MTG Salvation

Dark Depths is a card I always wanted to play and it would be right at home here, it costs a ton of money nowadays though. If I had it, I'd put it in without hesitation though.

Grozoth is just the type of weird, expensive card I like for this deck. However, I'd be careful to only include cards for him that I'd also be happy to draw on their own. For example, topdecking the Unspeakable won't really do anything for you. Myojin or Artisan are fantastic on their own though.

Mystic Remora might be another source of good card advantage, since paying the upkeep won't be as much of a problem with Kruphix.

If I were the Gisela player, I would have made sure to smash the Plasm player first just to deny him his epic second place Beating on the weakest player just so you can be the better loser is such a douchebag move, I can't even wrap my around why one would do that. Unless you're actually playing for prize money and want to secure your second place, I don't see the point either.

I agree, I don't think tokens are the best way to make use of Kruphix' unique powers. There's better commanders for that anyway, with Kruphix I'd rather have one monstrous Hydra or a bunch of Eldrazi than twenty tokens.

Staff of Domination could certainly be a useful and very versatile Mana outlet, though. I'll give that a try if I can make room for it I've also thought about Tower of Fortunes and its ilk for mana sinks, but those seem like they're rather overcosted even by Kruphix standards for what they do.

Heroes' Bane could be another card to consider. Chameleon Colossus has been mentioned in another thread as a possible aggressive mana sink, and Bane has the same effect permanently. It costs one more and has no protection though.

Phenax works really well with cards that let you untap your creatures so you can mill multiple times. Pemmin's Aura is a good example. This in turn can get rather interesting with Wake Thrasher, who mills like a truck. Mindshrieker is another cool choice that mills by itself, then can be tapped for a lot more mill.

Personally, I'd play Rise of the Dark Realms over Living Death. It's more expensive, but you get everything you milled instead of your opponents.

Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker mills a surprisingly large amount of cards if left unchecked, and because he's rather nonthreatening otherwise opponents may not think to remove him at first.

Eye of the Storm and Spellweaver Volute were ridiculously fun in my Melek deck, though of course not exactly first in line for 100% reliability Also, any draw spell that manipulates the top of your library is excellent, stuff like Ponder and Brainstorm.

Painter's Servant is a ban that completely confounded me when I first read the list. It's not broken in itself and seems like it would allow lots of fun shenanigans. I later read it was banned because of Grindstone and the ability to lock everyone out of the game with Iona, Shield of Emeria. Personally, I'd much prefer they banned Iona, a horribly unfun card whose design I absolutely loathe, rather than the quirky and interesting servant. In the long run though it might make sense to ban the root of the problem rather than every card that becomes problematic with the servant. Still the ban I dislike the most on the list, however.

Lazav is one of my favorite commanders on paper for his versatility and potential shenanigans, I just can't seem to find a really strong build for him. Originally I went the Mill route, but that had too many problems. The Mill wasn't strong enough on its own to work as a win condition, but it got me too little profit for the effort apart from enabling Lazav. The current idea is playing the enemy's stuff from the library and the graveyard and profiting again when they kill it because Lazav now transforms into it. However, it just doesn't seem to do enough. There's few powerful synergies in there, without haste and fast mana it's not very quick and it often gets stomped by green-based goodstuff decks or other decks that generate extreme value. I was hoping perhaps some of you had some ideas for a better Lazav deck or could help me spot this build's weaknesses

Karador and the Mimeoplasm seem the strongest to me as well and allow for tons of easy shenanigans. Which I hate, because I'm looking for a fun and interesting reanimator deck but both these commanders are already taken in our playgroup and I'm not a fan of mirrormatches x_O

The 'normal mode of the game' also means only one card per turn, creatures can't attack the same turn they're put into play and many more things that are routinely 'broken'. Prophet is hardly the first card to do that on a large scale, both Flash for everything and untapping mana have been done before. True, it's a very powerful card and the first that has both these effects at once, but arguing that the 'normal mode' of the game shouldn't be broken seems extremely pointless to me. In fact, I'd say what makes the best cards the most interesting is how they make the game less normal.

Prophet is hard to deal with though, I grant you that. Unless the enemy has left some mana open to kill it at once (and you can't expect all decks to do that all the time), he gives you all the mana you need to protect him and flash so you never have to play something until it's safe. The only limit is the number of cards you have, so opponents can gang up on you with enough removal that you can't counter it even with all your mana. But then, blue also likes to draw a lot.

Quote from acidfreeze

If you're already running Homeward Path, a deck like this is the perfect place to abuse the hell out of Perplexing Chimera. With Homeward Path out, you get to steal a spell every turn sequence. Add Seedborn Muse or Prophet of Kruphix to the equation and it becomes each turn.

Also, you have a decent number of 3 drop creatures and a lot of 5 drop creatures. It might benefit you to add some 4 drop utility / ETB creatures and a Birthing Pod. It would add consistency and help you power out a Prophet of Kruphix or Seedborn Muse.

Birthing Pod to get the Prophet more consistently could be very helpful indeed. Do you have any ideas for good 4 drops this deck could use, though? Maybe Ondu Giant could be added to the ramp suite.

The chimera sounds like fun, but it only really works with Homeward Path and I only have one card to tutor for that, so it probably wouldn't be consistent. Without the Path the chimera could actually be detrimental because I play bigger and more expensive stuff than many other decks.

Quote from frenzy776

I'm am genuinely excited to get a build with this guy going as soon as I can get my hands on him. A couple of cards I thought would probably be really synergistic.

Mycosynth Lattice Seems like if what you are going to have in your mana pool is colorless most of the time you should make it easier to cast your spells.

Since I'm more of a control player I'll probably put the base control skeleton in of 10-12 counters. I'll probably take a few plays out of the Omnath playbook such as: Greater Good, Omnath, Locus of Mana (I wonder how the 2 global effects work together, can you choose Omnath over Kruphix? Having some of the mana be green would be great), Genesis Wave.

Still thinking on it.

Mycosynth Lattice sounds like a neat idea Being able to cast a Voidslime with your saved colorless mana could be really useful. It's also a card that doesn't do much on its own though, you need Kruphix and lots of mana for it to become effective - one of the first problems this deck stumbled over was having too many of these cards.

Has anyone tested Omnath in a Kruphix deck yet? He's a cheap creature that becomes bigger with mana and a backup plan for Kruphix, both of which could make him really good. I'm not sure how powerful he is when only half your mana base is green though, which is why I hesitated to include him so far.

Genesis Wave probably really should be in here. I didn't include it originally because cards like Primordial Hydra are worthless with it and others like Polukranos need further mana to be good, but I probably was a bit too careful there - with enough mana that card will always be a powerhouse.

Quote from ThePeople"sHero

Coiling Oracle is a favorite UG card of mine. Psychic Spiral seems like it could be a good option here, especially if you have a way to discard a bunch of cards for some good effect. Prosperity could be added along with Blue Sun's Zenith in order to draw your opponents to death. Perhaps you could run the Freshmaker for the fun of it?

If I'm going for chump blockers that also give me ramp and/or value, Coiling Oracle really should be in here The Freshmaker is already included, can't forget him when we're talking big mana! I don't think I'll go for a milling strategy though. It could be done with Kruphix, but I don't find it very fun. When you don't have enough mana to deck them, Prosperity also helps your enemies, can't have that

I don't think I've ever gotten a bad deal with Bribery. 1v1 against a creatureless control or combo deck is about the only situation where it might not be useful, but decks without ANY valuable creatures are a rare thing in EDH. And in multiplayer, there's always at least one player who wants to win with goodstuff fatties. I guess it depends on your playgroup too, but Bribery is an all-around excellent card. It doesn't always give you an unanswerable auto win, but cards don't have to do that to be good.

Some great suggestions, thanks a lot

Generally, I like my ramp to give me two cards. Since I can't abuse creatures the way a Karador deck could I haven't used them, but you have a good point about early chump blockers. Just stopping the first few swings of commander damage could have made a world of difference in some of my recent games. I added your three suggestions, but I did keep Tempt with Discovery. It can search for Alchemist's Refuge, and any way to tutor for the very few Flash cards that actually exist is valuable here. For another blocker, I replaced one of my counters with Mystic Snake.

You're right about the win-more cards, I just recently had a Biomass Mutation sit in my hand all game without enough mana or creatures to make it worthwile. I cut the Mutation and That Which Was Taken and put in Mindshrieker as a cheap creature and better mana sink as well as Shipbreaker Kraken. I also replaced Argentum Armor with Steel Hellkite, which is more of a threat by itself and also another way to put huge amounts of mana to excellent use. Polukranos has actually done well for himself so far though, he's a 4 mana threat in a pinch and his ability is expensive but also powerful. I'm keeping him for the moment. Since I now have quite a few more creatures, I also put in Archetype of Endurance.

I've been on the fence about Yeva for a while since she only gives green creatures Flash. Teferi is pretty damn good I think, though I'd always tutor for Prophet of Kruphix ahead of him anyway so I cut him for space as well. I like the idea of some recursion instead to simply get the Prophet back, so I added Eternal Witness and Creeping Renaissance.

I don't actually have much that can tutor for Vedalken Orrery or the Leyline though. Fabricate/Tezzeret could help, but I think in this deck creature tutors are actually more versatile and helpful. Almost any effect I really need I have in creature form in some way. I do like your idea of more tutoring in general though, and the one blindspot in my creature tutors are the control cards which are largely instants and sorceries. I replaced Fade into Antiquity with Mystical Tutor, that can still search for another artifact removal and is more versatile otherwise.

Buyback is excellent for this deck, it's just that I haven't found any cards other than Capsize with effects this deck really wants. I did replace Cancel with Forbid though, simply because there's no downside to it. And it's no rarity for this deck to have a massive hand size, where this could become extremely useful.

Lastly I added Homeward Path, because getting Kruphix stolen by Aura Thief kinda sucks.

I found that you can still build up some impressive board states even without Kruphix. Powerful green ramp + Prophet of Kruphix or Seeborn Muse and Vedalken Orrery still let you spend massive mana, even if you can't save it up for a 40 card Stroke of Genius. Enter the Infinite into Omniscience is still in the cards though.

The curve is pretty bad right now, however - mainly because I started out with a mindset of "Think HUGE and worry about the details later". The deck mainly builds mana for the first couple of turns, and faster decks may take advantage of that. It's much better in multiplayer than 1v1. I'm trying to work on that at the moment, first by replacing all the fancy counters like Spelljack with cheaper and more basic versions like Hinder, and by adding some cheaper cards that can still make good use of massive mana later on. RobintM came up with Mindshrieker for his Kruphix deck, which is a pretty great example of what I'm looking for.

Mass Land Destruction could really screw this deck I guess if you don't counter it, however there's no deck like that in my playgroup so I haven't tested it yet.

Havengul Lich would surely make for some fun shenanigans. Lazav kinda made up for my disappointment that he wasn't legendary though. The Nephilim are the obvious candidates, both for their colors and their very unique effects.

He doesn't have Green, but wouldn't Nekusar the Mindrazer be amazing for this? He's tailor-made for that sort of deck and has both the draw and the punishment built in.

Personally, I'm always wary of symmetrical effects, I don't like giving my enemies better access to their answers - though I guess that's down to personal preference, I don't think it's impossible to make such a deck work. To be on the safe side it probably should have some good control of its own, and protection like Kira, Great Glass-Spinner.