Ghostly Flicker
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Dandan Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Judge's Tower Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Ghostly Flicker

Instant

Exile two target artifacts, creatures and/or lands you control, then return those cards to the battlefield under your control.

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

2 weeks ago

Sometimes when I'm deckbuilding, I focus less on the commander and more on an interesting concept/combo that I want to use or exploit. This is the case with one of my favorite decks in my profile and actually one of the first commander decks I ever built. This deck began years ago when Magic finally started caring about the EDH format. It was a more simple time then, Rhystic study was $1.27 (exactly the price I paid for mine over 10 years ago), Cyclonic Rift was a bulk rare, and demonic tutor could be found for $10.

The combo that I was interested in was Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator. The latter was my favorite card at the time and is still one of my favorites. It was a great tool and with all the ETB effects that were out around then it was an underrated and uber powerful card. In fact, the entire blink mechanic was and is a very powerful strategy.

When I built this deck, I played a few times in shops and was quickly told that edh is a casual format and interaction of any kind is not fair (was told this by a land destruction deck...) So this deck is definitely more on the competitive side, but it would be the distant fringe of cedh. Alright with that let's get into it.

Initial thoughts

So we have a combo that we like Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but we don't even have a commander yet and going mono-blue seems not great, so we want to figure out what color(s) to add and what commander to choose. In a combo deck, there are generally three things that I like to make sure I include beyond the normal ramp, and card draw. That is redundancy, the ability to tutor up my combo pieces, and ways to protect my combo. So when thinking about tutoring up my combo pieces, I generally like to have the best tutors. Those are in black. So things like Wishclaw Talisman, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal (if you have money to burn or your playgroup is fine with you proxying the best cards so you can obliterate their precons j/k I proxy all my expensive cards and put them in a binder in case someone has an issue).

So we have Blue and Black and we can certainly add another color if we wanted to, but at the time I liked Dralnu, Lich Lord because Snapcaster Mage was in standard and flashback was cool. So I stuck with it when I revamped it, but decided that I wanted something that could ensure I can protect my combo from any threat and then also use it to win if I wanted to. The answer came in the form of Ertai Resurrected. He can counter basically anything from spells to activated abilities (which will come in handy) or he can take a threat on the field at the cost of letting your opponent draw a card.

So now that we have our commander, how to build the deck?

Redundancy

Combo decks need redundancy. If you don't get your two cards or one of them gets exiled, you need a backup plan, or scooping is your only option. Fortunately, there are some great redundancies here. We have Ghostly Flicker and Displace. Both of these will blink your creatures (ghostly flicker will also blink artifacts). Displacer Kitten can be helpful too, but I don't own it and it is a little more chaotic than I need it to be. Palinchron is great because you can return it to your hand and potentially play it again and create infinite mana through the use of High Tide, but a similar combo that has added benefits is Peregrine Drake, Archaeomancer, and Ghostly Flicker. This bounces both the drake and the archaeomancer untapping 5 lands, and returning ghostly flicker to your hand. Rinse and repeat for infinite mana. Archaeomancer also will help in returning key counterspells and tutors to your hand. Nothing like doing double duty. Mnemonic Wall and Great Whale also fit here. The great thing about this combo is that each component is useful in and of itself. Bring out your Great Whale early untap some lands and do some other stuff or play out the rest of your combo with the untapped lands. Cast Archaeomancer to grab a used tutor for another combo piece.

One note here, if you get Peregrine Drake (or one of the other two) paired with Deadeye Navigator and you generate infinite mana you can now draw your deck with Ertai as commander: Step 1: Bounce Deadeye, when he enters don't soulbond with anyone.
Step 2: Cast Ertai, don't choose anything or if you want kill one of your opponent's creatures. It doesn't matter.
Step 3: Soulbond ertai and deadeye. Step 4: Bounce Deadeye and while that is on the stack bounce Ertai. Step 5: Ertai enters the battlefield counter the Deadeye bounce on the stack Draw a card Step 6: Soulbond ertai and deadeye again rinse and repeat. Draw as many cards as you need. Which means draw until you find your wincon.

Wincon

Since this is an infinite mana combo we need something to use all that mana. Obviously the activated ability on deadeye is great, but we need something to actually win with. I went with Commander's Insight and Blue Sun's Zenith. Both of these cards are useful even when they aren't being used to force your opponents to draw their cards. Blue Sun's Zenith works nicely because once you cast it goes back into your deck, which I showed above you can draw as many cards as you need so you cast it once, put it in your library draw again until you find it, cast it again on the next opponent, then again. You can also tutor them up or bring them back from the graveyard with the tutors or the archaeomancer/mnemonic wall from earlier. I like this more than straight damage, because if you don't have infinite mana these cards will still draw you cards.

Tutors

This is a fairly simple step, we need some good tutors. There are a number of good choices in black so I won't belabor that too much. I don't have some of the standard ones and feel like the deck performs fine with the ones it currently has. I do have a Tribute Mage in the deck because nearly all my mana rocks are 2 mana and so is Wishclaw Talisman. I found that the consistency with the deck is vastly improved by being able to tutor up my ramp. Also with deadeye I can bounce it multiple times and get more rocks or the talisman.

Protecting the combo

So I needed to figure out how to protect my combo and do so in a way that is flexible or can be used as needed. So Counterspell. Honestly, this part was fairly simple, most blue counter magic is here. Only reason Fierce Guardianship isn't here is because I don't have it. Other than that we have the typical cards here Force of Will, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, etc.

I also have a couple other standouts. Venser, Shaper Savant is great here as it can be bounced with Deadeye Navigator to essentially boomerang my opponent's board and all their spells. Ertai Resurrected also protects the combo and with deadeye becomes a nice repeatable counter/removal spell.

glen_elandra_archmage can be bounced when she has her -1/-1 counter allowing her to be used again and again to counter noncreature spells.

Typical stuff

There is a lot of ramp in the deck, so Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and other mana rocks including some larger ones like Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith to really get the ramp going, the sooner you can get to 7-8 mana the sooner you can combo out.

For card draw some key performers here are Rhystic Study, Black Market Connections, Phyrexian Arena, The One Ring. Mystic Remora. In my initial hand I want to have 3 lands, and one of these/tutor to find one or I typically mulligan.

Special notes

A couple other cards deserve mention here. Time Stretch and Time Warp. These are both repeatable with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall and I can honestly say that if I'm able to resolve either of these, it is unlikely that I'm going to lose, especially Time Stretch. With the ramp in the deck or a well timed Dark Ritual/High Tide I can play this fairly early and get a huge advantage.

Lands

Since this deck tends to be fast, you don't want lands that come into play tapped, so this deck uses fetch lands, shock lands, and duals that have the ability to come in untapped. (there are a couple that come into play tapped, but they are fetchable so I fetch them only when I know that I'm not going to be able to use the mana and only on an opponent's turn.)

I've had this deck for a while and it performs far better than any of my other decks. It always presents interesting lines that if followed will lead to surprising victories. As always let me know what you think in the comments and if you have a commander in mind that you want to see me build put it in the chat.

Here is the final decklist: Unlimited Power!

Azoth2099 on Wizard tribal Big X spells

2 months ago

Ahh yes, Wizard tribal. Amazing. Here's some cards to tutor, draw & ramp your way to victory with:

Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, Solve the Equation, Gamble, Fervent Mastery & Vedalken AEthermage are worth considering as tutors here imo. Most of the other tutors in this color combo are Artifact tutors like Fabricate, Reshape & Reckless Handling...which I suppose could end up playing into a revamped strategy here as the deck develops, who knows?

For draw, Windfall, Wheel of Misfortune (& Wheel of Fortune if you're cut like that), Tolarian Winds, & Decaying Time Loop are all great with this commander. Cantrips like Ponder & Brainstorm should probably make the cut as well, it's hard to top that value for 1 mana.

As far as ramp, I always try to roll with at least 10 mana rocks, a handful of rituals & perhaps a few cost reducers when I'm within , depending on the your deck's mana curve. I know that sounds extreme, but I swear it makes your deck awesome, especially the more it develops. As the quality of each card goes up over time, consistent ramp becomes more and more important.

Also, some combo pieces to pair with Dualcaster Mage wouldn't hurt either. Twinflame, Heat Shimmer & Ghostly Flicker all work, the former 2 are definitely more synergistic with your current list though.

I could yap about various bangers for this commander like Bribery & Acquire all day, but I'll stop here unless you request more.

Lastly, a bit of bad news...Vadrik, Astral Archmage is the best commander for big X spells lol, he's insane. I might even say that he's the best one in that color combo in general.

Cheers!

legendofa on Take Control

3 months ago

You're in the colors of counterspells and protection, with and . Flickering Ward and Counterspell are reasonable options, and Swiftfoot Boots lets her start doing her thing as soon as she comes out.

For blink effects, Cloudshift, Ghostly Flicker, and similar effects let you both protect one of your creatures and keep control of your opponents' creatures. Since these cards specifically return the exiled creature "under your control," you can basically reset the control effect. Like, if you took a creature from an opponent with Merieke, you can blink it with one of these cards and keep it under you control without having to keep Merieke tapped.

I also like Fool's Demise for this sort of deck, as a personal favorite.

Azoth2099 on Bwatsizzle Maelstrom

4 months ago

Kalamax! Tight. Here's some recs:

Wandering Archaic  Flip, Flusterstorm, Flux Channeler, Twincast, Fork, Reverberate, Reiterate, Radstorm & Spellbinder.

I'd also recommend running some synergistic combos like Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal & Dualcaster Mage + Ghostly Flicker.

Good luck refining your list! Great commander choice.

Coward_Token on I'm Blue (da ba dee da ba daa)

6 months ago

Oh and sorry if I'm being annoying but what's your plan with clones like Sakashima? Multiple sources of rebound are redundant, so IMO copying your commander isn't that impactful.

(Also, Teferi's Time Twist/Ghostly Flicker/Clockspinning seem decent for turning over the land-side back)

Azoth2099 on Mr. Jank's Caged Catastrophe

7 months ago

Here's some recs: Essence Flux, Ghostly Flicker, Buried Alive, Careful Study, Faithless Looting, Tolarian Winds, Gamble, Final Parting & Necrotic Ooze

ASalesman on Unesh, Ultimate Guide (Tribal)

8 months ago

1 card sub + found another relevant combo

Replaced Spark Double with Orvar, the All-Form. Spark double and Sakashima are great cards with awesome text, in this deck they effectively do the same thing. I don't think the deck needs redundancy here. Seeing both of these cards in your hand is undesirable because they are relatively expensive mana-wise. A faster card needs to go in one of these slots. I chose to take out Spark Double rather than Sakashima because the text on Sakashima is better. Incoming Orvar. Orvar benefits from Unesh's cost reduction making it only 2 mana to cast. He is a cheap sphinx which is good enough and the rest of the text is an outstanding bonus. The first ability on Orvar synergizes extremely well with Unsummon, Snap, Ghostly Flicker, and especially Chain of Vapor. The second ability isn't as important, but it is not an unhappy thing to see.

Found another almost infinite combo that includes Dockside Extortionist. But wait this is a mono-blue deck, what gives?? Dockside is huge in the format right now, and with Phantasmal Image you can make one if your opponent has one. In Unesh this can be a win condition. Here is the order of events:

Initial conditions:

Steps

  1. Cast a sphinx. This triggers Cloudstone Curio returning Phantasmal Image to your hand. This also triggers Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign, you pull sphinxes, changelings, bounce spells, Thassa's Oracle, and counter magic if possible from the BFOF.
  2. Play Phantasmal Image as a copy of Dockside Extortionist to regain mana equal to or greater than the combined cost of the sphinx and Phantasmal Image.
  3. Continue to play sphinxes until you can win the game with Thassa's Oracle.
  4. Repeat until Thassa's Oracle win is online.
  5. Cast Thassa's Oracle

ASalesman on Unesh, Ultimate Guide (Tribal)

8 months ago

Minor Revision

  • Replaced Rewind with Unsummon. Rewind is expensive, and like Treachery it feels bad when it doesn't resolve. The main reason to include Rewind over another counterspell is that it can gain additional mana in combination with mana doublers. However this usually only happens when you counter your own spell which is not always ideal. Unsummon keeps the value train rolling baby. This mana cheap spell keeps the win con rolling. So it keeps the deck faster and more focused.
  • Replaced Cryptic Command with Mystical Tutor. Cryptic command is an expensive spell to hold up. With other recent additions making the deck fast, it is probably better to speed the deck up more and win the race to a wincon rather than defend against other wincons. This card will mostly end up fetching Rite of Replication, but it can also grab your only board wipe Cyclonic Rift, Ghostly Flicker for value, or a piece of interaction.
  • Replaced Swiftfoot Boots with Trickbind. Swiftfoot boots feels a little slow with the 1 cmc equip cost. It is easier to defend Unesh with some of the other additions like Unsubstantiate or Unsummon (these also defend against a boardwipe while the boots don't. Trickbind is included because it can stop a lot of cEDH combos that don't rely on spells resolving. This spell can also be tutored by recently added tutors Spellseeker and Mystical Tutor.
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