Yeah, I think I am down to 5 of the 'god-mode' cards like that. And one of them is Hundred-Handed One, because he's a nice Vigilant threat as well.
It is a blast to play, especially when I drop one of the many weird cards, like Equipoise
It is not hyper unique, especially not anymore, but people usually consider my Marchesa, the Black Rose affinity list to be the most original thing I built.
It sacrifices nothing for its power. It wins in both the classic manner, the Modern manner, and with less conventional win conditions such as Time Sieve.
I'm not sure if it is unique, but I made an Ith, High Arcanist deck whose whole purpose was to prevent players from winning using combat damage. The win con was illusionist bracers and blue pingers like Prodigal Sorcerer. It was really bad because Ith would constantly die and cost ridiculous amounts of mana.
For the past year+ I've been trying to make the most unusual storm deck possible. I started with a simple anti-blue theme, making two fairly strong black+red decks (one with typical win-cons, one with empty the warrens).
The decks ended up being fairly strong, so I continued making it harder to actually win, and removed black. I made a naya storm list with Samut, since she gave hermit druid haste, but realized that even that enabled so many easy lines to victory, that I needed to make it harder. So I removed white, making a gruul radha, heir to keld storm list. Still too easy - past in flames from a hermit druid activation made far too many possible routes to victory.
I currently run a sigarda, heron's gracehermit druid deck, that is still pretty strong. It has just one single path to victory if hermit druid is allowed to activate. I love the deck because none of my friends considered it at all possible to combo in this fashion. This weak sigarda has always been a disappointment in my eyes, but she actually serves a purpose here, protecting Hermit Druid while also making my graveyard harder to target with removal.
I tend to stray away from the common commanders and themes, so I do have a few pretty odd decks;
I tend to make a bunch of experimental decks, all typically with a singular unique and unusual goal. Unfortunately my meta is fairly strong, so once they get the "gimmick" of the deck, my deck typically fails to whatever answers they hold on to, so most of my gimmick decks don't last too long.
Don't have the decklist handy but i have a pretty unique Zedruu upkeep tribal deck. Basically has every upkeep related card you can think of as a win condition. Then also has the Bronze Bombshell for those games where you just HAVE to nuke someone off the table
Unique? While the decks in my sig are anything but (though I am the Godfather personal liaison to Kaalia of the Vast), I do also have 2 shades of Alesha no one does.
My favorite deck is my Thrasios one, designed to feel like a deep ocean expedition. It plays a bunch of adventure themed cards from Zendikar and Ixalan, and ocean themed cards from Theros, with a Sea Monster tribal component, my favorite of which is Arixmethes. Examples of flavor: Ior Ruin Expedition, Quest for Ancient Secrets, Search For Azcanta.
O-Kagachi - Kamigawa tribal deck, playing every single character and location from the novels, such as Toshi, Kiku, Minamo Academy, etc.
Oona - A Faerie deck that used to be Rebecca Guay tribal, but now just has a strong Guay component but is mostly Lorwyn Faerie tribal.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy - Jace tribal, all cards depict Jace.
My unpartnered Silas Renn deck is a Voltron deck that uses artifact synergies to turn that little 2/2 for 3 into a fearsome one-shotting threat. I usually give him Hexproof, Indestructible (Champion's Helm, Darksteel Plate) and Cranial Plating or Darkblade Reforged close the game. Everything can be tutored easily. Time Sieve in my colors with Thopter production allows for some neat combos. Overall, I don't think most people think Volton upon seeing Silas Renn, and even less play Dimir artifacts, now that Breya, Joira/Izzet and Sharuum before her are around. So it's different.
My Ephara deck, which may become Kestia, is just a collection of my favorite cards in the game.
Rather than self-plug, I will simply point out that making an original deck often focuses on unusual commanders and the usually-bad cards that synergize well with them.
If you want to build a unique deck, then find a commander with lots of synergies like these. If a commander has enough synergies then you can start to replace the 'mandatory' staples that every deck runs with unusual and underplayed cards that are important to the specific commander.
Gonna leave this one open, since it has some interesting ideas in the older posts. Just please keep in mind the age of this thread when replying to other users.
My own Baral list is a Polymorph strategy, which is anything but unique. My list is a contributor to the statistics on EDHRec, which claims it only has 23% in common with the closest other Baral list. Is that original? I don't know. EDHRec wants Baral to be Talrand w/o a win condition. I didn't want just another tokens for counterspells deck. That said, Polymorphing into an Eldrazi titan was all the rage in the 1v1 formats. My variant is geared towards 3 player pods - listed here as a 1v1 deck, but only because it's better 1v1 than in some gigantic casual pod of 5+. Still, is it original? I run 57 instants and sorceries - 43 instants and 14 sorceries. There are only 7 nonland permanents counting the commander. I find some originality in the depths to which I tried to rely entirely on what I thought the mythical draw-go strategy would've been like. It's all answers and no threats.
The Legacy Weapon-led Weatherlight tribal deck. It was essentially WeatherlightSaga.dec. It contained the crew of the (original) Weatherlight as well as the pieces of the Legacy and every other card was related in some way, like Sift with the art and flavor text. It was pretty terrible.
The original plan was to have my friend build a Tsabo Tavoc-helmed Phyrexian tribal deck and we would battle them against each other, but that never really materialized and I ended up taking the Weatherlight deck apart.
I've never seen my deck on any decklisting, EDHrec, or mtggoldfish. The thread is semi old and some updates need to be input but it'll get the jist across.
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninja, a brewing thread, but that's the deck I've been working on. The focus is to combine morph/manifest creatures with ninja's "return to hand" ability. Kondo allows 2/2 or smaller to hit unhindered, therefore trigger the effect.
I think sometimes different is more about how you play a deck than what you put in it. If you want to build good decks, at any rate. There are exceptions, of course. I used to have a Rakdos, Lord of Riots affinity deck that was pretty good, and my Soramaro, First to Dream deck is fairly unique. But most often, the decks that stick out to me are the ones doing things differently, That's one reason I dislike goodstuff decks. They all pretty much play the same. So use your cards in different ways, play creatively. It's commander, the "optimal" play is not always the best play. Even if everyone had the same deck, how you play the game can make you stand out.
Fumiko wall tribal. It was like that political deck that one dude earlier in the thread was touting except it's mono red and swingy so I had to depend on other people making smart decisions on top of needing to make my own smart decisions. It made me miss Diaochan too much so it eventually got broken down.
Riku group hug was great. So many tools to massively accelerate a game. Certainly not always appropriate but he was great to break out when there were seven or eight people and we had one table at my friend's house. Even with that many opponents the games never lasted longer than 45 minutes max. Not a fantastic win rate but still decent and the whole point was to keep people from getting burned out on big games and it worked at that every time.
I have an old Uncle Karlov list on the forums somewhere that was all about lifegain for the specific purpose of utilizing it in some way to kill people instead of simply having a buffer or using Test of Endurance. A 1,300/1,300 Roiling Horror is fun, you should try it out.
I've got some pretty weird decks that i've had and are still in the process of building:
Old decks Ayesha Tanaka the banding and combat damage manipulation tribal. It's not good, but its brilliant having to explain to players how banding works, and then they (usually) have their minds blown when they realise it works differently on defence compared to offence.
current decks karona false god the skip all my turns deck. Uses a couple of weird mechanics like skipyourturn in combination with say a stasis, the vows, or even the potentially game-end-killing combo of teferi's protection and an infinite skip my turn 'combo'. doesn't work super well, is ultra fragile as a deck, but it CAN win, and can neuter some of those pesky take extra turn decks.
rakdos the defiler suicide BR. It might not seem very unique, but I've never come across anyone playing suicide (i.e. pay tonnes of life, ritual mana, and using tempo loss in exchange for killing opponents) in EDH. i've done turn 1 demonic consultation, exiling 2/3rd of my library naming mana vault just to power out an early sire of insanity. the only board wipe in the deck is mr fun himself. I've yet to do this, but one day, i want to win a game via sacrificing any demon in play for a kaervek's spite or last laugh.
I'm not sure if you'd consider this to be unique, but a mono-white combo deck is quite unique at least - Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle combo. Using things like ashnod's altar, burnished hart, treasure hunter, artifact mana, it is a pretty consistent combo deck that has a variety of ways to kill the table.
I have a oldborder only (7th edition and back i guess? atleast no modernbordered cards are allowed)enchantress prison control deck with Dakkon Blackblade at the helm.
I haven't seen anything else like my Xira Arienno-shuffling deck. Widespread Panic provides the mechanical incentive, but I designed it because I got tired of shuffling so damn much in EDH games.
You should add:
I put some consideration into building Rune-Tail once. I was totally going to rock a TON of those effects lol.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
It is a blast to play, especially when I drop one of the many weird cards, like Equipoise
It sacrifices nothing for its power. It wins in both the classic manner, the Modern manner, and with less conventional win conditions such as Time Sieve.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
Dragons of Legend, Lead by Scion of the UR-Dragon
The Gitrog Monster
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Shogun Saskia
Hive World
Atraxa hates fun
Abzan
The decks ended up being fairly strong, so I continued making it harder to actually win, and removed black. I made a naya storm list with Samut, since she gave hermit druid haste, but realized that even that enabled so many easy lines to victory, that I needed to make it harder. So I removed white, making a gruul radha, heir to keld storm list. Still too easy - past in flames from a hermit druid activation made far too many possible routes to victory.
I currently run a sigarda, heron's grace hermit druid deck, that is still pretty strong. It has just one single path to victory if hermit druid is allowed to activate. I love the deck because none of my friends considered it at all possible to combo in this fashion. This weak sigarda has always been a disappointment in my eyes, but she actually serves a purpose here, protecting Hermit Druid while also making my graveyard harder to target with removal.
I tend to stray away from the common commanders and themes, so I do have a few pretty odd decks;
~ Latulla, Kedon Overseer artifact base damage+mana doubler
~ Visara the Dreadful paradox engine/staff of domination/magus of the coffers combo deck
~ Dragonlord Kolaghan empty the warrens storm
~ Rakdos the Defiler tendrils/aetherflux storm
~ Treva, the Renewer voltron/swords/primal surge
~ Chandra, Fire of kaladesh 1v1 burn
I tend to make a bunch of experimental decks, all typically with a singular unique and unusual goal. Unfortunately my meta is fairly strong, so once they get the "gimmick" of the deck, my deck typically fails to whatever answers they hold on to, so most of my gimmick decks don't last too long.
Links to my most current deck lists;
Primary EDH; Rakka Mar Token Perfection, Crosis Mnemonic Betrayal, Cromat Villainous, Judith Gravestorm, Rakdos Empty Storm, Exava Artifacts, Bant Trash, & Fumiko Voltron!
EDH kept at home; Ruzzian Isset & Rakdos LoR!
EDH (nostalgic/pimp/retired) in storage;
Latulla Burns, Akroma Smash, Jeska Voltron, Rakdos Storm, Bladewing Darghans, Lyzolda Worldgorger, Xantcha Steals your Heart, Jori Storm, Wydwen Permission, Gwendlyn Paradox, Jeleva Warps, & Sigarda Brick!
Legacy Showanimator and High Tide!
Godfatherpersonal liaison to Kaalia of the Vast), I do also have 2 shades of Alesha no one does.3c Slivers: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/alesha-slivers-2/
Bird*****: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/alesha-birdsht-1/
White borders only: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-07-18-gyrus-waker-of-corpses/
Extreme budget: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-real-natures-vengeance/
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
O-Kagachi - Kamigawa tribal deck, playing every single character and location from the novels, such as Toshi, Kiku, Minamo Academy, etc.
Oona - A Faerie deck that used to be Rebecca Guay tribal, but now just has a strong Guay component but is mostly Lorwyn Faerie tribal.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy - Jace tribal, all cards depict Jace.
My unpartnered Silas Renn deck is a Voltron deck that uses artifact synergies to turn that little 2/2 for 3 into a fearsome one-shotting threat. I usually give him Hexproof, Indestructible (Champion's Helm, Darksteel Plate) and Cranial Plating or Darkblade Reforged close the game. Everything can be tutored easily. Time Sieve in my colors with Thopter production allows for some neat combos. Overall, I don't think most people think Volton upon seeing Silas Renn, and even less play Dimir artifacts, now that Breya, Joira/Izzet and Sharuum before her are around. So it's different.
My Ephara deck, which may become Kestia, is just a collection of my favorite cards in the game.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Peregrine Mask is jank, but with Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim it's suddenly great.
Blood Funnel is awful, but then you play it with Mishra, Artificer Prodigy and... well, it's still awful, but it makes you feel clever.
Lich's Mirror is tons of fun with Zedruu the Greathearted when you make target opponent immortal!
What's better than grabbing a big nasty with Extract From Darkness? Having Lazav, Dimir Mastermind become a copy of it as well!
If you want to build a unique deck, then find a commander with lots of synergies like these. If a commander has enough synergies then you can start to replace the 'mandatory' staples that every deck runs with unusual and underplayed cards that are important to the specific commander.
- Rabid Wombat
My Helpdesk
[Pr] Marath | [Pr] Lovisa | Jodah | Saskia | Najeela | Yisan | Lord Windgrace | Atraxa | Meren | Gisa and Geralf
The original plan was to have my friend build a Tsabo Tavoc-helmed Phyrexian tribal deck and we would battle them against each other, but that never really materialized and I ended up taking the Weatherlight deck apart.
Please elaborate how Peregrine Mask is improved by Ayli.
Bruse Tarl & Kraum, Ludevic's Opus
Mayael the Anima
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/787469-partner-commanders-nono-r-zombie-token-swarm
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
Riku group hug was great. So many tools to massively accelerate a game. Certainly not always appropriate but he was great to break out when there were seven or eight people and we had one table at my friend's house. Even with that many opponents the games never lasted longer than 45 minutes max. Not a fantastic win rate but still decent and the whole point was to keep people from getting burned out on big games and it worked at that every time.
I have an old Uncle Karlov list on the forums somewhere that was all about lifegain for the specific purpose of utilizing it in some way to kill people instead of simply having a buffer or using Test of Endurance. A 1,300/1,300 Roiling Horror is fun, you should try it out.
Old decks
Ayesha Tanaka the banding and combat damage manipulation tribal. It's not good, but its brilliant having to explain to players how banding works, and then they (usually) have their minds blown when they realise it works differently on defence compared to offence.
current decks
karona false god the skip all my turns deck. Uses a couple of weird mechanics like skip your turn in combination with say a stasis, the vows, or even the potentially game-end-killing combo of teferi's protection and an infinite skip my turn 'combo'. doesn't work super well, is ultra fragile as a deck, but it CAN win, and can neuter some of those pesky take extra turn decks.
rakdos the defiler suicide BR. It might not seem very unique, but I've never come across anyone playing suicide (i.e. pay tonnes of life, ritual mana, and using tempo loss in exchange for killing opponents) in EDH. i've done turn 1 demonic consultation, exiling 2/3rd of my library naming mana vault just to power out an early sire of insanity. the only board wipe in the deck is mr fun himself. I've yet to do this, but one day, i want to win a game via sacrificing any demon in play for a kaervek's spite or last laugh.
I'm not sure if you'd consider this to be unique, but a mono-white combo deck is quite unique at least - Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle combo. Using things like ashnod's altar, burnished hart, treasure hunter, artifact mana, it is a pretty consistent combo deck that has a variety of ways to kill the table.
lastly, i'm building a selenia, dark angel deck that neuters its own life total, and then kills via repay in kind or triskaidekaphobia or near-death experience. Its a budget deck thus far, since i don't have things like mirror universe. But it's a surprisingly good deck that can steal wins from nowhere. it can also get up to silly life-totals via children of korlis shenanigans.
Anyways, i'm always up for weird deck strategies, ideas.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
Dragons of Legend, Lead by Scion of the UR-Dragon
The Gitrog Monster
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Shogun Saskia
Hive World
Atraxa hates fun
Abzan
Who needs Colours?
My most played EDH deck:
X Kozilek, the Great Distortion
UBR Nekusar, the Mindrazer
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist