Hello and Welcome to this deck's quick explanation.
First, I want to say that I'm not a native english speaker and that this deck description can have wrong terms or spelling errors. I'm sorry about it.
Goal of the deck
This is a multiplayer casual deck built with the cards I own, and some of them can be replaced, but I had an absolute blast designing the different interactions and building a deck where the sole purpose is not to eliminate the opponents neither to kill them with infinite combos, but to win through cards that directly say so.
Progenitus
To be fair, any five color commander could be at the head of the deck, but progenitus helps for a few victory conditions, is a great blocker, can snipe opponent's planewalkers... I never attack the life total of opponents with it, because this deck is not about killing others. It's about winning ourselves.
Own restrictions
The deck has plenty of synergies or combo cards in it, thus I set as a hard restriction to never add a tutor card (except for land fetching) in the deck. The goal is to take the game with whatever win conditions are coming up. It's even more fun to play when you start to assembling multiple win conditions at once and the opponents don't know which one to target first. Digging cards are fine by me, but fetching the exact missing piece you want is absolutely not in the spirit of the deck.
I did not include similar win conditions. For instance, Test of Endurance is not in the deck because I already have Felidar Sovereign. The cat is better for me here because it counts for Mortal Combat and can help us to gain a little bit of life back thanks to lifelink. Being a creature is easier to deal with and the opponents will have more chances to interact with it: more fun for everyone. You can play Test of Endurance if you prefer the enchantment, but it works not as well (and require 10 more life to win).
This brings the last point: I don't actually care if I win or lose my own casual commander games. I just want to have fun. And playing victory conditions one after the others, seeing the opponents sweat as they try to handle them even if new and different ones keep coming is plenty of fun. If you absolutely want this deck to win, feel free to remove some of the most wonky and parasitic win conditions (I suggest Hellkite Tyrant, Mechanized Production and Mycosynth Lattice) and long term recursion (I suggest Pull from Eternity and Riftsweeper) to add more card draw engines in the deck.
Victory Conditions
Here are the different winning conditions, with the cards that interact with them.
One of the victory condition is a land (well, actually 11 lands). The gates are fine and budget fixing lands, even if they are really slow. Happily, the multiplayer casual format is not a place where people punish you to have a slow start. The political and sympathetic aspect of this format is the main reason this deck is not dead on arrival.
Maze's End helps fixing through the game by fetching the colored mana you need, does not seems that dangerous for the opponents, especially if they destroy or mill one of your gates during the game. A fine winning condition that I sadly don't espect to ever win with in this deck.
The win with
Laboratory Maniac is performed by milling yourself entirely. Here is the package coming with it.
Civilized Scholar
+
Golgari Brownscale +
Necrotic Ooze: if you have the scholar in the graveyard, you can tap the ooze to draw a card, discard the brownscale, and untap the ooze. Thanks to dredge on the brownscale, you can tap the ooze to mill two cards, pick back the brownscale, discard it again and untap the ooze. This combo lets you mill cards like there's no tomorrow. At a bonus point, the ooze lets you draw a card at the end when your library is empty, just be careful to not start with an odd number of cards in your library (or have a way to fetch/draw/mill one card) or you'll have to wait a turn to win. Please note that you also gain 2 life each time thanks to the brownscale text, so this combo is also useful in another win condition. The ooze can have plenty of abilities and is also helpful in other win conditions.
Dread Return lets you start the milling without having even already drawn the maniac. In the deck, this sorcery is otherwise a chance to bring back a fallen victory condition creature or a value one like eternal witness.
Biovisionary is obviously a combo with
Rite of Replication, but can also be copied in corner cases with
Mechanized Production if
Mycosynth Lattice is out. The rite of replication is an extremely good and flexible value card that doesn't have to be kept for the winning combo. The Biovisionary is a really fragile and bad win condition, but it's a creature (more on why I like creatures in this deck later) and it's just funny to play that card in a format where you can't have more that one of each card.
Hellkite Tyrant lets you easily win if
Mycosynth Lattice is out and sticks. At this time, you certainly will have 20 permanents, most of them being lands (given you have connected once with the dragon). The dragon is quite nice to get some rocks from the opponents and can be a funny way to deal with darksteel artifacts. The
Mycosynth Lattice itself is mostly in the deck for the tyrant, but is also useful for fixing the mana, letting you paying whatever ten mana for instance to cast your commander. The lattice is also very helpful with the
Mechanized Production win condition. Sadly, be aware that the Lattice is a nonbo with two cards:
Spirit of Resistance which is a stellar defensive tool, and
All Suns' Dawn which can help us retry fallen victory conditions or value plays.
Felidar Sovereign is an apparently easy win condition, in a format where you start at 40 life. Don't be fooled, you never have 40 life turn 6 of more if your deck is not designed to gain heavy amount of life. To get back to 40 or above, you have multiple ways. The more straitforward is to cast
Resolute Archangel and to hold on until your next upkeep. Already mentioned in the Laboratory Maniac description, the
Civilized Scholar
+
Golgari Brownscale +
Necrotic Ooze combo lets you gain plenty of life at instant speed, even if it's at some risks. Don't worry, if the plan fails, you can always cast Survive from your graveyard to shuffle your graveyard back to your library. Then you have the slow
Mayael's Aria that nets you 10 life each turn you stay with a big creature (for instance Progenitus) on the battlefield. The cat's lifelink,
Fumigate and
Approach of the Second Sun bring small amount of life, if just that is needed. The last one is an all-in move, with
Renounce: sacrifice all your permanents except from the Felidar at the end of the last opponent's turn, and sweat until your upkeep to know if it payed off.
Darksteel Reactor seems really slow and hard to stop. But it may not be that slow in this deck. Besides the obvious
Doubling Season, you have
Gilder Bairn and
Vorel of the Hull Clade that can quickly make this reactor an actual threat. Don't forget that
Necrotic Ooze which can have either ability... And even both of them! I actually managed once in a single turn to tap it with Vorel's ability, untap it with Bairn's, then tap it again with Vorel's. And it was enough to win. Being darksteel lets you also have a fun target for the
Mechanized Production.
Helix Pinnacle is the card that you just pay into whatever mana you have left each turn. This is not really a threat and should not be considered as one, given that with shroud, you can't double the counters on it with the Bairn. Or can you? There is a piece of artefact hidden in the deck that can help you gain that amount of mana:
Gemstone Array. This can be used as a proxy to be targeted by
Gilder Bairn and
Vorel of the Hull Clade (and the
Necrotic Ooze). Just double the charge counters and when you are at 100 or above, you can pour them in the Helix.
Doubling Season helps.
Mayael's Aria is a very very nice card in the deck. First, you commander makes you automatically activate the 5 and 10 conditions that net you 10 life and +1/+1 counters each turn. Speaking of +1/+1 counters, two creatures are in the deck specifically to win with this enchantment:
Managorger Hydra which can trample to kill planeswalkers, and
Forgotten Ancient which can move the counters around (only 10 counters are enough to make
Progenitus a 20/20).
Doubling Season helps (yeah, you'll see those 3 words a lot in this deck description), alongside
Gilder Bairn and
Vorel of the Hull Clade. Bonus creatures that can meet the 20 power requirement:
Wall of Blood (you just need a 20 life investment),
Psychatog (you need to have a big graveyard),
Mossbridge Troll (which is a fine blocker that survives almost all our wraths and can be activated by Progenitus alone), and in the most obscure corner case
Hex Parasite (bear with me, you'll need something like 40 counters on
Gemstone Array, which can be reached thanks to counter doublers). Nice touch: this enchantment covers three colors for
Spirit of Resistance and
All Suns' Dawn.
When you cast
Mortal Combat, you have to hum the Mortal Kombat theme. The deck packs only 28 creatures, so winning with it won't be easy (I have another deck based around cycling that packs more than 50 creatures and I never managed to win yet with Mortal Combat in that one)... But it's an additional way to with if you gathered the famous
Civilized Scholar
+
Golgari Brownscale +
Necrotic Ooze combo (this one again? yeah, I'm proud of it) to mill yourself. Remember that your upkeep is before your draw step. There is not that much to say otherwise.
Mechanized Production is a funny one. The best target must be the
Darksteel Ingot of the deck, as it's indestructible, ramps you, and helps you cast colored spells. It's even in curve on turn 4 (since you most likely have a gate to play alongside).
Doubling Season helps (I once even cast the production ON the doubling season thanks to
Mycosynth Lattice: having 1 into 3 into 11 doubling seasons is a lot of fun, sad that the game ends immediately after).
Temple Bell is another fine target at it helps you digging a lot for other win conditions, and the opponents don't mind the bells that much, go figure. Casting it on
Burnished Hart can also help you extracting all few basics from your deck.
Near-Death Experience or the nearly most dangerous of our win-cons. To lose life at will, you have the
Wall of Blood (can be used with
Mayael's Aria) and the
Hex Parasite (that can help fighting planeswalkers and other counter strategies). The parasite only takes you an even number of life, that's why I put a few painlands in the deck, just in case. As always, yours truely
Necrotic Ooze can make your dreams come true with this win condition. It's a good idea to keep mana for an emergency
Renounce when doing the "at your end of turn, I'm going at one" move.
You can't make a win condition more ballsy than
Barren Glory. I thought at first to have a Detention Sphere and a Flickerwisp in the deck to be able to make the glory survive an Apocalypse... But that red sorcery is unplayable otherwise, don't help reaching other win-cons, and don't make the other people releaved if they manage to deal with the glory before the apocalypse resolves: the game just becomes miserable. So I opted for a more flexible and fun combination of cards to reach the glory's conditions at instant speed:
Renounce (that also can let us survive and win with felidar) to sacrifice permanents and
Psychatog (that can throw cards to activate
Oath of Scholars, or help us winning with
Mayael's Aria) to discard our hand. Note that the gorgeous
Necrotic Ooze can replace the atog if that one is in the graveyard already.
The most boring of all win conditions here. But you can dig, so why not? The downside is that the opponents see it miles ahead and do everything to kill you as soon as possible if you cast it. So what I like to do is to cast the approach, and then shuffle my library (sakura tribe elder, gatecreeper vine, maze's end, survive...) to relieve my opponents and make it a russian roulette outcome. That's more fun. Other than that... It does nothing but gain 7 life, I guess that's a small step for the cat win-con.
Value creatures
This deck needs plenty of creatures to meet a win condition with Mortal Combat. Thus there are multiple creatures here to replace themselves, draw cards, search for a land, at the 2 and 3 mana cost. I won't enumerate them all, they are legion. They also let us chump, give us food for Dread Return and help giving utility to cards like Necrotic Ooze and Rite of Replication in early and mid-game.
Digging
The deck craves for digging. Thus cheap enchantments (the most durable non-land permanents) that make us draw/loot are mandatory: Compulsion, Monastery Siege, Rites of Flourishing, Phyrexian Arena, Oath of Scholars. Other digging cards: Temple Bell, Civilized Scholar
, Forbidden Alchemy, Satyr Wayfinder. Milling (Golgari Brownscale, Nyx Weaver) is a form of digging thanks to cards like Warden of the Eye, Eternal Witness, All Suns' Dawn, Dusk / Dawn, Dread Return.
Backup Plan
If something goes wrong and we are interrupted in a win condition, I tried to include ways to be able to try it again later. For instance, Struggle / Survive is a way (with an embedded removal) to shuffle back the graveyard in the library if someone kills a gate for the Maze, kills the maniac before our final draw, try to exile our graveyard, etc.
There are ways to get back cards from the graveyard : All Suns' Dawn, Dusk / Dawn, Warden of the Eye, Nyx Weaver, Eternal Witness. Creatures can be easily reused, non-creatures must have additional value (Dusk-wrath part, multi-targeting of All Sun's Dawn), so no simple Regrowth here.
There are two ways (Pull from Eternity, Riftsweeper) to get cards back from exile, sent there by the opponents, or by flashback (2 cards), or by aftermath (2 cards), or by themselves like All Sun's Dawn and
Teferi's Protection
). This is wanted both in a value perspective, and in a surprise factor, being able to bring back something that others thought they had definitely dealt with.
Miscellaneous Notes
I like having multicolor cards in the deck as they can help with Spirit of Resistance and All Suns' Dawn. For instance Supreme Verdict and Warden of the Eye are not necessarly the most optimal cards to play, but the occasional bonuses make them worth for me to keep.
One of the most important cards in the deck is Vedalken Orrery, as it can let us play just before our upkeep were all the fun takes place for most of our win conditions. I prefered it over the blue leyline to have another target for Mechanized Production, but it can be replaced by it if desired.
Teferi's Protection
plays the same role as the Orrery: reaching the next upkeep more easily if we already meet a win condition.
I thought to put Anger or Fires of Yavimaya to help winning with multiple win conditions (haste on Necrotic Ooze, Hellkite Tyrant, Vorel and Gilder Bairn), but I decided I did not needed to lose a slot for it at the moment. If I happen to gather more creatures with tap abilities in the future, maybe a hast enabler will come some day.
The mana base is SLOOOOOW. But I own 37 commander decks, and I can't have all of them have those expensive rare lands. If you want to build this deck, I recommand that you switch all trilands (from Tarkir and Alara) for Shocklands and a few Fetches. The gates are mandatory and make already plenty of lands come into play tapped.
Last Note
Again, I don't play this deck to win. I don't find any fun in throwing two random cards on the battlefield and say "tadaaaaa". But it's fun for me to play one part of a win condition. And one part of another. And one part of another... And to see confused opponents not knowing which one is finally coming and should be dealt with. I repeat, I designed it so that most of the cards either:
The goal of the deck is to gather win conditions by trying again and again, branching on new ones as the opponent successfully stop you from reaching the firsts.
Thanks for reading.
Have fun!
