Durdling Your Way to Victory - 5 Competitive Durdle Decks for C16.

Commander Deck Help forum

Posted on Nov. 6, 2016, 9:09 a.m. by HansonWK

I was bullied as a child, so now I make up for it by making people suffer playing EDH. I like to build combo decks with complicated engines to draw your deck and win - but only after taking 10+ minutes that turn to assemble all the moving pieces.

I set out to build competitive durdle decks for all the new 4 colour commanders - but I wanted to make each one also feel unique. 4 of the decks have complicated engines to dig through your deck and generate mana to try to win in one big turn (or many consecutive turns ;) )

These decks range from fairly competitive to very competitive (and from very expensive to, well, very expensive) and have been tested against other competitive decks. They can all hold their own in most games, though will be need to tuned to a more cut-throat meta to fight through whatever hate you are expecting, and there are probably better ways to build some for the most cut-throat metas.

Something to remember while playing them is that mulligening is incredibly important. A hand of 7 with no card draw will be much slower than a hand of 5 with some engine pieces, or a draw 7. Most of these decks contain multiple draw 7's, or powerful card draw like Skullclamp, so you can keep mulling to try to find them and not worry that you only started with 5 cards.

If anyone has suggestions, please let me know in comments. I've spent the last week tuning these decks, but often when I felt they were good enough instead of tuning them the last 5% of the way, I moved onto the next one. For the most part, I need to find out which cards are non-essential, or how many engine pieces I can removed to fit in more permission and removal. There are also plenty of other combo's that could be included but simply aren't needed - like Intuition + Unburial Rites in the Breya deck. One or more of the combo pieces will be weak in the deck, and the deck is strong enough without the otherwise dead cards to win. The final 5% of tuning takes a lot of time, and a lot of games. I've tried to suggest some things I was thinking of testing for each one, but havn't had time to do yet.

Remember, when suggesting additions, always try to suggest cuts too, as the answer to why havn't you included this is often going to be because there isn't room.

And while I have been testing these over the last week, I did this write up all in one sitting so please let me know if I have gotten anything wrong, or if anything isn't clear.

Introducing the 5 competitive durdle decks, in no particular order.

card:Jeskai Ascendency, mana dorks, and spells. Cast a spell, loot, untap your dorks, make more mana, cast another spell and continue until you find a route to victory!

The durdle comes from playing spell and untapping and tapping for mana and keeping track of the mana and how big each creature is, figuring out what to discard, what to play. Turns can easily take 20 minutes and 20 dice before you find way to win.

Huge Creatures! Ascendency also gives your creatures +1/+1 each time you untap, so you'll often just be able to alfa strike to kill your opponents (or at least some of them)Laboratory Maniac + Looting through your deck, and finishing it with a big Stroke of Genius. You can make a lot of mana quickly with this deck, and Lab Maniac is a great way to finish the game after you've cycled through most of it.Grapeshot + Regrowth/Flashback effects.Infinite Storm/Mana with Isochron Scepter/Dramatic reversal and win with Stroke or Grapeshot.

Turns 1-3 you want to be casting your mana dorks and sculpting your hand, trying to find that Ascendcy. Make sure you don't just run the Ascendency out there without ways to protect it, often times you'll want to wait and cast it and win on the same turn. Around turn 4/5, cast Ascendcy and a cheap cantrip to get the ball rolling. Then just keep drawing cards and generating mana until you can find a way to win!We have ways to give the mana dorks haste (Fires of Yavimaya/Anger) or suedo-haste (Lightning Greaves/Thousand-Year Elixir) and a lot of card filtering in the form of looters, and well, any non-creature spell cast after Ascendency!There's some neat tricks involving Sensei's Divining Top which can really help you filter through your deck and up your storm count if you have lots of mana. Sprout Swarm can also go infinite very easily with Convoke to loot through your deck and make huge creatures. You can also go infinite with Capsize if you can make 4UU!I havn't even mentioned Kynaios and Tiro yet! These guys don't actually combo with the rest of the deck, but they do provide a lot of value, and not just the colours. They draw you cards and ramp you up, letting you get to the key turn a lot quicker. Sometimes you won't need them, but I find most game I cast them on turn 3, draw a card and play a land, then try to win turn 4. They also turn Bloom Tender on for 4 mana on their own.This deck does rely quite heavily on Jeskai Ascendency (though it is possible to win without, it's quite hard). Use your card draw and tutors early to try to find it, and use your permission to make sure it resolves and doesn't get destroyed! You'll often want to wait and win the turn you cast Ascendency.

It goldfishes very well, winning turn 4-5 very easily. It does have it's drawbacks though. First, there are a few cards that stop your mana dorks from working like Linvala, which are really brutal against the deck. It also is heavily reliant on one card - if that gets exiled it may be hard to win. You can still just play this like any other storm deck, chaining draw 7's together until you piece together enough to combo out or kill people with grapeshot (often times after getting it back with regrowth then flashing it back a third time). The other problem is while you get more value out of your commander than your opponents, in competitive games, giving your opponent cards isn't always a great idea. Luckily though, with so many mana dorks, this deck doesn't fold to cards like MLD or Winter Orb like a lot of other combo decks do.

It would be nice to be able to find more room in this deck for permission and removal. There are a few cards we lose to, or that slow us down considerably, so we need answers for those cards. We need to find out what the correct number of dorks to play is to be consistently able to win, while not having too many slots taken up by them. There's also plenty of other mana dorks that we could use, we might not have the most optimal ones right now! Another obvious thing to test are the cantrips we are using. Maybe more card advantage and not just filtering is needed, by using things like Fact or Fiction, or stronger filtering like Impulse. I'm also testing changing one of Three Visits/Nature's Lore to Explore as it's better on the combo turn, and can be great if you drop a Cradle.

Rally the Ancestors: If you run your mana dorks out too early and get hit by a wrath, or just discard them to Ascendency/Wheel of Fortune/Looters, Rally the Ancestors can be a huge help to get them all back, but make sure you are going to try to win that turn.Sprout Swarm: This can go infinite with Ascendency really easily, which you can then use to loot through your whole deck to find kill spell.card:Isocron Scepter: This goes infinite with Dramatic Reversal, which is a fantastic card in the deck anyway. With so much looting and draw 7's, even if it's dead sometimes without Reversal, it's not too much of a hinderence. Plus putting a tutor or counter under here can help you out.card:Azami, Lady of the Scrolls: She's expensive, but drawing a card every time you cast a non-creature spell is worth the cost, and there's a few other wizards making it more than worth it if you are drawing 2.Skullclamp: a complete nonbo with Ascendency, but this can be used on your manadork in the early game to draw into Ascendency or a tutor. With so many 1 toughness creatures, and with card advantage being so important in this deck, skullclamp fits in even if it's a dead draw the turn you combo.card:Fatesticher: deserves a special mention because most people don't realise he can also tap permanents, meaning you can alphastrike through blockers. You are also happy to loot him away and unearth him for cheap, making him one of the better mana dorks.

Benefactor's Draught: double untaps and a cantrip, but we often have enough mana already. It is, however, a good way to fuel card draw BEFORE you find ascendancy, which is why it is still there.

This deck has heavy colour requirements, and enough mana dorks that Sol Ring and Mana Crypt aren't even very good here!card:Mizzux Mastery - another card I tested, but ultimately swapped for Praetors Concil. Maybe we can find room in the deck for both.Earthcraft - Basically every creature already has a tap ability, and most of those are for mana. I tried a version with more tokens through Young Pyromancer, card:Monestry Mentor, and Talrand, but found that it was slower, and you still need all the mana dorks to make sure you can combo out turn 4/5 so they were taking space of spells and permision. You also then become reliant on two enchantments to combo off, but it does still give you a win condition through token swarm if Ascendency gets exiled.card:Monestry Mentor - This is the only token maker that I wanted to keep in, as it provides a decent win condition without Ascendcy, especially if you can give your creatures haste. You'll sometimes cast a draw 7 mid combo giving your opponent enchantment removal stopping you mid turn, but with a Mentor out, you might already have enough power to get there.Viridian Joiner - Similar role to Selvala, but worse when played mid-combo, and worse without Ascendancy. I would like to fit this mana dork in, and my cut Rattleclaw Mystic for it, though Rattleclaw's fixing is fantastic. Gyre Sage is similar, but often even wrose then Joiner.
Take an extra turn. Then another. Then another. Then flashback a timewarp for another. Then E.Wit to get one back. Then Eldrazi Displacer the E.wit for infinite turns.

The durdle comes from taking turn after turn, not quite being infinite, and not quite ulting a planeswalker, so no one concedes, hoping your turns run out before you win, then BOOM combo out or ult a walker and win anyway.

Ultimate Planeswalkers! We play a bunch of planeswalkers which provide incrimental advantage, with the gameplan of taking enough turns to ult one or more.Infinite turns! There's combo's with card:Eldrazi Displayer, Tamyio Ult, and Venser for for infinite turns with a Time Warp and E.Wit. Utiliazing Atraxa's proliferate trigger can get us to ult range much faster.The Chain Veil! Untap 5 mana and this with planeswalkers (Teferi/Tezzeret) and you can get infinite planeswalker activations/mana. 4 Mana for infinite acitvations with Tezz or Tezz + Garruk, and a few activations with Teferi, as his untap is a - ability, he will eventually run out of activations on his own.

This is a control deck at the heart of it, and the first few turns should be played like one, with a little bit of ramp and hand sculpting, but keeping mana open for permission and removal as needed. We then try to resolve planeswalker or two and let the extra turns commence, trying to land Atraxa when we can, while digging for time warps and ways to rebuy them. We then chain turns together until we can win!

Deepglow Skate and Doubling Season both help ult faster, idealy the turn you play a 'walker.

Making a durdle deck with Atraxa presented a problem - her biggest asset is her end of turn trigger, but we wanted long durdly turns! Well what if instead of one long turn before victory, we just took 10 subsequent ones!This deck is also very land light, we really need to get a source of card advantage early.

As is, this will probably win a lot in a '75%' meta, the control elements will stop fast combo, and give you enough time to set up. In cut throat meta's, this deck is probably too slow. The average CMC is quite a lot higher than most cut throat decks. You can steal wins by ramping into Doubling Season + Planeswalkers, especially off the back of Mana Drain, but over all a stax/superfriends hybrid is probably stronger. You won't be winning through combo, but instead grinding out with Smokestax + Token making planeswalkers or slowing the game with Static Orb and Winter Orb, but those cards don't work well with extra turn effects. I still feel this deck will be able to compete in most meta's, and it's oh so satisfying spending 10 minutes having 5 turns only to ult a few planeswalkers to win.

'Counter' mana rocks - Pentad Prism, Astral Cornucopia, and Everflowing Chalice - these are all fantastic with proliferate, and reasonable in their own right, so we play them for the sweet syngergy.Mana dorks - The 1 cmc mana dorks may look out of place at first, but if you play with them you will see how important they are. They all provide ramp, but more importantly fixing, on turn 1, which is very important in 4 colour decks.card:Magistrate Scepter: While the first counter on here is pretty expensive at 3 + 4 mana, you can use Atraxa and your other Time Warps to get the counter up quite quickly, often getting you an extra turn when you run out of other ways to cast time warps, giving you time to find another one.Contagion Engine: This kills mana dorks and hatebears, while letting you pump your walkers loyalty up, or get your counter-mana rocks much higher.

Avacyn's Pilgrim - Only taps for W, unlike the other 1 cmc mana dorks, this is the weakest of the bunch.Temporal Trespass - The weakest Time Warp, but still strong, especially late game when it can be cast for UUU. Bad against graveyard hate, but so are out infinite turn combo's, so things like Rest in Peace are already destroy on sight.Contagion Engine - Very slow, but killing small creatures makes this borderline playable.

card:Inexorable Tides - This was in the first few drafts of the deck, but was ultimately deemed too slow. You never want to tap out for it, and it we don't cast enough spells for it to be high enough impact. Very good on paper, quite weak in practice. This was replaced by Contagion Engine.Deadeye Navigator - Eldrazi Diplacer comes down earlier, though costs 1 more to activate. I don't think both are needed, and I'd rather have the cheaper creature.X Planeswalker - there are plenty of other planeswalker that are worthy of inclusion, but I found this to be enough to get going, and would rather have control cards in the other slots.Necropotence - Getting BBB early is quite hard, especially without things like Dark Ritual.
X/1's + Skullclamp, mana dorks with haste or Earthcraft to generate mana to dig through to find a win condition.

The durdle comes from figuring out who to clamp and when, if you should get them back with your recursion, how to keep the chain going and making mana, and when to tutor cards that help keep going like lotus cobra, or that help piece together the combo. Long turns with lots of thinking, lots of sacrificing, and lots of recursion.

Boonweaver Combo - Boonweaver Giant get's Pattern of Rebirth, then you sac him and pattern gets Karmic Guide which gets Boonweaver getting Pattern which you sac for Saffi, sac Saffi targeting Karmic Guide, sac Guide which returns getting Boonweaver, sac Boonweaver getting card:Reveilark which you sac for a loop! Lots of sacing and returning.Craterhoof Behemoth Alpha Strike - Just play all your creatures then Craterhoof and alpha stroke. You can sometimes sac Craterhoof and reanimate him to double up on triggers, and other nifty tricks.card:Purpheros, God of the Forge - Chain this with any recursion loop, or just casting enough creatures over the course of a turn. You can loop E.Wit with Faith's Reward/Living Death and a sac outlet and hastey mana dorks for infinite damage too.

Sakia doesn't really lend himself to combo decks, but what he does provide is a way to win the games you don't quite combo out, especially when combined with Craterhoof to kill one player and have the Saskia trigger kill the second.So how do you build a durdle combo deck with a commander who doesn't really combo, but still feels like part of the deck? Well since the commander cares about combat damage, we obviously need a lot of creatures. And if we have a lot of creatures, well why not a skullclamp combo deck!

This Saskia deck utilizes a lot of 1 toughness creatures to try to draw through you deck to find out creatures to draw more or just combo off. You're early turns will be spent casting mana dorks and finding Skullclamp. Around turn 4, you'll be wanting to clamp them up, draw some cards, find Gaea's Cradle or some other way to generate more mana like haste enablers or Earthcraft, keep clamping up, and find a combo (of which there are plenty), or some recursion.

Some games will end up with you chaining a bunch of mana dorks together, getting them back with Rally the Ancestors/Faith's Reward/Living Death and fuelling a huge Genesis Wave, or just casting dorks, drawing cards, and overrunning with Craterhoof Behemoth. The craterhoof games are where you want our friend Saskia to help you kill multiple opponents at once. Anger and Lightning Greaves let you tap your dorks for mana, and Earthcraft bypasses the need (but requires basics)

Some things to note - try to search out at least a basic Forest and ideally a basic swamp too, before your skullclamp turn in case you draw into Earthcraft. Earthcraft will often be the difference between losing to bad draws and having everything you need to get through your deck.

This deck folds hard to cards like Linvala. We need to find a way to include more removal for problem cards like her, or artifacts with similar effects. Rest In Peace is also a huge problem turning off our skullclamp engine.

This deck could just be better by focusing on turors and hatebears over a skullclamp engine, but where would the fun in that be! It's a sad fact that most engine decks could be improved by turning their unique engines into normal card draw and tutors for your combo's instead of chaining together your engine pieces. Removing the cuter engine pieces (greaves, rally, faith's reward, living death, G.Wave) and having less of a focus on the skullclamp aspect and playing more tutors, reanimation and hatebears would make a strong deck, but remove most of the durdle we love this version for.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking: While skullclamping your way through you're deck, you'll end up with a hand with a bunch of land. Azusa helps utilize this, especially when combined with Lotus Cobra. You can often make a bunch of mana to help fuel a big Genesis Wave. Azusa replaced Cadaverous Bloom in the initial build of the deck.Bloodghast: May look odd at first, but a recurring skullclamp combo can help you out of some tight spots when combined with fetch lands to get lots of draws in one turn.Buried Alive: Early game this can get you Anger + Bloodghast + a Reanimate target, late game just get combo pieces.Grim Haruspex: If skullclamp gets exiled, you can often use this guy + a sac outlet as your draw engine, and with Skullclamp, it get's pretty silly.Genesis Wave: Often you will have no problem making a bunch of mana, but may need a mana sink. A G.Wave for 6+ will often find you enough resources to go on to win the game that turn, especially if you have something like Lotus Cobra out to generate mana from any land drops. Remember a G.Wave has to be 7+ to get Boonweaver though.

Most of the weak cards are x/1's meaning they are needed to keep digging. card:Weathered Wayfairer is weak after the first few turns, card:Aprentice Necromancer is weak in some games, but can be game winning in others.And sadly, our commander. Perhaps if not for the challenge, it would be better to find two partners in these colours to helm the deck.

This is another deck with heavy colour requirements where Sol Ring and Mana Crypt don't bring enough to the table. This deck has no problem making lots of mana turn 3-5, so the slot is better used on something that brings more to the skullclamp engine.Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Splinter Twin - Both in initial builds of the deck, but cut eventually. Kiki-Jiki wins the same way Reveilark/Karmic Guide does, but while being much hard to cast. I found in testing I never tutored for Kiki, and rarely tried to win with him. Splinter Twin is another Boonweaver target to win on the spot, but when Pattern also wins the game, you never need to go for Splinter Twin, as twin requires haste.
Casts a bunch of cheap artifacts that either draw a card themselves, or draw cards with Riddlesmith/Vedalken Archmage. Sac them for mana to card:Krak-Clan Ironworks and get them all back with Faith's Reward, Second Sunrise, or Scrap Mastery, drawing more cards to try to find more recursion.

The durdle comes from trying to dig through your deck with cantrip after cantrip and recurring them trying to dig further through your deck until you can find a way to win.

Breya. Breya is an infinite mana sink that wins the game through draining all your opponents lives. What this means, is any infinite mana combo + Breya wins the game. There are plenty to choose from in her colours, some people opting for Worldgorger Dragon or Power Artifact combo's, but I want to take my time with my food, so I chose Bomberman combo in an Eggs shell, and Scepter/Reversal. Auriok Salvagers and Lion's Eye Diamond makes infinite mana and storm, and you then win with Breya.Infinite Mana + Stroke of Genius or Infinite Recursion + Pyrite Spellbomb. These are both generally supported by the same loop, by saccing and recurring artifacts for storm and mana until you find a kill spell.card:Aetherflux Resevoir - You can get quite a lot of life quite quickly, so you can use Resevoir to kill your opponents. I have sometimes reached just over 50 life, and then killed a control player when they try to counter one of our recursion spells - They lose the game, their counter is removed from the stack, and we are free to continue to kill everyone else!

We first start by just casting mana rocks, and artifacts that cycle. We want to get through our deck to Krark-Clan Ironworks as fast as possible. From there, try to get discounts on your artifacts as you cast more and cycle more, sac artifacts for mana to cast more artifacts, recur them all drawing more cards and keep going through your deck.

There's some neat tricks like Ghost Quartering your own lands before a Second Sunrise to get a basic, and recur GQ and your other land, or even just wastelanding your own land for help with fixing when they both return, or just to kill your opponents lands. Inventors' Fair/Cephalid Coliseum are much easier to understand their tricks, but remember you can strip/waste them to get them to return untapped after a recursion spell if you need them.

Once we get our engine going we are looking to assemble is either a loop with one of Scrap Mastery/Second Sunrise/Faith's Reward and Codex Shredder, or to get Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond to make infinite mana, or Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal. Sometimes you'll just cast enough spells with an Aetherflux Resevoir up to gain enough life to kill a table, especially when combined with Hurkyl's Recall and Paradoxical Outcome.

You'll notice I included Scepter/Reversal in a few of these decks, but this deck is where it is best. You can use Isochron Scepter to imprint a counterspell or tutor to save it before wheeling, then later if you draw Dramatic Reversal you can sac the Scepter and bring it back imprinting Reversal for the combo. Being able to reset the Scepter makes it very powerful.

There is also the combo of Intuition into Auriok Salvagers, LED and Unburial Rites, no matter what they give, you should assemble the combo.

This is probably the hardest of the decks to play optimally. There are plenty of tricks involved, and figuring the right line of play, what to tutor, what to sac and fetch with Transmute Artifact, and how to make the most mana and card draw before Faith's Rewarding everything back. There are plenty tricks involving lands and sacing permanents that are easy to overlook. The deck folds to artifact hate, but the permission included as well as Aura of Silence and card:Fragmatize can help deal with things like Stony Silence. Like any draw 7 deck, you need to be careful about giving your opponents new hands as they may draw into permission themselves - but that's what Silence is for.

Another deck where the engine of eggs could be better just normal draw spells and tutors, maybe with the addition of Doomsday or Worldgorger Dragon combo instead. These changes make the deck into a streamlined combo deck and not an engine deck though. There could also be some changes made to the rocks and eggs included, but testing which ones currently included aren't worth it, and which to be added are will take a long time.

Pyrite Spellbomb: I meantioned you can use it as a kill spell, but why would you when you have Breya? Well first, this gets around Humility. Second, you generally don't. You use it early for card draw and to kill mana dorks. Stroke is similar, where while it can be a skill spell, its normally just for mass card draw.Transmute Artifact: There are lots of tricks involving which artifacts to sac and which to fetch and which times. This is a very powerful, but very complicated card in this deck.Aura of Silence: Slows your opponents down and can kill any enchantment stopping you combo, while coming back with our loop combo's.Rain of Filth: A cheap way to sac your lands for value, which will then come back untapped to Second Sunrise/Faith's RewardNim Deathmantle: Goes infinite with Breya and Krark-Clan Ironworks. There's also some tricks using this and Snapcaster Mage + Pyrate Spellbomb during your loops, but it's pretty mana intensive.

Vedalken Archmage is pretty clunky sometimes, but the card advantage provided can help ensure you don't fizzle, especially after getting a bad 7 off a twister/wheel.Semblance Anvil - Sometimes stuck deciding whether you need a rock to use as a cantrip or to exile for a discount, and choosing the wrong option could lead you to fizzle. The discount provided is pretty strong, but I keep swaping this in and out for Foundry InspectorBasalt Monolith - one of the weaker rocks as it costs 3 and taps for 3, but worth it whenever we have a discount on the table, and obviously great when sac'ed and recurred.Ichor Wellspring. Pretty bad without Krark-Clan Ironworks, but great during the combo. Slightly worse than the black puzzleknot without recursion, but much stronger with it.

Tendrils of Agony - When you have high enough storm, its generally because you have found a loop, in which case you likely also have infinite mana, so you can just win with Breya. In some decks, a short tendrils for life is good, especially when combined with card:Ad Nauseum, but we don't really need it here.Past in Flames and Yawgmoth's Will. Yawgmoth's Will doesn't work with our loops involving sacrificing and returning artifacts, or with the LED/Salvager's combo. Past in Flames is a fantastic card, but you generally don't need it to combo off.Sword of the Meek/Thopter Foundry - I found these weren't needed in the deck, even if they do go infinite with Krak Clan Ironworks.Kuldotha Forgemaster and Metalworker - Both require haste to be useful on the combo turn, and to work with our recursion loops, so neither are really worth including.
Cast High Tide, chain together draw 7's with rituals and mana rocks in between, untap some lands and tap them again and draw more cards and make more mana and cast more spells. Oh, and every time you cast a spell you get another (cheaper) free?

The durdle comes from your turns take 10 times longer from all the cascading into spells and drawing and shuffling and cascading and drawing and making mana and untapping lands and keeping track of your storm count and figuring out how to put people out their misssery - or how to keep it going longer.

Tendrils - Infinite (or very high) storm is very easy to achieve with this deck, either through Dramatic reversal/Isochron Scepter, or 2 high tides, Snap and Eternal Witness, or just super high from chaining draw 7's together over and over.Laboratory Maniac - You can easily draw your deck, especially when you are cascading over and over again, eventually you can just draw 10 cards with your leftover mana and win with Lab Man.Stroke of Genius - You can make infinite, or just huge amounts, of mana very easily with High Tide. You can then make an opponent draw their deck, get it back with E.wit and do it to the next opponent. The past in flames to do it to a third!

The early turns you want to get islands and ramp out. Turn 3 is the aim for resolving Yidris (though sometimes you won't even need him) then turn 4/5 you start trying to combo out. Cast your rituals or rocks and see what you cascade into, reassess your hand, draw more cards and make more mana, and try to find a line that wins you the game. Ideally you want 3 islands out when you start storming, and you can always fetch another with Three Visits mid combo if you don't have Breeding Pool/Tropical Island out yet.

This deck also contains the Scepter/Reversal combo as a simple way for infinite storm and mana, for those games you don't really want to play out. You can also go infinite with Snap/Eternal Witness after casting High Tide twice (surprisingly easy to do).

If you ever get to connect with your commander, you basically win, and if your opponents are using all their resources to stop that happening, you can often just win anyway when they've run out of permission. The addition of mana dorks helps make the heavy mana cost of your commander, but also opens you up to wraths, and are dead cards mid-storm without anger in the graveyard.

Grixis storm was already a top tier deck, the addition of green just makes it better. The 2 mana dorks are sometimes questionable mid combo, and Seize the Day could be seen as wasted slots. Wanting to cast our 4 colour commander is sometimes at odds with wanting lots of islands too, meaning your high tide may be underwhelming at times if you don't also have cascade that turn.

This list could really run Doomsday. It wouldn't take too much more to include it, you just need Gush (not great with High Tide, but fantstic if you have cascade that turn) and something like Gitaxian Probe. Personally though, I would rather play with my food and run pure storm without Doomsday, even if it does let you win easier without your commander.

Waste Not: With all the wheels, waste not can generate a bunch of mana and card advantage on your combo turn.card:Ancestral Visions/Wheel of Fate: Visions is great on turn 1, both are fantastic to cascade into.Seize the Day: While cascading once per spell is normally enough to make sure you win the game, double cascade basically ensures your turns take twice as long, and you never fizzle. And 3 times? Well everyone normally just concedes.Entomb: Included to make the most of Anger, but also good with Snapcaster/Past in Flames etc. Anger is honestly pretty weak though, but with 4 mana dorks, it may be necessary.

Arbor Elf is pretty decent at helping cast our commander, and great with high tide, but not fantstic when you find him mid combo. Still worth including to hit out commander t3 most games. I had a list with Anger/Greaves and some more dorks to begin with, and this is the only one I'm still playing. I found you rarely would win the turn you cast Yidris, even with haste, as you often wouldn't be able to cascade into enough to start your engine, so ultimately cut the haste package including mana dorks.Gruul Signet - I preffer the Talismans, and am still running two non-blue signets to help with mana fixing, but may gut Gruul signet as we have a r/g talisman.

Lotus Bloom: Generally found it wasn't needed, and if you draw it anytime but turn 1, it's a lot weaker. With so many other mana rocks, I wanted more of a chance to cascade into Wheel of Fate and Visions when casting 1 cmc spells. This is one I am seriously testing but pretty confidant I don't need it. It is a must if you are including Doomsday, as cascading into it after doomsday can lead to a lot of strong Doomsday piles.Doomsday: Doomsday is obviously fantastic and can lead to some very fast win. I just prefer to take my time and win after 20 minutes turns. Especially is in order to include it without diluting the deck, there's only a handful of piles you can make (all including lab man) or you have to add in a bunch of cards that otherwise don't work well with the deck. The addition of Doomsday could improve it, but it doesn't come without drawbacks.Carpet of Flowers: Definitely worth including in a heavy blue meta, and may eventually make it's way in here, but I didn't find I needed it, and had a few games where even against blue opponents it didn't make enough mana to be included.Necropotence: Probably the strangest card to not be playing, but BBB early and Islands for High Tide are at odds with each other. We also want to cast Yirdis turn 3 and win turn 4, so Necro would need to be aimed at landing turn 2, very hard for this deck. Non-high tide decks obviously want it though. Maybe Sylvan Library would be a worthy inclusion instead?

Omeros says... #2

You sound like you'd enjoy playing an Eggs list with Breya as commander. For an idea of what the deck looks like, look for current Sydri or Sharuum Eggs decks. You don't want much from red, just Wheel of Fortune, the red artifact land, Pyrite Spellbomb, and any RW or UR dual lands you have. Any other red cards added will be personal flavor choices.

November 7, 2016 8:43 a.m.

HansonWK says... #3

Uhhhh, there's a link to my Breya eggs list in the post there! Scrap Mastery has also been great whenever I drew it, as far as red cards go.

November 7, 2016 12:46 p.m.

Omeros says... #4

Cut Necropotence for Future Sight. It's your easiest wincon with Top and any cost reduction.

I was using shorthand before to effectively suggest a bunch of cards at once rather than having to list them all.

November 7, 2016 1:29 p.m.

HansonWK says... #5

Except everything you said in your first post is already in the Breya list, so you clearly didn't look at it. I also have a lot of experience playing Esper eggs, there's a reason the list is Esper eggs with some red cards.Not cutting Necropotence. Necro is too strong, and lets you recover for poor starts, or excessive hate. I'v recently added Chain of Vapor too, and have Chain'd my own NecroWill look to cut something to test Future Sight, it's very slow though. Normally by the time you get it online you have found another way to win anyway. I cut it from my Esper list, and its even harder to cast here. to stop the exile when you discard clause few times now.

November 7, 2016 2:16 p.m.

HansonWK says... #6

Something went wrong with that comment, one sentence apeared halfway in between another! Was trying to say I've added Chain of Vapour as a way to bounce Necro on your combo turn to stop the discard clause hurting.

November 7, 2016 2:18 p.m.

Omeros says... #7

I was saying in the first post that if you wanted ideas for non-green four color Eggs to look at a Sydri or Sharuum list and then find room for the small number of red cards that would obviously not be present. That's all.

Necro IS strong but not playing Future Sight when it ensures you won't fizzle on your combo turn feels like an even bigger error. If you love necro, cut another card to make room? I suggested necro purely as the cleanest substitution possible - your one enchantment for one other enchantment.

November 7, 2016 3:41 p.m.

HansonWK says... #8

Right, and I'm saying you obviously hadn't looked at my list at all, or even read the post because that's basically exactly what it is, and your first post is worded in a way that makes it clear you didn't check it at all.

It's fine, thanks for the suggestion of Future Sight.

November 7, 2016 4:10 p.m.

zelian12 says... #9

I love the Eggs and Ascendancy decklists. I've tried building budget versions of both in the past. Those decks haven't been great, mainly because there's no good replacements for the fast mana.

I have a few questions about the Ascendancy deck. Why not use Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix and one of the boros partners as your general? She's a bit slower than other mana dorks but once she's out would produce absurd amounts of mana with ascendancy.

What do you think about the dual colored man lands? They seem slow but would provide redundancy and make the combo less weak to board wipes.

How often do you end up unable to find ascendancy? It seems like with only 3 tutors it would happen often unless you mulligan very aggressively.

November 9, 2016 12:29 p.m.

This discussion has been closed