MTG Salvation

Obliterate is just the sort of card that needs a deck fiendishly devoted to exploiting it.

So, this is that deck.



I made this deck to be a very focused "combo" deck - you ramp like crazy with mana dorks (with this many dorks it gets out of hand quickly) and set down your general along with any of the other fun little accessories you might want. Then bam, drop an obliterate or similar to clear the field except for your army of 3/1 tokens and accessories.

Depending on your accessories this should generally win the game, or at least eliminate a few enemies - nether void means people are locked out of spells for a very long time (and you can cast obliterate through it!), xenagos leaves you with loads of mana and additional tokens, garruk gives you the same in more limited doses, druid's repository gives you tons of mana, arena, ritual and library give you cards, parallel lives and life give you additional tokens (while death can resurrect a powerful dork or sekkuar himself on the cheap), and loam helps you recover faster.

The tutors give you more reliable ways to hit your obliterates, or cool accessories if you've already got them. The lands are in somewhat short supply since 40 cards are already dedicated to mana dorks - generally once I played 3-4 lands I tend to hold onto them for post-wipe recovery.

So...thoughts?

Obliterate and friends doesn't get enchantments which I think should be exploited more, here are some cool ideas that I thought would be nice (mostly anthem effects)

Death pit offering (upgrade all your creatures basically)
Gaea's Anthem
Gruul War Chant
Homura, human ascendant (this is just dirty with obliterate, you have to admit)
Purphoros, god of the forge (survives obliterate and does a butt ton of damage to everyone and can pump your guys if you start getting mana again)

I think a really important aspect to this deck is haste outlets. This way, you'd play a mana dork from your hand, immediately be able to activate it, to play more mana dorks. Helps you go off a lot quicker. Some good options: Concordant Crossroads, Mass Hysteria, Fervor, Fires of Yavimaya, Hammer of Purphoros, Ogre Battledriver, Madrush Cyclops, etc. I'd recommend running at least 2 of these.

Glimpse of Nature might be good in here also. (Primordial Sage/Soul of the Harvest are probably too slow.)

You may want Skullclamp in case you end up with a dead board state, but with 10 tutors, may not happen.

Also, instead of a MLD spell, something like Craterhoof Behemoth could also close out the game.

Misc suggestions: Purphoros, God of the Forge (requires less dorks to win), Vicious Shadows (another great win con), Phyrexian Altar/Ashnod's Altar (may help you get there quicker), Aluren (all your dorks for free, great with Glimpse and cards like Recycle), Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, & Yawgmoth's Will (do it all again!).

Any reason you have not considered Natural Affinity, Living Plane, and Nature's Revolt?

Something like NAture's Revolt into a cycled Decree of Pain or Black Sun's Zenith where X=2 is why my Sek'kuar deck exists.

Obviously I get that oblit doesn't kill enchantments, hence the presence of so many enchantments in my "Accessories" section. That said, I think blowing up the board and leaving it empty save 4-8 3/1 hasty tokens on my side of the field is generally game over, or pretty close, so I don't really want to run enchantments that need everything to go perfectly to get any value out of them (like gaea's anthem et all). Purp isn't there mostly because people hate him, and also because the big threat of the deck is that I can have a token army on an unopposed board, so one-shot damage isn't very efficient. Anyway Prossh makes way more tokens, this deck is more about board cleanliness than massive token production.

haste i don't think is that necessary. tokens have it by default, and if I'm using mana and a card to give my guys haste, I think under most circumstances I could have gotten the same number of bodies on the field by playing mana dorks instead of haste enchantments, without losing the card.

glimpse would be great with tokens, but rarely do i play more than 2 creatures in a turn.

skullclamp just feels too much like anti-synergy with the decks main strat. It's a decent backup if I can't oblit for some reason, but for now I'd prefer the focused combo version unless that proves too unreliable.

craterhoof is unlikely to win the game outright, i rarely have more than 6 dudes on the field, which kills one person at best, and most of them generate the mana necessary to cast the craterhoof in the first place.

vicious shadows is another decent backup, mostly in case someone instant-speed kills sekkuar. I don't like the high cost, though, I really want ideally a T5-6 oblit and shadows almost certainly slows me down by a whole turn.

altars are bad, I don't want to sac anyone pre-oblit. Anyway mana has rarely been too difficult - if I had enough dorks that I want to oblit, I've got enough mana for oblit, no problem.

aluren is too risky, anyone can cast their blockers for free post-oblit with flash.

Nythos...maybe. It's really bad post-oblit but might be decent pre-oblit. That said, the more I playtest the more I'd rather have more tutors for cradle, because cradle is just absurd in this deck (got 9 mana on turn 3 off cradle once, and it's bonkers as your post-oblit land too)

yawgwin I think is too slow. I'd need 11 mana to cast it and oblit again, which is really really hard post-oblit even many turns down the road. I'd be much more likely to use something like oversold cemetery if I wanted to try to do serious recursion post-oblit.

I did think about living plane. It might make the deck. Downside is, lands in the future trade with my 3/1s which could cut down their ranks pretty quickly. I think life//death is better but then redundancy never hurt. Unfortunately I think natural affinity is too expensive.

As far as cycling decree or BSZ, that sounds like suicide for this deck since it wouldn't kill any big enemy creatures. A regular decree would work fine, but I think that introduces too many moving parts. I'd rather just tutor for oblit so I can guarantee that I'll be nuking lands and creatures at the same time.

You have valid points for the rest, but I have to disagree with you on the haste - Concordant Crossroads and Mass Hysteria only cost 1 mana, and they probably speed the deck up x2 as you don't have to wait an entire turn to use your mana dorks to cast more mana dorks. The only problem I see is that you will empty your hand too quick and will need to add more card draw (such as Phyrexian Arena or better yet Necropotence to the deck). When you add Glimpse to this, it just becomes absurd. I think you should at least try it out.

Other suggestions: Parallel Lives/Doubling Season. But, they might be win-more.

Quote from Toonamiguy »

You have valid points for the rest, but I have to disagree with you on the haste - Concordant Crossroads and Mass Hysteria only cost 1 mana, and they probably speed the deck up x2 as you don't have to wait an entire turn to use your mana dorks to cast more mana dorks. The only problem I see is that you will empty your hand too quick and will need to add more card draw (such as Phyrexian Arena or better yet Necropotence to the deck). When you add Glimpse to this, it just becomes absurd. I think you should at least try it out.

Other suggestions: Parallel Lives/Doubling Season. But, they might be win-more.

With those 2, mostly it's because I hate giving enemy creatures haste. That said I just don't think they're necessary. Assuming my total draw on turn 5 (about when I want to oblit) is 5 dorks, 4 lands, 1 oblit/tutor, and 2 accessories/tutors, I usually have no problem getting all of those cards + sek'kuar onto the field and obliterating on turn 5. If I had mass hysteria or whatever, I might have them onto the field a turn earlier (maaaybe) but I don't necessarily want to oblit too soon, either, or people will have too many lands in their hands.

But mostly it's because I just don't think it does enough. I'd hate to replace a card that does something - mana dork, accessory, tutor, land, or oblit - with one that might speed me up a bit. Given a choice between a card that gives me the chance for a god-hand, and one that gives me more reliability, I'll take the reliability most of the time.

I do already have parallel lives (it's decent), dunno if the extra mana for doubling season is justified by its interaction with my pws, I'm inclined to think not. Parallel lives isn't really exciting enough that I want another one, especially one that hits the same spot in the curve as my general.

I think you may want to consider the standard Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots protection set for your general, because while Obliterate cannot be countered, nothing stops an opponent from using spot removal such as Path to Exile on your general in response to such a spell and such an event occurring could be problematic for you.

Quote from ihockert »

I think you may want to consider the standard Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots protection set for your general, because while Obliterate cannot be countered, nothing stops an opponent from using spot removal such as Path to Exile on your general in response to such a spell and such an event occurring could be problematic for you.

I was thinking more along the lines of sylvan safekeeper or steely resolve since those provide value post-obliterate. We'll see if they're necessary, though, but I suspect they might be. On the other hand, sekkuar or not, a good pw on an empty board is still very likely to win.

Got to test it out at my lgs and at the office. Overall it worked pretty well, it won more games than it lost, although it's definitely a bit of a one-trick pony. If people don't see it coming it's hilarious, but wipes (the creature-only kind) are a real pain. Never actually ran into an issue with someone killing my general in response, interestingly. I seemed to hit my PWs a lot and they were great - I think a good offshoot of this deck could be a heavy pw-based 5 color deck also relying on oblit to seal the deal. Maybe some sort of turbofog concoction.

Anyway, the deck's pretty cool when it works, and it works pretty well, but it's definitely not a deck I see wanting to play for very long, so it'll probably get subsumed back into the EDH box pretty soon. For my next deck I'm thinking of another sweet one-trick-pony - uyo, silent prophet.

Decided to test this deck out online in the 1v1. Here's what i found

-you need to get Sek'kuar and board wipe combo out asap.
-because of the above, you dont have a lot of time to assemble your board to be blown up
-parallel lives + friends are a godsend and lets you wipe the board with only 4-5 creatures and still be worth

These observations are even more true for the multiplayer games which you've geared your deck towards, you absolutely need more token doublers so i suggest primal vigor and doubling season. Pumpers act in a similar fashion to token doublers (total damage wise). Homura is extremely broken as I thought. Probably going to need warstorm surge as well as that doubles the damage.