Twilight Sparkle's Meta-rending Magic

Commander / EDH*

___Shaggy___

Land (30)

• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Forest
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Gemstone Mine
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Taiga
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Artifact (6)

• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Sol Ring

Instant (28)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Flash
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Manamorphose
• 1x Mission Briefing
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Once Upon a Time
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Sorcery (9)

• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Timetwister
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Commander (1)

Creature (22)

• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x _____
• 1x Boreal Druid
• 1x Cephalid Illusionist
• 1x Channeler Initiate
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Devoted Druid
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Elvish Spirit Guide
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Myr Propagator
• 1x Necrotic Ooze
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Nomads en-Kor
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Simian Spirit Guide
• 1x Torch Courier

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Sylvan Library

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Who am I?

I go by ___Shaggy___ on the web, you may know me as the guy who brewed Fblthp, the absolute madlad, or as the Gitrog player who didn't practice his 60-step loops and got punished for it. I've been playing MTG for around three years, and EDH for almost as long. I didn't get into cEDH until late 2017, but I've been hooked since.

A brief history of the deck

On 3 October 2019, Wizards of the Coast announced that they would be making three silver-bordered cards based on another Hasbro franchise, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. They also announced that the profit would be going to charity (very nice of them by the way). I looked at the cards and didn't immediately see anything worth noting. However, I later realized that the card _____ from Unhinged would allow Princess Twilight Sparkle to function (almost) as she was intended. I unfortunately I had to go to class, so I was unable to begin brewing until several hours after I saw the announcement.

Gameplan

The gameplan, which you may already know, is to mill the entire deck using a Flash Hulk pile. This allows us to make an arbitrarily large amount of mana, an arbitrarily large number of copies of (in essence) _____ and activate the ability of these copies with Princess Twilight Sparkle on the battlefield to make everybody win the game. A more in depth breakdown follows:

1. Cast Flash, putting Protean Hulk into play. Do NOT pay the 2.
2. Protean Hulk trigger, get Nomads, Cephalid Illusionist, Torch Courier, and anything else.
3. Target Cephalid Illusionist with Nomads' ability about 30 times, milling your entire deck.
4. Sacrifice Cephalid Illusionist, Nomads, and the fourth creature you got to flashback Dread Return, getting Necrotic Ooze.
5. Sacrifice Torch Courier to give Necrotic Ooze haste.
6. Tap Ooze with Devoted Druid's ability to add G. Untap it with Devoted Druid's ability. Tap it with Channeler Initiate's ability to add one mana of any color. Untap it with Devoted Druid's ability. Do this as many times as you see fit.
7. Pay 3 and tap Necrotic Ooze to use Myr Propagator's ability. Untap it (it is now a 2/1) and do this again. Then sacrifice it to give one of these two copies haste (Torch Courier's ability). Then repeat this process with the hasty clone making two more copies. Do this as many times as you see fit.

8. Cast Princess Twilight Sparkle (skip this step if she is in your graveyard). Change the names of the many Necrotic Ooze clones as appropriate and activate Princess Twilight Sparkle's ability to make everybody win the game.

Justification

Some of you may be asking, as you should, "why should a person play this over any other cEDH deck, such as Thrasios and Tymna XYZ, Food Chain Sliver, or anything else? Is this even cEDH?" However, you miss a fundamental part of cEDH. The goal of the game is not to beat the other players, which is exemplified by other players killing each other or themselves being a generally good thing for any player (except those who lost). The goal, it would seem, is to win. We play cEDH, among other reasons, in order to maximize our win percentage. Any win is, of course, a win, and as such it is beneficial for any player playing against this deck to not only allow you to move towards the endgame, but to facilitate it. This means that, provided all players in the game have a decent understanding of game theory (2) and are playing cEDH on purpose, all of your opponents understand that they have two options:

Head towards their own win-condition. In this case they will face opposition from three other players, as usual.

Allow and even help you, the player of this deck, to find Flash Hulk to get _____, activate it, etc. In this case, they will face opposition from 0 other players.

Of course, this does not mean that the other players will be doing nothing the entire game. It is still beneficial for them to advance their own gameplan. What this does mean however, is that when it comes time for your opponents to make a choice that will help or hinder you, they will chose only to help you (unless this hurts them greatly). This means that there are no actions that any opponent can reasonably take against you, and so your opponents games all become 1v3, as usual, but yours becomes something approaching a 4v0. This will, of course, maximize your win percentage.

Footnotes

1: You may argue that the card says "everypony" not "everybody." However, certain cards use other seemingly meaningless terms while still being understood to function in a certain way. As such, it seems fairly clear that everypony is functionally identical to everybody. Stop being silly.

2: Not even necessarily an understanding of game theory, but an understanding of what the goal of the game is and how to move towards that goal in the most efficient way possible.

In Conclusion...

Because of the way this deck functions, each player is not adverse, or even indifferent to this deck executing its gameplan, but would rather it happen than roughly over 50% of the other possibilities in a given game. As such, the win percentage of this deck should be far, far above the win percentages of other cEDH decks. I expect this deck or variants of it to make up at least 25% of the meta, and likely more (at least until it is easier to find data on meta percentages). This is, of course, meta-rending, and I fully expect WoTC to ban one or more cards from the deck (likely _____ or Princess Twilight Sparkle herself) very soon.

Coming Soon™

• Recommended peripherals.

-SCD (particularly on Torch Courier and Myr Propagator.

• And more...

Changelog:

14 November 2019

Massive overhauls people. ruling from Maro along with the appropriate rules made me believe that the deck was dead, and it would have been. However, u/CommodoreCuddles provided me with some information. Apparently, Maro has ruled on his blog () that _ can actually be used in conjunction with Princess Twilight Sparkle. Presumably however, we must still have multiple copies. As such, we are now a Flash Hulk deck, similar to the good old Nooze Hulk decks worked. Changes have been made. Clone effects out, Hulk pieces in. Rarity, Aven Mindcensor, Regrowth, Tainted Pact, Plunge into Darkness, and Fact or Fiction out, Hulk Pieces in. Dockside Extortionist out, Simian Spirit Guide in. Arbor Elf out, Elvish Spirit Guide in.

3 October 2019

PepperoniNip made a very important observation. _____ can just be named "Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity" in order to get the win. As such, several changes were made.

Blade of Selves out, Polymorphous Rush in.

Followed Footsteps out, Red Elemental Blast in.

Mirror Image out, Pact of Negation in.

Quasiduplicate out, Tainted Pact in.

Rite of Replication out, Plunge into Darkness in.

Top Ranked	Achieved #15 position overall 4 years ago Achieved #6 position in Commander / EDH 4 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 53 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 22 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.76
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	Other people's Stuff