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Feldon. Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

Commander / EDH

Paul.The.Firewood.Salesman


This is my take on what I feel is the most powerful mono red commander available, Feldon of the Third Path

Feldon card

Legendary Creature - Human Artificer

, : Create a token that's a copy of target creature card in your graveyard, except it's an artifact in addition to its other types. It gains haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.

"She will come back to me."

Why Feldon of the Third Path?

Feldon, in my opinion, is the most powerful commander in mono red. His ability allows us to play high cost creatures for much cheaper. With the lack of ramp in this color being able to cast high cmc creatures is typically unreliable. With Feldon's 'recursion' ability we can use these creatures to their full potential in a far more efficient way. We may not be able to keep the tokens (there are workarounds to this though) but playing these high CMC cards for three mana is a fair trade off. Even then, sometimes we want these creatures to die anyways.

scuttling art

What is Our Strategy?

Feldon makes use of the creatures in our graveyard. Feldon makes token copies of a target creature in our graveyard, allowing us to use high CMC creatures for much cheaper. Besides the high CMC aspect Feldon also allows us to abuse enter the battlefield and dying effects. A perfect example of this is Solemn Simulacrum. When in the graveyard Feldon can create a token of Solemn, triggering its basic land fetch effect, and then at the end of the turn it is sacrificed which triggers the card draw effect. Feldon needs help with his ability though. We need to get cards in the graveyard.

Putting Our Cards In the Graveyard:

Luckily red has plenty of cards that puts cards from our hand into the graveyard. There are plenty of wheel effects that allow us to do this but most notable is Magus of the Wheel. We will likely only get one use out of cards like Wheel of Fortune and Reforge the Soul but with the Magus we can use Feldon's ability to constantly wheel our hands. On top of that, constantly wheeling our opponents hands will likely start to get on their nerves. If the mana and Feldon is available, with Magus we can wheel on every single one of our turns.

Cards like Daretti, Scrap Savant allow us to discard cards in our hand while drawing some. Same goes for Cathartic Reunion and Mad Prophet. Key to the City will make our big creatures unblockable while also putting other big creatures of ours in our graveyard and potentially letting us draw cards.

Fair art

How Do We Win?

The winning strategy is straightforward and Feldon is the key. Being able to use big creatures over and over is what will typically win us games. It That Betrays in the graveyard alone can win us the game. Combustible Gearhulk, Hellkite Tyrant and other creatures all have this capability.

Unlike most decks I run this deck doesn't have a Plan B. Even cards like Warstorm Surge depends on creatures in our graveyards and Feldon. Because of this, we cannot over extend. Abusing Magus and wheeling our hand over and over is fine and dandy but all it takes is one Bojuka Bog to ruin our day. Our best bet is to abuse a few cards in our graveyard as opposed to all of them. If someone doesn't like us using Feldon to copy Molten Primordial over and over and plays Bojuka Bog to take care of it, we'll be glad we didn't wheel out our Tormenting Voice and Bogardan Hellkite a few turns prior. Granted Rest in Peace will still give us a very tough time.

wheel magus art

The Land and Ramp

This deck doesn't need a lot of ramp due to the low cost of Feldon's ability. However, Feldon will likely be taken off the board a few time so his mana cost starts to add up. There is not a lot of ramp in this deck, but cards like Caged Sun and Gilded Lotus are used to in case we do start running into mana issues.

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is an obvious must due to the amount of basic mountains run in the deck. Three damage may not seem like much but this small amount of damage can keep certain creatures off the board, such as graveyard hate creatures like Scavenging Ooze and Deathrite Shaman.

We run some land destruction lands such as Wasteland to help deal with some pesky lands. I know of a lot of metas that do not like nor run land destruction but then I see those same metas run Alchemist's Refuge and Maze of Ith. I'm a firm believer that mass land destruction is not fun. But spot land destruction can be essential. If you're in a meta where mass land destruction is normal then Ruination and Blood Moon are great additions.

wurmcoil art

The Rest

Due to the color restriction does not have much in the way of removal or tutors. We rely on cards like Warstorm Surge and Valakut for removal for the most part but since we're in mono red we run the obligatory Chaos Warp. For tutors we run Gamble which plays well with Feldon's ability.

Blasphemous Act, Oblivion Stone, and Nevinyrral's Disk act as our board wipes. Oblivion Stone and Nevinyrral's Disk in particular have a fun interaction with Goblin Welder and Feldon. Feldon's ability also states that the creatures being recurred are artifacts are in addition. So with Goblin Welder in play or even in the graveyard will make it fairly easy for use to use both Oblivion Stone and Nevinyrral's Disk several times.

One card I want to mention is Sundial of the Infinite. Sundial actually lets us keep our tokens and there's a common misconception on how it works. Feldon's ability strictly says 'next endstep'. So many people may think that even with Sundial it only means we won't lose them on our endstep but instead on the endstep of the next player. However, there's a workaround to this. If it goes to our endstep the sacrifice triggers, but it only triggers once. The sacrifice trigger goes on the stack then in response we use the sundial, it 'exiles' the trigger. The 'next end step' sac trigger already happened and cannot happen again.

utvara art

The Conclusion

Feldon still suffers from what every mono-red commander typically suffers from: being mono-red. However, Feldon's strong ability arguably makes him the most powerful mono-red commander currently available in the format. Red still allows us to use Feldon's ability effectively and though other color options are nice having the access to red is efficient.

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Revision 11 See all

(5 years ago)

-1 Blood Moon main
-1 Bloodshot Cyclops main
+1 Burning Sun's Avatar main
+1 Etali, Primal Storm main
+1 Gauntlet of Power main
-1 Hoarding Dragon main
Date added 7 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

44 - 0 Rares

14 - 0 Uncommons

8 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 4.25
Tokens Copy Clone, Dragon 6/6 R, Emblem Daretti, Scrap Savant, Goat 0/1 W, Myr 1/1 C, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink
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