I have a "budget" deck with Intet, the Dreamer that's pretty great, but really any of the BUG or RUG commanders would be good. I'd stick with Vorosh or Intet just because then you're not blowing half your budget on the commander.
I have a Maelstrom Wanderer deck myself and try to abuse the double cascade as much as possible. To do that, I run repeatable bounce effects like Crystal Shard and Erratic Portak to bounce MW to my hand, ready to cast him again. Another extremely valuable card is Dream Halls. I have yet to lose a game where I resolved this on turn 4 or 5. It's kinda like an Omniscience for five mana.
Also, if you don't want to play Palinchron, I found that the fair "land untap" creatures like Peregrine Drake still work pretty well, while not being as tempting to go infinite with. That said, they're still infinite mana with Deadeye Navigator.
Yeah, the bouncey twin artifacts are great. Early in the deck's development I had Crystal Shard in here, but I found it had an ugly effect. Specifically, because people recognize it as a big threat in the deck, it tends to draw a disproportionate amount of hate, both to it, and to you. For all the hate it draws, I found that I tended to get used much less than you'd think.
Peregrine Drake has the same basic problems Palinchron. Since I don't want infinite mana, there just isn't any real reason to run either. The one infinite combo I do have is just an accident of cards that I want in the deck anyway.
I dont wanna be dredging up a old thread, but I have been thinking rebuilding my Maelstrom Wander build, and I'm using your list as a outline I just wanted to say thanks for the explanations and detailed layout of Maelstrom. I got a couple of questions:
I know you can't cascade into it, but what do you think of Epic Experiment?
I like what you said about the 8cmc creatures or spells: that you only run them if their effect is irriplacale. So what do you think of Bogardan Hellkite as a flash removal and a huge body?
cheers
I'm really down on Bogardan Hellkite personally. I know I've cursed him many a time when my opponent has cast him but to me, 8 CMC for a mediocre body and mediocre removal seems... mediocre. He's at his best when you can cheat him out, and in Wanderer, you're going to be hard-casting him most of the time.
I just don't have enough spells to justify Experiment. Some day I'll try to make a Experiment EDH deck, but it doesn't really fit here.
Niv, Draco-Genius is one of the numerous 6 CMC cards that float in and out of this deck experimentally when I'm trying to settle on the "best" cards for the deck. I like the steady card draw, particularly as this deck tends to have a lot of mana on hand, and I don't hate the body. The fact that he draws you a card on attack is great when you cascade in to him for the first time on 8 mana. I think he's actually in the deck at the moment, and should probably update this deck list with the various changes and non-changes to reflect it's current status.
Am I the only one for whom Sylvan Primordial seems like sort of a direct "go do something unspeakable to yourself" to the rules committee?
"Oh, so, you don't like Primeval Titan? Gonna go ahead and ban that? Here, let's give you a taste of this."
Broadly, the whole Primordial cycle seems like a strong statement to all the people who kvetched about the effect that Titans and Praetors have on the game. Personally, I'm a little ambivalent about the cycle, but let there be no doubt (I know there wasn't much doubt left, but removing Titans from the core set might have made some) that this is the way the game is going.
Cast MW, cascade twice, exile him with FC, he goes to the command zone, use the mana from FC to cast hime again, cascade twice, etc, etc, etc, swing with a bunch of hasty baddies. You have to add the commander tax every time, but it's still easily doable multiple times in a turn.
Wow, yes, this does seem very good. I'll have to give it a go.
So I noticed that you mentioned Hinder as your only counter just in case. There are a few counterspells that you can still get value out of when you cascade into them that Hinder can be replaced with:
Cryptic Command has extremely beneficial modes outside of countering a spell.
Spelljack can be an invaluable counter or, if you cascade into it, give you a third cascade.
A few experimental counters that you could throw in are: Draining Whelk: Counters Wanderer, 9/9 flier. Not extreme value, but you get a decent threat rather than a whiff. Also combos well with your Deadeye Navigator.
Counterlash: Counter Wanderer, get a free dude from your hand.
Remand: I used to run this. It'd be a whiff sometimes, but it nets you a card and lets you try your luck with Wanderer again later (or the same turn with enough mana).
Ertai, Wizard Adept: Never tried him, but he is hasted so you can counter on the turn he comes out.
So, the basic problem with the high CMC counters, although I enjoy many of them in other decks is that given this decks plan. Since I really want to force people out of their game with aggression, the worst thing I can do is pass my turn without doing anything, which is often what you have to do to keep mana open for one of the big boys. That said, this deck does have some difficulty with gassing out in situations where Wanderer sticks to the board or gets tucked, so I think I will give Overwhelming Intellect a shot.
On another note, I was thinking today about how a big part of this deck's strength is that it recovers from wipes much faster than most other people's decks can. As a consequence, if the game goes to long without a wipe, and the board gets crowded, I'm really losing a lot of my advantage relative to other decks. On that theory, I'm going to give Blasphemous Act a try. It's a sweeper that will be cheap to cast, but won't be stumbled in to by Cascade when I don't want to cast it, so it's a natural fit here. We'll see how I end up feeling about it.
Bumping this because I would love some more feedback on this deck. At this point, there isn't really anything in the deck that I want to take out. I would love for someone to point me to a card that I haven't thought about would fit this deck's gameplan.
Also worth mentioning here. I am now officially looking to replace Omniscience in the deck. I feel like I could write an article on how and why that's annoying, but regardless, Omniscience being in the deck is now causing me to play the deck less, and that's no good. Suggestions for a good replacement would be welcome. At the moment, Akroma's Memorial seems like a good choice, as it's Cascade-able, and is similarly likely to break open games.
So, I tried Godo for a bit. I subbed out Arcanis for him, since he's a utility card at the same point in the curve. Similarly, I took out Mimic Vat and added sword of Light and Shadow to give Godo another target, and to give the deck a little recursion. Unfortunately, I found the substitution underwhelming because of Godo's lack of evasion and higher than ideal casting cost. Even with the protections on the swords, it seemed like I wasn't often able to get through blockers to do the combat damage necessary to activate the swords. Also, the swords themselves draw a lot of attention. Feast of Famine is too good to leave out, but Light and Shadow just isn't, really. Anyway, for now the deck stays as is.
I like your deck list a lot, most of it is the same suite I'm running in my own Maelstrom Wanderer.
Question, is there a reason you don't have Kiki-jiki, Mirror Breaker in here? It plus Zealous Conscripts is an auto-win if no one has instant speed creature removal.
I also prefer Sylvan Library to JTMS. Yeah, you can't put cards from your hand on top but comes down for two mana, can set up your cascades a lot better and in a worst case scenario you pay 8 life to draw three cards for the turn. Enchantments are also a lot harder to get rid of and I wouldn't expect JTMS to stay on the table more than a turn anyway.
Other cards I have in my deck that I think are great in MW:
Godo, Bandit Warlord Cascading into this guy is beastly as you make your MW a 4-for-1 by fetching up any of the Swords (Feast and Famine is my favorite) or even Batterskull for a body with lifelink. Not to mention if you put the FaF on Godo you can potentially untap your lands twice in a turn which can be pretty back-breaking.
Brutalizer Exarch If he's the first cascade you get a 3/3 body and set up your next cascade to be whatever creature you want/can cascade into. He also tucks problematic noncreature permanents. Very versatile.
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth These two cards are the only ones I run that I can't cascade into. However I play a significant amount of ramp in my MW deck that their mana cost isn't that high for me and I can always cast an entwined Tooth and Nail for them (if for some reason Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts won't outright win me the game).
Sneak Attack With so many creatures having ETB effects despite us losing the creature at end of turn we still get value due to the haste and their ETB effects. Using this to get Eldrazi on the board, even though we don't get the cast effects, 10/10 indestructible or 12/12 hasted creatures with Annihilator 4 is disgusting. Also gives us a free graveyard shuffle back into our deck afterwards.
Karn Liberated Exiles any problematic permanent on board or starts exiling answers. Never had to use his ultimate yet.
Godo, Bandit Warlord is definitely a good idea for an addition to this deck. It's a little concerning that I only have one target for him, but it might be worth a shot anyway.
Sylvan Library, I actually do have in the deck, but for some reason I didn't mention it in that section of the post, but I'll add it.
Brutalizer Exarch is good, he's just one of those cards that never quite earns a spot over the other stuff in the deck. He competes with the other utility cards in the deck, and I just think that cards like Teferi and Arcanis, which are just slightly better in my opinion.
The Eldrazi I don't like primarily because I've used them myself from other people's decks waaay more times than they've actually been problematic for me.
Sneak Attack I actually don't have, but I'm not sure I'd use it anyway. It's obviously powerful, but I think if were to use that I'd want to include a recursion package in the deck, and I just don't really want that. Maybe when I finally get around to making a RUW deck.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and it's twin Splinter Twin I excluded specifically because they too often lead to infinite combos that I was specifically excluding from this deck.
This deck is sort of dumbed down to be less competitive and more of just a big swingy aggro deck, that's why I've left out the tutors, and the various combos that your list has. Now, having said that, I DO have a 1v1 competitive Wanderer deck and maybe I'll post that on here at some point. That's the deck that has the extra turns, the LD, the combos, etc...
Posting this deck because a buddy asked me for it and I thought I might as well share it here. The only two cards that I want to call out specifically are Conspiracy and Ashes of the Fallen. Ashes of the Fallen in particular feels like it has flown under the radar of the hive mind. I've never seen it played by anyone else, but in my mind it should be in any Horde of Notions deck that doesn't want to exclusively play Elementals. This deck does play with the classic suite of elementals, but the ability to play one of these two cards and recur all of the other creatures in your deck is big game. With no further ado.
So, I've been playing with and tweaking this Maelstrom Wanderer deck for a few weeks now and I thought I would post it along with my thoughts on building for Wanderer in general. I built this deck specifically for multiplayer and with an eye towards being very aggressive. I've tried to make it "friendly" in the sense that I've avoided the obvious infinite combos and severely oppressive combos. I also wanted it to be as fun for me as possible so I've left out tutors for the most part (Tooth and Nail being the exception). I do have topdeck manipulation, because I think that just goes along with Wanderer's abilities without getting rid of the variance that makes the deck fun to play.
Why play this commander? - So, why play Wanderer? For me, Wanderer was love at first sight. I'm fundamentally a Timmy, I think, with some Johnny tendencies, and Wanderer both with his "then do it again" aspect, and his inherent color identity, really feeds the Timmy in me. That said, using him with cards like Scroll Rack and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, lets you play a slightly Johnny-ish game as well.
Anyway, all that said, why play Wanderer as opposed to one of the other great commanders in the color combination? To a greater degree than any of the other color combinations, with the exception of WB, all of the commanders in this combination have very similar abilities and lend themselves to very similar builds. All of these commanders give you the ability to leverage your resources in to greater and greater resource advantage. Let's go over the options.
Animar, Soul of Elements: Animar is, in my mind, the weakest of the RUG commander. He strongly encourages you to overextend by building to an enormous board state. That part is great, but as we're talking about Multiplayer, when you inevitably get wiped out, you frequently get COMPLETELY wiped out. The best Animar decks are built to go infinite and win the game quickly in a way that isn't interesting to me. There isn't a lot of space in between and neither seems like fun to me.
Intet, the Dreamer The original commander for this color combination, Intet is really fun, but to my mind is simply strictly dominated by the other commanders in RUG. He needs to deal combat damage to get his ability to trigger, and he only gets one spell for free (well, 2U), as opposed to Wanderer's two. There are upsides to his ability, but to me, Wanderer and Riku are strictly better for a variety of obvious reasons.
Riku of Two Reflections Ahh Riku. Riku is awesome, and is the closest competition in the color combination. When left unmolested, Riku's ability is boooonkers. Unfortunately, that clause "when left unmolested" is really key. When you're playing Riku, expect to be molested. Smart players will know that you're going to do bonkers things and will want to kill him, and then you, as quickly as possible. Because he needs to stick to be effective, you have to commit to having a solid protection suite of cards in your deck.
Maelstrom Wanderer So, here we are. Why play Wanderer? Here is the reason. He is extremely hard to deal with profitably. He has to be tucked, or you need to slap a Lignify on him. When he's on the board, most of the time you'll be begging for him to get killed so you can cast him again. What's more, unlike some cards with strong ETB effects, leaving him on the board with an Arrest effect isn't an option either, because the Haste on your creatures will wipe people out. As a consequence, you really don't need to include the usual suite of hasty cards or protection cards, freeing up a crucial 4-5 card slots.
Broadly speaking, you should play Maelstrom Wanderer if:
- You like being the aggressor in games, overwhelming your opponents resource and card advantage.
- You enjoy swings that send an opponent screaming from the field of battle, and then salting their fields, burning their villages and moving on to the next sorry quivering bag of meat that your gaze falls upon.
Generally, you will not enjoy playing Maelstrom Wanderer if:
- You enjoy being reactive in games, never doing more than is necessary to answer your opponent's threats and then eventually wearing down their moves until you can ping them to death with a Staff of Nin
- You enjoy pretending to be a turtle, sitting at the kitchen table with nothing but the top of your head showing and occasionally flicking cards at anyone who looks at you funny until everyone else has killed each other and you can just say "no" until your opponent walks away in disgust.
So, there's that, hopefully that gives you a concept of why to play Maelstrom Wanderer.
Deck History - I don't know that my deck history is really that interesting. It started out as a Wanderer deck, and more than anything, has been honed slowly as I've realized certain things about the commander, which we'll talk about down in the Card Options and Strategy sections. In general, the deck has progressed towards being more and more proactive (as I've realized the full extent to which Wanderer hates reactive cards), and less and less combo oriented. Initially I had a suite of infinite turn combos and Splinter Twin/Kiki-Jiki combos. Subsequently, I've trimmed these out to make the deck more fun to play in multiplayer. I still have one three card infinite mana package in the deck, but it's cumbersome to utilize.
First off, let me say that I think Wanderer is a commander that can be built in a lot of different ways. He is not, I would say, a "build around" commander in the sense that he really demands certain things. That said, there are some guidelines that will guide our card choices:
1) Wanderer wants most of your cards to be CMC equal to or less than 7. This should be obvious. Anything above 7 CMC is going to get missed by Cascade, and therefore be played by the deck substantially less often. So, if you're going to include cards above 7, they should be cards that are win conditions, or cards whose effect simply can not be replicated at anything close to the effectiveness on a card with a lower CMC. I have 4 cards that can't be hit by cascade, and 2 that I don't want to be hit by cascade, which I'll discuss below.
2) Wanderer wants card that are proactive, not reactive. When you cascade in to a card, you want to be able to cast it, and you want it to be usable at something like it's optimal utility. This means that, generally, you don't want cards that are dependent on the board state, or cards that work on the stack. That means that counter spells, spells that copy or redirect instants or sorceries, or cards that have fairly corner case applications, are not going to be loved by Wanderer. I have allowed myself a few exceptions to this rule, and there are some cards that are less than optimal depending on the board state, but that I regard as too good to exclude. We'll go over these below as well.
3) Wanderer's haste all ability dramatically improves a number of cards that might otherwise be considered marginally useful. This is something that is definitely worth considering when selecting your favorite "bombs" for the deck. In general, this is going to be two types of cards. Cards with powerful activated abilities that might typically never survive to be used, and cards with abilities triggered by combat damage, that similarly seldom live long enough to hit home. I have included a good number of these, and broadly, figuring out which cards of this type to include or not include is what accounts for the vast majority of the substitutions in my deck.
4) Wanderer's casting cost is something that's worth mentioning. While this deck doesn't particularly make use of it, lots of competitive Wanderer decks make excellent use of the fact that Wanderer only requires 3 colored mana. For that reason, he goes well with heavy use of artifact ramping. If you're looking to build a really cut-throat Wanderer deck in multiplayer of 1v1, utilizing artifact ramping, mass land destruction, non-basic land hate, and sweepers with topdeck manipulation is very effective. This deck does not do any of that, but it's one way to go.
That said, let's go in to cards aren't just staples, but that I consider "key" to the deck's strategy.
So, these four belong to the family of cards that allow you to, in various ways, manipulate the top of your deck. Now, these are just the four that I'm currently running, but, in a more competitive deck, you would definitely want to consider the host of top of deck tutors, such as Personal Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, Mystical Tutor, and Worldly Tutor. I'm not running the tutors because, as I said above, I've made this deck to be relatively high variance, but they are all good options, depending on what you want to do. Brainstorm is another possible inclusion, notable for its rare ability to let you put cards from your hand on top of the library to be conveniently cascaded in to. I used to run Brainstorm, but it was supplanted by Scroll Rack and Jace for reasons of re-usability and versatility.
The Nonbo cards
Hinder The only counter spell in the deck. Justifiable because, well, you do want one counterspell and in the worst case scenario, you cascade in to this, counter Maelstrom Wanderer and put it on top of your deck. Cast it again next turn and keep on rolling. It's worth mentioning that if you cascade in to this first you MUST wait until you the second cascade passes before countering Wanderer. Otherwise, Wanderer cascades past himself, and you've tucked yourself.
Woodfall Primus Recently in for Terastadon. On the one hand, not as devastating as Terastadon, on the other hand, potentially infinitely reusable with Master Biomancer, and isn't quite as likely to create "fml" type situations when stolen out of your deck.
Praetor's Counsel This is the deck's one real source of recursion, and it's a good one. No real nuance here. Just a great card. Casting Omniscience and then this will end almost any game.
Warp World By far the most contentious card in the deck. While I've found that some people appreciate this card, generally speaking casting this means that it's you against the board for the rest of the game. The good news is that this card should always improve your position relative to the other players. This deck's basic plan is to ramp up massively to a point where you can cast Wanderer multiple times, so you're almost always going to have more permanents on the board than anyone else. Also, my deck has a pretty good ratio of permanents to spells, so few cards go to waste in the process of resolving this bad boy. In my experience, this card just cripples a lot of other decks, taking them out of the game completely. However, situational awareness is very important in using this card. Remember that this counts permanents owned not controlled and counts tokens. Count everyone's permanents before you cast this card. If the counts are close, wait until you are in a better position to seal the game. That is what this card does. If you're ahead, this card will seal it for you.
Cards that play nice with Warp World
Rampaging Baloths & Avenger of Zendikar Token producers that will up your number of permanents on the front end, and produce HUGE numbers of tokens if they get played on the back end of the Warp. Also makes our abundance of land ramp cards more useful in the middle and end of games.
I started playing Commander around the same time that Avacyn Restored was released, and Deadeye has been an auto-include in every commander deck that I can get him in since then. He is, it must be said, disgustingly abusive. As will surprise exactly no one, Deadeye is one part of the deck's infinite mana combo. I know a lot of people dislike this guy, but to my mind, he is still "fair" if ludicrously powerful because most of the time you do have to actually power his ability using mana. This deck produces tons of mana, so it's no surprise that landing Deadeye in conjunction with one of the other cards below will quite often just end games.
The one infinite mana combo here is Deadeye Navigator + Zealous Conscripts + Gilded Lotus. This will produce infinite mana of any color. I hope this is doesn't need to be explained, because it's a little arduous mechanically, since you're only producing 1 extra mana with each untap, but that's enough. Obviously, I'm excluding cards that would make infinite mana but, well, the hell with Palinchron, I just won't use him. Once you've got infinite mana, well, figure out something fun to do with it.
Urabrask the Hidden Your backup haste enabler. As a bonus, prevents your opponents from laying out blockers.
Mercurial Chemister Being able to use his ability as soon as he hits the board is huge.
Hellkite Tyrant SURPRISE! All your baubles are belong to me!
Balefire Dragon SURPRISE! There goes most or all of your creatures.
Sphinx Ambassador SURPRISE! Well, you get the idea. Be smart about what you pick with him.
Gratuitous Violence This is a big part of the aggro strategy, as probably does not requite explanation. With this down, the big swings that might otherwise just take a chunk out of someone's life will instead take them out of the game.
Teferi Mage of Zhalfir What?! Haste lover? Aggro card? Yes! The "Flash" ability is seldom relevant in deck, but keeping opponents from playing on your turn is huuuuge for this deck. This deck can go from 0-60 in no time. Imagine having nothing but Teferi on the board, casting in Wanderer right before your turn, flipping Gratuitous Violence and Arcanis the Omnipotent, drawing three cards, THEN untapping to start your turn and drawing 3 more. Cast two fatties with your open mana and attack the same turn for god knows how much damage all without any of your opponents being able to react. Teferi is big game.
Akroma's Memorial A big dumb brute of a card, like so many in this deck. It just brings the pain. Combine with Gratuitous Violence for Gallagher-like amusement.
The Steal/Copy Suite
This section of the deck has swelled and shrunk at various times. At the moment it's sort of at a low point. These cards have been cut as I've added "good stuff" that doesn't quite fit into any other category. The cards I've cut here are almost as notable as the cards I've included. Among them are Sakashima the Impostor, Copy Artifact, Copy Enchantment, Phantasmal Image, etc.
Treachery/Control Magic As I was writing the above sentence, I realized that if you're only going to include one of these, it HAS to be Treachery. The untap lands kicker is just more valuable than the one lower casting cost. In general, I want at least one of these in any blue deck because it is the best way to deal with many of the game's most resilient cards and commander. In particular, Avacyn is very popular these days, and stealing one of those is BRUTAL.
Bribery, Acquire, & Knowledge Exploitation These are your three gold standard cards for stealing cards from your opponent's library. It is frankly baffling to me that these three cards exist at their converted mana cost. People talk about black tutors being OP, but for a few more mana, you can tutor a card (albeit from someone else's library) and put it on the battlefield. Not on top of your deck, not in your hand, into play. Bananas.
Thada Adel You know her, you love her. She is blue's very best source of ramping. Play her turn 3 and have 2 Sol rings by turn 5. As a bonus, being able to play Knowledge Exploitation on turn 4 is often a game breaker.
The rest of the cards are, I think, pretty self-explanatory (hell, most of the above cards are self-explanatory). If someone has questions about any of them being included, I'd be happy to add stuff, but I think it's pretty obvious.
Strategy - The strategy with this deck is, as I've said, pretty aggressive. You are going to win by driving the action, forcing your opponents out of their gameplans, and using one of your 8+ CMC cards or Deadeye to break the backs of opponents you've been pummeling all along. The game goes a little something like this...
Early game: Establish the mana base. Don't be afraid to hold a hand that has nothing but land in it. Starting off slow is, within limitations, beneficial to you. Smart players will get on you from the start, but don't sweat your life total until you get down in the low twenties. If the smart player attacks you exclusively, you'll be amazed at how often simply doing and saying nothing can get your other opponents to attack that guy. Your early game should be the art of appearing to do nothing while building a solid mana base. Just don't miss land drops, play your mana stones, and ramp. Optimally, be ready with 8 mana around turn 4-5.
Mid game: This is where you are going to start driving the action. Chances are you'll want to play Wanderer as soon as your able, but be aware of the action. If nothing has happened, and everyone has full hands, hold off and just keep establishing resources. If there has been some permission and removal flung around, go ahead and drop Wanderer and start beating heads. At this point, attention will turn to you. Again, don't sweat the life total too much. Force people to use their answers, with aggressive moves while at the same time using your card drawing to keep yourself fueled up. Ideally, as we head in to the end game, you want your opponents to have light hands. Doesn't matter if you only have a few cards yourself, so long as you've managed to draw in to one or two of the cards that matter in the end.
End game: This is where all of your aggression in the mid game will pay off. If you've forced people to exhaust their answers, and hopefully have managed to draw in to one of our win conditions, then you're going to be in fine shape to overwhelm your opponent's in the end. The big end-game "win" cards at this point are Akroma's Memorial, Warp World, and Deadeye Navigator. These have all been discussed above. Each of them, when played at the right time, will cripple your opponent's ability to play, while overwhelming them with resources.
Changelog -
- Omniscience
+ Akroma's Memorial
This probably slightly waters down the deck, but not by much, really. Akroma's haste all ability is obviously redundant in this deck, although redundancy isn't a terrible thing, but all the rest is great. The fact that it can be cascaded in to is a bonus, but let's be real, this change is mostly because you can only "oops, I win" with a card so many time before you can't take it any more. So, out goes Omniscience, probably to never be played again.
- Mulldrifter
- Fact or Fiction
- Farseek
- Rampant Growth
- Sylvan Library
- Spin Into Myth
So, a lot of changes since the last time I updated this. Most of these represent minor adjustments. The two 2 CMC ramp cards have been shuffled out for two 4 CMC ramps. I took out one-shot card draw cards, Mulldrifter and Fact or Fiction and replaced them with two re-usable card draws in Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius and Mercurial Chemister. Mercurial Chemister has been in and out of the deck since RTR was released, but I have started to notice that there is a very high correlation between this getting played and me winning the game. The other substitutions represent a shuffling around. Vandalblast is awesome, Sylvan Library was leaving me cold, Spin Into Myth doesn't quite fit with the gameplan and Stalking Vengeance does, more or less.
04/03/13
So, time for a belated post-gatecrash update. Many many changes to the deck, both in terms of adding Gatecrash cards, and just making routine substitutions
- Coalition Relic
- Arcanis the Omnipotent
- Steel Hellkite
- Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
- Riku of Two Reflections
- Stalking Vengeance
- Sphinx Ambassador
- Tyrant of Discord
- Terastodon
- Jace, the Mind Sculptor
- Genesis Wave
- Momentous Fall
- Volcanic Island
- Taiga
- Tropical Island
- Island
So, lots of changes here. First off, you'll notice there are more adds than subtracts... yeah, not sure what that's about. Anywho. Two big categories of changes. One, I sold off some of my dolla dolla bill cards because they just weren't giving me value equivalent to what they were worth. In particular, now that I have a full set of shocklands, the duals are really a luxury that I can afford to do without. Otherwise, I exchanged Jace for Brainstorm. A shift of ~$50 and almost no change in utility 99 times out of 100.
The next big category of changes is Gatecrash additions. When Gatecrash came out, I tried out a lot of cards that didn't end up making the cut, but the cards that are still in there are really good in the deck, and just really good in general. Prime Speaker is amaaaazing. In this deck, cascading in to her is a wee bit of a bummer, but then really, you're getting a 1/1 that draws you a card for free. Kinda sucks, but it's not like it's the worst thing in the world. Urban evolution is just a great card, custom-made for this deck. Master Biomancer is a card that I love in general, and just makes everything else better. In particular, he makes Woodfall Primus and Glen Elandra Archmage immortal, which I don't mind at all, and is why Woodfall gets the nod over Terastadon at this point. Hellkite Tyrant is baller. Gruul Ragebeast is a recent addition and we'll see if he sticks around, however, I've been playing him a lot in other decks recently, and I've been really impressed, so he's getting a fair shake.
Then there are just sort of "other" subs. I re-added the two mana ramp spells, subbing out Rampant Growth for Nature's Lore because it's probably better. I found that the way it was it was getting too many slow starts because I was too top heavy, so some of the high-end creatures came out to make room for the cheap ramp. Just today, I added Lotus Cobra in place of Coalition Relic. This seems like sort of a sideways move, but I'm trying it out. Lotus Cobra allows for some explosive turns, but if I miss Relic too much, I might have to take something else out to put it back in, we'll see.
Personal Bio - Well, my name is James Garren. I play Magic exclusively on MTGO at this point though I'm considering getting back in to paper Magic, we'll see. As I said within, I started playing last spring, but I used to play a long long time ago. I initially quit shortly after Ice Age had come out, when I had my carefully crafted, much beloved UB deck stolen. I don't know who did it, but if you're reading this... I will END you. ;-)
As many have said, Maelstrom Wanderer and Riku are definitely your go to choices for ramping up and casting epic spells. Choosing between the two as your commander is tough though. I have a deck for each, and they behave quite differently despite the ramp -> win shared concept. Wanderer is probably the more powerful commander on the whole, in the sense that he will probably win you more games. However, to be most effective Wanderer decks wants few if any cards over CMC 7. I think my Wanderer deck has about 3 cards that he can't cascade in to and they're all essentially alternate win cons. Therefore Wanderer might be slightly more limiting than you're really looking for.
Riku, by contrast, has very few limitations. The more you ramp, the better he gets, and left untouched, he can dominate a board even more than his cascading cousin. Casting Eternal Dominion and copying it each turn? Yes plz! Unfortunately, Riku's 2/2 body and ludicrous ability put a big fat target on his and your back, and personally I find that he doesn't win as many games. Wanderer also gets you a target, but it's much harder to kill Wanderer profitably because you want to cast him over and over again anyway.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the two. Personally, I like my Wanderer deck best, for what it's worth.
Yeah, the bouncey twin artifacts are great. Early in the deck's development I had Crystal Shard in here, but I found it had an ugly effect. Specifically, because people recognize it as a big threat in the deck, it tends to draw a disproportionate amount of hate, both to it, and to you. For all the hate it draws, I found that I tended to get used much less than you'd think.
Peregrine Drake has the same basic problems Palinchron. Since I don't want infinite mana, there just isn't any real reason to run either. The one infinite combo I do have is just an accident of cards that I want in the deck anyway.
I'm really down on Bogardan Hellkite personally. I know I've cursed him many a time when my opponent has cast him but to me, 8 CMC for a mediocre body and mediocre removal seems... mediocre. He's at his best when you can cheat him out, and in Wanderer, you're going to be hard-casting him most of the time.
I just don't have enough spells to justify Experiment. Some day I'll try to make a Experiment EDH deck, but it doesn't really fit here.
Niv, Draco-Genius is one of the numerous 6 CMC cards that float in and out of this deck experimentally when I'm trying to settle on the "best" cards for the deck. I like the steady card draw, particularly as this deck tends to have a lot of mana on hand, and I don't hate the body. The fact that he draws you a card on attack is great when you cascade in to him for the first time on 8 mana. I think he's actually in the deck at the moment, and should probably update this deck list with the various changes and non-changes to reflect it's current status.
"Oh, so, you don't like Primeval Titan? Gonna go ahead and ban that? Here, let's give you a taste of this."
Broadly, the whole Primordial cycle seems like a strong statement to all the people who kvetched about the effect that Titans and Praetors have on the game. Personally, I'm a little ambivalent about the cycle, but let there be no doubt (I know there wasn't much doubt left, but removing Titans from the core set might have made some) that this is the way the game is going.
Wow, yes, this does seem very good. I'll have to give it a go.
So, the basic problem with the high CMC counters, although I enjoy many of them in other decks is that given this decks plan. Since I really want to force people out of their game with aggression, the worst thing I can do is pass my turn without doing anything, which is often what you have to do to keep mana open for one of the big boys. That said, this deck does have some difficulty with gassing out in situations where Wanderer sticks to the board or gets tucked, so I think I will give Overwhelming Intellect a shot.
On another note, I was thinking today about how a big part of this deck's strength is that it recovers from wipes much faster than most other people's decks can. As a consequence, if the game goes to long without a wipe, and the board gets crowded, I'm really losing a lot of my advantage relative to other decks. On that theory, I'm going to give Blasphemous Act a try. It's a sweeper that will be cheap to cast, but won't be stumbled in to by Cascade when I don't want to cast it, so it's a natural fit here. We'll see how I end up feeling about it.
Maelstrom Wanderer: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=469153
Godo, Bandit Warlord is definitely a good idea for an addition to this deck. It's a little concerning that I only have one target for him, but it might be worth a shot anyway.
Sylvan Library, I actually do have in the deck, but for some reason I didn't mention it in that section of the post, but I'll add it.
Brutalizer Exarch is good, he's just one of those cards that never quite earns a spot over the other stuff in the deck. He competes with the other utility cards in the deck, and I just think that cards like Teferi and Arcanis, which are just slightly better in my opinion.
The Eldrazi I don't like primarily because I've used them myself from other people's decks waaay more times than they've actually been problematic for me.
Sneak Attack I actually don't have, but I'm not sure I'd use it anyway. It's obviously powerful, but I think if were to use that I'd want to include a recursion package in the deck, and I just don't really want that. Maybe when I finally get around to making a RUW deck.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and it's twin Splinter Twin I excluded specifically because they too often lead to infinite combos that I was specifically excluding from this deck.
This deck is sort of dumbed down to be less competitive and more of just a big swingy aggro deck, that's why I've left out the tutors, and the various combos that your list has. Now, having said that, I DO have a 1v1 competitive Wanderer deck and maybe I'll post that on here at some point. That's the deck that has the extra turns, the LD, the combos, etc...
1 Birthing Pod
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Coalition Relic
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mimic Vat
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
Creatures
1 Etherium-Horn Sorcerer
1 Duplicant
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Maelstrom Archangel
1 Karmic Guide
1 Archon of Justice
1 Lord of Extinction
1 Mulldrifter
1 Reveillark
1 Shriekmaw
1 Terastodon
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Acidic Slime
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Maelstrom Wanderer
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
1 Ajani Vengeant
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1 Karn Liberated
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Enchantments
1 Aura Shards
1 Conspiracy
1 Maelstrom Nexus
1 Sylvan Library
1 Warstorm Surge
Instants
1 Condemn
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Path to Exile
1 Spin into Myth
1 Swords to Plowshares
Sorceries
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Cultivate
1 Diabolic Revelation
1 Praetor's Grasp
1 Rampant Growth
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Wargate
1 Wrath of God
1 Kodama's Reach
Nonbasic Lands
1 Arcane Sanctum
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Command Tower
1 Copperline Gorge
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Gravern Cairns
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Razorverge Thicket
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Savage Lands
1 Seachrome Coast
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Woodland Cemetery
1 Tropical Island
1 Temple Garden
1 Steam Vents
1 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Island
2 Mountain
2 Plains
2 Swamp
So, I've been playing with and tweaking this Maelstrom Wanderer deck for a few weeks now and I thought I would post it along with my thoughts on building for Wanderer in general. I built this deck specifically for multiplayer and with an eye towards being very aggressive. I've tried to make it "friendly" in the sense that I've avoided the obvious infinite combos and severely oppressive combos. I also wanted it to be as fun for me as possible so I've left out tutors for the most part (Tooth and Nail being the exception). I do have topdeck manipulation, because I think that just goes along with Wanderer's abilities without getting rid of the variance that makes the deck fun to play.
Why play this commander? - So, why play Wanderer? For me, Wanderer was love at first sight. I'm fundamentally a Timmy, I think, with some Johnny tendencies, and Wanderer both with his "then do it again" aspect, and his inherent color identity, really feeds the Timmy in me. That said, using him with cards like Scroll Rack and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, lets you play a slightly Johnny-ish game as well.
Anyway, all that said, why play Wanderer as opposed to one of the other great commanders in the color combination? To a greater degree than any of the other color combinations, with the exception of WB, all of the commanders in this combination have very similar abilities and lend themselves to very similar builds. All of these commanders give you the ability to leverage your resources in to greater and greater resource advantage. Let's go over the options.
Animar, Soul of Elements: Animar is, in my mind, the weakest of the RUG commander. He strongly encourages you to overextend by building to an enormous board state. That part is great, but as we're talking about Multiplayer, when you inevitably get wiped out, you frequently get COMPLETELY wiped out. The best Animar decks are built to go infinite and win the game quickly in a way that isn't interesting to me. There isn't a lot of space in between and neither seems like fun to me.
Intet, the Dreamer The original commander for this color combination, Intet is really fun, but to my mind is simply strictly dominated by the other commanders in RUG. He needs to deal combat damage to get his ability to trigger, and he only gets one spell for free (well, 2U), as opposed to Wanderer's two. There are upsides to his ability, but to me, Wanderer and Riku are strictly better for a variety of obvious reasons.
Riku of Two Reflections Ahh Riku. Riku is awesome, and is the closest competition in the color combination. When left unmolested, Riku's ability is boooonkers. Unfortunately, that clause "when left unmolested" is really key. When you're playing Riku, expect to be molested. Smart players will know that you're going to do bonkers things and will want to kill him, and then you, as quickly as possible. Because he needs to stick to be effective, you have to commit to having a solid protection suite of cards in your deck.
Maelstrom Wanderer So, here we are. Why play Wanderer? Here is the reason. He is extremely hard to deal with profitably. He has to be tucked, or you need to slap a Lignify on him. When he's on the board, most of the time you'll be begging for him to get killed so you can cast him again. What's more, unlike some cards with strong ETB effects, leaving him on the board with an Arrest effect isn't an option either, because the Haste on your creatures will wipe people out. As a consequence, you really don't need to include the usual suite of hasty cards or protection cards, freeing up a crucial 4-5 card slots.
Broadly speaking, you should play Maelstrom Wanderer if:
- You like being the aggressor in games, overwhelming your opponents resource and card advantage.
- You enjoy swings that send an opponent screaming from the field of battle, and then salting their fields, burning their villages and moving on to the next sorry quivering bag of meat that your gaze falls upon.
Generally, you will not enjoy playing Maelstrom Wanderer if:
- You enjoy being reactive in games, never doing more than is necessary to answer your opponent's threats and then eventually wearing down their moves until you can ping them to death with a Staff of Nin
- You enjoy pretending to be a turtle, sitting at the kitchen table with nothing but the top of your head showing and occasionally flicking cards at anyone who looks at you funny until everyone else has killed each other and you can just say "no" until your opponent walks away in disgust.
So, there's that, hopefully that gives you a concept of why to play Maelstrom Wanderer.
Deck History - I don't know that my deck history is really that interesting. It started out as a Wanderer deck, and more than anything, has been honed slowly as I've realized certain things about the commander, which we'll talk about down in the Card Options and Strategy sections. In general, the deck has progressed towards being more and more proactive (as I've realized the full extent to which Wanderer hates reactive cards), and less and less combo oriented. Initially I had a suite of infinite turn combos and Splinter Twin/Kiki-Jiki combos. Subsequently, I've trimmed these out to make the deck more fun to play in multiplayer. I still have one three card infinite mana package in the deck, but it's cumbersome to utilize.
Deck List -
1 Birthing Pod
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mimic Vat
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Scroll Rack
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Duplicant
1 Phyrexian Metamorp
1 Acidic Slime
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Balefire Dragon
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Deadeye Navigator
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Hellkite Tyrant
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Master Biomancer
1 Mercurial Chemister
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Prime Speaker Zegana
1 Rampaging Baloths
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Sphinx of Uhuun
1 Sylvan Primordial
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor
1 Urabrask the Hidden
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Zealous Conscripts
1 Mana Reflection
1 Warstorm Surge
1 Treachery
1 Brainstorm
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Hinder
1 Acquire
1 Boundless Realms
1 Bribery
1 Cultivate
1 Decimate
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Farseek
1 Knowledge Exploitation
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Nature's Lore
1 Praetor's Counsel
1 Recurring Insight
1 Rite of Replication
1 Skyshroud Claim
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Urban Evolution
1 Vandalblast
1 Warp World
Nonbasic Lands
1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Breeding Pool
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Command Tower
1 Copperline Gorge
1 Halimar Depths
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Homeward Path
1 Mosswort Bridge
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Spinerock Knoll
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Grounds
1 Temple of the False God
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Vesuva
5 Island
5 Mountain
Card Options -
First off, let me say that I think Wanderer is a commander that can be built in a lot of different ways. He is not, I would say, a "build around" commander in the sense that he really demands certain things. That said, there are some guidelines that will guide our card choices:
1) Wanderer wants most of your cards to be CMC equal to or less than 7. This should be obvious. Anything above 7 CMC is going to get missed by Cascade, and therefore be played by the deck substantially less often. So, if you're going to include cards above 7, they should be cards that are win conditions, or cards whose effect simply can not be replicated at anything close to the effectiveness on a card with a lower CMC. I have 4 cards that can't be hit by cascade, and 2 that I don't want to be hit by cascade, which I'll discuss below.
2) Wanderer wants card that are proactive, not reactive. When you cascade in to a card, you want to be able to cast it, and you want it to be usable at something like it's optimal utility. This means that, generally, you don't want cards that are dependent on the board state, or cards that work on the stack. That means that counter spells, spells that copy or redirect instants or sorceries, or cards that have fairly corner case applications, are not going to be loved by Wanderer. I have allowed myself a few exceptions to this rule, and there are some cards that are less than optimal depending on the board state, but that I regard as too good to exclude. We'll go over these below as well.
3) Wanderer's haste all ability dramatically improves a number of cards that might otherwise be considered marginally useful. This is something that is definitely worth considering when selecting your favorite "bombs" for the deck. In general, this is going to be two types of cards. Cards with powerful activated abilities that might typically never survive to be used, and cards with abilities triggered by combat damage, that similarly seldom live long enough to hit home. I have included a good number of these, and broadly, figuring out which cards of this type to include or not include is what accounts for the vast majority of the substitutions in my deck.
4) Wanderer's casting cost is something that's worth mentioning. While this deck doesn't particularly make use of it, lots of competitive Wanderer decks make excellent use of the fact that Wanderer only requires 3 colored mana. For that reason, he goes well with heavy use of artifact ramping. If you're looking to build a really cut-throat Wanderer deck in multiplayer of 1v1, utilizing artifact ramping, mass land destruction, non-basic land hate, and sweepers with topdeck manipulation is very effective. This deck does not do any of that, but it's one way to go.
That said, let's go in to cards aren't just staples, but that I consider "key" to the deck's strategy.
Key Cards
Scroll Rack, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Sensei's Diving Top, Sylvan Library
So, these four belong to the family of cards that allow you to, in various ways, manipulate the top of your deck. Now, these are just the four that I'm currently running, but, in a more competitive deck, you would definitely want to consider the host of top of deck tutors, such as Personal Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, Mystical Tutor, and Worldly Tutor. I'm not running the tutors because, as I said above, I've made this deck to be relatively high variance, but they are all good options, depending on what you want to do. Brainstorm is another possible inclusion, notable for its rare ability to let you put cards from your hand on top of the library to be conveniently cascaded in to. I used to run Brainstorm, but it was supplanted by Scroll Rack and Jace for reasons of re-usability and versatility.
The Nonbo cards
Hinder The only counter spell in the deck. Justifiable because, well, you do want one counterspell and in the worst case scenario, you cascade in to this, counter Maelstrom Wanderer and put it on top of your deck. Cast it again next turn and keep on rolling. It's worth mentioning that if you cascade in to this first you MUST wait until you the second cascade passes before countering Wanderer. Otherwise, Wanderer cascades past himself, and you've tucked yourself.
Woodfall Primus Recently in for Terastadon. On the one hand, not as devastating as Terastadon, on the other hand, potentially infinitely reusable with Master Biomancer, and isn't quite as likely to create "fml" type situations when stolen out of your deck.
Praetor's Counsel This is the deck's one real source of recursion, and it's a good one. No real nuance here. Just a great card. Casting Omniscience and then this will end almost any game.
Warp World By far the most contentious card in the deck. While I've found that some people appreciate this card, generally speaking casting this means that it's you against the board for the rest of the game. The good news is that this card should always improve your position relative to the other players. This deck's basic plan is to ramp up massively to a point where you can cast Wanderer multiple times, so you're almost always going to have more permanents on the board than anyone else. Also, my deck has a pretty good ratio of permanents to spells, so few cards go to waste in the process of resolving this bad boy. In my experience, this card just cripples a lot of other decks, taking them out of the game completely. However, situational awareness is very important in using this card. Remember that this counts permanents owned not controlled and counts tokens. Count everyone's permanents before you cast this card. If the counts are close, wait until you are in a better position to seal the game. That is what this card does. If you're ahead, this card will seal it for you.
Cards that play nice with Warp World
Rampaging Baloths & Avenger of Zendikar Token producers that will up your number of permanents on the front end, and produce HUGE numbers of tokens if they get played on the back end of the Warp. Also makes our abundance of land ramp cards more useful in the middle and end of games.
Deadeye Navigator and his favorite passengers
I started playing Commander around the same time that Avacyn Restored was released, and Deadeye has been an auto-include in every commander deck that I can get him in since then. He is, it must be said, disgustingly abusive. As will surprise exactly no one, Deadeye is one part of the deck's infinite mana combo. I know a lot of people dislike this guy, but to my mind, he is still "fair" if ludicrously powerful because most of the time you do have to actually power his ability using mana. This deck produces tons of mana, so it's no surprise that landing Deadeye in conjunction with one of the other cards below will quite often just end games.
The one infinite mana combo here is Deadeye Navigator + Zealous Conscripts + Gilded Lotus. This will produce infinite mana of any color. I hope this is doesn't need to be explained, because it's a little arduous mechanically, since you're only producing 1 extra mana with each untap, but that's enough. Obviously, I'm excluding cards that would make infinite mana but, well, the hell with Palinchron, I just won't use him. Once you've got infinite mana, well, figure out something fun to do with it.
Gruul Ragebeast SMASH SMASH SMASH.
Sphinx of Uthuun & Mulldrifter Draw cards. Lot's of them.
Acidic Slime See Tyrant of Discord, but more targeted and with less potential for blowing out deck with lots of non-land perms.
Venser, Shaper Savant Bounce Bounce. Don't forget that he's a temporary counter spell as well!
Zealous Conscripts Infinite mana with Gilded Lotus, then steal some stuff, or all the stuff, depending on your patience for durdling.
Avenger of Zendikar For tokens. For funsies, produce 20-30 tokens and then cast Warp World.
Duplicant Reusable exile removal? Yes plz.
The haste lovers and general AGGRO cards.
Urabrask the Hidden Your backup haste enabler. As a bonus, prevents your opponents from laying out blockers.
Mercurial Chemister Being able to use his ability as soon as he hits the board is huge.
Hellkite Tyrant SURPRISE! All your baubles are belong to me!
Balefire Dragon SURPRISE! There goes most or all of your creatures.
Sphinx Ambassador SURPRISE! Well, you get the idea. Be smart about what you pick with him.
Gratuitous Violence This is a big part of the aggro strategy, as probably does not requite explanation. With this down, the big swings that might otherwise just take a chunk out of someone's life will instead take them out of the game.
Warstorm Surge Not much to say. Baller card.
Teferi Mage of Zhalfir What?! Haste lover? Aggro card? Yes! The "Flash" ability is seldom relevant in deck, but keeping opponents from playing on your turn is huuuuge for this deck. This deck can go from 0-60 in no time. Imagine having nothing but Teferi on the board, casting in Wanderer right before your turn, flipping Gratuitous Violence and Arcanis the Omnipotent, drawing three cards, THEN untapping to start your turn and drawing 3 more. Cast two fatties with your open mana and attack the same turn for god knows how much damage all without any of your opponents being able to react. Teferi is big game.
Akroma's Memorial A big dumb brute of a card, like so many in this deck. It just brings the pain. Combine with Gratuitous Violence for Gallagher-like amusement.
The Steal/Copy Suite
This section of the deck has swelled and shrunk at various times. At the moment it's sort of at a low point. These cards have been cut as I've added "good stuff" that doesn't quite fit into any other category. The cards I've cut here are almost as notable as the cards I've included. Among them are Sakashima the Impostor, Copy Artifact, Copy Enchantment, Phantasmal Image, etc.
Treachery/Control Magic As I was writing the above sentence, I realized that if you're only going to include one of these, it HAS to be Treachery. The untap lands kicker is just more valuable than the one lower casting cost. In general, I want at least one of these in any blue deck because it is the best way to deal with many of the game's most resilient cards and commander. In particular, Avacyn is very popular these days, and stealing one of those is BRUTAL.
Bribery, Acquire, & Knowledge Exploitation These are your three gold standard cards for stealing cards from your opponent's library. It is frankly baffling to me that these three cards exist at their converted mana cost. People talk about black tutors being OP, but for a few more mana, you can tutor a card (albeit from someone else's library) and put it on the battlefield. Not on top of your deck, not in your hand, into play. Bananas.
Thada Adel You know her, you love her. She is blue's very best source of ramping. Play her turn 3 and have 2 Sol rings by turn 5. As a bonus, being able to play Knowledge Exploitation on turn 4 is often a game breaker.
Rite of Replication You know the drill.
The rest of the cards are, I think, pretty self-explanatory (hell, most of the above cards are self-explanatory). If someone has questions about any of them being included, I'd be happy to add stuff, but I think it's pretty obvious.
Strategy - The strategy with this deck is, as I've said, pretty aggressive. You are going to win by driving the action, forcing your opponents out of their gameplans, and using one of your 8+ CMC cards or Deadeye to break the backs of opponents you've been pummeling all along. The game goes a little something like this...
Early game: Establish the mana base. Don't be afraid to hold a hand that has nothing but land in it. Starting off slow is, within limitations, beneficial to you. Smart players will get on you from the start, but don't sweat your life total until you get down in the low twenties. If the smart player attacks you exclusively, you'll be amazed at how often simply doing and saying nothing can get your other opponents to attack that guy. Your early game should be the art of appearing to do nothing while building a solid mana base. Just don't miss land drops, play your mana stones, and ramp. Optimally, be ready with 8 mana around turn 4-5.
Mid game: This is where you are going to start driving the action. Chances are you'll want to play Wanderer as soon as your able, but be aware of the action. If nothing has happened, and everyone has full hands, hold off and just keep establishing resources. If there has been some permission and removal flung around, go ahead and drop Wanderer and start beating heads. At this point, attention will turn to you. Again, don't sweat the life total too much. Force people to use their answers, with aggressive moves while at the same time using your card drawing to keep yourself fueled up. Ideally, as we head in to the end game, you want your opponents to have light hands. Doesn't matter if you only have a few cards yourself, so long as you've managed to draw in to one or two of the cards that matter in the end.
End game: This is where all of your aggression in the mid game will pay off. If you've forced people to exhaust their answers, and hopefully have managed to draw in to one of our win conditions, then you're going to be in fine shape to overwhelm your opponent's in the end. The big end-game "win" cards at this point are Akroma's Memorial, Warp World, and Deadeye Navigator. These have all been discussed above. Each of them, when played at the right time, will cripple your opponent's ability to play, while overwhelming them with resources.
Changelog -
- Omniscience
+ Akroma's Memorial
This probably slightly waters down the deck, but not by much, really. Akroma's haste all ability is obviously redundant in this deck, although redundancy isn't a terrible thing, but all the rest is great. The fact that it can be cascaded in to is a bonus, but let's be real, this change is mostly because you can only "oops, I win" with a card so many time before you can't take it any more. So, out goes Omniscience, probably to never be played again.
- Mulldrifter
- Fact or Fiction
- Farseek
- Rampant Growth
- Sylvan Library
- Spin Into Myth
+ Mercurial Chemister
+ Niv-Mizzet Dracogenius
+ Explosive Vegetation
+ Skyshroud Claim
+ Stalking Vengeance
+ Vandalblast
So, a lot of changes since the last time I updated this. Most of these represent minor adjustments. The two 2 CMC ramp cards have been shuffled out for two 4 CMC ramps. I took out one-shot card draw cards, Mulldrifter and Fact or Fiction and replaced them with two re-usable card draws in Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius and Mercurial Chemister. Mercurial Chemister has been in and out of the deck since RTR was released, but I have started to notice that there is a very high correlation between this getting played and me winning the game. The other substitutions represent a shuffling around. Vandalblast is awesome, Sylvan Library was leaving me cold, Spin Into Myth doesn't quite fit with the gameplan and Stalking Vengeance does, more or less.
04/03/13
So, time for a belated post-gatecrash update. Many many changes to the deck, both in terms of adding Gatecrash cards, and just making routine substitutions
- Coalition Relic
- Arcanis the Omnipotent
- Steel Hellkite
- Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
- Riku of Two Reflections
- Stalking Vengeance
- Sphinx Ambassador
- Tyrant of Discord
- Terastodon
- Jace, the Mind Sculptor
- Genesis Wave
- Momentous Fall
- Volcanic Island
- Taiga
- Tropical Island
- Island
+ Hellkite Tyrant
+ Lotus Cobra
+ Master Biomancer
+ Woodfall Primus
+ Brainstorm
+ Fact or Fiction
+ Breeding Pool
+ Stomping Grounds
+ Homeward Path
+ Mystifying Maze
+ Thespian's Stage
+ Prime Speaker Zegana
+ Farseek
+ Nature's Lore
+ Urban Evolution
+ Garruk, Primal Hunter
+ Gruul Ragebeast
So, lots of changes here. First off, you'll notice there are more adds than subtracts... yeah, not sure what that's about. Anywho. Two big categories of changes. One, I sold off some of my dolla dolla bill cards because they just weren't giving me value equivalent to what they were worth. In particular, now that I have a full set of shocklands, the duals are really a luxury that I can afford to do without. Otherwise, I exchanged Jace for Brainstorm. A shift of ~$50 and almost no change in utility 99 times out of 100.
The next big category of changes is Gatecrash additions. When Gatecrash came out, I tried out a lot of cards that didn't end up making the cut, but the cards that are still in there are really good in the deck, and just really good in general. Prime Speaker is amaaaazing. In this deck, cascading in to her is a wee bit of a bummer, but then really, you're getting a 1/1 that draws you a card for free. Kinda sucks, but it's not like it's the worst thing in the world. Urban evolution is just a great card, custom-made for this deck. Master Biomancer is a card that I love in general, and just makes everything else better. In particular, he makes Woodfall Primus and Glen Elandra Archmage immortal, which I don't mind at all, and is why Woodfall gets the nod over Terastadon at this point. Hellkite Tyrant is baller. Gruul Ragebeast is a recent addition and we'll see if he sticks around, however, I've been playing him a lot in other decks recently, and I've been really impressed, so he's getting a fair shake.
Then there are just sort of "other" subs. I re-added the two mana ramp spells, subbing out Rampant Growth for Nature's Lore because it's probably better. I found that the way it was it was getting too many slow starts because I was too top heavy, so some of the high-end creatures came out to make room for the cheap ramp. Just today, I added Lotus Cobra in place of Coalition Relic. This seems like sort of a sideways move, but I'm trying it out. Lotus Cobra allows for some explosive turns, but if I miss Relic too much, I might have to take something else out to put it back in, we'll see.
Personal Bio - Well, my name is James Garren. I play Magic exclusively on MTGO at this point though I'm considering getting back in to paper Magic, we'll see. As I said within, I started playing last spring, but I used to play a long long time ago. I initially quit shortly after Ice Age had come out, when I had my carefully crafted, much beloved UB deck stolen. I don't know who did it, but if you're reading this... I will END you. ;-)
Riku, by contrast, has very few limitations. The more you ramp, the better he gets, and left untouched, he can dominate a board even more than his cascading cousin. Casting Eternal Dominion and copying it each turn? Yes plz! Unfortunately, Riku's 2/2 body and ludicrous ability put a big fat target on his and your back, and personally I find that he doesn't win as many games. Wanderer also gets you a target, but it's much harder to kill Wanderer profitably because you want to cast him over and over again anyway.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the two. Personally, I like my Wanderer deck best, for what it's worth.