I am Chief_of_Compliance, a long-time EDH enthusiast and returning to the cite now that I have a little more free time. I am very proud of this deck and is the closest thing to a competitive deck I've ever built. It pulls from several different designs, most notably Legacy storm and Legacy dredge. This is a budgetless deck and I was lucky to acquire most of these cards before many of the buyouts (I purchased my one copy of Lion's Eye Diamond back in 2016, a week before the buyout for $70) and selling the collection of foil Modern staples I accumulated well before the format existed. The deck was originally 3 different decks: Tasigur, the Golden Fang, The Gitrog Monster, and Jhoira of the Ghitu. It's now a Frankenstein's Monster mash-up of all of my favorite archetypes.
This deck is the final product of several different builds, inspirations, and cards acquired over a very long period of time. This deck is *not* a budget build. It started as a two separate decks: Tasigur, the Golden Fang dredge/delve and Jhoira of the Ghitu suspend/storm. As I started paying closer attention to Legacy (with I share a love of both archetypes), I noticed that the deck lists were surprisingly similar. Once Yidris was spoiled, I had an idea to cram both in the same deck.
Early Game
This deck has many win conditions set for various stages of the game. This iteration tries to close up shop as early as turn 2 with a Hermit Druid. This Hermit Druid combo is slightly different than the traditional set-ups and utilizes a Legacy dredge combo. To accomplish this you need the following: a land in hand, preferably a blue source. There are zero basic lands in the deck, so activating Hermit Druid instantly dumps your library into the graveyard. This places Narcomoeba onto the battlefield for free. You play your land, bringing back Bloodghast. Flashback Dread Return; sacrificing Narcomoeba, Bloodghast, and Hermit Druid to get Laboratory Maniac into play. Unearthing a Fatestitcher is also an option to get your 3rd creature. There are enough 1cmc draw spells or cycle lands to ensure at least one is in your hand.
Mid Game
Dredge -> storm is the mid game plan for this deck. The ability to out value your opponent cannot be overstated. Strip Mine / Life from the Loam can really help disrupt our opponents. Unlike similar locks with multiple land drops (Azusa or Oracle of Mul Daya), I use this to keep an opponent from key lands in an attempt to keep them off their colors.Vaporing something only to Strip Mine their ability to re-cast is value in its own right. Since dredge sets up my storm up, the mid game win is to Tendrils of Agony. There are a lot of tutors here, so being able to call up win conditions (see Hermit Druid above) should not usually be an issue. Cracking a Lion's Eye Diamond in response to Infernal Tutor nets you 3 mana and your choice of win condition.
Late Game
The late game is not something this deck has typically had to deal with because either the deck has won already or has had its win conditions disrupted and we are already dead with no good way back. Yidris is a 5/4 trampler, which can easily put opponents on a clock. There is still enough answers to other threats that we might be able to force our way to winning through commander damage. Although depending on the board state and assuming Yidris has been sent back to the command zone many times, this might not be viable to close up the game.
General
This deck truly benefits from the decks that came before. From piloting the Gitrog,Jhoira, and Tasigur in different stages of my learning of the game and grasping advanced mechanics through the school of hard lessons, I struggled with things such as "when do I crack the Lion's Eye Diamond?" or "why am I purposely putting things in the graveyard?" I've earned a 6th sense of piloting this deck because it's quite literally all my decks in one.
Some notable inclusions: there is no Sol Ring. Why? Colorless mana in this deck is not helpful towards the overall game plan. Yes, a turn 1 Sol Ring is good and can help me cast lots of things, while a 0 cmc Mana Crypt is better. Spending a crucial colored mana source to cast Sol Ring to tap for 2 colorless is much less effective when I may need mana open for other things. There is no Force of Will. I go back and forth with this card. It's obviously very good, but this deck is also very conservative about exiling its own stuff. Also no Dig through Time for the same reason.
Unlike most Yidris builds, this deck is not overly concerned with cascade triggers. That does not mean that the deck ignores cascade. Yidris is a 5/4 beater that can easily stick around for at least a turn's worth of combat damage. Cascading a Brainstorm into an Lion's Eye Diamond, 0 cmc mana rock or suspend spell never feels bad. This is also not a "fun" or "casual" deck, so if your playgroup is not too keen on Hermit Druid, storm or dredge combos and you still want to play it? Dialing the deck down to 75% could help keep the game fun without being degenerate.
I think that this is a beautiful pile of cards. The recommendation that I would add is to lower your land count so that you aren't flooded. While I understand that Cascade is a way to filter through your lands and get to the business spells, I think you can afford to shave off 2-3 lands and still have a decent land count to get off the ground.
Some cards that I would suggest that would be helpful to your game plan are: Memory's Journey, Dark Confidant, Aetherflux Reservoir, and Rapid Hybridization/Pongify/Nature's Claim. The Journey is useful to make sure that you get another chance to try again with your combo (in the case of 'yard hate or a well-timed 'yard exile effect from an opponent in response to your Dread Return). Dark Confidant is an easy way to start accruing great card advantage relatively early and with minimal cost to you; I think the CMC curve of your deck has got to be something around 2, so you should be able to draw cards until you win the game. Confidant and the Journey also have low CMC's so that flipping them over with Ad Nauseam isn't painful. Aetherflux Reservoir is the new way that competitive Commander decks kill with Storm since the incidental life-gain is so important and you need a lower Storm count in order to kill the table too. Finally, the cheap CMC removal effects are just generally good. Competitive Commander games are usually dominated by FlashHulk strategies and similar Storm strategies, so I would personally recommend the Claim since it also hits Food Chain in addition to mana rocks/mana sources.
Overall, it's a great deck with a low CMC curve and a highly efficient package of spells to generate card advantage and maximize your mana advantage. I'd love to play against it sometime!
I think that this is a beautiful pile of cards. The recommendation that I would add is to lower your land count so that you aren't flooded. While I understand that Cascade is a way to filter through your lands and get to the business spells, I think you can afford to shave off 2-3 lands and still have a decent land count to get off the ground.
Some cards that I would suggest that would be helpful to your game plan are: Memory's Journey, Dark Confidant, Aetherflux Reservoir, and Rapid Hybridization/Pongify/Nature's Claim. The Journey is useful to make sure that you get another chance to try again with your combo (in the case of 'yard hate or a well-timed 'yard exile effect from an opponent in response to your Dread Return). Dark Confidant is an easy way to start accruing great card advantage relatively early and with minimal cost to you; I think the CMC curve of your deck has got to be something around 2, so you should be able to draw cards until you win the game. Confidant and the Journey also have low CMC's so that flipping them over with Ad Nauseam isn't painful. Aetherflux Reservoir is the new way that competitive Commander decks kill with Storm since the incidental life-gain is so important and you need a lower Storm count in order to kill the table too. Finally, the cheap CMC removal effects are just generally good. Competitive Commander games are usually dominated by FlashHulk strategies and similar Storm strategies, so I would personally recommend the Claim since it also hits Food Chain in addition to mana rocks/mana sources.
Overall, it's a great deck with a low CMC curve and a highly efficient package of spells to generate card advantage and maximize your mana advantage. I'd love to play against it sometime!
Thank you for the feedback and you bring up some very good points. I'm not new to EDH, but I am new to trying to break into the cEDH scene. Aetherflux Reservoir offers a great additional win condition for a deck that is trying to have as many win cons as possible to be able to adjust on the fly. I will take into consideration shaving the land count, but I'm not sure how many or which ones to cut. Maybe City of Brass and Mana Confluence to mitigate unnecessary early game life loss (since fetching is already chunking my life totals. So, I think their replacements will be Aetherflux Reservoir and Nature's Claim.
I think you could cut Gemstone Cavern and one of your fetchlands. 9 is a really solid number to make sure that you have all the colors necessary, and the rainbow lands help generate any color you need.
Glad I could help. I'll be interested to see what your game reports look like with this deck! The synergy between the strategies is very impressive and makes for an efficient deck, methinks.
I think you could cut Gemstone Cavern and one of your fetchlands. 9 is a really solid number to make sure that you have all the colors necessary, and the rainbow lands help generate any color you need.
Glad I could help. I'll be interested to see what your game reports look like with this deck! The synergy between the strategies is very impressive and makes for an efficient deck, methinks.
Gemstone Caverns was a leftover from The Gitrog Monster. I agree that it is not really optimal outside of the opening hand, and only situationally good if I'm on the draw. I think adding Memory's Journey is the play here.
Next week I'm going out of town for vacation, but I'm going to try and head to the shop on the following Monday and Wednesday if I can squeeze it to report the standings and gameplay analysis.
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I am Chief_of_Compliance, a long-time EDH enthusiast and returning to the cite now that I have a little more free time. I am very proud of this deck and is the closest thing to a competitive deck I've ever built. It pulls from several different designs, most notably Legacy storm and Legacy dredge. This is a budgetless deck and I was lucky to acquire most of these cards before many of the buyouts (I purchased my one copy of Lion's Eye Diamond back in 2016, a week before the buyout for $70) and selling the collection of foil Modern staples I accumulated well before the format existed. The deck was originally 3 different decks: Tasigur, the Golden Fang, The Gitrog Monster, and Jhoira of the Ghitu. It's now a Frankenstein's Monster mash-up of all of my favorite archetypes.
1 Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder
Creature
1 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Cloud of Faeries
1 Fatestitcher
1 Putrid Imp
1 Narcomoeba
1 Hermit Druid
1 Baral, Chief of Compliance
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Bloodghast
1 Dark Confidant
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Simian Spirit Guide
Enchantment
1 Pernicious Deed
Land
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Strip Mine
1 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Blood Crypt
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
1 Watery Grave
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Marsh Flats
1 Arid Mesa
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Command Tower
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Forgotten Cave
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Barren Moor
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Woodland Cemetery
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Mox Diamond
1 Lotus Bloom
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Aetherflux Reservoir
Instant
1 Frantic Search
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Mental Misstep
1 Noxious Revival
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Swan Song
1 Thought Scour
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Mana Drain
1 Dark Ritual
1 Pact of Negation
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Brainstorm
1 Nature's Claim
1 Memory's Journey
Sorcery
1 Timetwister
1 Summer Bloom
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Life from the Loam
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Ponder
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Faithless Looting
1 Thoughtseize
1 Past in Flames
1 Wheel of Fate
1 Dread Return
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Ancestral Vision
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Duress
This deck is the final product of several different builds, inspirations, and cards acquired over a very long period of time. This deck is *not* a budget build. It started as a two separate decks: Tasigur, the Golden Fang dredge/delve and Jhoira of the Ghitu suspend/storm. As I started paying closer attention to Legacy (with I share a love of both archetypes), I noticed that the deck lists were surprisingly similar. Once Yidris was spoiled, I had an idea to cram both in the same deck.
Early Game
This deck has many win conditions set for various stages of the game. This iteration tries to close up shop as early as turn 2 with a Hermit Druid. This Hermit Druid combo is slightly different than the traditional set-ups and utilizes a Legacy dredge combo. To accomplish this you need the following: a land in hand, preferably a blue source. There are zero basic lands in the deck, so activating Hermit Druid instantly dumps your library into the graveyard. This places Narcomoeba onto the battlefield for free. You play your land, bringing back Bloodghast. Flashback Dread Return; sacrificing Narcomoeba, Bloodghast, and Hermit Druid to get Laboratory Maniac into play. Unearthing a Fatestitcher is also an option to get your 3rd creature. There are enough 1cmc draw spells or cycle lands to ensure at least one is in your hand.
Mid Game
Dredge -> storm is the mid game plan for this deck. The ability to out value your opponent cannot be overstated. Strip Mine / Life from the Loam can really help disrupt our opponents. Unlike similar locks with multiple land drops (Azusa or Oracle of Mul Daya), I use this to keep an opponent from key lands in an attempt to keep them off their colors.Vaporing something only to Strip Mine their ability to re-cast is value in its own right. Since dredge sets up my storm up, the mid game win is to Tendrils of Agony. There are a lot of tutors here, so being able to call up win conditions (see Hermit Druid above) should not usually be an issue. Cracking a Lion's Eye Diamond in response to Infernal Tutor nets you 3 mana and your choice of win condition.
Late Game
The late game is not something this deck has typically had to deal with because either the deck has won already or has had its win conditions disrupted and we are already dead with no good way back. Yidris is a 5/4 trampler, which can easily put opponents on a clock. There is still enough answers to other threats that we might be able to force our way to winning through commander damage. Although depending on the board state and assuming Yidris has been sent back to the command zone many times, this might not be viable to close up the game.
General
This deck truly benefits from the decks that came before. From piloting the Gitrog,Jhoira, and Tasigur in different stages of my learning of the game and grasping advanced mechanics through the school of hard lessons, I struggled with things such as "when do I crack the Lion's Eye Diamond?" or "why am I purposely putting things in the graveyard?" I've earned a 6th sense of piloting this deck because it's quite literally all my decks in one.
Some notable inclusions: there is no Sol Ring. Why? Colorless mana in this deck is not helpful towards the overall game plan. Yes, a turn 1 Sol Ring is good and can help me cast lots of things, while a 0 cmc Mana Crypt is better. Spending a crucial colored mana source to cast Sol Ring to tap for 2 colorless is much less effective when I may need mana open for other things. There is no Force of Will. I go back and forth with this card. It's obviously very good, but this deck is also very conservative about exiling its own stuff. Also no Dig through Time for the same reason.
Unlike most Yidris builds, this deck is not overly concerned with cascade triggers. That does not mean that the deck ignores cascade. Yidris is a 5/4 beater that can easily stick around for at least a turn's worth of combat damage. Cascading a Brainstorm into an Lion's Eye Diamond, 0 cmc mana rock or suspend spell never feels bad. This is also not a "fun" or "casual" deck, so if your playgroup is not too keen on Hermit Druid, storm or dredge combos and you still want to play it? Dialing the deck down to 75% could help keep the game fun without being degenerate.
Some cards that I would suggest that would be helpful to your game plan are: Memory's Journey, Dark Confidant, Aetherflux Reservoir, and Rapid Hybridization/Pongify/Nature's Claim. The Journey is useful to make sure that you get another chance to try again with your combo (in the case of 'yard hate or a well-timed 'yard exile effect from an opponent in response to your Dread Return). Dark Confidant is an easy way to start accruing great card advantage relatively early and with minimal cost to you; I think the CMC curve of your deck has got to be something around 2, so you should be able to draw cards until you win the game. Confidant and the Journey also have low CMC's so that flipping them over with Ad Nauseam isn't painful. Aetherflux Reservoir is the new way that competitive Commander decks kill with Storm since the incidental life-gain is so important and you need a lower Storm count in order to kill the table too. Finally, the cheap CMC removal effects are just generally good. Competitive Commander games are usually dominated by Flash Hulk strategies and similar Storm strategies, so I would personally recommend the Claim since it also hits Food Chain in addition to mana rocks/mana sources.
Overall, it's a great deck with a low CMC curve and a highly efficient package of spells to generate card advantage and maximize your mana advantage. I'd love to play against it sometime!
UB Dralnu, Lich Lord
RBW [Primer]-Kaalia of the Vast
BUG [Primer]-Tasigur, the Golden Fang
GWU [Primer]-Arcades, the Strategist
WUB Primer-Aminatou, the Fateshifter
UBR Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Thank you for the feedback and you bring up some very good points. I'm not new to EDH, but I am new to trying to break into the cEDH scene. Aetherflux Reservoir offers a great additional win condition for a deck that is trying to have as many win cons as possible to be able to adjust on the fly. I will take into consideration shaving the land count, but I'm not sure how many or which ones to cut. Maybe City of Brass and Mana Confluence to mitigate unnecessary early game life loss (since fetching is already chunking my life totals. So, I think their replacements will be Aetherflux Reservoir and Nature's Claim.
Glad I could help. I'll be interested to see what your game reports look like with this deck! The synergy between the strategies is very impressive and makes for an efficient deck, methinks.
UB Dralnu, Lich Lord
RBW [Primer]-Kaalia of the Vast
BUG [Primer]-Tasigur, the Golden Fang
GWU [Primer]-Arcades, the Strategist
WUB Primer-Aminatou, the Fateshifter
UBR Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Gemstone Caverns was a leftover from The Gitrog Monster. I agree that it is not really optimal outside of the opening hand, and only situationally good if I'm on the draw. I think adding Memory's Journey is the play here.
Next week I'm going out of town for vacation, but I'm going to try and head to the shop on the following Monday and Wednesday if I can squeeze it to report the standings and gameplay analysis.