This deck is an utter abomination against nature. Don't play it
This is a full 100 card version of my Grist Oathbreaker Combo rebuilt for EDH. This deck is possible in EDH for the first time ever now that the MH3 MDFC lands have given us just BARELY enough of a manabase to function. Essentially this is an "Oops all spells" style combo deck which revolves around stacking our library via effects like Recross the Paths, setting up an instant kill enabled by Grist's +1 mill ability. Below is a detailed walkthrough of the entire combo, modified from the original description on my Oathbreaker deck. The combo works almost exactly the same here just with more insects needed to handle the higher life totals of EDH. The EDH version also has slightly more efficient lines because we have access to Lion's Eye DiamondGC which is banned in Oathbreaker. With the printing of Aatchik, Emerald Radian I have also added a new primary kill method which I will explain after the main combo setup and OG kill described below.
P.S. $100 Budget Version for Bracket 3!
Here's how we kill the entire table on turn 3 using extremely janky insects and 17 lands:
- Cast Grist, the Hunger Tide
- Cast Recross the Paths, OR cast + activate Goblin Charbelcher, OR cast Abundance and draw using its replacement effect. ((((at this point, you can win on the spot if you are able to make OR , OR with mana using the free draw from Conjurer's Bauble / Street Wraith. You can also win with Sensei's Divining Top in play and . Having a combo piece in hand can make it even easier, or it might be more difficult and slower with certain pieces in hand or grave. Winning on the next turn is also very viable and the safest way to multi-turn is usually to cast Grist (or Recross first if you expect Grist to die), pass, then cast Recross and combo same turn. If you Recross first you get a free tutor because you can put any card on top and draw it for turn, but this reveals way more of your plan vs. leading on Grist.))))
- Stack your deck. Because the deck has no (front-facing) lands, any of the effects from step 2 will result in revealing the entire deck. Since all of those effects say to bottom the revealed cards in ANY order, reorder the deck with all remaining insects on top, followed by Dread Return, Corrupted Conviction, Songs of the Damned, Yawgmoth's Will, and then Exsanguinate. This is the simplest form of the combo and will cost to fully execute, after Recrossing. If going for the No-draw line, which seems to be the most common line, your pile will begin with BUGS--Dread Return--Corrupted Conviction--Lion's Eye DiamondGC--Street Wraith--Skullclamp--Songs/Yawg/Exsan. For the + draw line, the pile could look like BUGS--Dread Return--Lion's Eye DiamondGC--Skullclamp--Lotus Petal--Songs/Yawg/Exsan/whatever you want really, once you have clamp+mana set up. You might have to get a little creative if certain cards end up in your graveyard, generally you can fix this with Bala Ged Recovery
or Yawgmoth's Will. You can win without clamp/LED at all by stacking the basic combo BUGS/Dread/Corrupted/Songs/Yawg/Exsan but you will need . Just keep in mind your pile may need to change based on the circumstances. Sometimes I like to put the extra rituals and Phyrexian Altar before songs/yawgwin to hedge against graveyard interaction and allow more clamp draws, then Bala Ged and Goblin Charbelcher just below the core combo to serve as a backup plan. Veil of Summer is also important to have on hand but the only ways to get it before casting Skullclamp are to pass after recrossing and draw it for turn, buy it with a free draw, or to stack Corrupted Conviction--Veil of Summer--Skullclamp which will require to win with veil up. Currently the highest CMC in the deck is 7 with Turntimber Symbiosis
, followed by Aatchik, Emerald Radian, Zof Consumption
, and Disciple of Freyalise
at 6. So in the case of Recross the Paths generally we put one of these on top to try and win the clash, then immediately bottom it.
- With the deck stacking effect resolved, keep priority and activate Grist +1 milling all your insects from the top and also Dread Return as the last card, making 20+ insect tokens. If D.R. is not in the library, make SURE you put a spacer card where it would be because the first non-insect will be milled.
- Cast Dread Return using the Grist tokens, targeting Grave-Shell Scarab
- For the line use Grave-Shell Scarab to draw Corrupted Conviction, then cast to draw into LED and Street Wraith, rsp the Wraith with the LED, draw clamp and get , cast clamp and equip an insect to draw Songs of the Damned + Yawgmoth's Will with left in pool. ---OR--- 6b. For the line, use your free draw from Conjurer's Bauble or Street Wraith to draw Lion's Eye DiamondGC. Then use Diamond to pay for Grave-Shell Scarab with floating, draw Skullclamp, cast+equip, then draw Lotus Petal+Songs of the Damned
- Use your single to cast Songs of the Damned. You need give or take 25 creatures in your yard OR additional fast mana cards you can recast off Will. We'll use 25 creatures to illustrate mana in pool going forward
- Make 25 from songs. Draw into Yawgmoth's Will per one of the above lines.
- Cast the Yawgmoth's Will. Down to 21 mana
- Recast Songs from graveyard, -1+25 up to 45
- Even without clamp, at this point you can cast Stirge from graveyard, and activate to draw Exsanguinate. Stirge draw costs 3 so 42 mana left
- Cast Exsanguinate for lethal!
And that's the combo!
UPDATE: NEW PRIMARY COMBO LINE WITH Aatchik, Emerald Radian
Recross Pile: (top) Turntimber Symbiosis
(for clash, then bottom) -> Insects -> Dread Return -> Corrupted Conviction/Lion's Eye DiamondGC/Street Wraith/Skullclamp/Songs of the Damned -> Phyrexian Altar/Timeless Witness/Agadeem's Awakening
(order is flexible) -> rest of backup combo cards e.g. Yawgmoth's Will/Exsanguinate/Goblin Charbelcher/Bala Ged Recovery
(rest of deck)
Mana costs and setup are exactly the same as above all that changed are the positions of these new finisher cards. The loop is simple enough, draw down to Agadeem's Awakening
(can use Timeless to recur a draw spell if needed) then cast for X = 6, target at least Aatchik, Emerald Radian and Timeless Witness if it's in the yard. Witness will recur Agadeem's and Aatchik will make enough tokens to recast for 6 off Phyrexian Altar. This gives infinite mana and life loss as well as some other stuff! Another interesting bit about this loop is it can be done without needing to stack the deck at all, only needs 9 creatures in the yard to infinitely recast and 10 to net mana. There are also even more efficient forms of this combo, e.g. using Not Dead After All + Witness which inf recasts itself just off just the 1 altar mana draining out the whole table. But for the purposes of this deck where we already have redundant combos, the agadeems/witness/altar loop is more lightweight in terms of slots (we're already running agadeem, would need to add NDAA) and casting cost makes no difference after the after the primary setup of Grist + for recross then /+draw to win. Oh yeah the one other piece of tech for this is Edge of Autumn which can dumpster your Agadeem, the Undercrypt
if it's stuck in land form.
Oh yeah and DONT CAST YAWGWILL THEN TRY TO GO FOR THIS LINE LOL!!! Yawg/Exsan line is now the main backup, then there's belcher. (e.g. say they exile the GY in rsp to songs, that's really bad. This is where having rits in the pile comes in handy. if you have mana to keep drawing without songs, you can basically do a legacy tendrils and even hold yawg, use Blessed Respite to reshuffle rits/lotus petal, recast Recross the Paths to theoretically loop (not endlessly, limited by how many times you can clamp/green mana)--another strategy is to hold songs (replace it with culling the weak.) then use the rits+altar to start going off and hold the songs to respond if you really fear gy interaction. Another common case seems to be having 0 mana and 0 draw after casting recross, and in this case I often dread return the Aatchik, Emerald Radian which provides more threat on board + a bit of wrath resilience and represents an instant kill given a sac outlet like Nantuko Husk Dross Hopper or Plumb the Forbidden. The tech!!
General notes/strategy:
With a good hand you can totally jam this on turn 3-4. Whenever you get to 3 mana and a tutor it's go time. If you get stopped somewhere after the Grist +1 you are backed up by a board of insect tokens, grist ult for ~30 life, and the ability to recast Recross the Paths because clash usually re-buys the card. Goblin Charbelcher also gibs players as a 2nd backup working totally independently of our combo or the GY. Some of the deck's notable weaknesses include getting combo cards countered, instant speed graveyard removal, instant speed removal on skullclamp, failure to launch from not finding recross or grist getting beat tfd, or the ultra sketch manabase barely held together by meme dreams and multiple mulligans, user error which is probably the worse, and then of course there's Soldier of Fortune. And if anything goes wrong you're stuck durdling out crummy insects for the rest of the game then dying so I would definitely put this deck in the "glass cannon" archetype. Though it is oddly resilient in some ways, mostly because of the alt-wincons and recursion. This deck has won in multiple cEDH pods where the table was able to interact and stopped the combo but then still died a turn later to the token swarm. It's also worth noting that Grist like most removal lends herself to being played politically. Several times I've said "Leave Grist alone and I won't kill your stuff," and my opponent says "Sounds good." And then I murder the whole table with the combo 2 turns later. To sum up, I think the deck's strengths lie in that it's sneaky, works along multiple angles, has multiple '1-card-wins' with tons of tutors allowing repeated attempts at going off even after being interacted with, all in addition to being a fast instant-kill combo. I would rate this a solid power level 9, I might even say 10 if it were not for the inherent problems with the manabase and lack of interactive spells. That's the deck! I think this is probably the craziest thing I've ever made, certainly one of the decks I'm most proud of and my most successful build on here, so if you're one of the folks who read this far/thought it was cool/or gave a +1 I just want to say thankyou very much, it means a lot!
Editing record and notes:
Added Corrupted Conviction to enable the clamp line with with just . Switched in Universal Automaton and Giant Adephage as new insects. Added Phyrexian Altar. Added Scheming Symmetry Dimir Machinations Cruel Tutor to max tutors. Took out the chromatics/baubles. Took out Pentad Prism. Took out Blessed Respite. Took out our mascot Deadly Insect so we can live the dream of Blister Beetleing ragavans and birds.
Changed up some mana rocks after the Mana Crypt ban. Mostly trying out a Lotus Blossom. Moonsilver Key or Pentad Prism are the other main contenders for that slot I think. Dowsing Dagger
was considered as well but I think it's mostly just too slow and clunky to get online, even with so many 1 drop creatures (partly because so much of our mana enters tapped). Also swapped in Coldsteel Heart (totally forgot about this classic), taking out Helm of Awakening because Helm just gives your opponents too much of an advantage and helps them interact against you, so it's a rather risky card in such a fragile shell. I could also see swapping in more 1 mana dorks like Llanowar Elves or Forsworn Paladin, I may experiment with this as well.
Swapped Conjurer's Bauble back in for Unbridled Growth because 1. it turns on Mox Opal, and 2. being able to bottom a card from graveyard is actually really helpful sometimes e.g. if you mill LED with a standard Grist +1 before the combo turn. I also added Grist, Voracious Larva
which I had originally avoided due to being an unclampable x/2, but I realized that flipping her as a freebie off Dread Return and potentially sniping a Rule of Law or similar hate piece was too juicy of tech to pass up. Lastly I changed up parts of the combo description to try and make things clearer and provide more info around possible lines and decision making while Recrossing, as this is the crux of the entire combo and trickiest aspect of playing the deck.
Added Molt Tender and Webstrike Elite removing Scute Mob and Wirewood Symbiote (basically vanilla 1-drops). 1-drop insect mana dork? Uncounterable removal insect? I don't think they could have printed better cards for us! Also made a couple other changeling related insect swaps: Realmwalker, Masked Vandal, and Nameless Inversion in; Giant Adephage, Plague Beetle, and Blightbeetle out. Also Cryptolith Rite in Lotus Blossom out. IDK how I slept on Cryptolith for so long because this card is freakin amazing in here. I think now I am going to have to jam Aatchik, Emerald Radian too, this card seems too perfect as a top end "fair" threat / alternate reanimation target (which is what Adephage was meant to be). It is possible cutting so many 1 drops could negatively affect our ability to use Skullclamp and Springleaf Drum, but I think maximizing our removal like this should be worthwhile. I'll see how this plays, honestly have not been playing this as much lately in favor of new brews!
Most recently as of 8/2025 I made some more adjustments: Adding Village Rites, Deadly Dispute, and Beseech the Mirror as well as the new insect Gene Pollinator and less new insect Spring-Leaf Avenger, cutting cutting Jeweled Amulet, Caustic Wasps, Grist, Voracious Larva
, Halo Scarab, and Nameless Inversion also swapping Charcoal Diamond for The Soul Stone. Overall the insect count went down from 30 to 28 (27 now lol) which I think is tenable, while we gained a tutor, recursion, and card draw which I think will improve the deck's consistency on a more mediocre hand. Tiny Grist and the Wasps were tough cuts as the latter is especially fun to play with but I think the stuff I brought in makes the deck more effective and I don't think I have once managed to get a flipped tiny grist so, that's how it goes...
August '25 Edit Pt.II
So I did more thinking on the Aatchik kill and I figure the most lightweight way to take this infinite involves Eternal Witness or Timeless Witness as the only needed card. The loop is Agadeem's Awakening
targeting Aatchik, Emerald Radian and Eternal Witness, Eternal returns Agadeem's and Phyrexian Altar fuels the loop. This would allow us to finally kill those pesky infinite lifegain decks and provide an extra kill line that doesn't use any of our core combo cards. I don't know if this helps much vs. GY hate since usually hate is used in response to the initial Dread Return, or is a static effect like Drannith (which can be annoying but answerable through our MDFCs, or just tutor->belch them). But I think the main advantage in adding this is it lets the deck go truly inf as well as killing without needing to cast Yawgwin at all which lowers our commitment, increases number of backups and importantly the ability to continue threatening a win on subsequent turns if we're stopped initially. So I'm going to add Timeless Witness taking out Realmwalker, also Edge of Autumn swapped for Deadly Dispute just to give SOME way to sac an in-play Agadeem, the Undercrypt
because currently I have none. Edge is actually really good and is functionally a second Street Wraith providing redundancy to some combo lines, same with Village Rites/Corrupted Conviction. Originally I felt sooo cool for putting Dredge in this slot but I totally forgot about the far superior Edge of Autumn, which I think I avoided before precisely because of the land sac cost which I thought of as steep. The other contender for a land sac card is Reprocess which is arguably way cooler but does NOT enable a cheaper combo turn. A funny but probably mostly irrelevant aside, if you make it this far you can also kill every non-shroud creature with infinite -1/-1 from Blister Beetle, permanently exile all opponents' hands with repeated Brain Maggot trigs (sac in rsp to etb for perma), and nuke arts and enchants and also infinite life from Haywire Mite. I don't think I can kill lands at all though (maybe Death Cloud over Exsanguinate? lol), oh yeah and I don't think I mentioned it but Canoptek Tomb Sentinel can snipe something out of the yard too. The last change was to add Blessed Respite back in to give just a bit more protection and loopability, taking out arguably the worst tutor Scheming Symmetry.
