Lightning Druid

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Infinite Combo Mill Primer Reanimator

AverageDragon frozeninfate

Land (29)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Gemstone Mine
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Scrubland
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Artifact (10)

• 1x Aether Spellbomb
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Serum Powder
• 1x Shuko
• 1x Sol Ring

Creature (25)

• 1x Angel of Glory's Rise
• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Auriok Salvagers
• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Boreal Druid
• 1x Cephalid Illusionist
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Elvish Spirit Guide
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fatestitcher
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Hermit Druid
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Narcomoeba
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Nomads en-Kor
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1x Shaman en-Kor
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Warrior en-Kor

Sorcery (13)

• 1x Cabal Therapy
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Life / Death
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Postmortem Lunge
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Show and Tell
• 1x Sylvan Tutor

Commanders (2)

Instant (14)

• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Flash
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Shallow Grave
• 1x Summoner's Pact
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Concordant Crossroads
• 1x Dance of the Dead
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wild Growth

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Lightning Druid

PRIMER IS OUT OF DATE AND WILL BE UPDATED An extremely fast combo list which layers Protean Hulk + Flash with Hermit Druid + Haste Enablers

In a Competitive EDH meta, Hermit Druid is regarded in a mediocre light due to its massive downside; You have to pass turn and give your opponents a chance to hoard interaction to deal with you. This means that while Hermit Druid can increase your goldfish speed, it's hard to actually win with it in real games, where opponents will be aiming counterspells and removal at you first opportunity they get.

Enter Haste Enablers . These allow us, for a pretty low mana cost, to use Hermit Druid on the same turn we play it, negating its main downside of telegraphing. This list is built around maximizing speed and minimizing the telegraphing we need to do in order to win the game. There are multiple interesting combo lines here, and the deck manages to be passably interactive as well.

The Milled Library

Going backwards from the end, you have to know what your win-line is with your library in your graveyard. After activating Hermit Druid , your ultimate goal is to flashback Dread Return targeting Goblin Dark-Dwellers , and use the ETB trigger to cast Yawgmoth's Will . This allows you to cast your fast mana, and then cast your dorks with some haste out ( Anger can make this easy), and finish off with Laboratory Maniac and a cantrip .

Naturally, since we rely on it so much, there are quite a few cards in the deck to guarantee that this line goes smoothly. Narcomoeba helps to give you an extra creature to sacrifice to Dread Return , and if you still need a third, you can cast Thrasios for cheap. If you have the extra mana (check the Hulk line below for a trick), you can use Memory's Journey flashback + Flash of Insight for 1GU at instant speed to recur and draw a Force of Will or Pact of Negation , which can be useful in case of interaction from opponents. Cabal Therapy gives you the ability to drop any pieces stuck in your hand, such as Goblin Dark-Dwellers , Yawgmoth's Will , or Dread Return . Finally, in the event of a missing Laboratory Maniac , you can use Grim Monolith + Power Artifact , then Walking Ballista in order to finish off a game.

Hasty Druids

There's a few ways to take advantage of the naked hasty druid in this list. Naturally, you have your normal Hermit Druid lines with the haste enablers. Mass Hysteria and Concordant Crossroads are the cheap and best in-hand haste enablers for the deck, as you can play them for only one additional mana, and get a hasty druid for your troubles. Entomb functions as a haste enabler as well, since you can use it to grab Anger . You can also use Hellraiser Goblin , but it's more expensive from the mana side of things. The deck runs Narcomoeba in order to give you an extra creature to sacrifice for Dread Return , and you always have Thrasios in the command zone to help out as well.

On a different note, this deck has a mana intensive one-card wincon in Survival of the Fittest . If you have a Mountain, you can search for Anger , dump it in the yard to search for Hermit Druid , and then win. This costs 2GGGGG in total. You can also just use Survival of the Fittest as a way to get haste when Hermit Druid is stuck in your hand. While the lines using it are expensive, Survival leaves you in a generally good state at any point in the chaining.

Postmortem Lunge is the last notable one, but that will be covered in the "Backup Lines" section.

Protean Hulk

Despite appearances, this is the primary line of the deck. Protean Hulk + Flash lets you fetch out the entire Hermit Druid combo, with added protection. It's extremely versatile and useful, and should be your primary objective unless you happen to have a haste enabler in hand.

The ideal hulk line in this deck is Hermit Druid + Hellraiser Goblin + Orcish Lumberjack . If you don't have a Forest available, any dork that can produce Green mana is fine, though you should avoid Deathrite Shaman since it isn't a mana ability and you have to pass priority. Use your dork, if it's Orcish Lumberjack add GGG to your mana pool. Otherwise, just add G. You're immune to creature removal, as you can activate Hermit Druid in response to any interaction pointed at you. This will mill out your library and enter the lines described above in the "Milled Library" section.

As for Orcish Lumberjack , you can use the extra GG from it to pay for the flashback on Memory's Journey and the generic in the flashback for Flash of Insight . This means that for only an additional U, you can have access to instant speed interaction through Pact of Negation or Force of Will . While it's not quite as effective as Grand Abolisher , you can still protect your combo relatively well.

In the event of a Hermit Druid stuck in your hand, you can easily fetch Hellraiser Goblin + three dorks, in order to generate the mana needed to cast and activate Hermit Druid easily.

Backup Lines

Sometimes, you get interacted with or staxed out, and you need to have a line to get around it. There are two main backup lines in this deck, meant to acknowledge both possibilities.

First of all, Lightning Druid should not be worrying about permanent removal if you play correctly. Playing an unhasted Hermit Druid is what the deck is designed around avoiding, since it will result in you eating interaction. When you cast Hermit Druid , you should already have a haste enabler on the battlefield and the mana to activate it. This means that you can activate it before people get a chance to interact, and then Goblin Dark-Dwellers doesn't care about creature removal either, since all you need is the ETB trigger. Finally, Laboratory Maniac is safe as well, since Yawgmoth's Will gives you access to every counterspell in your deck, as well as Autumn's Veil . This means that if you play right, you should always be safe from permanent-based removal, provided you have enough creatures for Dread Return .

However, this isn't the only way for Hermit Druid to get into your grave. If you eat a counterspell or get wheeled, Postmortem Lunge is the prime backup of choice. For only 2 mana, the same as the price of the Hermit Druid itself, you can get it back from the graveyard AND give it haste.

Graveyard hate can really slow the game down, since most of the combos require that you destroy the offending piece before comboing. However, Grim Monolith + Power Artifact is our final backup line. Thrasios gives us a colorless-only enabler, and Walking Ballista is our infinite outlet of choice. This is also useful for when Laboratory Maniac is unavailable when the library is milled, since you can assemble the infinite mana combo using the normal Yawgmoth's Will line.

Fair warning that this deck is still relatively new and untested. There are likely to be lots of fast changes as the deck grows and evolves. If you want more concrete lists, which inspired many of the card choices in Lightning Druid, look no further than:

• Breakfast Hulk by Sigi
• Tazri Hulk Druid by biopower

Dan-inspired Update: Lightning Mauler is out of the deck for Hellraiser Goblin , and so now the deck is called "Lightning Druid" because Vial Smasher the Fierce has lightning in her art. Case closed.

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Date added	5 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 55 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.77
Tokens	Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	Competitive edh, Cedh, Decks to build?, Decks to Study