FELDON NEEDS SOME LOVE (Feldon EDH Primer)
Commander / EDH Discard Mono-Red Primer Reanimator Stompy Tokens
Creature (26)
- 1x Ancient Stone Idol
- 1x Anger
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1x
Balefire Dragon
- 1x Balor
- 1x Blast-Furnace Hellkite
- 1x Chancellor of the Forge
- 1x Cityscape Leveler
- 1x Combustible Gearhulk
- 1x Deal Broker
- 1x Duplicant
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1x
Goblin Engineer
- 1x Hellkite Tyrant
- 1x Imperial Recruiter
- 1x Inferno Titan
- 1x Magus of the Wheel
- 1x Merchant of the Vale
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1x
Meteor Golem
- 1x Mirror-Style Master
- 1x Molten Primordial
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1x
Pathrazer of Ulamog
- 1x Ryusei, the Falling Star
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1x
Terror of the Peaks
- 1x Trumpeting Carnosaur
- 1x Utvara Hellkite
- 1x Wurmcoil Engine
- 1x Zealous Conscripts
Planeswalker (2)
Artifact (19)
- 1x Arcane Signet
- 1x Battlemage's Bracers
- 1x Brass's Tunnel-Grinder Flip
- 1x Caged Sun
- 1x Cursed Mirror
- 1x Extraplanar Lens
- 1x Gauntlet of Power
- 1x Gilded Lotus
- 1x Illusionist's Bracers
- 1x Lightning Greaves
- 1x Magewright's Stone
- 1x Matzalantli, the Great Door Flip
- 1x Patriar's Seal
- 1x Rings of Brighthearth
- 1x Sol Ring
- 1x Sundial of the Infinite
- 1x Swiftfoot Boots
- 1x The Celestus
- 1x Thousand-Year Elixir
Enchantment (6)
Commander (1)
Land (37)
- 1x Blast Zone
- 1x Flamekin Village
- 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
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1x
Hanweir Battlements
Meld
- 1x Myriad Landscape
- 31x Snow-Covered Mountain
- 1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Sorcery (6)
Instant (3)
Maybeboard
Enchantment (1)
Artifact (1)
Feldon of the Third Path is a great card for multiple reasons. First of all, he smashed people with giant red and artifact creatures before it was cool (I'm looking at you Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded). Well, at least Feldon can reanimate eldrazi, too. Another great thing about him is the quality of his backstory and how the card reflects that.
Feldon of the Third Path and Loran of the Third Path lived happily maried in the days of Urza and Mishra. They didn't take part in the factions of the war, choosing the "Third Path." After the Brothers' War ended with the Silex explosion (fun fact, Loran delivered the Silex to Urza), the land turned cold. The harsh weather eventually combined with other factors in taking Loran's life.
Feldon could not accept her death. He could vividly remember her smile and her demeanor. He tried to recreate her with an automaton. He tried green magic, blue magic, and black magic. Throughout all of his endeavors, something was never right. It was never her, no matter what or how hard he tried. But throughout all of this grieving process, he was finally able to use white magic to meet her just long enough to say goodbye.
The card Feldon of the Third Path creatively depicts a grieving soul. He's shown gazing on that simple, knowing smile his wife had that he has recreated. He tries his best, but is always dissatisfied with the product, dismantling it and starting anew. Each turn, the tokens he makes are sacrificed. Underneath it all is the simple desire, "she will come back to me." Feldon needs some love!
For you Vorthos players out there that want to read his whole story, here it is: Loran's Smile
Here's the battleplan:
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Get creatures in your graveyard.
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Reuse powerful creatures in your graveyard via Feldon of the Third Path
Before going into any worthwhile discussion about how to use the deck, let's start with its strengths and weaknesses.
So how can you know if you want to play this kind of deck? Simply put, you like the strengths more than you dislike the weaknesses. If you like an explosive, commander-dependent, reactive play style, then this will work well for you! If you dislike being crippled by enchantments that you usually can't remove, play something else. Although those enchantments aren't very common in my meta.
This deck has 3 major weaknesses. 1. Graveyard hate. 2. ETB hate or creatures enter tapped. 3. Commander removal. Chaos Warp can deal with most of them.
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Graveyard hate. To deal with this, it's rather simple. Don't play into it. Effects like Bojuka Bog can hurt, but aren't devastating unless you've already pitched your hand full of nasty creatures into your graveyard already. Be conservative. Effects like Scavenging Ooze are really nasty to go against. They can respond to any reanimation attempt by exiling the target. It's similar to a Rest in Peace in effect. The only way against it is to play from your hand.
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ETB hate or creatures entering tapped. I am referring to Torpor Orb and Authority of the Consuls effects. They don't shut your deck down, but they do make things more difficult. If you can't figure out some way to get rid of the effect, than you only have 1 choice. Kill the player. Creatures with attack triggers, like Utvara Hellkite, or just plain big creatures, like Ancient Stone Idol, are great for killing people. But what do you do if those creatures enter tapped and can't attack? Simple question, simple answer. Reanimate your creatures during the end step prior to your turn. They won't be sacrificed until the beginning of the next end step, which is yours. You'll untap with an army read to attack.
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Commander hate. You can give your commander either hexproof or haste. There's not much else you can do.
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I didn't mention this, but being mono-red is a restriction. Our enchantment removal is almost nonexistent. That does cause problems at times.
Enough with the weaknesses. Let's talk about strengths!
Feldon is certainly more of a rattlesnake commander than most. He's not well known, so he flies under the radar. But he can be explosive when he wants to be. He can play politics when he wants to. Attacking is easy, fun, and occurs often. After all, you don't care if the creatures die. Feldon is a good balance of being reactive and aggressive.
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Strength #1 (and a great reason to play this deck): you attack people with 3 Utvara Hellkite's out of nowhere and swing the game in your favor. Seriously, that happens. If you set it up right, you can even attack with more than that. Because Feldon doesn't actually reanimate, but copies cards in your graveyard, this allows him to make multiple copies of the same creature, circumventing the 1-of rule commander is known for. Many cards should not exist in multiple, such as eldrazi, but they do here.
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Strength #2: control in red! Not literally. Feldon is a toolbox deck. He can be made to play reactively. His ability is instant speed, and you can be aggressive at the same time. You can bide your time to look for something worth reacting to, and if nothing comes up, you can reanimate a fatty during the end step before your turn and attack with it on your turn. If you wait like this, you'll still have Feldon untapped to respond for another round of turns. There's lots of ways to respond and interact. You can go with spot removal with Bogardan Hellkite or Meteor Golem (this guy can hit enchantments, too), boardwipe with Balefire Dragon, wipe out artifacts with Hellkite Tyrant, redirecting or copying spells with Dualcaster Mage or Emissary of Grudges, land destruction with Keldon Firebombers, politics with Humble Defector, cause shenanigans with Molten Primordial (like removing a voltron commander from combat), and much more. It's like legos. You can make your own deck with whatever pieces you want.
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Strength #3: boardwipes. This deck loves them. The deck only needs Feldon out to rebuild after a boardwipe. Then you can pull ahead of everyone else who are still suffering setbacks from the boardwipe. And you can keep them down depending on what you can reanimate.
Here's some of the steps to use Feldon effectively. As an FYI, the order of importance for themes in this deck are Discard > Reanimate > Reuse. If you're going to Gamble for something, your best bet is a solid discard outlet. If you're good there, the next best thing is Goblin Engineer.
Discard your creatures using looting effects. Trust me, I put quite a number of them in the deck. 10-15 is a good amount.
Combustible Gearhulk (he's close)
Sneak Attack (also close)
Goblin Engineer gets a special mention here for being awesome. He is one of our few ways to recover from artifact hate. He can tutor low end synergy cards like Illusionist's Bracers and Sundial of the Infinite, ramp like Extraplanar Lens, or beaters like Combustible Gearhulk (can't reanimate him, though). And the best part? If he's reanimated by Feldon he can sacrifice himself, since he's an artifact due to Feldon's artifact clause.
Use Feldon's ability to put artifact tokens that are a copy of a creature in your graveyard that have haste. Then, and this is important, you sacrifice it at the end of the turn. Now keep in mind that Feldon's ability costs . Reusing that ability by untapping him requires more mana for each untap. This can be accomplished through mana ramp cards.
IMPORTANT LOOPHOLE: Feldon's tokens are sacrificed "at the beginning of the NEXT end step." So, if you make a token(s) during the end step of the turn right before yours, those creatures will survive until the beginning of the next end step, which is yours. You can temporarily double up Feldon's ability for just that one turn. This trick can also be used to get around cards like Authority of the Consuls.
Imperial Recruiter can tutor up about a dozen different creatures. Including the most important one, who is also a tutoring creature, Goblin Engineer. With those two, you can tutor a lot of the creature in the deck.
Bogardan Hellkite, Inferno Titan, and Spawn of Thraxes are great damage dealers for this deck. Their purpose is generally to kill as many creatures as possible. Add Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, too, because he does tons of damage. I haven't kept any of these creatures in the deck, but they are certainly good budget options.
However, the absolute BEST card in my deck that does damage to creatures would have to be awarded to Balefire Dragon
. He's a one-sided boardwipe. Ryusei, the Falling Star is a semi-universal boardwipe that can also be very handy. You can make multiple copies if you need more damage (make more of them before the damage resolves). It's good to have two reanimateable boardwipes in the deck anyway for consistency.
Duplicant and Meteor Golem are special in that they can get rid of cards that are normally untouchable. Indestructible creatures, and the pesky enchantments. Cityscape Leveler gets a special nod for also being a threat that can do decent damage. And since most people are confused by powerstone tokens anyway, you won't even really be giving them an advantage since they won't use it.
Special shoutout to Hellkite Tyrant. What's the only thing better than resource denial? Stealing.
Pathrazer of Ulamog kind of counts as removal? While not particularly good at getting rid of specific cards, it does apply huge pressure to a single opponent by reducing their boardstate so they aren't so threatening anymore.
Value creatures do 1 of 3 things: get cards, make tokens or remove things
Worldgorger Dragon can both save you from boardwipes and also extremely accelerate your gameplan if you have a card like Thousand-Year Elixir that gives haste. It basically lets you untap your whole board and use it again. WARNING: if he gets killed while his ETB effect is on the stack, his second ability will resolve first, returning nothing because nothing has been exiled yet, then your entire battlefield will be exiled with no way to get it back.
Get Cards: Skullclamp, Goblin Engineer, Mind Stone, Combustible Gearhulk, Endless Atlas, Trumpeting Carnosaur, and Arch of Orazca. Ugin, the Ineffable also draws cards in a way. Hellkite Tyrant kind of gets you card advantage, too. Special shoutout to Combustible Gearhulk who hit my opponent for 21 damage once because he wouldn't let me draw. Seasoned Pyromancer can net you cards if you have less than 2 in hand.
Keep Tokens: Sundial of the Infinite (it'll be explained later), Chancellor of the Forge, Utvara Hellkite, Wurmcoil Engine, and Ancient Stone Idol. I guess Seasoned Pyromancer counts, too.
Removal: All damage dealers (especially Balefire Dragon), Hellkite Tyrant, Duplicant, Meteor Golem, Pathrazer of Ulamog, and Blast Zone (which can hit enchantments!). Balor is decent removal, too.
Remember, if you lack sufficient killing power, you can double up on Feldon's ability for one turn by making tokens during the end step of the turn prior to yours and again during your own turn. That often gives you the power for an alpha strike.
Molten Primordial, Ancient Stone Idol, Drakuseth, Maw of Flames (11 damage swing!), Pathrazer of Ulamog, and It That Betrays are generally the creatures that can seal the game on their own. Molten Primordial turns into Insurrection, while the 2 eldrazi can utterly devastate players. It That Betrays doubles as a value engine. Balor probably could kill an opponent as well if they have enough cards in hand.
Blast-Furnace Hellkite needs a bit of an explanation. First off, he gives any creature attacking an opponent double strike. This can double the power of your own creatures, so he's a really good support that you would rather cast instead of reanimate from the grave. Second, he gives your opponents double strike as well. If you cast him with Artifact offering, you can sacrifice one of Feldon's tokens to cast it for super cheap. Plus, when you cast with Artifact offering, you may cast it AS THOUGH IT HARD FLASH. Talk about a combat trick.
This card gets an honorable mention: Utvara Hellkite. Not only does he make tokens, he can easily throw the game in your favor. Very quickly. I once played a game where because of this card I did an average of 503 damage to each of my 4 opponents. That's cooler than just saying you went infinite, btw. Terror of the Peaks and Chancellor of the Forge also get exponentially better the more copies of them you can make, but they're harder to pull off than Utvara Hellkite due to them being dependent on other creatures instead of themselves.
Did you honestly think that I would only want to use Feldon's ability once in a turn? Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. There are so many cards that can pull out the most amount of creatures from Feldon. Here they are.
Those last five are going to need a little explaining. First: an introduction. Feldon's tokens must be sacrificed at "the beginning of the next end step." Notice how it only says the next end step. It'll trigger just once, so if you end the turn on top of the stack with Sundial of the Infinite, guess what happens? The turn will be ended, and when that happens everything on the stack is exiled. Including triggered abilities. Now my card will never be sacrificed because it already triggered (and failed).
Mirror-Style Master took me a while to understand its value. And you'll understand, too. First off, back-up gives a creature a +1/+1 counter. If that counter is given to a DIFFERENT creature, that creature gains all of the abilities of Mirror-Style Master (except for the backup ability). Also, a creature with a counter on it is considered modified. Now let's put it all together. I have Mirror-Style Master and let's say Chancellor of the Forge in my graveyard. I have no way to copy Feldon's ability (that hardly ever happens, but we're assuming a worst case scenario here). During the previous end step to my turn, I reanimate Chancellor. During my turn, I reanimate Mirror-Man and give Chancellor a counter. Chancellor gains Mirror-Boy's ability. When I attack, I have 2 triggers to copy all attacking modified creatures I control, meaning I make 2 more Chancellors. If I had more Mirror-Guys in play, I will make even more copies. Mirror-Master lets me multiply my modified creatures by 2X for every Mirror-Stylus I've played that turn AS LONG AS HE GIVES HIS COUNTER TO ANYBODY BUT HIMSELF. Long explanation? Trust me, it'll be worth it when you kill someone.
(NOTE: I've don't run this card anymore since it's not THAT great) Mirage Mirror can copy a Feldon token or anything else you want to at the time. As a bonus, it can turn into a land if someone tries to destroy it. It should be noted that mirage mirror's ability can be activated multiple times before it transforms into something else (at which point it loses the ability to transform until it reverts at end of turn). For example, I have Caged Sun and Fiery Emancipation out. I use the mirrors ability twice, having it first become a copy of caged sun, then Fiery Emancipation. While it's the caged sun, I float a lot of extra mana, then I let the other ability on the stack resolve so it becomes Fiery Emancipation. Now I have extra mana to play lots of creatures with 2 Fiery Emancipation out. Now that's just overkill.
Now, the dragon. Worldgorger Dragon exiles my battlefield and, when he dies, brings it all back untapped. He basically lets me use Feldon's abilities again as long as I have something like Thousand-Year Elixir that gives him haste at any time (i.e. not Lightning Greaves because they only equip at sorcery speed).
And the goblin. He's better at recycling than first glance would tell you. If he's in your graveyard, you can tutor up thousand-year elixer, sac himself to get it out (remember, he's an artifact creature at the moment), untap Feldon and find something else. All at instant speed!
You don't need to run all of these cards, and I don't run all of them either. The weakest ones out of these cards are Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Mirage Mirror, and Puppet Strings. So if you want to optimize the list, run the rest. The absolute best, top priority cards are illusionist bracers, Battlemage's Bracers, Sundial of the Infinite, and Thousand-Year Elixir because they either do one thing really well or they do several things for you.
Now. Reusing Feldon's ability takes A LOT of mana. Like, metric tons of it. For each activation you need , plus whatever amount of mana you're using to untap him. Just remember, only around 1/3 of it needs to be so colorless ramp works great. Here's my ramp cards.
Gauntlet of Might (way too expensive, though)
Fires of Invention is special. It frees up your mana to use Feldon while also not impacting your game much. More spells, and it doesn't even affect when you can use Feldon's ability. We don't run instants, anyway. It's the best ramp card in the deck.
After people realize Feldon is a threat, they will kill him. Since he's a pretty cheap commander, and there's a lot of ramp in the deck, you can cast him, give him haste, and use his ability immediately. People won't see it coming and that can put you at an advantage. Here are the cards that give haste in the deck.
That's how the deck runs, but there are lots of other factors involved in playing this deck, like looking innocent when you're really not. You'll either have to face it or use it to see how it really should run.
Here’s a pro tip combining all my Feldon experience. Sometimes, you hard cast a dangerous creature and you want it to stick around instead of dying to spot removal, like Terror of the Peaks. If someone wants to kill it, remind them that, if it’s dead, you can copy it multiple times over and make the situation worse than when I only could have one of it around. The obvious loophole to this threat is that you only have a limited number of reanimations you can do a turn, so you have to use up your resources reanimating Terror of the Peaks instead of something else. BUT, they don’t know that. Rather than looking for loopholes in your deceit, they’ll focus on how dangerous that possible truth is. I’ve saved powerful creatures countless times with this threat, or, other times, staying completely silent when I do want them dead to turn them into a destructive copy machine.
I know there are a lot of players out there who are even more budget than me. Trust me, that is somewhat impressive. Okay, maybe not, but I know there are a lot of people who spend gold bars on this game. Here are the expensive cards (more than $5) and what you can possibly replace for them.
Balefire Dragon-->Steel Hellkite, Breaker of Armies, or Drakuseth, Maw of Flames
It That Betrays and Pathrazer of Ulamog-->Artisan of Kozilek, Bane of Bala Ged, or Ulamog's Crusher
Reforge the Soul and Wheel of Misfortune-->Sandstone Oracle, Avaricious Dragon, Dream Pillager, Bedlam Reveler, Ruin Grinder, or Chandra, Flamecaller
Lightning Greaves-->Mask of Avacyn or Swiftfoot Boots. We don't talk about Champion's Helm in budget.
Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, Sol Ring, Everflowing Chalice, Caged Sun, gaunlet of power, Extraplanar Lens, Fires of Invention, Dockside Extortionist, Jeska's Will-->Hedron Archive, Dreamstone Hedron, or any other mana rock you have.
Myriad Landscape, Sea Gate Wreckage, Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Homeward Path, any other land--> Mountain
Endless Atlas, Combustible Gearhulk, Skullclamp-->Mazemind Tome, Dire Fleet Daredevil (pseudo card advantage), Humble Defector
Fiery Emancipation-->Warstorm Surge
Worldgorger Dragon-->Scrap Mastery Worldgorger mostly serves as boardwipe protection. Hence the swap.
Purphoros, God of the Forge-->Vicious Shadows
All is Dust, Blasphemous Act-->Incite Rebellion, Hour of Devastation
Imperial Recruiter-->Goblin Recruiter/Goblin Matron (because I almost always tutor up Goblin Engineer), and also Sarkhan's Triumph (if you use lots of dragons).
Goblin Engineer-->Hoarding Dragon
Hellkite Tyrant-->Tuktuk Scrapper or Ingot Chewer. If you can't have it, kill it.
Ancient Stone Idol-->Phyrexian Triniform
Sneak Attack-->ilharg the raze-board Not exactly a budget option but you don't Sneak Attack effects aren't the strongest in this deck anyway since the commander can work without it.
Thousand-Year Elixir, Illusionist's Bracers, Magewright's Stone, Sundial of the Infinite-->I would not suggest skimping on any of these. They are too good. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Mirage Mirror are in here mostly because they can get me even more Feldon creatures (although Mirage Mirror does do a lot more than just that). Budget option: Puppet Strings.
Now for even more budget card options. You can replace many of the cards less than $5 with these options as well. In terms of good budget cards other than the ones listed above, Heartless Hidetsugu, Fanatic of Mogis, Mask of Memory, Sin Prodder, Emissary of Grudges, Dualcaster Mage, Dragon Mage, Sunbird's Invocation, Fireflux Squad, Clone Shell, Scuttling Doom Engine, Sandstone Oracle, Etali, Primal Storm, and especially Shivan Harvest or Tyrant of Discord (if you feel like being mean), are good budget adds. Also, cards in my maybeboard are cards I've considered adding into my maindeck, or want to add as soon as I get the card. If you have any of those cards, put them in your own Feldon deck.
Here's my take on a budget Feldon list. Each card is below $5, with 1 key exception for Illusionist's Bracers.
Feldon Needs Some Love! On a Budget!
Commander / EDH
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Revision 7 See all
(3 months ago)
| -1 | Arch of Orazca | maybe |
| -1 | Blast Zone | maybe |
| -1 | Deflecting Swat | maybe |
| -1 | Fable of the Mirror-Breaker Flip | maybe |
| -1 | Gamble | maybe |
| -1 | Gauntlet of Power | maybe |
| -1 | Sensei's Divining Top | maybe |
| Top Ranked |
|
| Date added | 9 years |
| Last updated | 3 months |
| Legality | This deck is Commander / EDH legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 14 - 0 Mythic Rares 41 - 0 Rares 9 - 0 Uncommons 5 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 100 |
| Avg. CMC | 4.43 |
| Tokens | Construct 6/12 C, Copy Clone, Dragon 6/6 R, Emblem Daretti, Scrap Savant, Goblin 1/1 R, Goblin Shaman, Powerstone, Spirit 2/2 C, Treasure, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink |
| Folders | EDH, cards for deck, SAC, Decks I Like, Inspiration, feldon, like, Good stuff., EDH, Nice Decks |
| Votes | |
| Ignored suggestions | |
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