Nicky B and his Pro-Life Posse

Commander / EDH Superfriends UBR (Grixis)

Savage1988

Land (37)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Dreadship Reef
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Interplanar Beacon
• 7x Island
• 1x Karn's Bastion
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Riverglide Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 5x Swamp
• 1x Training Center
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave

Creature (6)

• 1x Deepglow Skate
• 1x Flux Channeler
• 1x Spark Double
• 1x Thrummingbird
• 1x Valki, God of Lies  ^Flip
• 1x Viral Drake

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Inexorable Tide
• 1x The Eldest Reborn

Planeswalker (22)

• 1x Ashiok, Dream Render
• 1x Chandra, Flamecaller
• 1x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
• 1x Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
• 1x Geyadrone Dihada
• 1x Jace Beleren
• 1x Jace, Architect of Thought
• 1x Karn Liberated
• 1x Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor
• 1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
• 1x Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
• 1x Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
• 1x Ral Zarek
• 1x Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
• 1x Sarkhan the Masterless
• 1x Teferi, Master of Time
• 1x Teferi, Temporal Archmage
• 1x Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Contentious Plan
• 1x Crux of Fate
• 1x Savor the Moment
• 1x Tezzeret's Gambit
• 1x The Elderspell
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Instant (5)

• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Evacuation
• 1x Hagra Mauling  ^Flip
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Snuff Out

Commander (1)

 ^Flip

Artifact (20)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Astral Cornucopia
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Coalition Relic
• 1x Contagion Engine
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Everflowing Chalice
• 1x Lithoform Engine
• 1x Magistrate's Scepter
• 1x Manifold Key
• 1x Mirage Mirror
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Pentad Prism
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x The Chain Veil
• 1x Throne of Geth

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Maybeboard

Planeswalker (6)

• 1x Chandra, Awakened Inferno
• 1x Chandra, Flamecaller
• 1x Jace Beleren
• 1x Sorin Markov
• 1x Tezzeret, Artifice Master
• 1x Ugin, the Ineffable

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Torment of Hailfire

Instant (1)

• 1x Clockspinning

Artifact (2)

• 1x Ensnaring Bridge
• 1x Voltaic Key

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"Your Dragon-God has returned."

And he brought some friends :D

Main gameplan

1. Ramp

2. Proliferation engine

3. Planeswalkers / control

4. Proliferate

5. Ultimate

6. Reck 'em

Why Bolas

Bolas's Pro-Life Superfriends is my first attempt at:

• grixis

• proliferation

• planeswalkers in edh

Initially i thought of going Bolas Tribal (hence the commander) because i got a japanese prerelease promo of Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God while on holiday in Tokyo, which i really wanted to build something with. Piece by piece i adjusted the list to be a little more synergistic instead of a theme-deck until it looked like the list below. Very little Bolas left, but probably something that can sometimes hold its own. Still very casual, but I think fun for a while. I think it should work but i haven't played a game yet.

Any feedback and tales from experience from my fellow T/Oers is much appreciated.

Card by card

Ramp

• 1/2CMC: Sol Ring , 3 signets, 2 talismans, Pentad Prism , Everflowing Chalice

• 3 CMC: Astral Cornucopia , Coalition Relic

• 4 CMC: Chandra, Torch of Defiance , Ral Zarek

Proliferers (In order of impact)

• Deepglow Skate gets pretty much any walker to ult immediately

• Savor the Moment / The Chain Veil effectively give all walkers double activations

• The Elderspell destroy / sacrifice some walkers to get one ultimate immediately

• Viral Drake got mana? got proliferation! Works well with our proliferable artifacts mentioned under Proliferees

• Inexorable Tide / Flux Channeler we only run 8 creatures, so that makes more than half our deck proliferate, sometimes multiples times/turn

• Once per turn: Lithoform Engine / Contagion Engine / Contagion Clasp / Throne of Geth / Thrummingbird / Karn's Bastion

• Single use: Tezzeret's Gambit / Contentious Plan

Proliferees

Bolas’s friends

3cmc

• Narset, Parter of Veils gets me deeper into my deck and hinders others, likely to die on sight

• Ashiok, Dream Render disables tutors for others, is graveyard hate. If her abilities don’t matter she’s pretty unimpressive, could be cut

• Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast defends us, kills threats and can win the game with his ult by copying some dumb stuff. A bomb for 3cmc

• Saheeli, Sublime Artificer defends us, can make temp copies of our more powerful non-pw permanents and doesn’t hinder others too much. Seems innocuous, but can build up a wall to protect our walkers if left alone for too long

4 CMC

• Chandra, Torch of Defiance ramp, removal, cards and a great ult

• Daretti, Scrap Savant helps dig into the deck and can get back our more important artifacts

• Jace, Architect of Thought helps on defense a bit, can get us some cards, but is mostly here for his ultimate: stealing oppo’s wincons and fetching one from our own deck. If we drop this + Deepglow Skate in the same turn we should be able to win.

• Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor is just a bit of a nuissance. Making blockers and making our walkers and creatures harder to target and looting all contribute towards my endgame

• Ral Zarek untaps key permanents to either ramp, proliferate or do somethjng else multiple times, bolts a key creature in the early game and can help us win through additional turns as ult

• Teferi, Master of Time looting and protection at instant speed are great, but it’s got a big target on its head due to being able to activate every turn. Hopefully I get to ult it some day

5 CMC

• Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God card-advantage, removal, win-con, and all the other things

• Sarkhan the Masterless makes a decent blocker, but can also enable an alpha-strike with our planeswalkers for some unexpected damage

• Tezzeret the Seeker Enables all kinds of shenanigans, see also “Combo’s”

6 CMC +

• Liliana, Dreadhorde General Great for board presence/control, great ult that all but wins the game

• Teferi, Temporal Archmage can help us proliferate/ramp more, gets us some card-selection and the ultimate makes all our walkers activate 4 times as much

• Karn Liberated It’s Karn!

• Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh It’s Bolas!

• Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker More Bolas!

• Ugin, the Spirit Dragon Moar Dargen Planeswalkers!

• Lux Cannon “Nuke em from orbit”

• Magistrate's Scepter : could remove in the future, depending on how consistent this goes infinite. Table would get salty if i get to do this too often. I think my only tutor for it is Tezzeret the Seeker ?

• Ramp ( Everflowing Chalice , Pentad Prism , Astral Cornucopia , Dreadship Reef , Coalition Relic )

• Fixing ( Vivid Creek , Vivid Marsh )

Card advantage

The real card advantage is in activating the walkers multiple times

Control

• Some planeswalkers

• Nevinyrral's Disk

• Toxic Deluge

• Crux of Fate

• Evacuation

• Counterspell

• Slaughter Pact

Mostly for flavor

• Cruel Ultimatum

• In Bolas's Clutches

• The Eldest Reborn : has a cool interaction with Mirage Mirror where you can copy it on upkeep the turn after you play The Eldest Reborn to get the first trigger, and its clock can also be sped up with proliferation!

Combo’s

Infinite turns

Magistrate's Scepter with enough proliferation (e.g. Contagion Engine with either Lithoform Engine or Mirage Mirror )

Infinite everything!

Stage 1: infinite walker activations

1. The Chain Veil (to do what it does)

2. Tezzeret the Seeker (To untap the veil and a mana artifact)

3. Produce 4 mana through ramp or pws: either Chandra, Torch of Defiance (+1 for 2 mana) + Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God (copying chandra’s ramp ability) or Chandra, Torch of Defiance + artifact that taps for 2 or artifact that taps for 4

This exactly gives us infinite PW activations (including ultimates) for any walkers not required in the loop.

Stage 2: Infinite mana + artifact usage

If part 3 has either any mana artifact, a 3 mana producing artifact or a 5 mana producing artifact respectively in the different scenarios this also gives infinite mana.

Infinite mana in turn gets us infinite non-veil artifact untaps: Because we don’t need all our mana for the veil we can store at least 1 per cycle and untap a non-ramp artifact at least once every 5 turns. What we do with infinite mana? Who cares :D

What if we only have chandra and tezzeret though? Well infinite mana also gives us infinite chandra ultimates because we don’t need her for her mana ability every cycle, which allows us to -7 every few cycles.

The next spell we cast can dome our opponents for [insert big number] * 5.

Stage 3: infinite everything

If the untaps can be used for Lithoform Engine or Magistrate's Scepter we really got there. The scepter gives us the turns immediately. In the case of the engine you can find a spot to copy the chain veil ability (they stack). This gives tezzeret a cycle off of untapping veil to fetch the scepter with his -X.

Because yeah, we needed that ;)

Cuts and Considerations

Possible cuts:

-

Strong Considerations:

• Sorin Markov : Drains slowly, can help table take care of archnemesis, resets the lifegain deck, has evil ult. Especially the -3 here is just “fun”

• Will Kenrith / Rowan Kenrith : will is the real powerhouse here, but playing either to tutor for the other might be good enough to include rowan too

Other Options:

• Tezzeret, Artifice Master : helps throne of geth, draws cards, has cool ult

• Ugin, the Ineffable : helps control, builds boardstate, helps cast artifacts (and ugins/karns)

• Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools : makes blockers

• Torment of Hailfire needs to be in here just for flavor really

• Cheap interaction: Pongify / Rapid Hybridization / Reality Shift / AEtherize (politics)

Notable absentees

• Nevinyrral's Disk : destroys a lot of our own (ramp, most notably) but is a great, cheap, instant way to prot. my walkers, the play-pattern just isn't fun though

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Top Ranked	Achieved #12 position overall 3 years ago Achieved #8 position in Commander / EDH 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Superfriends 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH UBR (Grixis) 3 years ago
Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	20 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.70
Tokens	Construct 1/1 C Token w/ Defender, Copy Clone, Dragon 4/4 R, Elemental 3/1 R, Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Emblem Teferi, Temporal Archmage, Emblem Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor, Servo 1/1 C, Thrull 0/1 B, Wizard 2/2 U, Zombie 2/2 B