HEY YOU!
Are you a fan of competitive EDH? Do you find yourself enjoying the thrill of taking unnecessary risks in life? Do you have a crippling gambling addiction? Well I have the perfect deck for you!
Back when Battlebond was spoiled, I was very intrigued by the partners Zndrsplt & Okaun for their coin flipping fun factor. Unfortunately, I am also a fan of cEDH and most of my decks, even the less viable ones, lean deeply into consistency, interactivity, and efficient wincons. Because of all these aspects, I wanted to find a way to bring these two into the cEDH sphere with some level of viability.
Luckily, a little known card named "Frenetic Efreet" works as a perfect combo piece with Zndrsplt to win on the spot. To get to this creature as fast as possible, we use Polymorph effects to pull the Effret out of the deck, often at instant speed.
Strategy
As mentioned before, the overall general goal is to utilize Frenetic Efreet's activated ability to put an arbitrary amount of coin flips on the stack and draw nearly all of your deck with Zndrsplt's wonderful ability to draw when you win a flip. To stop yourself from drawing the deck and losing, you simply use a bounce or kill spell to take Zndrsplt off the field while the rest of the activations resolve. You then win with Isochron Scepter with Dramatic Reversal to use Codex Shredder or Blue Sun's Zenith to deck opponents.
For the most part, this strategy is very mid-ranged. Because of this, the deck features a robust interaction suite to interact with any game-ending effects early on. It often benefits you to hold up mana to threaten interaction instead of chaining out ramping spells. However, the deck can win turn 1 with a few four/five specific card hands that lead to IsoRev wins. Zndrsplt is normally your first priority, but if you manage to get Okaun out, the double flip triggers will normally let you draw a good amount of cards.
When you mulligan, you want to keep enough mana to get close to bringing out Zndrsplt/Okaun(if you have a morph in hand) while still having a couple of pieces of interaction in hand. Unlike most dedicated polymorph decks, having Efreet in hand is not an issue, because Efreet is cheaper than your Poly spells and can be played on a turn after Zndrslpt resolves. Additionally, you can choose to keep a hand with IsoRev pieces and their tutors to try to threaten a quick turn 2-3 win. For the most part, this will not be our main strategy.
If things go south, you can use Academy Ruins and Buried Ruin to get your Scepter or Paradox Engine back. If Dramatic Reversal is lost, almost any instant under Scepter creates a IsoRev effect hen paired with Paradox Engine, which are recoverable. In a pinch, Codex Shredder can get any card out of the graveyard. If things go very very south, Okaun works as a big beater and can, with a little bit of coin luck, one shot people in cEDH's mostly blockerless meta.
Strengths
This deck will typically illicit strange looks when sitting down with decks like TT Flashhulk, Kess Storm, or Shimmer Zur. Because of this, it is a marked strength that you will be the lower priority on the table. The lean wincon allows for more slots to be allocated to interaction. The midrange nature of the deck and high levels of interaction leans will into taking advantage of the hangover after a pod-wide counterwar that stopped someone from winning. Zndrslpt is often a source of unexpected mass card draw with her ability. Also, a suddenly massive Okaun can demand opponents sacblock with creatures they needed, or he can pressure AdNaus decks mightly with only one hit.
Weaknesses
Unfortunately, the fun aspect involved with relying on lucky coin flips to generate massive draw turns is also a glaring weakness. Sometimes, when you depleted much of your hand stopping a win or removing a hate pice, Zndrslpt will crush your dreams by drawing you zero cards to refill your hand. Also, the partners' 5 CMC cost is high, thus the cost of executing a Polymorph is normally very high in total. Because of this, the deck can perform inconsistently when goldfishing on XMage. It can fish out turn 2-3 wins but also fish out turn 4-5 wins if flips go wrong. Thus, the fun, meme-like aspect of the deck can be its greatest strength and greatest weakness.
Card Choices
Essential to the function of the deck, are the polymorph effects and the Frenetic Efreet. For the most part, drawing your deck and using fast mana to generate a Scepter win can lend to many different "final" wincons. For example, while Dramatic Scepter into an outlet is preferred, a combo like Final Fortune under Scepter will Sundial of the Infinite will win just as well.
The interaction suite is rather robust, but it can be adjusted to accommodate some stax pieces like Blood Moon, Back to Basics, and Ruination. If you do go this route, I recommend you change the manabase slightly. When you use these cards, an Okaun beats strategy becomes more of the right consideration, while Zndrslpt draws you cards.
The same can be said for the tutor suite. Many of the tutors, like Personal Tutor and Mystical Tutor you will want to keep, as they grant you immediate access to Polymorph. However others, like Long-Term Plans, can be considered for flexing out to bring in some of the aforementioned stax pieces.
I will test these type of effects and potentially incorporate them into future updates, if they work well.
Conclusion
Overall, these lucky partners will never be high tier cEDH commanders, and are extremely fringe as is. However, if you like unique commanders with interesting wincons, and if you want a change of pace from your typical "cEDH database" deck, these two might just be perfect for you. Feel free to give it a try, and let me know how it works out for you. Thanks for reading, and may all your flips be lucky!
