Vial Smashing

Commander / EDH BRG (Jund) Cascade Ramp

Ratjarr

1 - Big Spells (7)

• 1x City on Fire
• 1x Draco
• 1x Earthquake Dragon
• 1x Ghalta, Primal Hunger
• 1x Primeval Protector
• 1x Scion of Draco
• 1x Shadow of Mortality

2 - Shenanigans (11)

• 1x Baneful Omen
• 1x Dream Devourer
• 1x Keeper of Secrets
• 1x Nalfeshnee
• 1x Omen Machine
• 1x Passionate Archaeologist
• 1x Possibility Storm
• 1x Timesifter
• 1x Vedalken Orrery
• 1x Wild Evocation
• 1x Wild-Magic Sorcerer

3 - Removal (7)

• 1x Call Forth the Tempest
• 1x Curtains' Call
• 1x Divergent Transformations
• 1x In Garruk's Wake
• 1x Plague Wind
• 1x Terastodon
• 1x Volcanic Salvo

4 - "Card Advantage" (20)

• 1x Apex Devastator
• 1x Blood for the Blood God!
• 1x Chimil, the Inner Sun
• 1x Combustible Gearhulk
• 1x Etali, Primal Conqueror  ^Flip
• 1x Etali, Primal Storm
• 1x Fevered Suspicion
• 1x Hit the Mother Lode
• 1x Keen Duelist
• 1x Palantir of Orthanc
• 1x Plargg and Nassari
• 1x Protection Racket
• 1x Soulfire Eruption
• 1x Tavern Brawler
• 1x Thunderous Debut
• 1x Tooth and Nail
• 1x Twilight Prophet
• 1x Up the Beanstalk
• 1x Urabrask, Heretic Praetor
• 1x Wondrous Crucible

5 - "Mana Ramp" (16)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Avatar of Growth
• 1x Beanstalk Giant
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Delighted Halfling
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Aberration
• 1x Hoarding Broodlord
• 1x Ignoble Hierarch
• 1x Reshape the Earth
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Tlincalli Hunter
• 1x Treacherous Terrain
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Verdant Mastery

6 - Lands (37)

• 1x Akoum Warrior  ^Flip
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 8x Forest
• 1x Jund Panorama
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Mosswort Bridge
• 4x Mountain
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Riveteers Overlook
• 1x Spinerock Knoll
• 1x Spire Garden
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 4x Swamp
• 1x Tangled Florahedron  ^Flip
• 1x Turntimber Symbiosis  ^Flip
• 1x Undergrowth Stadium
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Ziatora's Proving Ground
• 1x Zof Consumption  ^Flip

Commanders (2)

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This is a big mana jund deck with casting spells from exile as a sub-theme. Win condition is dealing non-combat damage through effects like Vial Smasher the Fierce and Passionate Archaeologist.

Overview

Theme: Big Mana Jund - Every Card a Banger

The two commanders are good signposts for the deck: ramp hard via Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood into big mana value spells for Vial Smasher the Fierce. The subtheme in the background is casting spells from exile. Card priorities for this deck goes in the following order:

1. The card contributes to casting more spells, ideally from exile
2. The card has a high mana value, preferably 6 or greater
3. The card has situation-independent value (i.e. it's valuable to play at any time)

Play this deck if: (you love big spells and flashy turns) and you're capable of keeping your pace up while playing long turns with lots of triggers.

Avoid this deck if: You dislike decks that don't interact with the table or dislike keeping track of lots of triggers on the stack.

Important playstyle note: This is a very solitaire style deck with very long turns. There's no infinite combo that you explain for everyone to accept and concede, and there's aren't complicated choices that you could prepare ahead of time. It snowballs into more and more cards via effects like Cascade, so there's no avoiding going through those steps. Get used to doing them quickly and keeping track of lots of triggers if you don't want to annoy your playgroup, and make sure you and your friends are prepared for that kind of non-interactive gameplay in the first place.

Cards and Organization

Keeping in mind the 3 Priorities (see the Overview section), the value and purpose of the cards in the context of this deck go as follows:

Big Spells

These are the cards that met no other priority other than #2: they cost a lot of mana. Some are among the highest mana value cards in the game (Draco), and they're meant to be reduced in price (Ghalta, Primal Hunger), cheated out through something like Wild Evocation, or revealed with something like Palantir of Orthanc or Baneful Omen. While "quantity is a quality all its own" applies to the mana value of these cards (considering breakpoints like 14 mana value being enough to deal lethal Vial Smasher damage to a full health player if City on Fire is on the battlefield), these would still be the first cards to be substituted out in future revisions.

Shenanigans

These cards change the way the game is played in a manner that is favorable to you. They're allowed to be low mana value because they meet top priority #1 of enabling casting lots of high cost cards from exile. Several enable (Omen Machine) or capitalize on (Passionate Archaeologist) the cast from exile sub-theme. Some give other advantages: Timesifter is far better than normal with the deck's average mana value of over 6 and emphasis on removing lands from your library (see "Mana Ramp" below), and Vedalken Orrery let's you get the first-cast-of-the-turn bonuses from Vial Smasher the Fierce and Wild-Magic Sorcerer during other players' turns with non-instant spells, working especially well with Tlincalli Hunter. While players typically groan at Possibility Storm, it is amazing in this deck, and you can easily defend its inclusion if you feel the need. For starters, the entire deck meets at bare minimum priority #3: the cards are valuable regardless of the situation. Most decks, especially more organized ones, rely on using cards in a certain order. Possibility Storm ruins that. But this deck capitalizes on it. Casting Ignoble Hierarch and having it exile via Possibility Storm into casting Apex Devastator is a back breaker, and with Shenanigans cards like Nalfeshnee and Keeper of Secrets on the battlefield, the value only goes up.

Removal

This is not a very interactive deck. The removal is mostly in the form of board wipes to get maximum value when you do play them, but it's really aimed at meeting priorty #2: big mana. Curtains' Call and Divergent Transformations are great for their low effective cost (thanks, Undaunted!) and instant speed - you can cast them on opponent turns to get more Vial Smasher the Fierce value, and they're over 6 mana to get card draw if using mana from Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood. Call Forth the Tempest is easily the top card of the category, however, as the only one guaranteed to cascade into more cards.

"Card Advantage"

Why the scare quotes? Because you'll notice that none of these are Necropotence. It's not conventional card advantage; it's Priority Numero Uno advantage. Take Apex Devastator, for example. He's you're big 10/10 boy, wonderful. He costs 10 mana, outstanding. And then he cascades... then he cascades again... and again... and again. He's the poster child for why this section is the bread and butter of the deck: it gets you access to as much of the deck as possible, sometimes getting value from those cards just by finding them. Soulfire Eruption can reliably get you access to 10 or more cards to cast from exile. Fevered Suspicions gets access to 6 cards across two turns to cast for free- and it rebounds to cast its big 8 mana self again for free from exile on your following turn! Keen Duelist, Plargg and Nassari, Protection Racket, Twilight Prophet, and more all give tons of repeating triggers to get access to more cards to cast along with the utility of damaging opponents. A player who unwittingly denies your Combustible Gearhulk or Palantir of Orthanc card draw request can find themselves in a world of hurt if even your average mana value cards get milled. Keep in mind that you already have reliable card draw in your commander Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood. That will maintain you just fine until you start to get some of these real "Card Advantage" players going.

"Mana Ramp"

Again with the scare quotes? Yes, because these aren't necessarily meant to generate mana. They're meant to skip that step and go straight to casting, no mana required. Tlincalli Hunter and Hoarding Broodlord (and yes, it does tutor you one card to cast, but I still count it more for convoke effect) will let you cast a lot of spells from exile for free. The only thing limiting the cards to this section and not "Card Advantage" is that they're only supplying the "cast for free" side and not including Cascade or other effects with it. There is also "traditional" mana ramp, but it's cards that are ordinarily terrible versions of it: why on earth with you Reshape the Earth when you're not playing landfall? Because you're playing lots of cards like Timesifter and Baneful Omen and you're even more avoidant than normal at top decking lands, that's why. The actual "traditional" mana ramp is all 1 mana value (Ignoble Hierarch, Birds of Paradise) so that you can drop a commander on turn 2.

Lands

This section almost deserves scare quotes because of the dual faced lands like Akoum Warrior   and Tangles Florahedron. They're counted among the lands to keep track of what the functional number of lands is in the deck for the sake of making sure there are enough to reliably have enough mana in your starting hand. The other lands are chosen pretty carefully to not end up in dead fetch situations. Duals are paired as the fetch (Verdant Catacombs) and the corresponding dual with basic types (Overgrown Tombs, or they're guaranteed to come out untapped on early turns (Spire Guarden). The Hideaway lands (Mosswort Bridge give you more cast from exile options. Finally, there are enough basics to generally make sure your Avatar of Growth cards don't miss for you, and there's a slight emphasis on green to improve playability of the early ramp cards like Birds of Paradise.

Game Plan

Mulligans

A big benefit of the "every card a banger" philosophy is that you don't have to worry about your starting hand too much. If you have access to all three colors of mana in your starting hand, you're almost guaranteed to be alright. I would mulligan if I have no green lands or only 2 lands and no ramp. Ideally you will have lands providing all 3 colors and a Birds of Paradise or similar. Almost nothing beyond that matters, but some of the Shenanigans or cheaper "Card Advantage" cards are extra gravy.

Early Game: Turns 1-3

If you have the ramp, you'll get out one commander on turn 2 and the other on turn 3. I typically put out Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood first for two reasons. The first is the mana ramp, and the second is that it's less scary to the table than getting Vial Smasher the Fierce out too early. You don't want to make yourself an archenemy target until it's too late. Putting out Vial Smasher on turn 2 is only going to get you an extra 3 damage when you cast Gilanra on turn 3, and that's not going to make a difference in a couple of turns, but it might be enough to get a focus on you. Worst case, you typically get them both out by turn 4, and it's reasonable to expect that you'll catch up on the ramp and get back on track in the mid game.

Mid Game: Turns 4-6

This is where you want your Shenanigans cards to show up. While no single one is critical, getting some of them will be instrumental for the late game triggers to win. Remember to tap Gilanra for mana for anything costing over 6 to get that card draw, and along with Shenanigans cards, prioritize putting out any cards that give you access to more cards (Keen Duelist), anything that casts for free (Wondrous Crucible), and anything that starts thinning the lands (Verdant Mastery or low mana value cards (Chimil, the Inner Sun out of your library. When you search for lands, prioritize other fetches first, and pay attention to what they can fetch- don't waste Bloodstained Mire on a basic swamp when you could get Blood Crypt or Ziatora's Proving Ground.

Late Game: Turns 7-10

The late game will snowball very hard, very suddenly. It's not a combo deck in the traditional sense, but it does rely on the synergy of cards already mentioned. The strengths are that the "combo pieces" are extremely interchangeable, with many cards pairing well with many others, so non-board wipe removal is hard for opponents to use to pin down the key pieces. Even the commanders, while an important part, aren't the only part. And most of the effects are dependent on you casting spells (see Possibility Storm), but aren't dependent on them resolving, so it's hard for opponents to slow down outside of stax decks that only let you cast spells from your hand to begin with.

While you might get an extra card or two in the mid game from one or two cards like Wild-Magic Sorcerer, by around turn 7 you're probably going to have cascaded into something like Nalfeshnee that's going to synergize with these effects and increase their value literally exponentially. This means that turns 8 and 9 are probably going to have tons of triggers, tons of cards in exile that you can cast, and tons of cascades, duplications, and possibility storms. The library can routinely get down to under 50 cards on turn 8, and by turn 10 there's a real possibility of emptying your library completely. Fortunately very few of your cards actually draw you a new card, and you're almost certainly going to have won by the end of the turn that you deck yourself.

On that note, the win condition: noncombat damage. Whether it's from Vial Smasher the Fierce, Passionate Archaeologist, Keeper of Secrets, or the Treacherous Terrain you cast and copied after Avatar of Growth gave everyone the impression they were keeping up with you, things are going to be dealing damage left and right. It's death by a thousand ~~cuts~~ massive wounds. And if those don't deal quite enough noncombat damage, you've probably accidentally ended up with Ghalta, Primal Hunger with his big power and trample or Nalfeshnee with flying on the battlefield, so swinging in for the combat damage coup de grâce, while unlikely to be needed, is definitely an option. Don't forget that you may have some odd bonuses, like Scion of Draco granting lifelink to Vial Smasher, or Tavern Brawler occasionally giving both commanders huge power boosts. Important note: there is a lot to keep track of in these last few turns. Be sure to keep track of what spells are cast vs only copied (relevant to Keeper of Secrets, for example), where things are on the stack with cascade triggers and copied spells, and triggers in general, between all of the cards that give you extra exiled card options on upkeep, revealing at the end of the turn, revealing and casting automatically in your upkeep, etc.

What this deck is not: card choices, exclusions, themes, and the answers to some "why not this" questions

Why not blue?

Blue partners are popular for Vial Smasher the Fierce, and you don't need to have Omniscience to understand why. Blue is very good at card draw, very good at "cast without paying its mana cost," and surprisingly good at including some high mana value cards. However, the blue commanders are not, in my opinion, as reliable (or as fun, which to me is the most important thing in the end) as Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood. Gilanra guarantees you early ramp, guarantees card draw, and further rewards high mana value cards. It's harder to play blue without playing low cost spells, and I wanted to avoid those as much as possible. Green also gets you more of the turn 1 ramp into turn 2 commanders, such as Birds of Paradise. Blue also tends to be more situational than green, which is discussed more below. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, without green you can't play Apex Devastator, and that is simply unacceptable.

Wincons and the philosophy of every card a banger

Give an entrenched magic player unlimited mana and see what they do. Most of the time you're probably going to get a card or a combo that wins outright if you pump enough mana into it. It's common to hear "you shouldn't be casting a spell for 8 mana unless it's going to win you the game." Why aren't those cards and combos in here? It's because of my philosophy for the deck: every card has to contribute every time it's played. That means no cards that don't work if they're not cast in the right order or at the right time. X in the mana cost is great for big mana, but it's not great when Wild Evocation makes you cast it for X=0. While I could have just not had Wild Evocation, the direction I chose for the deck was to use those cards, and there are a lot of them, and the price I paid for that is simply not using cards X in the mana cost. Furthermore, the free-cast and non-X cast means I'm more likely to be able to cast cards on opponent's turns in addition to my own, maximizing the value of once-per-turn effects.

By prioritizing reasonably powerful and universally applicable effects and ruling out wincon-level but situationally irrelevant effects, I can get very real, very wild value out of cards like Possibility Storm and Omen Machine. I simply do not care what card they bring up, because every single card it going to be great. And in the end, the way the deck works out would probably win on the same turn as some of those situationally game-winning cards without the liability of those cards ever fizzling. The brakes are off, the value train is rolling, and nothing is stopping it. This also makes the deck more variable: sometimes you get doubles of Apex Devastator and win through that. Sometimes you wipe the board more than once and win through multiple turns of big spells. Sometimes you cast Treacherous Terrain vs a landfall deck. Sometimes you get 30 cards to choose from and wipe the board and smack opponents' faces because you cast an especially big Soulfire Eruption, maybe even targeting some of your own creatures to get max value. Sometimes Etali steals your opponent's eldrazi. Sometimes everyone at the table gets a laugh because you played Combustible Gearhulk on turn 4, a player called it, and you mill cards with 42 total mana value and took them right out of the game (all of the "your call" cards like this, Palantir of Orthanc are really fun for the table in addition to being really functional in this setup). There are so many ways for it to go, and it's a blast knowing that every card you turn over could do something crazy and you don't need to look for the same wincon every game.

The answer to most of the rest of the "why not this" questions

While the priorities in the Overview are helpful, these are the technical aspects that cards really need to have to be playable here:

• Spells must be cast. Not copied. Not put straight onto the battlefield. Not Enters the Battlefield-dependent. Spells must be cast and have on-cast effects.
• The first spell you cast each turn is usually the most important. This is the only caveat to not caring about the order of casting spells.
• It's really important for cards to be over 6 mana value.
• It's super important that cards under 6 mana value are not in your library.
• It's potentially game-endingly important for nothing with zero mana value to be in your library.

Hot: Chimil, the Inner Sun costs 6 mana. Check. It allows you to cast spells for free. Check (double check for casting from exile!). It thins your deck out of cards less than 6 mana. Check. It casts those 5 or less mana value cards at the end of your turn, allowing you to make sure you cast your big spell for Vial Smasher the Fierce before it goes off. Check. This card does absolutely everything I want a card to do in this deck. It's beautiful.

Not: Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant is big and flashy and cheats things out. Seems great, right? But he just puts your creatures on the battlefield. Apex Devastator doesn't get you any value if it's just put on the battlefield, Passionate Archaeologist doesn't see anything from those creatures that were cheated out, and Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant itself doesn't provide its value if Possibility Storm is out because Ghalta itself has an Enters the Battlefield effect and not an on-cast effect.

Some other notes:

• 1 mana value mana ramp is debatably better than zero mana value mana ramp (like Mana Crypt), because it will still beat out opponent lands in Timesifter competitions, and zero mana value mana ramp isn't very likely to get a commander out earlier than turn 2 anyway.
• There are a lot more dual faced lands, but most of them don't do anything valuable for this deck on the front face. I limited it to the ones that have a valuable front face, because I still want room for fetch lands and enough basics for tutoring.
• Cards that cast other cards increase exponentially in value as you add more of them. While I maintain that every card is a banger, they really can be pretty low on the banger totem pole if they contribute to casting all of them. "Card Advantage" really is the most important section of the deck for this reason.
• Some seemingly roughly equivalent cards are deliberately excluded because there's some subtle feature that makes them not work well with everything else. Some examples: Nexus of Becoming seemed good when I first saw it, because it can help get out the mid-game effects like Nalfeshnee, but the fact that it doesn't cast anything or get you access to anything new really kill it. Bonehoard Dracosaur isn't bad, but the fact that it's 2 more mana than Tavern Brawler makes it awkward to get out (2 and 3 mana value versions of similar effects can come out on turn 3 or 4 depending on ramp), but it being under 6 mana means it doesn't even get the card draw from Gilanra. So 4 and 5 mana value cards are rough just from the awkwardness of that mana range. Dragon Cultist seems great with 2 commanders and frequently dealing 5+ damage per turn, but the tokens generated don't usually provide much value (combat damage is not often a big part of the win), and it has that awkward 5 mana value on top of it.
• At one time I was much more focused on instants to cast and get some value on each turn. I've moved away from that, as cards end up coming out so much in the late game snowball and getting their value away from Vial Smasher, but I still kept Vedalken Orrery for the times when you have multiple once-per-turn effects, and it does still generate some good value then.
• The "themes" I've considered and abandoned include biggest possible spells, {X}-cost spells, more cascade, no lands, eldrazi, hydras, dragons, other sources of direct damage, ETB effects, card draw as a wincon, landfall, the list goes on. In the end, you need ramp and card advantage no matter what you're doing with this, and the "theme" I went with is just more "ramp" and more "card advantage" until that's nearly every card.

Tips and final thoughts

Tips, tricks, and things to keep in mind:

• Don't stress out about choices too much. Every card is good, genuinely. You're going to be taking up enough time resolving your triggers later on to suffer from analysis paralysis, and besides, you'll probably end up casting things without much volition anyway once your Omen Machines and your Wild Evocations are out there.
• Because of all the triggers happening at different times, I've found it helpful to organize my play area based on trigger timing. Put all of your permanents with upkeep triggers together, all of your permanents with on-cast triggers together, all the cards that give you options together (for example, Hoarding Broodlord giving your spells convoke is a valuable one that's easy to forget), etc. This might sound basic, but there end up being a lot of these triggers on your last couple of turns, so don't give it a try. I'm not joking when I say you might be running out of library by turn 10.
• Copy effects do exist in this deck. Nalfeshnee is one. Be careful not to say that Keeper of Secrets gets two triggers when you cast one spell from exile and Nalfeshnee creates a copy of the spell. Pay close attention to the source of the spell as well (cast from hand or from exile, for example).
• Remember that you determine the order of your triggered abilities. It may not matter for the effect itself, but it might matter psychologically for the choices your opponents make. For example, I would choose to resolve Protection Racket before Keen Duelist during my upkeep, because if my opponents know that I drew a good card with Keen Duelist, they might be more willing to let me draw the cards with Protection Racket as well, thinking I can't play all of them anyway. But if Protection Racket resolves first, they might choose to take the life hit rather than give me the good card, and then one of them will have to take another big hit, unavoidable this time, when Keen Duelist's trigger resolves.
• Don't underestimate the value of thinning your deck of lands. You might have 10 lands out already and think Reshape the Earth or Verdant Mastery are overkill when you have damage dealing spells in hand, but those cards will let you ramp even more (obviously), but more importantly they'll ensure that you're top decking the best possible cards for all of your Baneful Omen and Keen Duelist effects, of which there are many. Clean that library out. Also, pay close attention when you search for lands whether or not you can search for any lands or only basic lands, as well as whether they enter tapped or not. Searching for non-basic lands will maximize your deck thinning efforts.
• Embrace the chaos! Timesifter is a scary card to put down. So is Possibility Storm. But remember: this deck is built for those cards. Even if you haven't filtered all the lands out of your deck with Reshape the Earth yet, you're in a much better Timesifter position than your opponents. And while it might feel like a risk to cast an 8 mana spell with Possibility Storm out, at the risk of being to repetitive, every card is a banger. You're probably going to get another high mana value card anyway. But even if you don't, a terastadon is arguably less impactful than a Keen Duelist, so if Possibility Storm forced me into that trade, I look at it like I got a better card effect in Keen Duelist while still getting the advantages of 8 damage from Terastadon's casting for Vial Smasher, card draw with Gilanra, and any bonuses I get from casting Keen Duelist from exile. I'm happy. And I get all that while actually messing up opponents who would probably rather have control over the cards they play. You can embrace the lack of control. Take that into the world with you.
• This deck won't win on turn 4, and it doesn't have reliable interaction to stop someone who's trying to win on turn 4. It's just not cEDH. That said, anyone trying to stop you is going to have a hard time of it themselves. If they aren't actively trying to take you out by turn 6 you're going to start popping off so hard and so suddenly that it'll be hard for them to take you out of the game in time. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is not unusual on turn 8 or 9 to cast upwards of 20 spells and deal over 100 damage in a single turn.
• It's also not the end of the world if your opponents do focus on you. Vial Smasher and Gilanra are important, but they aren't strictly necessary for the deck to work. There are other sources of damage, ramp, and card advantage in the deck- it's almost all that's in the deck, after all. Vial Smasher and Gilanra are just the guaranteed, starting hand access to those things. So again, even if the table focuses them down, it may not stop you because they'll likely focus on each other at that point, and you only need that critical mass turn or two to go out of control.

I had a lot of fun making and playtesting this deck, and it's become one of my all time favorites. I love finding playing cards that have severe enough drawbacks to preclude their use in normal situations, and this deck let me get value from a lot of those cards. It still surprises me how it consistently pops off and somehow feels different each time. It's a lot of fun. I dislike solitaire style in general; I try to include lots of interaction in my decks, and I try to build decks with fun mechanics like goad and monarch that encourage and incentivize interaction and combat, but this one really scratches that itch to pop off so thoroughly and in such a specific, fun way that I can't help but love it.

Date added	1 year
Last updated	1 week
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 54 - 0 Rares 9 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	6.18
Tokens	City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Elephant 3/3 G, Treasure