”Omnath, the "flickering heart," is a divine manifestation of the wild and chaotic mana of Zendikar, an elemental being that can be found in some incarnation in many creation myths of the plane.
Despite the uncertainty of Omnath's actual existence, a real site on a high mesa of Ondu was dubbed the "Prison of Omnath". The site was safeguarded by a binding circle of strange globular swamp-growths, stone hedrons, and animal bones. The circle created an eerie sensation in those who approached it, deterring them from approaching the circle's center, where a huge pit leads deep into the ground. Those who got too close died to the destructive surges of power that lashed out from the circle.
Religious pilgrims from across Zendikar traveled to the Prison of Omnath on a twice-yearly basis to perform the "Ritual of Lights", a ceremony designed to protect the world from the release of Omnath. During the events leading up to the Rise of the Eldrazi, however, the ritual was disrupted and Omnath was set loose.” – MTG Salvation Wiki
On October 2, 2015, Battle for Zendikar was released, and in the wake of the Eldrazi rampage, Omnath, formerly the Locus of Mana, was released from his prison as the Locus of Rage.
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The premise of this deck is straight forward: play lands, cast ramp spells, get Omnath onto the battlefield, play more lands, and create a bunch of Elementals. Omnath is a "lands matter" type of commander, meaning lands are just as important as your other spells. Lands serve a dual purpose in this deck: the obvious one is they allow you to cast your spells. But each land is also a creature while Omnath is out, and each fetchland is two creatures. But what can we do with these Elementals? We can use them the old-fashioned way by turning them sideways and attacking. We can also use them for utility by drawing cards or dealing damage to any target.
When this Omnath was first spoiled, I thought to myself “Oh cool, they made another Omnath, but RG this time. Pretty neat ability, too.” Sounds real enthusiastic, huh? Well, that was before I gave him a chance. I built him on Xmage to test him out. It was originally built as a RG good stuff deck that wasn't really focused on Omnath. That's where I went wrong. Omnath is a Commander that you NEED to build around. So how do you fully take advantage of this commander? You make him a “Lands Matter” deck. You cut the good stuff spells and add a bunch more land and ramps spells. You don't need very many creatures, as Omnath himself makes them, and they're 5/5s, too! Once I made those changes, he became a much more ferocious deck. I won games I had no right to win. I came from behind and pulled victory after victory. I've even taken someone from 40 to 0 life with 6 cards left in my library. This deck is the culmination of all of the testing and hard work that I and a few others have done to get this deck into competitive shape.
“Why would anyone want to build a deck with a commander that has that high of a CMC?” The answer is quite simple. This is essentially a mono-green ramp deck which splashes red for its burn counterpart. Having two colors gives you access to good spells on each side, and also more fetch lands to make better use of Omnath.
You ramp into Omnath, create a bunch of 5/5's, and then overwhelm your opponent with either massive combat damage, or if you feel like sitting back, use them for blockers, sac them and kill your opponents on their turn.
Let's take a closer look at Omnath to see why we chose him as our commander:
Cost:
Omnath costs 3RRGG. Yes, that is an EXTREMELY costly commander. While the cost may be a big deterrent, it is usually a non-issue with the number of lands and ramp spells that are present in the deck.
Power/Toughness:
Omnath is a 5/5 for 7 mana. It isn't the best body for its cost, but it also isn't terrible. He does make a great attacker, and also a great blocker. These stats would be even better if he had Trample, but then he would most likely cost more as it would be too good.
Abilities:
His abilities are where Omnath really shines. His Landfall ability creates a 5/5 Elemental whenever a land enters the battlefield. The key to this ability is the first part: "Whenever a land enters the battlefield". This is important, as it triggers any time a land enters, not just when you play. So, it will trigger from our ramp spells as well. The second part of his ability will deal damage to ANY target when Omnath or any other Elemental dies. We can use that ability in conjunction with a sac outlet to damage creatures, planeswalkers, and players. This is another way for us to win games.
You might like Omnath if:
1) You like playing Gruul colors.
2) You like creating a mass amount of tokens.
3) You like winning with or without going to combat.
4) You like blowing up creatures on the board.
5) You like ramping into bigger things and having a lot of lands.
You might dislike Omnath if:
1) You dislike all the reasons why you should play him.
2) You hate playing decks that focus on the commanders.
3) You dislike investing in big spells that get countered.
4) You prefer combo/control decks.
5) You don't like being targeted due to the amount of lands you have compared to others.
Omnath, Locus of Mana: The other Omnath. Being mono green gives you access to an easier mana base, and allows you to play more of the green good stuff creatures and spells.
Xenagos, God of Revels: This guy can play more or less the same as our general. Ramp as much as you can. Play some big fatties. Use your general to double up a creatures power and swing away.
Atarka, World Render: Again, you want to ramp with this deck. Play a bunch of big dragons. Play your commander, and swing. You could also go Voltron with this general if you want to try and one-shot someone.
Ruric Thar, the Unbowed: This deck plays a bit differently. It runs very few nonpermanent spells, and will mostly likely have Primal Surge to dump most, if not all, of your deck onto the battlefield.
Mina and Denn, Wildborn: A new Gruul ramp commander. You can switch this card out with Omnath and make a few changes to the list and it will play almost identical.
Titania, Protector of Argoth: Mono green Lands Matters commander. Drops the red color entirely and focuses entirely on ramp and green goodstuff. Titania creates Elementals when a land is sacrificed, so making use out of all sorts of sac lands and cards that allow you to sac lands is a key theme of the deck.
The Gitrog Monster: Replaces the color red with black for tutors, discard, removal, etc. When a land goes to the graveyard, you can draw a card. There are many loops you can do with the frog as your commander that will allow you to go infinite and win that way.
While there are many options for cards that could be included in a deck, there is only room for 100. In the spoiler below, I will give a card-by-card explanation as to why I specifically chose to have a certain card in in the deck.
Creatures:
Elvish Reclaimer: Reclaimer is essentially a Crop Rotation on a potential 3/4 body for only G. Unfortunately, the land will enter tapped, unlike Rotation, but being able to produce another land drop for a Landfall trigger is enormous, and having another outlet for getting out a Gaea's Cradle is insane.
Lotus Cobra: Early game mana acceleration. He doesn't have a real significant body, so more than likely he will slither under the radar as far as a must-remove creature. He can generate quite a bit of mana, however, especially when used in conjunction with any fetchland. One part of a "machine gun" combo with Perilous Forays.
Sakura-Tribe Elder: This little guy is essentially a Rampant Growth on a stick. Why play him over Growth? He doubles as an attacker and blocker, which Growth cannot do. You can cast him in an earlier turn, then wait to crack him until Omnath hits the field.
Springbloom Druid: Harrow on a body. The lands enter tapped, but being able to Chord it into play makes up for that downfall. Unlike Harrow, we also won't be out of a land if it gets countered.
Tireless Tracker: A lands matter creature. Will get us a Clue every time a land enters the battlefield, not just when we play one. This matters as we have a lot of ramp spells in here. We can also sacrifice the Clues to draw cards, and that will cause Tracker to grow as well.
Oracle of Mul Daya: Oracle allows us to play lands off the top of our deck, essentially letting us dig deeper into our decks to get to our better cards. She enables an extra land drop as well, which will in turn get us closer to playing Omnath.
Purphoros, God of the Forge: Purphoros deals damage to all opponents whenever a creature enters the battlefield under our control. This is a pretty significant effect, as it not only affects all opponents, it doesn't target so it gets around Hexproof and Shroud. For 2R, we can also pump our creatures +1/+0 each time we activate it to get in a little extra damage if we swing in.
Titania, Protector of Argoth: The Queen of Elementals, to go alongside our King Omnath. She will return a land from our graveyard upon entering, giving Omnath another Landfall trigger. If she brings back a fetchland and we crack it, Titania herself will create a 5/3 Elemental. While these Elementals aren't as good as Omnath's as far as stats go, they are still Elementals so when they do die, they will be able to Lightning Bolt any target.
Avenger of Zendikar: Another lands matter creature. Avenger will create 0/1 tokens equal to the number of lands we control as he enters. While the tokens don't start out that great, with each land that enters, they get a +1/+1 counter on them. With the number of ways we have to get multiple lands per turn, these little critters can get insanely huge.
Craterhoof Behemoth: The big game ender. Craterhoof gives all of our creatures +X/+X for each creature we control on the battlefield. If that wasn't enough, he also gives them trample, so the excess damage will go through. He makes a great follow up play after Avenger of Zendikar, but even better when we have an absurd number of Elemental tokens out. We can easily tutor him out with Chord of Calling or Natural Order, making him the perfect way to end a game.
Artifacts:
Mana Crypt/Sol Ring: The mana rocks of the deck. These two are the only real necessary rocks as they will help facilitate our plays much earlier. Having actual land ramp is far more important than mana rocks, as we need to be able to abuse Omnath's Landfall ability, but these two rocks are too good to pass up.
Lightning Greaves: Mainly used to protect Omnath the turn he comes down, especially if we aren't able to make a land drop in the same turn. Can be used on other creatures we'd like to protect, as well as utilized to possibly end the game by having a hasty creature.
Ashnod's Altar: Free sac outlet. Generates CC for every creature sacked, so we can utilize that mana to play more spells for the turn. If we have a lot of Elementals out, can also power out a huge Genesis Wave.
Crucible of Worlds: Much like Ramunap Excavator, it will allow us to reuse our fetch lands, and replay any other lands that get destroyed or discarded via something like Greater Good or an opponent's effect. Redundancy is never a bad thing.
Akroma's Memorial: Gives our creatures protection from any damage or targeted removal in red or black's colors. Gives us a bunch of great keyword abilities, the most important ones being Flying and Haste.
Sorceries:
Life from the Loam: Another source for recurring lands from the graveyard. If we don't need a new card draw, we can Dredge this card from the graveyard and use it pull up to three lands back to reuse.
Nature's Lore/Three Visits: Our 2-drop ramp spells. Both of these can get any Forest card from the deck and put them into play untapped. This means it can grab any of our dual sources, so long as it has the Forest subtype.
Cultivate/ Kodama's Reach: Our 3-drop ramp spells. These can pull any two basic lands out of the deck, put one onto the battlefield, and the other in our hand. These can get us two Landfall triggers if we have Omanth already out and haven't played a land for the turn.
Genesis Wave: One of the big bomb cards in the deck. Allows us to cheat multiple permanents into play, as long as we pour enough mana into X. This will also trigger any enter the battlefield effects from those permanents or any others we already had on the battlefield.
Nissa's Pilgrimage: Another 3-drop ramp spell. This one isn't included with the other two, as it can only grab basic Forests. However, if we have Spell mastery, we can grab three basic Forests instead of two.
Wheel of Fortune: We tend to run out of gas fairly quickly, and for 2R we can immediately fill our hand up again. This is a double-edged sword card because not only can we disrupt our opponent's hands, but it can also give them the cards they need to take over and win the game.
Explosive Vegetation: 4-drop ramp spell. Can get any two basics out of the deck, and put them directly into play. They come into play tapped, so unless we have Amulet of Vigor or Lotus Cobra out, we won't be able to utilize the mana until our next turn.
Skyshroud Claim: 4-drop ramp spell. Can grab any Forest card, including our dual sources with the Forest subtype. They also come into play untapped so we can follow it up with another spell, provided we have one.
Splendid Reclamation: Returns all lands from our graveyard to the battlefield. Can give us a ton of Landfall triggers at once. They do enter tapped, so having Amulet of Vigor or Lotus Cobra out will enable us to do a follow up play. Great card to play after Scapeshift.
Tempt with Discovery: A group hug style ramp spell. We can grab any land from our deck with this spell. If any opponent chooses to take the offer, we get another land for each opponent who accepts. A good thing to keep in mind is the first land we grab should be a fetchland. That way if an opponent decides to grab a Strip Mine, Wasteland, or anything of the like, we can be sort of protected. Once everyone else is finished grabbing their lands, you can then decide what other lands to grab, most notably would be Gaea's Cradle.
Hour of Promise: 5-drop ramp spell. We do not run Deserts in here, so we will never be able to get the Zombies from it. However, it's a ramp spell that lets us grab any land, so that is justification enough to run this card in here.
Shamanic Revelation: Massive card draw. The amount of creature tokens we can create in this deck is absurd, so the amount of cards we can draw is equally so. The majority of creatures we would have on the battlefield will also have more than 4 power, so we will also gain a ton of life.
Traverse the Outlands: 5-drop ramp spell. You fetch lands equal to the highest-powered creature you control on the battlefield, which will usually be 5 power, so will net us 5 lands. With as steep as the cost is on this card, you would not want to cast it with anything less than 5 power out.
Rishkar's Expertise: This is the card draw equivalent to Traverse the Outlands. With Omnath or one of his tokens out, we will draw five cards. At a CMC of 6, that may be as good as it gets (unless we draw in the second Main Phase after a Craterhoof), so drawing anything less than five is not ideal. We are then able to cast a spell from our hand with CMC 5 or less for free, which is definitely not bad.
Blasphemous Act: Sometimes, we just want to watch the whole world burn. The only board wipe we run, as it can cost as little as R. Good chance of completely wiping the board of all creatures. Will allow us to start Bolting opponents if we have Elementals out. We can also protect our creatures from this card if we have Akroma's Memorial out.
Instants:
Crop Rotation: This card should read "Sacrifice a land to bring Gaea's Cradle into play." That's mainly what this card does: tutors out Cradle. It can also be used to "save" a land from targeted removal by swapping it with another from the deck.
Chord of Calling: Searches up any of our creatures at instant speed. Can also use creatures that are currently on the battlefield to help pay for its cost. Most of the time it will search up a ramp creature such as Oracle of Mul Daya, but can also search up Purphoros, God of the Forge or even Craterhoof Behemoth to end the game.
Harrow: Instant speed ramp. We have to sac a land as an additional cost, so effectively we only get one land out of the deal, but will get two Landfall triggers. With Titania, Protector of Argoth out, we can get another Elemental out when casting this card.
Force of Vigor: Hard removal for artifacts/enchantments. We can essentially cast this for "free" by exiling a green card from hand during anyone else's turn, meaning we don't need to leave any open mana up and give our opponents a false sense of security. This could possibly be better than Chaos Warp since we will be getting rid of two things and not swapping one thing for another. We do lose the ability to get rid of permanents with indestructible so be aware of that.
Enchantments:
Burgeoning: Land ramp any time an opponent plays a land. We can run out of land drops fairly quickly when using this, so Ghost Town is Burgeoning's best friend. When Burgeoning triggers, if Ghost Town is on the battlefield, activate its ability to return it to your hand, and then put it back onto the battlefield for another Landfall trigger. Only allows you to put lands from your hand onto the battlefield.
Goblin Bombardment: Another free sac outlet. This one will allow us to ping any target for 1, and when you sac an Elemental, you do an additional 3 damage, for a total of 4 damage per Elemental.
Steely Resolve: Mass spot removal protection for all Elementals. Don't bother naming any other creature, as we only need to protect these specific ones. Also protects from targeted abilities, not just spells.
Sylvan Library: One of the best cards in green to have. Let's us draw the top three of our library and keep any of them at the cost of 4 life per card after the first. We can either draw them all to dig deeper into the deck, or we just take what we need, put back what we don't, and shuffle them away with either a fetch land or ramp spell.
Elemental Bond: Draws us a card whenever a creature with power 3 or greater comes into play. With Omnath out, we play a land, create an Elemental, and draw a card, and do that each time a land is played. This card can draw us a lot of cards in a single turn, and even more throughout the game if left unanswered.
Greater Good: Our last free sac outlet. Sac an Elemental, deal 3 damage, draw 5 cards, discard 3, repeat. Fills up our hand fairly quickly.
Parallel Lives/Doubling Season: Our token doublers. Not only will they double our Elemental tokens, but also Plant tokens and Clue tokens from Avenger of Zendikar and Tireless Tracker, respectively. Doubling Season will also double the counters that are placed on Plant tokens from Avenger when a land enters the battlefield.
Perilous Forays: Pay 1, sac an Elemental, deal 3 damage, search for a basic land, create an Elemental, repeat. This process can be repeated for as many untapped lands you control, as these new lands will enter tapped. If you have Amulet of Vigor or Lotus Cobra on the battlefield, you can repeat this process for however mana basic lands you still have in your deck. This essentially turns Omnath into a "machine gun" of sorts, and is a very powerful interaction for the deck.
Where Ancients Tread: We don't just want to create Elementals and have them die for them to do anything. We want them to do something when they enter. Much like Elemental Bond, whenever a creature with power 5 or greater enters, i.e., our Elemental tokens, we can deal damage to any target. Note that even though the paper card states creature or player, it has been errata'd to any target.
Warstorm Surge: A very similar card to Where Ancients Tread, Warstorm Surge, it triggers when ANY creatures enter the battlefield under our control, and it then deals damage equal to said creatures power. Note that even though the paper card states creature or player, it has been errata'd to any target.
Planeswalkers:
Nissa, Vital Force: The only planeswalker we run. The main thing we want to do with her is to use her +1 to create an extra creature to help protect her, and then immediately use her -6 to gain her emblem so we can draw an absurd amount of cards every time we have lands come into play.
Lands:
Ancient Tomb: I would say Ancient Tomb is a staple in a lot of EDH decks, especially those decks that want to cast their spells a turn earlier. In a 40 life format, the 2 life per use is negligible. Just don't get carried away with it if you don't have to.
Cavern of Souls: A big problem for this deck is counters. With Omnath being so high-costed, we want him to make it onto the battlefield without fear of being countered. That's why this land is in here, and will always name Elemental.
Cinder Glade/Sheltered Thicket/Stomping Ground/]Taiga: The dual lands of the deck. These will fix your colors and enable you to have the correct colors for casting spells. I have a specific order in which I fetch these lands, and they are:
Cinder Glade: Will enter tapped in the early game. If you have two basics already out, fetch out Stomping Ground before this.
Stomping Ground: Will usually enter tapped unless we need to use the mana right away. Then we can pay the two life to enter untapped.
Taiga: Will always enter untapped, so fetch this one last.
Command Beacon: Omnath will cost more and more each time he's sent back to the command zone. This land enables us to pay his base cost of 3RRGG without the commander tax. Can be replayed via Ramunap Excavator/Crucible of Worlds.
Forest/Mountain: The basic lands of the deck. Nothing much needs to be said about these as they are the basic lands of choice for Omnath.
Ghost Town: This land allows us to have a guaranteed land drop each turn by returning it to hand at the end of our opponent's turn just before ours. Pair this land with Burgeoning and we can guarantee a Landfall trigger on everyone's turn, as long as they play a land.
Yavimaya Hollow: A very useful utility land that enables us to regenerate a creature to save it from removal or combat. Will not protect from exile effects, but is still a good land to keep Omnath alive (or any creature for that matter). You can even use it as a political card to save someone else's creature.
In order to fully understand how to play the deck, we need to look closer at Omnath to see what he does. He focuses on three things: lands, creating Elementals, and those Elementals dying. Let's take a look at those three things individually.
Lands: Lands entering the battlefield are what triggers Omnath to create tokens. We run fetchlands in order to get more than one Landfall trigger. Some lands, such as Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland will give you more than two Landfall triggers, all from a single card. Ghost Town is another card that can give you multiple triggers throughout the game. Ramp spells are what really gets Omnath's juices flowing. The ability to drop a land for a Landfall trigger and then play a ramp spell for one or more triggers is really nuts in this game. Producing multiple Elementals in a single turn can turn any game around. We also run quite a bit of basics, 14 Forest and 6 Mountain to be exact. A lot of our ramp spells specifically search up basics, so we want to have enough in our deck to be able to search these out. The majority of these basics are Forest as about 87% of our spells are greed; red is just the splash color for the burn elements of the deck.
Creating Elementals: When lands come into play, Omnath creates Elementals. But is that all he does? Creates bodies to swing? No, he does far more than that. You want to be able to take advantage of the mass amounts of Elementals coming into play. How do you do that? You play things that trigger when creatures come into play. Warstorm Surge, Where Ancients Tread, and Purphoros, God of the Forge will all deal damage to either creatures or players. These enchantments help control creatures and planeswalkers, and can also kill an opponent if enough creatures come into play. And what's better than creating a single Elemental for every Landfall? Why, multiple Elementals thanks to Parallel Lives and Doubling Season! More Elementals being made means more damage and a faster road to victory. Playing all of these cool spells means you run out of gas, so why not draw cards with Elemental Bond when you make Elementals?
Elementals Dying: Knowing what happens when Elementals die will sometimes make our opponent's hesitant to kill our creatures, especially with an army out. In order to get around that, we need to take advantage of sac outlets to essentially “machine gun” our opponents. Free sac outlets such as Goblin Bombardment, Greater Good, and Ashnod's Altar will allow us to start Bolting things with no mana requirement necessary on our part. Perilous Forays requires an investment of a single mana, so while it less versatile than the others, it is still a very key sac outlet. Forays will ramp and Bolt at the same time and with Lotus Cobra or Amulet of Vigor, will let us fetch our all of our lands with a basic land type. This alone could win us the game.
Now, how do we go about playing through a game with Omnath? Let's take a look at what we should do:
1) Mulligans: Your opening hand needs to consist of two things: lands and ramp. If you have neither, then a mulligan is necessary. If your opening hand has a higher ratio of lands to spells, keep the hand as you will be able to play a land every turn and should be able to draw into a ramp spell. If your hand contains a few ramp spells, with only one or two lands, if one of those ramp spells is 2 CMC, keep it; otherwise you will want to mulligan it away. This is a lands deck, and a lot of our spells have a high CMC, so without lands or a way to get lands, we're not going to have much luck playing the game.
2) Early Game: The early game is where you want to set everything up. You want to be playing lands every turn, and your early ramp spells so that you can play your bigger spells sooner. We don't play many straight card draw spells, so getting out a Tireless Tracker early on and getting lands on to the battlefield will help you get to one of your draw engines. Ideally, you want to draw into Elemental Bond early on as well, so when you start creating Elementals, you can draw a card for each one made. Next, you want to get a free sac outlet online such as Ashnod's Altar or Goblin Bombardment so you can use your Elementals to control the board. Greater Good is the best of both worlds, as it is a draw engine that will net you two cards in hand, but also a free sac outlet.
3) Mid Game: We should have been dropping lands and playing ramp spells at this point. We have a fair amount of mana available to us, and should have some sort of engine online, whether it is a draw engine, sac outlet, a damage enabler like Purphoros, God of the Forge, or a token doubler such as Parallel Lives or Doubling Season. We can now focus on getting Omnath onto the battlefield and start generating tokens. We must pay attention to our opponents and their board states. If they have mana open, we must be prepared for either counters or spot removal. We can help mitigate this by using Cavern of Souls to prevent him from being countered, but also Steely Resolve to protect him from spot removal with no further investment. That's why it is important to ramp fast and get him down as early in the game as possible, as our opponents will also be building up their board and resources and may not have something readily available early on. It is possible to play Omnath as early as turn three, and here is how:
We also do not want to be playing Omnath without a land drop to follow. If you must take a turn off from playing him because you don't have a land, then do so. If we play him just for the sake of getting him out, there is a good chance he will be killed. We paid 7 mana for nothing, and now will have to take a couple extra turns to get him back out. You have to plan your plays very carefully, as he will get more expensive to cast each time he is killed, and we only have so many ramp spells and land drops before it won't be enough.
4) Late Game: If you have Omnath out and have been dropping lands and creating tokens, then things have been going exactly as planned. You must use your discretion as to how you wish to proceed during this point of the game. If you can swing in for a few points of damage to lower someone's life total, then do so. But try to keep some blockers back as the tokens can dish out 5 damage to an attacking creature, and another 3 if said token dies. You can swing in unhindered if you have Akroma's Memorial out as our creatures will have Vigilance. Casting Craterhoof Behemoth with a buttload of tokens out means we will be able to get damage through via Trample and should be able to take out everyone else.
If the combat step is somehow hindered and makes it difficult to swing in, we can always sac our tokens to burn everyone out of the game. Each token that is sacrificed will deal 3 damage to any target. We can pump a bunch of mana into a Genesis Wave and get a bunch of Landfall triggers, which should make things easier by creating more Elementals and hopefully burn our opponents low enough with Warstorm Surge/Where Ancients Tread that we can sac a few tokens to finish them off.
When exactly do you want to play Omnath?
When I play this deck, I always try to rush for Omnath. But is it good enough to get to 7 mana to cast him and get nothing out of him? No, not really. The best time to cast Omnath is when you can get value out of him. What kind of value, you ask? Wait until you have something out that will trigger when he enters, like Where Ancients Tread or Elemental Bond, or when you can cast him and make a land drop. Don't pay 7 mana for him to just get killed and cost 9 next time. Get something out of him before he dies.
What if Omnath keeps dying?
Omnath is going to die. A lot, in fact. What do you do when that happens? Keep ramping and casting him. Eventually, you will get to the point where he will stick around for a good amount of time. Give him some protection of sorts with Lightning Greaves or Akroma's Memorial. Command Beacon is Omnath's best friend. While the commander tax is still adding up, casting Omnath from your hand will still only cost 7 mana. Being able to reuse this land with Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds will help alleviate the excruciating commander tax this guy can get.
How do I win?
Winning can be simple. Create a bunch of Elementals and swing. Adding Akroma's Memorial to give your army evasion and protection, or a Craterhoof Behemoth with an army is usually game over for most players. However, most games I have won by using Warstorm Surge, Where Ancients Tread, and Purphoros, God of the Forge and dropping a bunch of lands into play and burning everyone to death. Using sac outlets and “machine gunning” everyone down is another effective way of closing out the game. No attacking necessary. A Genesis Wave for an absurd amount of mana will usually enable you to get a good majority of those cards, along with lands for triggers, and win the game.
Another thing to keep in mind when playing is who you are playing against. If you're playing against a blue player, you need to be able to know when to play your spells. Don't needlessly cast something if you think they have a counterspell waiting for you. If need be, try baiting them out with a spell you don't necessarily need. Be cautious if the blue player has 7 mana available. If you play everything you can, they can and will Cyclonic Rift you and restart your entire board. It's always a good idea to have a free sac outlet available in that case so you can at least Bolt them a few times and get some use out of your Elementals.
Just like any deck, this one has its weaknesses as well. There is hopefully enough redundancy in the deck that you should be able to fight through whatever is thrown at you. Let's look at some of the weaknesses:
1) Counters: Every deck's worst nightmare. We ramp a lot and need the ramp in order to keep playing Omnath. If your opponent is smart, they will want to keep you down on lands, so they are going to counter your ramp spells first. After that, they will probably go after countering Omnath in order to keep his tax high.
2) Land Destruction: We rely on our lands. A lot. When we encounter LD of any kind, it slows us down a lot. Yes, we ramp a lot. But if we get hit with a mass land destruction spell, we're back to square one and need to start over, this time with less ramp spells to help us out since we already have used some.
3) Gaddock Teeg: This guy right here is a big pain. A lot of our good spells have a CMC of 4 or more. He stops them dead. If we can get Omnath and a sac outlet out and keep them out, we can keep him in check. Otherwise, he will slow us down a lot.
4) Flying Creatures: We don't have any flyers and we only have one creature with reach. In order to protect ourselves from them, we need to either have a sac outlet with enough Elementals to Bolt them out of the sky, or have Akroma's Memorial so our Elementals can take flight for some aerial assault and prevention.
5) Aven Mindcensor: This deck fetches a lot. When you can only search through the top four cards of your library, most of the time you are going to whiff, even with the number of lands we run. When this guy is out, we need to play slowly until we have a way to get him off of the field.
-Amulet of Vigor/Lotus Cobra + Perilous Forays: The basic idea of this combo is to have Omnath and Perilous Forays out. You pay 1, sac an Elemental token, deal 3 damage, tutor up another land that enters tapped, and create an Elemental. You do this for each untapped land you control. Normally, that's where the combo would end. However, if you add in Amulet of Vigor or Lotus Cobra, you will gain a mana by either Amulet untapping the tutored land, or Cobra generating a mana when the land enters. This will allow you to repeat the cycle and tutor out all basic lands, effectively turning Omnath into a "machine gun."
-Scapeshift + Splendid Reclamation: This isn't so much of a combo, but a really nice synergy. You first cast Scapeshift and sacrifice whatever number of lands you want to tutor up the same number to the battlefield. You then cast Splendid Reclamation to bring back all of the lands you sacrificed, as well as any others that were in your graveyard. The downside to this is they will all enter tapped, but if you have Amulet of Vigor, they will untap so we can use them for mana. Lotus Cobra will essentially do the same as Amulet as well.
I took out the Planeswalkers because they only usually stick around for the turn they come into play, so have little staying power. Skullwinder, Undergrowth Champion, and Whisperwood Elemental were severely underperforming to warrant keeping them in. Replaced all of them with more ramp to get to Omnath faster, and to provide extra landfall triggers once he's out.
Took out Reclamation Sage for World Breaker since Breaker's removal is exile and it's an on cast trigger, so even if he gets countered, his removal won't (unless the ability is countered). Took out Turf and Expanse to add in 2 Wastes so I have a fetchable source of colorless for World Breaker. Took out Behemoth and Beast Within in favor of Alter for a free sac outlet/ramp and Mina and Denn for extra land drops, and to be able to reuse lands in play for extra land drops.
Behemoth has been fairly lackluster for me. Haven't necessarily needed the uncounterability. Nissa provides me with the ability to ensure a land drop, and when she slips, will either give me more card advantage or more ramp.
I took out Rampant Growth as it was the least effective ramp spell in the deck. Sword of the Animist requires you to have a creature and attack with said creature in order to ramp, so it isn't necessarily all that good. Eldrazi Monument is only good if you have enough creatures to sac to keep it in play, and we don't really care if our creatures are indestructible. Ulamog has been my #1 Bribery target. It's removal is good, but when it gets used against us, we have very few things to remove it, so it gets the axe.
In their places, I am adding Tireless Tracker for early beats that grows and for the insane amount of clues and future card draw it provides. Ulvenwald Hydra is a big creature that can fetch out Gaea's Cradle (or any other land). Gratuitous Violence is essentially a win more card that doubles all damage from combat and also Omnath triggers. Natural Order is a sac outlet to Bolt something, and can fetch any green creature we need.
Currently online, I am testing Seasons Past/Praetor's Counsel in place of Gratuitous Violence since it isn't a real necessary card, and as stated above, is a win more card. Also testing out Mana Crypt in place of a Mountain for earlier ramp.
Gratuitous Violence isn't a necessary card to have. It is essentially a win-more card, and I find I will always mulligan it away if given the chance, and am not too happy to see it when I do draw it. Seasons Past has been the card I've been testing in its place and it seems to do the trick. It allows you to get some cards back, and will get put back in your library for future use, if it resolves. I am still contemplating whether or not this is better off than Praetor's Counsel is. More testing will need to be done.
Mana Crypt allows for earlier plays. It enables turn 1 Kodama's Reach/Cultivate, turn 2 Explosive Vegetation/Skyshroud Claim, and various other early turn ramp. With me cutting Gratuitous Violence, I am allowed to cut 1 Mountain since I no longer have a spell that requires 3 red mana.
Seasons Past has been in a flex spot that has been shared with Gratuitous Violence and Praetors' Counsel, and none of them have felt like a permanent fixture of the deck. With the printing of Splendid Reclamation, I feel like that slot can be permanently filled. It allows all of your lands to return to the battlefield and can give you a ton of Landfall triggers.
Evolutionary Leap is honestly not the best card in here as we have fewer than normal creatures. Farseek can only grab Mountains in our deck, and they enter tapped. Greenwarden is just a big Eternal Witness that costs more. Mina and Denn I found to be lackluster, and rarely used the return land ability. Stalking Vengeance also was just lackluster. Thawing Glaciers I felt was too slow for what it did. Verdant Confluence wasn't that great either, and it costs too much. World Breaker and Wastes just wasn't worth their investments.
Ancient Tomb allows our bigger spells to be played much earlier. Growing Rites of Itlimoc has the same downside that Leap has with us not having very many creatures, but having access to a 2nd Gaea's Cradle is worth it, for now at least. Hour of Promise ramps us and allows us to get any lands from our deck. Nissa is crazy in this deck and it's really easy to get her ultimate, which will then let us draw an absurd amount of cards. Ramunap is another Crucible, so having another source to grab lands from our graveyard is invaluable. Sheltered Thicket is another fetchable dual land, and can draw us a card when we don't need the land. Steely Resolve is mass protection from targeted spells for all of our Elementals. Sylvan Scrying can grab us any land we need. Three Visits is a much better Farseek. Traverse the Outlands will usually grab us 5 lands as long as Omnath or an Elemental is on the battlefield.
I decided to cut the Hydra in favor of Rotation simply because not only can we play it much earlier, but the Hydra makes the land come into play tapped, while Rotation will let us use it right away. This is extremely important as we can immediately use the mana if we grab Gaea's Cradle, or whatever utility land or fetch land we end up grabbing.
Growing Rites of Itlimoc has been lackluster in here. While it is nice to have a second Gaea's Cradle out, we almost never hit a creature off it. It isn't necessary to hit a creature but paying 2G for an enchantment that may not do anything isn't worth it.
Sylvan Awakening is a card that can help close out a game. We ramp hard, so we will have a lot of lands out that will become hasty indestructible Elementals. Once we swing in, we can sac them to burn everyone out of the game.
I made this change a few weeks back, but I forgot to update here. Nissa has been a real lackluster card. She doesn't necessarily ramp us any further, just guarantees a land drop for this turn or the next. When she does flip, while her abilities do have synergy with the deck, they aren't really game changing. Adding Rishkar's Expertise gives us another card draw spell that can draw us up to 5 cards, sometimes more, and allows us to cast one of the newly drawn cards or one we had previously for free, which can allow us to cast another spell with the mana we saved.
I'm still a bit on the fence with this one, but Finale is SO GOOD! Being able to tutor from deck or graveyard is amazing, especially if something like Craterhoof someone ended up in the yard. On top of that, we can give our creatures +10 or more power while giving them haste can also make Avenger a game-ender. While Awakening is nice, if the swing for lethal doesn't pan out, I'd rather not have to sac lands in order to deal damage.
I think this is a great swap, and will make the deck even crazier.
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6/26/19:
I never ended up doing an official review for Modern Horizons, so I figured I'd better pick up the slack with a review of the new core set!
We only got one card from the set that I feel can make a serious impact, and that is Elvish Reclaimer.
Reclaimer is essentially a Crop Rotation on a potential 3/4 body for only G. Unfortunately, the land will enter tapped, unlike Rotation, but being able to produce another land drop for a Landfall trigger is enormous, and having another outlet for getting out a Gaea's Cradle is insane.
So, where do I slot this guy in? There aren't very many flex spots in the deck, and from a few posts above, I've already made some changes to the deck post-Modern Horizons, so I think I may end up trying him out in the Circuitous Route spot, just to see how it works out.
With that, here is how the changes are going to look:
A brief little history on this deck. Daretti was not my first Commander deck. In fact, when I first thought about getting into the format, I found a Kaalia of the Vast list that I liked and built it. I had a fair amount of success with it. However, when people saw what it could do, I was always the target of everyone’s attacks, counters, and removal spells. It made it hard to make a comeback and play anything.
When Commander 2014 came out, I decided I was going to build Nahiri, the Lithomancer until I happened upon a Daretti, Scrap Savant. I thought to myself, “No way can this deck be any good. But, it looks fun, so I’ll try this instead.”
Fast forward to today. Daretti has easily become my best and all-time favorite deck. It doesn’t seem to matter how much hate he receives; he seems to be able to persist through much of it, and can come back and win games out of nowhere. I haven’t had more fun games than I have had with him.
You may ask yourself “Why play Daretti as your commander?” There are many reasons as to why or why not you should play them. Let’s take a look at the card itself:
Daretti is not a Creature: This is important to note because now you have a General that is immune to creature removal of all kinds. Yes, he will be the target of attacks, as with all Planeswalkers, but it will also act as a fog for you.
Relatively low CMC: He has a CMC of 4. Although it is not as low as some other General, it is also not that high. With the kinds of ramp we run, it is possible to get him out on turn 1, or more consistently by turn 2. Getting him out as early is possible means you have a good chance at getting further ahead than any of your opponents.
Mono-Red: Daretti is a mono-colored General. What does that mean? It means a more consistent mana base. You don’t have to run any non-basics to fix your colors. The only non-basics you need are your utility lands. This also makes your entire deck consistent as you only have red spells to play.
His abilities are where he really shines:
+2: Card Filtering- This is a graveyard-based artifact deck. Being able to pitch artifacts and draw into more cards is insane. It is essentially a repeatable Faithless Looting each time. It’s not necessarily card advantage, as you will end up with the same amount of cards in hand, but when you combine it with Alhammarret's Archive, then you gain your card advantage.
-2: Artifact Recursion- Once you have pitched some nice artifacts into the graveyard, you can “weld” artifacts back. Who wouldn’t want to turn a spent Mana Vault into the better Gilded Lotus, at literally no cost to you?
-10: The Ultimate- If you are able to achieve Daretti’s Ultimate, you essentially become a force to be
reckoned with. Opponent’s artifact destruction spells become null and void. Your “weld” effects become so
much better since you will get back what you welded away, gaining you an even better board presence.
Once this is happens, you become harder to kill.
You might like Daretti if:
1) You enjoy the simplicity of playing mono-colored decks.
2) You enjoy artifact and/or graveyard based decks.
3) You enjoy cheating in big, dumb artifacts.
4) You enjoy playing aggro decks, but also like elements of control.
5) You like having a Planeswalker as your General, instead of a boring creature.
6) You like playing some Stax effects to help control the board so you can Ultimate Daretti.
You might dislike Daretti if:
1) You want more colors for more options.
2) You hate artifacts and want to destroy all graveyards.
3) You want the option of using Commander Damage as an alternate win condition (which you can still win that way here; you just have to try. ;))
4) You dislike playing Planeswalkers as a Commander. Since it's inception, the only commander option was Legendary Creatures. Some people like to stick to the original ways of only running Legendary Creature Commanders; there is nothing wrong with that.
5) You dislike any Stax effects.
There are other possible commanders to choose from. Here’s a few possibilities:
Arcum Dagsson: Arcum is probably the most powerful Mono-Blue artifact commander out there. He is a toolbox commander that turns artifact creatures into bigger, more powerful artifacts. Being blue also allows some tutor and counter packages to help protect your pieces. If you’re looking to build mono-artifacts and want the security that blue provides, Arcum is an excellent choice. Bosh, Iron Golem: Another Mono-Red general. This guy is better off in a 1v1 setting as you’re going to want to throw your artifacts at only one person, not spread it throughout 3+ other players, especially with the amount of artifact removal in the format. Karn, Silver Golem: If going colorless is your thing, Karn is the Golem for you. He can run most of the same stuff we can, minus the red spells. Memnarch: Another Mono-Blue deck. Memnarch focuses on building up a good board state and attempts to make infinite mana to steal all other permanents. If you want to play other people’s cards, he’s the perfect general for this. Muzzio, Visionary Architect: Another Mono-Blue deck? Yup. This time it’s Daretti’s student. Can dump artifacts like no one else’s business. Can go from a tiny little rock to a Darksteel Forge with one activation. card]Sharuum the Hegemon/ Sydri, Galvanic Genius: Esper artifact commanders. Runs multiple infinite combos to secure a win. Both can be used in each other’s deck for other combos. Both are viable options and losing red doesn’t hurt the deck very much. Being Esper allows you more tutors and also counter packages to protect combos. Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer: Probably the best choice as alternate commander for a mono-red artifact deck. Built in protection makes all of your important pieces hard to deal with. The deck will more or less play the same, except you won’t have Daretti in the command zone for repeat casts. Daretti is by far the better choice to run as commander as his abilities far outweigh Slobad’s. Breya, Etherium Shaper: The newest artifact commander to hit the scene. She is the best of all artifact worlds. She’s red so you can slot in a lot of stuff from Daretti. She’s white/black so you can have some of the best tutors in the game, and she is also blue to allow for counter packages. If you’re looking for a straight up combo deck, she is who you want to run as you get the best of everything not green.
This deck has changed quite a bit over the years. Straight out of the box, there's quite a bit of non-artifact cards in it. I immediately noticed that as being a problem because if you want to maximize Daretti's effectiveness, you need more artifacts than that.
Next thing I noticed, mono-red doesn't have many forms of disruption. In order to combat full boards of creatures that want to attack Daretti, or decks with lots of counters that want to counter all of your relevant things. That's why I added a bit of Stax effects with the combo of Static Orb and Clock of Omens to slow everyone down. Mass creature removal is also necessary, as a clogged board is difficult to deal with.
What you see here is a culmination of extensive testing and I feel it is at a point where not much else needs to be changed.
While there are many options for cards that could be included in a deck, there are only room for 100. In the spoiler below, I will give a card-by-card explanation as to why I specifically chose to have a certain card in in the deck.
Creatures:
Goblin Welder: The original welder that inspired Daretti’s -2 ability. We can activate his ability at instant speed so we can surprise someone with a blocker or some sort of removal, or just swap something out that we can get good use out of on our turn.
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer: Slobad pulls double duty in the deck. At first glance, you can see that he gives an artifact indestructible at the cost of sacrificing another. This is important, as there is a lot of artifact hate out there. The other thing he does that may not be so obvious is he protects in another way: he sacrifices artifacts to protect against exile effects.
Metalworker: Crazy ramp in an artifact deck. Nets two mana for every artifact you reveal. Can be really explosive in the first few turns, but can be less effective in the later game if you only have a few cards in hand.
Quicksmith Genius: I like to think of this guy as a “mini Daretti.” He essentially does the same thing as Daretti’s +2 ability, except it triggers anytime an artifact enters the battlefield under your control. It doesn’t matter when or how it enters, as long as it does. With Mycosynth Lattice out, he triggers when any permanent enters, and will also trigger many times if you have Daretti’s Emblem.
Scrap Trawler: A much better version of Myr Retriever/Junk Diver. His ability doesn't require him to go the graveyard like the other two. He can remain on the battlefield while you sacrifice another artifact to bring back something else. He is limited in what he brings back, as he can only return something that costs less than the artifact that went to the graveyard.
Squee, Goblin Nabob: One of the all stars of the deck. When you discard him to Daretti, you basically get to draw an extra card next turn. He helps you choose more carefully what artifacts to discard and sort of helps play around graveyard removal. He can also be used as a recurring chump blocker to help protect you and Daretti.
Silent Arbiter: Slows down token/swarm strategies. Allows us to essentially "control" how combat works. Protects Daretti by only letting one creature attacks, and there's a good chance Arbiter can withstand that attack.
Solemn Simulacrum: A commander staple in my opinion. Helps ramp you when he enters, and draws you a card when he dies. Great Daretti/Welder fodder.
Karn, Silver Golem: Really effective blocker. Can be difficult to get past an 8 toughness creature. Can turn your big CMC artifacts into attackers/blockers. Also used in conjunction with Mycosynth Lattice to blow up lands.
Kuldotha Forgemaster: One of the few tutors we run. What sets this apart from other tutors is Forgemaster brings whatever you are tutoring to the battlefield instead of to hand. You can tutor up some kind of removal or try to go for a Blightsteel Colossus win. Works wonders when you have Daretti’s emblem. If you have Rings of Brighthearth out, you can sac three artifacts to activate Forgemaster, then copy to tutor out two artifacts.
Combustible Gearhulk: This guy is a beast! He's a 6/6 with First Strike, which is nothing to scoff at. This card was made for this deck. You'll either get three cards in hand to pitch with Daretti, or you'll get things to recur, and if the opponent chooses to mill, they will get burned.
Duplicant: Exile removal on a body. Tutorable with Imperial Recruiter and Kuldotha Forgemaster. Do note that he only copies P/T and Creature Type and not any abilities. If you go to exile a commander, and they choose to put it into the Command Zone instead, Duplicant will not copy the values as it is a replacement effect.
Steel Hellkite: Flying body with built in removal. Has to connect in order to remove things. Can only remove one CMC per turn, so you'll have to prioritize what you need fine first.
Thopter Assembly: This deck has trouble with flyers, and this guy seems like a pretty good solution. If he survives until your next turn, you'll get five flying bodies in its place and you can then pitch him to Daretti.
Wurmcoil Engine: One of the best artifact creatures ever printed. 6/6 with Deathtouch and Lifelink is really good. What could be better than that? Two bodies when he dies.
Myr Battlesphere: 8 total power spread between 5 bodies seems pretty good. Can use the tokens for Daretti fodder, or to chump block to protect him. When Battlesphere attacks, you can tap the Myr to deal damage to an opponent and redirect to a planeswalker, which is really nice. Not many people see it coming.
Blightsteel Colossus: One of our win conditions of the deck. Most of the time, we will not cast him. He will usually be pitched to Daretti and shuffled away. He is most of the time tutored through Kuldotha Forgemaster and put directly onto the battlefield. Do note: when Blightsteel is discarded to Daretti or any other draw spell that requires a discard as part of the cost, he will be shuffled back in right away before you draw your card. That is due to his replacement effect.
Sensei's Divining Top: Allows us to look at the top three of our library and rearrange them in order to draw what we want with Daretti. We use the fetch lands to reset the top if none of the three are very good. We can create inifinite mana with Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith and use it to draw a card with Top and copy it, allowing us to redraw the Top and the rest of our library if need be.
Voltaic Key: Untaps our mana rocks to get more mana out of them, or a creature to use as a surprise blocker. Can be used as a part of the Rings of Brighthearth/Basalt Monolith combo to infinitely untap things.
Winter Orb/Static Orb: We use these to help control other’s board states. Winter Orb slows the casting of spells by choking off mana produced by lands, and Static Orb slows people down from attacking as well as producing mana. Clock of Omens is used in conjunction with these to “turn off” their effects, allowing us to untap our permanents.
Chaos Wand: A nifty new little toy for Daretti. Allows us to cast instants and sorceries for free from any opponent. It can mess up any top of library shenanigans an opponent does, as the rest of the cards go to the bottom. With Paradox Engine and mana rocks that make a total of 4, it can essentially go "infinite," as long as an opponent has any in their library.
Rings of Brighthearth: Copies all activated abilities, including our Planeswalkers. It copies Basalt Monolith’s untap ability to create infinite mana.
Sculpting Steel: A utility artifact that becomes whatever we need it to. This card as slightly better use than Mirage Mirror, as it can utilize ETB effects because it enters as a copy and doesn't trigger when enters to copy.
Staff of Domination: The Swiss army knife of the deck. It gains you life, draws you cards, taps creatures down, or untaps them, and can untap itself. Used in conjunction with the Rings of Brighthearth/Basalt Monolith combo or Metalworker with at least three artifacts in hand in order to go infinite.
Clock of Omens: This card is mainly used to “turn off” our Orbs, but it has plenty of other uses as well. It can give us a surprise blocker on someone else’s turn. It can also let us reuse an artifact with a tap ability, such as Planar Bridge or the Monoliths.
Krark-Clan Ironworks: Another sac outlet that helps protect from exile effects. Can also be used to ramp into a bigger spell, or set up for a Scrap Mastery. Can also be used in conjunction with Scrap Trawler to sac an artifact for mana, bring back another and cast it.
Nevinyrral's Disk: Essentially a reset button. Used when the board is getting to cluttered with things you don’t like. When used with Darksteel Forge, your artifacts will remain unharmed. Add in Mycosynth Lattice, and you wipe everyone’s board but your own.
Oracle's Vault: A fun new toy for Daretti. Not only does it allow us to dig deeper into the deck, but when you get three brick counters on it, we get to play the card for free. When used in conjunction with Sensei's Divining Top, we can guarantee we will hit a spell to cast, or even a land that we need. Combine with Paradox Engine and you can cast a bunch of your deck for free. This can definitely be game changing.
Unwinding Clock: The third untapper of the deck. This one happens automatically during other turns, so there is no activation required.
Alhammarret's Archive: Doubles your extra draws and life gain. Turns Daretti and Bazaar of Baghdad into positive sources of card advantage. This is usually a good target for a Gamble after Daretti is in play as it will gain you a ton of card advantage. Even if you have to discard down to hand size, it's more artifacts in your graveyard for later use.
Memory Jar: This lets us dig deeper into our deck. It's a sort of repeatable Wheel effect, except what we don't use gets discarded and we get our old hand back. Can also double as a mill effect for our opponents.
Paradox Engine: A new card that has taken EDH by storm. While other decks can better utilize this card, and can go infinite, I still think there are some good synergies it can provide, as long as we have the spells and mana rocks to make it worthwhile. Being able to use Planar Bridge or even Oracle's Vault multiple times in a turn can turn the game in our favor.
Mindslaver: One of our other win conditions. Recurrable with Daretti and Goblin Welder. With Daretti’s emblem out, you can sacrifice it to take the next player’s turn and then get Mindslaver back at the end of the turn. Then, if you have enough mana, at the end of the controlled player’s turn, you can activate it again to take the next player’s turn. Keep repeating to control everyone for the rest of the game.
Mycosynth Lattice: This card is always used in conduction with other cards. Use with Darksteel Forge to make all of your permanents indestructible. Use with Nevinyrral’s Disk to blow up the entire board. Use with Vandalblast to blow up everyone else’s permanents. Use with Karn, Silver Golem to blow up lands. Use with Scrap Mastery to reset the board and get some artifacts back in return. If you have Daretti’s emblem, everything that you had to sacrifice will be returned, as the emblem will see them as artifacts when they went to the graveyard.
Planar Bridge: A much better tutor artifact for the deck. While it does have a hefty cost to activate, being able to put any permanent onto the battlefield is game breaking. We can utilize infinite mana plus Rings of Brighthearth/Voltaic Key to bring all of our permanents into play.
Staff of Nin: A little extra card draw each turn. Helps keep little critters and Planeswalkers under control. Can take everyone else out of the game with infinite untaps.
Spine of Ish Sah: Spot removal on an artifact. Can be searched up with Kuldotha Forgemaster to take out a permanent. If it’s already on the battlefield, it can be sacked to Daretti, and then it will be returned to your hand to either be cast again, or pitched to Daretti.
Darksteel Forge: Makes all of our artifacts indestructible and harder to deal with.
Sorceries:
Faithless Looting: Early card filtering. Has flashback so we can get two uses out of it. It's nice that you draw first just in case there is something you want to keep in hand.
Gamble: It definitely is a Gamble to run this, but it is the best early game tutor we run. If it's in my opening hand with no way to get out an early Daretti, I always go for Mana Crypt. Otherwise, Alhammarret’s Archive is my second choice. Later in the game, assess what would benefit you, and go for that.
Vandalblast: Early spot removal for artifacts, usually used to take out a mana rock or annoying artifacts. Overload it take them all out. When used with Mycosynth Lattice, it will take all of your opponents’ permanents. That usually ends the game.
Tormenting Voice: Card draw. Discarding a card is part of the cost, so you will lost out on a card if it gets countered, but having an extra artifact in the graveyard for later use is not a bad thing for us.
Saheeli's Directive: A new addition from Commander 2018: a Genesis Wave for artifacts! While this card is a bit more restrictive than Wave, as it only grabs you artifacts and not any permanent, it has the Improvise ability, so we can tap our artifacts to help pay the cost, essentially netting us more mana and allowing us to dig deeper to put more artifacts onto the battlefield.
Wheel of Fortune: The original Wheel effect. Can either get rid of a junk hand for a new one, or just completely refills your hand.
Pirate's Pillage: Tormenting Voice's bigger brother. Costs twice as much for the same effect as Voice, but it will create 2 Treasures, so it will essentially cost the same. The Treasures will also double as sac fodder, so we get double use out of this card.
Scrap Mastery: The Living Death for our artifacts. One of my favorite cards printed in the Commander 2014 set (behind Daretti of course). Allows you to “exchange” artifacts from the field with artifacts in each other player’s graveyard. This card is the reason why we want to dump all of our artifacts into the graveyard. Combine this with Mycosynth Lattice and you reset the board. With Daretti’s emblem, you get everything back, so it essentially becomes a one-sided wipe;
All Is Dust: Our catch-all removal for anything colored. We don’t have very many colored permanents, so this card slots into the deck nicely. It does have a high CMC, but thanks to all of the mana rocks we run, it should be no problem to cast. It does not work very well with Mycosynth Lattice, however, as Lattice turns everything colorless, rendering this spell useless while it is on the field, so be careful when you play either.
Blasphemous Act: Mass creature removal. Not many things can survive 13 damage. Can be cheap removal if playing against token/creature strategies.
Instants:
Chaos Warp: One of the few pieces of spot removal we have. Use it to get around things with indestructible. I really love using it when my Blightsteel Colossus gets Bribery’d, so then Blightsteel gets shuffled and I get the chance to put something into play.
Planeswalkers:
Chandra, Flamecaller: I was against this card when it was first spoiled, but decided to give it a try. I must say that I am glad I did. It has become a core card in this deck. Her -0 is a one-sided wheel effect that nets us +1 card. Her -X makes for a good board wipe, and is copyable with Rings of Brighthearth to allow her to have remaining loyalty to survive, but also wiping out anything with 6 or less toughness. Her +1 is the least used mode for me, but it can help restock her loyalty for future board wipes.
Karn Liberated: One of the best Planeswalkers ever printed. It’s colorless so it can go into any deck. His +4 takes resources out of a player’s hand. His -3 takes care of any problematic permanent. His ultimate will usually just win you the game as you will most likely be ahead of everyone else.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Another amazing Planeswalker. His +3 is a Ghostfire (which is pretty flavorful). His -X is a catch-all removal. We run mostly coloress stuff, so this won’t hurt us as much as it will others. His ultimate is really awesome. Gaining seven life, drawing seven cards, and putting seven permanents into play is game-changing, especially when you can copy it with Rings of Brighthearth.
Lands:
Ancient Tomb: The first of our “Sol” lands. Two mana in one land is really powerful in any format. In Commander with 40 life, the 2 damage is negligible. Helps power out Daretti or any other spells in the deck.
Bazaar of Baghdad: Card draw and discard on a land with no mana requirements. This land does everything we want it to for the deck. It does become negative card advantage since we discard more than we draw, but with Alhammarret's Archive out, it becomes positive card advantage as we net +1 cards.
Buried Ruin: Artifact recursion on a land for the small cost of two mana. Can use the recurred artifact as more fodder to Daretti.
Command Beacon: We want to keep Daretti out as long as we can, but he tends to get killed a lot. This helps alleviate the big Commander Tax he is capable of getting. Casting him for 4 is better than casting him for 12+.
Forge of Heroes: Another nifty utility land that will enable Daretti to gain an additional loyalty counter upon entering. This will enable us to ultimate Daretti in four turns, instead of the typical five, as long as we can protect him.
Geier Reach Sanitarium: As previously stated with Bazaar of Baghdad, card draw on a land is really good. This land is better than Mikokoro, Center of the Sea in this deck because it also discards a card, which could possibly force an opponent into discarding something they don’t want to.
Inventors' Fair: The life gain on this land isn’t much, but over the course of a long game, it can be the difference between winning and losing. What’s really great about this land is that it is also an artifact tutor that doesn’t take the slot of a valuable spell, making this the perfect inclusion to any artifact-based deck.
Maze of Ith: This is quite possibly the worst land in the deck as it doesn’t make any mana, but it can save you from a lethal attack, or keep Daretti protected long enough to reach his Ultimate. With the right combination of cards, you can prevent attacks from all opponents.
Mishra's Workshop: Another “Sol” land of sorts. Makes three mana, but the downside is that mana can only be used for artifact spells. Works amazing in here, as most of our spells are artifacts. An easy staple for any artifact deck.
Mountain: This is a red deck. This is a land that produces red mana. Seems good.
Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant, Urza's Tower: The Tron Lands. Once Tron is assembled, as in having all three of these lands, we make 7 C between three lands. That is a hard thing to pass up, especially in an artifact deck.
This section is reserved for cards that didn’t make the cut, or will be kept in reserve as a “toolbox” of sorts for things I can swap out when I feel like changing the deck up.
As far as a strategy goes, everyone is going to play their deck differently. The way I play Daretti is to get him out early and rush towards his Emblem. Once the Emblem is achieved, it becomes difficult for our opponents to win. How do we go about doing this? Simple. We do the following:
1) Mulligans: Your opening hand is very important. It'll basically tell you how the game is going to go. You want at the very least one Mountain in your starting hand in order to pay for Daretti's color requirement. After that, you want mana rocks. More specifically, early, cheap mana rocks like Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, or Mana Vault. Even Grim Monolith is good, albeit a bit slower than the others. You want these to pump out a fast Daretti. Finally, you need pitch fodder. Whether that's the big artifacts, extra mana rocks or lands, or utility artifacts. Something to make it worth casting Daretti.
2) Early Game: Get Daretti out as fast as you can. Turn 1 is definitely the best, and there are a few ways of doing this, such as:
Once on board, keep using his +2 ability to rush for that ever so sweet Emblem. Don’t hesitate to use his -2, as sometimes that is going to help you keep Daretti safe and set your board up for later.
3) Mid Game: This is the part of the game when you have been alternating his +2 and -2 abilities to set up your hand, board, and graveyard in order to get to your win conditions. By this time, your opponents should be on to your game plan and what your deck can do (if they didn't know already just by seeing Daretti). You want to be able to protect him as much as you can, so use things like Blasphemous Act to clear the board of creatures so they can't attack him.
4) Late Game: By this time, you should have dug and pitched through your deck to find your road to victory. There are many ways to do this. Straight up attacking down your opponent's life totals from 40 to 0, infect damage through Blightsteel Colossus, or through one of the many combos this deck can do, which will be discussed in another section.
As with any deck, there are going to be some weaknesses. Some of these include:
1) Artifact Hate: Daretti is an artifact-based deck, and in the EDH format, there is TONS of various artifact removal. There is the old-fasioned artifact destruction, such as Aura Shards, Vandalblast, Bane of Progress, among others, but these are the most potent. There is also exiling effects, such as Return to Dust and Merciless Eviction, as well as many others. These are harder to come back from, as we cannot recur them. Stony Silence is also a very bad card for us. If we have Mycosynth Lattice, this card will cause the game to draw out, as no one can cast anything since they can't tap lands for mana.
2) Graveyard Hate: Not only is Daretti an artifact-based deck, it is also graveyard-based. Cards such as Tormod’s Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, etc. put a real damper on our gameplan. Trying to get these out of our way as early as possible will only help us in the long run.
3) Counter Decks: Personally, this is the one I dislike the most. It’s one thing to play your stuff and then get it removed. It’s another to not even get to play them because they get countered. Over. And over. And over again. It can be frustrating, so if you’re playing in a counter-heavy meta, Defense Grid might not be a bad inclusion.
4) Flying Creatures: Flying creatures are definitely a big hindrance. We only have three creatures with Flying in our current build, so unless we use our mass removal spells to get rid of them, Daretti will almost always end up back in the Command Zone.
5) Direct Damage: Much like creatures with Flying, anything that deals direct damage to Planeswalkers will knock loyalty counters off Daretti. We used to have protection from burn with cards such as Witchbane Orb and Orbs of Warding, but when they changed redirection to actually targeting Planeswakers, these cards fell off the radar.
In this section, we will go over the main interactions/combos that this deck has to offer. There may be more hidden in there somewhere, so if someone happens to see what that I did not, feel free to let me know and I will get it added!
Infinite Mana Combos: One of the key cards we run in the deck is Rings of Brighthearth due to its combo potential. The card we pair with Rings the most is Basalt Monolith in order to generate infinite colorless mana. How does this work?
It's simple: Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith + 2 from any source: Tap Monolith for 3. Use the 3 to untap, Rings triggers, use 2 from any other source to copy the untap effect. First untap on stack resolves, tap again for 3. Let second untap resolve and tap again for mana. You now have 6 floating. Use 3 to untap, and 2 to copy untap with Rings. This leaves you with 1 available. Repeat steps for infinite colorless mana.
Pair this infinite mana combo with a few more cards, and you can get some crazy interactions, such as:
Sensei's Divining Top: Use SDT's draw effect and copy with Rings. The copied ability will resolve first, drawing you a card and putting SDT back on top of your deck. The second trigger will resolve, drawing you SDT, and since SDT is no longer on the field when the ability resolves, it doesn’t go back on top. Cast SDT again, and repeat this process to draw your deck and look for an avenue to victory.
Spine of Ish Sah + Krark-Clan Ironworks: Cast Spine and when it enters, you get to destroy any permanent. Sacrifice it to KCI and it will return to your hand. With the infinite mana you have created, you can repeat this process to remove all opposing permanents, and shut people out of the game.
Staff of Domination: With infinite mana, you are able have infinite activation of Staff, which you can use to tap/untap creatures, gain infinite life, or draw your deck, similar to the interaction that SDT has above.
Voltaic Key + Staff of Nin: Tap the Staff to deal one damage to any target, usually an opponent. Use the Key to untap Staff, copy the untap with Rings and target the Key. Key will untap, and then Staff will untap. Repeat for infinite damage. You can also copy the damage ability of Staff, but it really won't make anything faster.
Voltaic Key + Planar Bridge: Tap the Bridge to bring out any permanent of your choosing. Activate Key, targeting Bridge, and then copy the Key's ability with Rings, this time targeting the Key itself. Once both abilities resolve, Bridge and Key are both untapped and you can continue bringing out all of your permanents, if you so choose.
*Alternatively, you can use Metalworker + Staff of Domination to create infinite mana by doing the following: With 3 artifacts in hand, tap Metalworker, revealing the 3 artifacts in hand to generate 6. Use 3 to untap Metalworker with Staff, then use 1 to untap Staff. You are left with 2. Repeat for infinite mana. You can then proceed to go infinite with Staff, or add Rings to use any of the combos above.
Paradox Engine Combos: These combos involve having Paradox Engine on the battlefield in order to untap your permanents and essentially "go infinite.
Spine of Ish Sah + Krark-Clan Ironworks + mana rocks that make 5: Use your mana rocks to cast Spine, which will trigger Engine and untap the rocks. Spine will enter and destroy any permanent. Sacrifice Spine using KCI and it will return to your hand via its effect. Cast it again to remove all opposing permanents.
Miscellaneous Combos/Synergies: These are the other "combos" which are more or less cards with great synergy together.
Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk: With Forge on the battlefield, all of our artifacts are now indestructible. Activate Disk to destroy all artifacts, creatures, and enchantments. All but five of our creatures are artifacts, and we run no enchantments, so it shouldn't hurt us too much.
Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk + Mycosynth Lattice: Same as the combo above, but with Lattice added. Lattice turns all permanents into artifacts so Disk will destroy everything on board, except for our stuff, as Forge grants everything indestructible. Be cautious when using this, as someone could have instant-speed removal such as bounce or exile, and if they target Forge, you will lose permanents as well.
Mycosynth Lattice + Vandalblast: This synergy is just like the one above, but much more safe. Lattice will turn every permanent into an artifact, and then Vandalblast will blow all artifacts to smithereens. Forge isn't needed in this combo, as Vandalblast is only for artifacts we don't control.
Mycosynth Lattice + Karn, Silver Golem: Lattice turns all permanents into artifacts, including lands. Karn will allow us to turn any artifact into a creature with base power/toughness equal to its mana cost for only 1. If you target a land with Karn's ability, it will turn into a creature with power/toughness of 0/0. Due to state-based effects, or SBEs, the land will be put into the graveyard due to having 0 toughness. This will allow you to remove as mana lands as you have mana available.
Mycosynth Lattice + Scrap Mastery + Daretti's Emblem: Lattice will turn all permanents into artifacts. Scrap Mastery will exile all artifacts in all graveyards, put all the artifacts that are on the battlefield, which would be all permanents due to Lattice, into the graveyard, and then return all artifacts that were exile by Mastery onto the battlefield. Daretti's emblem sees them enter the graveyard as artifacts so it will trigger for each, and then return them at beginning of the next end step.
Mindslaver + Daretti's Emblem: This is what I like to call the "SlaverLock." Activate Mindslaver to take over someone's turn, usually whoever's turn it is next. When you sacrifice it as part of its cost, the emblem will trigger and return it at the beginning of the next end step. You will take that person's turn, and as long as you have enough mana, you can activate Mindslaver again to take the next person's turn. As long as you have enough mana, or enough mana rocks to make 4 and an Unwinding Clock out, you can indefinitely take everyone's turn and shape the game how you want until you end it.
Shattering Spree was too mana intensive to be able to remove mass artifacts; Vandalblast does this much better and at a cheaper cost. So I dropped it in favor of a mass boardwipe for creatures, since we have trouble with our opponents having lots of them. Add in the fact that it sometimes will cost only 1 red mana makes this wipe a very good inclusion.
Pithing Needle wasn’t doing too much in the deck, and only being able to stop one thing at a time was kind of a pain. Howling Mine helped out everyone else too, which is something we don’t want to be doing. I prefer Static Orb over Winter Orb, as we can effectively “turn off” Static with Clock of Omens and be able to untap our stuff, while keeping everyone else’s tapped down. Mana Web is out too as it also goes along with Winter Orb. I took our Ruination as I am not a fan of MLD. Added in Mox Diamond as more early ramp, Static Orb/Clock of Omens to lock our opponent’s down, Coffin as a colorless way to get rid of things like Iona on red, and Mind’s Eye for the extra card draw.
Never really got to use the Coffin too much; it just doesn’t seem like the right fit for here. Wasn’t a big fan of Inkmoth in here either; it didn’t put in enough work. Added in Codex Shredder to help recur our non-artifact spells, and Caverns to help us get to Daretti faster (if it’s in our opening hand).
The big addition here is the Archive. This thing was made for Daretti. The card advantage this generates is insane with all of the card draw in here. Once I get a Bazaar, it’ll make that even better as well. Price of Glory is in for people who like to play during other people’s turns and is better than Grid because it sets them back by losing land, and Trading Post is another utility artifact that does good things, even tho I’m not it’s biggest fan. Engine and Nexus just weren’t doing enough for me.
Daretti tends to head to the Command Zone quite frequently, so having Beacon take the place of a Mountain is well worth us only having to pay 4 for him late game. Fellwar Stone is probably the weakest rock here simply because if we happen to play against a colorless deck, we don’t get to add any mana. Thought Vessel is a rock that produces mana every time, and has the added bonus of giving us no maximum hand size.
Dropping a couple Mountains to add in Reliquary Tower to help us better control what we discard since we no longer have a max hand size, and Sanctum to be able to tutor up creatures. If we can draw at least two cards each time Oracle comes into play, it is strictly better than Voice since it is recurrable.
Finally got my hands on a Bazaar. This will allow me to draw additional cards and put more artifacts into the graveyard. It doesn’t produce mana, so I do lose out on a mana source, but it should allow me to draw into more.
Soul wasn’t really doing much other than being a beater, so I replaced him with Chandra Flamecaller as a sort of catch-all. Gives us tiny guys to help get in more damage, a one-sided wheel effect that draws us an additional card, and a board wipe for small critters. Tower isn’t necessary anymore thanks to Thought Vessel, so I added in Haven in its place. Ugin is a very good card in EDH, and having an additional way of reusing him is always good. Caged Sun is ok, but Gauntlet is cheaper and I haven’t need the extra mana Caged produces, so I put back Fellwar Stone as another early mana rock.
Ok, the biggest update I’ve had on here. Staff of Nin over Mind’s eye is because I don’t have to pay anything to get an extra card, and can combo with other things in the deck. Greaves over Hammer because I only usually need one creature to have haste, and has the bonus effect of giving Shroud. Contagion Engine/Chain Veil to help add more counters to all of our planeswalkers. Hellkite as another way to win. Ulamog is in for more colorless removal, and it exiles so even better. Key for more untap shenanigans. Blinkmoth Urn can help generate a ton of mana. Lotus Bloom as a free mana rock; can be a Black Lotus every turn after an emblem; this is still being tested of Thran, but Thran still might replace it as it is guaranteed three mana every turn. Everything else was removed to make room for newer cards.
I haven’t used the tutor effect of Sanctum as much as I had hoped for. With my utility lands, I like to get as much use out of them as I can. Having Dust Bowl in here will allow me to continually remove lands from my opponents when I have enough mana rocks out that I don’t need as many lands.
Lotus Bloom has been my flex spot for quite awhile, floating between that, Thran Dynamo, and Slobad. But because Winter Orb has been errata'd again so we can now "turn it off," I'm going to put it in as another lock piece to hinder opponent's while not hurting us, so long as we have Clock of Omens out.
Phyrexia's Core has been lackluster in this deck. The only function it ever takes on is being another colorless land. Haven't used its sac effect in quite a while, if ever. Geier Reach Sanitarium fills the role of colorless land just as good, but has the added functionality of being able to draw cards and discard things for later recursion, which is a valuable ability to have, especially at instant speed.
I took out High Market and Mirrorpool as I felt they were both underperforming, and with some lands from Kaladesh, were in need of replacing. Decided to drop 2 more Mountains, as the deck can run just fine with only a couple red sources, and Utility lands are at a premium (not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds cool). The rest of the cut cards were essentially removed to make room for the new stuff, and I felt these were safe cuts.
Homeward Path is in here as Bribery insurance. Inventors' Fair is a tutor that doesn't take up a valuable spell slot. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods is another Sol Land that still lets us tap for one in the early game. Sequestered Stash fills our graveyard, and brings back an artifact to the top of our deck. Quicksmith Genius is Daretti 2.0, albeit on a smaller scale, but just as good. Combustible Gearhulk is my new favorite toy! Big beater and either gets us cards in hand or cards in graveyard for future use. Thopter Assembly was added back in to help against flyers. Cathartic Reunion/Tormenting Voice were added for more guaranteed card draw (and also the discard portion).
I decided to try something a little different with these updates. Instead of hiding behind Stax effects to protect Daretti, I wanted to try and make it a little more explosive. So I took out the Orbs/Omens synergy as well as Arbiter in order to make room for some new stuff. Gauntlet was removed as we really don't need the extra mana when we run a bunch of rocks, and can also weld back our bigger stuff. I haven't needed Recoup in a long time, so that was a safe cut. Fire Diamond was a safe cut since we don't really want our rocks to come in tapped and unable to be used until next turn.
Fellwar is back in as it is a rock that comes into play untapped, and can possibly make red if we need (if someone can produce red). Chain Veil is also back in and will hopefully synergize well with Paradox. As far as Paradox goes, I'm not too sure it's a good fit in here yet, as our deck isn't built to abuse it like some other decks, but being able to reuse Veil, Bridge, and other effects may prove to be useful. Planar Bridge is another one I'm not too sure on yet. We can grab any permanent and put it directly into play, which could prove vital for when we are in a pinch, or when we need a combo piece. We can abuse its effect with Paradox and enough rocks/spells to put a bunch of things into play, or infinite mana plus Rings/Key to do the same, but get all of our permanents. Heart of Kiran can make for a decent blocker and can be crewed with Daretti in a pinch. Pia's Revolution is like a mini Combustible so synergizes very well with the deck. Trawler is a better Junk Diver/Myr Retriever as it works with all of our artifacts.
Well, I tried some new cards and had high hopes for them, but unfortunately they didn't work out. Revolution just didn't do what I had hoped it would be good for. Turns out I do care if I want something to stay in the graveyard, so it got the cut. Kiran, for the most part, just sat there on defense, so I wasn't getting very much use out of it, and there are far better defense cards to run. Fellwar is the least impactful rock I run, and I needed to cut something to make room for the third card.
I'm putting pack both Orbs and Omens to help control the board more and slow others down in order to get to Daretti's Ultimate and take over the game. In fact, I really missed running these and am sort of glad the other cards didn't work out.
After playing a few games with Vault, I have decided it has earned it's place in the deck. Not only does it allow us to dig deeper into the deck, but when you get three brick counters on it, we get to play the card for free. When used in conjunction with Sensei's Divining Top, we can guarantee we will hit a spell to cast, or even a land that we need. Combine with Paradox Engine and you can cast a bunch of your deck for free. This can definitely be game changing.
In order to make room for Vault, I have decided to cut Reunion. While red doesn't have very much as far as card draw goes, I feel like this was a safe cut to make. Tormenting Voice is a lot safer to play, as you only have to discard one card instead of two.
Haven't updated in awhile, since Amonkhet to be exact. There really hasn't been much that can make this deck more over the top than it already is, but I did find some cards that can fit well in here. Pirate's Pillage is more card draw that can also create sac fodder for Daretti, or ramp us into another spell. Karn, Scion of Urza is more card draw, but can also create artifact bodies for attacking/blocking/sac fodder. Arch of Orazca just gives us another outlet for card draw, but only when we have the city's blessing.
To make room, I took out Blood Moon mostly because I don't want to shut off our lands, even though it also shuts opponent's off. We can't recur it, so once it's in the graveyard, it's done for anyways. Dust Bowl is expensive for land destruction, so it got cut. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods didn't really do much for the deck, so it was an easy choice to make.
I also removed the Visual Deck List and Pimpage sections. I know longer have a physical copy of the deck and its accessories, so I feel like these are no longer necessary.
Scrap Trawler has been fairly lackluster in recent games. He really doesn't do much of anything until an artifact goes to the graveyard. When one does, he is also limited in what he can bring back.
I decided to bring back Silent Arbiter as a way to slow down token/swarm strategies, and have a better way of controlling combat in order to protect Daretti. Oh, and I like big butts and I cannot lie, and Arbiter has a pretty big one as well!
I've been testing quite a few changes recently, and these are the ones I've come up with. I am going to continue to test these out and see which ones will ultimately stick.
We don't get any mana from Blinkmoth Urn until our following turn, but our opponents do, so this gets the cut. I never used Haven of the Spirit Dragon or Sequestered Stash for their abilities, nor have a ran into the situation where Homeward Path was necessary. Karn, Scion of Urza, while he does find a spot in the deck, and worked really well, often times I found myself getting a land, and the opponent exiling a good card, and then kill him. It's a bit of a risky card, and I don't want to take too many risks. Lightning Greaves was cut as was only really used with Blightsteel Colossus. We usually only tutor Blightsteel at end of an opponent's turn, so we can swing with him on ours, so the Greaves isn't needed. Mirrorworks I have found that I haven't been using it for anything other than pitch fodder, so when a card gets to that point, it needs to go. Lastly, The Chain Veil is better off in a deck that has a bunch of Planeswalkers to fully utilize it, or somewhere it can go infinite such as Teferi, Temporal Archmage.
I have added in the Tron lands in place of the three I took out. While they do absolutely nothing on their own, the ability to make 7 mana with three lands is a hard thing to ignore. I've added in Krark-Clan Ironworks and Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer as mainly sac outlets to avoid exile effects, and to set up a nice Scrap Mastery. KCI also allows us to ramp a little bit, and Slobad provides some protection for our artifacts. Chaos Wand is pretty bonkers. With enough rocks and Paradox Engine, we can churn through our opponent's decks until they run out of instants and sorceries. Scrap Trawler is back as he is too good to pass up, especially since he doesn't have to go to the graveyard to return an artifact, like Myr Retriever and Junk Diver. Sculpting Steel is a nice little utility artifact that can become whatever artifact we need at the time, whether it's a mana rock, or a Spine of Ish Sah.
I've opted to cut all of the fetch lands and Crucible of Worlds, at least for the time being. Being a mono-colored deck means we don't need to worry about color fixing, the fetches aren't necessarily important. Losing Crucible may prove to be a mistake, as we will no longer be able to play lands from our graveyard to ensure hitting our land drops, or reuse our many utility lands.
In their place, I have opted to run four more basic Mountains as well as Forge of Heroes to replace the lands I took out. Forge will hopefully prove to be a worthwhile land, as it should enable us to ultimate Daretti a turn earlier. In place of Crucible, I have chosen to put in Saheeli's Directive. With Directive, we should be able to spam the board with a ton of artifacts, and hopefully get closer to winning the game.
I'm not going to go into too much detail at the moment, as it's sort of late and I'm a bit tired. I've decided to cut some of the "cuter" items to go a little bit more into the Stax aspect for the deck. I still won't be adding in MLD as I am not a fan of that particular strategy. Some of the changes you may question, so if you want specifics, feel free to ask and I will answer.
I'm going to start this introduction by being completely honest. When Commander 2016 was fully spoiled, I was a bit disappointed with the set. You may ask yourself, “Why would anybody be disappointed with this set? A lot of people were wanting four-color commanders to be playable.” My reasoning was simple: I was looking for new cards to put into my current decks, and wasn't going to be bothered by trying to build a new one. That is, until I stumbled onto one card: Breya, Etherium Shaper.
I'm a sucker for artifact decks. I played Affinity in Modern, and enjoyed it so much, I foiled out the whole deck. I got hardcore into Commander, so I built and foiled out Daretti. Now, I have built Breya and she may be more busted than my Daretti deck.
The first think everyone needs to realize is Breya is a machine gun and the deck is the ammo. What exactly does that mean? She is a win condition in the Command Zone. Let's break her card down:
Cost:
Breya costs WUBR. This can be quite difficult to achieve as the more colors in your commander, generally they are more difficult to cast. What's great about these colors is that she has the best colors for counters, tutors, and removal of all sorts. That is a pretty powerful thing in and of itself.
Power/Toughness:
Breya is a 4/4 for 4 mana. Not bad as far as stats go but is pretty generic for that cost. This isn't something to really write about, but her abilities are where her stats get really good.
Abilities:
Breya's first ability creates two 1/1 blue Thopter creature tokens. Altogether, that's 6 power/toughness spread across three bodies for only four mana. That makes it even better!
Her activated abilities all cost 2 and two artifacts to be sacrificed, and you get one of three options:
Her first ability lets you Lightning Bolt someone in the face.
What's that? She GIVES you two artifacts to sacrifice to herself? THAT'S ABSURD! Add infinite mana and a select few cards, and you can wipe the entire board of creatures, gain infinite life, or just get straight to it and kill everyone at the table.
While we can specifically focus on Breya's abilities and build the deck around that, that's not what we are doing here. While using her as a win condition is included in the deck, we are also using her for her colors.
You might like Breya if:
1) You like playing powerful decks capable of winning in the first few turns.
2) You like infinite combos.
3) WUBR are your favorite colors of that Magic pie.
You might dislike Breya if:
1) You enjoy long, grueling games with tons of interaction.
2) You would rather turn creatures sideways and win through combat.
3) You want your deck to fully take advantage of your Commander, and not just use them for the colors.
Other Possible Commanders:
When considering other Commanders over Breya, the thing that everyone should understand is there are multiple ways to build her. I chose to build her as a Doomsday/Ad Nauseam deck that utilizes those cards to get into a combo for a quick win. Others may want to build her as an artifact-centered deck. Either way to build her is fine, so I will list a couple other Commanders that fall into those categories and are still in our colors. Those Commanders are:
Artifact-Centered Commanders: Sharuum the Hegemon: Sharuum is the original Esper artifact Commander. She is a combo piece sitting in the Command Zone waiting to be abused. She utilizes other artifacts such as Sculpting Steel/Phyrexian Metamorph to continuously swapping herself and that artifact to create infinite triggers with Disciple of the Vault or infinite Gravestorm with Bitter Ordeal to secure a win.
Daretti, Scrap Savant: A newer Artifact-matters Commander, and a personal favorite of mine. Losing out on Esper colors is a negative for running him as you lose out on tutors and counters, but he makes up for it by having a more consistent mana base and allowing you to filter through your hand and deck to find answers or a way to win. Also utilizes the graveyard as a second hand, allowing you an abundance of options for any situation.
Doomsday Commanders: Zur the Enchanter: When people think of Doomsday in Commander, the usually will associate it with Zur, as he, in my opinion, is THE DEFINITIVE Doomsday Commander. The deck utilizes a low curve and plenty of tutors to either grab Doomsday itself, or goes for Ad Nauseam to fill the hand and put out a lot of mana to combo off.
Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge: This Commander is more associated with Storm decks. While it does run the same Doomsday/Ad Nauseam cards and will use the same piles, or at least similar piles, it also utilizes the Storm mechanic to pull out a win with Tendrils of Agony or the new Aetherflux Reservoir
The deck has gone through quite the changes over the time that I've played it. Breya is a vary versatile commander, not only for her abilities, but also for her colors.
The first iteration of the deck was basically an artifact "good stuff" deck with Gearhulks, big bad artifacts, and all the combos I could find, including Sharuum the Hegemon combos. The deck was clunky and unreliable.
The second iteration took out the clunky good stuff and focused on infinite combos. This still was too clunky. Having pieces to multiple combos that don't work together is not a good thing. Back to the drawing board.
The third iteration saw me cut all the "I win" combos, like Sharuum the Hegemon, Sculpting Steel, and Disciple of the Vault, to focus on making infinite mana and using Breya as the win condition. To protect the combo, I added in more removal and a counter package to fill in the voids.
After much more playtesting, I came to the realization that Nim Deathmantle/Eldrazi Displacer + Krark-Clan Ironworks is way too slow and mana-intensive to allow for fast wins. The Bomberman combo is fast enough, but for it to be faster, we needed to be able to get him into play faster, so being able to reanimate him for a much cheaper cost is the ideal way of doing so. Since we are playing reanimation spells to bring Salvagers back, why not use them to bring Worldgorger Dragon back as well? So, I decided to drop the Deathmantle/Displacer combos for the much faster George combo and other spells to facilitate it, but it still took a while to get into the combo. Enter Doomsday. This single card allows us to stack our deck with whatever combo we need to win, and can either win the same turn, or the very next one, if left uninterrupted. And if we're playing Doomsday, you may as well throw in LabMan to give you another option that isn't graveyard-reliant.
Now, we are on to the fifth iteration of the deck. I dropped the George combo, as I felt it was too fragile and easily disrupted. Once disrupted, we would have no choice but to concede, as there is no coming back from that. So, I added in Demonic Consultation and a few other cards to dive deeper into LabMan/Doomsday combos.
This is the deck I bring to you today. So, without further ado, let us get into it and check the deck out.
While there are many options for cards that could be included in a deck, there are only room for 100. In the spoiler below, I will give a card-by-card explanation as to why I specifically chose to have a certain card in in the deck.
Creatures:
Dark Confidant: Drawing extra cards in any format is a powerful thing. Drawing extra cards for free is even better. Confidant has the downside of hurting us if we draw anything above 1 CMC, but as our curve is low, it shouldn’t hurt us too much.
Grand Abolisher: Being able to protect our combo is essential. Abolisher does this like no other. Shutting out anything our opponent’s do on our turn is amazing and beneficial to us. The bonus of him being a Human makes him uncounterable with Cavern of Souls, since that is what we will always name since Breya is also Human.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy: Helps us dig deeper into our deck. When he transforms, he gives us access to our graveyard in case there is a counter spell in there to protect us when we try to combo off.
Laboratory Maniac: One of the win conditions of the deck. He is part of the Doomsday “combo” and is one of the ways we win with said combo.
Auriok Salvagers: The first half of the "Bomberman Combo." This card goes infinite mana of any color with Lion's Eye Diamond. Can also be used to return a small artifact as well.
Notion Thief: This guy will prevent other players from drawing extra cards and allow us to draw them. Depending on how many cards are being drawn and the number left in the library, it is possible to win a game if you have LabMan out with this guy. Can also empty out other players’ hands when using a Wheel effect.
Lion's Eye Diamond: The second half of the "Bomberman Combo." Its effect is a mana ability, so it doesn't use the stack, so when you activate it, you will lose your hand immediately. Caution is required when playing the card. Having a way to protect your combo via Silence/Grand Abolisher or a counter will help ensure you go off without a hitch.
Sensei's Divining Top: Filters through the top three cards to smooth out our draws. It’s a Commander staple and should be in most, if not all decks just because of the value it gives. Can also help facilitate the Doomsday combo.
Isochron Scepter: The main purpose of Scepter is to be used in conjunction with Dramatic Reversal, Aetherflux Reservoir, and mana rocks that produce at least 2 to facilitate a storm win. If one of your mana rocks can produce all colors as well, can also win via Breya herself.
Faithless Looting: We tend to go through cards in our hand quite fast, so we need ways to refill. Filters our hand and gets rid of stuff we don't need.
Gamble: We need tutors to search for our combo pieces, counters, and removal, and even sometimes for that vital land drop. It can come back to bite us by discarding what we tutored for, or another card we wanted to keep, but that’s why it’s called Gamble. It’s another low-cost tutor that is needed for the deck.
Gitaxian Probe, Ponder, Preordain: Our one mana draw spells. Having one of these cards in hand after casting Doomsday can help us combo off in the same turn.
Imperial Seal: Sorcery speed Vampiric Tutor. Having access to a tutor on turn one is powerful. Sets up plays for the following turn.
Vandalblast: Gets rid of a single problematic artifact, or for its overload cost, it can be a artifact board wipe for our opponents.
Winds of Change, Wheel of Fortune, Windfall: These cards help refill our hand when we empty them. Can also be used in conjunction with Notion Thief to empty everyone else’s hands and fill ours up even more.
Demonic Tutor: Black staple card. Hands down the best tutor available. 1B to bring any card from your library to your hand is insane. Will either tutor up a combo piece, or some protection for us to combo off.
Night's Whisper: Another draw spell. Can also be used in a Doomsday pile to help facilitate a win. Redundancy is never a bad thing.
Doomsday: The namesake card of the deck. This single card wins games. Use this spell to stack your deck in multiple ways to set up your combo for next turn, or the very same turn if you have the mana/cards to do so. Very powerful card to have, but also a very difficult card to use.
Yawgmoth's Will: Allows us to play our graveyard like a second hand, but just for the turn. Useful for when our combo pieces get countered/destroyed as it will allow us to replay them. Be cautious when using this, as ANY card that gets put into the graveyard will be exiled, not just the ones you play from the graveyard.
Angel's Grace: Mainly used in combination with Ad Nauseam to get our deck in our hands. Can also save us from losing when in a pinch.
Brainstorm: Draw three for a single mana is good, even if you must put two back. You can put cards you don’t need on top, and then use a fetchland to send them on their way. Can also help facilitate the Doomsday combo.
Chain of Vapor: Removes any problematic permanent so we can combo off. Be cautious when using this card, as it can also bite us back and stop us from winning on the same turn.
Demonic Consultation: One of the new pieces that we are trying out in the deck. This combined with LabMan and a cantrip is game over for everyone else.
Silence: Shuts our opponent’s out during our turn so we can combo off unhindered.
Swords to Plowshares: Low cost removal when we need it. One of the best pieces of removal in the game.
Thought Scour: Part of the Doomsday pile. This card alone puts what we need in the graveyard and grabs us the next piece to continue the combo.
Cabal Ritual: Another mana accelerant that produces BBB. With Threshold, it produces BBBBB, which is the exact amount we need to cast Ad Nauseam.
Cyclonic Rift: Can take care of a single problem that is keeping you from comboing off, or if you have the mana, return everyone else's permanents to hand and not have to worry about them for a turn or two.
Izzet Charm: An all-in-one spell. Helps protect our combo, filters our hand, and can remove a creature if need be.
Lim-Dul's Vault: A tutor card of sorts. Let's us take a look at five cards at a time and stack them how we want. If we don't like those five, we pay 1 life and try again. Used to help set up our win.
Predict: A cantrip that is mainly used in a specific Doomsday pile.
Tainted Pact: Another avenue for victory with LabMan, we can use it to go through our deck to find the last piece of our combo.
Frantic Search: Part of the Doomsday pile. Essentially it is a free spell if it resolves, and we will usually cast LabMan right after.
Thirst for Knowledge: Draw spell that lets us draw three cards but will have to discard 2 cards or one artifact.
Ad Nauseam: Our mass draw spell. Our curve is low, so we shouldn't lose too much life. Best to use at end of opponent's turn just before ours as we can draw a boat load of cards, start our turn with more than a full grip, and most likely combo off.
Gush: A "free" draw spell. Another piece used in conjunction with our Doomsday piles.
Enchantments:
Mystic Remora: Early game draw source. Can be used later in the game but loses its effectiveness when others can pay the extra four.
Necropotence: Card draw is important, and Necropotence is probably the best at doing that. We can fill our hand back to 7 or draw more to dig deeper for combo pieces. Once we get this down, we will usually want to pay 10 life at a minimum to shape our hand and hopefully combo off the following turn.
Ancient Tomb: This land taps for 2 colorless mana at the cost of two life. Being able to cast our spells a turn earlier is a powerful thing to do in any format.
Cavern of Souls: Breya is one of our win condition in the deck, so we need to make sure she hits the battlefield when we cast her. Produces our colors so we only need to produce 3 of the other colors alongside this land. Also, it's beneficial that all of the creatures we run are also Humans.
Darkslick Shores/Spirebluff Canal: Fast lands for early game color fixing. These both make the most important color, U, and Darkslick will make the second most important, B.
The strategy for this deck, much like any Doomsday/Ad Nauseam/combo deck, is straight forward: get your combo and win as fast as possible. How do we go about doing that? Our deck runs a plethora of tutors that can find us our first combo piece to get a game plan in motion, or it can find the other half to the combo in our hand. We also need to assess the other Commanders/board state to see if it’s possible to combo off as early as possible, or if some sort of protection will be needed. Each phase of the gameplay is important, so let’s take a closer look at them.
1) Mulligans: Mulligans are one of the most important things to master about this deck. You need to know what hands are good, which are bad, and which ones are manageable enough for the long game. When deciding whether to take a mulligan or not, you need to keep in mind the following things:
Minimum of 2 Lands: We need at least two lands to cast our spells. Within those two lands, we need to be able to make at least U and B, as those are our two most important colors. We would also like both of those to be Islands as well, as they will help facilitate a Gush/Doomsday pile.
Mana Acceleration: Whether this is mana rocks, or Dark Ritual/Cabal Ritual, we would like to see some kind of ramp in our opening hand, that way we can move the game state forward by caster more/bigger spells earlier in the game. Being able to cast Ad Nauseam within the first few turns will usually mean the end of the game soon.
Combo Piece/Tutor: We want to see one of these things in our opening hand. Having one of these will essentially decide our lines of play for the game. With an exact combo piece such as Lion’s Eye Diamond, or even Doomsday, we have an exact road to winning the game, so we should follow that. If we only have a tutor card, we can assess the board/players, and decide which combo would be most effective to take.
2) Early Game: The early game is where we deploy our lands and mana rocks. We develop our hand for a combo by tutoring the pieces we need or drawing into them naturally. We don’t want to give too much information out this early in the game, so if possible, use tutors that don’t make you reveal what you search for, such as Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, or Demonic Tutor. We also continuously monitor the board state and the other players. We want to know what decks they are playing, any possible disruption they may have, and whether they can combo before us.
If we were lucky and drew a “perfect hand,” we can attempt to combo off on Turn 1 or 2. What are some of the combos that allow for Turn 1 or 2 wins? Here are just a couple examples:
This spectacular hand will allow you to have a Turn 1 Doomsday win.
I will discuss both wins in further detail below in the Combos and Doomsday Piles sections below.
Those hands are basically “Magic Christmas Land,” but the possibilities are there, and knowing what kind of lines of play you are able to take will help you decide which is going to be the best and most efficient way of winning. You may not be able to get these on turn 1 or 2, but it is possible to do them even on 3 or 4.
3) Mid Game: If we are unable to get one of those “Magic Christmas Land” opening hands and win within the first few turns, then we move on into the mid game. In this phase of gameplay, we are still on the hunt for our combo pieces or protection (whichever we are at the time lacking), and still keeping an eye on the boardstate. We need to keep track of everyone’s life totals, cards in hand, number of untapped lands, and what is physically on the battlefield. If we think we can combo off if the opportunity arises, then we can do so. Otherwise, play the slow game and bring out Breya for some small beats or chump blocks.
4) Late Game: With the way the deck is build, we should never get to a late game, as that is when we are at our worst. How do we get to this point? Not drawing any combo pieces or tutors, or we tried going for a combo and it was stopped by multiple people. This is when we start hurting badly. We can attempt to go for another combo if we still have the resources (a hand and/or permanents on the field). Otherwise, Breya beats will be our plan until we win or lose. It’s bad to say our late game is terrible, but when you’re an all-in combo deck, it’s usually all or nothing, and at times it is going to be nothing. I would like to reiterate, however, that with the way the deck is built, we should never get to this point in the game and shouldn’t have to worry about it too much. Just keep it in the back of your mind the possibility is always there.
While I'm sure many people like to think their deck is top notch and has answers for everything, the truth is no matter what the deck is, there will be weaknesses and people will exploit them. In testing, I have discovered Breya has the following weaknesses:
1) Artifact Hate: Being an artifact deck is really tough. There is a ton of removal in the format whether it's things like Creeping Corrosion and Vandalblast or something more permanent like Return to Dust and Merciless Eviction. Which brings me to the next weakness.
2) Too Glass Cannon-y: This deck wins by combos. All-in combos to be exact. If our Bomberman combo gets disrupted, we will be left without a hand. If we get disrupted while going for our Doomsday win, we will also lose. We must know when it is safe to combo off, or have protection, otherwise we will lose and lose hard.
3) Creature-Based Strategies: We run very little creature removal. In fact, the only piece we have for dealing with mass creatures is Cyclonic Rift, and it will only help us for so long. We should hurry and find our combo pieces and win before we get overwhelmed by creatures, and sometimes things just don't work out in our favor.
4) Graveyard Hate: Some of our win conditions are graveyard based. If our graveyard becomes unusable via cards like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void, then we only have one way to win. If they use something like Tormod's Crypt or Surgical Extraction while we are attempting to combo off, we will be left without a hand or permanents.
5) Counters: Of course every deck is weak to counter spells. Being a combo deck means we are trying to get to our combo pieces as quickly as possible to combo off. Sometimes our tutors will get countered, or a vital piece to our combo gets countered, and when that happens, our game plan can fold.
While Doomsday itself isn't a combo, it does help facilitate our LabMan wins. However, we do have a couple of actual combos that help us win, and they are as follows:
Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond: The Bomberman combo! This is an infinite mana combo. With Salvagers in play, either cast LED, or bring it back with his ability. Activate LED, generating white mana. Activate Salvagers ability for 1W to bring LED back to hand, netting you a single W. Repeat this to generate infinite W to activate Salvager's ability, then continuing to generate your other three colors infinitely. Cast and activate Breya infinitely for the win.
Isochron Scepter, Dramatic Reversal, Aetherflux Reservoir, + mana rocks that produce at least 2: Activate Scepter using mana rocks which will create a copy of Dramatic Reversal, it will trigger Reservoir's life gain ability, and then when Reversal resolves, it will untap Scepter and the rocks. Repeat this process to gain infinite life to one-shot each opponent and win the game. You can also have Mox Opal or Mox Diamond in place of Reservoir in order to help create infinite colored mana, and then use Breya to facilitate your combo win.
Doomsday is probably one of the most complicated cards to play in the game. Knowing which cards go into a pile, and the order they go in, can make your head hurt. This section will go over some of the MANY different ways to build your piles. Please note that I did not create this list of piles, and I used a list located here to compile these. These piles also follow the same format: the first card in the list will be the top card of the pile, and the last will be the bottom card. If you wish to combo off the turn you cast Doomsday, you will have to have a cantrip in hand to start the process. Otherwise, you will start on your next turn. Here are some examples of our Doomsday Piles:
You will need to have 2 extra cards in hand for this pile to work. Cast Search and draw LabMan and Scour, discard two cards, and untap three lands. Cast LabMan, followed by Scour, binning your last two cards in the deck and drawing. Since there are no cards left, LabMan's replacement effect will win you the game.
If you have Sensei's Divining Top on the field, you can also do another pile that goes like this:
Activate SDT, drawing a card and putting Top as your first card in the pile. Cast Scour, binning SDT and the random, and drawing Frantic. Cast Frantic, drawing LabMan and Probe, discarding two cards, and untapping three lands. Cast Probe and with LabMan's replacement effect, you win the game.
Cast Gush by returning 2 Islands and draw into Probe and LED. Cast LED. Cast Probe, hold priority and crack LED for BBB. Draw Will off Probe and cast from the floating mana. Cast LED and crack for UUU. Cast Probe and draw Maniac. Cast Maniac from the floating mana, and cast one more cantrip for the win.
Cast Predict and name LabMan. He will get milled, and then you draw into LED and Probe. Cast LED. Cast Probe, hold priority and crack LED for BBB. Draw Will off Probe and cast from the floating mana. Cast LED, crack for UUU and play LabMan. Cast Probe for the win.
Cast Gush by returning 2 Islands and draw into Pact of Negation and Frantic Search. Cast Frantic Search and draw Probe and Maniac, and discard any two that are not LabMan, Pact, or Probe. Untap three lands and cast LabMan followed by Probe for the win.
Cast Gush by returning 2 Islands and draw into LED and Whisper. Cast LED. Cast Whisper, hold priority and crack LED for UUU. Draw into LabMan and Probe. Cast LabMan off of the floating mana, followed by Probe for the win.
Turn 1 Doomsday Win Pile:
The following cards need to ALL be in your opening hand:
Cast LED. Cast Probe, hold priority, crack LED for BBB, and draw Whisper. Cast Whisper and draw Ritual and Will with B left in pool. Cast Ritual followed by Will. Replay LED, crack for BBB, replay Ritual and have BBBBB in your pool. Replay Whisper and draw into Petal and LabMan with BBB left in pool. Cast Petal, crack for U, cast LabMan, and follow up by replaying Probe for the win.
Nim Deathmantle/Eldrazi Displacer + Krark-Clan Ironworks: This was previously the go-to infinite mana combo of the deck. Deathmantle was the graveyard-reliant combo, while Displacer could achieve the same effect without relying on the graveyard.
Metalworker + Staff of Domination: While Staff can be good in the deck itself, Metalworker relies heavily on having enough artifacts in hand to go infinite. With our curve being so low, and the chances of having any remaining artifacts in hand our hand, this isn't an ideal combo to have in this specific build of the deck.
Thopter Assembly + Time Sieve: We really don't want to be sacrificing other artifacts to take an extra turn, so in order for this combo to happen, Assembly needs to stay alive until your next turn, but if people see that's what is coming, they will destroy one or both of them. This is too slow of a combo to include.
Grand Architect + Pili-Pala: Another infinite mana combo. This combo is also too slow since we have to have Pili-Pala under our control since the beginning of our upkeep or have a haste enabler in order to untap it.
Saheeli Rai + Liquimetal Coating: This is another combo in which you want to utilize Bitter Ordeal, Disciple of the Vault, Marionette Master, and/or Altar of the Brood in order to win. Since we don't run any of those four, there is no point in running these two.
Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek: With infinite mana, we can create infinite tokens and gain infinite life. Breya already does this, and at a much faster rate, so this combo isn't needed in here, and its slots can be used for something else.
There are many other cards that can be included but aren't, and it would take a lot of typing to explain every single one of them. If you are curious as to why a certain card isn't in here, ask and I will be happy to explain!
I took out the lands as our curve ends at 5, and with the amount of mana rocks that are ran, it shouldn't be too difficult to get the mana that is needed. Grand Architect/Pili-Pala are cut as they are too slow to produce infinite mana, and are easy to remove. Took out PtE/Utter End as the former has a drawback of ramping our opponents and the latter is too high costed for removal. Intuition only fetches out a select few artifacts, so it isn't the best option to run. Saheeli Rai doesn't necessarily fit in here as we don't run many things to copy. Clock is cut to make room for other things, and isn't necessary to effectively run Winter Orb.
Added in Pact/Denial for more low-cost counters. Imperial Seal/Intuition/Tezzeret as more tutors. Toxic Deluge as another sweeper to help control the board. Gilded Lotus as another mana rock to produce through a Winter Orb. Future Sight to help dig through our deck, and combos with SDT and Etherium Sculptor. Ad Nauseam is another effective draw spell, and with having a small curve, should be able to get enough cards in hand to be able to combo off.
Etherium Sculptor really wasn't doing very much for the deck. The discount was negligible and often unneeded. Future Sight was barely every played, and I feel like there are better ways to be able to go through your deck to get what is needed.
Dark Confidant will be a fine inclusion, as it will let us dig deeper into our decks at the cost of a little life. Our curve is low (and now a bit lower) so the loss of life won't hurt us badly. Lim-Dul's Vault is the best way to dig through your deck and find what you need. It's cheaper to play than Future Sight, and can also set up the next few draws as well.
After playing the deck, I’ve realized that going for the Displacer/Deathmantle + KCI combo is really clunky and mana intensive. We still want infinite combos to be the way to go, so I added the Worldgorger dragon combo back in, as well as Doomsday to help get the combo pieces faster. I’ve dropped the Signets in favor of Talismans so we don’t need to leave mana open to use them. Notion Thief + Winds of Change or any other Wheel effect will empty out everyone else’s hands and help us dig even deeper for our combo or some sort of protection. Angel of Glory’s Rise was brought in to make a better Intuition pile if you have a reanimation spell in hand (bin Angel, Salvagers, and Trinket Mage in order to combo off). Lowered the curve significantly so Dark Confidant and Ad Nauseam doesn’t hurt as much.
Took out some more fluff to make room for LabMan combo and friends. Izzet Charm and Thirst for Knowledge digs us deeper into our deck, and can bin Worldgorger if we end up with him in our hand. Necromancy can let us combo off at end of turn if the need/opportunity arises. Pull from Eternity is really useful if one of our combo pieces happens to get exiled, or can be used in conjunction with Tainted Pact so we can flip past a combo piece and then bin it afterwards.
Completed revamp of the deck. New primer written to show the change in focus of the deck, as well as updated the card choices to hopefully make the deck more consistent.
I currently have a Gonti, Lord of Luxury ETB reanimator deck, but always thought it could work just as well, if not better, if it had a splash of white. So this is what this deck is all about!
White allows us some flicker effects, and some other key white ETB effects.
I needed more ways to recur, draw, and gain some life, so I decided to add Disciple of Bolas for the lifegain and draw, Sword of Light and Shadow for the lifegain and recursion, and Stoneforge Mystic in order to tutor it and the other equipment that is ran in the deck.
I opted to cut Palace Jailer as I don't want to risk giving anyone else card draw, Dimir House Guard as it is an important card slot, and an expensive tutor, and Abnormal Endurance just to free up a slot.
No new changes to deck. I am contemplating trying to find room for Scour from Existence and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger as more removal. Not entirely too sure as they aren't artifacts, so aren't easily recurrable. The list I am running is pretty tight and it's really hard for me to decided on what isn't necessary and can be cut.
On a more positive note, I commissioned a playmat and it's coming along nicely. Should hopefully be done soon.
I've been testing quite a few changes recently, and these are the ones I've come up with. I am going to continue to test these out and see which ones will ultimately stick.
We don't get any mana from Blinkmoth Urn until our following turn, but our opponents do, so this gets the cut. I never used Haven of the Spirit Dragon or Sequestered Stash for their abilities, nor have a ran into the situation where Homeward Path was necessary. Karn, Scion of Urza, while he does find a spot in the deck, and worked really well, often times I found myself getting a land, and the opponent exiling a good card, and then kill him. It's a bit of a risky card, and I don't want to take too many risks. Lightning Greaves was cut as was only really used with Blightsteel Colossus. We usually only tutor Blightsteel at end of an opponent's turn, so we can swing with him on ours, so the Greaves isn't needed. Mirrorworks I have found that I haven't been using it for anything other than pitch fodder, so when a card gets to that point, it needs to go. Lastly, The Chain Veil is better off in a deck that has a bunch of Planeswalkers to fully utilize it, or somewhere it can go infinite such as Teferi, Temporal Archmage.
I have added in the Tron lands in place of the three I took out. While they do absolutely nothing on their own, the ability to make 7 mana with three lands is a hard thing to ignore. I've added in Krark-Clan Ironworks and Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer as mainly sac outlets to avoid exile effects, and to set up a nice Scrap Mastery. KCI also allows us to ramp a little bit, and Slobad provides some protection for our artifacts. Chaos Wand is pretty bonkers. With enough rocks and Paradox Engine, we can churn through our opponent's decks until they run out of instants and sorceries. Scrap Trawler is back as he is too good to pass up, especially since he doesn't have to go to the graveyard to return an artifact, like Myr Retriever and Junk Diver. Sculpting Steel is a nice little utility artifact that can become whatever artifact we need at the time, whether it's a mana rock, or a Spine of Ish Sah.
I'm going to have to go through this list and see if I can find anything interesting in recent sets to give this deck a little tune up. I might have to get it loaded into MTGO soon.
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”Omnath, the "flickering heart," is a divine manifestation of the wild and chaotic mana of Zendikar, an elemental being that can be found in some incarnation in many creation myths of the plane.
Despite the uncertainty of Omnath's actual existence, a real site on a high mesa of Ondu was dubbed the "Prison of Omnath". The site was safeguarded by a binding circle of strange globular swamp-growths, stone hedrons, and animal bones. The circle created an eerie sensation in those who approached it, deterring them from approaching the circle's center, where a huge pit leads deep into the ground. Those who got too close died to the destructive surges of power that lashed out from the circle.
Religious pilgrims from across Zendikar traveled to the Prison of Omnath on a twice-yearly basis to perform the "Ritual of Lights", a ceremony designed to protect the world from the release of Omnath. During the events leading up to the Rise of the Eldrazi, however, the ritual was disrupted and Omnath was set loose.” – MTG Salvation Wiki
On October 2, 2015, Battle for Zendikar was released, and in the wake of the Eldrazi rampage, Omnath, formerly the Locus of Mana, was released from his prison as the Locus of Rage.
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The premise of this deck is straight forward: play lands, cast ramp spells, get Omnath onto the battlefield, play more lands, and create a bunch of Elementals. Omnath is a "lands matter" type of commander, meaning lands are just as important as your other spells. Lands serve a dual purpose in this deck: the obvious one is they allow you to cast your spells. But each land is also a creature while Omnath is out, and each fetchland is two creatures. But what can we do with these Elementals? We can use them the old-fashioned way by turning them sideways and attacking. We can also use them for utility by drawing cards or dealing damage to any target.
When this Omnath was first spoiled, I thought to myself “Oh cool, they made another Omnath, but RG this time. Pretty neat ability, too.” Sounds real enthusiastic, huh? Well, that was before I gave him a chance. I built him on Xmage to test him out. It was originally built as a RG good stuff deck that wasn't really focused on Omnath. That's where I went wrong. Omnath is a Commander that you NEED to build around. So how do you fully take advantage of this commander? You make him a “Lands Matter” deck. You cut the good stuff spells and add a bunch more land and ramps spells. You don't need very many creatures, as Omnath himself makes them, and they're 5/5s, too! Once I made those changes, he became a much more ferocious deck. I won games I had no right to win. I came from behind and pulled victory after victory. I've even taken someone from 40 to 0 life with 6 cards left in my library. This deck is the culmination of all of the testing and hard work that I and a few others have done to get this deck into competitive shape.
“Why would anyone want to build a deck with a commander that has that high of a CMC?” The answer is quite simple. This is essentially a mono-green ramp deck which splashes red for its burn counterpart. Having two colors gives you access to good spells on each side, and also more fetch lands to make better use of Omnath.
You ramp into Omnath, create a bunch of 5/5's, and then overwhelm your opponent with either massive combat damage, or if you feel like sitting back, use them for blockers, sac them and kill your opponents on their turn.
Let's take a closer look at Omnath to see why we chose him as our commander:
Cost:
Omnath costs 3RRGG. Yes, that is an EXTREMELY costly commander. While the cost may be a big deterrent, it is usually a non-issue with the number of lands and ramp spells that are present in the deck.
Power/Toughness:
Omnath is a 5/5 for 7 mana. It isn't the best body for its cost, but it also isn't terrible. He does make a great attacker, and also a great blocker. These stats would be even better if he had Trample, but then he would most likely cost more as it would be too good.
Abilities:
His abilities are where Omnath really shines. His Landfall ability creates a 5/5 Elemental whenever a land enters the battlefield. The key to this ability is the first part: "Whenever a land enters the battlefield". This is important, as it triggers any time a land enters, not just when you play. So, it will trigger from our ramp spells as well. The second part of his ability will deal damage to ANY target when Omnath or any other Elemental dies. We can use that ability in conjunction with a sac outlet to damage creatures, planeswalkers, and players. This is another way for us to win games.
1) You like playing Gruul colors.
2) You like creating a mass amount of tokens.
3) You like winning with or without going to combat.
4) You like blowing up creatures on the board.
5) You like ramping into bigger things and having a lot of lands.
You might dislike Omnath if:
1) You dislike all the reasons why you should play him.
2) You hate playing decks that focus on the commanders.
3) You dislike investing in big spells that get countered.
4) You prefer combo/control decks.
5) You don't like being targeted due to the amount of lands you have compared to others.
7 Omnath, Locus of Rage
//Creatures (13):
1 Elvish Reclaimer
2 Lotus Cobra
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
3 Eternal Witness
3 Ramunap Excavator
3 Springbloom Druid
3 Tireless Tracker
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
5 Titania, Protector of Argoth
7 Avenger of Zendikar
8 Craterhoof Behemoth
//Artifacts (7):
0 Mana Crypt
1 Amulet of Vigor
1 Sol Ring
2 Lightning Greaves
3 Ashnod's Altar
3 Crucible of Worlds
7 Akroma's Memorial
//Sorceries (20):
2 Life from the Loam
2 Nature's Lore
2 Sylvan Scrying
2 Three Visits
3 Cultivate
3 Genesis Wave
3 Kodama's Reach
3 Nissa's Pilgrimage
3 Wheel of Fortune
4 Explosive Vegetation
4 Natural Order
4 Scapeshift
4 Skyshroud Claim
4 Splendid Reclamation
4 Tempt with Discovery
5 Hour of Promise
5 Shamanic Revelation
5 Traverse the Outlands
6 Rishkar's Expertise
9 Blasphemous Act
1 Crop Rotation
3 Chord of Calling
3 Harrow
4 Force of Vigor
//Enchantments (12):
1 Burgeoning
1 Exploration
2 Goblin Bombardment
2 Steely Resolve
2 Sylvan Library
3 Elemental Bond
4 Greater Good
4 Parallel Lives
5 Doubling Season
5 Perilous Forays
5 Where Ancients Tread
6 Warstorm Surge
//Planeswalkers (1):
5 Nissa, Vital Force
//Lands (42):
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Cinder Glade
1 Command Beacon
1 Evolving Wilds
14 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Ghost Town
1 Misty Rainforest
6 Mountain
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Sheltered Thicket
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Stomping Ground
1 Strip Mine
1 Taiga
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Yavimaya Hollow
7 Omnath, Locus of Rage
//Bombs:
3 Genesis Wave
7 Avenger of Zendikar
8 Craterhoof Behemoth
//Card Advantage:
2 Life from the Loam
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Elemental Bond
3 Eternal Witness
3 Ramunap Excavator
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Wheel of Fortune
4 Greater Good
5 Nissa, Vital Force
5 Shamanic Revelation
6 Rishkar's Expertise
//Protection:
2 Lightning Greaves
2 Steely Resolve
7 Akroma's Memorial
//Ramp/Land Advantage:
0 Mana Crypt
1 Amulet of Vigor
1 Burgeoning
1 Crop Rotation
1 Elvish Reclaimer
1 Exploration
1 Sol Ring
2 Life from the Loam
2 Lotus Cobra
2 Nature's Lore
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Sylvan Scrying
2 Three Visits
3 Ashnod's Altar
3 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
3 Cultivate
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Harrow
3 Kodama's Reach
3 Nissa's Pilgrimage
3 Ramunap Excavator
3 Springbloom Druid
4 Explosive Vegetation
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Scapeshift
4 Skyshroud Claim
4 Splendid Reclamation
4 Tempt with Discovery
5 Hour of Promise
5 Nissa, Vital Force
5 Perilous Forays
5 Titania, Protector of Argoth
5 Traverse the Outlands
2 Goblin Bombardment
4 Force of Vigor
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
5 Where Ancients Tread
6 Warstorm Surge
9 Blasphemous Act
//Sac Outlets:
2 Goblin Bombardment
3 Ashnod's Altar
4 Greater Good
5 Perilous Forays
//Tokens:
4 Parallel Lives
5 Doubling Season
7 Avenger of Zendikar
//Tutor:
1 Crop Rotation
1 Elvish Reclaimer
3 Chord of Calling
4 Natural Order
5 Perilous Forays
//Lands:
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Cinder Glade
1 Command Beacon
1 Evolving Wilds
14 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Ghost Town
1 Misty Rainforest
6 Mountain
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Sheltered Thicket
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Stomping Ground
1 Strip Mine
1 Taiga
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Yavimaya Hollow
While there are many options for cards that could be included in a deck, there is only room for 100. In the spoiler below, I will give a card-by-card explanation as to why I specifically chose to have a certain card in in the deck.
Artifacts:
Sorceries:
Instants:
Enchantments:
Planeswalkers:
Lands:
In order to fully understand how to play the deck, we need to look closer at Omnath to see what he does. He focuses on three things: lands, creating Elementals, and those Elementals dying. Let's take a look at those three things individually.
Now, how do we go about playing through a game with Omnath? Let's take a look at what we should do:
1) Mulligans: Your opening hand needs to consist of two things: lands and ramp. If you have neither, then a mulligan is necessary. If your opening hand has a higher ratio of lands to spells, keep the hand as you will be able to play a land every turn and should be able to draw into a ramp spell. If your hand contains a few ramp spells, with only one or two lands, if one of those ramp spells is 2 CMC, keep it; otherwise you will want to mulligan it away. This is a lands deck, and a lot of our spells have a high CMC, so without lands or a way to get lands, we're not going to have much luck playing the game.
2) Early Game: The early game is where you want to set everything up. You want to be playing lands every turn, and your early ramp spells so that you can play your bigger spells sooner. We don't play many straight card draw spells, so getting out a Tireless Tracker early on and getting lands on to the battlefield will help you get to one of your draw engines. Ideally, you want to draw into Elemental Bond early on as well, so when you start creating Elementals, you can draw a card for each one made. Next, you want to get a free sac outlet online such as Ashnod's Altar or Goblin Bombardment so you can use your Elementals to control the board. Greater Good is the best of both worlds, as it is a draw engine that will net you two cards in hand, but also a free sac outlet.
3) Mid Game: We should have been dropping lands and playing ramp spells at this point. We have a fair amount of mana available to us, and should have some sort of engine online, whether it is a draw engine, sac outlet, a damage enabler like Purphoros, God of the Forge, or a token doubler such as Parallel Lives or Doubling Season. We can now focus on getting Omnath onto the battlefield and start generating tokens. We must pay attention to our opponents and their board states. If they have mana open, we must be prepared for either counters or spot removal. We can help mitigate this by using Cavern of Souls to prevent him from being countered, but also Steely Resolve to protect him from spot removal with no further investment. That's why it is important to ramp fast and get him down as early in the game as possible, as our opponents will also be building up their board and resources and may not have something readily available early on. It is possible to play Omnath as early as turn three, and here is how:
We also do not want to be playing Omnath without a land drop to follow. If you must take a turn off from playing him because you don't have a land, then do so. If we play him just for the sake of getting him out, there is a good chance he will be killed. We paid 7 mana for nothing, and now will have to take a couple extra turns to get him back out. You have to plan your plays very carefully, as he will get more expensive to cast each time he is killed, and we only have so many ramp spells and land drops before it won't be enough.
4) Late Game: If you have Omnath out and have been dropping lands and creating tokens, then things have been going exactly as planned. You must use your discretion as to how you wish to proceed during this point of the game. If you can swing in for a few points of damage to lower someone's life total, then do so. But try to keep some blockers back as the tokens can dish out 5 damage to an attacking creature, and another 3 if said token dies. You can swing in unhindered if you have Akroma's Memorial out as our creatures will have Vigilance. Casting Craterhoof Behemoth with a buttload of tokens out means we will be able to get damage through via Trample and should be able to take out everyone else.
If the combat step is somehow hindered and makes it difficult to swing in, we can always sac our tokens to burn everyone out of the game. Each token that is sacrificed will deal 3 damage to any target. We can pump a bunch of mana into a Genesis Wave and get a bunch of Landfall triggers, which should make things easier by creating more Elementals and hopefully burn our opponents low enough with Warstorm Surge/Where Ancients Tread that we can sac a few tokens to finish them off.
When exactly do you want to play Omnath?
When I play this deck, I always try to rush for Omnath. But is it good enough to get to 7 mana to cast him and get nothing out of him? No, not really. The best time to cast Omnath is when you can get value out of him. What kind of value, you ask? Wait until you have something out that will trigger when he enters, like Where Ancients Tread or Elemental Bond, or when you can cast him and make a land drop. Don't pay 7 mana for him to just get killed and cost 9 next time. Get something out of him before he dies.
What if Omnath keeps dying?
Omnath is going to die. A lot, in fact. What do you do when that happens? Keep ramping and casting him. Eventually, you will get to the point where he will stick around for a good amount of time. Give him some protection of sorts with Lightning Greaves or Akroma's Memorial. Command Beacon is Omnath's best friend. While the commander tax is still adding up, casting Omnath from your hand will still only cost 7 mana. Being able to reuse this land with Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds will help alleviate the excruciating commander tax this guy can get.
How do I win?
Winning can be simple. Create a bunch of Elementals and swing. Adding Akroma's Memorial to give your army evasion and protection, or a Craterhoof Behemoth with an army is usually game over for most players. However, most games I have won by using Warstorm Surge, Where Ancients Tread, and Purphoros, God of the Forge and dropping a bunch of lands into play and burning everyone to death. Using sac outlets and “machine gunning” everyone down is another effective way of closing out the game. No attacking necessary. A Genesis Wave for an absurd amount of mana will usually enable you to get a good majority of those cards, along with lands for triggers, and win the game.
Another thing to keep in mind when playing is who you are playing against. If you're playing against a blue player, you need to be able to know when to play your spells. Don't needlessly cast something if you think they have a counterspell waiting for you. If need be, try baiting them out with a spell you don't necessarily need. Be cautious if the blue player has 7 mana available. If you play everything you can, they can and will Cyclonic Rift you and restart your entire board. It's always a good idea to have a free sac outlet available in that case so you can at least Bolt them a few times and get some use out of your Elementals.
Just like any deck, this one has its weaknesses as well. There is hopefully enough redundancy in the deck that you should be able to fight through whatever is thrown at you. Let's look at some of the weaknesses:
1) Counters: Every deck's worst nightmare. We ramp a lot and need the ramp in order to keep playing Omnath. If your opponent is smart, they will want to keep you down on lands, so they are going to counter your ramp spells first. After that, they will probably go after countering Omnath in order to keep his tax high.
2) Land Destruction: We rely on our lands. A lot. When we encounter LD of any kind, it slows us down a lot. Yes, we ramp a lot. But if we get hit with a mass land destruction spell, we're back to square one and need to start over, this time with less ramp spells to help us out since we already have used some.
3) Gaddock Teeg: This guy right here is a big pain. A lot of our good spells have a CMC of 4 or more. He stops them dead. If we can get Omnath and a sac outlet out and keep them out, we can keep him in check. Otherwise, he will slow us down a lot.
4) Flying Creatures: We don't have any flyers and we only have one creature with reach. In order to protect ourselves from them, we need to either have a sac outlet with enough Elementals to Bolt them out of the sky, or have Akroma's Memorial so our Elementals can take flight for some aerial assault and prevention.
5) Aven Mindcensor: This deck fetches a lot. When you can only search through the top four cards of your library, most of the time you are going to whiff, even with the number of lands we run. When this guy is out, we need to play slowly until we have a way to get him off of the field.
11-24-15:
OUT:
Skullwinder
Undergrowth Champion
Whisperwood Elemental
Xenagos, the Reveler
Nissa, Worldwaker
IN:
Rampant Growth
Nature's Lore
Farseek
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Skyshroud Claim
I took out the Planeswalkers because they only usually stick around for the turn they come into play, so have little staying power. Skullwinder, Undergrowth Champion, and Whisperwood Elemental were severely underperforming to warrant keeping them in. Replaced all of them with more ramp to get to Omnath faster, and to provide extra landfall triggers once he's out.
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12-6-15:
OUT:
Mountain
IN:
Yavimaya Hollow
Added another utility land to help keep Omnath alive.
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1-14-16:
OUT:
Reclamation Sage
Spearbreaker Behemoth
Beast Within
Gruul Turf
Terramorphic Expanse
IN:
Mina and Denn, Wildborn
World Breaker
Ashnod's Altar
Wastes x2
Took out Reclamation Sage for World Breaker since Breaker's removal is exile and it's an on cast trigger, so even if he gets countered, his removal won't (unless the ability is countered). Took out Turf and Expanse to add in 2 Wastes so I have a fetchable source of colorless for World Breaker. Took out Behemoth and Beast Within in favor of Alter for a free sac outlet/ramp and Mina and Denn for extra land drops, and to be able to reuse lands in play for extra land drops.
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4-12-16:
OUT:
Spellbreaker Behemoth
IN:
Nissa, Vastwood Seer
Behemoth has been fairly lackluster for me. Haven't necessarily needed the uncounterability. Nissa provides me with the ability to ensure a land drop, and when she slips, will either give me more card advantage or more ramp.
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6-8-16:
OUT:
Rampant Growth
Sword of the Animist
Eldrazi Monument
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
IN:
Tireless Tracker
Ulvenwald Hydra
Gratuitous Violence
Natural Order
I took out Rampant Growth as it was the least effective ramp spell in the deck. Sword of the Animist requires you to have a creature and attack with said creature in order to ramp, so it isn't necessarily all that good. Eldrazi Monument is only good if you have enough creatures to sac to keep it in play, and we don't really care if our creatures are indestructible. Ulamog has been my #1 Bribery target. It's removal is good, but when it gets used against us, we have very few things to remove it, so it gets the axe.
In their places, I am adding Tireless Tracker for early beats that grows and for the insane amount of clues and future card draw it provides. Ulvenwald Hydra is a big creature that can fetch out Gaea's Cradle (or any other land). Gratuitous Violence is essentially a win more card that doubles all damage from combat and also Omnath triggers. Natural Order is a sac outlet to Bolt something, and can fetch any green creature we need.
Currently online, I am testing Seasons Past/Praetor's Counsel in place of Gratuitous Violence since it isn't a real necessary card, and as stated above, is a win more card. Also testing out Mana Crypt in place of a Mountain for earlier ramp.
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6/13/16:
OUT:
Gratuitous Violence
Mountain
IN:
Seasons Past
Mana Crypt
Gratuitous Violence isn't a necessary card to have. It is essentially a win-more card, and I find I will always mulligan it away if given the chance, and am not too happy to see it when I do draw it. Seasons Past has been the card I've been testing in its place and it seems to do the trick. It allows you to get some cards back, and will get put back in your library for future use, if it resolves. I am still contemplating whether or not this is better off than Praetor's Counsel is. More testing will need to be done.
Mana Crypt allows for earlier plays. It enables turn 1 Kodama's Reach/Cultivate, turn 2 Explosive Vegetation/Skyshroud Claim, and various other early turn ramp. With me cutting Gratuitous Violence, I am allowed to cut 1 Mountain since I no longer have a spell that requires 3 red mana.
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8/1/16:
OUT:
Seasons Past
IN:
Splendid Reclamation
Seasons Past has been in a flex spot that has been shared with Gratuitous Violence and Praetors' Counsel, and none of them have felt like a permanent fixture of the deck. With the printing of Splendid Reclamation, I feel like that slot can be permanently filled. It allows all of your lands to return to the battlefield and can give you a ton of Landfall triggers.
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7/6/18:
OUT:
Evolutionary Leap
Farseek
Greenwarden of Murasa
Mina and Denn, Wildborn
Stalking Vengeance
Thawing Glaciers
Verdant Confluence
Wastes x2
World Breaker
IN:
Ancient Tomb
Growing Rites of Itlimoc
Hour of Promise
Nissa, Vital Force
Ramunap Excavator
Sheltered Thicket
Steely Resolve
Sylvan Scrying
Three Visits
Traverse the Outlands
Evolutionary Leap is honestly not the best card in here as we have fewer than normal creatures. Farseek can only grab Mountains in our deck, and they enter tapped. Greenwarden is just a big Eternal Witness that costs more. Mina and Denn I found to be lackluster, and rarely used the return land ability. Stalking Vengeance also was just lackluster. Thawing Glaciers I felt was too slow for what it did. Verdant Confluence wasn't that great either, and it costs too much. World Breaker and Wastes just wasn't worth their investments.
Ancient Tomb allows our bigger spells to be played much earlier. Growing Rites of Itlimoc has the same downside that Leap has with us not having very many creatures, but having access to a 2nd Gaea's Cradle is worth it, for now at least. Hour of Promise ramps us and allows us to get any lands from our deck. Nissa is crazy in this deck and it's really easy to get her ultimate, which will then let us draw an absurd amount of cards. Ramunap is another Crucible, so having another source to grab lands from our graveyard is invaluable. Sheltered Thicket is another fetchable dual land, and can draw us a card when we don't need the land. Steely Resolve is mass protection from targeted spells for all of our Elementals. Sylvan Scrying can grab us any land we need. Three Visits is a much better Farseek. Traverse the Outlands will usually grab us 5 lands as long as Omnath or an Elemental is on the battlefield.
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7/31/18:
OUT:
Ulvenwald Hydra
IN:
Crop Rotation
I decided to cut the Hydra in favor of Rotation simply because not only can we play it much earlier, but the Hydra makes the land come into play tapped, while Rotation will let us use it right away. This is extremely important as we can immediately use the mana if we grab Gaea's Cradle, or whatever utility land or fetch land we end up grabbing.
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8/11/18:
OUT:
Growing Rites of Itlimoc
IN:
Sylvan Awakening
Growing Rites of Itlimoc has been lackluster in here. While it is nice to have a second Gaea's Cradle out, we almost never hit a creature off it. It isn't necessary to hit a creature but paying 2G for an enchantment that may not do anything isn't worth it.
Sylvan Awakening is a card that can help close out a game. We ramp hard, so we will have a lot of lands out that will become hasty indestructible Elementals. Once we swing in, we can sac them to burn everyone out of the game.
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12/21/18:
OUT:
Nissa, Vastwood Seer
IN:
Rishkar's Expertise
I made this change a few weeks back, but I forgot to update here. Nissa has been a real lackluster card. She doesn't necessarily ramp us any further, just guarantees a land drop for this turn or the next. When she does flip, while her abilities do have synergy with the deck, they aren't really game changing. Adding Rishkar's Expertise gives us another card draw spell that can draw us up to 5 cards, sometimes more, and allows us to cast one of the newly drawn cards or one we had previously for free, which can allow us to cast another spell with the mana we saved.
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5/23/19:
OUT:
Sylvan Awakening
IN:
Finale of Devastation
I'm still a bit on the fence with this one, but Finale is SO GOOD! Being able to tutor from deck or graveyard is amazing, especially if something like Craterhoof someone ended up in the yard. On top of that, we can give our creatures +10 or more power while giving them haste can also make Avenger a game-ender. While Awakening is nice, if the swing for lethal doesn't pan out, I'd rather not have to sac lands in order to deal damage.
I think this is a great swap, and will make the deck even crazier.
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6/26/19:
I never ended up doing an official review for Modern Horizons, so I figured I'd better pick up the slack with a review of the new core set!
We only got one card from the set that I feel can make a serious impact, and that is Elvish Reclaimer.
Reclaimer is essentially a Crop Rotation on a potential 3/4 body for only G. Unfortunately, the land will enter tapped, unlike Rotation, but being able to produce another land drop for a Landfall trigger is enormous, and having another outlet for getting out a Gaea's Cradle is insane.
So, where do I slot this guy in? There aren't very many flex spots in the deck, and from a few posts above, I've already made some changes to the deck post-Modern Horizons, so I think I may end up trying him out in the Circuitous Route spot, just to see how it works out.
With that, here is how the changes are going to look:
OUT:
Boundless Realms
Blighted Woodland
Chaos Warp
Finale of Devastation
IN:
Elvish Reclaimer
Force of Vigor
Prismatic Vista
Springbloom Druid
1
A brief little history on this deck. Daretti was not my first Commander deck. In fact, when I first thought about getting into the format, I found a Kaalia of the Vast list that I liked and built it. I had a fair amount of success with it. However, when people saw what it could do, I was always the target of everyone’s attacks, counters, and removal spells. It made it hard to make a comeback and play anything.
When Commander 2014 came out, I decided I was going to build Nahiri, the Lithomancer until I happened upon a Daretti, Scrap Savant. I thought to myself, “No way can this deck be any good. But, it looks fun, so I’ll try this instead.”
Fast forward to today. Daretti has easily become my best and all-time favorite deck. It doesn’t seem to matter how much hate he receives; he seems to be able to persist through much of it, and can come back and win games out of nowhere. I haven’t had more fun games than I have had with him.
His abilities are where he really shines:
much better since you will get back what you welded away, gaining you an even better board presence.
Once this is happens, you become harder to kill.
You might like Daretti if:
1) You enjoy the simplicity of playing mono-colored decks.
2) You enjoy artifact and/or graveyard based decks.
3) You enjoy cheating in big, dumb artifacts.
4) You enjoy playing aggro decks, but also like elements of control.
5) You like having a Planeswalker as your General, instead of a boring creature.
6) You like playing some Stax effects to help control the board so you can Ultimate Daretti.
You might dislike Daretti if:
1) You want more colors for more options.
2) You hate artifacts and want to destroy all graveyards.
3) You want the option of using Commander Damage as an alternate win condition (which you can still win that way here; you just have to try. ;))
4) You dislike playing Planeswalkers as a Commander. Since it's inception, the only commander option was Legendary Creatures. Some people like to stick to the original ways of only running Legendary Creature Commanders; there is nothing wrong with that.
5) You dislike any Stax effects.
This deck has changed quite a bit over the years. Straight out of the box, there's quite a bit of non-artifact cards in it. I immediately noticed that as being a problem because if you want to maximize Daretti's effectiveness, you need more artifacts than that.
Next thing I noticed, mono-red doesn't have many forms of disruption. In order to combat full boards of creatures that want to attack Daretti, or decks with lots of counters that want to counter all of your relevant things. That's why I added a bit of Stax effects with the combo of Static Orb and Clock of Omens to slow everyone down. Mass creature removal is also necessary, as a clogged board is difficult to deal with.
What you see here is a culmination of extensive testing and I feel it is at a point where not much else needs to be changed.
4 Daretti, Scrap Savant
//Creatures (12):
1 Goblin Welder
2 Loyal Apprentice
3 Imperial Recruiter
3 Magus of the Moon
3 Metalworker
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Silent Arbiter
4 Solemn Simulacrum
6 Combustible Gearhulk
6 Duplicant
6 Wurmcoil Engine
7 Myr Battlesphere
//Artifacts (35):
0 Mana Crypt
0 Mox Diamond
0 Mox Opal
1 Mana Vault
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Voltaic Key
2 Grim Monolith
2 Mind Stone
2 Winter Orb
3 Basalt Monolith
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Oblivion Stone
3 Rings of Brighthearth
3 Sculpting Steel
3 Staff of Domination
3 Static Orb
3 Tangle Wire
4 Clock of Omens
4 Hedron Archive
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Unwinding Clock
5 Alhammarret's Archive
5 Gilded Lotus
5 Memory Jar
5 Paradox Engine
6 Contagion Engine
6 Mindslaver
6 Mycosynth Lattice
6 Planar Bridge
6 Staff of Nin
7 Spine of Ish Sah
9 Darksteel Forge
1 Faithless Looting
1 Gamble
1 Vandalblast
2 Tormenting Voice
3 Saheeli's Directive
3 Wheel of Fortune
4 Pirate's Pillage
5 Scrap Mastery
7 All Is Dust
9 Blasphemous Act
//Instants (1):
3 Chaos Warp
//Enchantments (2):
3 Blood Moon
4 Stranglehold
//Planeswalkers (6):
4 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Karn, the Great Creator
6 Chandra, Flamecaller
6 Ugin, the Ineffable
7 Karn Liberated
8 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
//Land (33):
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Blast Zone
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Buried Ruin
1 Command Beacon
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Forge of Heroes
1 Great Furnace
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Inventors' Fair
1 Karn's Bastion
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Mishra's Workshop
12 Mountain
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland
4 Daretti, Scrap Savant
//Big Creature:
5 Karn, Silver Golem
6 Combustible Gearhulk
6 Thopter Assembly
6 Wurmcoil Engine
7 Myr Battlesphere
12 Blightsteel Colossus
//Card Advantage and Tutor:
1 Faithless Looting
1 Gamble
1 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Tormenting Voice
3 Wheel of Fortune
3 Imperial Recruiter
3 Quicksmith Genius
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Oracle's Vault
4 Pirate's Pillage
5 Alhammarret's Archive
5 Kuldotha Forgemaster
5 Memory Jar
6 Chandra, Flamecaller
6 Planar Bridge
6 Staff of Nin
//Control:
2 Winter Orb
3 Static Orb
6 Mindslaver
//Mana Acceleration:
0 Mana Crypt
0 Mox Diamond
0 Mox Opal
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
2 Grim Monolith
2 Mind Stone
3 Basalt Monolith
3 Metalworker
4 Hedron Archive
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks
4 Solemn Simulacrum
5 Gilded Lotus
1 Goblin Welder
3 Scrap Trawler
5 Scrap Mastery
//Removal:
1 Vandalblast
3 Chaos Warp
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
6 Contagion Engine
6 Duplicant
6 Steel Hellkite
7 All Is Dust
7 Karn Liberated
7 Spine of Ish Sah
8 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
9 Blasphemous Act
//Untap Effect:
1 Voltaic Key
4 Clock of Omens
4 Unwinding Clock
//Utility Cards:
2 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
3 Chaos Wand
3 Rings of Brighthearth
3 Saheeli's Directive
3 Scrap Trawler
3 Sculpting Steel
3 Staff of Domination
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks
4 Silent Arbiter
5 Paradox Engine
6 Mycosynth Lattice
9 Darksteel Forge
0 Ancient Tomb
0 Bazaar of Baghdad
0 Buried Ruin
0 Command Beacon
0 Darksteel Citadel
0 Forge of Heroes
0 Geier Reach Sanitarium
0 Great Furnace
0 Inventors' Fair
0 Maze of Ith
0 Mishra's Workshop
18 Mountain
0 Strip Mine
0 Urza's Mine
0 Urza's Power Plant
0 Urza's Tower
0 Wasteland
While there are many options for cards that could be included in a deck, there are only room for 100. In the spoiler below, I will give a card-by-card explanation as to why I specifically chose to have a certain card in in the deck.
Artifacts:
Sorceries:
Instants:
Planeswalkers:
Lands:
This section is reserved for cards that didn’t make the cut, or will be kept in reserve as a “toolbox” of sorts for things I can swap out when I feel like changing the deck up.
As far as a strategy goes, everyone is going to play their deck differently. The way I play Daretti is to get him out early and rush towards his Emblem. Once the Emblem is achieved, it becomes difficult for our opponents to win. How do we go about doing this? Simple. We do the following:
1) Mulligans: Your opening hand is very important. It'll basically tell you how the game is going to go. You want at the very least one Mountain in your starting hand in order to pay for Daretti's color requirement. After that, you want mana rocks. More specifically, early, cheap mana rocks like Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, or Mana Vault. Even Grim Monolith is good, albeit a bit slower than the others. You want these to pump out a fast Daretti. Finally, you need pitch fodder. Whether that's the big artifacts, extra mana rocks or lands, or utility artifacts. Something to make it worth casting Daretti.
2) Early Game: Get Daretti out as fast as you can. Turn 1 is definitely the best, and there are a few ways of doing this, such as:
3) Mid Game: This is the part of the game when you have been alternating his +2 and -2 abilities to set up your hand, board, and graveyard in order to get to your win conditions. By this time, your opponents should be on to your game plan and what your deck can do (if they didn't know already just by seeing Daretti). You want to be able to protect him as much as you can, so use things like Blasphemous Act to clear the board of creatures so they can't attack him.
4) Late Game: By this time, you should have dug and pitched through your deck to find your road to victory. There are many ways to do this. Straight up attacking down your opponent's life totals from 40 to 0, infect damage through Blightsteel Colossus, or through one of the many combos this deck can do, which will be discussed in another section.
As with any deck, there are going to be some weaknesses. Some of these include:
1) Artifact Hate: Daretti is an artifact-based deck, and in the EDH format, there is TONS of various artifact removal. There is the old-fasioned artifact destruction, such as Aura Shards, Vandalblast, Bane of Progress, among others, but these are the most potent. There is also exiling effects, such as Return to Dust and Merciless Eviction, as well as many others. These are harder to come back from, as we cannot recur them. Stony Silence is also a very bad card for us. If we have Mycosynth Lattice, this card will cause the game to draw out, as no one can cast anything since they can't tap lands for mana.
2) Graveyard Hate: Not only is Daretti an artifact-based deck, it is also graveyard-based. Cards such as Tormod’s Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, etc. put a real damper on our gameplan. Trying to get these out of our way as early as possible will only help us in the long run.
3) Counter Decks: Personally, this is the one I dislike the most. It’s one thing to play your stuff and then get it removed. It’s another to not even get to play them because they get countered. Over. And over. And over again. It can be frustrating, so if you’re playing in a counter-heavy meta, Defense Grid might not be a bad inclusion.
4) Flying Creatures: Flying creatures are definitely a big hindrance. We only have three creatures with Flying in our current build, so unless we use our mass removal spells to get rid of them, Daretti will almost always end up back in the Command Zone.
5) Direct Damage: Much like creatures with Flying, anything that deals direct damage to Planeswalkers will knock loyalty counters off Daretti. We used to have protection from burn with cards such as Witchbane Orb and Orbs of Warding, but when they changed redirection to actually targeting Planeswakers, these cards fell off the radar.
In this section, we will go over the main interactions/combos that this deck has to offer. There may be more hidden in there somewhere, so if someone happens to see what that I did not, feel free to let me know and I will get it added!
It's simple: Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith + 2 from any source: Tap Monolith for 3. Use the 3 to untap, Rings triggers, use 2 from any other source to copy the untap effect. First untap on stack resolves, tap again for 3. Let second untap resolve and tap again for mana. You now have 6 floating. Use 3 to untap, and 2 to copy untap with Rings. This leaves you with 1 available. Repeat steps for infinite colorless mana.
Pair this infinite mana combo with a few more cards, and you can get some crazy interactions, such as:
Paradox Engine Combos: These combos involve having Paradox Engine on the battlefield in order to untap your permanents and essentially "go infinite.
Miscellaneous Combos/Synergies: These are the other "combos" which are more or less cards with great synergy together.
5/20/15:
OUT:
Shattering Spree
IN:
Blasphemous Act
Shattering Spree was too mana intensive to be able to remove mass artifacts; Vandalblast does this much better and at a cheaper cost. So I dropped it in favor of a mass boardwipe for creatures, since we have trouble with our opponents having lots of them. Add in the fact that it sometimes will cost only 1 red mana makes this wipe a very good inclusion.
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6/5/15:
OUT:
Pithing Needle
Howling Mine
Winter Orb
Mana Web
Ruination
IN:
Mox Diamond
Static Orb
Clock of Omens
Tawnos's Coffin
Mind's Eye
Pithing Needle wasn’t doing too much in the deck, and only being able to stop one thing at a time was kind of a pain. Howling Mine helped out everyone else too, which is something we don’t want to be doing. I prefer Static Orb over Winter Orb, as we can effectively “turn off” Static with Clock of Omens and be able to untap our stuff, while keeping everyone else’s tapped down. Mana Web is out too as it also goes along with Winter Orb. I took our Ruination as I am not a fan of MLD. Added in Mox Diamond as more early ramp, Static Orb/Clock of Omens to lock our opponent’s down, Coffin as a colorless way to get rid of things like Iona on red, and Mind’s Eye for the extra card draw.
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6/25/15:
OUT:
Tawnos's Coffin
Inkmoth Nexus
IN:
Codex Shredder
Gemstone Caverns
Never really got to use the Coffin too much; it just doesn’t seem like the right fit for here. Wasn’t a big fan of Inkmoth in here either; it didn’t put in enough work. Added in Codex Shredder to help recur our non-artifact spells, and Caverns to help us get to Daretti faster (if it’s in our opening hand).
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8/2/15:
OUT:
Scuttling Doom Engine
Defense Grid
Ugin's Nexus
IN:
Trading Post
Price of Glory
Alhammarret's Archive
The big addition here is the Archive. This thing was made for Daretti. The card advantage this generates is insane with all of the card draw in here. Once I get a Bazaar, it’ll make that even better as well. Price of Glory is in for people who like to play during other people’s turns and is better than Grid because it sets them back by losing land, and Trading Post is another utility artifact that does good things, even tho I’m not it’s biggest fan. Engine and Nexus just weren’t doing enough for me.
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11/18/15:
OUT:
Mountain
Fellwar Stone
IN:
Command Beacon
Thought Vessel
Daretti tends to head to the Command Zone quite frequently, so having Beacon take the place of a Mountain is well worth us only having to pay 4 for him late game. Fellwar Stone is probably the weakest rock here simply because if we happen to play against a colorless deck, we don’t get to add any mana. Thought Vessel is a rock that produces mana every time, and has the added bonus of giving us no maximum hand size.
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12/17/15:
OUT:
Mountain x2
Tormenting Voice
IN:
Reliquary Tower
Sanctum of Ugin
Sandstone Oracle
Dropping a couple Mountains to add in Reliquary Tower to help us better control what we discard since we no longer have a max hand size, and Sanctum to be able to tutor up creatures. If we can draw at least two cards each time Oracle comes into play, it is strictly better than Voice since it is recurrable.
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1/14/16:
OUT:
Mountain
IN:
Bazaar of Baghdad
Finally got my hands on a Bazaar. This will allow me to draw additional cards and put more artifacts into the graveyard. It doesn’t produce mana, so I do lose out on a mana source, but it should allow me to draw into more.
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2/24/16:
OUT:
Soul of New Phyrexia
Caged Sun
Reliquary Tower
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
IN:
Fellwar Stone
Chandra, Flamecaller
Haven of the Spirit Dragon
Mirropool
Soul wasn’t really doing much other than being a beater, so I replaced him with Chandra Flamecaller as a sort of catch-all. Gives us tiny guys to help get in more damage, a one-sided wheel effect that draws us an additional card, and a board wipe for small critters. Tower isn’t necessary anymore thanks to Thought Vessel, so I added in Haven in its place. Ugin is a very good card in EDH, and having an additional way of reusing him is always good. Caged Sun is ok, but Gauntlet is cheaper and I haven’t need the extra mana Caged produces, so I put back Fellwar Stone as another early mana rock.
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3/9/16:
OUT:
Mind’s Eye
Thran Dynamo
Starstorm
Hammer of Purphoros
Fellwar Stone
Trading Post
Comet Storm
Thopter Assembly
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
IN:
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Voltaic Key
Blinkmoth Urn
Lightning Greaves
Contagion Engine
Hellkite Igniter
The Chain Veil
Staff of Nin
Lotus Bloom
Ok, the biggest update I’ve had on here. Staff of Nin over Mind’s eye is because I don’t have to pay anything to get an extra card, and can combo with other things in the deck. Greaves over Hammer because I only usually need one creature to have haste, and has the bonus effect of giving Shroud. Contagion Engine/Chain Veil to help add more counters to all of our planeswalkers. Hellkite as another way to win. Ulamog is in for more colorless removal, and it exiles so even better. Key for more untap shenanigans. Blinkmoth Urn can help generate a ton of mana. Lotus Bloom as a free mana rock; can be a Black Lotus every turn after an emblem; this is still being tested of Thran, but Thran still might replace it as it is guaranteed three mana every turn. Everything else was removed to make room for newer cards.
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3/29/19:
OUT:
Sanctum of Ugin
IN:
Dust Bowl
I haven’t used the tutor effect of Sanctum as much as I had hoped for. With my utility lands, I like to get as much use out of them as I can. Having Dust Bowl in here will allow me to continually remove lands from my opponents when I have enough mana rocks out that I don’t need as many lands.
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6/10/16:
OUT:
Lotus Bloom
IN:
Winter Orb
Lotus Bloom has been my flex spot for quite awhile, floating between that, Thran Dynamo, and Slobad. But because Winter Orb has been errata'd again so we can now "turn it off," I'm going to put it in as another lock piece to hinder opponent's while not hurting us, so long as we have Clock of Omens out.
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8/1/16:
OUT:
Phyrexia's Core
IN:
Geier Reach Sanitarium
Phyrexia's Core has been lackluster in this deck. The only function it ever takes on is being another colorless land. Haven't used its sac effect in quite a while, if ever. Geier Reach Sanitarium fills the role of colorless land just as good, but has the added functionality of being able to draw cards and discard things for later recursion, which is a valuable ability to have, especially at instant speed.
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12/6/16:
OUT:
High Market
Mirrorpool
Mountain x2
Hellkite Igniter
Sandstone Oracle
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Codex Shredder
The Chain Veil
IN:
Homeward Path
Inventors' Fair
Sequestered Stash
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
Quicksmith Genius
Combustible Gearhulk
Thopter Assembly
Cathartic Reunion
Tormenting Voice
I took out High Market and Mirrorpool as I felt they were both underperforming, and with some lands from Kaladesh, were in need of replacing. Decided to drop 2 more Mountains, as the deck can run just fine with only a couple red sources, and Utility lands are at a premium (not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds cool). The rest of the cut cards were essentially removed to make room for the new stuff, and I felt these were safe cuts.
Homeward Path is in here as Bribery insurance. Inventors' Fair is a tutor that doesn't take up a valuable spell slot. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods is another Sol Land that still lets us tap for one in the early game. Sequestered Stash fills our graveyard, and brings back an artifact to the top of our deck. Quicksmith Genius is Daretti 2.0, albeit on a smaller scale, but just as good. Combustible Gearhulk is my new favorite toy! Big beater and either gets us cards in hand or cards in graveyard for future use. Thopter Assembly was added back in to help against flyers. Cathartic Reunion/Tormenting Voice were added for more guaranteed card draw (and also the discard portion).
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1/26/17:
OUT:
Clock of Omens
Fire Diamond
Gauntlet of Might
Recoup
Silent Arbiter
Static Orb
Winter Orb
IN:
Fellwar Stone
Heart of Kiran
Paradox Engine
Pia's Revolution
Planar Bridge
Scrap Trawler
The Chain Veil
I decided to try something a little different with these updates. Instead of hiding behind Stax effects to protect Daretti, I wanted to try and make it a little more explosive. So I took out the Orbs/Omens synergy as well as Arbiter in order to make room for some new stuff. Gauntlet was removed as we really don't need the extra mana when we run a bunch of rocks, and can also weld back our bigger stuff. I haven't needed Recoup in a long time, so that was a safe cut. Fire Diamond was a safe cut since we don't really want our rocks to come in tapped and unable to be used until next turn.
Fellwar is back in as it is a rock that comes into play untapped, and can possibly make red if we need (if someone can produce red). Chain Veil is also back in and will hopefully synergize well with Paradox. As far as Paradox goes, I'm not too sure it's a good fit in here yet, as our deck isn't built to abuse it like some other decks, but being able to reuse Veil, Bridge, and other effects may prove to be useful. Planar Bridge is another one I'm not too sure on yet. We can grab any permanent and put it directly into play, which could prove vital for when we are in a pinch, or when we need a combo piece. We can abuse its effect with Paradox and enough rocks/spells to put a bunch of things into play, or infinite mana plus Rings/Key to do the same, but get all of our permanents. Heart of Kiran can make for a decent blocker and can be crewed with Daretti in a pinch. Pia's Revolution is like a mini Combustible so synergizes very well with the deck. Trawler is a better Junk Diver/Myr Retriever as it works with all of our artifacts.
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2/23/17:
OUT:
Fellwar Stone
Heart of Kiran
Pia's Revolution
IN:
Clock of Omens
Static Orb
Winter Orb
Well, I tried some new cards and had high hopes for them, but unfortunately they didn't work out. Revolution just didn't do what I had hoped it would be good for. Turns out I do care if I want something to stay in the graveyard, so it got the cut. Kiran, for the most part, just sat there on defense, so I wasn't getting very much use out of it, and there are far better defense cards to run. Fellwar is the least impactful rock I run, and I needed to cut something to make room for the third card.
I'm putting pack both Orbs and Omens to help control the board more and slow others down in order to get to Daretti's Ultimate and take over the game. In fact, I really missed running these and am sort of glad the other cards didn't work out.
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5/1/17:
OUT:
Cathartic Reunion
IN:
Oracle's Vault
After playing a few games with Vault, I have decided it has earned it's place in the deck. Not only does it allow us to dig deeper into the deck, but when you get three brick counters on it, we get to play the card for free. When used in conjunction with Sensei's Divining Top, we can guarantee we will hit a spell to cast, or even a land that we need. Combine with Paradox Engine and you can cast a bunch of your deck for free. This can definitely be game changing.
In order to make room for Vault, I have decided to cut Reunion. While red doesn't have very much as far as card draw goes, I feel like this was a safe cut to make. Tormenting Voice is a lot safer to play, as you only have to discard one card instead of two.
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5/25/18:
OUT:
Blood Moon
Dust Bowl
Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
IN:
Pirate's Pillage
Karn, Scion of Urza
Arch of Orazca
Haven't updated in awhile, since Amonkhet to be exact. There really hasn't been much that can make this deck more over the top than it already is, but I did find some cards that can fit well in here. Pirate's Pillage is more card draw that can also create sac fodder for Daretti, or ramp us into another spell. Karn, Scion of Urza is more card draw, but can also create artifact bodies for attacking/blocking/sac fodder. Arch of Orazca just gives us another outlet for card draw, but only when we have the city's blessing.
To make room, I took out Blood Moon mostly because I don't want to shut off our lands, even though it also shuts opponent's off. We can't recur it, so once it's in the graveyard, it's done for anyways. Dust Bowl is expensive for land destruction, so it got cut. Shrine of the Forsaken Gods didn't really do much for the deck, so it was an easy choice to make.
I also removed the Visual Deck List and Pimpage sections. I know longer have a physical copy of the deck and its accessories, so I feel like these are no longer necessary.
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8/3/18:
OUT:
Scrap Trawler
IN:
Silent Arbiter
Scrap Trawler has been fairly lackluster in recent games. He really doesn't do much of anything until an artifact goes to the graveyard. When one does, he is also limited in what he can bring back.
I decided to bring back Silent Arbiter as a way to slow down token/swarm strategies, and have a better way of controlling combat in order to protect Daretti. Oh, and I like big butts and I cannot lie, and Arbiter has a pretty big one as well!
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9/15/18:
OUT:
Blinkmoth Urn
Haven of the Spirit Dragon
Homeward Path
Karn, Scion of Urza
Lightning Greaves
Mirrorworks
Sequestered Stash
The Chain Veil
IN:
Chaos Wand
Krark-Clan Ironworks
Scrap Trawler
Sculpting Steel
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
I've been testing quite a few changes recently, and these are the ones I've come up with. I am going to continue to test these out and see which ones will ultimately stick.
We don't get any mana from Blinkmoth Urn until our following turn, but our opponents do, so this gets the cut. I never used Haven of the Spirit Dragon or Sequestered Stash for their abilities, nor have a ran into the situation where Homeward Path was necessary. Karn, Scion of Urza, while he does find a spot in the deck, and worked really well, often times I found myself getting a land, and the opponent exiling a good card, and then kill him. It's a bit of a risky card, and I don't want to take too many risks. Lightning Greaves was cut as was only really used with Blightsteel Colossus. We usually only tutor Blightsteel at end of an opponent's turn, so we can swing with him on ours, so the Greaves isn't needed. Mirrorworks I have found that I haven't been using it for anything other than pitch fodder, so when a card gets to that point, it needs to go. Lastly, The Chain Veil is better off in a deck that has a bunch of Planeswalkers to fully utilize it, or somewhere it can go infinite such as Teferi, Temporal Archmage.
I have added in the Tron lands in place of the three I took out. While they do absolutely nothing on their own, the ability to make 7 mana with three lands is a hard thing to ignore. I've added in Krark-Clan Ironworks and Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer as mainly sac outlets to avoid exile effects, and to set up a nice Scrap Mastery. KCI also allows us to ramp a little bit, and Slobad provides some protection for our artifacts. Chaos Wand is pretty bonkers. With enough rocks and Paradox Engine, we can churn through our opponent's decks until they run out of instants and sorceries. Scrap Trawler is back as he is too good to pass up, especially since he doesn't have to go to the graveyard to return an artifact, like Myr Retriever and Junk Diver. Sculpting Steel is a nice little utility artifact that can become whatever artifact we need at the time, whether it's a mana rock, or a Spine of Ish Sah.
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12/15/18:
OUT:
Arid Mesa
Bloodstained Mire
Crucible of Worlds
Scalding Tarn
Wooded Foothills
IN:
Forge of Heroes
Mountain x4
Saheeli's Directive
I've opted to cut all of the fetch lands and Crucible of Worlds, at least for the time being. Being a mono-colored deck means we don't need to worry about color fixing, the fetches aren't necessarily important. Losing Crucible may prove to be a mistake, as we will no longer be able to play lands from our graveyard to ensure hitting our land drops, or reuse our many utility lands.
In their place, I have opted to run four more basic Mountains as well as Forge of Heroes to replace the lands I took out. Forge will hopefully prove to be a worthwhile land, as it should enable us to ultimate Daretti a turn earlier. In place of Crucible, I have chosen to put in Saheeli's Directive. With Directive, we should be able to spam the board with a ton of artifacts, and hopefully get closer to winning the game.
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3/15/19:
OUT:
Blightsteel Colossus
Chaos Wand
Kuldotha Forgemaster
Mountain x5
Oracle's Vault
Quicksmith Genius
Scrap Trawler
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
Thopter Assembly
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
IN:
Arid Mesa
Blinkmoth Nexus
Blood Moon
Bloodstained Mire
Crucible of Worlds
Ensnaring Bridge
Inkmoth Nexus
Lion's Eye Diamond
Magus of the Moon
Mishra's Factory
Oblivion Stone
Scalding Tarn
Stranglehold
Tangle Wire
Ward of Bones
Wooded Foothills
I'm not going to go into too much detail at the moment, as it's sort of late and I'm a bit tired. I've decided to cut some of the "cuter" items to go a little bit more into the Stax aspect for the deck. I still won't be adding in MLD as I am not a fan of that particular strategy. Some of the changes you may question, so if you want specifics, feel free to ask and I will answer.
2
I'm going to start this introduction by being completely honest. When Commander 2016 was fully spoiled, I was a bit disappointed with the set. You may ask yourself, “Why would anybody be disappointed with this set? A lot of people were wanting four-color commanders to be playable.” My reasoning was simple: I was looking for new cards to put into my current decks, and wasn't going to be bothered by trying to build a new one. That is, until I stumbled onto one card: Breya, Etherium Shaper.
I'm a sucker for artifact decks. I played Affinity in Modern, and enjoyed it so much, I foiled out the whole deck. I got hardcore into Commander, so I built and foiled out Daretti. Now, I have built Breya and she may be more busted than my Daretti deck.
Cost:
Breya costs WUBR. This can be quite difficult to achieve as the more colors in your commander, generally they are more difficult to cast. What's great about these colors is that she has the best colors for counters, tutors, and removal of all sorts. That is a pretty powerful thing in and of itself.
Power/Toughness:
Breya is a 4/4 for 4 mana. Not bad as far as stats go but is pretty generic for that cost. This isn't something to really write about, but her abilities are where her stats get really good.
Abilities:
Breya's first ability creates two 1/1 blue Thopter creature tokens. Altogether, that's 6 power/toughness spread across three bodies for only four mana. That makes it even better!
Her activated abilities all cost 2 and two artifacts to be sacrificed, and you get one of three options:
What's that? She GIVES you two artifacts to sacrifice to herself? THAT'S ABSURD! Add infinite mana and a select few cards, and you can wipe the entire board of creatures, gain infinite life, or just get straight to it and kill everyone at the table.
While we can specifically focus on Breya's abilities and build the deck around that, that's not what we are doing here. While using her as a win condition is included in the deck, we are also using her for her colors.
You might like Breya if:
1) You like playing powerful decks capable of winning in the first few turns.
2) You like infinite combos.
3) WUBR are your favorite colors of that Magic pie.
You might dislike Breya if:
1) You enjoy long, grueling games with tons of interaction.
2) You would rather turn creatures sideways and win through combat.
3) You want your deck to fully take advantage of your Commander, and not just use them for the colors.
When considering other Commanders over Breya, the thing that everyone should understand is there are multiple ways to build her. I chose to build her as a Doomsday/Ad Nauseam deck that utilizes those cards to get into a combo for a quick win. Others may want to build her as an artifact-centered deck. Either way to build her is fine, so I will list a couple other Commanders that fall into those categories and are still in our colors. Those Commanders are:
The deck has gone through quite the changes over the time that I've played it. Breya is a vary versatile commander, not only for her abilities, but also for her colors.
The first iteration of the deck was basically an artifact "good stuff" deck with Gearhulks, big bad artifacts, and all the combos I could find, including Sharuum the Hegemon combos. The deck was clunky and unreliable.
The second iteration took out the clunky good stuff and focused on infinite combos. This still was too clunky. Having pieces to multiple combos that don't work together is not a good thing. Back to the drawing board.
The third iteration saw me cut all the "I win" combos, like Sharuum the Hegemon, Sculpting Steel, and Disciple of the Vault, to focus on making infinite mana and using Breya as the win condition. To protect the combo, I added in more removal and a counter package to fill in the voids.
After much more playtesting, I came to the realization that Nim Deathmantle/Eldrazi Displacer + Krark-Clan Ironworks is way too slow and mana-intensive to allow for fast wins. The Bomberman combo is fast enough, but for it to be faster, we needed to be able to get him into play faster, so being able to reanimate him for a much cheaper cost is the ideal way of doing so. Since we are playing reanimation spells to bring Salvagers back, why not use them to bring Worldgorger Dragon back as well? So, I decided to drop the Deathmantle/Displacer combos for the much faster George combo and other spells to facilitate it, but it still took a while to get into the combo. Enter Doomsday. This single card allows us to stack our deck with whatever combo we need to win, and can either win the same turn, or the very next one, if left uninterrupted. And if we're playing Doomsday, you may as well throw in LabMan to give you another option that isn't graveyard-reliant.
Now, we are on to the fifth iteration of the deck. I dropped the George combo, as I felt it was too fragile and easily disrupted. Once disrupted, we would have no choice but to concede, as there is no coming back from that. So, I added in Demonic Consultation and a few other cards to dive deeper into LabMan/Doomsday combos.
This is the deck I bring to you today. So, without further ado, let us get into it and check the deck out.
4 Breya, Etherium Shaper
//Creature (6):
2 Dark Confidant
2 Grand Abolisher
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
3 Laboratory Maniac
4 Auriok Salvagers
4 Notion Thief
//Artifact (15):
0 Chrome Mox
0 Lion's Eye Diamond
0 Lotus Petal
0 Mana Crypt
0 Mox Diamond
0 Mox Opal
1 Mana Vault
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
2 Dimir Signet
2 Fellwar Stone
2 Grim Monolith
2 Isochron Scepter
2 Talisman of Dominance
4 Aetherflux Reservoir
//Sorcery (15):
1 Faithless Looting
1 Gamble
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Imperial Seal
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Vandalblast
1 Winds of Change
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Merchant Scroll
2 Night's Whisper
3 Doomsday
3 Wheel of Fortune
3 Windfall
3 Yawgmoth's Will
0 Pact of Negation
1 Angel's Grace
1 Brainstorm
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Dispel
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Flusterstorm
1 Mental Misstep
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Pyroblast
1 Silence
1 Spell Pierce
1 Swan Song
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Thought Scour
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Cabal Ritual
2 Counterspell
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Delay
2 Dramatic Reversal
2 Izzet Charm
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Mana Drain
2 Predict
2 Tainted Pact
3 Frantic Search
3 Thirst for Knowledge
5 Ad Nauseam
5 Force of Will
5 Gush
1 Mystic Remora
3 Necropotence
//Land (28):
0 Aether Hub
0 Ancient Tomb
0 Arid Mesa
0 Badlands
0 Bloodstained Mire
0 Cavern of Souls
0 City of Brass
0 Command Tower
0 Darkslick Shores
0 Exotic Orchard
0 Flooded Strand
0 Forbidden Orchard
0 Mana Confluence
0 Marsh Flats
0 Misty Rainforest
0 Plateau
0 Polluted Delta
0 Reflecting Pool
0 Scalding Tarn
0 Scrubland
0 Spirebluff Canal
0 Tundra
0 Underground Sea
0 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
0 Verdant Catacombs
0 Volcanic Island
0 Windswept Heath
0 Wooded Foothills
4 Breya, Etherium Shaper
//Card Advantage/Tutors (30):
1 Brainstorm
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Faithless Looting
1 Gamble
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Imperial Seal
1 Mystic Remora
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Thought Scour
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Winds of Change
2 Dark Confidant
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Izzet Charm
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Merchant Scroll
2 Night's Whisper
2 Predict
2 Tainted Pact
3 Frantic Search
3 Necropotence
3 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Wheel of Fortune
3 Windfall
4 Notion Thief
5 Ad Nauseam
//Combo Pieces (11):
0 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Angel's Grace
1 Demonic Consultation
2 Dramatic Reversal
2 Isochron Scepter
2 Tainted Pact
3 Laboratory Maniac
3 Necropotence
4 Aetherflux Reservoir
4 Auriok Salvagers
5 Ad Nauseam
0 Pact of Negation
1 Angel's Grace
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Dispel
1 Flusterstorm
1 Mental Misstep
1 Pyroblast
1 Silence
1 Swan Song
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Vandalblast
2 Counterspell
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Delay
2 Grand Abolisher
2 Izzet Charm
2 Mana Drain
5 Force of Will
//Mana Acceleration (14):
0 Chrome Mox
0 Lion's Eye Diamond
0 Lotus Petal
0 Mana Crypt
0 Mox Diamond
0 Mox Opal
1 Dark Ritual
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
2 Cabal Ritual
2 Dimir Signet
2 Fellwar Stone
2 Grim Monolith
2 Talisman of Dominance
//Utility Cards (2):
3 Doomsday
3 Yawgmoth's Will
0 Aether Hub
0 Ancient Tomb
0 Arid Mesa
0 Badlands
0 Bloodstained Mire
0 Cavern of Souls
0 City of Brass
0 Command Tower
0 Darkslick Shores
0 Exotic Orchard
0 Flooded Strand
0 Forbidden Orchard
0 Mana Confluence
0 Marsh Flats
0 Misty Rainforest
0 Plateau
0 Polluted Delta
0 Reflecting Pool
0 Scalding Tarn
0 Scrubland
0 Spirebluff Canal
0 Tundra
0 Underground Sea
0 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
0 Verdant Catacombs
0 Volcanic Island
0 Windswept Heath
0 Wooded Foothills
While there are many options for cards that could be included in a deck, there are only room for 100. In the spoiler below, I will give a card-by-card explanation as to why I specifically chose to have a certain card in in the deck.
Artifacts:
Sorceries:
Instants:
Enchantments:
Lands:
The strategy for this deck, much like any Doomsday/Ad Nauseam/combo deck, is straight forward: get your combo and win as fast as possible. How do we go about doing that? Our deck runs a plethora of tutors that can find us our first combo piece to get a game plan in motion, or it can find the other half to the combo in our hand. We also need to assess the other Commanders/board state to see if it’s possible to combo off as early as possible, or if some sort of protection will be needed. Each phase of the gameplay is important, so let’s take a closer look at them.
1) Mulligans: Mulligans are one of the most important things to master about this deck. You need to know what hands are good, which are bad, and which ones are manageable enough for the long game. When deciding whether to take a mulligan or not, you need to keep in mind the following things:
2) Early Game: The early game is where we deploy our lands and mana rocks. We develop our hand for a combo by tutoring the pieces we need or drawing into them naturally. We don’t want to give too much information out this early in the game, so if possible, use tutors that don’t make you reveal what you search for, such as Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, or Demonic Tutor. We also continuously monitor the board state and the other players. We want to know what decks they are playing, any possible disruption they may have, and whether they can combo before us.
If we were lucky and drew a “perfect hand,” we can attempt to combo off on Turn 1 or 2. What are some of the combos that allow for Turn 1 or 2 wins? Here are just a couple examples:
Those hands are basically “Magic Christmas Land,” but the possibilities are there, and knowing what kind of lines of play you are able to take will help you decide which is going to be the best and most efficient way of winning. You may not be able to get these on turn 1 or 2, but it is possible to do them even on 3 or 4.
3) Mid Game: If we are unable to get one of those “Magic Christmas Land” opening hands and win within the first few turns, then we move on into the mid game. In this phase of gameplay, we are still on the hunt for our combo pieces or protection (whichever we are at the time lacking), and still keeping an eye on the boardstate. We need to keep track of everyone’s life totals, cards in hand, number of untapped lands, and what is physically on the battlefield. If we think we can combo off if the opportunity arises, then we can do so. Otherwise, play the slow game and bring out Breya for some small beats or chump blocks.
4) Late Game: With the way the deck is build, we should never get to a late game, as that is when we are at our worst. How do we get to this point? Not drawing any combo pieces or tutors, or we tried going for a combo and it was stopped by multiple people. This is when we start hurting badly. We can attempt to go for another combo if we still have the resources (a hand and/or permanents on the field). Otherwise, Breya beats will be our plan until we win or lose. It’s bad to say our late game is terrible, but when you’re an all-in combo deck, it’s usually all or nothing, and at times it is going to be nothing. I would like to reiterate, however, that with the way the deck is built, we should never get to this point in the game and shouldn’t have to worry about it too much. Just keep it in the back of your mind the possibility is always there.
While I'm sure many people like to think their deck is top notch and has answers for everything, the truth is no matter what the deck is, there will be weaknesses and people will exploit them. In testing, I have discovered Breya has the following weaknesses:
1) Artifact Hate: Being an artifact deck is really tough. There is a ton of removal in the format whether it's things like Creeping Corrosion and Vandalblast or something more permanent like Return to Dust and Merciless Eviction. Which brings me to the next weakness.
2) Too Glass Cannon-y: This deck wins by combos. All-in combos to be exact. If our Bomberman combo gets disrupted, we will be left without a hand. If we get disrupted while going for our Doomsday win, we will also lose. We must know when it is safe to combo off, or have protection, otherwise we will lose and lose hard.
3) Creature-Based Strategies: We run very little creature removal. In fact, the only piece we have for dealing with mass creatures is Cyclonic Rift, and it will only help us for so long. We should hurry and find our combo pieces and win before we get overwhelmed by creatures, and sometimes things just don't work out in our favor.
4) Graveyard Hate: Some of our win conditions are graveyard based. If our graveyard becomes unusable via cards like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void, then we only have one way to win. If they use something like Tormod's Crypt or Surgical Extraction while we are attempting to combo off, we will be left without a hand or permanents.
5) Counters: Of course every deck is weak to counter spells. Being a combo deck means we are trying to get to our combo pieces as quickly as possible to combo off. Sometimes our tutors will get countered, or a vital piece to our combo gets countered, and when that happens, our game plan can fold.
While Doomsday itself isn't a combo, it does help facilitate our LabMan wins. However, we do have a couple of actual combos that help us win, and they are as follows:
Doomsday is probably one of the most complicated cards to play in the game. Knowing which cards go into a pile, and the order they go in, can make your head hurt. This section will go over some of the MANY different ways to build your piles. Please note that I did not create this list of piles, and I used a list located here to compile these. These piles also follow the same format: the first card in the list will be the top card of the pile, and the last will be the bottom card. If you wish to combo off the turn you cast Doomsday, you will have to have a cantrip in hand to start the process. Otherwise, you will start on your next turn. Here are some examples of our Doomsday Piles:
There are plenty of cards that could go into Breya, but unfortunately, there isn't enough room. These are the cards that didn't make the cut.
12/1/16:
OUT:
Exotic Orchard
Sacred Foundry
Path to Exile
Artificer's Intuition
Pili-Pala
Grand Architect
Saheeli Rai
Clock of Omens
Utter End
IN:
Pact of Negation
Imperial Seal
Arcane Denial
Intuition
Toxic Deluge
Ad Nauseam
Future Sight
Gilded Lotus
Tezzeret the Seeker
I took out the lands as our curve ends at 5, and with the amount of mana rocks that are ran, it shouldn't be too difficult to get the mana that is needed. Grand Architect/Pili-Pala are cut as they are too slow to produce infinite mana, and are easy to remove. Took out PtE/Utter End as the former has a drawback of ramping our opponents and the latter is too high costed for removal. Intuition only fetches out a select few artifacts, so it isn't the best option to run. Saheeli Rai doesn't necessarily fit in here as we don't run many things to copy. Clock is cut to make room for other things, and isn't necessary to effectively run Winter Orb.
Added in Pact/Denial for more low-cost counters. Imperial Seal/Intuition/Tezzeret as more tutors. Toxic Deluge as another sweeper to help control the board. Gilded Lotus as another mana rock to produce through a Winter Orb. Future Sight to help dig through our deck, and combos with SDT and Etherium Sculptor. Ad Nauseam is another effective draw spell, and with having a small curve, should be able to get enough cards in hand to be able to combo off.
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12/15/16:
OUT:
Etherium Sculptor
Future Sight
IN:
Dark Confidant
Lim-Dul's Vault
Etherium Sculptor really wasn't doing very much for the deck. The discount was negligible and often unneeded. Future Sight was barely every played, and I feel like there are better ways to be able to go through your deck to get what is needed.
Dark Confidant will be a fine inclusion, as it will let us dig deeper into our decks at the cost of a little life. Our curve is low (and now a bit lower) so the loss of life won't hurt us badly. Lim-Dul's Vault is the best way to dig through your deck and find what you need. It's cheaper to play than Future Sight, and can also set up the next few draws as well.
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1/3/17:
OUT:
Academy Ruins
Arcane Denial
Azorius Signet
Basalt Monolith
Chromatic Lantern
Daretti, Scrap Savant
Dimir Signet
Eldrazi Displacer
Fabricate
Fact or Fiction
Gilded Lotus
Goblin Welder
Inventors' Fair
Izzet Signet
Krark-Clan Ironworks
Mox Opal
Muddle the Mixture
Nim Deathmantle
Reshape
Rings of Brighthearth
Scrap Mastery
Seat of the Synod
Skullclamp
Tezzeret the Seeker
Thirst for Knowledge
Trading Post
Transmute Artifact
Vindicate
Winter Orb
IN:
Ancient Tomb
Angel of Glory's Rise
Animate Dead
Buried Alive
Cabal Ritual
Chain of Vapor
Dance of the Dead
Dark Ritual
Dispel
Doomsday
Entomb
Grand Abolisher
Impulse
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Merchant Scroll
Mystic Remora
Notion Thief
Reanimate
Recruiter of the Guard
Snapcaster Mage
Tainted Pact
Talisman of Dominance
Talisman of Progress
Talisman of Indulgence
Thought Scour
Wear // Tear
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Winds of Change
Worldgorger Dragon
After playing the deck, I’ve realized that going for the Displacer/Deathmantle + KCI combo is really clunky and mana intensive. We still want infinite combos to be the way to go, so I added the Worldgorger dragon combo back in, as well as Doomsday to help get the combo pieces faster. I’ve dropped the Signets in favor of Talismans so we don’t need to leave mana open to use them. Notion Thief + Winds of Change or any other Wheel effect will empty out everyone else’s hands and help us dig even deeper for our combo or some sort of protection. Angel of Glory’s Rise was brought in to make a better Intuition pile if you have a reanimation spell in hand (bin Angel, Salvagers, and Trinket Mage in order to combo off). Lowered the curve significantly so Dark Confidant and Ad Nauseam doesn’t hurt as much.
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1/5/17:
OUT:
Angel of Glory's Rise
Anguished Unmaking
Chaos Warp
Counterspell
Grim Monolith
Impulse
Lim-Dul's Vault
Negate
Recruiter of the Guard
Vandalblast
Winds of Change
IN:
Frantic Search
Gitaxian Probe
Izzet Charm
Laboratory Maniac
Mental Misstep
Mox Opal
Necromancy
Night's Whisper
Pull from Eternity
Silence
Thirst for Knowledge
Took out some more fluff to make room for LabMan combo and friends. Izzet Charm and Thirst for Knowledge digs us deeper into our deck, and can bin Worldgorger if we end up with him in our hand. Necromancy can let us combo off at end of turn if the need/opportunity arises. Pull from Eternity is really useful if one of our combo pieces happens to get exiled, or can be used in conjunction with Tainted Pact so we can flip past a combo piece and then bin it afterwards.
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9/9/18:
OUT:
Animate Dead
Buried Alive
Dance of the Dead
Entomb
Intuition
Gemstone Caverns
Necromancy
Pull from Eternity
Reanimate
Snapcaster Mage
Talisman of Indulgence
Talisman of Progress
Toxic Deluge
Trinket Mage
Wear // Tear
Worldgorger Dragon
IN:
Aetherflux Reservoir
Angel's Grace
Counterspell
Demonic Consultation
Delay
Dimir Signet
Dramatic Reversal
Grim Monolith
Gush
Isochron Scepter
Lim-Dul's Vault
Predict
Pyroblast
Spell Pierce
Vandalblast
Winds of Change
Completed revamp of the deck. New primer written to show the change in focus of the deck, as well as updated the card choices to hopefully make the deck more consistent.
1
I currently have a Gonti, Lord of Luxury ETB reanimator deck, but always thought it could work just as well, if not better, if it had a splash of white. So this is what this deck is all about!
White allows us some flicker effects, and some other key white ETB effects.
Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome!
3 Tymna the Weaver
4 Ravos, Soultender
//Creatures (21):
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Whitemane Lion
3 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Angel of Finality
4 Disciple of Bolas
4 Faceless Butcher
4 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
4 Ravenous Chupacabra
4 Restoration Angel
4 Solemn Simulacrum
5 Karmic Guide
5 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
6 Duplicant
6 Grave Titan
6 Noxious Gearhulk
7 Angel of Despair
7 Meteor Golem
7 Rune-Scarred Demon
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
8 Ashen Rider
//Artifacts (13):
0 Mana Crypt
1 Expedition Map
1 Sol Ring
2 Jet Medallion
2 Nim Deathmantle
2 Orzhov Signet
2 Pearl Medallion
3 Ashnod's Altar
3 Phyrexian Altar
3 Sword of Light and Shadow
4 Helm of the Host
4 Panharmonicon
5 Conjurer's Closet
5 Lifeline
1 Reanimate
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Diabolic Intent
3 Toxic Deluge
4 Damnation
4 Wrath of God
5 Beacon of Unrest
5 Living Death
6 Merciless Eviction
//Instants (16):
1 Cloudshift
1 Path to Exile
1 Supernatural Stamina
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Undying Evil
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Long Road Home
2 Otherworldly Journey
2 Wake the Dead
3 Anguished Unmaking
3 Corpse Dance
3 Eerie Interlude
3 Ghostway
3 Teferi's Protection
5 Thrilling Encore
//Enchantments (4):
2 Animate Dead
3 Necromancy
3 Phyrexian Arena
7 Debtors' Knell
//Lands (36):
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Command Tower
1 Deserted Temple
1 Flooded Strand
1 Godless Shrine
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Marsh Flats
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Orzhov Basilica
1 Phyrexian Tower
6 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
7 Swamp
1 Temple of Silence
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Windswept Heath
10-27-18:
OUT:
Dimir House Guard
Palace Jailer
Abnormal Endurance
IN:
Disciple of Bolas
Stoneforge Mystic
Sword of Light and Shadow
I needed more ways to recur, draw, and gain some life, so I decided to add Disciple of Bolas for the lifegain and draw, Sword of Light and Shadow for the lifegain and recursion, and Stoneforge Mystic in order to tutor it and the other equipment that is ran in the deck.
I opted to cut Palace Jailer as I don't want to risk giving anyone else card draw, Dimir House Guard as it is an important card slot, and an expensive tutor, and Abnormal Endurance just to free up a slot.
1
No new changes to deck. I am contemplating trying to find room for Scour from Existence and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger as more removal. Not entirely too sure as they aren't artifacts, so aren't easily recurrable. The list I am running is pretty tight and it's really hard for me to decided on what isn't necessary and can be cut.
On a more positive note, I commissioned a playmat and it's coming along nicely. Should hopefully be done soon.
1
OUT:
Blinkmoth Urn
Haven of the Spirit Dragon
Homeward Path
Karn, Scion of Urza
Lightning Greaves
Mirrorworks
Sequestered Stash
The Chain Veil
IN:
Chaos Wand
Krark-Clan Ironworks
Scrap Trawler
Sculpting Steel
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
I've been testing quite a few changes recently, and these are the ones I've come up with. I am going to continue to test these out and see which ones will ultimately stick.
We don't get any mana from Blinkmoth Urn until our following turn, but our opponents do, so this gets the cut. I never used Haven of the Spirit Dragon or Sequestered Stash for their abilities, nor have a ran into the situation where Homeward Path was necessary. Karn, Scion of Urza, while he does find a spot in the deck, and worked really well, often times I found myself getting a land, and the opponent exiling a good card, and then kill him. It's a bit of a risky card, and I don't want to take too many risks. Lightning Greaves was cut as was only really used with Blightsteel Colossus. We usually only tutor Blightsteel at end of an opponent's turn, so we can swing with him on ours, so the Greaves isn't needed. Mirrorworks I have found that I haven't been using it for anything other than pitch fodder, so when a card gets to that point, it needs to go. Lastly, The Chain Veil is better off in a deck that has a bunch of Planeswalkers to fully utilize it, or somewhere it can go infinite such as Teferi, Temporal Archmage.
I have added in the Tron lands in place of the three I took out. While they do absolutely nothing on their own, the ability to make 7 mana with three lands is a hard thing to ignore. I've added in Krark-Clan Ironworks and Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer as mainly sac outlets to avoid exile effects, and to set up a nice Scrap Mastery. KCI also allows us to ramp a little bit, and Slobad provides some protection for our artifacts. Chaos Wand is pretty bonkers. With enough rocks and Paradox Engine, we can churn through our opponent's decks until they run out of instants and sorceries. Scrap Trawler is back as he is too good to pass up, especially since he doesn't have to go to the graveyard to return an artifact, like Myr Retriever and Junk Diver. Sculpting Steel is a nice little utility artifact that can become whatever artifact we need at the time, whether it's a mana rock, or a Spine of Ish Sah.
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