Doomsday

Sorcery

Search your library and graveyard for five cards and remove the rest from the game. Put the chosen cards on top of your library in any order. You lose half your life, rounded up.

Discussion (47)

Rocketman988 on Demon Till Your Dreams Come True

1 month ago

I love the gambling feel of the deck, so my personal philosophy has been to include as many of those big “man if this goes off, it’s gonna be so sweet” type cards that have the potential to win out of nowhere to maximize the odds of it happening. It appeals to the Timmy in me haha. The deck is a bit of an early/mid game glass cannon as I have it, but it catches people off guard and steals games more than it should before the lack of value engines catches it with its pants down. I prefer winning with style to winning more reliably.

If you want to build the deck “smarter”, the deck could really use more draw power to help power out threats in the late game. All the wheel effects help a lot, but I could see cutting cards like Doomsday for draw. At this point, if my boardstate cannot support winning within 1 turn of casting Doomsday , I hold it until it can (which sometimes doesn’t happen, but like you said, oh boy when it does!)

As for what I get, it’s usually things to turn my current board state into a win ASAP. The whole game, I play “plan disruption”. Wheel away people’s answers, hit the person who’s almost the strongest instead of the current “winning” player to force the two other players to begrudgingly team up with me or lose outright. Extra combat or turn spells, damage multipliers like Fiery Emancipation / Archfiend of Despair , a life loss outlet like Kuro, Pitlord plus Repay in Kind , Gray Merchant of Asphodel , etc. If playing Rakdos right and I haven’t been focused too hard, most people’s boardstates stay pretty fragile and collapse easily under the right explosive turn. When I’ve lent the deck out, the biggest issue I see people making it refusing to be as mean and aggressive as the deck needs the pilot to be to put people in range of the deck’s one-turn knockout power.

Bloodsucker1211 on Goblin Dungeon Horde

2 months ago

So I know the deck is a little old but I see you updated recently, so maybe i'll get an answer.

Whats your Doomsday pile look like? Building Grenzo, Dungeon Warden myself as a goblin tribal deck with a doomsday pile but not sure how to. I've never used doomsday before so forgive me if my question is a simple answer.

I want it to be semi competitive but not overbearing. Similar to my "War will make corpses of us all" deck featuring Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord as an elf tribal commander/combo enabler

StopShot on I need help choosing another …

3 months ago

@Raging_Squiggle, the cards you suggested removing have benefitted me countless times in cEDH though. Personally, I'd rather remove Terminate first. Holding up less mana every turn to address multiple threats is better as it gives me more flexibility. If you want to advance your boardstate it's better to hold up two 1's and a 2 than two 2's and a 3. Finding ways to do things cheaper without need for ramp is in a way card advantage as I see it and it mitigates how severe a discard cost is when you build your deck around flexibility than tempo. As I said I like playing more reactively than proactively. As for my experiences Lightning Axe 's removal capabilities in commander I find to be on par with Lightning Bolt 's capability in 60 card formats - not capable of removing everything but efficient enough to not get in the way of doing two things at once. Sinister Concoction is telegraphed removal which is incredibly undervalued in multiplayer settings as no one willingly wants to have it proc on their best card in hand, and having that kind of chilling effect on a whole table for one mana is pretty strong. And then there's Molten Vortex which is probably the best thing on earth for removing hatebear after hatebear and bypassing counter spells in blue combo decks. Losing lands to it may seem steep, but the cost is nothing when your opposition is locking you down and locking you out in the first place and if its a dead card I pitch it to the Lightning Axe or Sinister Concoction anyway.

Personally I've grown to loathe "non-black" removal spells. It's not just this combo but its also The Gitrog Monster and Kaalia of the Vast and Nekusar, the Mindrazer and Opposition Agent . I acknowledge there are a lot of non-black targets I can use it on instead, but picking between a Doom Blade and a Murder when Lightning Axe / Dismember takes out more of them for less mana sums up my approach to this. And I do run Chaos Warp , Anguished Unmaking and Generous Gift along with a slew of boardwipes for anything bigger - I just didn't mention I ran them here when the focus of my thread is on small and early game threats where the heavier removal isn't as apt at addressing these problems.

Still, even without the mana ramp the combo can come down on turn three by casting the cards on consecutive turns or on turn four by playing them all at once, and we are talking about competitive black which has plenty of tutors. In the early game holding up 2 or 3 mana for only one answer every turn I find to be a waste. It's not just this combo either as I'm in the company of decks that are looking to end or lock the game before turn six if left in a vacuum. At the same time I still want to acknowledge other non-aggressive strategies do exist and striking the balance is difficult when one set of cards is too slow for my current meta and another set don't go far enough for everything outside of that meta. Personally, I think the small spells still have some merit in all cases whereas the larger spells become an annoying liability when you're put on the clock. It's another reason why I value being reactive than proactive, to value flexibility over tempo, because I'd need to pick a different commander entirely if I want to match the speed my competitors play at. However, my opponents lose much more value than I do when they go headfirst into certain strategies only for them to be thwarted such as with the Witherbloom Apprentice + Chain of Smog combo or with the Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond combo or the Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead combo or anything that relies on Doomsday . My deck is built to address this kind of madness, but when I make card decisions I still want to keep more normal metas in mind when picking cards. Cards like Magma Spray and Fatal Push are incredibly narrow, I know that, but what I need to know is which card of that set is the best for taking on problems outside of my own meta.

zAzen7977 on PHYREXIAN DOOMSDAY - K’rrik Combo [cEDH Primer]

3 months ago

Profet93, thanks for the +1 and your comment! You bring up some important points.

I’ve optimized the deck for Tainted Pact . I can use it to search for any particular card I need at the moment to complete a combo, since I only have 1 of each card in the deck. If I can steal an opponent’s Thassa's Oracle with Praetor's Grasp (which is more likely than not if an opponent is running blue), then I can cast Tainted Pact , naming a random card not in the deck, and exile my entire library for the win. I can also set this up with Doomsday , as I explain in the primer.

I considered Contamination , but the creature sac requirement prevents me from keeping it in play for long, since I run only a few creatures. Infernal Darkness accomplishes the same objective but I can keep it around a turn or two as necessary by paying life during my upkeep with K’rrik. The goal is to protect myself for at least 1-2 turns while I assemble a combo. You are right that Defense Grid is more effective during the early game, but this build is designed to win asap, and I rarely ever reach the late game where this becomes an issue.

You are also right that Drag to the Underworld is a lesser removal spell compared to others. However, in this build I mulligan aggressively to ensure that I can cast K’rrik within the first 1-3 turns. With K’rrik on the field I meet Drag’s devotion requirement, so I only have to pay 4 life and 0 mana with K’rrik to destroy any creature. Hero's Downfall requires at least 1 colorless mana to cast. I’m thinking in terms of speed, since each mana I have should go towards the 3 mana I need to cast Bolas's Citadel once I pull off Doomsday . So I would rather pay 0 mana to kill a creature with Drag and save my mana for Citadel.

iplayBANJO on Prototype Control

3 months ago

If you're playing a very heavy control theme in commander your win condition is going to probably be a game lock. There are a few different kinds of those. Hard locks will literally stop your opponents from being able to play the game at all. You accomplish this by setting up a situation where they can't cast spells, they can't untap, or they can't generate mana. Soft locks are where you severely diminish an opponents ability to play the game. This is often done by forcing your opponents to discard all of their cards.

The hard locks I would suggest with this are the Karn lock and the Knowledge Pool lock. The Karn lock is very specifically Karn, the Great Creator + Mycosynth Lattice . Your opponents can't activate any abilities of permanents on the battlefield. This means that opponents can't tap anything for mana. The cards are also useful to you individually because Karn, the Great Creator stops opponents from using mana rocks and Mycosynth Lattice helps you cast opponent's spells by allowing you to spend your mana as though it were any color.

The Knowledge Pool lock has only one required card. Knowledge Pool exiles every spell that any player casts from their hand. Players can then cast a spell from the previously exiled cards. This means that a player must cast two spells for anything to resolve. Rule of Law prevents casting any spell after the first spell. Effectively this means to no one can play spells from their hands. But you can cast cards from other players hands if you have Sen Triplets out. This is also true for Arcane Laboratory , Eidolon of Rhetoric , Archon of Emeria , Drannith Magistrate , Teferi, Time Raveler and Ethersworn Canonist to an extent. All of those cards, are also things you use to limit the amount of actions other players can take as a part of your control strategy.

The soft locks all involve preventing players from drawing cards. Narset, Parter of Veils , Hullbreacher , Alms Collector , and Notion Thief . All of these prevent opponents from drawing cards to some extent, which benefits your control plan. The lock is formed when you have one of those pieces out and you cast a spell like Windfall , which makes everyone discard their hand and draw new cards. But they can't, so only you draw new cards. Cards like Windfall are also very strong as they allow you to refill your hand. Similar cards are Echo of Eons , Day's Undoing , Jace's Archivist , Time Reversal , Commit / Memory (Probably pick two or three, not all of them).

You could also use the Laboratory Maniac combos as a win condition, since you are in the right colors for it. It's probably the most common win condition in high powered competitive decks. The way it works is you draw through your entire deck while Laboratory Maniac or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries are on the board then you attempt to draw a card and you win. Similarly, you can draw through your entire deck and then play Thassa's Oracle . The ways you "draw" through your deck are either Tainted Pact , Demonic Consultation , or Doomsday . Because they are common competitive win conditions, some of those pieces are expensive.

Allow me to advise you on getting to these win conditions though. You can tutor for these pieces with Vampiric Tutor , Enlightened Tutor , Demonic Tutor , or similar cards; but you probably would rather draw into them because that also gets you your control cards. Two cards that are surprisingly good for this are Ad Nauseam and Peer into the Abyss . You have to keep the mana cost of spells very low for Ad Nauseam, but it's worth it especially because it was reprinted recently and is only a few dollars I think.

staxcat on Divergent Dreamer Duo

4 months ago

cheffireball could work.. not just for Planar Chaos , but also for Divergent Transformations . I had initially exempted Boseiju from this list because it didn't work with Doomsday but now that I've moved to different lines it should work better. I'll look into swapping it in -- just need to figure out what I can remove. The manabase is rather fragile right now. Thanks for the suggestion

Oof_Magic on Doomsday UV

5 months ago

I attempted a Doomsday deck but the deck has some rather convoluted lines of play that I’m less familiar with. I emphasized the importance of lands with my Mind Funeral / Mind Grind deck so I don’t have an issue with 10 lands. The biggest question I have yet to answer is whether the meta would have a healthy balance or be forced to have free counters to survive.

Mattio38 on K’rrakaka

5 months ago

Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions! Grind I thought of that card too, and I'm still a little bit in doubt. The thing is you usually get about 10 to 13 lands in play before the game is over, right? So I wonder how much Cabal Stronghold actually bring me... Only since turn 6 he's of some value... Now on the other hand, there is no real downside to the card. So perhaps you're right and it's worth the try.

Massacar, Cabal Coffers is right now too expensive. If I still really like the deck after playing it a couple of times I might invest into it more and I'mma get my hands on that sweet little uncommon again! Now I really like your question. I've seen some cEDH decks running Doomsday with Infernal Contract and comboing off in turn 3, 2 or even turn 1. That doesn't sounds like a lot of fun to me. I'm thinking a powerlevel somewhere around an 8, according to the Command Zone power level guide. I think K'rrik in turn 3 and a big impactful black creature in turn 4 can be fun to play, be very powerful but at the same time not broken or cEDH.

Tips and suggestions are most appreciated!

Mat