n0bunga When I said unpredictability of the deck I meant that most people can't really tell very quickly what cards that are out are the really threatening ones. Once they have figured it out it loses some of the unpredictability, but the decks ability to utilize virtually any 2 cards in the deck that don't produce mana in a lethal manner

I don't hold any illusions on nekusars tier placement, and I agree with where he is placed. I'm more looking at how would one build an optimized list for nekusar, as the feedback I have received on it have been all over the place

So yeah...Hulk is insane. Its going to warp the hell out of the format. Getting a turn 3 win with hulk is SLOW hand

Lilbrudder Sure, if you start every game with Flash / Hulk and rocks in hand then he's gonna be unfair, but due to the nature of the format I believe Hulk is a fair card more often than not.

I mean you don't just run hulk. He does best in an overlapping combo package. Even if you just run him I am describing tutoring for one or both half of the combos and still easily winning on turn 3. Hulk is the exact opposite of fair, much in the same way sheldon is the opposite of smart/reasonable. If within a day hulk is consistently faster than FCT, then we have a huge problem. I don't ever troll casuals, but I may make an exception and take a fully pimped out hulk list to my old LGS and smash some asses for a night just to get the word out that hulk is not safe. They bitched about Leo and cheered his demise. They have no clue what awaits them...

I imagine it may have a place in Yisan.

Sheldon: we are banning leovold

Everyone: yaaaay he has been annoying for long enough

Sheldon: and unbanning protean hulk

Everyone:... SHELDON!!!

Lilbrudder I'd love to be enlightened as to what cards make Hulk into a consistent turn 3 (or earlier) win. I can agree that Sheldon isn't very bright, but until I see concrete evidence that Hulk is format warping then I don't see the need to get very upset about it.

Well...aside from all the ways to tutor it up, the amount of fast mana in edh, and the relative ease at which you can find a way to kill it...karador decks in general

Good evening, thegigibeast, NarejED, and everyone here. Its been a while, but Im ready to resubmit my Purphoros, God of the Forge deck again since it finally hit 100 upvotes. Alright, let me begin my case.

I believe that a Purphoros deck needs to be more than a Tribal-goblin deck. If left to be purely goblin-like, you tend to miss out on amazing and needed cards, like Norin the Wary, Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs, Tempt with Vengeance, and Grinning Ignus, just to name a few. Infinite combos are also awesome, but as has very minimal amount of tutor cards, I just leave them along (also a personal preference not to have infinite combos here). However I do list them in my description in case a player wants to have them too.

With some suggestions, I have lowered the CMC in this deck. Even with Blasphemous Act, the range is as little as 2.69. I've also changed up a third of the deck by adding Snow-Covered Mountain and all. Hmm... However, I do not believe that Purphoros needs a card like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. My goal with Purphoros is to not let him have enough devotion to be a creature, as even indestructible creatures are more prone to removals more than indestructible enchantments, case being Swords to Plowshares and Dictate of Erebos.

I hope that you would reconsider my request to see if my deck is worth joining the list here. Or any comments/suggestions. Thank you for your time.

Purphoros and Krenko (Multiplayer EDH Primer)

Commander / EDH ay.lobo

SCORE: 103 | 143 COMMENTS | 17148 VIEWS | IN 76 FOLDERS

Human_Wizard Obviously there can be no objective data as it has been around for 1 day, but there are some objective facts about the combo. For a basis of comparison let us look at a combo that is generally considered one of (if not the best) combo in cEDH, Food Chain+Eternal Scourge. It costs 6 mana to go off or 3 mana and 2 cc worth of creatures. This is often achieved on turn 3-4 and occassionally on turn 2. Now food chain is an enchantment, which is hard to tutor for. Eternal scourge is obviously easy, but still it takes a lot of FC only enablers to be consistent (i.e Demonic Consultation) or Extract). These cards are either bad outside the combo (extract) or dont play nicely with the rest of the deck (consultation).

Now let us compare that with Flash+Protean Hulk. It costs 2 mana to win the game. That is a lotus petal and a land...Green creatures are incredibly easy to tutor for i.e Summoner's Pact, Worldly Tutor, Natural Order etc and Flash is similarly easy to tutor for (i.e Mystical Tutor, Merchant Scroll). So just tutor both to hand and cast flash. If it resolves gg. The degeneracy does not end there. You can also just Cabal Therapy+Reanimate hulk from hand then sac it for two mana gg. You can also Entomb+Necromancy him at instant speed for 4 mana. gg I honestly could go on, but there is no need. Flash hulk is instantly the best 2 card combo in cEDH and it fits extremely well into many existing archetypes. It requires no board presence at all and can go off with limited resources.

Lilbrudder I'm not doubting that the combo is good. I'm doubting the consistency and efficiency that you claim the combo has.

Maybe it's just me, but I play in a meta that runs quite a lot of graveyard hate. I have the featured SBT deck in my meta (the one that's been stomping the online cEDH tournament) and people have learned to play quite a bit of hate. I just don't see Hulk being that much more problematic than many other graveyard combo lists when a lot of people are prepared for graveyard combos.

Human_Wizard in all honestly its more like one card that can combo off with a gigantic number of different cards. It turns into: sac outlet+hulk, with the 7cmc being easily dealt with by the insane amount of fast mana in edh. Flash is just by far the most efficient one

How can you doubt the efficiency? Its a 2 mana combo. Nothing is more efficient. If you have the necessary parts it will always win by turn 3 at the latest. Ive said it before this combo is your plan a line. If you run other overlapping combos with it you can get turn 3-4 wins elsewhere. I am not saying a devoted hulk deck gets turn 1-3 victories 80% of the time. I am merely saying it can be the best combo in a deck that wins by turn 3 close to 80% of the time.

I mean just run demonic tutor, vamp tutor, mystical tutor, worldly tutor, sylvan tutor, and all the tutors you can and that more or less it all that's needed. And given how much tutoring there is in cEDH, it will rarely matter

If you play voidias list, then you should be able to appreciate that a combo that does what his best combo does (nooze) with twice the mana efficiency and no drawback is kind of hard to stop. Basically if an opponent cant drop early gravehate or counter the spell they lose. Given that the combo is instant speed and requires no setup there are only a handful of cards that will shut it down. SBT actually has a great new flashulk package that works with preexisting cards in the deck.

What would be the best way to ask for help bringing two decks up to snuff in the cEDH realm? I'm not completely inexperienced, but I can't say I understand cEDH enough to know how good these two decks are.

The decks in question are Trying to do Purphoros cEDH, what I believe to be the fastest aggro deck possible in cEDH by utilizing fast mana to consistently deal a total of 120 damage by turn 7 in a typical 4-player pod, and Infinity Torments You (Thrasios + Tymna), an infinite combo deck containing 19 possible infinite mana combos using only 15 cards plus the commander as an infinite mana dump which gets Walking Ballista as the infinite mana dump AND a Protean Hulk package that requires the addition of only 4 cards to the deck, including Protean Hulk.

I am proud of the amount of building I have done to this point, but I definitely appreciate any help regarding upgrading these decks to as high of a power-level as possible. Thank you in advance!

Again these are the decks:

Trying to do Purphoros cEDH

Infinity Torments You (Thrasios + Tymna)

I don't play Voidia's list, I play against him. The primary point I was trying to make in the first place was that the combo isn't that bad. I understand that all it takes is casting Flash and putting Protean into play. But if you let the game get past turn 2 without comboing off it's really not gonna be that much more op than pre-existing combos. People play plenty of early answers in cEDH. The part that makes Protean scary is the fact that he goes off if you have Flash. I'm just of the opinion that the percentage of games where playing him as a dedicated combo over some other slightly less fast combo deck are going to minimal. Time will tell if I'm wrong.

I thought since so much of the discussion is about Protean Hulk right now I'd help everyone out and come up with the simplest combos in each color pair:

/:

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Walking Ballista

This one doesn't win the game outright, since Walking Ballista needs to ping itself if you don't have a sac outlet, but it is infinite ETB and gravestorm, and it becomes infinite damage with numerous cards.

/:

Flash OC... but also Laboratory Maniac + Hermit Druid

Hulk should die during your end step, and you can't have basics, naturally. You also have a 1 mana flex slot to grab another creature with, my go to would be Sylvan Safekeeper or Caustic Caterpillar if you need something gone.

/:

Karmic Guide + Reveillark + Fiend Hunter + a sac outlet.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you how this goes.

/ & Just :

...Ummmm.... idk. Ideas?

That is fair. We shall see

We have a new banned commander guys, and I say GOOD Riddance!

@sonnet666 Best thing I can think of in is Kiki-Jiki and Great Oak Guardian, though there's probably something better.

Hey there! So this will be an odd suggestion, but I think that Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician can actually be built to compete higher than the T4 that he is currently listed at.

He breaks Stax parity pretty well, can handle Mass Land Destruction/Resource Denial better than most other decks, and even benefits from being Blood Mooned. It is still a Monored aggro deck at heart, so not T1 or T2 deck by any stretch, but I think T3 is definitely a more accurate evaluation of how he can be built.

Thoughts?

yavimaya_eldred, That doesn't work. All the creatures being searched by Hulk need to have their CMC add up to 6. My first thought was Kiki-Jiki too, but so far there's no 1 CMC creature that combos with him. The bigger problem is that there are very few ways to recur Hulk's trigger in Green or Red without returning it to hand and recasting.

Here's the best I can come up with:

With a sac outlet: first Hulk grabs Feldon of the Third Path + Quirion Ranger + Crimson Mage, to get a second Hulk, return a forest to untap Feldon, sac Hulk to grab Burning-Tree Emissary and Treasonous Ogre, use the and 3 life Feldon a third Hulk, grab Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Kiki copies Quirion Ranger, return another Forest to untap Feldon again, 9 life for a fourth Hulk that grabs Zealous Conscripts.

Total cost: , 12 life, 2 forests in play, a sac outlet, Hulk and 7 other card slots devoted to the combo.

Not nearly as elegant as the combos I posted above.

As far as mono-green goes, I think your best bet is to play Hulk in decks that were planning on comboing out with Umbral Mantle, Staff of Domination, or Sword of the Paruns already, and then just use him as a surefire way to grab the creatures you need once you have one of them out.

Liquidbeaver, How exactly does sacing your own lands break stax?

For comparison, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Krenko, Mob Boss, and Zada, Hedron Grinder are all T3 generals, and all of them are capable of combo-ing out by turn five or six. Hell even Grenzo, Havoc Raiser, Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, and Feldon of the Third Path are T3, ad they're just value generals. I think Ib is fine where he is.