Midrange Maelstrom Combo

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Midrange RUG (Temur)

gekkoe

Land (30)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Cascade Bluffs
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1x Flooded Grove
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Grove of the Burnwillows
• 1x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Taiga
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Food Chain
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Splinter Twin
• 1x Sylvan Library

Creature (29)

• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Coiling Oracle
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Drift of Phantasms
• 1x Duplicant
• 1x Eternal Scourge
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fierce Empath
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Great Oak Guardian
• 1x Imperial Recruiter
• 1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1x Lotus Cobra
• 1x Misthollow Griffin
• 1x Mulldrifter
• 1x Palinchron
• 1x Pestermite
• 1x Phantasmal Image
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Riftsweeper
• 1x Scavenging Ooze
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Wood Elves
• 1x Zealous Conscripts

Artifact (5)

• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring

Commander (1)

Instant (16)

• 1x Ancient Grudge
• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Long-Term Plans
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Sorcery (14)

• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Foresight
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Hull Breach
• 1x Manipulate Fate
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Nature's Spiral
• 1x Regrowth
• 1x Selective Memory
• 1x Skyshroud Claim
• 1x Stomp and Howl
• 1x Sylvan Tutor
• 1x Tooth and Nail

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Maybeboard

Creature (4)

• 1x Somberwald Sage
• 1x Soul of the Harvest
• 1x Tishana, Voice of Thunder
• 1x Walking Ballista

Land (1)

• 1x Strip Mine

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Bring to Light
• 1x Glimpse of Nature
• 1x Timetwister
• 1x Vandalblast

Instant (2)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Fact or Fiction

Artifact (1)

• 1x Cloudstone Curio

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Inspired by Enderkr's interesting MW Combo Deck

This deck is something I'm working on because I'm realizing that my current Animar, Soul of Elements deck just isn't going to reliably work the way I want it to in my meta. (All of our players prefer competitive EDH lists.) It's a great deck and a lot of fun to play, but it simply isn't resilient enough to deal with interaction and relies far too heavily on its commander.

Enter Maelstrom Wanderer. As Enderkr pointed out, many people build this commander to be ramped to as quickly as possible and then cast to cheat out huge threats. That's not my goal here.

The starting goal was to find interesting ways to abuse Imperial Recruiter in a creature toolbox shell with the potential to go off while holding up counter magic, and multiple routes to stay in the game after the inevitable disruption it'll have to fight through.

Toward that end, what this deck generally wants to do is disrupt/slow opponents a bit at the beginning of the game, then find (often by transmuting Drift of Phantasms) and cast Food Chain, then sac a couple of creatures to it (or use the infinite cast-from-exile cycles with Eternal Scourge or Misthollow Griffin) and get multiple castings of the commander to cast your deck until you find combo pieces and go off with something like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or infinite Purphoros, God of the Forge triggers.

Unlike many Maelstrom decks, this one doesn't mind whiffing on a cascade here or there by hitting counter magic, as they just go back into the deck and we're not usually casting the commander without already having revved up our mana engines.

Worst case scenario we have a 7/5 haste creature on the battlefield and we can get back around to cheating things out with him later.

This is very much a work in progress. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Top Ranked	Achieved #38 position overall 6 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	6 years
Exclude colors	WB
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 54 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 15 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.80
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone
Folders	Stolen Decks