NOT Tribal
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Nov. 30, 2020, 9:58 a.m. by Reznorboy
I came up with an idea for a deck, and after some research, realized that the deck was easily able to assemble a combo to win the game.
My question is: Should I focus on making the deck completely revolve around getting the combo as quickly as possible as consistently as possible, or should I have a high quantity of disruption to prevent my opponents from having their plans go through?
I know the answer is already, "It depends on the deck". However, maybe someone has a different opinion.
The deck has Horde of Notions as commander, with Jegantha, the Wellspring as a Companion.
The combo is to use Buried Alive to get Chakram Retriever, Bloodpyre Elemental, and Illuna, Apex of Wishes in grave. You will also want to tutor for Lightning Greaves and you will need at least one other Elemental (any Elemental) in your grave for the combo to work.
What you do is you get Jegantha from the Sideboard by paying, cast Jegantha, equip it with Lightning Greaves, tap it for mana, cast your commander Horde of Notions, either pass hoping nothing happens or have something like Dramatic Reversal, use Jegantha again and use Horde of Notions' ability to cast Chakram Retriever from grave. Then you just need to cast any spell (once) to finish them off. This untaps Jegantha, and now, because Horde of Notions CASTS the Elementals from grave, every time you use the Notions ability, you will get to untap Jegantha and just do it again.
Now you just revive Bloodpyre Elemental and the one other Elemental of any name, mutate Illuna, Apex of Wishes onto Bloodpyre, (the Horde allows you to mutate from grave because you're casting it, and therefore can pay the alternate cost), and Illuna does his thing once. Then you sacrifice Bloodpyre Elemental with Illuna mutated on, targeting the other elemental of any name to take the damage. If said elemental dies, revive it.
You can repeat the above, playing and sacrificing Illuna, Apex of Wishes until you hit Omnath, Locus of the Roil. Then you play him and kill him repeatedly with Bloodpyre Elemental, using Omnath's ETB to kill everyone else.
Convoluted, I know.
Anyway, I just wanted to know people's opinion on how viable a deck like this would be (the entire deck, as I envisioned, would be some tutors, some lands, the essential combo pieces, a few utility Elementals, and the rest of the deck ramp like Kodama's Reach, the deck being mostly Black (tutors) and Green (ramp)). Additionally, I would like to know what direction people think this deck should take.
I thought of this combo and thought that it was interesting/maybe useful enough to be worth sharing, so I posted it mostly for people's information/amusement.
Thank you for reading.
Hmmm.
I do like that the combo literally only requires your commander(s) and Buried Alive, basically turning one tutor and enough mana into a win.
However, I also like the innate synergy between Horde of Notions and Jegantha, the Wellspring, which generally works very well.
There's probably an optimal balance between "Toolbox Elemental Goodstuff" and "Hardcore Combo Deck" in terms of viability/power level, but it would almost definitely be more interesting for the opponents to just go Toolbox Elementals.
Anyway, thank you for your insight.
November 30, 2020 10:18 a.m.
I also just realized that Illuna, Apex of Wishes isn't necessary, you can potentially just tutor for Omnath, Locus of the Roil instead of him.
November 30, 2020 10:25 a.m.
SteelSentry says... #5
You can't mutate Illuna from the graveyard, unfortunately. Mutate is an alternate casting cost, and Horde of Notions' ability is also an alternate casting cost; the activated ability specificaly lets you pay and cast the target, it doesn't just give you the ability to cast it. Since only one alternate cost can be paid for a spell, and the graveyard access is tied to the cost, you can't also pay the cost to mutate.
November 30, 2020 11:36 a.m.
Thank you for the clarification. I sort of realized that after posting.
However, the combo overall still works if you use Buried Alive on Omnath, Locus of the Roil instead of Illuna, Apex of Wishes.
(You revive Omnath and use Bloodpyre Elemental to kill him repeatedly.)
(Yes, I should have checked to make sure before posting).
November 30, 2020 11:48 a.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #7
I think you'd need to ramp pretty hard for this deck to work--no Kodama's Reach, more along the lines of Harvest Season--and run basically every tutor available (which, to be fair is all of them in this deck)... only problem with that is most tutors are pretty high-costed, meaning you'll need more ramp: stuff like Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus. But I like the idea! By all means go for it!
November 30, 2020 12:16 p.m.
RNR_Gaming says... #8
Jeweled Lotus is awful in this circumstance due to your commander being so color intensive. Its basically a 60 dollar lotus Petal. Personally, this seems very hard to assemble and ideally you want cards that are both proactive and counter active. Things like Mana Drain that both counter a spell and give you a heap of generic mana are the types of spells you want to be running. It's an interesting combo. Maybe something like Hermit Druid would make it a bit more compact.
November 30, 2020 1:44 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #9
RNR_Gaming my fault was thinking of Jegantha, the Wellspring as the CMDR
November 30, 2020 2:13 p.m.
TriusMalarky says... #10
Sounds plausible. IMO, there's not much in elemental tribal that's all that great for edh. So it'd effectively be a 5-color interactive deck with a handful of ways to tutor out the entire combo.
Buried Alive, Congregation at Dawn, Hermit Druid with no basics(easy in a 5 color deck), and a couple other tools can help it out.
You should also go super heavy on green, and mana dorks. You'll also want a good number of 2-mana rocks, mostly talismans, Fellwar Stone and Arcane Signet.
Then, add some random high power draw engines. Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, Verity Circle are great. Just draw, draw, draw off them. Ramp, and hold up high power interaction.
November 30, 2020 3:24 p.m.
You're probably right.
I'm personally always very reluctant to run mana dorks, as from my experience, they always get blown up right away (not sure exactly who instilled this innate fear in me, now that I think about it.)
I generally agree with your sentiment, and for anyone else looking to build the deck, I think they should do that.
Unfortunately, I have a low budget however, and I am still uncertain as to how I would build it personally in a way that won't require sucking the entire budget into fetch/shock lands to get the colors to work. I think I will post my budget version when/if I finish.
November 30, 2020 4:54 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #12
Do note that Lightning Greaves is kinda awkward in this combo, Shroud prevents your Jegantha from being targeted by your Retreiver to untap it. Swiftfoot Boots will do the trick, but the Greaves need to be shuffled around all the time to be able to untap.
December 1, 2020 3:16 a.m.
TriusMalarky says... #13
plakjekaas but he would be able to move it to Horde in between:
Cast Jeggy
Equip Greaves to Jeggy
Tap him to cast Horde
Move Greaves to Horde
Cast untapper
Move greaves to Jeggy, tap him, and move them back to horde
cast something with horde
Move greaves to jeggy, tap him, and move them back to horde
It adds another step, but it works.
December 1, 2020 11:24 a.m.
Love It!
I feel like Maelstrom Wanderer & Averna, the Chaos Bloom would be fun with this deck.
Stopping your opponents is important but if you combo off first it doesn't really matter
so as you predicted lame answer it depends on your deck
if you CAN build it consistent to go off by turn 3 then do so
if you CAN'T then start finding ways to stop others to buy yourself time.
December 5, 2020 2:07 p.m.
My very first EDH deck was Jund tutors and revolved around Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combos.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that building a deck that just tutors out the same cards gets stale to play and stale to play against. I ended up dismantling my deck for the mana-base and built a new jund deck.
I'd advise against such deck building unless your play group is CEDH, where anything goes. Just my opinion, different people enjoy different things.
RiotRunner789 says... #2
I wouldn't try to build around the combo for the main reason of requiring several cards and a go around the board.
What I would recommend is having one or two tutors to help find the combo for when you already have a piece in hand. Also, just having a lot of good card draw might naturally, though not often, draw you into the combo.
I find winning by combo tends to be more fun for the pilot and less frustrating for your opponents when the combo is infrequent, especially if it is also convoluted.
November 30, 2020 10:11 a.m.