Thrasios//Vial Smasher EDH Baking Combo Cakes

Commander / EDH Infinite Combo UBRG

songdavis

Land (35)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Botanical Sanctum
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fetid Pools
• 1x Field of Ruin
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Forest
• 1x Frontier Bivouac
• 1x Great Furnace
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 2x Island
• 1x Labyrinth of Skophos
• 1x Lumbering Falls
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Opal Palace
• 1x Opulent Palace
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Savage Lands
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 1x Shadowblood Ridge
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Malady
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Transguild Promenade
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Vivid Crag
• 1x Vivid Creek
• 1x Vivid Marsh

Creature (5)

• 1x Dualcaster Mage
• 1x Evil Twin
• 1x Fae of Wishes
• 1x Kess, Dissident Mage
• 1x Nivix Guildmage

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Kiora, the Crashing Wave
• 1x Oko, Thief of Crowns

Instant (19)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Clash of Wills
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Evacuation
• 1x Firemind's Foresight
• 1x Ghostly Flicker
• 1x Logic Knot
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Negate
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pull from Tomorrow
• 1x Silumgar's Command
• 1x Stroke of Genius
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Syncopate

Sorcery (18)

• 1x Beacon of Tomorrows
• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Bring to Light
• 1x By Force
• 1x Channel the Suns
• 1x Deadly Tempest
• 1x Decimate
• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Dreadbore
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Regrowth
• 1x Temporal Mastery
• 1x Temporal Trespass
• 1x Treasure Cruise

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Rhystic Study

Commanders (2)

Artifact (17)

• 1x Astral Cornucopia
• 1x Commander's Sphere
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Gruul Signet
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Simic Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Temple Bell
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Thran Dynamo

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Sideboard

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Covetous Urge
• 1x Desert Twister
• 1x Fireball
• 1x Recollect
• 1x Stream of Life
• 1x Three Tragedies

Artifact (2)

• 1x Mindslaver
• 1x Mirrorworks

Creature (1)

• 1x Memnarch

Instant (1)

• 1x Stream of Consciousness

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Maybeboard

Instant (7)

• 1x Ancient Excavation
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Gush
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Polymorphist's Jest
• 1x Pull from Eternity

Creature (4)

• 1x Chasm Skulker
• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 1x Naru Meha, Master Wizard
• 1x Thassa's Oracle

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Burning Wish
• 1x Doomsday

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Rites of Flourishing

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Ad Infinitum

"All things return to their beginnings. The waters that spill across the Kamitaki Falls flow to sea, only to be returned to her as the rain that joins the mighty river." - Dosan, the Falling Leaf

Woof, where to start with this one. There's a lot of explaining to do here, but lets digest the first few key elements of this lists' construction: We want to enable endless gameplay possibilities- infinite card draw, infinite mana, infinite extra turns, dictate the turn order, infinite recursion, Dictating all life totals to specific values, dictating the number of cards players have in their hands, dictating the exact cards that players have in their hands/have in their libraries/have in their graveyards/exist in the game, dictating the number of permanents allowed in play, determining which player may ascend beyond the power of your average planeswalker.

Certainly all these things can be accomplished, but the process of achieving a game-state that possesses all of these qualities at once is what we hope to create. If you find yourself nodding violently, shaking uncontrollably or frothing at the mouth at the prospect of being granted such power, perhaps this is the deck for you.

Beginning the Ascension to Godhood

Enabling these strategies is most easily achieved with the creation of an infinite-mana combination. While infinite mana in a Thrasios deck is often answered by a state-based action involving the immediate flipping of the nearest table, our intention is not to let the game end so soon. But I cannot stress this enough: Don't let them concede yet. While Tymna could well be a better choice for the kind of archetype we're following, I have been playing Vial Smasher for far longer and I enjoy the combos available to this deck with the red splash moreso than splashing white - though I'm sure you could accomplish similar things no matter where Thrasios is. The true beauty of Thrasios is in his ability to sink "infinite-mana" sources into card draw (which simultaneously pulls your remaining lands left in your library into play). While simultaneously acting as a draw-engine to dig for your combo AND ramp into one.

Infinite-Mana JUICERS

Our objectives of play focus on achieving one of these three things:

1. Setting up an Isochron Scepter with Dramatic Reversal imprinted; with the possibility of generating at least three mana with mana-abilities of non-land cards that involving tapping such utilities: such as a Gilded Lotus

2. Playing a Nivix Guildmage followed up by a Channel the Suns, holding priority after casting channel the suns to use Nivix Guildmage's ability to put a copy of Channel the Suns on the stack - allowing it to resolve to add 5-coloured mana to your pool and spending 4 of it to copy it once again. It should be noted that this can only produce infinite amounts of , and mana and will leave only one floating in your manapool after resolving. This is easily fixable however, and alternatively you can follow the same process with Dramatic Reversal instead of Channel the Suns provided that you've accomplished the same criteria as the combo above. (Mana Vault perhaps?)

3. Casting Ghostly Flicker and responding to it with Dualcaster Mage at instant speed. Setting the targets for the copy of Ghostly flicker to be: Dualcaster mage, and anything that taps for mana (Command Tower and other lands that don't come into play tapped). Dualcaster mage gets flickered, and triggers its ETB again putting another copy on the stack with the same targets, tap your land again for mana. Rinse and repeat.

Each one of these possesses its own strengths and weaknesses and can be interrupted in certain phases - keeping resources available such as Pact of Negation or Swan Song can be a wise investment.The Ghostly Flicker combo can utilize a few other cards such as Naru Meha, Master Wizard and be cast at instant speed, which can be incredibly useful in times where quick responses to your opponents actions are necessary. The Nivix combinations are clunkier but don't rely on the content of your artifacts, and ramping into them can be brutal. They tend to be my fallback if I'm caught in a longer slog against decks running a lot of artifact-hate (such as a Zacama, Primal Calamity (RIX) EDH). Although both the Nivix and the Dualcaster mage combos encounter the difficulty of having targetable creatures involved in their set-up. The Nivix + DR combination being the most resource-intensive, as you need to be able to make a net-gain off of your copies of Dramatic Reversal.

Dodging Krosan Grip is important too, or your isochron scepter will be a vulnerable target. Know your opponents' options well and you'll be able to pull these combos off without a hitch most games. Bait their major counters with scary spellcasts: Oko, Thief of Crowns, Decimate, Burning Wish, Temporal Trespass, etc.

A Recipe of Substance for a Competitive Curry

Protecting and allowing for the set-up of these combos is now what we'll focus most of the rest of our efforts into. We can actually play Vial Smasher and set up some disgusting turns, getting multiple triggers through Extra-turn taking, miracle-casting Temporal Mastery and copying it with Nivix Guildmage etc, casting Logic Knots for 12CMC+ for massive lifepoint and tempo swings has been a surprisingly common occurrence during many of my games. However, that's not what we're here for. We're here for combo combo combo, baby. We wanna be ramping up to pumping out lands with thrasios pretty early and establishing an understanding of the opponents strategy, holding onto countermagic - leaving yourself untapped every turn to counter, destroy permanents and "Scry one, reveal, draw" until we can start tutoring for optimal combos. Hunting for pieces with Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, Mystical Tutor, or Bring to Light (which is a disgusting tutor in any deck with 5-colour access). Oko, Thief of Crowns's ability to neutralize enemy commanders is absolutely broken in this format, Rhystic Study tax slows down our opponent or speeds US up heavily, Evil Twin to keep certain commanders out of the game. Sensei's Divining Top fixes our top 3 letting us be more secretive with which cards get revealed by Thrasios, Triton Hero, and helps us guarantee that we hit ramp when he triggers or not.

Overall we want to be slowing down our opponents gameplan as we ramp up, and hit our combo as fast as we can muster as SAFELY as we can. A good Decimate, taking out their Cabal Coffers or Gaea's Cradle, Sol Ring, Faeburrow Elder etc can be game winning. A reactionary and low-risk playstyle has often brought me more success when attempting these combos.

A quick sidenote on Wish rulings: "Abilities which refer to other cards owned outside the game (Wishes, Spawnsire, Research, Ring of Ma'ruf) do not function in Commander unless the optional sideboard rule is in use. If sideboards are used, wishes and similar cards may retrieve sideboard cards.

(...)

Rather than filling every deck with banal responses, it is preferable to allow some flexibility in the composition of a deck.

Players may bring a 10 card sideboard in addition to their 99 cards and 1 Commander. After Commanders are announced, players have 3 minutes to make 1-for-1 substitutions to their deck. * Any cards not played as part of the deck may be retrieved by "wishes".

Reasoning: Highly tuned threats piloted by skilled opponents mandate efficient answers. The minimum number of response cards required to ensure they are available in the early turns can easily overwhelm the majority of an EDH deck's building space.

Sideboards allow players to respond to the "best" strategies in a timely fashion . They should be strongly considered as a necessary defense against brokenness and degeneracy in an environment where no gentlemans agreement on style of play exists."

Certainly, depending on Wish cards to provide flexibility to decks that shouldn't be permitted such degeneracy can certainly be unfun. Let it be known that I'm not condoning the use, and propagation of those strategies amongst your playgroup... HOWEVER, what we're hoping to accomplish with the use of Fae of Wishes is nothing short of a divine missive from Heliod himself.

I'll be honest, I love wish cards and the awesome power of willing spells into existence that would never have found their way into the game otherwise, therefore I run with a "Wishboard" acting as this deck's sideboard. Certain things can be removed/added - but in general my playgroup allows a 10 card sideboard. NONE of it is necessary to win you the game, you can more than easily accomplish that by going infinite and casting massive copies of Stroke of Genius to mill everyone out, copying it with Nivix Guildmage or by drawing out your library with Thrasios, playing Vial Smasher and simply taking infinite turns with Beacon of Tomorrows. (Sure you could win with Labman too but why not throw 271,835,014,362 potions with your red-haired Goblin Berserker who has just become the greatest Chronomancer that has ever lived).

So you're welcome to run a more competitive sideboard list if you wanted to, but we're here to explore fun.

Being a harbinger of the Endtimes

Lets discuss the content of our wishboard first. We won't normally be casting Fae of Wishes to fetch any of these until we're going infinite. Each card is chosen to fill a role in changing the game state once we've demonstrated a few things: we're able to produce arbitrary amounts of mana, we have a near infinite amount of counter-spell potential in Isochron Scepter imprinting Counterspell with our recursion pieces Regrowth, Nivix Guildmage copies, etc. What we want to accomplish from here is having our entire library in hand, all our lands in play, A Nivix Guildmage in play that we can protect from any response from our opponents and a Fae of Wishes on the stack with 14 copies resolving from Nivix Guildmage triggers.

Now the fun begins.

Step one, proving yourself as a benevolent god

"The most enlightened mages create beauty from violence" - Medomai the Ageless

Before your might, the creation and destruction of life is nothing more than a tool. But you are kind to those who are kind to you; we cast Stream of Life to raise our opponents lifetotals to 40 or Fireball to lower our opponents lifetotals back down to 40. Hopefully this gives them pause when deciding whether or not to storm away in anger, as you put an arbitrary amount of copied Desert Twisters on the stack. You can usually remove hexproof creatures with the use of a cast of Sudden Spoiling. Once all permanents other than your own are in their respective graveyards and our opponents' libraries have been drawn and then discarded into their graveyards with a combination of Stroke of Genius and Three Tragedies. Describe to them the delicious flavour text on observations of the Kami War:

"As the kami passed over the village of Mita, the inhabitants relived their three most grevious tragedies. Some cried. Some raged. Some were driven to madness. But the next morning, none possessed the will to fight." as you are the kami now. As you force them to relive this scenario game after game after game, with Darrell Riche's mind-explosive artworks turning their brains to pulp. All other libraries are now discarded.

Step two, removing degeneracy from the game

This may be dependent on your playgroup, but personally - infinite combos get old amirite. You don't want any of your opponents playing with the potential of becoming a god. Target exile your opponents most DEGENERATE cards with as many copies of Covetous Urge as you like. Perhaps even play some of them yourself if they are useful to your new ascended form. I always enjoy removing their Palinchron + Deadeye Navigator, Devoted Druid+Vizier of Remedies, Obliterate(because cards that destroy the wonderful world you have just created CANNOT be allowed to remain in your heavenly domain) Removing all their artifact hate and Nevinyrral's Disks can be a good idea, as you're just going to be countering them anyway.

Step three, The Mulligan

Once decks have been edited and neutered to maintain your gamestate, lets have all players shuffle their graveyards back into their libraries with Stream of Consciousness. Just as we have given them streams of everlasting nectar-of-life, we must open the floodgates of heaven and let their minds be awoken.

Using our infinite recursion combo: which in this case is Recollect with infinite Nivix Guildmage copies and Regrowth with infinite copies. You get your graveyard back with a cast of each (which will probably result in you having one of the two in hand at all times, allowing you to repeatedly put your graveyard into your hand in this way) we demonstrate a moment of intellect that is nothing short of a Stroke of Genius, by recurring our stroke and having each player draw 7.

The game has begun anew, ask each player whether they would like to mulligan - discarding their hands down with Three Tragedies as you do so to make them reshuffle, and then redrawing with stroke.

Step four, determining the New World Order

Play Mindslaver, using your infinite mana to recur mindslaver as much as you like with Recollect/Regrowth with Nivix Guildmage copies once again... but Mirrorworks!

Ask the players to roll off to determine the starting player of the new game you've created. Because the turn order of the current game still has to be maintained in effect, we'll simply say that any turns that we DON'T want to permit are taken control of by one of our many copies of mindslaver and then passed through all its phases without action until the starting player may "begin".

Command your subjects to "play" at your amusement. This is a new game now, the constants of the universe have changed. Time has begun anew. But let it be known that heretics won't go unpunished.

Step five, Punishing Heresy

Lets lay down some arbitrary rulings, as this new world order demands absolute subjugation.

• Players may not attack god, nor target God's permanents with anything that would disrupt our infinite loop or play boardwipes that would disrupt our loop (but you've probably removed all things that can do that by now with Covetous Urge.
• You must treat your fellow players with respect and decency
• Each turn they must amuse you with their best interpretive dance, or a permanent they control will be destroyed at random
• If they can make god laugh, give them another 10 life with Stream of Life
• Provide them with boons if they are able to answer your riddles; whether that be life, 1/1 spirits produced by your Forbidden Orchard or card draw, etc or punish them for a wrong answer - take control of their permanents with Memnarch.
• Players may not cast commanders (unless you allow them to).

You decide who wins. You decide who loses. Have fun!

SwanPocalypse

Bonus Combo- Making infinite swans with Swan Scepter (Swan Song) and a copy from Mirrorworks to make a Dramatic scepter (Dramatic Reversal) and:

1. someone casts any spell that can be countered by swan song
2. Tap swan scepter, cast swan song
3. Hold priority, tap dramatic scepter casting dramatic reversal, let this spell copy resolve untapping both the swan and dramatic imprinted scepters along with your required rocks
4. Tap swan scepter countering your own copy of swan song let this resolve countering the first swan song copy with the second generating a 2/2 bird.
5. With the original spell on the stack use dramatic scepter to untap both of your scepters and go back to step
6. Repeat steps 2-5 until the desired number of bird tokens is obtained.

then taking an extra turn is a fun way to win.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 1 Mythic Rares 45 - 2 Rares 26 - 5 Uncommons 17 - 2 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.06
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Elk 3/3 G, Emblem Kiora, the Crashing Wave, Food, Kraken 9/9 U, Spirit 1/1 C