MTG Salvation

So I'm kind of wracking my brain to come up with some new deck ideas, and unfortunately the decklist database isn't organized by deck theme. I've got a couple of ideas on the back burner I could use some ideas for, so I'll talk about those in a second. The first question on my mind right now though is: Does anyone have any interesting unusual deck themes or normal deck themes with an unusual but still synergistic commander they could share?

I always like getting other people's perspectives on deckbuilding because it usually leads to me coming up with things I hadn't considered before.

My current back burner ideas

Topdeck Manipulation: a deck all about knowing whats on the top and ripping cards off of it to play for free. I started with Rashmi, Eternities Crafter but unfortunately U/G is kind of... durdle heavy. I tried going the "make free big dudes, smash" approach, but it kind of turned into "get overwhelming durdley board state, opponents scoop" before I could attack. I was thinking of maybe going 3 color and looking at Sidisi, Brood Tyrant or Intet, the Dreamer for a more focused approach, sidisi being free stuff and reanimator, intet being free value bomb spells. My concerns on sidisi are that the topdeck theme might not actually be that useful compared to her usual "mill self incrementally, cast living death" game plan or that the two will get in the way of one another. Intent also runs the risk of becoming super durdle heavy but I don't really know how to curb that and also avoid boring two card table kills.

Self-Propagating Tokens: So this started with wanting to build a Sekki, Seasons' Guide deck based around cards like Broodhatch Nantuko, Hornet Nest, Sprouting Phytohydra and Saber Ants that make tokens when they get dealt damage. I also have recently made several failed attempts at a Pariah/Arcbond/Coalhauler Swine style self-damage combo deck, and I was thinking the two themes seemed like they would fit well together. I was thinking Reyhan, Last of the Abzan + Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder would be ideal for this style of deck, but I still havent really figured out why I was having trouble with my other self-damage decks. Most of the time I just never drew the right cards together or got the tutors I needed, or sometimes I just didnt have enough on board to actually end the game and I'm not really sure where I went wrong.

Any input on these decks and the above topic is very much appreciated, thank you

On the topic of usual deck themes, I tried an Atogatog deck (thread in signature) that was unusual. I'm also familiar with a neat thread with Reaper King at the helm, located here.

I do not have much experience with your two ideas, but I've read a lot of threads so I'll add what I can.

In terms of your top deck manipulation idea, have you considered a deck built around Primal Surge? All permanents, meaning your top deck cards get better. Things like Lurking Predators and Vizier of the Menagerie seem like they would help you do more than just curdle.

What about Arjun, the Shifting Flame. I tried the precon with him at the helm, and it was very weird. You end up with 20 cards in hand, and several times a turn you go through the entire deck. Pre-con, I drew over 200 cards in one turn.

Since you get to order the cards, you actually end up manipulating the order of your entire deck. Don't know what to do with that though.

I would add in Possibility Storm, Eye of the Storm, Knowledge Pool.

And you can win with draw triggers, or storm, just deck yourself. You can even just draw into Kiki+Pestermite.

I think the deck can be a bunch of cantrips and a few win conditions and it will do the rest by itself.

Uril, the Miststalker: Foglio art tribal. With the exception of Uril and all but 2 of the lands, the cards are illustrated by Phil Foglio or Kaja Folgio. (Between the two, they only illustrated 2 lands, which are in the deck, and two legendary creatures, one of which is in the deck and one of which is UB. I really need 3+ colors to get a large enough card pool to make a deck, and I already had a mono-W and a UB deck.)

Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa & Vial Smasher the Fierce: What's mine is yours. Lots of Monger (Squallmonger, Scandalmonger, etc.) type effects, abilities anyone can use, as well as self-donating cards (eg, Humble Defector) and cards where my opponents can potentially choose the target (Cuombajj Witches, Diaochan, Artful Beauty). This (my non-U deck) is meant to be a contrast to my mono-U theft deck, which wins by stealing my opponents' wincons; my Monger deck tries to get my opponents to use my cards, instead. Also has several Chain spells (Chain of Smog, etc.), and because it actually has a fair amount of discard effects, it's got cards to capitalize on that (Geth's Grimoire, Waste Not, etc.)

Build a deck based on goad. Grenzo could lead a pure red one. UR/W also has possibilities since UR has all the goad cards, and Boros interacts so well with combat.

On the subject of odd deck ideas:

I brewed a 5-color enchantments creatureless O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami deck that is a blast. I've been enjoying the deck for weeks and my playgroup seems to enjoy it too because I play a very political game with O-Kagachi's exile trigger. The deck is full to the brim with nastyness that would ordinarily provoke people to swing but the crackback is just sooo overwhelming with a plethura of damage doublers like Berserk, Fatal Frenzy and such...It's pretty hilarious to hold onto a few lands in hand and bluff an opponent out of attacking me and going after someone else!

Ghave Enchantress sorta fell together. One day, back before Theros came out, I was going over my Ghave decklist, and I saw



So, yeah, 22 enchantments. That's enough to seriously consider an enchantress subtheme. And so I did.

I was going to suggest Yidris as well, but I'm not sure how unusual you could consider that strategy with him or Rashmi for that matter. You'd have to be doing something unique with your topdeck syrategy.

Tl;dr but i dod do a goblin tribal with purphoros at the helm. Not really far fetched, but most goblin tribal uses krenk, wort or kiki-jiki.

Quote from Outcryqq »

On the topic of usual deck themes, I tried an Atogatog deck (thread in signature) that was unusual. I'm also familiar with a neat thread with Reaper King at the helm, located here.

I do not have much experience with your two ideas, but I've read a lot of threads so I'll add what I can.

In terms of your top deck manipulation idea, have you considered a deck built around Primal Surge? All permanents, meaning your top deck cards get better. Things like Lurking Predators and Vizier of the Menagerie seem like they would help you do more than just curdle.

Oh hey, thats me!

I came here to show off mine, but someone beat me to it Modern is my format where I go cut throat competitive, so EDH is where I can play for fun, but I had a hard time not being "min max" about it so I started to make a lot of edh decks with themes. Over the years I only kept one, which is my Halloween themed Reaper King Deck, using the 5 colors to let me build with all of the creepy things from magics card pool.

Still workin' on it being a primer, but I've been a little busy the last few weeks. Should be able to get to it soon.

Tribal is always the easy to go theme but theres a few I remember others doing and Ive done, that also fits the bill.

• Tribal themes, goblins, vampires. Thats the easy one.
• Holiday themed; Halloween creepy, Christmas "ice" group hug, 4th of July explosions
• Block themed; Mirridan, theros, shadowmoor, ect
• History/time period themed; Egyptian (Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons or nameless gods), celtic (Kaysa or Lorwyn stuff) ect
• Types of magic, Voodo curses (think stuffy doll and Curse of Misfortunes), Mimic magic with clone and morph effects, air bender with cool khans cards
• Multiplayer Matters. A friend stuffed as much voting, goad, ivory mask stuff in it. politics!
• TV/anime tropes. My fiance plays a magical girl themed edh based off Azami, Lady of Scrolls with every wizard altered into sailor things. You also got pirates, ninjas, archers, super heros ect.
• For a while my fiance and I used to play "partner decks" where we'd build decks off each other. Not necessarily to team up, usually to clash. Ashling vs ashling, Gisa and Gerolf, Tibor and Lumia, anax and cymede, usually we both run the same commander card, and one of us would go mono colored, and the other go the different color.

Theres more stupider themes Ive done, but those were the fun ones. I usually go out of my way to avoid "mechanic themes" because I dont want to min max the decks too hard and have turn 3 kills.

My Thras & Tarl (TnT) deck is pretty weird. It's built around burn and Swans of Bryn Argoll. It includes only basic lands and lands that find basics for Early Harvest, Winter's Night, and Price of Progress.

Most of my decks are built to do what they do, end of story. Not necessarily to win but to follow a mechanic through and let it do its thing. The one exception I have to that is my Lazav, Dimir Mastermind deck that portrays a set of characters from my favourite series of books. It works reasonably well as a deck too, but it's a lot more intriguing when you have that further mental investment in the deck. It's one of the decks I have that I'm really not interested in taking apart, and I'm considering doing another deck themed around characters from the same series, this time with Kresh the Bloodbraided at the helm.

I've done a "top of the deck matters" theme, and the best way to go IMHO is Temur. Intet, the Dreamer and Maelstrom Wanderer both make good candidates for the commander, and there are all sorts of cards that care about the top of your library in those colors (but they are mostly concentrated in green and blue, so your initial thinking to go with Rashmi makes a lot of sense). Since the deck will end up extremely durdley, the red might help by providing sweepers and other mass removal options.

Intet is one of my favorite decks, although the way I play mine is a little different, instead of expensive spells it emphasizes on getting extra spells onto itself via extra combat and extra trigger, same way I play my Jeleva, making Intet my "extra hand".

I have an Intet deck that's all about cheating stuff into play. Some top of deck manipulation for Rashmi, Intet, Djinn of Wishes, Call of the Wild type stuff. Then of course cheat from in hand things, Sneak Attack, Through the Breach, Elvish Piper, Quicksilver Amulet. And even some randomized things like Temporal Aperature and Unexpected Results. It can be really good sometimes or it can start slow and fight to get back into it. But it's fun to have goofy interactions like that. And of course I run all the big baddies to cheat into play(except I won't run Blightsteel, infect is no fun in EDH).

My true top of deck manipulation is my 5-color deck I refer to as the Deck of Lies. The deck is a commanded by Karona, False God. The goal of the deck is to generate tokens and then find and cast Deceiver of Form. Once in play there are multiple ways to manipulate top of library to put something vastly overpowered on top. Examples are Biovisionary to win in your next end step, Utvara Hellkite attack and X times X 6/6 dragons where X is the number of tokens you have in play, Omnath, Locus of Rage all but one die to legend rule and see eachother die, then you get X times X-1 triggers of 3 damage where X is the number of tokens you had, Pathbreaker Ibex all attack triggers go on the stack then resolve individually giving a massive bonus to each creature (8 * 2^X where X is number of attackers is the final trigger's plus of P/T), Hero of Bladehold get a bunch of attackers with a bunch of Battle Cry triggers. There's a few more options too. In case the Deceiver is killed I have graveyard recursion, exiled I have exile recursion, all else fails I just run anthem effects and have a bunch of powerful tokens. Some of my friends hate the deck because if Deceiver resolves I almost always win. But it's a fun deck that has many surprise concepts of winning that most people never think about.

Intet top deck manipulation/cheat stuff can be fun; I had one for a very long time.

"Unusual themes" is one of my go-to's when crafting: can I take the obvious direction for commander/color combo and go the complete other way - or just do something silly?

Some worthy mentions:
My colorless is Hope of Ghirapur voltron swordpile. Eldrazi? Nah.
Odric, Lunarch Marshal: basically I am playing x-factor with my creatures, and consider it a moral victory if I get all thirteen keywords.
Jori En, Ruin Diver merfolk tribal izzet aggro.
Ravos, Soultender + Silas Renn, Seeker Adept creatures-only Esper.