Purphuros the Bronze-Blooded (brainstorming)

gilrad · Post by **gilrad** » 4 years ago

The goal:

To make a heavily instant-speed deck that relies on Purphuros's ability to control the board using effects that are normally sorcery speed. Things like Meteor Golem are way more valuable as instant-speed spot removal, zealous conscripts effects can be used to remove attackers from combat or to make blockers, and so on.

I made a list, mostly focused on artifacts because kuldotha forgemaster is just bonkers at instant speed, though there might be a line of thought I haven't come up with yet. So,

what I'd like to know is if there are any oft-overlooked creatures that have a cool utility use that would be much more valuable as an instant for three mana.

For now, here is my second draft list:

Decklist

Approximate Total Cost:

First draft

SPOILER

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Decklist

Commander

1 Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded

Creatures

1 Ancient Stone Idol

1 Burnished Hart

1 Clone Shell

1 Combustible Gearhulk

1 Dragon Mage

1 Duplicant

1 Etali, Primal Storm

1 Feldon of the Third Path

1 Goblin Engineer

1 Goblin Welder

1 Golden Guardian // Gold-Forge Garrison

1 Hellkite Tyrant

1 Hoarding Dragon

1 Ilharg, the Raze-Boar

1 Inferno Titan

1 Iron Myr

1 Junk Diver

1 Knollspine Dragon

1 Kuldotha Forgemaster

1 Scarecrone

1 Scaretiller

1 Scrapyard Recombiner

Sorcery

1 Wild Guess

Instant

1 Chaos Warp

1 Thrill of Possibility

Artifact

1 Caged Sun

1 Mind Stone

1 Skullclamp

1 Sol Ring

1 Thran Dynamo

1 Wayfarer's Bauble

1 Worn Powerstone

Land

30 Mountain

1 Temple of the False God

1 Thawing Glaciers

1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

Enchantment

1 Flameshadow Conjuring

Approximate Total Cost:

darrenhabib · Post by **darrenhabib** » 4 years ago

I like the concept of playing disruptive creatures in your opponents turn, perhaps stopping a game winning play. The other thing is that you can always use his ability during opponent end step just before your turn, so that you still get an attack, so it's not like you waste your mana if you didn't need to explicitly interrupt what an opponent was doing.

There are definitely some great creatures you can play missing from your list.

Draw
Bedlam Reveler, Cavalier of Flame, Runehorn Hellkite
Creature control
Molten Primordial, Conquering Manticore, Bogardan Hellkite, Caldera Hellion, Chaos Maw, Crater Hellion, Spawn of Thraxes, Ryusei, the Falling Star, Bloodfire Colossus, Fumiko the Lowblood, Stalking Yeti, Starke of Rath
Board wipe
Bearer of the Heavens
Opponent hand
Mindclaw Shaman
Opponent graveyard
Dire Fleet Daredevil
Prevent game win or loss
Platinum Angel
Destroy land
Avalanche Riders, Goblin Settler, Ogre Arsonist, Ravaging Horde
Destroy artifact
Batterhorn, Goblin Trashmaster, Ingot Chewer, Tuktuk Scrapper, Wild Celebrants
Attacking
Balefire Dragon, Drakuseth, Maw of Flames

Some of the tricker plays you can look to do is use Purphoros during opponents draw step in response to them having Mystical Tutor with Mindclaw Shaman.

There would be literally no more satisfying play, than responding to a Thassa's Oracle+Demonic Consultation play with Platinum Angel.

Sundial of the Infinite is a must in a Purphoros deck, meaning you get to keep the creatures.

Erratic Portal is custom made for this deck.

Bearer of the Heavens is a bomb in this deck, as Purphoros is indestructible and you can play around it by keeping lands in hand.

gilrad · Post by **gilrad** » 4 years ago

No game report yet, but after doing entirely too much goldfishing:

- the card selection instant and sorceries aren't all that useful, I don't have enough payoff for putting things in my graveyard early, and once I'm established I'd rather be throwing as many creatures into play as my mana can afford. This also goes for the Cavalier, since he can't actually net any positive amount of cards. I was originally a little worried about including too many mini-wheels, but I'd rather have too many gumming up my hands sometimes if it occasionally helps bring me out of a no-gas situation.

Fortune thief might be a better alternative to platinum angel depending on your meta; there aren't a whole lot of lose states that leave you in the clear at the end of the turn that I can think of, but Thief is a pretty broad "I don't lose this turn" card.

- Sundial and Portal at least deserve a spot, moreso than flameshadow conjuring in my experience at least. Being artifacts they have a bit more synergy, and they're both good insurance policies on keeping no-action states away.

- I should probably focus on "smart" rocks and small rocks more than big rocks, lotus and Dynamo kind of feel like they're in the way a lot of the time, but getting Purph out a turn earlier more reliably is important, as is being able to weld or junk dive a dreamstone hedron back for the cards if I'm running out of more convenient card sources.

weltkrieg · Post by **weltkrieg** » 4 years ago

How about runehorn hellkite? It's a 5/5 flier in the air and refills your hand from the graveyard otherwise.

gilrad · Post by **gilrad** » 4 years ago

I haven't had a chance to do a proper in/out but here we go:

SWAPS
blasphemous act into bloodfire colossus - Being able to wipe most of the board at instant speed for four mana I feel is stronger than wiping all the board for usually one mana at sorcery speed. The damage to players has better synergy with spinerock knoll and knollspine dragon too.

fire diamond into everflowing chalice - No ETB tapped, and being able to drop it for zero as Forgemaster fodder in a pinch will also be helpful.

gilded lotus into dreamstone hedron - I don't really need the extra red mana, and being able to weld it into three cards to keep the creatures flowing is way more important than a bit more mana efficiency.

OUT:

Card selection effects

dumb rocks:

Leaving seven cards for more draw and better control creatures.

IN:

well, the numbers don't add up so I must be forgetting something I took out, but I updated the list!

I chose the manticore over the primordial because of the flying mostly. Also I suspect I will be using him less as a way to push in peoples' faces on my turn and more to wipe out attacking players, so the flying will help with the blocking there.

Revoker is kind of a test card that needs to be put through a number of real games before its worth can be determined. At worst it only delays players from doing the thing they wanted to do until I sacrifice it because I don't have any way to keep it out, at best I might be able to shut down really nasty effects almost permanently with the help of a goblin welder effect.

The rampaging ferocidon is another one that I want to give a try, as both of its abilities have great potential for game-ending reversals at instant speed.

Possible cuts:

So far in my (again, entirely too much) goldfishing, I haven't really been able to get any good payoff from either of these guys. Clone shell especially, since this deck already specializes in doing what it does, without the chance of missing. Might as well have another control creature maybe? Treasure keeper is a bit more difficult to judge, since it can pick up noncreatures too and can be a good way to dig for things like the welders or Feldon, which I don't have any easy access to.

gilrad · Post by **gilrad** » 4 years ago

Still no game report since I was unable to make it on my only available day last week, but a few more thoughts:

Possible cuts:
caged sun - unlike my only other frame of reference for a mono-R artifact build (Bosh, Iron Golem), this deck doesn't have very good mana sink potential, and there really isn't much benefit to going beyond nine mana since most of my shenanigans involve Purph's activation and other tap abilities. Untapping with 20+ mana just won't win me the game like it would with many other decks.

Additionally, cutting this removes my only reason to need a high density of mountains, allowing me to really go deep on utility lands.

Possible adds:

conjurer's closet - I was reluctant to add this originally because five mana is a pretty rough cost to pay sorcery speed, while forcing one of my plays to be done in my turn to get the full benefit. The payoff seems a bit weak when I'd rather have more options during other players' turns.

But then I realized it works really well as a force multiplier for kuldotha forgemaster. Put simply: end of turn forgemaster, sacrifice three artifacts to bring in thopter assembly, untap, sac three thopters for closet, end step the forgemaster untaps and I am ready to forgemaster out what I really want at instant speed at any time the remaining round with sacrifice fodder just three mana away in my hand. This is miles above any line I could think of without the closet.

toctheyounger · Post by **toctheyounger** » 4 years ago

I pulled a constellation copy myself and I'm pretty keen to get things rolling on a build. Here's some bits and pieces I'm looking at:

Ancestral Statue - Something to flash in to save your key pieces, or just give you another ETB trigger.
Lightning Crafter - This one is a little weird. But it gets haste, champions something you might've flashed in already, bolts something, gets sacced and saves your other creature. Maybe it's a little too cute, but it does get you a second ETB trigger if needed or saves you a beater.
Malignus - Something about flashing this in as a chump blocker just tickles my fancy.
Dualcaster Mage - there's no discount and no bonus as it flashes anyway (redundancy I guess) but copying someone else's ramp seems like the least value you could get from it.
Filigree Familiar - In this context it's a chump blocking cantrip really.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker - I guess if you don't want combo it's Kiki or Conscripts, and probably depends on the depth of your legendary roll call, but...you know...more ETB triggers.
Fanatic of Mogis - I'll admit I'm skeptical about this guy as I'm far from certain of any type of permanency with my boardstate to generate any kind of devotion, but there's at least some pieces I'll probably look to hard cast, so this could be a fun resuable burn. Especially if you end up running things like Gratuitous Violence, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, Angrath's Marauders and such.
Scrap Mastery - This kinda saves your bacon in case of a Vandalblast.
Panharmonicon - I don't have a spare myself, so I may not be able to free one up, but there's pleeeeenty for this to make even more degenerate.
Mirror March - This one seems a little jank, but it could be hilariously good. I'm down to give it a punt at any rate.
Bogardan Hellkite - You're not hardcasting it so why not?
Viashino Heretic - Oldie but a goodie, especially at instant speed.
Warstorm Surge - Should give good mileage.
Ashnod's Altar, Goblin Bombardment - If there's stuff you can't save due to lack of Sundial, Closet et al, why not get something more out of them?

This one is kind of just going to be a fun one for me, to see how high I can push the dial on impact per sneak attack. Hope some of this helps, and if you've already goldfished some of it I'd be keen to find out how you got on.

DirkGently · Post by **DirkGently** » 4 years ago

I just realized Purphoros might be the first commander where it's worth running zodiac dragon, which I think is the second most expensive card I don't own that's commander legal.

Erg. Let me check my bank account...

I'm working on a list for this boy. Few thoughts I had, which you can agree or disagree with:

-because we're mostly going to be purphorosing things into play, we don't really cast many spells. Ergo, stuff like sphere of resistance and damping sphere might make a lot of sense. Basically anything that hates on spell casting.

-for similar reasons, I think it's worth going all-in on ramp to hit 5 mana ASAP, since Purph is pretty unlikely to be removed, and afterwards we really just need mana for his ability which is fairly cheap. So I'm thinking lotus petal, jeweled amulet, mana vault ofc, grim monolith, all that good stuff. Basically it's turn 3 or bust.

EDIT: ooh, ol' ZD actually isn't that bad in chinese. The price on that card has changed surprisingly little over the years tbh, I had a friend that owned one back in high school (15 years ago now) and I think it was nearly the same price back then as it is now. Weird.

gilrad · Post by **gilrad** » 4 years ago

I've still not had enough games with my build to come to any cohesive conclusions, but near as I can tell the first decision to be made is: Artifact heavy or artifact-lite?

The biggest factor influencing these decisions is the fact that, when all is said and done, this deck really requires a tiny amount of mana to blaze through any card draw you can get. Since every creature and spell effect essentially costs three mana, you're throwing out two cards plus a land every turn at six mana, three cards plus a land at nine. No matter what you do, the most effective way to keep your hand somewhat full is to use wheel effects, specifically the "discard your hand and draw X cards" effects.

With artifacts, you can suppliment those effects with other fun things like artifact search for Sandstone Oracle, welding or forgemastering out coveted jewel or dreamstone hedron, and since many of these things are repeatable you have an engine that can keep generating cards to feed the hungry machine that is Purphuros in tandem with your other strategies.

With less artifact synergy, mostly not enough to support kuldotha forgemaster, goblin welder, or goblin engineer, you've got less overall draw, and I feel, running all the effects you can might not be enough. You could add in wheel of fortune and even chandra ablaze, and maybe add some soft tutor effects like sarkhan's Triumph for the wheel dragons or imperial recruiter to fetch Feldon of the Third Path to recur spent wheel dudes, but all together I feel the best solution to this strategy is to just try to kill players as fast as possible, focusing more on getting the most efficient amount of damage through for your one card spent.

sphere of resistance is an interesting angle to this. I might even take this a little bit further and think about adding keldon fire-bombers, since this deck can basically do anything it needs to with three mana. Personally though, three lands is a bit too close to MLD which I don't like running.

As for ZD, yeah P3K is weird in that the Japanese and Chinese printings for the "collectors cards" are super cheap compared to English, but IIRC the unique and played cards are basically the same across all languages. They had a crazy small print run in English - less than 20k copies of rares I think? - and considerably more in Chinese and Japanese.

DirkGently · Post by **DirkGently** » 4 years ago

gilrad wrote: ↑
4 years ago
As for ZD, yeah P3K is weird in that the Japanese and Chinese printings for the "collectors cards" are super cheap compared to English, but IIRC the unique and played cards are basically the same across all languages. They had a crazy small print run in English - less than 20k copies of rares I think? - and considerably more in Chinese and Japanese.

I bought/traded for all the p3k legends in english around the time commander 2013 came out. Back then, the asian language ones were cheaper, but I didn't think it was by that much. But to be fair, ZD is a lot more than those legends were, especially back then. Anyway, definitely wouldn't pay for the english version on the dragon, the delta between cost and playability is bigger than any card I can think of except for juzam djinn (which, btw, is the most expensive commander legal card I don't own).

I wonder if something like planar chaos might even work here. Or possibility storm. The disruption is sweet, plus with storm you could cast some middling creature for a decent chance to roll into a permed BSC or whatever other nonsense.

toctheyounger · Post by **toctheyounger** » 4 years ago

As someone who definitely can't afford things like Ancient Tomb and such, Damping Sphere seems like a great idea. I don't know if resistance gives enough resistance to be worth it, but I think probably both inclusions would vary meta to meta anyway. Resistance would almost certainly make life difficult for Edgar Markov type decks, but I don't see a ton of those anyway. Damping seems the more versatile of the two to my mind.

I tossed up Possibility Storm but ultimately decided against it. We're not going to be casting a whole lot in general, so it's going to be a little weird trying to capitalize on it, which is where it's best. There's a chance it either entirely screws your opponents or backfires, and either way you can't control that, but because it applies to everyone you really want to be able to build around it enough to be pretty sure you can trade something like Squee, Goblin Nabob that you really don't care about for something great like Etali, Primal Storm or whatever. To my mind, this deck requires far too great a creature density to guarantee you can get more out of it than your opponents can. The other side of it that can be really beneficial is using the cast triggers for Storm-like mechanics. That's kind of wasted here. The final nail in the coffin for me is it's CMC, which is a bit high just for the potential of control with no real guarantee of advantage for you. Again though, it's a meta call - if you see heavy blue control you know counters probably don't resolve and you'll probably get good mileage.

Planar Chaos I can kind of see, although again it's precarious control because there's no guarantee it sticks around for any length of time, and once it's done it's gonna be likely gone for good - I don't know of any easy ways to get enchantments back from the yard in red. The casting cost is right though, so I'm more sold on this than Storm personally.

*edit now that I'm on a desktop:
I think the artifact lite/heavy discussion is a personal preference thing personally. I'm going more lite, but not entirely bereft, purely because the hand-filling capacity of things like Sandstone Oracle and cantripping chump blockers like Solemn Simulacrum and Filigree Familiar is particularly handy, in that we don't necessarily need lots of mana, we need lots of cards in hand. Add to that the fact that literally all of our ways to cheat Purph's ability or abuse ETB's are artifacts: Ancestral Statue, Assault Suit, Sundial of the Infinite, Conjurer's Closet. Besides which, Goblin Welder is worth running anyway for being able to protect these pieces to some degree, as well as being able to cycle your cantripping rocks like Mind Stone, Hedron Archive, Dreamstone Hedron as well as being kinda cool with Feldon of the Third Path and/or Thornbite Staff for activations aplenty. I guess if you're going all-in on artifacts these pieces would be really clutch, but I'm going to be running these nonetheless anyway. Thornbite Staff is a maybe, but I'm also running Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker so the potential instant equip and super token spam is undeniably great. I don't want to have Kiki able to go infinite so I am going to have to be pretty careful with other inclusions, but nonetheless Thornbite Staff seems reasonable for those times you need a blocker and want a different way to get some extra value out of Purph's activated ability.

DirkGently · Post by **DirkGently** » 4 years ago

I threw a deck together and got in some games last night. It was really sweet tbh, played a solid control and aggro game. Some all stars that haven't gotten a lot of press were flayer of the hatebound, cauldron of souls, avatar of slaughter, flamerush rider, scourge of the throne, heartless hidetsugu, chaos maw, utvara hellkite, and thunder dragon. Deck was maybe beyond the power of my LGS, I think I won like 4/5 3-4 player games, plus a couple 1v1s even when I got horrendously mana screwed.

This is almost certainly the highest average CMC deck I've ever made lol. Basically just a bunch of fast mana, some 2-mana rocks, a little draw, and then a metric ton of 6-12 drops. I'll post up the list when I have some time.

Post by **benjameenbear** » 4 years ago

Cloudstone Curio seems like a fantastic card for this deck.

Sharpened · Post by **Sharpened** » 4 years ago

Talk of Platinum Angel but no talk of Platinum Emperion? Seems like an oversight.

gilrad · Post by **gilrad** » 4 years ago

Oh yeah! platinum emperion made it in my list the last game night I was able to play, along side darksteel forge. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of "hard pillowfort" because it kind of declares war on the table, but it is pretty fun for now at least. Well, aside from me throwing a game because I forgot to double-check the rulings and died to commander damage.

Any way, between kuldotha forgemaster, goblin welder, and just throwing it out as a fog for a turn, it definitely deserves a slot.

toctheyounger · Post by **toctheyounger** » 4 years ago

DirkGently wrote: ↑
4 years ago
I'll post up the list when I have some time.

Definitely do, I'm keen to see more of what people are doing here. Still waiting on bits and pieces (plus the cash to buy 'em) myself.

benjameenbear wrote: ↑
4 years ago
Cloudstone Curio seems like a fantastic card for this deck.

I thought the same myself - I guess it depends if you're spamming ETB's enough to justify it, but it seems like an obvious add if you're heading down that avenue. I probably won't add myself, purely because I have just the one, it's in use and it's soared in price since I got my copy.

edit: It's a SUPER risky option, but Worldgorger Dragon occurred to me as a possible add for repeating a crap ton of ETB effects or just to avoid the sac effect for other creatures. Entirely possible it could backfire and leave you with nothing at all, so it could be a 'thought about it but nah' for that reason alone. Thoughts?

weltkrieg · Post by **weltkrieg** » 4 years ago

Worldgorger dragon and kiki jiki is an infinite combo with other possibilities as a win condition (pandemonium, for example).

You have a kiki on the battlefield, you bring in worldgorger, put his etb on the stack, make a copy of worldgorger with kiki. Let the copy resolve, it exiles all of your permanents. At this point, the original is still on the stack, now it resolves, exiling the copy and returning all of your other permanents to the battlefield. Repeat ad nauseum for infinite mana with lands, infinite damage with valakut (if enough lands) or pandemonium effect, etc.

Additionally, low opportunity cost seems to be had for

Artifacts that do something similar:

toctheyounger · Post by **toctheyounger** » 4 years ago

weltkrieg wrote: ↑
4 years ago
Worldgorger dragon and kiki jiki is an infinite combo with other possibilities as a win condition (pandemonium, for example).

You have a kiki on the battlefield, you bring in worldgorger, put his etb on the stack, make a copy of worldgorger with kiki. Let the copy resolve, it exiles all of your permanents. At this point, the original is still on the stack, now it resolves, exiling the copy and returning all of your other permanents to the battlefield. Repeat ad nauseum for infinite mana with lands, infinite damage with valakut (if enough lands) or pandemonium effect, etc.

Well that's me out then. Kiki is the preferred value piece of the two, so 'thought about it but nah' lol.

OCPunisher · Post by **OCPunisher** » 4 years ago

From a very high level, it kinda looks like you've gone a bit too far in the artifact direction. When I first read through your list, it almost looked like it was aDaretti shell with a different guy at the helm. Kuldotha Forgemaster is a fine card, but I doubt he's good enough to warp your list that much around him, especially when you have a limited number of ways to dig him up.

If you really want to focus that much on Forgemaster, then Gamble becomes a must-have.

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