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Maelstrom Wanderer Group Hug V2

Commander / EDH RUG (Temur)

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Commander (1)

Commander: foil Maelstrom Wanderer

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Maybeboard

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Maelstrom Wanderer Turbo Group Hug a.k.a. "The spirit of EDH"

Have you ever asked yourself the following questions when deck building?

  • "Can I build a deck that never plays the same way twice?"
  • "Can I build a deck that interacts in ways that only an experienced judge would understand?"
  • "How can I give people a deck with an interactive play experience that epitomizes Big Flashy plays in Magic?"

or

  • "Can I put enough Copies of Warp World on the stack to create a monotone decreasing sequence which converges to zero?"

THEN LOOK NO FURTHER MY COMRADES!

Maelstrom Wanderer Turbo Group Hug is a mostly symmetric chaos-prison commander deck built around one of my favorite generals of all time, Maelstrom Wanderer.

Author's note: The Maybeboard would be the cards I would swap in to make a 'fully powered version' of the list. If that's your cup of tea, god speed friendo. For the best experience I would rate this deck is equivalent to a '70%' deck for matching this deck to your playgroups power level.

Why Maelstrom Wanderer and Why Temur?

The primary reason for choosing Maelstrom Wanderer to helm our deck. The primary reason is that the majority of rules warping effects such as aforementioned cards like Warp World , Scrambleverse , Perplexing Chimera , and Hive Mind are primarily Blue and red. There are some chaos effects in White and Black, however since they are colors that have more of a sense of order color philosophy wise, we opted to stick with Blue and Red Chaos effects, we primarily use Green for mana ramping and fixing and for our namesake commander. We also incorporated several colorless chaos effects as well such as Timesifter that would also help us completely turn the the normal turn and phase structure on its head.

Maelstrom Wanderer Stands out as the Ideal chaos commander in Temur because is a solid 7/5 Haste body that casts two free spells for us and provides a solid consistent clock to kill our opponents when we decide we have accumulated the sum total of fun for the game. In addition, our commander has double cascade, which allows us to bypass our own Chaos as Prison effects such as Possibility Storm and deploy most of our chaos effects while he still remains on the stack.

Yeah, Well thats great but what about other Commanders in Temur/Ydris?

  • Personally, I find that Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder does not add enough to our game plan to warrant building around the combat damage cascade mechanic, without sufficient payoff to warrant adding black. Additionally in order to cascade, we have to spend additional mana to gain a single free spell, and in the long game, maelstrom wanderer allows us to have a more consistent mana base that provides greater mana efficiency over time.

  • [Riku of Two reflections] would be a solid second option, given he can copy creatures like perplexing chimera, and spells like warp world, Scrambleverse and other payoff spells, however It makes our ability to close out a game much harder since he is only a 2/2 verus a 7/5 haste creature that gives us two free spells.

  • Partners: Thrasios/Kraum/Ludevic/Kydele/Zndyrspt/Oakun If you were focusing on a stronger wheel of fortune style or coin flip deck where you deck your opponents, then you could make an argument for doing so, however, since you would have the drawback of primarily casting spells from hand, rather than alternative effects like cascade, knowledge pool, etc which would basically making it harder to break parity from your chaos effects.

How Does This Deck Play and Win the Game?

Well, I am glad you asked, there are several ways this deck has to win:

Early Game (Turn 0-4)

In the early Game, all you care about is ramping through rampant growth effects (my version) or deploying mana rocks asap, the goal is to survive with propaganda effects, board wipes like Anger of the Gods , Blasphemous Act , and Chain Reaction , once you reach 8 mana, you are now in the mid game officially. while in the early game, you can deploy your low cmc taxing and chaos effects like Altar of the Brood , Pyxis of Pandemonium aka THE MYSTERY BOX, and Memory Erosion to disrupt top deck manipulation from tutors, sylvan libraries, and brainstorm/SDT effects.

Mid Game (Turns 4.5-8)

  • This is where your deck really takes off. At this stage, you want to actively deploy your chaos effects, slow mutating the game state into a horrifying train wreck for your random onlookers at your friendly local game store. Confusion in the Ranks makes permanents based strategies like eggs, tokens, and etb value decks cry in agony or laugh in delight as they are forced to exchange their own cards away for opponents permanents, Knowledge Pool and Possibility Storm and stops storm decks from being able to easily chain the correct spells to win the game, and effects like Grip of Chaos makes niv-mizzet combos turn into a game of over sized Russian roulette since it randomly re-selects against all legal targets.

  • Another big point of the endgame is to maximize the value off of Maelstrom Wanderer , and cast him and keep recasting to maximize the number of free spell effects off of him. Though you cannot gain free Warp World s or Scrambleverse s, dropping in two separate effects like Hive Mind and Eye of the Storm into play can take the board state from moderate disarray to stripping the last modicum of autonomy away from your opponents.

Note: For Maximum Flavor and effectiveness, it is strongly recommended on each Cast of your commander to chant the sacred ritual phrase "Wheel of Morality, turn, turn, turn, show us the lesson we shall learn..."

Wheel Of Morality

The End Game (Turns 8+)

You, as your opponents look on in utter defeat

Now that you have completely distorted the rules of time and space in your game, you can now focus on the end game. Every thing from turn order, phases, combat, or even things as simple as drawing cards or targeting players is now in shambles for your opponents and you get to close out the game. We do have several ways to go about this:

  • Maelstrom wanderer beats: It takes 3 turns to take out a player, and most of the time your chaos effects will prevent meaningful interactions such as bounce or kill spells to effectively hit him, in addition to your opponents being put into topdeck mode from things like Shared Fate , Widespread Panic , and Possibility Storm helping ya boi dunk them with commander damage one hit at a time

  • Eye of the Storm + Knowledge Exploitation : The way this combo works is basically you exile knowledge exploitation onto eye of the storm, you cast the copy and then when you cast the spell you gain from an opponents deck, you repeat this process as many times as you wish to cast all instant and sorceries from their libraries, in addition to gaining N-K copies of every other subsequent spells exiled onto eye of the storm in the process

  • Eye of the Storm + Hive mind + Scrambleverse + Warp World: While this does not win the game directly, Often times it will cause enough chaos at the table for opponents to scoop up and not continue the game. if you have Eye of the Storm in play, you can also for each occurrence of hive mind you trigger, you can stack the hive mind trigger at the bottom of the stack and resolve your your eye of the storm trigger first, cast all of those spells, including your now exiled warp world or scrambleverse, that depending on the board state with enough warp worlds on the stack, leave players with almost no permanents or none left in play theoretically.

  • Hive Mind + Wheel effects + Eye of the storm (optional): basically you wheel the table to death by forcing the table to cast a bunch of wheel effects, if you have Eye of the storm in play, you can use similar stack shenanigans to basically put enough copies of wheel effects onto the stack to deck all players at the table.

Ending Remarks

I hope you guys Have enjoyed my primer on the deck that encapsulates the spirit of the format in its purest, most raw form with Maelstrom Wanderer Group hug. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or hit me up on my twitter handle @DavidLPatton!

P.S - Two Important Rules for playing this deck!

One more thing, before I let you off the hook, as much fun as I've had writing this primer, and as much fun as you may or may not have had reading this, please please keep in mind two things:

  1. This is a "sometimes" deck for the 95% of playgroups. I personally only break this deck out roughly once a month with people I know and play commander with regularly, its like having too much of a good thing. If you play it to often, your playgroup will hate you. I guarantee it ( Metalzarak and erabel can attest to this )

  2. If you want to honor the tradition of this deck, play with a proxied basic mountain. It's not required, but the origins of this deck started as a meme among my playgroup where I was too stingy to buy a second wanderer so I sharpied a basic mountain for a proxy, and the rest is history. The mountain art should fit what you like best, for maximum memes i prefer the full art foil phallic shaped basic mountain from ZEN block.

Alright all, thanks for reading the primer and take care!

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