You're a wizard Harry [Budget MTGO] (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

You're a wizard Harry [Budget MTGO]

Commander / EDH* Budget Infinite Combo Storm Tribal UBR (Grixis)

GS10

Creature (24)

Instant (14)

Land (33)

Sorcery (9)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Inalla, Archmage Ritualist

Artifact (16)

Enchantment (3)

**Be advised, we are trying to win in a variety of unfair ways, so if infinite combos or extra turns are not for you, this might not be your deck.**

If you are still reading, chances are you have watched both The Professor's at Tolarian Community College, and The Lab Maniacs' takes on Inalla from a competitive standpoint. Those are definitely more finely tuned versions than this one, so if you are looking for a fully competitive deck, you should follow their suggestions instead. That's your Avada Kedavra

This is my own take on a similar build of Inalla, toned down for the much more unbalanced MTGO meta and on a pretty affordable budget. The deck still remains very much capable of winning, it's just not meant to be cutthroat since you'll find very different levels of power in MTGO EDH queues and I'm looking to play some fun games, rather than win all games and have my opponents feel miserable every single time. And remember, Harry didn't need Avada Kedavra to win

The deck itself is not particularly heavy on creatures, in fact we run very few for a tribal deck. Most of those creatures are wizards of course and all of them have a role to play in here. What almost all of them have in common is that we will benefit from making copies of them as they enter the battlefield, if nothing else it allows us to go on the redzone without risking losing our actual creatures, that we can lay back with in case we need any emergency blockers.

Relevant ETB

Cards like Sea Gate Oracle, Merchant of Secrets, Anathemancer, Harbinger of the Tides and such have relevant Enter the Battlefield triggers, that you can replicate copying the original creature when it comes into play, thanks to Inalla's ability.

These ETBs are meant to help us tempo out our opponents and gather more resources as we go. Getting two cards from Sea Gate Oracle is pretty good, and a card like Trophy Mage will immediately get 2 of our 3 mana artifacts... The one copy of those creatures and their ETB is almost free advantage for us, and while it doesn't win games on its own, it's amazing synergy and a well oiled engine that we will definitely be exploring in the grindier matches.

Of course sometimes we won't grind at all, because Wanderwine Prophets is a card, one that we count in our ETB creatures, and it might just win us the game on its own. We'll go over further it in a bit.

Static Abilities

All these abilities can be used out of nowhere thanks to the hasty copies from Inalla, but they all grant incremental advantage for as long as they stay on the battlefield.

We have 2 very relevant tap abilities in Timestream Navigator and Riptide Director that are amazing with or without copying the actual creature. Timestream Navigator is one of our main win conditions and it can grant us 2 extra turns right out of the bat, while somewhat protecting itself, and Riptide Director left unchecked will draw us an insane amount of cards. Both have potential to go infinite.

Then we have all those cards with abilities that stay there for when we might need them, cases of Viscera Seer, Glen Elendra Archmage, Voidmage Prodigy and such. While they don't directly benefit from their copies coming down, their abilities grant us ways to optimally use our resources throughout the game.

And finally, we have Marchesa, the Black Rose and Sage of Fables. On their own they're nothing to write home about, but together, you're whole board will essentially become invulnerable to removal, while feeding Inalla's for additional copies each time they come back.

Educated Muggles

While the non-wizard creatures in the deck might not synergize that much with Inalla, they all play really important, dare I say crucial, roles in the deck so I'll talk individually about each and every one of them:

As you may have noticed, these muggles are also some of our best reanimation targets as well. These are some of our most expensive creatures, and they're here because they can really pull their weight without any ties to our general. We'll go 7 feet deeper into our reanimation strategy further down in the description, so I won't give it all up just now.

Also known as playing the role of the control player.

We get plain old Counterspell, we get Doom Blade, Chaos Warp all those Grixis controlling staples you might expect, you know them all by now. No Force of Will, Mana Drain or others alike for budget reasons, but if you have a couple of tix to spare, Mana Drain is actually pretty affordable online.

I'm also running an enchantment that's pure value in every sense of the word: Attrition. This has been a staple in a lot of different reanimator strategies and for good reason. In here it fits like a glove. Not only it gets our creatures dead so we can reanimate them if we need that for their ETB, but it gives us a mana sink and something really powerful to do with our token copies before ending the turn! I'm also running Marchesa, the Black Rose and Sage of Fables for that incidental "come back at the end of turn" trigger which is devastating!

As for board wipes I'm not running a whole lot. Of course Cyclonic Rift is in there, but the only other board wipe is the true catch all and mother of all board wipes (maybe not... It's actually more like the weird fat cousin to All Is Dust): In Garruk's Wake. Most times we will be using it to get rid of a bunch of annoying tokens, and it will be suboptimal that way, but there will be times where we'll be facing superfriends and such and those might be hard matchups to beat without a catch all answer. Besides, the fact that we get to keep all our stuff is major in a deck that runs just 22 creatures. Sure, we have ways to reanimate, but if we'd were to wipe half our creatures at once, we'd need too long a time to rebuild. Again, In Garruk's Wake is a personal choice, but you can always go with your Toxic Deluge, Damnation, even Hour of Devastation, whatever flies your broom.

I've talked about our most expensive creatures already, and while we can hard cast all of them, they are way too powerful in most scenarios and will, most likely be killed, so we would want reanimation for them anyway.

Turns out, this horcrux package also has the side effect of letting us turbo out our big beaters for way cheaper than we otherwise would.

You probably know by now most cards we run and why we run it, but let's go over them anyway.

Graveyard Fillers

Cards like Entomb, Buried Alive, Cathartic Reunion, Windfall help us fill our graveyard either with creatures we specifically want to reanimate, or with other creatures that we end up discarding for value later on.

Incidentally we also have cards like Attrition and Ashnod's Altar that will let us sac our own creatures for value and these will also fill our graveyard with the pieces we might need to reanimate as we need them.

The deck isn't streamlined to the reanimator strategy, but it's nice to have a few ways to get the cards we need where we need them. While most of these cards were not specifically meant to feed a quick reanimator strategy, I tried to include as much synergy across the deck as I possibly could and that's why you see cards like Frantic Search and Gamble to draw us cards and tutor something, for instance - it all ties together real nicely.

Rise and Shine!

These are pretty much the cards you'd expect: Reanimate, Corpse Dance, Animate Dead... Get your creatures (or your opponents' if you want) back, and go to town!

I thought about including Necromancy as well, but ended up cutting it in the end for additional creatures, that I felt were more needed than ways to reanimate our targets. As you've figured out by now, we're not aiming to beat everyone down with a lone Rune-Scarred Demon in most games, so while reanimation adds some nice synergy and will sometimes win us games in a quick fashion, it doesn't need to take up much more slots.

Also, we run one other reanimator card, in Mimic Vat. This one is slightly different as it requires the creatures to actually die, but it serves a crucial role in the deck, helping us in every single step, from grinding out value from our ETBs to actually comboing off and making us infinite turns.

Our Undead of Choice

We'll start with the obvious one, and the one reason we can take advantage from an early reanimation:

Wanderwine Prophets is the one win condition everyone already knows about in a Inalla, Archmage Ritualist deck. If we can somehow turbo it out with reanimation, we have a better chance to find an opponent wide open that will allow us to take our infinite turns. We will specifically go over this combo further down the description, but for a comprehensive tutorial on how it works, check The Lab Maniacs' deck!
We've been over Docent of Perfection before, but here's some game advice that ties tightly with our reanimation strategy. The Docent is fairly expensive to hard cast and even if it isn't that spicy of a reanimation target because it doesn't bring chaos and glory with him all at once, you'll find yourself discarding it to our graveyard fillers more often than not. It's really important to make the most out of our turns and make optimal use of our resources so taking a turn off to hard cast Docent will not always be in your best interest. I often pitch it soon in the game to reanimate it for cheap and chain a few spells right after, later on in the game. On its own, it's a pretty squachable bug, but if you can get him down and follow it with some wizard tokens, transforming it, then we're talking a whole different game.
As for Sheoldred, Whispering One and Rune-Scarred Demon, I've said all I had to say about them. They're here to be our beaters if need be, but they serve additional purposes, so reanimate accordingly.

The more competitive versions of the deck I've told you about run Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and Sire Of Insanity instead, and they're amazing as well, but personally I'd rather run creatures that I can actually hard cast if for some reason I need to, and these four better fit my profile as a player. Ultimately, your personal undead army depends entirely on your preferences.

I started by warning that we would be trying to win in somewhat unfair ways. Let's talk about some of the cards that are so good in here, they feel unfair. These will cause all kinds of havoc even without going infinite (and yes, all of them have the ability to go infinite).

Paradox Engine

Ever since Paradox Engine was spoiled everyone shouted out that it was broken enough to be banned. It's an amazing card, and while it is very much abusable, it's not quite at a point where it entirely destroys the format. The thing is, if you are running Paradox Engine you're probably doing unfair things with it regardless!

Sometimes I forget Inalla can just tap 5 wizards to deal 7 damage. Turns out that ability works really well with Paradox Engine and there are ways it can feed itself while the Engine will keep making you mana with help of your mana rocks. With Riptide Director you might actually go "infinite" drawing cards, and casting more wizards, for as many "Tap 5 Wizards, deal 7 damage" as you have spells to cast.

Of course Paradox Engine is a part of an infinite combo in here, but it just works so well with Inalla tapping all those creatures over and over again that that synergy is honestly the main reason for Paradox Engine to be in this deck.

Paradox Engine is a card that will always draw hate, and with good reason. If you're playing it and not winning in quick fashion, you should feel bad. Incredibly fun to go off from the owners standpoint, but excruciating for everyone else watching. This card rarely allows shortcutting and even if you don't do anything really groundbreaking with it, it's a card that make your turns go longer and your opponents salt levels to rise, because everyone expects the game to be over soon, one Paradox Engine comes out.

Timestream Navigator

This card is by far my favourite card in this deck. She is so good! Even if you don't go infinite, worst case scenario you get at least 2 extra turns out of her and that makes for a HUGE advantage in the extra resources you gather, even if you fire it really soon in the game. Provided you get the City's Blessing, Timestream Navigator is the card you want to tutor for every single time unless you're just missing a piece for an infinite combo (and that piece might actually be Timestream Navigator itself). I had my reserves about this card, and I built no hype around it until I actually played it, IT'S AMAZING!

The fact that Inalla can get you an extra turn with the copy the turn you cast Timestream Navigator is huge, no one expects it until they see you make that play one first time, and even if someone manages to try and kill the original before you find a way to go infinite with her, you can always respond by tapping to take an extra turn, and tuck her in the bottom of the library, safe and sound.

Just picture casting Timestream Navigator paying for the copy, take an extra turn with the copy. Draw a tutor for the extra turn, take an extra turn with the original and tutor for it, cast it again in your second extra turn, make a copy, take another extra turn. You're not going infinite, but with just 2 cards, you get 4 extra turns! Timestream Navigator holds tremendous potential and turns out as an unfair card even without much else to support her.

Mimic Vat

Mimic Vat and pretty much any dead wizard can turn into an unfair combo.

Even if you have just something like Trophy Mage and Sea Gate Oracle on the battlefield and you get both removed at the same time, you can imprint Trophy Mage and get the one 3 mana artifact missing (it would either be Chromatic Lantern or Ashnod's Altar in this list, provided you got one of them when you cast the mage) and then imprint the Oracle, to Preordain before your turn. Even with two seemingly meaningless minions dying, Mimic Vat functions as value engine that needs to be respected.

Now picture imprinting something like Rune-Scarred Demon on it and tutoring while swinging for 6 in the air each turn for just mana. And we're still just thinking of our own creatures. If you manage to grab something like a Shriekmaw, an Azor, the Lawbringer, a Gray Merchant of Asphodel, so many different options... There's a whole lot of crazy that you can do with Mimic Vat even if you're not going infinite with it. This card is often ignored, but it's one of the unsung heroes of this deck.

Now onto the big guns. You've seen how the deck can grind advantage, how the deck can overpower opponents with just some few cards, it's time to actually dive in in our main win conditions.

The One Card Combo

Wanderwine Prophets is a one card combo, with Inalla's ability. Just champion the original to its copy, attack, take an extra turn, when the copy gets exiled you get the original back, pay to copy it again and since Inalla's second line of text has already been in effect, the copy won't be exiled until the end of your extra turn. Rinse and repeat and you have infinite turns. With mana per turn Wanderwine Prophets gives you infinite extra turns, so this is our wombo combo, our Patronus. While other combos are easier to understand and even shortcut, you need nothing else but Wanderwine Prophets to win in this deck, so this card is an absolute auto include.

The combo itself is a bit confusing to explain, but if you're considering plyaing this deck and you're struggling to understand, I'd recommend again that you check the original videos and decklists from Prof and the Lab Maniacs where they go over this win con (and general strategy) in more depth. While the deck is not remotely the same, most concepts they explain also apply to this build - We also do that, we're just not built to just do that.

Navigator Combo

Long and excruciating extra turns to kill any opponent that doesn't concede and sail away right then. With Deadeye Navigator's Soulbond ability we can make Timestream Navigator enter the battlefield at any time, triggering Inalla, Archmage Ritualist. That will allow us to make a hasty copy of Timestream Navigator for mana, which we tap for take an extra turn.

This one is a bit mana intensive, you'll need to spend each turn to pull this off, but it's definitely achievable, especially considering that you have to get the City's Blessing before you pull the trigger.

In a very similar way, you can replace Deadeye Navigator for Mimic Vat if you can sac your Timestream Navigator or an opponent falls for the trap and kills her with Mimic Vat out. Mana to make a token of Timestream Navigator and the additional to take an extra turn. Overall it costs you the same each turn, it just demands specifically less blue mana.

Dramatic Scepter Combo

Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter + Aetherflux Reservoir is already a very reputable combo as well. You just need mana worth of mana rocks and you have infinite storm count and infinite damage from Reservoir. If you have more than mana in Mana Rocks you also go infinite on mana.

This combo will also work with any other spell imprinted on Isochron Scepter if you have Paradox Engine out.

Paradox Engine will also allow you to imprint Swan Song on Isochron Scepter for an alternate win condition, without Aetherflux Reservoir. Just counter any spell your opponents cast with a copy, then counter your own copies an infinite ammount of times to create infinite bird tokens. You're opponents might die to an infinite combo, but swans at least are the most elegant part of our game plan.

You can also replace Aetherflux Reservoir for Docent of Perfection as the finisher, provided no one can remove your infinite wizard tokens before you can atack with them. You can make them at instant speed on the last end step before your turn, so you'll probably just have to worry the most with Cyclonic Rift and something killing your Docent of Perfection or Isochron Scepter during one turn cycle.

Bloodline Necromancer Combo

Bloodline Necromancer is a card that I originally overlooked because I wasn't all that into reanimating just wizards, and 5 mana was considerable for a deck which I intended to have a very low to the ground curve. Turns out and this card goes infinite with ease, and the pieces for it present us with effects we also want in the deck anyway!

The combo is fairly simple and you can pull it of in numerous different ways. As presented you just need Bloodline Necromancer + Ashnod's Altar and Purphoros, God of the Forge.

As Bloodline Necromancer enter's the battlefield, you put Inalla's ability on the stack, then Bloodline Necromancer's, Purphoros, God of the Forge will deal 2 damage to each opponent;
You sac Bloodline Necromancer to Ashnod's Altar making ;
You get Bloodline Necromancer with it's own trigger, as it enters the battlefield, repeat the process.
If you have other Wizards on the graveyard, you can use from Ashnod's Altar to pay for Inalla's ability and copy Bloodline Necromancer. Like that, at each cycle you repeat, you can get an additional creature on the battlefield. Playing online, I recommend Anathemancer since it vastly speeds up the process, sparing time both to you and your opponents (remember, they're also there to play, you might be winning, but you don't need to make them wait to see you kill them until the sun comes down)

If you are using Ashnod's Altar you don't even need Purphoros, God of the Forge, with the infinite mana you generate, you can just cycle whatever wizards with the extra reanimation and copying them as they enter, so that you also generate infinite copy tokens to swing in.

If you are using a different sac outlet, like Viscera Seer, you need either Purphoros, God of the Forge or enough mana to get enough copies from Bloodline Necromancer and/or Anathemancer from the combo that you deal enough damage to win you the game.

I will at some point try to convert this list to paper at a reasonable budget, but keep in mind that it simply isn't possible to build Inalla in paper in a 50$ budget as it is online. As soon as I have that deck and description ready I'll share the link in here.

Once more, a shout out (as if they needed one) to the Professor and the Lab Maniacs, because their takes on the deck layed the base from which I've adapted my own version and I would have never gotten to such a powerful list without their priceless insights. Definitely check them out if you haven't yet (and if that's the case, what are you doing??).

Budget Notes

At this point not all prices are showing because I'm still updating the correct printings of each card, but in time, all CardHoarder prices should show and you'll be able to see the full cost of the deck. Either way, I'd just export the decklist and check it through your favourite vendors if you are interested so you can how much it would actually cost you.
I'm not running all the current cheapest versions of the cards, personally, because I either traded for them a long time ago at a diferent price, or because I wanted to bling out a bit with something like a Masterpiece. I'll try my best to update the deck with the cheapest version of each card so you can easilly build your own version on the lowest budget possible.

Week 1 Review

After getting a fair ammount of games with this deck I made a few tweaks to improve overall playability and the deck's reach.

One problem I've come up often is the lack of creatures or meaningful ways to use them. So I've cut a few spells like Winds of Rebuke (which was okay but not super powerful, and was a liability that risked binning our Aetherflux Reservoir or another important combo piece that we would then be uncapable of using) to make way for creatures. Note that one of the new additions is Fallowsage, a Wizard that draws us cards on tapping, something relevant.

One other relevant card I ended up cutting was Gamble. Same as Winds, often times I'd gamble for Aetherflux Reservoir and I ended up discarding it. Besides, drawing Gamble and having nothing in hand is terrible. In it's place I decided to include Fabricate since it will get either Reservoir or Isochron Scepter for a swifter win.

AEther Adept, Bloodline Necromancer and Purphoros, God of the Forge were the other upgrades.

I'm also trying Storm the Vault . The deck has a lower enough curve that Vault of Catlacan might not be that impactful, so only testing will tell.

If you read through all of this description and all of my terrible puns, you're probably too good a person to be playing such a deck, but give it a go anyway! And remember, if you liked it give it an upvote, it would mean the world to me!

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Date added	6 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 30 - 0 Rares 30 - 0 Uncommons 20 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.79
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Human Wizard 1/1 U, Manifest 2/2 C, Treasure
Folders	MTGO Decks, Commander
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Based on	5 Colours in Magic? I just play these 3 GS10 EDH
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