you'll regret it. I suggest you take a look, I love sunforger, it could work in your deck.
Hopefully now I will get more feedback.
My favorite deck at the moment is Zedruu, and while I am not on an overly strict budget, I have nowhere near the resources that other EDH players have (I have a few fetchlands, one shock. Manabase wise, that's about it. Nothing before mirrodin). So, while some of my suggestions may be out of your price range, I suspect that most won't be.
That said, I have played around a lot with what I want Zedruu to do. I tried the very heavy "combo" (play kill card, donate it, repeat) aspect, but it got predictable enough that zedruu never lasted longer than a turn, which is frustrating and doesn't win often. I've settled into the control-mindset, with the main goal to just survive. However, Zedruu can still be political without any specifically political cards (I donated a windborn muse two nights ago so that the guy with the token army couldn't kill one of my allies, and he rewarded me with one-shotting the token player), so don't feel that you have to sacrifice the deck's theme to make it more powerful.
On to the card critiques!
Sunforger Package:
I actually don't run a sunforger package, but I've heard it suggested a lot, so it must have some validity to it. If it's working for you, great! Besides, I run a bunch of those cards anyway, just because they're good cards (Orim's Thunder, for example). However, I'm pretty sure you want some counterspells accessable through the sunforger, so maybe add an Absorb and something like it.
Win Cons:
Viscous Shadows: will this eventually kill your opponents? Yeah, probably. The problems with it are twofold. One, you don't really have control over when/how fast the damage is dealt, and two, its 7 mana. For a 7 mana sorcery-speed spell, you should be able to just win (see the one mana more Insurrection).
Psychosis Crawler: Excellent. One of my favorites, because it kills everyone at the same time.
Rite of Replication: Great! Doesn't have to be a win-con, but can if necessary. Also kills generals!
Insurrection: Love.
Storm Herd: Also love. The mana cost can be a bit high, but the life gain from Zedruu pretty much guarantees you're getting upwards of 40-50 tokens, which is plenty to win a game.
Hoofprints of the Stag: This is soooo sloooooow. Even if it just becomes 2W: make a 4/4, that's still not fast enough to truly be a "win-con" that you want. Just cut this one.
Inkwell Leviathan: I had Neumot, the Devastator in this slot, but it's pretty much the same thing. I cut it because I needed room, but it was a hard cut. I just don't think it's as fast as the other win-cons for the same cost, but if you like it I can definitely see the benefit of it.
Call of the Skybreaker: 5/5 flyings aren't going to kill players in EDH nearly fast enough. I'd just cut it.
The way I look at it, you don't really need that many win-cons. If you can establish control and donate some lands away with Zedruu, you should draw into what you need.
Donation Targets:
Steel Golem/Grid Monitor: I actually cut these (heresy, I know), for three big reasons. One, while they are quite a beating to the agro player, they don't actually stop you from dying to what they already have on the field. Two, they are creatures. If the player you donate it to wants to get rid of it, they'll just negotiate to swing into someone else's bigger creature to get rid of it. Third, if Zedruu gets killed in response to you casting these, you are absolutely screwed. (This happens with Pyromancer's Swath as well, but I feel the payout of destroy target hand is big enough to risk it).
Illusions of Grandeur/Delusions of Mediocrity: Both of these have the same problem: They don't do enough. Illusions is fine, i guess, but it'll give you a life swing and that's about it. Compare this to other donation targets (Pyromancer's Swath), which pretty much shut that player out of the game. Delusions is pretty awful because you have to waste a enchantment kill spell on it if you want the 10 damage. Now, if you are playing Venser, The Sojourner, then both of these cards are totally worth it, because you can keep repeating their effects almost for free. If you aren't playing Venser, you shouldn't be playing these two.
Taniwha: I tried it, just wasn't impressed. You have to wait a turn, because it phases itself out before it phases out the lands. Again, it can just be swung into another creature to kill it (though 8/8s aren't common, per say). Alternatively, it might just be coming your way each turn, which isn't pretty.
In my opinion, every Zedruu deck should run the trifecta of donation targets, which include:
Pyromancer's Swath
Statecraft
Celestial Dawn
All three of these cards completely shut down decks that down't follow very specific guidelines (Celestial Dawn shuts down non-white decks, Statecraft shuts down agro decks, Pyromancer shuts down everything, but is more dangerous). Also, all three of them are enchantments, and are thus harder to get rid of once donated. Third, Celestial Dawn and Statecraft can be played beforehand without any negative effects (Pyromancer doesn't fit this, but again, is powerful enough to warrant inclusion). These are the only three true "donation" targets I run. I feel that they are powerful enough to just stand on their own.
I'm just going to go on to your deck now. First, however, out of the list of possible additions, I don't know most of them, but there are a good number I do, so here's what I think about them:
Ghostly Prison/Propaganda/Collective Restraint: All of these are positively incredible. It's just a little incentive for people not to attack you.
Paradox Haze: This one is a trap. Sure, you think of all the cards you could get from it, and sure, it's really cool, but it doesn't do anything. Don't run it.
Thieve's Auction: I love this card. Love Love Love. And I run it because of that. However, there are a good number of people where I play that hate it. Make sure you know your audience before going with it.
Rhystic Study: This one is dangerous. If your deck can back it, it's a great source of card advantage. However, it makes people mad, and mad people tend to want to knock you out of the game. So, the takeaway is that you shouldn't run this unless you're confident in your ability to repel intruders.
Other random things:
Words of War>>>>>Words of Wisdom. One wins you the game when you're drawing 10 cards/turn, the other just gains you more life.
Vedalken Plotter = Political Trickery plus a free 1/1. I'd run both, along with shifting borders, mostly because un-switching lands is really really hard, so it gives you a consistent source of Zedruu-card advantage
Spell Crumple > Hinder in this scenario, given your use of wild research (which is THE BEST reason to play WUR anyway.). I run both anyway.
No Oblivion Ring? That should be in there, especially because it's donate-able. Take out Prison Term for it, because you can't donate Prison Term without the "You" in its rules text becoming your opponent, who will promptly move it away when possible.
The manabase is sort of hard to mess with on a tight budget, but one cheap and worthy addition is Mistveil Plains. It lets you recycle cards pitched to Wild Research at a really cheap cost.
I'm just going to list some of the cards I found when looking around for tech (many of which are quite cheap), but other than the critiques listed above, it looks pretty good! These cards below have served me well, so maybe they can help you as well.
Forbid: This is cancel on roids. Once your hand gets gigantic the buyback is almost negligible, which is crazy. To help getting to this point, also consider adding Reliquary Tower
Spiritual Asylum: This one I'm still testing, but it seems really good. It's like a lightning greaves for all of your creatures, and getting rid of it if you need to isn't hard. The one downside is it makes it hard to donate lands. Not sure if it warrants a spot, but definitely interesting.
Teferi's Moat: Really really good. I usually name green, just for the reason that the primeval titan has to swing at someone else each turn.
Island Sanctuary: This card is truly stupid good. The combination of 1) the mana cost (really low), 2) the fact that the ability is optional (you don't have to skip your draw after someone wrathed), and 3) it prevents attacks from creatures without flying or islandwalk, the latter of which is exceedingly rare, and creatures with the former don't have very high powers on the whole. The fact that Zedruu lets you keep drawing cards while protecting yourself is just gravy. <3.
A note on "Moat" style cards: A big thing to remember is that you don't want to prevent people from attacking in general, just attacking you. When no one can attack at all, the game stalls, and the easiest way to break the stall is to break the dam (read: you). When you can't be attacked, (or it's expensive to do so), people just shrug and direct their random early game attacks elsewhere.
So, good: Propaganda, Island Sanctuary, Teferi's Moat
bad: Magus of the Moat, Peacekeeper
Copy Enchantment: This card is my silver bullet. I've copied a Collective Restraint with it, making each creature pay 6 to attack. I've gotten an O-Ring with it to take out a troublesome permanent. It's even possible to copy a Celestial Dawn to lock out two players at once, which is pretty sweet.
Well, I hope this feedback has been helpful on the whole. Keep working with the deck! Zedruu's a great general, and UWR is a brilliant color combination.
UR Storm WUBRG Sunnyside Up W Death+Taxes BR 7->0:60 Discard
EDH
GU Vig RWU Zedruu BR Olivia
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I need to find more cards to remove from the current list. I updated the OP.
I'm close, but I need some help...