MTG Salvation

After years of playing the Child of Alara Dreamcrusher deck, every once in a while I decide to try an all commons build of commanders that seem like they'd have the strength to take down your average EDH game. Muldrotha is the newest iteration of my experiments and quite possibly the strongest to date. The deck aims to ramp and play the control game until you have enough mana to stick Muldrotha and leave up protection. After that, you just try to keep the beloved Elemental Avatar in play every turn and recur all your sweet Fonts, Spellbombs, Seals, etc. I have included your typical Ghostly Flicker combo package as the way to close out the games if Mulldrifter beats aren't quick enough. (EDIT: I have cut the Flicker combo based upon playstyle preference, but it is very good and perfect in this deck!)



This is the current list of cards I am considering:

Overall I think it looks like a really nice deck and I have only a few suggestions, namely:
Dream Fracture similar to arcane denial but trades a card to them for a mana. The card is much better then you get to duels (where arcane denial is problematic).
foil - free counter spell! You have some number of ways to get islands into hand, like drawing one dirctly, reach, cultivate or bouncing one with a bounce land (the latter will likely get fetched with the general land fetches you are running), so it should be fairly easy to play for free and then you get to reuse the cards discarded to foil.
stinkweed imp - it will typically come down, get traded and then dredged back (or prevent others from attacking you at all, which is even better). On average I think you will likely dredge less than 2 non-permanents per time (it is only straightforward if you do not take to many things into account, like that you need 3 mana to play it, it needs to die and so on, and the tutors make it hard to say exactly how many sorceries and instants compared to everything else are left at that point).

Have you considered running looters? E.g. Looter il-kor, it seems fairly strong with your commander (they also happen to be redicules with stinkweed imp).

Ohh, also, I think Mnemonic wall is better than scrivener (not necessarily in a 1 vs 1 comparison, but mainly in that the other return wizards have similar stats and 0/4 can sometimes be more usefull than 2/2 - e.g. for blocking 3/3) - you already have 2 better return wizards for the wizard tutor anyway

Thanks for the feedback! Dream Fracture I did consider and I will include in the Maybeboard for the time being. I only ever expect to use Arcane Denial to protect myself during the combo, but if I feel like I'm light on counters, I will test it out. Foil was a card I looked at but was unsure how often I'd actually be able to cast for free, I'll throw it in the maybeboard too. I actually put Stinkweed Imp in my pile of cards to consider and somehow lost it. Great catch, I'll definitely be adding it to the deck.
Re: Looters - I'm not so sure I really want those effects. They do let me churn through my deck faster, but I also want to make sure I don't get completely hosed by GY hate. I envision just looping spellbombs alongside Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study to keep a steady supply of cards in my hand. This also means keeping a lot of my tricks on board and keeping my graveyard only partially stocked at any given time. That being said, I still think Stinkweed is valuable in refilling the yard once I do fall victim to Bojuka Bog and the like.
Mnemonic Wall is great for all the reasons you mentioned. At this point I have Scrivener strictly because it is a wizard and because I don't see the P/T being significant. If it ends up mattering, I will happily make that swap.

Thanks for the feedback, Zombie Shakespeare! I've decided I'll go ahead and make the Mnemonic Wall swap after all.

I completely missed Scribe of the Mindful so that's in over the Weird. Admittedly, it is a spot that is being watched, but I like the idea that it is a way to return spells repeatedly using Muldrotha's ability.

I added your suggestions to the maybeboard. Spark Harvest will definitely get a spot once I figure out what to cut for it.

At this point, I have a few cards on the watch list that could easily end up being cut to try out other cards. That list currently includes: High Tide, Pestilence, Scribe of the Mindful, Transguild Promenade & Co. I have only played it once so I still have some testing to do before I come to any conclusions, but those are the ones that immediately jump to mind. I have no shortage of cards I want to try out, but the tricky part is figuring out where to fit them in. I hope to play some games with it here soon and report back. If anyone sees any cards they think are particularly weak or out of place, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Bump to update the list. Played the list a lot more. I was leaning on combo a lot more than I really intended to with the deck, so I decided to cut it out for now and to stick with the grind 'em out plan. If I can get Muldrotha to stick around a turn or two, things start to snowball really quickly. I do want to look more into potential life gain options.

I'm interested in trying each of those options. Weather the Storm is overperforming just about everywhere I look. I just added the Brindle Boar so I will see how that goes and go from there.

Spark Harvest has been okay. I think I've only cast it an handful of times. It was pretty great to sacrifice a creature in exchange for getting rid of a pesky walker when my creatures couldn't get through. Spells are just tricky to balance in the deck. I really only want them to tutor or set myself early in the game. After that I pretty much just rely on the recursion engine and turn into much more of a tap-out control deck. The biggest thing I want is some way to counter spells with creatures, but unfortunately the best options I've found are Spiketail Drakeling and Wizard Replica, neither of which are particularly great. Brine Shaman might be a funny fit for the deck. There may also be some merit to Hydromorph Guardian, Voidmage Apprentice, and Martyr of the Frost, but I'm not sold.

Hi bfine70,

Here are some contributions given the new mana base/ramp provided by snow lands approach (that we use on Coa deck), and more protection to your main goal: Keep Muldrotha alive protecting it so you can use your swiss army knife more and more each turn providing leverage to commander beats or anything that can kill opponents



Maybeboard: Gray Merchant of Asphodel, combo (lol)
Hope you like some inputs. I will tru to build this deck IRL as soon as stores reopen here.

I found this deck pretty amazing, kudos!!!

All the best!

Nice! I was just working on the list again myself and have been trying to tinker more with other 99 common Commanders. Here is the updated list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/DZNoH7h0-0C-87Mv4C_3AQ. I will port that over to this format at some point. I do like more protection, I'm just not sure the exact number of enchantments because they are pretty clunky after you have one. I tried to make it so I have 1-2 options at each CMC. The manabase is the thing I am currently trying to figure out most. I intend to cut the Thriving lands, but I don't know if I want all the cheaper ramp since there are already so many other pieces of ramp that are cheap. You definitely found some card I haven't considered. Lingering Death is neat. I need to do a little bit more tuning and take it for a spin myself. There was one other person playing Muldrotha in that Child discord server and I am pretty excited about it. There are some cool Ashnod's Altar combos if those are your thing. The considering section is pretty big right now as I am still in the early stages of messing with it. I'd love any more thoughts on it. I'm so glad you enjoy the idea and deck as well!

Further comments:
1) Fleshbag Marauder over Slum Reaper - thanks to Commander Legends, Fleshbag is a common now. 1 mana cheaper and much easier to transmute for if need be.
2) Recursion - I don't see the need to play much in the way of recursion. Muldrotha provides so much of the necessary recursion on its own. It may be worth playing 1-2, but outside of Archaeomancer, I don't see the need.
3) 1v1 vs. multiplayer - as I continue tweaking the list, I keep having to make decisions on cards based on what setting I plan on playing in. I think I will aim to keep my list multiplayer focused, but I will maintain a sideboard of cards I think the deck should run should you anticipate more 1v1 play. I think the discard may just not be worth it unless you are in more 1v1 games.