MTG Salvation

If this thread proves anything, it's that this group of people who cares a lot about this format can't agree on how combo should fit into the format. Banning combo or combo cards would alienate a large portion of players, and yet there is a large portion of players who want to play without it.

I live in Portland where it's not hard to find a combo-friendly or non-combo playgroup. I'll usually ask when sitting down to a new group of players which they are. I also get that some people have limited options as far as people to play with. I suppose if I was in that scenario and wanted a non-combo game I might ask if we could have a combo game and a noncombo game, maybe I could borrow someone's combo deck if I wasn't into building such a thing myself. Or if I am a combo player and nobody wants to play combo maybe I'd ask if we could do 1 combo game a night and here's some fun fast combo decks for you guys to borrow, don't worry this'll take less than 30 minutes probably.

I think this discussion is healthy because we see how many different types of game people like, but it's pretty damn clear we're never never never all going to agree on what the ideal EDH/Commander game looks like.

Only redeeming thing about Golos to my mind is that it's a lot easier to kill than Narset. Because otherwise *loud raspberry* Wizards loves to give us these legendary creatures that give free spells, and sometimes with cards like Etali and Yennett they do alright where you get to have your fun and not either take 20 minute turns or literally all the turns, and then with Narset and Golos the temptation is just too great for a deckbuilder to make something that creates a scenario of three people watching the fourth play solitaire.

Not. A. Fan.

Which is funny because the new Kaalia being a card advantage engine rather than a mana skipping engine is pretty good.

My plan is to spend time on MTGS and the new forum, taking part in what conversations draw me in as I have on MTGS over the years. If there ends up being good community in both places, why not lurk both places? I do think it sucks how they pulled this in the final hour when most people had gone through the process of planning what to do next, but I'm happy for those who want to stay on MTGS and happy for those who are looking to a new vision of what a user-run forum would look like.

Really want to recognize Cry and Airithne and the others with skin in the game who've worked so hard to make the best of this. It's that attention to community that draws community, which is one of the main reasons I'll definitely be lurking on the new site when it's up!

edit - just looked at my join date, holy cow, 8 years.... tis a bit of time

Quote from toctheyounger77 »

Soul Diviner - decent tech. I could see it used for removing cumulative upkeep counters, among other things, for profit.

Drawing cards off Glacial Chasm... so good...

It has been done here before, but not updated. Tappedout has a decent list without explanation. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/list-of-edh-draw-cards/

We've done top 5 in various colors before, and top 10, and various such lists. Google brought up this from 2014: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/567131-top-10-draw-spells-for-edh

Unhelpful answer, it depends, right? On colors and strategy and mana curve? Do you put Rhystic Study in every blue deck? Oddly enough I didn't put it in my enchantress deck because the enchantresses already draw a crap ton of cards and I wanted a slot for something else more interesting.

It's color specific but one of my favorite flat out draw spells is Sphinx's Revelation because it's flexible, instant speed, and includes life gain as a bonus.

The most card drawing fun I've ever had is when I get Scroll Rack and Land Tax active.

Ooo, Goreclaw is pretty good tech in this deck. Nice.

Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis

Plenty of people don't like them because they're too enabling, but I like how they accelerate the table but break parity for you if you build your deck right. They're basically grease in my favorite colors and there are so many options for building with them.

Grenzo, Dungeon Warden is one of the coolest designs I've seen.

Turn 3 Aura of Silence.

Quote from snowfox54119 »

Quote from PenThief »

Looks like someone around here posted this to
Reddit

I saw that! I'm always happy to see others find the joy of Grenzo.

Quote from kraus911 »

Interested in your non-infinite version, what you cut, how you still win...

Of course! For my casual version I took out all of the major combo enabling pieces and either replaced them with other cool cards or weaker versions of themselves. So essentially, the cards I took out were:

• Ashnod's Altar
• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• Metallic Mimic
• Thornbite Staff

I then added:

• Phyrexian Altar - still strong, but much harder to abuse as quickly
• Balthor the Defiled - had to bring this guy back in for the consistency since the deck is slower
• Mindclaw Shaman - Since it's a more casual meta, I have a lot more fun with this card. Also, it feels really good to catch someone else's Merciless Eviction and hit all of the enchantments with their own card.
• Silent Arbiter - My casual meta has a lot of token decks

Other than these changes, the list is all the same. It does slow down the deck a bit in the sense that you don't run into the "oops, I win" scenario as often; but the pace of excitement is still the same. The win-cons now become one of the three:

• An aristocrats finish through abusing Deathbringer Thoctar/Zulaport Cutthroat
• An infinite combo that requires Phyrexian Altar, Heartstone and a creature that creates 3+ tokens (if you let me get 4 pieces out and keep them, I don't feel bad for infiniting)
• Repeated damaging effects like Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Furystoke Giant

Last game I played, I still managed to flip through most of my deck and actually found that I got to see a lot more of it since I have to dig a lot deeper for the win sometimes. So I really enjoyed these changes and my meta appreciated the ability to to play longer games as well.

Awesome. I do love the explosiveness and randomness of this deck, but sometimes don't want to risk accidentally going Kiki/Zealous and making the table groan. I might find a way to keep Kiki in there because he's so awesome with most of the cards in the deck. Take out Lightning Crafter and Zealous and play with that. Maybe add Krenko and go wider. Thanks!

There have been several of these I've noticed over the years, but more in the recent legendaries printed for Commander products. The one that recently stood out to me was Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign. I built her like a lot of people, focusing a lot on odd-costed bombs and top deck manipulation. Thing is, she's also a 3/5 flyer for 5 that has Vigilance and Menace. And if you don't have a single odd costed card in your deck she draws you a card whenever she hits. Realizing that, she's got a lot of potential and if you have a handful of odd bombs, cool. I too am guilty of looking at a new commander and trying to figure out the magical Christmas land scenario I want to build, but sometimes just half of a commander is plenty decent.

The other one that stands out to me is Atraxa... if you just cut off the bottom half of the card, took away the proliferate nonsense, she'd still be plenty playable at her cost. I was wanting to build her and looking at various uses of proliferate and finally realized I wanted to build her enchantress voltron. I've got a Spike Weaver I can proliferate, but that's it.

I have a friend who put Horde of Notions in his EDH cube even though there is just a smattering of elementals because he's a 5/5 haste/trample/vigilance for 5.

Anyways, my point in this thread is to discuss commanders you've found that are plenty good even if you don't build to their abilities and also to point out that assessing a commander doesn't necessarily mean looking at how good a deck you can build according to the card's salient abilities.

Thoughts?

So the theme of this deck is deep sea exploration/archaeology. The crowning goal is to find Arixmethes. That is why he isn't the Commander, because Thrasios is exploring the deep, encountering various sea creatures and legendary locations on the way to the end-goal of discovering the greatest sunken city of all.

I tried to make this an even trade between funcitonality while staying true to the theme. So sure, cards like Clinging Aneomones should be Elvish Piper for example. But I really wanted to represent as many different sea creatures as possible. To capture the exploration element, I included many unique lands, which work great with Realms Uncharted, that is thematic. I may drop this card and many of the ETB tapped lands for Islands, but not sure yet.

The most difficult part of this deck was having to cut the following cards, which I am considering re-adding (especially Exploration):


Dizzy Spell can search many of the one-drops, specifically Quest for Ula's Temple or Training Grounds. The latter is strictly to augment Thrasios. They're not on theme, but add a lot more consistency to the deck. This is tied with my Jace and Theros themed Enchantment deck as my favorite deck.

And the moment we've all been waiting for, at long last, ARIXMETHES!

The main differences between the websites is that the staff are now able to try all-sorts of different functionality within the MTGNexus website, where as they weren't able to do much at all with Salvation as they didn't actually own it and were limited with what they could try.

MTGNexus is just going to get better and better overtime with new features and functionality, where as Salvation is going to remain stagnate and realistically go backwards, because the staff who were maintaining the website here are now working on Nexus.
Maybe Salvation will get some new staffers to move things forward, but realistically that is unlikely due to the limitations that are already there.

MTGNexus really is a gift to Magic enthusiasts.

Hello friends,

This is my take on Raff Capashen. Basically, it’s a mix of historic and artifact themes. Almost every spell will have flash when he’s on the table. More details to come later.
Again, the main theme is to leave everything up so that anything is possible at any time in the game. More to come later.

Quote from 3drinks »

complete the game objective. which is to win the game,

I don't want to be pollyanna too much here but the game objective of EDH for me is far more than to win the game. That's *an* objective. But not the objective. Lots of sub objecives

* Do my thing
* Hopefully see other people do their thing
* Chat with people
* Have a good time


Winning is fairly low on the list for me actually. I mean, I'm trying to win, but if it were the only objective I'd be doing it a lot differently and so would most people.

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

Zedruu - The Greatest Of All Time

---

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

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

You will like this deck if:

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

You will not like this deck if:

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

---

Why Zedruu?

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

Also, Zedruu is the best.

---

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

---

The Comprehensive Guide of Everything the Deck Does

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

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

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

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

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

Zedruu the Greathearted

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

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

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

The 99

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

Lands

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

Artifacts

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

Enchantments

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

Creatures

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

Instants

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

Sorceries

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

Planeswalkers

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

---

Big Splashy Synergies

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

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

Draw Doubling and Hand Cycling

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

Knowledge Pool, Possibility Storm, Eye of the Storm

Mirrorweave and Infinite Reflection Shenanigans

Strionic Resonator Spam

Build Your Own Doomsday

---

4-Card Combos!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Precursor Golem/Ephemeral Shields/Jeskai Charm/Arcbond

Barren Glory

---

Changelog

It is still in the (closed) building phase. As soon as we have more public info we will share it.

Cruel Ultimatum is a fun card to cast and I've been looking for an excuse to play the ridiculous Bolas walkers, so this is the solution.



This still feels a little fractured because I haven't played it at all and I think there's some internal tension here. The deck isn't really focused on either a more tapout style, which the high CMC walkers are pushing, or a more traditional draw-go list. I like the number of mana sources, given that it's curving out to 8 and there's a benefit to being able to play and flip the general in a single turn cycle, whether that's to get an immediate walker activation or to play around removal more effectively. I also think there should probably be another couple X-cost spells to take advantage of it, probably a draw spell like Stroke of Genius or Pull from Tomorrow and maybe a burn spell. Reanimation spells are possible cuts to fit those because they're largely relying on opponents. I don't have a lot of targets here.

Fast mana, tutors, Cyclonic Rift, Exsanguinate, and Torment of Hailfire are all intentional omissions. I know they're good cards, my group has chosen to omit those because we all got tired of seeing the same things every game. Combo is also relatively rare, so I'm not too worried about passing on the cheap/free counters.