Swan Song

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Tokens

Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Swan Song

Instant

Counter target enchantment, instant or sorcery spell. Its controller creates a 2/2 blue Bird creature token with flying.

ASalesman on Unesh, Ultimate Guide (Tribal)

6 months ago

One more minor sub

Replace Swan Song with An Offer You Can't Refuse. I need this slot to hit artifacts as well. I don't mind giving the opponent 2 treasures if it keeps something like Null Rod or the card that shall not be named off the table.

SniperFrog on Doomsday [Primer]

6 months ago

UB

Draw for turn opens, Tome Scour in hand, one creature in play

Swan Song or other counter

Dregscape Zombie or Fatestitcher, depending on mana

Thassa's Oracle

Narcomoeba

Dread Return

Azoth2099 on Narset's Work Out Plan

8 months ago

Bkotz

This version of Narset looks so fun, man!

One thing that I feel is fundamental when remembering Narset, Enlightened Exile's function as a Commander is that her ability gives you Graveyard hate as well as pseudo card draw by giving you access to your opponent's Graveyards as well as your own, meaning that you will always have card advantage as long as you protect your Commander.

That being said, I would definitely find room for Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, & an abundance of Counterspells. Personally, I don't like spending more than 1 Mana for a Counterspell these days. Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Dispel, Swan Song & An Offer You Can't Refuse provide a crazy ceiling of value for a single Mana. If you wanted to roll with 2-drops for budget reasons, though, Delay, Arcane Denial, Dovin's Veto & Negate are all easy to cast, & throw a wide net. Misdirection & Bolt Bend are also options here.

Secondly, Narset, Enlightened Exile can only trigger on your own turn, & you need to ensure that everything is going to go as planned. Grand Abolisher & Conqueror's Flail will lock your opponents out of your turn without giving your opponents the same utility like cards like Teferi, Time Raveler & Defense Grid notoriously do. Silence, Revel in Silence  Flip, Abeyance & Orim's Chant can do something similar for 1-2 Mana.

Speaking of Stax, there are a few concise, utilitarian pieces that you may want to consider. Drannith Magistrate, Sanctum Prelate, Archon of Emeria, Lavinia, Azorious Renegade, Boromir, Warden of the Tower, Aven Mindcensor & Containment Priest shut down a LOT of strategies. You'd be surprised how little most decks can do once you take away their ability to cheat stuff in, Tutor and/or cast things for free. Personally, every deck I have is heavily handicapped by all of those pieces. I wouldn't even be able to target them with removal if you played your cards right.

For noncreature Stax, you've got Chalice of the Void, Cursed Totem, Thorn of Amethyst, Deafening Silence, Grafdigger's Cage (which your Commander's ability gets around btw, very strong here), & Rule of Law as a few solid options.

You do need quite a bit more card draw, though. Scroll Rack & Sensei's Divining Top are obviously great, but the level of toolbox utility they actually give you in practice is even better than it seems! Archivist of Oghma, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder all give you card draw that scales with what your opponents are doing, which is fantastic. Other things like Deep Gnome Terramancer & Wandering Archaic  Flip do the same thing, though they technically aren't card draw. Hell, might as well throw Monologue Tax out there too since I'm talking about scaling.

There's also Careful Study, Frantic Search, Tolarian Winds, Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Burning Inquiry, Thrill of Possibility & Dragon's Rage Channeler, which are great synergy here!

Speaking of synergy, let's get into that! The foremost synergies for Narset, Enlightened Exile imho is Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze & Intuition, and much of the deck should be geared towards maximizing on that. They're all very easy to Tutor up via cards like Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Solve the Equation, Fabricate, Reshape, Transmute Artifact, Reckless Handling, Goblin Engineer & Gamble, in addition to being easy to recur via your Commander's ability. It's actually absurd, truly busted. I wouldn't recommend throwing Wheels like Wheel of Fortune or Windfall into the mix, though. They're very overrated, & you can just run Brain Freeze for the combo instead. No need to give all of your opponents a bunch of cards for free if you don't have to! Queen Kayla bin-Kroog is for sure worth consideration, though, if you choose to run Artifact Stax.

Maximizing on Underworld Breach, however, means running Storm. I'd recommend Birgi, God of Storytelling  Flip, Storm-Kiln Artist, Urabrask  Flip, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual & Seething Song to keep your Storm engine from shutting off. I personally don't condone Runaway Steam-Kin, as it's just too freaking slow & conditional compared to other options.

Additional Combat Phases would also be of great use here as opposed to trigger doublers like Strionic Resonator or something. Aggravated Assault, Waves of Aggression, World at War & Seize the Day are the only ones I'd consider running, though. You don't wanna load up on too many synergy effects when you can just Tutor for the best of them when the time's right, ya know?

Since you're running Dockside Extortionist, I'd also consider Cloudstone Curio. With one other Creature (like Spellseeker for example), you can produce infinite Treasures & ETBs with little effort, which is usually more than enough to get you to the finish line.

Your ramp package is looking solid enough, but I'd include 2 more Rocks as well as the rituals I named previously. Fellwar Stone is, functionally, a 5-color Rock for 2 Mana, which is absurd. I tend to not condone 3-drop rocks, with the exception of Chromatic Lantern, which was just reprinted recently and is currently super cheap.

Oh man, now that I think of it Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal gives your whole team infinite power and toughness via your Commander, as well as giving you infinite Mana if you have enough Rocks on the field. Maybe consider it lol.

Monastery Mentor seems to fit like glove here as well, offering some much needed redundancy and a surprising amount of board presence. It's kind of like Deep Gnome Terramancer or Wandering Archaic  Flip in the sense that it just provides waaaay more value while playtesting than you thought it was going to!

Also, consider giving yourself Hexproof with stuff like Witchbane Orb to protect your own Graveyard.

To summarize, I really think your best bet with this one is building a system that gets to either an Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze combo win or an Intuition win as quickly as possible, with other combos like Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter being strong potentialities on the way.

Cheers!

legendofa on

8 months ago

On to Grixis! I was about to suggest Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, but that's Commander only.

Swan Song is another token maker worth at least a sideboard slot.

MrHighscore on In the grim darkness of the far future

8 months ago

Updated. Not sure for the better, but for sure plays into the win conditions.

DawnsRayofLight on Lich King Nekusar

8 months ago

Peer into the Abyss

Faerie Mastermind

Elder Brain: slow, but could be funny

Folio of Fancies

Sword of War and Peace: could help punish the card draw

you may want to up the number of counterspells to deal with the fact you're helping your opponents dig, combo decks will ruin your day.

Miscast

Spell Pierce

Swan Song

Negate

An Offer You Can't Refuse

Flusterstorm

Drops

Sigil of Sleep

Propaganda

No Mercy or Dissipation Field: probably the board wipes will be enough with only one of these.

I might trade out some of the 3 drop rocks for signets or talismans

It may not be a bad idea to have some other cheap combo line to pull off when playing against combo decks as well since you're digging so much with the draw (Consecrated Sphinx could help here too)

the big worry is needing to speed the deck up which involves somewhat expensive mana rocks:

Chrome Mox

Mox Diamond

Mana Vault

Azoth2099 on Saruman, the X man

8 months ago

Xindmin

So, this list is off to a great start in my opinion. I've put together a few lists for Saruman of Many Colors of my own, and the only ones that work at a high level are the ones with literally like 15+ Mana Rocks because of the Commander's MV, so great job there lol.

I do think you need a LOT more low-cost Instants to consistently Trigger Saruman of Many Colors' Ability, though. Mainly 1-drop & 2-drop Counterspells, Cantrips & Removal Spells are what I mean, as they'll allow you to seamlessly meet your proc requirement, draw cards, interact & fill your opponent's Graveyards with things you wanna steal without having to necessarily pivot your focus to do so. I'd consider Mystical Tutor, Swan Song, An Offer You Can't Refuse, Flusterstorm, Dispel, Miscast, Brainstorm, Thought Scour, Winds of Rebuke, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Silence, Orim's Chant & Disenchant for example. Free spells like Misdirection & Snapback can also carry a lot of weight here, never underestimate the power of a free cast at Instant speed in this deck. Borne Upon a Wind, Quicken & Emergence Zone could enable some craziness as well.

Intentionally filling your opponents yards with things like Mind Grind & Traumatize is also good strategy, but personally I'd be very discerning as to which of those pieces actually make the cut compared to cards like the aforementioned Instants.

Also, I know its expensive but I'd have to recommend Vampiric Tutor here. It was around $90 a little bit ago, and now it's around $40 I think. Better to get it while the getting is good, so to speak.

Cheers!

Potvuurka on Jhoira of the GG no re

9 months ago

To remove any issues with your suspend cards being countered I would suggest running some counterspells. Preferably Spell Pierce, Miscast, Swan Song, Dispel. Since you don't have a way how to defend yourself I would play 8 of them at least in any combination. Perhaps Unsummon might be a good addition either at some point.

As someone suggested above Clockspinning, Jhoira's Timebug and Fury Charm are not good.

Cryptic Command is a great multipurpose thing.

For the lands, if you wish to stay budget you can use something like Shivan Reef, Swiftwater Cliffs. For the non budget of yourse Steam Vents and Scalding Tarn.

If you would use Unsummon or any other similiar effect cards, you might be interested in playing Braids, Conjurer Adept. She's slow but fun, and works without suspend.

Mainly, better threats for opponent. Something like Inkwell Leviathan, Pathrazer of Ulamog. Using suspend even Emrakul, the Aeons Torn could prove useful.

Then of course more your own card control / draw - Serum Visions, Opt, Fire / Ice

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