This is an updated version of my "Chaos Corrupts Absolutely" deck. What's the idea behind this deck? Well, in MTG, there are various ways to win the game:

  1. Reduce your opponents' life to zero and be the last one standing.
  2. Add 10 poison counters to your opponents.
  3. Force your opponents to draw an empty library.
  4. Royally screw with the board position so much that your opponents concede in protest.

This deck explores that 4th option, the way to win that MTG doesn't really tell you about. Originally inspired as a EDH version of Darth Parallax's Infinite Universes of Chaos, this deck is meant to break MTG. Just literally break the game. While your opponents are trying to kill each other, you have a hidden agenda to play the practical joker and just f'k with people's game states. Even if you don't end up winning for real, you've still squirted an acid flower on everybody.

It starts out innocent enough. You have nice player cards like Howling Mine, Mana Flare, Oath of Lieges. Then you have your commander, Zedruu the Greathearted.

I mean, look at this guy. He's nice and smiling. He gives your opponents stuff. He just wants some cards and life in return. Sure, he's been played with in quite a bit of those "Throw bad perms to the enemy" decks, but overall, the threat level isn't high for this guy.

Then you put up your defenses like Ghostly Prison, Wall of Frost, Aurification, etc. Okay, fine, so you're not really an aggro deck, but still nothing threatening. Then you ramp it up with cards like Custody Battle and Capricious Efreet. Funny man Jokester cards, meant to eliminate threats in unusual ways.

Then BAM! You bring out the big guns with cards like Grip of Chaos, Possibility Storm, Eye of the Storm, Hive Mind, Counterbalance, Knowledge Pool, Teferi's Puzzle Box, and Scrambleverse. Now the game is truly a new kind of game, a game of YOUR design, with YOUR rules. You've donned your Mad Hatter tophat and shoved the rest of the players down the rabbit hole, all of them on a bad acid trip. With luck, the game is so screwed that they can't even wipe your enchantments properly. GAME OVER, MAN!

Grip of Chaos

I cannot stress how good this card is. Or how funny. People forget about this card easily, because nobody ever sees this card, and they are so used to targeting always working. Well, now it doesn't. In fact, that Acidic Slime that was aiming for one of your enchantments just got redirected to a random land of his. You'll probably get a good 2-3 mistaken hits with this card per game, until they really wise up and look for this card. Even then, they are still going to try to cast some targeted spell/ability several times to try to get RID of this enchantment.

Also, with RL MTG, it's got to be funny watching people deal with a "target permanent" card, having to count the number of permanents they have, and then find out that they need a 94-sided die to roll for all of the targets. Be sure to label all of the permanents with a number!

This should be one of the first cards you play when you start "The Operation", since it's like a shroud for everything.

And if that doesn't work, these will:

Psychic Battle / Counterbalance / Possibility Storm

Psychic Battle is like Clash for everybody, and everything. Since you're packing a lot of high-end CMC enchantments and artifacts, you should have a pretty good win ratio here. (This is also why all of the "group hug" cards end up working to your advantage, too.)

Counterbalance basically creates a null zone for certain spells. Every turn, nobody knows what the magic number actually is until the first spell is cast, so it's always a fun game of chance here. With cards like Crystal Ball, Sensei's Divining Top, Temple Bell, and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, you can manipulate the magic number to get rid of bad spells that are trying to get rid of your enchantments (like Counterbalance itself).

Possibility Storm is... well, one of my new favorite cards. Maybe even funnier and more chaotic than Grip of Chaos. I mean, just read it. It means that players can't effectively cast the spells they want. For you, that doesn't really matter, because you just want to create chaos and get more and more of these nasty enchantments in play. For the rest of the players, it usually nullifies their game plans full stop.

Drift of Phantasms / Ethereal Usher

Keep in mind that these are tutors, not creatures. This deck has a lot of good 6CMC permanents, so Ethereal Usher will fetch cards like Grip of Chaos, Gate to the AEther, Wild Evocation, Final Judgment, etc.

Drift of Phantasms gives you a lot of the anti-combat perms like Propaganda, Ensnaring Bridge, Forcefield, as well as utilities like Paradox Haze, Hanna, Ship's Navigator, and Aura of Silence.

Eye of the Storm / Hive Mind / Knowledge Pool

This is the UBER TRIFECTA OF DOOM! Maybe throw in a Grip of Chaos and/or Possibility Storm, and the game is done. You aren't even playing Magic: The Gathering any more. It's some other weirder game where you're not sure of the rules, like some cavemen trying to play Tri-Dimensional Chess.

For extra double-plus fun, throw Enduring Ideal into Hive Mind. Yes, they will be forced to cast it. Yes, spells will end at that point. Yes, you have a crapload of enchantments in your deck.

Other Tutors - You can use other tutors like Enlightened Tutor, Academy Rector, or even Gamble. Muddle the Mixture might be good for a few of the 2CMC perms in the deck.

Warp World - Another nice battlefield scrambler, though you do need to be careful of high token counts. Also, more often than not, you will end up with a small amount of creatures to their big nasties, so be careful when and how you cast it.

Other Anti-Attack cards - Like Blazing Archon (good, but a high white cost), Norn's Annex (arrow to the knee), Chronomantic Escape (weird), Peacekeeper (nasty). I don't recommend War Tax, since you have to "reload" it before the attack phase of each opponent.

Dovescape - Certainly a fun card, but it really depends on the meta. If you think people are going to suddenly gang up on you, you might want to re-think this one. Then again, if you already have the lock down with Ghostly Prison or its cousins, then it's probably not much of a gang up at that point. Careful of anti-counter cards, like Boseiju, Who Shelters All or Cavern of Souls, as they'll get the card out the door AND the doves.

Enduring Ideal - Funny that I mentioned this card earlier, but it's not actually in the deck any more. This can be a good card if you have a pretty good lockdown, and have some other cards like Gate to the AEther and Wild Evocation to drop even more stuff in your battlefield. It can backfire often, though, so be careful how you use it.

Goblin Game - Another bizarre card to play. You can choose to write the number down on a piece of paper and reveal it simultaneously, which is sorta what MTGO does with this weird card. I only exclude it because it's just a one-time shot Sorcery, and not an enchantment. Same goes for cards like Mages' Contest, Illicit Auction, and Mirrorweave.

Thieves' Auction - Similar to Dimensional Breach or Scrambleverse, but I've found this card can take forever to resolve. You want to warp the game, but not in a fashion that doesn't allow you to play the game at all. Still, if you really want to get players to concede in protest, this is the card that does it.

Confusion in the Ranks - While most of the enchantments are global (so that you can trade them via Zedruu), I have had this card backfire before, especially with people trying to take Zedruu from me. Since this deck is very creature light, it can be hard to recover him back. Still, if you need some more fun stuff to play with, this card definitely fits.

Shared Fate - Another really bizarre card to play. Problem is that now you can't really play with your own library any more, and chances are that the rest of the players aren't going to pick your deck to play with those cards, either. End result is that the whole deck collapses and fun times are over.

Color/Land Type Shifters - Cards like Spectral Shift, Mind Bend, and Alter Reality are great for screwing up somebody's mana ramp or messing with a specific game plan. The color and land types don't appear as often as they used to, so I don't use these much any more.

Other Coin Flipping Cards - This deck isn't specifically for coin flipping, but those kind of cards are great for weird game states and mini-games. I used to have a Krark's Thumb in here, too, but now I don't have enough coin flippers to justify it.

Ruhan of the Fomori

This guy is in the 99, so it's perfectly reasonable to throw him in there. I've swapped him back and forth a few times. He just randomly bashes his face into an opponent, but it's a pretty good threat. It might be too threaten to some folks, though.

Numot, the Devastator

A lot of people don't like land destruction, so this might raise your threat level a bit too much.

Narset, Enlightened Master

This is an interesting pick. Most players are very wary of Narset, but at the same time, if you can get in an attack or two, you can put down some lockout permanents on your board. With some card manipulation tricks, this version might actually work.

Jhoira of the Ghitu

Cutting white kind of sucks, but this also gives you the potential of dropping a lot of chaotic enchantments all at the same time. You can replace the white spells with time counter manipulation tricks.

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