Gavi - Mass Polymorph / Terror of the Peaks

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ISBPathfinder
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 3 years ago



This deck is built on the back of Synthetic Destiny and Mass Polymorph. The concept I was going for was finding a Terror of the Peaks combination that would kill everyone with as few creatures as possible. To be honest, I don't know that my current setup is "Ideal" but most of the alternatives I poked at required more cards and weren't as sticky.

So obviously my goal is to get 5+ creatures / tokens in play and then mass polymorph them off into our only five creatures: Terror of the Peaks, Fiendish Duo, Angrath's Marauders, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, and Avacyn, Angel of Hope. If this ideal situation happens without interaction from my opponents we will ultimately end up with: 64 damage, 40 damage, 32 damage, and 40 damage as damage doubler effects stack.

This is probably enough to kill most boards. Including Avacyn, Angel of Hope into this mix doesn't add a ton but it makes it far harder to spot remove interact with one of the damage dealers which is going to be one of the bigger ways to shrink our damage. If someone does have exile our bounce spot removal having Avacyn in the mix also makes it more likely that we exist to the point where we can attack with some of the creatures as well. I found a few other things that would give more output but they increased the number of targets I was looking at and didn't seem to make things better than just using Avacyn.

It is possible that I should add more counter magic to defend the mass poly effect itself such as Fierce Guardianship, Pact of Negation, or even go down the option of silence effects but that sounds like something I would explore more if I ever build this abomination lol. I was sort of looking to build a combo like deck that isn't infinite which is part of why I got to where I am here. This is totally a combo deck but given how much commitment to the build there is, I felt like it was more interesting than something like Thassa's Oracle ever could be. There is also a lot more counter play to this concept while also imposing a lot of deckbuilding restrictions on me.


Decklist

COMMANDER (1)

PLANESWALKER

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Well, thats the rough draft.... I have no idea if I will ever make it but it was kinda fun to construct lol.
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Post by MeowZeDung » 3 years ago

Panharmonicon as a way to eek out victory even if you have to go for the mass poly with fewer than five tokens? Yorion, Sky Nomad/Eerie Interlude or even Ghostly Flicker could also hedge that bet. Maybe even a Phyrexian Metamorph and/or Mirage Mirror?

I'm currently writing up a Polymorph/Mass Polymorph centered list, so this stuff is on my brain and it's fun to see what others brew up. I hadn't even thought of Terror of the Peaks. Good stuff. Makes me wish I actually owned one.
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 3 years ago

MeowZeDung wrote:
3 years ago
Panharmonicon as a way to eek out victory even if you have to go for the mass poly with fewer than five tokens? Yorion, Sky Nomad/Eerie Interlude or even Ghostly Flicker could also hedge that bet. Maybe even a Phyrexian Metamorph and/or Mirage Mirror?

I'm currently writing up a Polymorph/Mass Polymorph centered list, so this stuff is on my brain and it's fun to see what others brew up. I hadn't even thought of Terror of the Peaks. Good stuff. Makes me wish I actually owned one.
Panharmonicon - It could sort of work but it would also be a target with mass poly on the stack and it would add to the complexity of the execution. I think it would be cleaner to just have something like Secure the Wastes instead where I could end of turn make a bunch of tokens going into a mass poly effect.

Yorion, Sky Nomad - It could serve as a damage double effect but it also has the downside of adding in more target timing options for opponents. Adding him in to the current list would increase the number of creatures I would need to polymorph but it would also give removing Terror of the Peaks a viable out. As it stands with the double damage effects, as soon as the Mass Polymorph resolves it is too late for removing Terror of the Peaks to matter which is kind of nice. That said, removing a damage double effect would have the same vulnerability but I just don't see including Yorion being in any way stronger than a damage double effect. My goal is to keep the creature package to as few creatures as possible and I don't think it competes with a damage doubler in a good way.

Ghostly Flicker - I am not sure if you are going for protection or more damage output or both here. I think we have enough damage right now with the setup I have so I would more likely go for a counterspell if looking for protection. I think its better to craft a mass polymorph effect that is desirable just from its resolution than it is to try to add more cards to making it better in some way.

Clones - Keep in mind that when you put a bunch of creatures into play all at the same time that clones have to become copies of something already in play. You see this a bit in modern with Collected Company and Phantasmal Image. Mirage Mirror would work, but I don't see it being any better than just having a counterspell if an opponent has interaction.

Terror of the Peaks - Yea, I ended up having to sort of custom craft a concept around it. There was a streamer who played a historic deck built around Indomitable Creativity and Terror of the Peaks that was interesting enough that I asked myself if I could make Terror work in commander which ended up taking me a while to figure out due to the fact that clones don't work with the mass poly effects and its a singleton format.

Just for fun I will mention a few alternative concepts I explored. Most of these were in consideration in place of Avacyn. In the end due to the fact that these concepts used more cards and didn't seem to make the deck better in my mind I went back to just using Avacyn.
  • Knollspine Dragon + The Locust God - In the end, the fact that Knollspine has to target a player was what killed this concept for me. If it just drew based on the highest damage done to an opponent this turn I might have gone with this but it meant that I couldn't trigger off of a dead player and the combo ideally kills players. If that had been different I might have run this setup because it would generate a lot of flying hastey tokens and draw a bunch of cards. This play could also play towards an effect that would shuffle our graveyard back into the library and reload in case of failure.
  • Ogre Battledriver + Utvara Hellkite - so, Battledriver pumps for Terror of the Peaks triggers so all of my creatures entering hit harder, and then it lets me attack with two dragons and make two more 6/6 dragons for Terror of the Peaks to poke with. I liked the buff in size for terror's initial damage and if anyone lives through the first hits it allows for an escalating boardstate and immediate attacks. I think this configuration has a very high immediate output number potential but its also a little more susceptible to removal given the lack of avacyn to protect the damage doublers. It does attack on multiple axis though. In the end, I didn't go this direction mainly due to how the combo is likely to kill everyone without additional support so Avacyn was less creatures needed and protected the shell of what was happening rather than relying on additional threats. What is cool about this direction though is that opponents would need multiple spot removal effects to shut down the terror kill (removing a damage doubler) and then also stopping the dragon spawn followup. Battledriver's buff is also not insignificant with so many double effects.
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MeowZeDung
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Post by MeowZeDung » 3 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
3 years ago
Keep in mind that when you put a bunch of creatures into play all at the same time that clones have to become copies of something already in play.
I looked this up because I thought it was incorrect based on playing with Cathars' Crusade - in CC's case, when multiple creatures ETB at the same time they "see" each other for each individual trigger - and I assumed the same for a clone effect (that has "when ... enters the battlefield *thing happens*" straight up printed on the card) due to the type of trigger. Alas, you are correct.

EDIT: it's not a very clean or efficient way to go about it, but you could get similar clone effects with Flameshadow Conjuring, Mirror March, or Molten Echoes naming dragon edit again: Angel I guess if you aren't running Utvara Hellkite. At the end of the day, you're probably just better off without them.

RE: Ghostly Flicker my thought was merely to double up on your damage triggers if you feel like you have to pull the trigger on Mass Polymorph/Synthetic Destiny now or never and you have <5 tokens in play. Realistically, it shouldn't be hard to generate 5 tokens first (as in your Secure the Wastes example, especially in a meta where your deck is unknown every game (ie online). In a known meta though, folks will know that you are looking to reach a threshold of tokens to essentially combo off and will treat the effect that gets you up to 5+ tokens the same as you attempting to resolve a Doomsday or Isochron Scepter. If it's not a highly tuned or competitive playgroup, you're probably still fine though. People don't ALWAYS have the answers. I think I just sometimes take the principle of building in resilience and redundancy in decks too far.
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