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This was the first EDH deck I ever built, although it has lived through many incarnations since then.

Zedruu is a politics-based control deck. This means that I aim to keep multiple opponents in check by pitting them against each other and nudging the scales until they're evenly matched, as opposed to the more traditional less interactive Stax or raw card advantage. Keeping my opponents at each other's throats through politics is challenging, but ultimately more rewarding to play even when I don't win. Note that I don't pull any of the normal Zedruu gimmicks of donating detrimental cards (with the exception of Illusions of Grandeur ) as my experience has been that players will retaliate and most of them aren't strong enough to be worth that.

The first challenge of a politics deck is to manipulate the game state such that your opponents feel incentivised to attack each other instead of you. I try to accomplish this here via a three pronged approach: pillowfort to make me a less appealing target, reactive removal to punish people who attack me, and rewards for following along with my plans.

The second challenge is making sure my opponents wear each other down more or less evenly. The ultimate goal of this deck is to make it to the last two surviving players with my opponent at as low a life total as possible. If one player gets out of hand early, Zedruu wants to be able to put a stop to it . Likewise if one player is struggling because of bad draws Zedruu loves to help them get back on their feet , even if it's only so they can help Zedruu by attacking other players.

When the game gets down to the last opponent (or if it's just dragging on too long) it's time to pull out all the stops. I can finish off a weakened opponent in a variety of ways, such as by stealing my opponent's creatures with Insurrection , Mob Rule , or Reins of Power , or I can mill someone out with Forced Fruition and Nin, the Pain Artist . Thanks to Laboratory Maniac , the person milled can even be myself. If I don't think I can win one of those ways, I can always cast Crescendo of War and watch the fireworks as someone else wins spectacularly (or unintentionally leaves an opening for me to win). Illusions of Grandeur occasionally nets me a win, but more often it softens someone up for a kill, eats up a removal spell, or forces someone to play defense for a couple turns while I set up some other plan.

Ultimately this deck is fairly easy to hate out of the game if an opponent chooses to do so. Winning with Zedruu relies on convincing my opponents that keeping me around is the strategically sound choice, either because I'm helping them stop their opponents' biggest threats or because taking me out would put them in a strategically disadvantageous position. Even though they know I have my own wincons waiting in the wings, the goal of this deck is to make them consider the risks and to manipulate the game so the risk assessment always falls in my favor.

I'm always looking for more cool cards to consider. Please leave suggestions, especially for political cards that can help or hurt my opponents depending on how they're used. Anything that does both is especially awesome, like Shieldmage Advocate .

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93% Casual

Competitive

Date added 8 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

2 - 0 Mythic Rares

47 - 0 Rares

27 - 0 Uncommons

11 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.09
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Elemental 1/1 R w/ Haste, Ogre 3/3 R, Spirit 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders ZD, immediate make, Zedruu, Zedruu, Interesting Deck Lists, Commander, EDH, yerr
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