I Can't Believe It's Not Pod

Commander / EDH d3sden0va

SCORE: 56 | 57 COMMENTS | 20362 VIEWS | IN 37 FOLDERS


Making Haste —Feb. 5, 2019

I wasn't expecting to make updates to the list so soon but I've been thinking a lot about it and the games I've tested with it and solidified my design philosophy for the deck. Goldfish games end on turn 4 almost every time, wigth the rare 3 or 5. The deck is incredibly consistent, and has good recovery and redundancy slotted in. The weak link is (and probably always will be) having to cast your commander and have it live for a turn. With this in mind I've re-added Winding Canyons and Savage Summoning. Being able to dodge sorcery speed interaction or sneak in after a counter war should give us a much better chance of winning than just running it out and hoping. I've also added Lightning Greaves back, and a tutor/situational counter in the form of Muddle the Mixture. With a haste enabler in play, we can go off the turn we cast our commander, and the combo line only costs 2 mana, allowing for wins that are difficult to interact with.
To make room for these slots, I've cut a few cards I'm not impressed with.

  • Ghostly Flicker served as a backup for Deadeye Navigator, giving an alternate combo line, with all of our graveyard recursion, it shouldn't be a problem. You can re-add it if Praetor's Grasp is rampant in you meta.

  • Wirewood Herald is really powerful and opens up alternate combo lines but isn't necessary for anything and isn't good enough to expend a tutor on. It may make its way back in but there's more important things I'd rather have in that slot right now.

  • Preordain was the last card I cut for the adds, but it definitely should be added back somewhere, i haven't figured out where yet. It's a great card but it's low impact, so I'm okay with moving it out to the maybeboard until I find a place for it.

+Savage Summoning
+Winding Canyons
+Muddle the Mixture
+Lightning Greaves

-Ghostly Flicker
-Wirewood Herald
-Island
-Preordain

With the inclusion of more haste enablers, I'm considering re-adding Vizier of Tumbling Sands to allow manaless win routes from a hasty commander, being an out-of-hand untap for hateproof combos, and possibly enabling the addition of actual Birthing Pod as a backup option. More to come

Sheriff_K says... #1

You don't need Reality Shift to win, imo. My list doesn't run it at all. My go-to win-con is Beast Within+Cyclonic Rift; get rid of all their permanents, rift the tokens away, having flickered Spellseeker for every Counter in your Deck, you pass. Assuming they haven't conceded, they likely can't do anything anyway, and you just slowly win via combat damage.. lol.

January 28, 2019 8:48 a.m.

Sheriff_K says... #2

Your deck seems to just flop if it loses Fatestitcher (whether it be in hand, grave, or exile,) have you considered some alternate "4-bridges" (like Breaching Hippocamp or Archaeomancer along w/ Vitalize ? Vitalize also works great with Greenwarden of Murasa for a double Untap if you Pod it.

Also need contingencies for if Deadeye is gone, I used to have Temur Sabertooth in mine for that (and it also allowed some interesting Woodland Bellower lines, but I ultimately took it out,) now I've got Palinchron (still not sure on it though, but it does give an untap with Minamo/Wirewood out, as well as potentially creating infinite Mana w/ just a Phantasmal Image )

January 28, 2019 10:14 a.m.

d3sden0va says... #3

Sheriff_KElvish Piper is the backup 4. Hippocamp and Archeomancer don't work because they produce two bodies. "Losing access" to combo pieces isn't something that realistically happens very often. For pieces drawn, they can be cast or Piper'd, for pieces in the graveyard we play Eternal Witness, and if exile is a big problem in your meta you can include Riftsweeper. My current build also has the Isochron Scepter-Dramatic Reversal package as a compact backup wincon, and previous builds ran Elite Arcanist-Reversal/Benefactor's Draught, but I may be abandoning those packages entirely in an upcoming revision. Simply put, there's no need to waste slots on redundancy for events that aren't aren't likely to happen to you.

January 28, 2019 1:10 p.m.

akhsig says... #4

Hey! Just wanted to start by saying that I love your deck! I just have a question regarding the combo finish now that beast within is no longer in the deck... Basically, how do you go from infinite mana to win now? All your ender loops included beast within before and I don't see how the new cards in the deck allow for the same game ending loops... Thanks!

January 28, 2019 3:06 p.m.

akhsig says... #5

Nevermind just saw that you updated the primer with new combo enders XD oops sorry about that

January 28, 2019 3:09 p.m.

Helwyrm says... #6

In your hastened ending loops you just say "13. Tap Forbidden Orchard to give everyone a Spirit Token" It only gives one opponent a token so you'd have to untap it with Peregine Drake...

My brain doesn't want to work right now so i cant figure out if it is still accessible/flickerable to untap the orchard.

You maybe should mention that in that line to make it more clear.

January 30, 2019 4:27 a.m.

Sheriff_K says... #7

You can flicker Body Double having it enter as a clone of Peregrine Drake to untap your Orchard. ~.^

January 30, 2019 9 a.m.

YNotBro says... #8

d3sden0va, for the Unhasted Shift Loop Ender, are we just assuming that Deadeye Navigator will be the biggest card on the field to draw our entire deck with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds trigger?

January 30, 2019 2:50 p.m.

d3sden0va says... #9

Helwyrmhuh, you're right. I somehow missed that, I thought it was each opponent. I'll take a look at options and write something up. YNotBrounfortunately, yes that's a requirement for that line that we don't have a great way to work around. it's a backup line though and there's several ways to work around it if you have additional resources. the most compact line is that, though, and needs 5/5 to be the biggest body in play.

January 30, 2019 3:40 p.m.

Managem says... #10

I was giving this Commander some thought. I'm trying to conceive if there's any way to combo into LabMan and also utilizing Hermit Druid...

I think there's a lot of potential with this commander. There are other 'puzzles and pieces to put together' for her I believe..

January 31, 2019 11:33 a.m.

d3sden0va says... #11

Managemthere's been some drafting of Hermit Druid, Jrax has a list here: Pod-mom hermit hulk The problem is building a hermit druid mana base in 2 colors which is miserable, but there's groundwork here if that's a direction you want to explore.

February 1, 2019 10:15 a.m.

pokeylop says... #12

This primer has been immensely helpful to me for building my own list; well structured with helpful updates over the past month or so! While I had 2 combos before (the main finisher in this primer and a Protean Hulk combo), I settled on a way to include the hulk as a potential route to the finisher (Pod Hulk to Terastodon , fetch Spellseeker and Eternal Witness ). The one you use here is just as effective, but this felt like a slightly more linear path towards the final state without having to change Body Double and start a new chain (also allows you to destroy all lands, if that's a concern).

Here's the link to my decklist; it's my first cEDH build, so I would really appreciate any feedback you might have!

February 2, 2019 2:06 a.m.

YNotBro says... #13

2 things. Firstly, is Scavenging Ooze necessary for the combo finisher or is it just nice to have? Secondly, hypothetically, considering that we will be pod-ing into stuff combined with fetching, we could have smaller remainder of our deck than our opponents. In this case, if we used the Eternal Witness and Winds of Rebuke combo, would we lose because we would run out of cards first, or do we not because Winds of Rebuke isn't considered as a "draw"? That's what I'm assuming at least.

February 2, 2019 11:46 p.m.

d3sden0va says... #14

pokeylopI feel like if you want to blow up lands you could just get back on Beast Within/Reality Shift as your ender loop of choice. Putting hulk in the deck without an instant win pile seems loose, but you're free to build however you like. You're also a little light on artifact removal, but if you're not playing against Cursed Totem and Grafdigger's Cage every game that's probably more ok. YNotBroMilling is not drawing, so as long as we don't draw a card we won't lose. We also have several resources (timetwister, nantuko tracer, noxious revival, etc) to put cards back into our library at will. Scavenging Ooze isn't directly required, but Winds of Rebuke loops won't win if opponents are playing Eldrazi Titans or Gaea's Blessing or similar. Oooze is also a 2-drop which can start the combo and serve as incidental graveyard hate, making it worth the slot over Beast Within as our finisher.

February 3, 2019 12:56 a.m.

Sheriff_K says... #15

Why'd you drop the Reality Shift+Beast Within finisher, when Reality Shift is still in the Deck? Could just cut ScOoze and Winds, and just put Beast Within (and something else) back in the Deck, no?

What advantage does Winds give?

February 4, 2019 11:23 a.m.