The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Zeganaxy

Commander / EDH Combo GU (Simic) Infinite Combo Ramp Theme/Gimmick Toolbox

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Maybeboard

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Planeswalker (1)

1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

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Land (9)

Artifact (6)

DON'T PANIC

Hello! I am a longtime casual commander player, and this is the Hitchhiker's Guide to my Prime Speaker Zegana deck. Though the guide has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over older, more pedestrian decks in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover..

UPDATE: Final decklist updates to ensure it can be rebuilt after I take it apart for So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Feel free to comment any suggestions, especially ideas for further connecting the books and the deck!

Any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. Show

Storytime.

So the Guide to the Zeganaxy is my oldest deck, and as such it's been subjected to myriad iterations and variations. The paper deck on the screen before you (yes, it's all in paper, no proxy Mana Crypt or anything) is a far cry from the casual blink deck I built years ago with big bombs like Kederekt Leviathan and Terastodon.

I designate Prime Speaker Trillian as my cEDH deck, the deck I play against the most ruthless players in my playgroup when we feel like pitting unstoppable forces against immovable objects. And, despite all theorycrafting to the contrary, Zegana (aka Trillian) is able to hold her own against more meta competitive decks, even while featuring a comparatively "unplayable" commander. I'd rate it a 9 out of 10, mostly due to budgetary restrictions. Again, no proxy moxies.

The question that is probably popping into many readers' heads right now is "But it's a cEDH deck in Simic colors, and you're building around a Thassa's Oracle, so why not just run Thrasios, Triton Hero in the command zone? Durrrrrr." And there are certainly alternate commanders that could work for this deck: Thrasios, Tishana, Voice of Thunder, Rashmi, Eternities Crafter, and Tatyova, Benthic Druid come to mind. There are three main reasons why Zegana is the premier commander selection of the bunch for this deck, and I'll detail them here. TL;DR she combos best and she values okay.

--First, Zegana's able to participate in this deck's combos in multiple tangible ways. In case it's not obvious, we're playing variations on the Deadeye Navigator + Palinchron combo and dumping the infinite mana to draw our deck. Could the deck be built without a combo piece in the 'zone? Sure, but that's just one more card to go tutor or draw off Rhystic Study before we can win the game; when we've got infinite mana but no way to draw cards off Tatyova, we'd better be holding a Blue Sun's Zenith or that's one big fizzle of a combo. This is the primary reason why Thrasios is commonly played, and he'd clearly work as well as Zegana or Tishana for the purpose. There's a subtle additional reason why Zegana is a superior combo enabler: We're playing a decent chunk of Birthing Pod deck tech, such as Neoform and Prime Speaker Vannifar, and ideally we want our commander to pod into a combo piece like Peregrine Drake at 5 CMC or Palinchron at 7 CMC. Oddly, this makes Zegana and Rashmi the superior commander choices, and Rashmi doesn't give us the clear combo path to draw through our deck like Zegana does.

--Second, Zegana gives us access to strong frontloaded value. Oddly, I find Thrasios to be among the weakest of the bunch as far as value goes, with his main strength being his ability to flop in extra land drops. Perhaps this stems from the cEDH community's misinterpretation of "value" as card advantage, and little else; I like to cite the Command Zone's description: "The player who spends the most mana casting the most spells wins the game." In other words, a value play is one that gives us more resources (mana ramp, card draw, free creatures, free spells, etc.) that we can use to play the cards that actually matter in our deck. And it can be difficult to remember which cards those are, too! (Especially with super-interactive cEDH decks whose win conditions are compact combos.) In a format where resources are hoarded as jealously as possible every turn, the best value engines are those that produce the greatest amount of resources for the least investment. In this regard, Tatyova is probably the most powerful, as she gives us resources when we simply play lands (something we'd do anyway). Rashmi grabs value from playing spells, and Zegana and Tishana draw cards off junk creatures sitting around; Thrasios requires an investment of mana, a comparatively tall order. While I acknowledge his interaction with cards like Seedborn Muse, the value he provides is much less "free" and is easily disrupted by a Path to Exile, whereas cards like Zegana and Tishana provide all their value immediately on spell resolution.

--And third, Zegana is interesting. To be fair, this isn't unique to her; 90 percent of legendary creatures are seen as "completely non-viable" cEDH commanders. But it does mean this deck can call itself avant-garde and flavorful, since it isn't the same Tymna-Thrasios Demonic Consultation garbage we've seen dozens of times. And I like my decks to be at least a little bit playful and have motivation behind the card selections, so I'm happy to tell the story of the competitive Hitchhiker's Guide, a deck that uses Prime Speaker Trillian to go looking for Arthur Dent (Arthur's card HAS to be a dead draw, right?) while running into Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android along the way. And the story puts itself together, or maybe it doesn't; maybe it gets countered by Force of Will. But it's better than a deck that's not interesting whatsoever.

So how do we build a deck for cEDH with a derpy baseline strategy revolving around creatures and lands? Simple. We keep the combos slim and we let our commander be the deck's primary value engine, and we go for as much interaction as possible. As a deck that was originally blink-centric, it's been hard to get away from the theme of ETB creatures for the Infinite Improbability Drive, but sometimes your junk creature sitting around on the field has to be a morph creature or a spellbomb on a stick, because instant-speed interaction means everything in this format.

You should play this deck if:

--You enjoy decks where lands matter and you ramp out tons of lands very quickly.

--You enjoy drawing cards and would run a Mulldrifter in the command zone if you could.

--Your playgroup allows infinite combos (like, seriously, why ban them though?)

--You enjoy frustrating cEDH players by beating them with "weaker" decks.

--You prefer to win instantly in a single turn with little room for counterplay.

--You don't mind getting dirty looks for Cycrifting the board 3 turns in a row.

--Your reaction on seeing Vogon Poetry is to lunge across the table and attempt to strangle its controller.

As the Improbability Drive reaches infinite improbability, it passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously. So you're never sure where you'll end up or even what species you'll be when you get there. Show

Very rarely will you see me devote the first section of a primer to a deck's land base. This deck is the exception. Our goal is to fly the Heart of Gold to all the various planets in the universe, searching for Magrathea, and maybe find a decent cup of tea along the way.

In all seriousness, our combos need 5-8 total lands or specific powerful lands to work properly, so I've tuned up a strong lands-matter package.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is Magrathea, the dream land. Magrathea rewards us for flooding the board with cards just to rack up devotion. This card is often the linchpin that produces the crucial 2 or 3 extra mana to set off explosive combo turns, so we should tutor out Magrathea whenever possible. Gaea's Cradle is the only other land I can think of that could fill this niche, generating +3 or more mana

Lotus Field The two sacrificed lands can be problematic, but Ramunap Excavator does a good job of mitigating that downside of this land. Easily solved by Tempting for a Lotus land and spare basics. +2 mana

Lotus Vale After playtesting, I actually prefer the reprinted Field over the Vale. Enough players play silver bullet land destruction eg. Ghost Quarter that the hexproof feels valuable. That said, Lotus Vale is still a house. +2 mana

Simic Growth Chamber The Chamber's the least efficient of our big mana accelerator lands, but it still enables Cloud of Faeries to set off infinite loops. +1 mana

Growing Rites of Itlimoc The Cradle of Itlimoc is our budget copy of Gaea's Cradle, the big daddy of all hilariously massive green mana sources. As you might expect, the main downside is that Growing Rites isn't a land, so it's hard to tutor out. +3 or more mana, typically.

Field of the Dead We've got plenty of different lands with funky names, so Field of the Dead almost immediately starts pooping out zombie tokens. I've deliberately included multiples of each snow-covered basic, since those count as alternate card names from regular basic lands. The tokens guarantee access to 3 cards from Zegana, and they also have the most important keyword ability: 'chumpblock.'

Vesuva Because the only thing better than one Field of the Dead is... two Fields of the Dead? Nah, how about a copy of an opponent's Cabal Coffers? (Or their Bojuka Bog, or Maze of Ith, or whatever.)

Dryad Arbor Although it's awkward to watch a land get cleared by Wrath of God, Dryad Arbor does some amazing, gravity-defying shenanigans in this deck. We can ramp it out with Chord of Calling and we can discard it to Fauna Shaman. I've never made it happen, but theoretically we can clone Lotus Cobra a couple times and get infinite mana off Arbor and Deadeye Navigator as well.

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea Mikokoro can stand in for our commander once we're comboing, since we can use it to draw through our deck or even deck out opponents as a wincon. Just be wary of any opponent with open mana or a Slaughter Pact in their deck.

Geier Reach Sanitarium Ah, Sanitarium, one of my favorite lands in the whole game. Sanitarium mostly serves as another copy of Mikokoro. Our commander provides plenty of raw card advantage, but we're using lands as a backup whenever we can.

Blast Zone is a reasonable sidegrade to Ratchet Bomb. This land breaks a few of the game's hardest stax locks, like Decree of Silence and Knowledge Pool gamestates that counter everything, since it gives us a way to remove nonland permanents without casting a spell. Still weak to Stasis effects, but what land isn't?

Scavenger Grounds is our non-black version of Bojuka Bog. Clearly less efficient but still a good silver bullet against reanimator decks.

Ghost Quarter can deal with opponents' power lands like Cabal Coffers and is a great land to pull with Tempt with Discovery as a safeguard.

Breeding Pool counts as a forest, which matters for a couple of our ramp effects.

Fabled Passage isn't fancy like Misty Rainforest, but it's still a fetchland for Ramunap Excavator. (To be fair, I'm going to add Rainforest as soon as I find a copy that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.)

Waterlogged Grove is another good land to loop with the Excavator. Spare card draw is never a bad thing.

Tolaria West transmutes into any land we need, or possibly Walking Ballista or Pact of Negation.

Of course, any lands-matter combo deck worth its salt needs to quickly build hyperspace expressways:

Collective Voyage gives everybody massive early mana acceleration. We can usually try to combo off the turn after this resolves, turn 3 in the best-case scenario.

Crop Rotation can fetch Magrathea.

Sylvan Scrying ditto.

Elvish Reclaimer Basically just Crop Rotation on a stick.

Tempt with Discovery always fetches Magrathea and usually Field of the Dead and/or Ghost Quarter, depending on our opponents' choices.

Oracle of Mul Daya is crazy good. We can usually hit plenty of lands off the top, or we can use Trillian to stuff our hand full of lands and abuse the extra land drop.

Ramunap Excavator lets us recur lands from grave. Great with Lotus Field and Fabled Passage and tons of other stuff.

Nature's Lore gets into Breeding Pool or Dryad Arbor

Lotus Cobra turns all of these land fetches into direct mana, leading to explosive turns.

And (of course) the usual dorky suspects are present:

Birds of Paradise is the only creature in the deck that won't increase Trillian's draw power.

Elvish Mystic and Llanowar Elves and Fyndhorn Elves because DUH.

Sol Ring is a Sol Ring.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was "Oh no, not again." Show

If infinite mana makes you shudder, you might want to just skip this section, because this deck is built around powering up the Infinite Improbability Drive with infinite mana combos. No, seriously, skip this section, people play too many damn infinite combos in commander.

I am unfortunately no exception. I could make pretenses about aggro and creature goodstuff, but that definitely isn't a consideration here. No Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, only Palinchron.

Combos where lands don't matter

Our combos are based on the creatures that untap lands equal to their CMC:

Cloud of Faeries

Peregrine Drake

Palinchron

A Sperm Whale (Never worry about dropping a Sperm Whale onto the stack from several miles above the ground; it should have come to terms with its existence before it goes SPLAT on the battlefield.)

These create some common combos that will net infinite mana under practically any circumstances, even when we're playing on basic lands only. 90 percent of our won games will come from these combos:

Palinchron + Phantasmal Image Infinite storm count and infinite mana. The storm count is entirely irrelevant, but hey, it's there.

Peregrine Drake/Sperm Whale/Palinchron + Ford Prefect Ford's a great hitchhiker and a good navigator. He can also flicker himself to subsequently hitchhike with Trillian.

Peregrine Drake/Sperm Whale/Palinchron + Eternal Witness/Skullwinder/Archaeomancer + Ghostly Flicker/Displace People tell me this setup is mildly confusing, so here's how the stack works: Ghostly Flicker targets the Sperm Whale and EWitness, exiles and returns them, and triggers their abilities; then Flicker finishes resolving and goes to the graveyard. Once Flicker resolves, state-based actions are checked; the ETB triggers then immediately go onto the stack and choose targets. Sperm Whale untaps 4+ lands and EWit returns the Flicker to hand.

Combos where lands do matter

Okay, let's assume that we have access to lands that generate bonus mana per untap, such as Magrathea. Here's some less efficient combos and the extra mana that individual lands need to generate to go infinite:

Cloud of Faeries + Ford Prefect. +1 mana (fairly common scenario)

Palinchron + Phyrexian Metamorph/Clever Impersonator. +2 mana.

Cloud of Faeries + Eternal Witness/Skullwinder/Archaeomancer + Ghostly Flicker/Displace. +2 mana

Temur Sabertooth + Cloud of Faeries/Peregrine Drake/Sperm Whale/Palinchron. +3 mana (more difficult but typically doable)

Ghostly Flicker + Archaeomancer/Eternal Witness/Skullwinder + specifically Magrathea. Magrathea has to net +4 mana on tapping into itself, since this combo relies on Ghostly Flicker's ability to target lands directly.

Palinchron by itself. +5 mana, which is occasionally possible with Magrathea. Honestly, Palinchron is just kinda broken like that.

Our creatures also go mana-positive from mana-doubling effects like Mana Flare. We're not running any of those but our opponents might be, so watch for sneaky opportunities to copy Caged Sun with Phyrexian Metamorph and combo out.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Show

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. More importantly, time is the worst win condition. I detest extra turns or anything else that draws the game out into a long, complicated storm-fest. If I have infinite mana and complete control of the board state, my opponents are already upset with me; I would rather end the game quickly and succinctly instead of making them suffer for half an hour while I durdle around reading Vogon poetry. Within 30 seconds of comboing out, I want to say "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

Trillian is the key way to start burning mana. Since almost all of those infinite mana combos are based on flickering arbitrary creatures, they allow us to not only play Trillian but also flicker her at will, drawing cards until we pick up a win condition. If for some reason Trillian can't draw us out (e.g. Narset, Parter of Veils or Solemnity or just Nevermore), the usual backup plan is a card-draw land, either Geier Reach Sanitarium or Mikokoro, Center of the Sea. (In Narset's case we have to just punch her vigorously with whatever creatures are handy.)

After less than 30 seconds of drawing cards, we'll draw one of the following win conditions and we'll immediately declare the game to be over:

Arthur Dent: We just play him and declare that we draw the rest of our deck by flickering Trillian. Simple. Any creature tutor that can spit Arthur Dent into play achieves the exact same result. (And YES, I am fully aware that Oracle doesn't resemble Arthur nearly as well as the hockey puck that was the Lab Man, but what else am I supposed to do about it? Still a pretty dead draw in most cases.)

Marvin, the Paranoid Android Equally simple. We slap down Marvin for X = a million and declare that the planet is now closed. Visitors shall be greeted with a pair of thermonuclear missiles and a dreary, depressing conversation about aching diodes.

Zaphod Beeblebrox: Although he might claim otherwise, Zaphod technically isn't a very good win condition; but we can flicker him to indefinitely return each of our opponents' spells, permanents, and annoyed objections to their hands. This hardlock usually results in a mass scoop, followed by an argument over who deserves to get second.

If all else fails, there are a few jank wincons floating around too, such as Reality Shift. After handing each opponent a free beast token, we can flicker Eternal Witness to recast Reality Shift indefinitely on manifested creatures and exile our opponents' entire decks. Nasty, but effective. And hey, a giant army of zombie tokens from Field of the Dead certainly puts in work as well.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. Show

This is not a control deck at heart, but I do run a large suite of control cards to prevent foolish opponents from outpacing us or interfering with combos. While playing from behind, this deck should FEEL like a control deck, although we don't have much in the way of stax to keep a hard lock on the battlefield. In keeping with our theme, as many effects as possible are tied to creatures and ETBs.

First of all, always know where your towel is. Our towels negate threats, slow opponents down, and most importantly keep opponents from disrupting our combos with a well-timed Path to Exile. And if the towel comes away clean enough, then we'll use it to dry off afterwards.

Flexible Stifle Towel

Force of Towel

The Other Force of Towel

Pact of Towel

The Towel Boy

The Towel Snake is reusable via Ghostly Flicker, which can generate a decent softlock. Towel Snake gets the pass over Frilled Towel, because Frilled Towel is too damn hard to cast, no matter how much I love to say "lizard wizard."

The Persistent Towel can be reused more than twice if we flicker to remove the -1/-1 counter. Also just a good intimidation tool.

Zaphod Beeblebrox is eminently reusable and can neatly fizzle uncounterable spells. He may take offense if you call him a towel, though.

Boardwipes are essential to any commander deck, even competitive decks. While cEDH players definitely understand that getting 3-for-1 trades is necessary for removal to be efficient in commander, they don't always build their decks with that concept in mind. This is one of the few areas where G/U struggles, since the only good wipes are generally unsummons. However, we tend to come out ahead since we usually have more mana to recast stuff than our opponents do, and our creatures often have valuable ETB triggers anyway.

Cyclonic Rift Ew.

Evacuation Also ew.

Devastation Tide Ew at sorcery speed.

Finally, spot removal is always useful for breaking up opponents' combos and for removing nasty stax that lock us out of the game:

Krosan Grip is the best answer this deck has for Vogon Poetry. Seriously, if you even suspect somebody is mainboarding that filth, save KGrip for it. I also love Split Second as a mechanic - cEDH players rely on countermagic too damn much, so it's nice to drop KGrip and Trickbind on the stack every now and then.

Nature's Claim because hey, the Playing with Power guys say it's objectively better than KGrip, and I can't argue with their logic. But I also have to ask, "Why not both?"

Force of Vigor is pretty comparable to Return to Dust but has that completely balanced "Force of" mechanic.

Reality Shift is our blue Path to Exile. Yeah, manifest that card you dug out with Vampiric Tutor, go on.

Rapid Hybridization has some of the best Simic flavor text of any card I've seen. Read it. Also, cheap killspell.

Pongify because functional reprint of Hybridization but with twice the outdated Harambe jokes.

Beast Within kills off planeswalkers nicely. Or artifacts, or lands, or whatever.

Reclamation Sage Good card, amirite?

Ainok Survivalist Crouching Tiger, Hidden Reclamation Sage. Or something like that.

Caustic Caterpillar Suicidal Rec Sage is still excellent.

Zaphod Beeblebrox can also be used as removal in a pinch. Zaphod's just a really amazingly together guy, okay?

Marvin, the Paranoid Android Marvin can fling +1/+1 diodes at dorks, but it's definitely not his optimal use. "Just think. They left me, an ordinary, menial robot, to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, whilst they ran off to save themselves... I'll tell you what they gave me to protect myself, shall I?" "Yes, all right." "Nothing... Nothing at all."

Against all probability, a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet. Show

Importantly, this deck has creature-based tools for every occasion, allowing tutor spells like Chord of Calling to pull wincons, removal, or even counterspells. The creature tutor suite is as follows:

Chord of Calling By virtue of being an instant, Chord is the strongest tutor effect we've got. Instant + convoke = Suddenly a Sperm Whale falls onto the battlefield during somebody's combat step. Or maybe you just need Zaphod Beeblebrox. He is indeed a really amazingly together guy.

A Bowl of Petunias is amazing in this deck. If nothing else, Trillian pods into Palinchron, but every CMC from 2-7 has at least one associated combo piece the Bowl of Petunias can fetch. In order: Cloud of Faeries Eternal Witness Temur Sabertooth Peregrine Drake Ford Prefect Palinchron

Neoform Very much like a single-shot Birthing Pod of Petunias. We can pull out Neoform with Spellseeker, then pod Trillian into Palinchron later. Mana-efficient as hell.

Eldritch Evolution is like a single-shot Birthing Pod of Petunias, but better since we're not limited to one exact CMC. Any nontoken creature at least evolves into our friend Arthur Dent, and pitching Trillian into Evolution lets us grab any creature whatsoever. I really wish the spell didn't exile itself though.

Prime Speaker Vannifar is our Birthing Pod on a Stick. The deck lacks a decent package to run Vannifar in the command zone (cards like Lightning Greaves, Deceiver Exarch, and Intruder Alarm come to mind) but she's still hugely valuable as a creature that repeatedly tutors out other creatures. Protect her! She wins games!

Fauna Shaman If you're my opponent, kill this tutor-bear on sight. No, seriously. She will wrap up the game incredibly quickly if she gets to dig for creatures a couple of times, almost as quickly as Vannifar will.

Survival of the Fittest The original Fauna Shaman, devoid of summoning sickness or a tap symbol in its ability. A couple green mana and our hand gets stuffed with a toolbox of optimal creatures for whatever problems lie ahead.

Finally, to wrap things up, a couple effects that I can only describe as "miscellaneous but indispensable"

Phantasmal Image is a minor combo piece but also cheaply copies important tools like Eternal Witness, which is basically as good as flickering them.

Phyrexian Metamorph does the same. We can technically copy a Bowl of Petunias with Metamorph but that's only useful in niche scenarios. More likely, we want an opponent's Isochron Scepter or Coalition Relic.

Spellseeker We run a lot of instants and sorceries that find specific creatures, so it's only fair to run a creature that can find specific instants and sorceries. Great tutor options include Neoform, Cyclonic Rift, Reality Shift, Arcane Denial, Collective Voyage, and Crop Rotation.

Mystic Remora I don't play a lot of raw card draw engines, because Zegana takes care of most of that herself. But while I may have sideboarded Sylvan Library and Rhystic Study, the Stupid Fish lives on.

So long, and thanks for all the Fish

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Casual

99% Competitive

Date added	5 years
Last updated	2 years
Key combos	Deadeye Navigator + Palinchron
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	2 - 0 Mythic Rares 48 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 16 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.75
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Beast 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Elemental 4/4 UR, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Manifest 2/2 C, Morph 2/2 C, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	EDH, Commander Decks, EDH Possibilities, Cool Deck List, Cool Stuff, More EDH, Commander Decks
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