MTG Salvation

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Deck Overview

The Commander

First, a few words about Diaochan.

To clarify her ability, you first tap her to kill a creature of your choice. You then choose an opponent, who chooses a second creature for her to kill. You can only do this on your turn, pre-combat. Having the ability turned on you seems frightening at first glance, but you might be surprised, for a number of reasons:

1. Diaochan herself is the source of both effects, meaning she can not only be protected by the usual Shroud and Indestructibility (Hexproof does not work as she is still a source you control), but also Protection from Red, making the Swords of Fire and Ice and War and Peace both offensive and defensive tools.
2. You choose the opponent who kills the second creature. In multiplayer games, you can often find an opponent who's more interested in someone else's creatures than yours.
3. Tokens. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. This is one thing this deck does.
4. Creatures with Enter-the-Battlefield (ETB) abilities. Focus on creatures who already give you an advantage merely by entering the battlefield. Often there will be better creatures on the board for you opponents to kill, who haven't already exhausted part of their usefulness.
5. Hard-to-get-rid-of creatures like Kuldotha Phoenix.
6. If you think you'll get the worse end of the deal, it's your choice to not tap her!!

Token Shenanigans

This deck controls the board through Diaochan and token shenanigans and has a few finisher strategies. First, the shenanigans. Tokens perform a few functions in this deck, aside from making you a poor Diaochan target:

1. Confusion in the Ranks means you're trading weenies for useful things. The sacrifice mechanisms in this deck also make you a poor target for theft.
2. Warp World turns tokens into real cards. Warp World is especially explosive in decks like this one, with an ETB focus on the creatures.
3. Alpha Striking as a back-up finisher strategy, through cards such as Shared Animosity and Moonveil Dragon.
4. Mana Echoes causes potentially huge cascades of mana, to either empty your hand or put into mana sinks like Comet Storm, Rolling Thunder, Orochi Hatchery or a Sword of the Paruns-equipped Diaochan, Krenko or Rakka Mar.
5. They provide sac fodder for handy cards like Shivan Harvest, Trading Post and Helm of Possession. A healthy amount of sac mech also demands cards like Insurrection and Mass Mutiny; Threaten creatures and never give them back! I find sac mech underrated even just to screw over Mind Control.

Enter-the-Battlefield (ETB) Effects

Creatures in this deck have an ETB focus, for a few reasons.

1. It makes your creatures poorer targets if Diaochan's ability turns on you. If part of their function has already been realized simply by coming into play, your opponents may likely have better targets.
2. Warp World becomes explosive on the play. It's not a rare occurrence this deck will convert a hand-full of weenies into a Bogardan Hellkite, a Molten Primordial, a Duplicant, etc... so what of your opponent is sitting on a Wrath?
3. Confusion in the Ranks synergy; you get the ETB effect, and opponents are often left with a vanilla creature (at worst a vanilla flyer) afterward. Mindclaw Shaman, for example, nets you the free spell, then you give them a 2/2 Lizard.
4. Recurrence with cards like Mimic Vat and Trading Post is quite easy with sac mechanisms. How fun to play a Molten Primordial, sac it into Ashnod's Altar, put it under the Mimic Vat, and spend that mana towards a second Primordial in the same turn!
5. The ETB theme overlaps heavily with the token theme, in the form of Beetleback Chief, Siege-Gang Commander, Chancellor of the Forge, etc.

Creature Overview

Strategy

Update Log

I'm beginning to find that this deck has little trouble finding sac mechanisms, as Hoarding Dragon looks for artifact sac and Expedition Map looks for land sac. I'm therefore going to risk replacing Greater Gargadon with Wurmcoil Engine. Even if Diaochan kills it, it generates two tokens of the same type for Mana Echoes, gives extra bodies for the Swords, replaces with two creatures with Confusion... damn good card.

This deck has won a surprising 3/3 games so far. Perhaps this is because my opponents haven't learned to respect the deck yet, but given that I was harbouring doubts about its viability, this is encouraging.

It is even better than I expected at disrupting board position with cards like Diaochan and Confusion in the Ranks, and two out of three of the games I won by Warp World ing into, amongst other things, Vicious Shadows. The Bogardan Hellkite kills one creature, the Inferno Titan kills another, and that was 14 damage alone to one opponent. I then sacced a few goblins via Mr. Beetleback into Ashnod's Altar to end the game.

The second game I won by Molten Primordialing twice by saccing him into the Altar, putting him under the Mimic Vat and using the Altar's mana toward spitting another one out. Even if I didn't win then and there, the Altar would have ensured I returned no creatues, so only a wrath would have saved them.

The only thing seems to be that it doesn't have that many tokens of the same type out at a given time. I'm beginning to wonder about running something like In the Web of War over Shared Animosity. The Haste would be an added benefit with Diaochan.

Just realized Akroma's Memorial goes excellently with Diaochan, not only for the Protection from Red, but from the Haste as well. It wouldn't constitute a direct replacement with Shared Animosity, though, due to the CCC and the lack of an actual power boost.

No advice at all?

Have you pondered having Skirk Prospector and Goblin Sharpshooter in there? Essentially you could have a nice little 2 pop with the sharpshooter for your commander's tap and an additional mana source from Krenko's production.

Quote from Overcore

Have you pondered having Skirk Prospector and Goblin Sharpshooter in there? Essentially you could have a nice little 2 pop with the sharpshooter for your commander's tap and an additional mana source from Krenko's production.

3 pop, even! Tap #1 damage, tap Diaochan to kill creature #1, untap Sharpshooter, tap #2 damage, Diaochan kills creature #2, untap Sharpshooter, tap #3 damage. This can potentially be even more damage if I'm saccing tokens into the Altar or similar.

Unless I'm mistaken and he doesn't get an opportunity to tap/untap between the two creatures being killed by Diaochan?

This amount of damage is just on the cusp of being handy in EDH, so Sharpshooter's iffy though. For a 3CC card, I'm not sure I'll be doing more than 3 consistent damage. While amazing in a 20 life format, it might be underwhelming with 40 life. I'm curious to give him a play test, however.

Prospector seems boss, though. Another free, no-tap sac mech, goblin tribal, one mana, and mana accel for my mana sinks. I think he definitely has a place here.

Thank you.

Two more victories last night. Amazingly, this deck is 5-for-5 so far. These wins were, alas, not particularly interesting.

First victory, I got an early Krenko with a pair of Lightning Greaves. By the time I played Shared Animosity on turn 6 or so, I think I had nearly twenty goblins. I killed two players and the third couldn't recover.

Second victory I played Insurrection after an opponent's Storm Herd.

But wins are wins!

Without wraths tokens can win quite nicely, nothing really beats an Insurrection I've found unless they have a sacrifice outlet, which they may not even wat to use.

Diaochan is more for style points, rather than synergy I take it, since she is control and this is more an aggro deck than control.

Moggcatcher and Hellkite Tyrant seem like they would fit in well here, as tutor and win-con, as you do have a lot of good goblins.

So you may have either given up on this deck or just don't check the site anymore but lets hope that neither of those have happened. I only say this because the last post was a long time ago. Anyways, have you thought about running Icefall in this deck? With the Recover mechanic and how Diao causes one of your creatures to die you have a decent Land or Artifact destruction engine. Sure it costs a lot of mana (6 per turn if you were to keep destroying your opponents stuff) but that is what EDH/Commander is for, making expensive engines viable.

Keep in mind that I haven't tried this engine out yet since I am still building the deck

Quote from MiffedMoogle

Diaochan is more for style points, rather than synergy I take it, since she is control and this is more an aggro deck than control.

Moggcatcher and Hellkite Tyrant seem like they would fit in well here, as tutor and win-con, as you do have a lot of good goblins.

Yes, the original point of the deck was to build a deck around Diaochan. I eventually settled on tokens mainly because as long as she's protected, I have no good targets for her ability to turn back on me.

Hellkite Tyrant is definitely high on the maybepile; in fact he'll likely replace Kuldotha Phoenix as a fattie. Hellkite Igniter is another artifact-friendly swinger I'm considering.

A goblin toolbox is a great idea, though I'm not sure if I have enough of one right now to start with the goblin tutors. I'll think about it.

Quote from Mankat

So you may have either given up on this deck or just don't check the site anymore but lets hope that neither of those have happened. I only say this because the last post was a long time ago. Anyways, have you thought about running Icefall in this deck?

I disappear when I'm heading projects. No time to even think about MTG. But I lurk my threads when I can so I'm reading responses.

My creatures are indeed dying a lot here, and dealing with problem lands is a strong concern in my meta. This is a great idea, I'll try and see if I can find a bit of room for it. Thanks.