pie chart

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

Commander / EDH GU (Simic)

TrophyBuck


A deck created out of sadness that Deceiver of Form is not a legend, with the desire to build a deck around him.

Idea of this deck is to play Momir Vig, dig out a bunch of creatures that can trigger into digging other creatures, and dig out Deceiver of Form. Have a bunch of small things suddenly become giant monstrosities or combo pieces that wreck havoc and then decide to go home. Continue to ready up awful times for your friends with Momir and look shocked when Deceiver reveals them. Backup plan is standard creature swarm.

I've written out a ton of description text below to explain interactions and card choices. Advice welcome.

Momir Vig, Simic Visionary and Deceiver of Form are the main stars for this deck- but their functionality is such that it's worth explaining before going into more of this deck's details. Momir Vig's effects trigger on cast, and as such can happen before or after any cast effects for the creature being cast (you get to choose cast effect order when there are multiple for the same creature). If a creature is both Green and Blue, you get to choose the order Momir Vig's effects resolve in (and keep in mind, Momir's effects do not have to resolve sequentially). Because of this, Momir Vig gives a lot of flexibility in allowing you to tutor to the top or to hand when you cast Green-Blue creatures. Deceiver of Form reveals the top card of your library and lets you choose to have all other creatures become a copy of that revealed creature until end of turn (this is a may, not forced). You often want to wait to play Deceiver until you can also play a Green creature to tutor with Momir on the same turn- as he draws quite a bit of control aggro. He also allows you to put the card revealed this way on the bottom of your library- incredibly valuable, as you may want to tutor for it again later instead of drawing that card on your next turn. It's worth noting that because the copies stop being copies at the end of turn, if multiple end of turn triggers you control occur, you get to choose the order they resolve.
This decklist is just what I've arrived at with the original idea - if your price range/collection doesn't support it, I'd encourage you to explore building it with cheaper options. Most of the cards in here other than Deciever & Momir could easily be replaced in a deck with a lower budget, and that's how my decklist was when I started building it. The price tag is intimidating, but with some major tweaks you could still get a lot of fun without the cost.

Shardless Agent Show

Shardless Agent lets you do an incredible amount if Momir is out. Because of the way the cast triggers work, you get to choose whether Momir Vig's cast trigger or Shardless Agent's cascade resolves first. Because of this, you can do some tricky things. The most common choice is to cast Shardless Agent, choosing to trigger Momir and then cascade, and choosing to trigger first the blue effect then the green. Blue reveals the top card, maybe getting you a draw, and then green resolves to tutor to the top something to cascade into. Because of the way cascade works in that it actually casts the spell, the creature cast by cascade can trigger Momir's green and/or blue effects, meaning if you cascade into a creature like Kiora's Follower you can tutor to the top a creature you'll immediately reveal and draw.

Prime Speaker Vannifar Show

The card that made me rework most of this list. As a commander, this card can just win the game with a 1-drop. In this deck, it's mostly here to circumvent mana costs and allow for some more interesting Birthing Pod style lines. Anything in this deck with an ETB or effect that outlives it's usefulness can be podded away into something better, and the CMC of the deck has been re-worked to better support curving upwards. Honestly, spending time with Vannifar and your deck will do a better job than I can here describing the lines - though I will note that Kiora's Follower and Vannifar can allow for some very powerful double-jumping.

  • The most stable wincon is to have Deceiver copy Biovisionary. A hilarious use of a card not really seen in EDH, Biovisionary works because you get to choose the order your end step effects resolve in. So, you choose Biovisionary to resolve before Deceiver does, and proceed to win before your copies fade away. I try to avoid using this too often, as it's an easy way to allow this deck to become a degenerate combo. Part of my goal with the deck is to avoid this- to create a combo deck that plays different depending on match-ups and board states.
  • Wanderwine Prophets is great as deceiver lets you avoid the Champion cost of Wanderwine (they technically don't enter, existing creatures become copies), and allows your board to generate turns to deal with a threat. Politics can help you here, as a members of the table might allow you to poke them unblocked if you agree to only use the extra turns to deal with a player that's clearly about to win (politics vary from playgroup to playgroup, use with caution).
  • Beast Whisperer might be the best card Wizards has printed for this deck (other than Deceiver/Momir of course). The ability to go up or even on every creature card is insane for this deck - if you need to refill your hand, this is a great thing to grab.
  • Elvish Reclaimer lets you tutor busted lands like Gaea's Cradle or Field of the Dead repeatedly.
  • Prime Speaker Vannifar is busted as a commander, but in this deck is comparably fair. Mostly this allows you to cheat on mana some and pod away creatures that outlive their usefulness (notably, any creatures that leave tokens behind).
  • Crashing Drawbridge is a tutorable way to give haste, which can be busted with some of the abilities in this deck.
  • Dryad Arbor for when you need a land drop (note: Momir triggers on cast, so Dryad Arbor will not let you tutor).
  • Reclamation Sage whenever you need it for a threat? Yes please.
  • Eternal Witness to retrieve things from graveyard.
  • Mystic Snake and Frilled Mystic for if you run out of counterspells - though you will be announcing the presence of these.
  • Scavenging Ooze to hate on graveyards.
  • Rashmi, Eternities Crafter can let you do some serious board output - reorganizing cast triggers like I mentioned with Shardless Agent really benefits this.
  • Vizier of the Menagerie makes every green creature give you the ability to play what you just tutored for - also lets you save some of your blue mana to hold up counterspells. A hidden ability of Vizier is that it lets you produce any type of mana for creatures - meaning it also lets non-colorless lands produce the colorless needed for Deceiver.
  • Temur Sabertooth is pretty fantastic, allowing you to get more ETBs and cast triggers.
  • Bramble Sovereign also doubles ETBs, but making more utility creatures with it is even crazier. Double Beast Whisperer, even double mana dork leads to jumping ahead very quickly.
  • Bane of Progress to board wipe artifacts and enchantments.
  • Woodland Bellower seems odd, but it can grab some great things like Kiora's Follower (note: nonlegendary green creatures only).
  • Llanowar Tribe is absolutely crazy. Yes, it's 3 elves in a trenchcoat. But you can untap the trenchcoat with Kiora's Follower, make two of them with Bramble Sovereign. And instead of having to tutor & somehow draw 3 mana dorks, you only need to get one.
  • Springbloom Druid was mentioned to me by timmyteplant, and I think it's worth including. It's slightly awkward to shuffle away a creature you just tutored, but if you use it with Beast Whisperer you can get around this. Harrowing lands is a safer but slower ramp method than the mana dorks, and with Temur Sabertooth you can make your own magical wood-chipper.
  • Deranged Hermit makes a bunch of dudes and then dies because let's be honest, you're not paying the echo cost. The newer Deep Forest Hermit is a better version of this card, but both are worth including.
  • Spellseeker to tutor for certain spells when you need them - gets Cyclonic Rift, several counterspells, and Mystical Tutor if the spell you want isn't 2 CMC or less.
  • Yeva, Nature's Herald lets you postpone your creature casting to when it's best, which is normally when the other control players tap out. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir does the same thing, but trades off not being green for the ability to lock out opposing interaction.
  • Seedborn Muse allows you to use up your mana and still hold up counter-magic on other peoples' turns really well. Also makes your own sort of Prophet of Kruphix when combined with Yeva or Teferi.
  • Craterhoof Behemoth is the backup win condition - cast on a board of dudes, make them swoll, and hit face.
  • Any devoid creatures. One of the most frustrating things when I was testing this early on was to play Brood Monitor, go to tutor only to have my opponent remind me the creature was a colorless spell. Read the card, kids.
  • Gilt-Leaf Archdruid is... very rude and not what I'm really going for. You know what's worse than mass land destruction? Mass land abduction.
  • Spinebiter and other infect creatures would make this an infect deck - again, not what I was going for.
  • Any Slivers because I have morality.

This deck is a lot of fun to play, and not just the first time you use it in a playgroup (though that is hilarious). The deck runs a fine line of trying to not get controlled into the ground long enough to go ballistic (I may still have to do some tweaking to the amount of protection/retrieval the deck runs).

Typical play pattern is to ramp into playing Momir Vig & preparing to put out Deceiver. When you play Momir depends on the board- how many players are playing control, what do you need to have prepared, etc. If you can get away with an early Momir, great. But it's sometimes worth holding out for the ability to cast Momir and protect him in a single turn if you feel too threatened. From there, you prep by putting out more creatures with stuff like Shardless Agent, then tutor up Deceiver and go for the big plays.

A couple of notes before I finish, just to explain some design decisions. The deck runs a lot of utility lands that produce colorless mana, mostly to ensure it can cast Deceiver. Counterspells are pretty abundant by necessity with this deck, as well as some more rigid creature protection. The deck can function without Deceiver, and I've done so before - it basically translates into a semi-normal Momir deck at that point, trying to build a board and brute force your opponents with creature swarm.

While the main goal of this deck was to build around Deceiver of Form, it's become an interesting experiment into trying to build a combo deck that isn't degenerate and stays within a budget. It's the first combo deck I've ever built, and also the first time I've played Blue extensively (my prior decks were Naya or Gruul colors).

Suggestions

Updates Add

Occasionally I'll plan changes but put off buying cards, or buy cards & put off making changes to the online list, so I took some time to make sure this list online matches my in-paper one. I've also decided to start writing out the updates to help facilitate this, and go over what card swaps I'm certain on and what I'm uncertain/testing. Here's all the recent changes I can remember (some I'm not sure what got replaced for the additions);

  • Pull from Tomorrow -> Thassa's Intervention: Not super certain on this one, but wanted to see if a flexible card selection/counterspell could substitute for a pure card draw spell for the deck.
  • Nissa, Steward of Elements -> Oko, Thief of Crowns I actually kinda hate doing this, but I'd be dumb not to. In case you were living under a rock during 2019, Oko is a busted card. I waited to pick one up until it got banned from most formats, and even in commander it makes Nissa look laughable with what it offers. Nissa's still fine, Oko's just absurd.
  • Road of Return -> Disallow I've had Disallow in here before, and had cut it before for some of the free counterspells I picked up in the past. Realistically, I've missed the ability to counter abilities, and Road of Return has proved to be... not really worth it.
  • Aspect of Mongoose -> Sudden Substitution Sudden Substitution is a kinda absurd counterspell, but not sure if cutting Aspect for it is correct or not. Theory is that another counterspell is more flexible than a protection aura, but we'll see if that pans out.
  • ? -> Veil of Summer Because you needed to draw a card after you block a removal spell I guess. 2019 was a wild time.
  • ? -> Crop Rotation Some of the land additions made me decide to put in crop rotation, and I'm sure it'll stay at this point.
  • Greenbelt Ramager -> Elvish Reclaimer Greenbelt has a cool interaction with Momir, but Reclaimer helps facilitate finding busted lands just like Crop Rotation.
  • Khalni Garden -> Reflecting Pool Reflecting Pool making mana of any type is pretty sweet, and I figured was a decent upgrade to a tapped land that's past due on getting replaced.
  • Basic Land -> Field of the Dead & Half of Basic Lands -> Snow-Covered Basic Lands Another famously busted 2019 card, Field of the Dead lets you make an army from one of the hardest permanent types to interact with. I've replaced half my basics with Snow-Covered ones to facilitate having a better chance at meeting it's condition, and I've found it to be pretty consistent in this setup.
  • Basic Land -> Gaea's Cradle Finally bit the bullet and bought one.

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Hi! Please consider becoming a supporter of TappedOut for $3/mo. Thanks!


Important! Formatting tipsComment Tutorialmarkdown syntax

Please login to comment

Date added 6 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

11 - 0 Mythic Rares

45 - 0 Rares

21 - 0 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.23
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Elk 3/3 G, Food, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Insect 1/1 G w/ Flying, Deathtouch, Squirrel 1/1 G, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders IRL, EDH, edh, Want
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views