Combo Tutors
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on July 16, 2019, 10:04 p.m. by enpc
Now that Paradox Engine is banned, I will have to tweak my Thrasios, Triton Hero and Tymna the Weaver deck:
Triton Weaver
Commander / EDH*
SCORE: 7 | 10 COMMENTS | 1657 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS
to remove PE. My thoughts are to double down on the Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal package by increasing the tutor density of the deck.
I'm considering adding Spellseeker which fetches Dramatic Reversal but can also get counterspells/ Silence for my combo turn.
On the artifact side, I'm considering swapping
Dark Petition
out for either
Tezzeret the Seeker
,
Whir of Invention
or
Grim Tutor
(budget isn't an issue). At the end of the day, they each cost 5 mana to get Scepter into play, however each has their own benefits and drawbacks.
So the question is: Am I better off just keeping Dark Petition or should I swap it out for something else? And is Spellseeker worth a slot here?
Also, any other feedback would also be appreciated.
Spellseeker is good since tutors on a body do come in handy sine you can use them to block or flicker them.
I wouldn’t add in Whir of Invention since the triple blue may be a little troublesome when you would prefer to leave some of that mana up.
July 16, 2019 10:45 p.m.
Honestly, I would not try that approach as adding more tutors at cmcs over 2 doesn't really effectively help the deck compete against fast decks and slower decks already get beat by the Tymna/card advantage game plan pretty soundly. You'd be adding cards that wouldn't matter in slower matchups and cards that are actively dead in fast matchups, it'd actually decrease the overall win rate of the deck against the competitive tier of the meta.
There's a better approach and it's to simply slot in Mystic Forge for PEngine and a cost reducer ( Helm of Awakening in place of Voltaic Key for me) to retain those same three card slots devoted to PEngine, Top, Key combo and turn it into Forge, Top, Reducer combo. Still draws your whole deck, just doesn't produce infinite mana along the way, but producting and defending the production of infinite mana with the whole deck in hand is pretty trivial most games. No other card slots would have to change in this set up.
If you'd like to, you can take a look here: Dramatic Thrymna. I'm working for the primer on it in bits and pieces but it's performance is absolutely insane against the whole meta. Super complicated deck to pilot, but the ceiling for performance is the best of any deck in the format once the ins and outs have been learned.
July 16, 2019 11:15 p.m.
Here's some other tutors that you can possibly include that I don't see in your list.
Merchant Scroll : Another tutor for Dramatic Reversal .
Dimir Infiltrator / Shred Memory : Along with Muddle the Mixture which is already in your list can all can act as tutors for both Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal using transmute.
Tribute Mage : can grab the scepter. Aside from the scepter it can still grab Grim Monolith , Fellwar Stone , ect. among others in your deck.
Reshape : another tutor but requires you to sac an artifact.
Long-Term Plans : not as good as others but can grab anything.
July 17, 2019 2:45 a.m.
Diabolic Intent , because sometimes another Demonic Tutor is better than a mana-dork.
Wargate , most opponents would rather use counter-magic on what you tutor up rather than the tutor itself. With this your opponents have to guess what you might tutor up otherwise it gets put on the field un-countered.
Scroll Rack , really goes well with decks with lots of shuffle effects like Bloodstained Mire and Demonic Tutor . Always gets you new cards to pull from the top of your deck on.
Tainted Pact , gets you whatever card you need so long as you're willing to dig for it.
July 17, 2019 8:07 a.m.
Thank you to everybody who commented, sorry about the delayed response. Good ol' fashioned life getting in the way (not to mention I wasn't getting notifications for a while).
DrukenReaps: The extra tech with Tez is nice. Ultimately, the reason I like him so much is that once he's down, it's an ability which fetches the artifact and puts it straight into play. He can also get a mana rock (read Mana Vault ) turn N and Isochron Scepter turn N+1. The untap is the icing on the cake, but not why I would play him. The double blue is a bit of a shame, but what can you do. I think he's a relatively strong contender for the slot.
Joe_Ken_: I think I'm goingto swap Impulse for Spellseeker - she just seems better (albeit at sorcery speed). It's a shame she doesn't have flash, but I get why she doesn't have flash. And I think I agree with you on Whir of Invention , while the deck can hit triple blue, you effectively need quad blue held up to resolve it.
jaymc1130: I both agree and don't agree with you. First off, I'll touch on Mystic Forge - I don't mind the combo but I don't think it has a place in the deck. The thing about PE was that sure, there was a combo with Sensei's Divining Top , but more than that it tied the rest of the combo packages together in the deck and acted as a nice piece of redundancy against losing access to reversal/scepter. And I don't think that Mystic Forge does the same thing.
On the topic of 3+ CMC tutors - while I agree to an extent, I don't want to discount them either. Grim Tutor is probably the worst tutor in that paying 3 mana is basically a bad Demonic Tutor (which, granted, is one of the best tutors in the entire game), but even still there is zero restrictions on what it can get.
The rest of the tutors however provide some kind of additional value, most of them in the form that they deploy the tutored card into play, effectively uncounterably (yes, I know that Stifle is still a card). So while you are paying ultimately 1 additional mana, you get to test the waters a little bit. And in that light, the difference is a single mana. Dark Petition is a bit different, but again the ability to get anything is super strong. Not to mention that when getting then playing an Isochron Scepter , there is no cost difference between it and D Tutor. But on the flipside, I'm not going to be cramming Diabolic Tutor into my deck anytime soon just to increase the tutor density.
As for the whole fast v slow matchups, again, I agree and I don't. sure, expensive spells are generally bad against lightning fast decks, but that also comes down to what else is going on in my hand. Generally the faster a deck, the more glass cannon-y it is, so in those games I'm focused more on a counterspell or two anyway - I'm playing the slower game. But that doesn't always mean I'm going to generate value with Tymna. A common table for me is Kess storm, OG Sisay combo/beats hybrid and Tasigur control (I appreicate this may not be toppest of top shelf cEDH but they're still not casual, pub-stomp games). Kess will be about on par with me speed wise, but all of the other decks outcreature me. At this point, I don't mind paying a bit more for a value tutor - especially since most tutors I'm interested in do more than just putting a card in my hand.
On the topic of your Tymna/Thrasios deck, I had a look and it looks really cool. It's interesting to see the amount of proactive hate the deck runs, which is not as common to see these days compared to just packing a deck full of counterspells (which is I guess what you're going for). That being said, in my playgroup and for my playstyle, it's not the deck for me. If all I was versing was fast combo it would be much more appealing. But as it stands, I'm happier with the direction the deck is currently taking and given my group, I think the list has more potency for what I'm up against (not to mention it seems like it would be a lot more stressful to pilot :P).
Flagellum: I don't mind Merchant Scroll , but for the 1 extra mana that is Spellseeker , I think I would much prefer her in the deck, especially given the synergy of it.
The transmute cards are interesting. I think that Muddle the Mixture is by far the strongest of the three (which is why I re-included it). Shred Memory is nice GY hate, but feels like it's just a tutor and at that poing costs the same as Grim Tutor . And Dimir Infiltrator is cool (especially with Tymna) but you want ot cast it as soon as possible for CA, which tehn means it's no longer a tutor.
I hand thought about Tribute Mage but he just feels too narrow.
I don't like Reshape here - I'm basically eating mana rocks to get the thing which combos with mana rocks.
Long-Term Plans is a cool card, but yeah, it feels a bit weak here. Good in Melek though.
StopShot: I had thought about Diabolic Intent before and the benefit that worst case scenario you just eat your commander. I'm still on the fence about it though. Again, I don't want to eat a thing to fetch a thing which combos with what I just ate.
I completely forgot about Wargate though and I have to say I'm very intrigued by it. The fact that it can fetch a part of any combo (except Dramatic Reversal and even then it can get Spellseeker assuming I make space for her) is very nice and the fact you don't sacrifice the end goal card if gate is couterspelled is really cool. The mana coast is a bit tricky but I think it could be a strong contender.
Scroll Rack is nice, but potentially a bit slow and can feel really empty if you're stuck topdecking for whatever reason. It's good wheel insurance though. I'll have a bit more of a think about this one.
I had thought about Tainted Pact , however the mana base will cause issues since I run 4 Island s for High Tide (which is surprisingly good). If I cut this down to 2 I could do the whole land/snowland trick, but I'm not sold on it.
Again, thank you all for your comments - there is a lot to digest here but I very much appreciate people's thoughts on it. Also, I think I really overthink card swaps :P
July 18, 2019 5:28 a.m.
@ enpc There's no question that PE was just hands down amazing and nothing can really replace it's versatility. That card was flat out busted. Mystic Forge can do a fair impression, but is definitely more limited in application to pull that impression off. In practice it actually does act as a redundant Iso/Rev combo, it's just that making it pull off this impersonation is convoluted as all hell. The only good thing about it is that doing it doesn't require much in terms of additional card slot devotion outside of what was generally already being run in a PS deck shell. Generation of infinite mana after infinite draw makes use of Dark Ritual and Lotus Petal most of the time and just needs an Elixir of Immortality added to the equation to make it work. If Mystic Forge is considered to take the spot of PE, Helm takes the spot of Key, and Top stays as the third piece in that equation with Petal and Ritual already being run it effectively means just the Elixir got added to it.
Relatively similar in totality of function to Scepter+Reversal+Grim Monolith+Simic Signet+Memory's Journey+Noxious Revival+Thrasios in that both set ups result in infinite mana, infinite card draw, and infinite graveyard recursion (although Iso/Rev only produces infinite U and G mana with that combination while Mystic Top is any color). Technically the Mystic Top set up even requires 1 less card for the same net functionality, in theory saving a card slot, but really you kind of have to account for the fact that Helm, Forge, and Elixir are generally less independently useful pieces than the ones included in Iso/Rev. Neither combination is as effective as Key+PE+Top+Mana Crypt+Mox Diamond+Memory's Journey+Noxious Revival which is just purely independently useful elements with just the Key being meh on it's own.
I tried a lot of tutors out as well tbh, and they work. They do what they do, which is usually nice. Only problem is the way the cEDH meta is changing with Ashiok being run in literally everything now and Aven Mindcensor often pairing with it. The prevalence of these paired in cEDH lately can make it really tough (sometimes impossible) for a deck to function if it's overly dependent on an overly dense tutor package as opposed to relying more on outright card advantage sources. Not something to consider in every meta mind you, so if yours doesn't reflect this aspect it's less important to worry about. The cEDH meta at large, however, is where you'd have to really think long and hard about that aspect of deck construction.
Oh man, my Inception strategy decks (as I'm calling them now cuz what else do you call a deck with an infinitely spinning Top focused on Extraction and cards with flavor of dream creation and sleep like the movie?) are unbelievably intense and difficult to pilot. If you've been able to do your homework and preparation then the success rate is nothing short of astounding against the meta at large and completely revolutionary against fast glass cannon combos, but a lack of studying or proper understanding will really hurt the chances of winning. It's probably not the deck for most people or most metas tbh as there are probably things that can be equally effective in specific metas that are well established. It's a blast to pilot against the top level stuff when those decks have top level pilots though, tons of long grindy games with incredibly nuanced interaction layers that make it a real brain scratcher.
July 18, 2019 6:08 a.m.
@enpc You are currently running 4 Island s and 2 Forest s. Take out 2 Islands and 1 Forest for 2 Snow-Covered Island s and 1 Snow-Covered Forest . This will make Tainted Pact work much better as they have different names and it won't disrupt your High Tide synergy.
DrukenReaps says... #2
I would lean towards Tezzeret the seeker since it has a number of different uses.
July 16, 2019 10:33 p.m.