MTG Salvation

Maelstrom Nexus


This card was not picked randomly, but it picks randomly itself, so I consider that a reasonable trade.

I know that I'm half a year shy of my intended tenure on this thread, but this is the thread's finale, my final Random Card of the Day. I don't know if anyone has a mind to pick up where I left off with a new random card thread here on Salvation, but there is a successor already rolling elsewhere full of familiar faces for those interested.

It's been great doing this, thank you to everyone who made this thread fun every day.

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Welcome to the Random Deck of the Week thread! This is a thread where once a week a deck is chosen randomly from the pool of submissions for us all to discuss at length, or at least until the next deck's turn. This week's deck is:

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What sort of comments should you leave here?
Mostly you should just be speaking about your own experience: what commentary you can make is going to depend on what your personal experience is. If you're not sure what to say, here are some questions you could answer:

• Have you played with a deck like this before? If so, tell us about it! Would you recommend building a deck like this? What about your deck was similar to this? Did you use the same colors and general, or were you playing something strategically similar? Did you play mostly the same cards? What cards are a uniquely good fit for this deck? What's would be your favorite card to draw from this deck? Is there an opponent this deck is really good against or really bad? Is there a number of players you find this deck ideal for? What seemingly obvious inclusions would you say are traps to avoid? Do you have any particularly memorable moments from playing something like this?
• Have you played against a deck like this before? If so, tell us about that! How would you feel playing against this deck? Has this style of decks given you good games or bad ones? How do you feel sitting across the table from this commander, and does this deck meet your expectations? What card is in the back of your mind that you hope your opponent doesn't draw? Are any cards you play especially bad against this deck or especially good against it? If you wanted to set up a good matchup, either for competitive or entertainment purposes, what deck would you play against this? Do you have any particularly memorable moments from playing against a deck like this?
• Regardless of your past experience, were you inspired reading this decklist? What in this deck would you want to imitate? What would you least want to immitate? What in this deck have you never thought about before? Are there any themes or strategies you feel would overlap nicely with what this deck is doing? Are there any ideas from this deck you would consider adding to your own other decks? Would you rather play with this deck or against it? If you were to recommend this deck to someone you know, what type of player would that be, and how would you sell them on it?

And of course, try to limit discussion to whatever the current deck is. Some overlap is inevitable, but please don't distract from the current deck by responding to otherwise concluded conversations.

Should you leave comments or questions for the deckbuilder?
Absolutely, 100%, but probably not here. I hope that people see when their deck's been picked and involve themselves here over the course of their week, but there's no guarantee of that. There's no better place to discuss a deck with its builder than in their thread itself.

If you have questions about deck choices, recommendations for cuts or inclusions, or even just compliments about a job well done, please follow the link to where the deck is posted and leave your comments for them there. Everyone listing decks here is encouraging feedback and would be ecstatic to hear from you. Additionally, if the deck of the week isn't enough to satiate your desire to discuss decks, the list at the bottom of this post is all decks where your feedback would be welcomed.

Just, as a personal request from me, try to maintain situational awareness when you make recommendations. The competitive duel commander deck doesn't want Scrambleverse, the 75% deck didn't just forget about Mana Drain, and nobody will ever respond "Thank you so much! I've never heard of Sol Ring before!". No suggestion is a bad suggestion, but think about what answer you're likely to get before making one.

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How do you get your decks into the Random Deck of the Week
First, you need to meet just a few requirements:

1. You need a link to your list. I can't take stray decklists as submissions, so you need a url to link to.
2. Your decklist must be a 100 card Commander deck, including the commander(s). If you're playing with a different banlist than the standard one, please note that in the linked page.
3. You genuinely want feedback. Not all feedback is good, not all good feedback is productive, and not all productive feedback may seem kind. If you want to have people talking about your deck, go in with the mindset that all comments are welcome.

That's it! If you've got a handle on those and you have decks you would like to have a chance at Random Deck of the Week, just submit the links to your decks, I'll pull out your username and deck titles from there. There are two ways you can get your decks to me.

1. Message me the list of links you want to add to the pool, using the "send message" button when you click my name.
2. Comment them in this thread, but I'd like it to be done a specific way: have the decks you want added contained within a spoiler. If you don't know how to do that, your post should look something like this:
[spoiler] Links to your decks [/spoiler]
That way, the deck links don't take up too much space in the thread. And since you're already leaving a reply at that point, you may as well comment on the current Deck of the Week with the same post!

Thank you to everyone sharing their decks here, and thank you to everyone sharing your experiences here. I hope this thread is both fun and enlightening.

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All the Random Decks of the Week, both past and future

The thread title is a backronym from "Zedruu the Goat." I do think this deck is the best thing ever, but you don't have to.

Zedruu - The Greatest Of All Time

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What is this deck, and why would I play it?

This deck is a lot of things. It's a solid amount of group hug, a unique selection of combos, and a tiny bit of chaos sprinkled on top. It is my understanding that every part of that last sentence has a bad reputation among magic players, but I think that's mostly because people are using these things wrong. It can be frustrating to play against a group hug player who pretends they aren't trying to win, a chaos player who actually isn't trying to win, or a combo player who does win with efficiency and consistency. This deck is not going to do any of that. It yearns for the win, it does everything in its power to get it, and it takes the game on a wild ride in the process.

You will like this deck if:

- You want relatively consistent success out of incredibly varied lines of play.
- You want to create unconventional board states.
- You want to play with cards you wouldn't otherwise use.
- Win or lose, you want a story to tell.

You will not like this deck if:

- You want to start each game with a defined game plan.
- You like to have some control over the game.
- You are afraid of enabling your opponents too much.
- You or the people you play with are set on never playing a combo, no matter how ridiculous.

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Why Zedruu?

Zedruu the Greathearted's most important function is the card draw. Zedruu can feed you disgusting amounts of cards. If you want to match Zedruu's card advantage engine with a general, you would have to play something like Azami, Lady of Scrolls or Arcanis the Omnipotent, at which point you are just playing mono-U and you're down 2 colors and all the charm of the lovely goat-person. The red and white are necessary here, so Jeskai colored legends are the only real considerations. Of Jeskai colored legends, the only other option that lets you dig into your deck is Narset, Enlightened Master, which can provide similar value to zedruu in an even less predictable way. However, Zedruu is an active part of an infinite combo and a strong synergy with many cards here, so there would need to be changes to make this into a Narset deck, and then you'd have mostly the same deck while painting a big target on your face.

Also, Zedruu is the best.

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This is the deck exactly as it exists in real life pink sleeves (that make it easily identifiable when the cards get handed out to other people). This deck started the day the commander was released and has gone through many changes over the years since, but it has finally reached a point where I can say comfortably there isn't a change I wish I could make. That is not to say that I don't ever change the deck, but rather I'm long past the point where I keep a list of things I would play if I owned them.

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The Comprehensive Guide of Everything the Deck Does

When this deck does what it wants to do, there are essentially 3 phases of the game.

Phase 1: Fix the mana, set up card draw, and hopefully get flash.
Phase 2: Interact, sow chaos, and continue drawing cards.
Phase 3: Win in one big swoop.

Phase 1 is all about making mana and playing Howling Mines and then the Howling Mines will find you more mana and you're ready to go, and that usually takes the first 4 or 5 turns. Phase 2 is all about card interactions, the subtle synergies within this deck as well as the interactions between these cards and things opponents might play that will keep people guessing instead of winning the game or destroying the card draw, and this part of the game could be 2 turns or 200 depending on the opponents. Phase 3 is doing something immensely stupid and flashy to win the game, and that almost universally takes 1 turn, 2 turns, or infinite turns and nothing inbetween.

In previous iterations of this thread, I claimed that any number of things could happen and I couldn't cover them all, but that's not going to be true anymore. The following is a list of how all the cards in the deck function followed by how they synergize with one another. I don't imagine that I'll really hit every possibility, but if there is anything missing, feel free to mention it and I will gladly make additions.

The first card to address is, of course....

Zedruu the Greathearted

Zedruu is the cornerstone of the deck. Although the 4 toughness can prove to be suprisingly useful at times, the power of Zedruu lies in two very relevant abilities. The first ability triggers on upkeep and gives life gain and card draw equal to the number of permanents you own that your opponents control. Repeated card draw is crucial to winning with this deck, and while there are many card draw effects in this deck, sometimes you don't draw them or they get removed, so having an engine in the command zone is absolutely necessary. The second ability allows you, at the cost of 3 mana, to donate your permanents to other players. By design, this is meant to enable the first ability, but it's important to remember that donating permanents is more versatile than just that even without any cards that benefit you to donate. The simplest example is the multiplayer situation where someone says "if I had one more mana I could save us from losing" and you can just hand it to them.

Playing Zedruu properly requires an understanding of certain rules in the game, many of them specific enough that not all players would be familiar with them, so below is a brief summary.
Zedruu's Points of Interaction

-"Global" permanents: Most the things zedruu donates from this deck are things that don't particularly care who controls them. Howling Mine and friends, -Opalescence/March of the Machines, Detention Sphere a Pentad Prism with no counters left... Anything that effects all players equally makes a fair candidate for donation.
-Political Trickery: the 3 land swapping cards set up zedruu draws smoothly. The 3 mana spells happen the turn before zedruu, and Shifting Borders is an instant and can be done in response to the first Zedruu trigger.
-creatures: generally, it's best not to donate creatures because sacrifice outlets (and board wipes) are common enough that you'll lose your donation quickly, but there is a handy little trick you can do in combat. If you block with a creature and then donate it after blocks, the change in controller removes the creature from combat, so you get a permanent over to an opponent and hold off an attacker (unless it has trample)
-Strionic Resonator: activate Strionic Resonator to copy Zedruu's upkeep trigger and gain double life and draw double cards.
-Sakashima the Impostor: Because Sakashima keeps his name, you can clone Zedruu to double up on the upkeep trigger.
-Infinite Reflection: while Infinite Reflection's etb trigger is always going to effect you, the effect that makes new creatures enter as copies applies to the controller of Infinite Reflection, so by donating Infinite Reflection, you can make your opponent's things enter as what you want, which is a great way to combat decks playing etb the gathering. Note: if you play it on a creature other than zedruu and don't have donate mana to respond to the trigger, you will turn zedruu into not zedruu and no longer be able to give Infinite Reflection away.
-Dissipation Field: Sometimes it's good to bounce creatures and sometimes it isn't, so the ability to throw around control at instant speed gives you some amount of control over Dissipation Field's effect.
-Alhammarret's Archive: With zedruu's first ability, the draw doubler can make you draw serious cards, but some games is the gateway to an inevitable death, and being able to give it away can save you.
-Cowardice: 3 mana into zedruu can bounce a creature you control whenever you want.
Notable Nonbos
-Forbidden Orchard: Ownership of tokens belongs to whoever they entered play under, so Forbidden Orchard does not count towards Zedruu's card draw.
-Strionic Resonator: Resonating zedruu's trigger is good synergy, but control of an ability relies on controlling the permanent, so if you donate a card away with Zedruu, you can no longer resonate its triggers

The 99

The other 99 cards in the deck are detailed below in the same format as zedruu is above: a brief description followed by a list of the notable interactions in the deck. A lot of interactions that use 3 or more cards, I'll talk about it at more length in a later section.

Lands

A note about the lands in this deck, (much like the rest of the deck) the lands go slightly against conventional wisdom. Short of the extreme decks that plan on winning in the first 3 or 4 turns, playing a deck with 34 lands is probably a bit low. But here it works due to the vast card draw and the other means of generating and fixing mana. The first 3 or 4 mana are key to getting the engine running, but once everyone is drawing 4 cards a turn, this deck can consistently hit every land drop while everyone else gets frustrated by percieved mana flood. I don't run a maximized mana base with fetches/duals/shocks because min/maxing zedruu's mana base would be like greasing the wheels of a K'nex car, but the lands are picked to carry their weight.

Artifacts

Artifacts are the second most prevalent card type in the deck as they do most of the heavy lifting in the mana-making and card-drawing engines that let the deck succeed, but there are some fun bits in here.

Enchantments

Zedruu's enchantments aren't always the cards people see the most of, but they are definitely the cards that opponents remember. Crazy enchantments are often the highlight of a zedruu victory as they offer the greatest impact and confusion to the board state.

Creatures

Where lands are the foundation of Magic: the Gathering, creatures are the face of it. Creatures aren't the face of this deck though because they mostly aim to do more of what the artifacts and enchantments are doing.

Instants

Instants are usually instant for a reason, the instants in Zedruu offer the most immediate interaction with opponents that the deck has to offer.

Sorceries

Sorceries are usually the basic spells of a deck; ramp, cantrips, boardwipes, and all those reliable staples a normal deck needs. But that's not how it works here! Zedruu's sorceries are heavy hitters. Possibility Storm from Political Trickery can cause all sorts of madness.

Planeswalkers

The last card type represented here, these 2 planeswalkers round out the deck. There are exactly 2 planeswalkers in this deck because of Possibility Storm. If I play Possibility Storm, I have a card type where I know exactly what I'll flip into, and whichever one it is, they both can remove a Possibility Storm if I need to resolve something in my hand. This deck is not built to be able to protect planewalkers for very long, so they're mostly included for their immediate impact, but the ultimates are cool too.

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Big Splashy Synergies

"This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."

Zedruu has won many games of edh in many remarkable ways, but casting individual spells and letting them act as a win condition alone is an incredibly rare outcome. In order to reach the point of victory, this deck almost requires that select pieces be strung together that grant the pilot an unfathomable board state or direct access to most or all of the deck. While I pride myself on winning in comically unique ways, the truth is that the win conditions are often purely academic exercises once one of the major engines gets up and running. Any one of these strategies could be picked out and made into a more focused, more consistent deck. Having done so with more than one of them, I've found it's my preference to weave them all into one deck and let chance decide what strategy to pursue in any given game.

Draw Doubling and Hand Cycling

Making Mana to Make More Mana to Make More Mana...

Knowledge Pool, Possibility Storm, Eye of the Storm

Mirrorweave and Infinite Reflection Shenanigans

Strionic Resonator Spam

Build Your Own Doomsday

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4-Card Combos!

4 cards minimum, that's a hard rule. 2 or 3 card combos are efficient, and efficiency is lame-o. Feel free to ask any opponent ever, and they'll gladly tell you how lame your combo win was. But when it takes 4 or more pieces to create the infinite loop, at least you know you had to work for it! It's like assembling Blasting Station/Summoning Station/Salvaging Station/Grinding Station except my combos are better because they weren't designed by Wizards of the Coast they're extra double plus convoluted, and that's just the essence of style. I hope people reading understand the nonsense tone I'm going for, but in all seriousness, the greatest joy I've gotten out of making this thread is that more than just appreciating the deck style, people have immitated these win conditions, and that's just such lunacy that I can only smile.

Memnite/Zedruu, the Greathearted/Warstorm Surge/Dissipation Field = Infinite Damage

Opalescence/Detention Sphere/Sakashima the Impostor/Warstorm Surge = Infinite damage

Rest In Peace, Mirror of Fate, Temporal Mastery, Font of Mythos = Infinite turns

Jeskai Ascendancy/Strionic Resonator/March of the Machines/Mana Creatures = Infinitely large creatures and maybe infinite mana

Eye of the Storm, Mind's Desire, Rest in Peace, Mirror of Fate

Precursor Golem/Ephemeral Shields/Jeskai Charm/Arcbond

Barren Glory

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Changelog

19th Deck:

3drinks: Edgar Markov Swarmpires Contamination

It's swarmpires. It swarms you, but with vampires. And then contaminates you, with contamination. Swarmpires contamination. I don't know how many points I give this title, but I don't think it matters. The goal here is quite explicitly to lock your opponents out of non-black mana with Contamination and never have to sacrifice the enchantment because Edgar gives you an unstoppable river of 1/1 sac fodder. It's an aggressive vampire tribal shell that by virtue of its design gets to pretty freely play a card that's like 4 copies of Iona, Shield of Emeria for 3 mana.

Oh wow, I just realized that a new website means I probably won't have to click subscribe exactly 3 times to find out when people comment in a thread. Sweet!

Victimize


Yesterday's graveyard recursion was slow accumulated value. Today's is obscenity all at once. Yes, I would like to sacrifice my Bloodghast for Spirit of the Night and Sheoldred, Whispering One

Oversold Cemetery


Used to see this card all the time, not so much lately. I'd say it was amazing back when the format was almost all fatties and boardwipes, but I don't want to oversell it.

Quote from plushpenguin »

Sounds like if you want a guarantee instead of a liability you would just run Fanatic of Mogis instead.

If I was using this, I would probably care more about power for power's sake than just the quick damage. Feed it to something like Momentous Fall.

Quote from MRdown2urth »

Anyone play Tiagam? The plus side is this guy costs no mana to use.

Someday soon I will, I've got most of the deck set aside. That being said, that's more so as the ultimate excuse to play both Paradox Haze and Null Profusion side by side.

Quote from Legend »

Quote from cryogen »

To use an example from recent events, a white supremacist spewing hate and a dude throwing a milkshake are not equally at fault.

Will we be allowed to debunk this sort of slander on the new site without being unpersoned?

Magic players have difficulty understandings multiplayer magic politics half the time. The debunking you dream of would likely be a waste of keystrokes, and I generally prefer the current politics avoidance here.

Quote from tstorm823 »

Even if imprint itself has recieved some changes, the rules of linked abilities are still in place.

607.1. An object may have two abilities printed on it such that one of them causes actions to be taken or objects or players to be affected and the other one directly refers to those actions, objects, or players. If so, these two abilities are linked: the second refers only to actions that were taken or objects or players that were affected by the first, and not by any other ability.

607.2a If an object has an activated or triggered ability printed on it that instructs a player to exile one or more cards and an ability printed on it that refers either to “the exiled cards” or to cards “exiled with [this object],” these abilities are linked. The second ability refers only to cards in the exile zone that were put there as a result of an instruction to exile them in the first ability.

linked abilities are one of the messiest parts of the rules, but I honestly don't think there is a concise way to express on each card that abilities are linked and don't refer to anything else. Imprint, I believe, was their attempt to make these connections clearer, but even that falls short of clearly expressing the intent of linked abilities, cause if you play imprint cards exactly as written, you could still Saheeli, Sublime Artificer a Knowledge Pool into a Mimic Vat and glitch the game out.

cc: @DirkGently

Edit: So, I asked some judges and they said that Linked abilities are never divorced from their source, and that Mimic Vat essentially has a serial number for its triggered ability, and will only make copies of things with that serial number. My interpretation of the rules is incorrect; though it might make sense in English, it does not make sense in Magicese.

Quote from hyalopterouslemur »

This makes me wonder why Blood of the Martyr is so (expensive? weighted?)

Well, early balance is like weighing a feather against an iron except there are no scales and your hands are on fire.

Kurobrand

First time poster, looooong time lurker (I actually signed up for an account, just now, just to post here): thank you very much to the mods, admins, and all others here who have put so much time and effort into making this site fantastic. As my Magic group has slowly faded away over the years, this site (and now ECHREC) has been my remaining link to my favorite game.
In particular, I want to thank tstorm823 and DementedKirby for your contributions: you have influenced my play style and EDH deck interests more than any other sources (long live the G.O.A.T.!).
I'm very sad to see this site go, but I look forward to lurking around the planned next site and am optimistic that I will continue to find great content there!

Well the forum structure you're used to here should hopefully feel familiar, and all the bb code should be the same - no new coding to learn. I don't know that we will have a way to directly transfer threads over, so for now the best I can say is that saving everything in a word doc will save a lot of time.

I promise two things: first that as long as I am a part of the new site I will strive to make it at a minimum what we had here, and secondly that based on what we have discussed so far I think it will be even better in the long run.

Quote from Feyd_Ruin »

For those of you who wish to continue on with our community here, the staff and I have begun building a new home. We'll announce and discuss the prospect when it is more concrete and closer to completion.

We hope that you follow us to the new home we are currently building.
It's only 40 days away, so it won't have everything we've planned, but we will never stop building and improving it.

Quote from hyalopterouslemur »

It is only a 2/2. That said, in my experience, cards that "perform some other vital function (usually mana) but are also creatures" can help aggro decks get off the ground, but they won't seal the game for you..

It's still nice to be able to pressure planeswalkers post-wrath.

Quote from tstorm823 »

Pull the trigger on someone else's Nev's Disk.

Add a fate counter to one of your things with someone else's Oblivion Stone. A bargain at 7 mana!

Quote from tstorm823 »

Am I crazy, or is Modern Horizons feeling kinda like Time Spiral?

MaRo has said that it is an intentional throwback to Time Spiral.

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/184967966093/if-modern-horizons-is-a-love-letter-to-planar

Quote from DirkGently »

Force of negation is very likely to make it into phelddagrif. The turn clause is almost irrelevant and the noncreaure clause still leaves it very strong. 3 is super reasonable for a backup cost, too. Love it.

I think any deck running Force of Will will be happy with also slotting in Force of Negation. Most spells that matter are going to be Noncreatures anyway. I know I will pick up a couple just in case (mostly for Modern), but I don't run FoW in any decks so I doubt I will run this either.

Hard agree - Mindmoil is nuts in the right context. Does great things for Zedruu, does great things in my Yidris enchantress Vorthos build (jesus Toc, make the build more obscure, I dare you!).