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Sorcery (3)

Artifact (1)

Instant (2)

Creature (1)

Enchantment (1)


Maybeboard


Hey Guys, Thanks for dropping by! Any comments are welcomed!

Been creeping for a while and I've seen good Zaxara decks, but I couldn't find any focused/optimized ones. So heres my project with Zaxara I wanted to share with everyone.

PLEASE LEAVE ME ANY OF YOUR COMMENTS AND I WILL BE HAPPY TO LEARN FROM EVERYONE

Boundaries / Goals of the Deck:

  • To efficiently kill ALL our opponents as quickly as we can
  • No major budget restrictions, dual lands is as far as I wanted to go (really does help with how quickly you can get your commander out)
  • NOT really flavour/theme based. While our commander is a hydra, we aren't married to the idea. You'll see lots of hydras in here, but they are here after careful thought. (check out my notable exclusion section below)

Weakness of Zaxara Decks:

We all know what the strengths are for Zaxara! Thats why we're here afterall. But I think it'd be important to understand/record what her weaknesses are so that we know how to minimize and manage them:

  • Heavy commitment: To get the most out of Zaxara's ability, we are INCENTED commitment as much mana to our X spells as possible. (And why not!? The spell could get countered and we still get a big hydra body out of it!) However, if we aren't infinite with mana yet, we are forced to make tradeoffs between a more powerful spell and hydra, or options to do anything else. Having all mana tapped out at the end of your turn is necessary alot of times, but weakens our ability to respond / or even threaten a response to anything. That is why when we cast our X spells, we gotta make it count!

  • Speed: Yes, we can get big boy hydras out, but having to WAIT atleast 1 turn for them to attack is basically begging all our opponents to use their removal on us. Not to forget all these hydras can easily be chump blocked by any 0/1 tokens on the floor. Telegraphing our moves and then having them blockable can easily give our opponents the edge. You will find that the win cons I have included are fairly quick, and rely very on waiting for big hydras to attack.

  • Card Advantage: In trying to make our deck faster (addressing problem above), our ramp spells make our hands deplete rather quickly. Even with all the tutoring in our deck, we're merely replacing one card (our tutoring card) for another (our tutored card). Thats why I tried to include a few cards that both draw cards AND does something critical for our deck. [such as Hydroid Krasis (draw and wincon), Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner (draw and untaps things for mana), Selvala, Heart of the Wild (Draw and mana ramp).]

The Two Modes of Zaxara:

From my experience so far, I find there are really just 2 modes in which a Zaxara operate in. Infinite Mana Mode, and Other Mode.

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INFINITE MANA MODE: This one is easy. Tutor up Pemmin's Aura or Freed from the Real after you got Zaxara on the field, and you got infinite ANY COLOR mana. All you need is an X spell (practically any in this deck) and you can kill off an opponent (with a backup GIANT HYDRA as backup).

WinCon/Winning w Infinite Mana:

-Directly cast X spells that kill everyone/one person (Torment of Hailfire, Exsanguinate, Mind Grind, or my personal favourite Villainous Wealth, etc)

-Draw/Search your library for the card you need and cast it with your infinite mana (Stroke of Genius, Thassa's Intervention, Diabolic Revelation)

-Even cards that don't immediately look like wincons could definitely be! (Genesis Hydra your library, grab Simic Ascendancy and put counters on to win next turn). OR Finale of Devastation and grab Herald of Secret Streams for your new unblockable hydra to swing in for lethal, or grab Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and sac that hydra for every opponent to die. Green Sun's Zenith can only fetch Jarad, but can be used as ramp early on as well.

-X hydras aren't really great at this, as mentioned, you have to wait. But sometimes, you don't have an alternative.

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OTHER MODE: This mode is much less straight forward. We need to win by having the mana to cast these big spells, in a big enough way, where we are still deadly.

Winning in Others mode: -Its going to sound dumb, but fetch things to get to INFINITE MANA MODE. That is also why Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy\Nyxbloom Ancient + Basalt Monolith is there as backup in case both Pemmin's Aura and Freed from the Real is removed somehow, but this will only generate infinite colourless mana.

-Use Natural Order to fetch for Nyxbloom Ancient quickly. That can easily generate enough mana for your X spells to be deadly enough.

-Tutor, Tutor, Tutor. Do not be shy to spend 10 life or more Lim-Dul's Vault if its going to set you up to win. Intuition is a huge card in this deck. Fetch for Pemmin, Freed, Regrowth together if you need your infinite. Fetch for X spells if you got none. Or just simply grab your counter spells to ensure you'll get ur spells off xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Notable Cards:

  • Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is great value to this deck. Not only does it give extra mana, but it gives us an extra tutoring target in Basalt Monolith. Imagine if someone shut down enchantments... we would have no other infinite mana combos. Also, Birds of Paradise, or "any color" mana producers now become prime targets for going infinite mana with the Pemmin and Freed from Real. All without your commander

  • Intuition is a sure fire way to get atleast one of our infinite mana enchantments. Grabbing Pemmin's Aura, Freed from the Real, and Noxious Revival. Anything they choose, and you can get what you want.

  • Doubling Season and Unbound Flourishing are just amazing value engines. You don't get a second hydra with Unbound since its just a copy and not a cast, but still amazing to get another spell. And if you summoned a Hydra, thats even higher value.

  • The reason Simic Ascendancy is here instead of Helix Pinnacle is because of how it synergizes with Zaxara. If Simic Ascendancy is out, any X spell will create counters on it due to how Zaxara works. And if you were casting a hydra and/or you have Doubling Season or Unbound Flourishing out as well, its 1-2 spells max and you have won. Eg: With Doubling Season, just cast a X=3 Hydra, you got 18 counters. (6 on original hydra, 2x hydra token each with 6). Even if just cast a non-Hydra X=5 spells, thats 2 hydra tokens witih 10 +1/+1 each.

  • Diabolic Revelation was something that I, at first, just ignored. X3BB seemed too steep of a cost right off the bat. But once I tested it, I had to keep it. It obviously works great if your in infinite mana mode, as it operates as a draw-your-whole-deck and cast card. But when you're in other mode, this card can fetch everything you need to win. Got an artifact/enchantment problem? get Beast Within. Think your infinite mana enchantments will get rekt? Grab Kinnnan/Basalt as a backup. Better yet, grab Arcane Denial to gurantee your spell resolves. When you can grab multiple cards to ensure you can win next turn, or at least deal with your immediate threats, its a win. X spell is just a bonus

Notable Exclusions:

  • Finale of Revelation I actually am debating between this card and Genesis Hydra. But Genesis gives me an extra body, and can be casted in non infinite blue mana cases.

  • Black Sun's Zenith This card actually nullifies any advantage that Zaxara gives. Your Hydra's appear on cast, so when black sun resolves.. you just killed your hydra token. Giving you a net of nothing. If you want creature removal, go with Mass Manipulation.

  • Hooded Hydra, Hungering Hydra, Vastwood Hydra are too slow! Sure, they are resilient, and they are X spells, but sitting there waiting a turn is not ideal for this deck, especially if they can be chump blocked. But wait! You put in Hydroid Krasis, Mistcutter Hydra and Voracious Hydra, aren't you being a hypocrite? Well, they all serve an alternate purpose, such as card draw, haste to win the same turn, and fighting to remove things. Also, have you ever had the awesome situation of Unbound Flourishing and Doubling Season while casting Voracious Hydra in a non infinite mana mode? Its orgasmic :P

  • Gargos, Vicious Watcher is actually my old commander. It is an amazing card, but you have to basically build around him to be useful. I only have 6 hydras in here, so it isn't critical mass for us to put him in. Also, the fight ability is completely wasted if we don't build around it.

  • Doubling Cube is generally too slow. By the time you have enough mana to make it useful, you should instead close to infinite mana mode. Also, a completely useless card once you go infinite

  • Theres probably some land optimization I need to do. But Cabal Coffers is only useful if we fetch it along with Urbog. But I don't find that happens consistent enough for it to matter.

  • Corpsejack Menace\Branching Evolution are cards I had considered, but doubling +1/+1 on blockable hydra tokens is not that great.

  • Rhonas the Indomitable was hard to cut. It was cheap to fetch, durable, deathtouch, works well with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, Ilysian Caryatid, and could give all those BIG Hydra tokens trample. BUT it couldn't finish all opponents off. Its up to you if you want him or Jarad in the deck.

PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT AND I WILL DEFINITELY REPLY. ALWAYS GOOD TO EXAMINE AND EXPLORE EVERYONE'S QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS!

Suggestions

Updates Add

July 3 2020 update:

Replaced Stonecoil Serpent with Animist's Awakening: Firstoff, Stonecoil Serpent is an amazing card for just X and no colour restrictions. Its got trample and alot of good keywords. Removing it almost hurts my heart. However... I found that his usefulness is restricted to "when I have enough mana", doesnt have enough evasion, and feels really shitty when your casting it for X=3-5. Whereas Animist's Awakening, we can ramp and offers us more option. If you read above, I am not a fan of single function big X creatures...

Replaced Negate with Fierce Guardianship: If you recall, I mentioned that if you don't have infinite mana going for you, you pretty much have to COMMIT with this deck. AKA, pretty much tap out alot of times. This leaves us vulnerable. Fierce Guardianship offers us a no mana counterspell and surprised our opponent when we're tapped out.

Replaced a Forest with Verdant Catacombs: Just some mana fixing.

Cards under consideration as of July 3:

Garruk's Uprising: Card draw is a weakness in this deck, and this thing offers us a chance to draw cards whether we are early or late in the mana ramping stage. (ie. if we already have big creatures out.. it still draws u a card on the turn it comes in.). PLUS giving all our hydra token trample is a big deal!!! STRONGLY CONSIDERING

Branching Evolution - every hydra token is now double in power/defense? Kinda like corpsejack....pass for now

Deadly Rollick - no mana spell for a commitment deck.... again worth considering

June 9 2020 update:

Replaced Mass Manipulation with Blue Sun's Zenith Replaced Split Decision with Delay

May 31 2020 update:

Replaced Demonic Consultation because of the "6 card risk". We lose automatically if we accidentally removed the card we want in the 1st 6 cards. Also realized that we didn't have enough removal, so Oko, Thief of Crowns was put in. Most enemy commanders are quite low power, and changing them to an elk permanently without removing it from the battlefield can be really effective

May 25 2020 update:

Rejigged lands: took out Waterlogged Grove and put in Watery Grave. Underground Sea also works if you have the $.

May 9th 2020 update:

Replaced Condescend with Pact of Negation Replaced Power Sink with Tainted Pact

This deck has to commit, or risk wasting turns. If we don't commit, our opponents will either guess we don't have a play, or know we are saving mana for counter spells.

Adding Pact of Negation as a free counterspell allows us to protect our big spells when we cast them (and commit to them fully). But also allows us to catch our opponents offguard when they assume we are defenseless with our tapped out status. Use only to stop opponent wincons/lockdown, or to defend our own. Precious weapon that must be used only when desparate.

Tainted Pact should theortecially be used with with Thassa's Oracle. But TO on its own isn't very useful without INFINITE MANA mode. This is an extra tutor for us to get to our critical card

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Casual

99% Competitive

Top Ranked
Date added 3 years
Last updated 1 week
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

19 - 0 Mythic Rares

50 - 4 Rares

12 - 2 Uncommons

12 - 2 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.38
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Food, Forest Dryad 1/1 G, Hydra 0/0 G
Folders EDH Inspiration
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