Blue Sun's Zenith

Instant

Target player draws X cards. Shuffle Blue Sun's Zenith into its owner's library.

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
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (47)

psionictemplar on Balaam__'s Challenge: Get Twisted

3 months ago

Well the thing about the cryptic/Sanctuary lock is that you return sanctuary so it always comes in untapped.

Putting that aside though I dont think snapcaster will be of much help to you, at least not in the normal play patterns it commonly sees. You pretty much want to save it as a counter grabber as needed.

Going back to your high tides, I just dont see the value. You have to use 1 land to cast and then 3 more lands to get eon hub into play which only saves 1 land over casting it normally. Rewind makes it slightly better because you could have extra mana for after, but then you need something like a Blue Sun's Zenith to sink it into. Instead of high tide what about Extraplanar Lens instead? It still helps ramp and can help every turn?

Flarhoon13 on Kruphix's Fantastic Elastic Mighty Morphin Machine

5 months ago

Nov 1 Kruphix's Fantastic Elastic Mighty Morphin Machine won a 5 player custom game. It was pretty much a shutout. Kurtis on Alania, Divergent Storm was the knight and I the King. We dominated. He kept gifting me and Kruphix got Seedborn Muse. We shut them down. I was able to get infinite mana and card draw, drawing Rob out with Blue Sun's Zenith. Rob was about to control me during my combat. Kurtis had eliminated the other two players.

Flarhoon13 on Flarhoon13

5 months ago

May 3, 2024, I started a new quest. Having built 52 decks, I endeavoured to play them all, in roughly the same order as I created them.

Aug 22

Treasure Chest

Omnath (decklist not uploaded) won another epic game. I dropped an early Mana Flare. Will used Sovereign Okinec Ahau to threaten Ben who retaliated to kill his dad with his commander Kalamax, the Stormsire. I untapped once with Omnath, which was enough for Blue Sun's Zenith for 12ish, even though he was killed in my upkeep lol. Win brings my record to 23-26-1 for a .469 win percentage

Flarhoon13 on Kaervek the Merciless, Vampires & Doomsday Demons

5 months ago

May 3, 2024 I started a new quest. Having built 52 decks, I endeavoured to play them all, in roughly the same order as I created them.

May 31

Kaervek the Merciless, Vampires & Doomsday Demons loss 8-8 I went for it but vs two blue decks with open mana and I paid the ultimate price. Had Bloodletter of Aclazotz out, cast Rune-Scarred Demon and got Demonic Consultation since I had Mirror of Fate in hand. Consulted for Fraying Omnipotence but that exiled all but three cards of my deck. Cast a five drop demon but the Fraying Omnipotence ate a counter. Blaine's Blue Sun's Zenith finished me off.

Before I had started this play through of my decks, I had gotten a turn 4 win with Bloodletter of Aclazotz and Fraying Omnipotence against these very same opponents in a game last year, tied for fastest victory of any of my decks. Turn one Sol Ring, turn 2 Demonic Tutor, turn 3 played the tutor target, Bloodletter of Aclazotz and turn 4 Fraying Omnipotence ended the game. Kind of. The table just kept playing out the game so Kurtis could show off Ovika, Enigma Goliath's crazy tricks.

ANXI3TY on Merfolk

6 months ago

It goes pretty fast, definitley one of my fastest aggro decks! I use to play modern merfolk years ago, so the fish are special to me.

Probably going to add: Strix Serenade and Flare of Denial removing the Aether Vial and Blue Sun's Zenith.

Vial was really nice in modern, but if you don't have it out early it doesn't have much value in EDH.

I found playing the counterspells while having Lullmage Mentor and Vodalian Hexcatcher is sweet for control.

AThiccNacho on Say Hy(dra) to Your Grandma For Me

1 year ago

I would very much recommend:

Garruk's Uprising as it gives you trample for the big bois, can cantrip AND gives you draw power on ETB. If you cast a hydra with {X} > 3, you get to draw 2 cards, assuming Zaxara is on the field.

Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner Gives you ramp AND ETB triggers. Same as G's Uprising above.

Elemental Bond Have you noticed a pattern yet? More expensive than the others because of the Power 3 trigger vs 4; but still a really sick card to have.

Simic Ascendancy Alternate wincon and pretty easy to get twice {X} since, if a hydra enters with 6 counters, you get 12 if you control Zaxara due to the token getting the +1/+1 counters.

Open Into Wonder Straight up ends the game if a creature is big or your board state went unchecked for too long. Won me plenty of games. If it can't end the game, you can still draw plenty of cards to play on main phase 2.

Finale of Revelation Essentially just an X draw but with additional benefits for going all in. Obviously, Zaxara is needed to get a 10/10, but it's way better than Even the Score; the extra 2 cards drawn is meh and you lift the 4 card restriction. Blue Sun's Zenith is technically better being at instant speed, but you get WAY more value in EDH out of Finale, especially with mana doublers/triplers.

Herald of Secret Streams A more $$ card, but makes your creature with +1/+1 unblockable; usually allows you to kill 1 or 2 players that turn and end the game if it goes unanswered, buying your other threats more time.

Curse of the Swine To exile high prio threats. Giving opponents 2/2 creatures doesn't matter. Gets around indestructible or creatures that are overly powerful such as voltron creatures. I would honestly swap this for Spinning Wheel Kick as that relies heavily on your commander; which Zaxara is already a high prio target.

Those are all the suggestions i have for budget; most of the others i'd make for budget are counter spells. My Zaxara deck should be on my profile if you're interested in higher $$ cards.

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

1 year 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!

Profet93 on Budget Urzanomics

1 year ago

I'm not too familiar with the blue cEDH aspect of Thassa Oracle. I understand you use ambassador to mill yourself and/or opponents with infinite mana, then use oracle to win the game.

Why not swap out Ambassador with Blue Sun's Zenith or Stroke of Genius? They can also be used as oracle wincon while drawing you cards if needed. Meaning, they are not dead cards and are less susceptible to removal as well. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something.