Zedruu the Greatest of All Time

[tstorm823]

Ok. Math time.
Mirrorweave to Precursion Golem with 10 creatures on my side, play Pandemonium, play Rootha, play Replication Tecnique targeting the Precursion Golem with Demonstrate (I choose my Skullbriar opponent that only had 1 creatures, so that I will be safe from any Pandemonium dmg) and copy it again with Rootha targeting again with the copy my Precursion Golem. How many golems are made and is it enough Pandemonium dmg to kill my opponents if their lives are at 54, 27, 15?

EDIT: Comments like "this deck gave me a headache and it is only Sunday morning" should be received as high praise.

Without even doing the math, yes. And it isn't particularly close.

Doing the math: your opponent has 1 creature, but after Mirrorweave, that creature is a Precursor Golem, and with Pandemonium in play, copying that would translate to triple Lightning Bolt, which can interact with you. So assuming the opponent is trying to survive as best as possible, they can zap the golem you targeted with the your demonstrate copy, effectively countering it. So in this particular situation, it's actually stronger not to demonstrate.

Ignoring the demonstrate and just casting the spell, Precursor Golem triggers 10 times. First trigger resolves, copying the spell to 9 other golems. Each makes a Precursor Golem and 2 3/3 vanilla tokens, which is 9 power each. 9x9 is 81 damage from the first Precursor radiate trigger, the first 2 opponents have died. The second Precursor trigger resolves, but now there are 18 other Precursor Golems and 18 vanilla tokens to target, and after 2 more copies of Replication Technique on Precursor Golems, the game has ended with 8 Precursor Golem triggers and 34 Replication Techniques still on the stack. And then I go put some numbers in an excel sheet to find the total potential damage, it's 304,110 damage with 9218 Precursor Golems and 92162 vanilla tokens in play.

But if we imagine that Eye of the Storm were in play to give a second cast of Replication Technique , you'd get another 9218 Precursor Golem triggers radiating to all >100,000 golems, which creates bigger number than most calculators can even calculate. It's somewhere in the ballpark of a 3000 digit number of golems. A second spell to trigger Eye in this scenario would well overshoot a googolplex of golems. Precursor Golem makes really big numbers.

Edit, I forgot about Rootha, which doesn't cast the spell so it would only copy Replication Technique once, starting you with 11 precursors and 2 vanilla golems instead of 10 and 0. But also that means we can bolt the opponents creature before demonstrate resolves, so that's another precursor and 2 vanillas, for 12 and 4 to start with. Updating the excel sheet and taking out the 3 damage aimed at their creature, we've got 11,266 Precursor Golems, 116,738 vanilla tokens, and 383,979 damage to aim wherever we want.

[jjjrrrgggnnn]

Hey @tstorm823!

Long time lurker, first time poster. First off I just want to say a massive thank you for nurturing this absolute nonsense! This is my first and only commander deck, reading your old thread on mtgsalvation got me into EDH and I have never come across another deck I wanted to play.

I have a couple of questions for you...

1) Could you explain in further detail the merits of Temporal Cascade? I think i have not quite grasped the card´s full potential yet...

2) Is there a reason you play Mystic Monastery over Path of Ancestry? Is it just because Mystic Monastery is a slightly safer donation target?

Thanks in advance!!

[tstorm823]

Hey @tstorm823!

Long time lurker, first time poster. First off I just want to say a massive thank you for nurturing this absolute nonsense! This is my first and only commander deck, reading your old thread on mtgsalvation got me into EDH and I have never come across another deck I wanted to play.

I have a couple of questions for you...

1) Could you explain in further detail the merits of Temporal Cascade? I think i have not quite grasped the card´s full potential yet...

2) Is there a reason you play Mystic Monastery over Path of Ancestry? Is it just because Mystic Monastery is a slightly safer donation target?

Thanks in advance!!

First off, thank you for posting! I do hope that you can find other things you like, if only for the continued sanity of the people you play with (edit: unless you just play against strangers online, then go for it!), but it's always great to hear from people having fun with the deck. If you ever have an exceptional game, or try out a new card that works well for you, please share it here so that we might all live vicariously through you. There's not enough time in the world to see every possibility alone.

Questions:
1) Temporal Cascade is great because it's essentially 3 completely different spells. The entwined version is what people think when they look at the card, but 9-mana Timetwister is a pretty mediocre card, although sometimes it's exactly what you need. The two halves independently are what make it great.
Each player draws 7 is great, depending on timing. It's certainly going to backfire if you just say "everyone draw 7, pass the turn", but done with a flash enabler, or with lots of extra mana available, or into Eye of the Storm, you'll get a much better experience. It's a little like Memory Jar; everyone draws 7, but you time it so that you're the one reaping the advantage.
And then there's the other option: shuffle hands and graveyards in. Honestly, Temporal Cascade might be the meanest card in Magic. Like, look at Identity Crisis for a second. Hitting somebody with that is brutal. Temporal Cascade does that to the entire table, the cards just get shuffled in instead of exiled. Like, hands and graveyard are a resource, and typically when you hit someone's hand, they still have their graveyard, but this just clears it all. You get to keep what is on the battlefield, that's it.
And then the final justification is working with Barren Glory, where it not only clears your hand so that Glory can trigger, it also clears other people's hands of any enchantment removal they may have been holding onto.

2) I just have a few decks that are more tribal and/or more color intensive that I moved my Path of Ancestrys to. It is strictly better, and I'm sure I'll stumble into more copies of it in the future and put it back in. The most boring of answers.

[jjjrrrgggnnn]

Ah, interesting, I've always seen it as more of a expensive utility card and never thought of it as a nuclear weapon before, it does seem to be delightfully oppressive when you say it that way.

Unfortunately I don't get to play that often, so haven't nearly reached that level of loathing within my pod. I do however love the challenge this deck proposes, it feels like it has an almost infinite ceiling of potential interactions. Outside of building and playing @MeowZeDung's Zedruu self land sac build from a while back, I've stuck very closely to your template.

My only humble addition is Tendo Ice Bridge (not its far less cool counterpart Aether Hub) it has worked very well for me as both short term mana fixing and a guilt free donation target.

Another question did come to mind, what would you play as a replacement for Time Spiral, you know, for monetary reasons. I've been running Emergency Powers, and felt pretty happy with it, but was hoping you knew something that meshed better with your preexisting combos.

[tstorm823]

Tendo Ice Bridge is interesting. Goes well with bounce-lands too.

Unfortunately, Time Spiral is pretty much one-of-a-kind. I wouldn't call it necessary for the deck, but I also wouldn't call it replaceable either. It's the sort of card that by cutting, you almost have to add two cards back, one for the draw 7 and a second for the untap.

[MeowZeDung]

Ahhh, Zedruu lands. I swear I'll revisit that deck someday. Much fun, very silly.

[Sefir]

Ahhh, Zedruu lands. I swear I'll revisit that deck someday. Much fun, very silly.

My Kynaios and Tiro "Egglands" deck list is heavily influenced from your Zedruu one! An extremely fun and enjoyable deck. Acknowledges have to be made!!

[Sefir]

Just realized the power of Wandering Archaic // Explore the Vastlands in Zedruu. Not only the Archaic is an excellent CA engine (especially with Strionic Resonator in) with a pint of chaos in it, but also Explore the Vastlands is a piece in the Bonus Round/Narset's Reversal/Turanbout and Vedalken Orray/Rootha/Turnabout combo variations.....

So many cards, so few space.....

[tstorm823]

Just realized the power of Wandering Archaic // Explore the Vastlands in Zedruu. Not only the Archaic is an excellent CA engine (especially with Strionic Resonator in) with a pint of chaos in it, but also Explore the Vastlands is a piece in the Bonus Round/Narset's Reversal/Turanbout and Vedalken Orray/Rootha/Turnabout combo variations.....

So many cards, so few space.....

The front of that card is definitely powerful, but I don't think rhystic effects are really my style. The back is not that great here, the chance of hitting both card types is like 50%

[lyonhaert]

Edit: also worth noting, that Time Spiral/Narset's Reversal I end the description with just, like, find a win condition. Having to manage hand size to deterministically draw 7 makes it way more complicated than that, and the likely solution is to cast permanent spells for each exiled card you want to bring in, but that depends on what is in hand and I can't concisely tell you the solution. Regardless, if anyone else is insane enough to try to win that way outside of just a proof of concept, I'm confident you can figure out the necessary balancing act.

Yeah, I tried practicing this today after goldfishing and studying the lines/combos the past couple evenings. The easiest was to bring in Walking Archive and pump it up and pass the turn, but obviously that can be vulnerable.

So I set it up again with a bad scenario of having 4 lands plus Mirror of Fate (in play), Narset's Reversal, and Time Spiral as the 7 cards and lands as the only other permants in play (and the assumption that I already played a land) so there isn't anything else to get help from. So I exile the library with Mirror and do the Narset Spiral loop for infinite mana.

Then I tried to figure out how I'd pull in a whole combo with Mirror and be able to get to all of the cards if I didn't draw all the combo pieces but also other stuff. The easiest would be if I already have a way to draw a single card like Temple Bell, Kwain, Itinerant Meddler, or Nin, the Pain Artist (but then I'd probably be setting up with Jeskai Ascendancy to kill everybody with Nin instead) and then just make Mind's Desire or Harnfel, Horn of Bounty the top card, draw it, and get the rest with it.

But what about my bad scenario? With Mirror bringing in X cards on top of itself, Time Spiral, Narset's Reversal, and the 4 lands, casting Time Spiral and not using Reversal brings us down to 6 + X cards to draw 7 from, leaving some still in the library. So far it seems like Mind's Desire and Harnfel, Horn of Bounty are the two best to include with the combo pieces to ensure access to everything, as well as using Reversal on Time Spiral so that if I draw some permanents and Time Spiral, I can reuse it to access more after casting some stuff out of my hand. With returning Time Spiral I keep to the original 7, and if Sea Gate Restoration is also in the new 7 from Mirror and happens to be my only way to access the rest, the math still works out, so it's probably the third pick after Mind's Desire and Harnfel.

As for the combo to go for, it's possible choosing Replication Technique + Eye of the Storm as the combo since Mind's Desire could already be in there would work, but I figure Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Unbender Tine + March of the Machines + Pandemonium would also be good, and allows a full 7 with Mind's Desire, Harnfel, and Restoration. And yet it's still possible to draw a 7 from that pile that includes the 4 lands and 3 cards that don't help me dig or complete a combo, so...

Wait. Nope. Just figured it out. Use Mirror to put Mind's Desire as the only card in the library (Harnfel or Restoration could perhaps also work), cast Time Spiral and let it exile so we're still at 7 cards with nothing left behind in the library. Cast Mirror again and stack the library with the combo pieces and cast Desire (or whichever) to get to them. Cool, I just had to write the entire thing out to find the solution.

[tstorm823]

Cool, I just had to write the entire thing out to find the solution.

Great things happen when thoughts get written down!

With that solution of just let the Time Spiral resolve and exile itself, the 1 card pick is definitely Mind's Desire. That makes the math real easy, especially with infinite mana already floating.

[benjameenbear]

This deck is straight-up madness and has the most convoluted combos I've seen. I had to read some of the above posts like 7/8 times to understand the triggers and the math.

That's all I wanted to say. My respect for the Goat increases every time I see a new post here.

[lyonhaert]

This deck is straight-up madness and has the most convoluted combos I've seen. I had to read some of the above posts like 7/8 times to understand the triggers and the math.

That's all I wanted to say. My respect for the Goat increases every time I see a new post here.

The open-ended interplays between so many cards in the deck is Goals️™ for me as far as other deckbuilding, where most of the time I'm able to do *something* with whatever I draw. I run one other deck that's resilient kinda like that (though not nearly as sophisticated). So it's always a bit of a surprise what will happen, but I'm rarely stuck doing nothing. Unless I just get overloaded with choices and get confused.

[tstorm823]

Unless I just get overloaded with choices and get confused.

Hey! That's my deckbuilding process right now.

[lyonhaert]

Also in a game last night, I had Banishing Knack in hand, drew Chrome Mox, and then drew Jeskai Ascendancy and didn't realize the combo. I was too focused on getting a second blue source so I could cast Kami of the Crescent Moon and Role Reversal. Irony being that I used Role Reversal to trade Kami for a Soltari Champion.

[MeowZeDung]

Also in a game last night, I had Banishing Knack in hand, drew Chrome Mox, and then drew Jeskai Ascendancy and didn't realize the combo.

Huh. I just realized if I add Banishing Knack to my Kykar list I could do this with Sol Ring or, while Kykar is in play, Springleaf Drum/talisman/signet. Jeskai Ascendancy is a filthy, filthy magical card.

[tstorm823]

Jeskai Ascendancy is a filthy, filthy magical card.

On that note, I want to make Cursed Mirror a thing. Which, low bar, card is great. Would you like a Heat Shimmer that's also a permanent mana rock? Me too! But the thought of it takes me back to when Cavalier of Dawn was brand new, and I really wanted to do something cool with it and Phyrexian Metamorph, because you could Metamorph the Cavalier, have it seppuku, and then return itself to your hand and leave behind a golem. I never quite solved that one, but this time I have a new advantage, because Cursed Mirror isn't a creature when you cast it, so it can trigger something like Jeskai Ascendancy, and then I just need something to let me cast it for free. The closest thing I can think of is Chief Engineer, which gets me darn close, but it only works if I also have a red creature. And also, do I really want to play Chief Engineer?

[lyonhaert]

I think I learned today that there are times when you shouldn't put Mindmoil out.

[tstorm823]

I think I learned today that there are times when you shouldn't put Mindmoil out.

Nekusar?

[lyonhaert]

I think I learned today that there are times when you shouldn't put Mindmoil out.

Nekusar?

That definitely qualifies.

I had put it out there in a game last night just to see what would happen since I'd never used it before. But I didn't have any flash and started off going through 20 cards at a time with Mindmoil trying to find a way to not die on my opponent's next turn. Or rather, I was trying to find a way to win. Didn't find a way to infinite mana, though I had 14 mana to work with after a Turnabout.

In hindsight today, I had opportunity to deal with the threatening attackers with the mana I had and some of the cards I saw like Chaos Warp and Firestorm. That might have been enough to live longer even at 6 life. And if I hadn't stolen their Patron of the Vein with Catch, then Sakashima could have copied and destroyed it.

I should intentionally practice with Mindmoil, probably.

[jjjrrrgggnnn]

Is Glimpse of Tomorrow a total windmill slam inclusion? It works with Mirror of Fate's doomsday pile much like the Precursor Golem + Chaos Warp combo. But also if you could manipulate enough if your top deck to just have Barren Glory as your only permanent? Could it be too good?

[tstorm823]

Is Glimpse of Tomorrow a total windmill slam inclusion? It works with Mirror of Fate's doomsday pile much like the Precursor Golem + Chaos Warp combo. But also if you could manipulate enough if your top deck to just have Barren Glory as your only permanent? Could it be too good?

Once upon a time I'd be right on board with you, and for a bit I did actually play Warp World, but I have so many instants and sorceries these days, it likely is not going to end profitably most of the time. It could end the game in conjunction with double Mirror of Fate, but then I have to either cheat cast Glimpse of Tomorrow or time the suspend perfectly with the Mirror.

[tstorm823]

So, there's a new super high-powered set, and I think the most natural fit of any of the cards in it is just Ornithopter of Paradise. Cause it fixes mana and works with Jeskai Ascendancy. Not exactly a Zedruu set, but I've got so many goodies lately, I can't complain.

[tstorm823]

DND set approaches, what looks good?

True Polymorph is an effect at like at way too high a mana cost. I understand it's so expensive because it's both the neat cloney things that I like and a pretty impressive instant speed removal spell, but I think that makes it a jack of all trades, master of none situation.

Demilich is a free creature potentially for the old Memnite, but one that plays well wth Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, and maybe Mirrorweave with a big graveyard. and maybe Mirror of Fate sometimes. This looks like a "maybe test it out" card to me.

Sorcerer Class is the one definite test I'll be doing. 2 mana loot 2 is perfectly reasonable. That's a high floor. Being able to bounce or flicker that is a bonus. Being a donatable permanent that only does anything in specifically spell-heavy decks that can make blue and red mana is a fringe benefit. The second level makes my creatures mana dorks for instants and sorceries, which is limited in usefulness, but more than half of my spells with mana value >5 are sorceries, so that is what I want to ramp to. And having mana dorks is great with Jeskai Ascendancy. Level 3 is low impact, but it's also game ending with Eye of the Storm.

Next time on Dragonball Z, we can discuss whether Share the Spoils qualifies as a Howling Mine.

[ThatOneGuyJesse]

I'm in love with Share the Spoils, super cool card and people might take our stuff so that's extra donations for Zedruu.
It's like a toned-down Knowledge Pool which I cut for being too chaotic.