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Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Premodern | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Great Whale
Creature — Whale
When Great Whale enters the battlefield, untap up to seven lands.
rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …
1 week 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
Mono Blue Bouncers
8 months ago
I would honestly cut some of those chunky 7-drops like Agent of Treachery or Diluvian Primordial along with Storm of Saruman since you're not able to cheat them into play somehow, and they aren't combo pieces (as far as I can see, that is) like Palinchron or Great Whale. You may also wanna consider a few more Tutors like Mystical Tutor & Solve the Equation since you're running a few creatures that can grab them from your graveyard. These are the things that make a deck consistent and win you games!
Also, have you considered Cloudstone Curio here?
Samothrace on
Higure, the Still Here
2 years ago
Update: I have removed most of the infinite combos from the deck due to new house rules in my playgroup. While this deck was never scary fast it is very very reliable, with a creature tutor on the commander. To keep things centered on combat, I have removed Deadeye Navigator and Great Whale as well as Peregrine Drake.
I have swapped in Thada Adel, Acquisitor and Scourge of Fleets for Higure targets.
I have also put in a Drift of Phantasms as a means of tutoring for Arcane Adaptation
bomb_arie on
Umezawa's Demons
2 years ago
jconeil1988 I have been upgrading my deck and I foud Mindshrieker, cheap evasive creature which can be used to mill your opponents once you get infinite mana in your combat phase. And I also discovered that if you attack with two Evasive creatures Thousand-Faced Shadow can get nasty with Palinchron or Great Whale. Infinite mana, and infinite attackers to finish the game. Adding these cards make room for other slots because you can drop some of your wincon critters.
enpc on Kenrith Deck Help
2 years ago
Your deck is being pulled in too many directions. You have Pili-Pala + Grand Architect (which is not a good combo outside of artifact decks) and Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake, neither of which have any form of redundancy or overlap. You also have waaaaay too many win conditions in the deck. Kenrith is an infinite mana sink, i.e. with infinite mana you win the game through his abilities alone - either forcing your oppoenents to deck out or beating with infinite sized creatures.
Additionally, a bunch of the infinite combos you do run also have zero redundancy or overlap, meaning that you have to get that one other card or the combo is useless.
You'd be much better off focusing on adding more ways to generate infinite that have overlapping parts, since once you have that and Kenrith, you don't need a huge density of win conditions.
For example, if you're going down the lands based mana combos then you should be looking into adding cards like Palinchron/Great Whale, Eternal Witness, Ghostly Flicker, Tooth and Nail etc (as well as adding more land fetching ramp). Hell, with Kenrith you could even look into a repeatable sac outlet, Peregrine Drake and Mirari's Wake (or Nyxbloom Ancient would be better) as yet another loop. Bue either way, now your mana combos are protected so that you can lose any one piece and you're still covered. And you increase the chance of drawing into it since you don't necessarily need to draw a specific card, you have 2-3 different cards that can fit that bill.
I run a Kenrith list (which admittedly has a much higher budget) which focuses on generating infinite mana then going from there. What I have tried to do is to keep the combos to two central themes - one is around tapping mana dorks/rock and the other is around flickering to generate infinite mana. however what you'll see is that all the pieces are designed to interact with each other, providing the deck with many ways to form infinite mana while also leaning on other functions of the deck to do so (in this case mana dorks/rocks). This means that by the simple act of ramping, the deck is setting up its combos.
deck: King me! King me!
Also, I would look at ditching Cowardice - it's only good against expensive beaters that don't have good ETBs.
BattlePants409 on
Commander Cube #1
2 years ago
Akroma's MemorialOmen MachineAminatou, the FateshifterWood ElvesFarhaven ElfGreat WhaleKor CartographerMaelstrom WandererNyxbloom AncientPeregrine DrakeRamos, Dragon EngineSakura-Tribe ElderTidespout TyrantUlvenwald HydraZacama, Primal CalamityLurking PredatorsMana ReflectionMirror MarchPrimeval BountySylvan LibraryTreachery
Last_Laugh on
2 years ago
Exploration, Burgeoning, and Wild Cantor are 3 more options for turn 2 Animar.
Temur Sabertooth and Equilibrium are 2 more bounce enablers to abuse etb's.
Walking Ballista and Purphoros, God of the Forge make any infinite bounce combos lethal. I.e. Ancestral Statue or any Cloudstone Curio combo.
Palinchron goes infinite by itself if Animar has 4+ counters. Cloud of Faeries and Peregrine Drake are worth running also (Great Whale if Palinchron is understandably out of your budget).
Spellseeker/Neoform and Weird Harvest are worth running if you add Walking Ballista. Weird Harvest looks up Ballista/Statue for both combo pieces and Spellseeker/Neoform are the last pieces you don't already run for the most efficient combo line in Animar. It only requires Imperial Recruiter in hand, 2 counters on Animar, , and 4 life.
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Imperial Recruiter looks up Phyrexian Metamorph
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Phyrexian Metamorph for 2 life copies Recruiter and looks up Spellseeker.
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Spellseeker looks up Neoform.
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Neoform sacs Spellseeker to look up Ancestral Statue.
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Bounce statue over and over til Animar's power is double your opponents life totals and use Statue's final bounce trigger to return Metamorph to hand.
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Metamorph for 2 life again copies Imperial Recruiter to look up Walking Ballista for the win.
Feel free to check out my list for more ideas. Upvotes on any of my decks are appreciated. Animar, Gaea's Hemorrhoid ⫷PRIMER⫸
EVENcast on
A Monster’s Guide to Volo [Primer]
2 years ago
Wandering Archaic Flip is amazing and I went back and forth between it and Diluvian Primordial for the Avatar slot. I’ve yet to pull the primordial in a game so I’m waiting to make the swap until I see it in action. Archaic is far more mana efficient and will help protect the board, but the primordial’s trigger is immediate and potentially game changing. Super tough call, but something tells me the archaic might make the final cut. I didn’t even know Great Whale existed, what a cool card! Might have to save up for that one. Myr Battlesphere is going in the maybeboard as well. I’ve spent so much time tinkering with this build and I’ll need more play testing to figure out what to cut. Thanks for the awesome suggestions!
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