Zedruu the Greatest of All Time

[tstorm823]

Cool, featured primer. You should probably steal the gif with incense smoke.

Oh man, I missed that! Good call, will do.

Sidenote: the first post here has been updated with all the changes I've been talking about for weeks so that the feature would be current.

[tstorm823]

Thoughts on Theros cards:

I have wanted a constellation spell for this deck because a relevant constellation spell would be a nice secondary spout for the Sakashima the Impostor / Detention Sphere loop, and amazingly enough the second visit the Theros actually disappointed me more than the first in this regard. All I wanted was a constellation trigger that's both reasonable on its own and game ending when done infinite times. So the first disappointment was when they put the ability on all non-enchantment creatures this time, which takes away a ton of the potential value with clones or Venser, the Sojourner. And then look at the triggers we get in these colors and there's just nothing I want to play. +1/+1 until end of turn is neither interesting once nor game ending infinite times. Loot on a 5 drop, double strike for a turn, tap a creature all usless. Mill 2 is terrible outside of a combo finish. The clone basically only cares about the first trigger. The pegasus king is the only individually powerful card in question, but it only likely fires once a turn maybe and even with infinite triggers it loses to a board wipe. Eutropia the Twice-Favored could have been a consideration if it was on color just for funny tricks with my +1/+1 counter guys, but it's green. I genuinely believe the best constellation creature printed for this deck is still Forgeborn Oreads, and that's pretty medium. So that's a shame.

Elspeth Conquers Death is probably not something I'd ever try here, but it's brutal with Venser, the Sojouner. Exile a permanent every turn +tax your opponent's noncreature spells at all times except your beginning phase, and if they attack Venser down he immediately comes back two turns away from ultimate. If you play a controlling deck with Venser in it, probably give Elspeth Conquers Death a consideration.

Heliod, Sun-Crowned is a potential combo piece, but with the expectation that plenty of people will be comboing with him, I may as well not. Again, I've got a pair of creatures that do fun things with counters on them, but Imma hold off on Heliod.

Escape cards, probably most feasably Glipse of Freedom as it's naturally an instant, all exile cards from graveyard, which means they can play with Mirror of Fate. My deck almost certainly could never feed Underworld Breach enough to be interesting, but it does play with Mirror of Fate, exiling cards to pick and recurring the Mirror itself.

One With the Stars is very funny removal that can be donated. Neat Pacifism variant.

Nyx Lotus is a natural consideration for a deck that abuses both Nykthos and Gilded Lotus, but I think they made this difficult enough to abuse. It's a legendary artifact, so it's nearly unclonable. It comes into play tapped, so you can't double up by bouncing. It's great with Unbender Tine, but that's mostly it, and unlike my other big mana producers it is a blank on its own. Nykthos is great because both the floor and ceiling on it are super high and the topdeck win is totally possible. The floor on Nyx Lotus is basically rock bottom. I'm sure people will play with it and be happy, but it's not worth cutting something to me.

Aaaand the one card I'm gonna test out once I get one, Dream Trawler. I know I've been disappointed by these wall of text cards in the past, but look at how wally and texty it is! Flying and lifelink makes it an evasive threat and a life buffer. Pumping on draw lets you kill by drawing cards in a weak enough way to not just be Psychosis Crawler again. Drawing on attacks is drawing more cards which is great. And then the last ability makes it dodge removal which is great. Now, considering the context of the deck: it's got 2 devotion to 2 colors for Nykthos, it works great in multiples as they feed each other. It can flip over a Golden Guardian on your turn without dying itself and gain you 4+ life in the process. Alternatively, you can be cheeky and bounce a 4/4 off a 3/5 lifelink on other people's turns for repeatable life gain, which feeds Sanctum of the Sun. It pumps power to interact favorably with Vanish Into Memory. It has lifelink to interact favorably with Arcbond. It draws a card partway through the turn which can be useful with Mirror of Fate. It's another draw that can be copied with Strionic Resonator. It can be a huge unblockable threat with Venser. It can come in with haste of of Nahiri, the Harbinger. There's a lot of little interactions to list, as there should be for a 6-drop with 4 abilities.

But most of all, it does what I want cards to do for me: it makes the cards I want to be good better. The 3 most noteworthy interactions with the rest of my deck: it's a free discard outlet for setting up Barren Glory, it's a fantastic Mirrorweave target that makes huge attackers that draw a pile of cards and are difficult to block profitably, and it turns Mindmoil into an immediate threat. Those are 3 cards I always want to be great, so any card that works with all 3 is going to get at least a try-out.

[benjameenbear]

I love the spotlight on your Primer for the site. Good work, tstorm.

[tstorm823]

I love the spotlight on your Primer for the site. Good work, tstorm.

Thank you!

Credit also to [mention]Feyd_Ruin[/mention] for the extra coat of gloss and posting it up there. I look forward to seeing what gets the next spotlight.

[Xar]

Hello,

New here but was lurking around for a while. I have read a lot about your deck and how it changed. I'am very interested in it, had a first game with it (proxied most of it but I want to be sure if this is "IT"). I noticed a lot of missplays on my side that could have been very bad for my opponents like Infinite Reflection on Knowledge Pool to slow them down. I also wanted to ask what happens if I cast Infinite Reflection on Inferno Titan and then, later in the game when I have a bunch of enchantments in play and I play Opalescence? Does they turn to Titans or they stay as enchantments? If they turn to Titans does ETB trigger? I think they stay as they were but are creatures from Opalescence. Either way I think that deck looks fun, kinda hard to master, but still going to try it again.

[tstorm823]

Hello,

New here but was lurking around for a while. I have read a lot about your deck and how it changed. I'am very interested in it, had a first game with it (proxied most of it but I want to be sure if this is "IT"). I noticed a lot of missplays on my side that could have been very bad for my opponents like Infinite Reflection on Knowledge Pool to slow them down. I also wanted to ask what happens if I cast Infinite Reflection on Inferno Titan and then, later in the game when I have a bunch of enchantments in play and I play Opalescence? Does they turn to Titans or they stay as enchantments? If they turn to Titans does ETB trigger? I think they stay as they were but are creatures from Opalescence. Either way I think that deck looks fun, kinda hard to master, but still going to try it again.

Hello, and welcome!

First, to answer the rules question, you are correct. Infinite Reflection only makes creatures into copies when it or they enter the battlefield, so a permanent that was in play when Infinite Reflection entered but wasn't a creature at that time would not turn into a copy. Your enchantments would all remain the card as printed except they would be creatures in addition.

More generally, don't beat yourself up on missplays. Most Magic decks are incredibly difficult to play optimally, I would categorize this one as impossible. Especially with something like putting Infinite Reflection on Inferno Titan instead of Knowledge Pool, because those are both super valid plays, you'll never really know if you picked wrong.

I don't think there is an "IT", per se. If you've got this proxied up and the people you play with don't mind, I'd keep playing it proxied for like a dozen games or so (maybe not consecutively). Chances are you'll either love the deck or save yourself a bunch of money. But if you've followed the changes over time, you know that there are a lot of cards or whole packages you could substitute out for something that's also fun that you might personally prefer.

[goscinny]

Heya Tstorm, first off, I really love this deck, thanks for making it.

Been playing commander for a year or so with a couple of friends and from the beginning we agreed to not make optimal cEDH two-card combos, playing with decks like is much more entertaining.

This is the first time I found your updated list on this site and I like the changes a lot. I got one question though, I've pulled off the "Doomsday" Mirror+Eye+Mind's Desire combo several times with [Rest in Peace] but I simply cannot see how you manage to exile [Mirror of Fate] with the Mirror+Eye+Echo+Mind's Desire combo, can you (or someone else) enlighten me please? I'm prolly overseeing something obvious but I thought I'd still ask.

Have a great weekend,
- Gos

[tstorm823]

I simply cannot see how you manage to exile [Mirror of Fate] with the Mirror+Eye+Echo+Mind's Desire combo

I just don't. I copy the Mirror of Fate with Echo Storm every time through the cycle and then never sacrifice the original. That being said, getting a graveyard exiler back in the deck is always on the short list here.

[tstorm823]

Played 2 games with Zedruu last night at a store I hadn't visited in a while, one of which I did nothing because I kept a greedy hand, and one of which I turn-6'd the table with Unbender Tine and Azor's Gateway. There were some new faces. However, it seems as though the style of game there has veered a little more towards "untap, combo you" sort of games, albeit in the turn 6-10 time frame. In an effort to have interesting games, I'll probably lean myself more towards a control role, and play my more reactive decks there, with the exception of Zedruu because Zedruu never gets benched. But with the intention of being reactive, I want to get some amount of Nahiri's Wrath, Rest in Peace, Narset's Reversal, and Chaos Warp into the deck at least for the time being as a metagame decision.

Highlight play: While I did end the game by Mirrorweaveing Pandemonium to deal 104 damage with a Golden Guardian, the real best play was casting Role Reversal giving Scrap Trawler to the Torbran deck while giving Torbran, Thane of Red Fell to the artifact combo deck.

[toctheyounger]

It's been a little while since I dipped my toe in the cool, chaotic waters of Zedruu, but Dream Trawler seems made for you. I can't see it being anything but spectacular. The only unfavourable part is it's heavily coloured CMC, but Possibility Storm will see you right I'm sure.

Not sure if you've actually tried Narset's Reversal here or not, but I sing it's praises, personally. Really versatile card that should do pretty great things for you in terms of control, but also in general. It keeps X values, bypasses additional costs, steals ramp, disrupts combos, and copies your Bonus Round for an extra dip of flavour on your spell-copying chaos. Not sure what you'd want to cut, but I can recommend giving it a punt for sure.

[tstorm823]

It's been a little while since I dipped my toe in the cool, chaotic waters of Zedruu, but Dream Trawler seems made for you. I can't see it being anything but spectacular. The only unfavourable part is it's heavily coloured CMC, but Possibility Storm will see you right I'm sure.

I gave Dream Trawler a well deserved tryout, and it just doesn't feel quite right. I did manage to discard my hand to it once for Barren Glory, and I did gain like 300 life with Arcbond. But interaction with Mirrorweave was lackluster, as maximum benefit comes from copying pre-combat, and that takes all the surprise fun out of it. And overall, it made me feel like I should try to slow the game down as long as I had it in play to take full advantage. If I want a card to slow the game down, discard my hand, and interact with Arcbond, I feel like I really should be going back to Nahiri's Wrath. Like, Dream Trawler is very good, I recommend it as a possible inclusion, but it just didn't quite feel right for me.

Not sure if you've actually tried Narset's Reversal here or not, but I sing it's praises, personally. Really versatile card that should do pretty great things for you in terms of control, but also in general. It keeps X values, bypasses additional costs, steals ramp, disrupts combos, and copies your Bonus Round for an extra dip of flavour on your spell-copying chaos. Not sure what you'd want to cut, but I can recommend giving it a punt for sure.

Not yet, but the theory of it has fascinated me. Obviously, it's a swell interactive spell for tempoing people back and me forward. It's got very neat interaction with Bonus Round, but also with Time Spiral. If I can manufacture a situation where 6 lands make more than 8 mana, and my hand + library + graveyard has exactly 7 cards, I could cast Time Spiral, copy it with Narset's Reversal, Time spiral goes to hand, Reversal goes to graveyard, shuffle both in and redraw all 7, and untap for positive mana. And then with infinite mana and Mirror of Fate, go grab a win condition from exile.

[toctheyounger]

Not yet, but the theory of it has fascinated me. Obviously, it's a swell interactive spell for tempoing people back and me forward. It's got very neat interaction with Bonus Round, but also with Time Spiral. If I can manufacture a situation where 6 lands make more than 8 mana, and my hand + library + graveyard has exactly 7 cards, I could cast Time Spiral, copy it with Narset's Reversal, Time spiral goes to hand, Reversal goes to graveyard, shuffle both in and redraw all 7, and untap for positive mana. And then with infinite mana and Mirror of Fate, go grab a win condition from exile.

See that didn't take long to break now did it? Lol. This is entirely within the realms of possibility for this deck too, so. To be honest I can't really see an instant/sorcery spell that it wouldn't do good things with. Can you imagine how obstinate you could be once it's in the Eye of the Storm?

[tstorm823]

See that didn't take long to break now did it? Lol. This is entirely within the realms of possibility for this deck too, so. To be honest I can't really see an instant/sorcery spell that it wouldn't do good things with. Can you imagine how obstinate you could be once it's in the Eye of the Storm?

There's definitely a multiplicative effect if you have a pile of instants with Eye of the Storm, bouncing spells back to hand but resolving everything in the Eye anyway. It's actually an interesting way to resolve spells through Eye of the Storm, as you can bounce and copy the original by casting an instant in response, letting you do things like take an extra turn without putting Temporal Mastery in the Eye for anyone else.

And like, it also steals ramp and sidesteps counterspells, so that's nice too.

[tstorm823]

Not sure what you'd want to cut, but I can recommend giving it a punt for sure.

Circling back to this question of what to cut, I just took stock of the deck looking for answers. The 4 cards I suggested I'd want to wedge in here again are Nahiri's Wrath, Rest in Peace, Narset's Reversal, and Chaos Warp. Those are cards that add a little more interaction to the deck, but also all cards that fit 4 card combos. Nahiri's Wrath discards my hand for Barren Glory. Rest in Peace exiles Mirror of Fate to loop that. Those two have been done already, the other two cards make new combos for me.

Narset's Reversal with Bonus Round can make infinite Turnabouts, which means infinite mana, infinite untapping any creature, artifact, or land, and infinite copies of any instant or sorcery. Which means there are a half-dozen cards that can act as a spout for this, including Barren Glory with infinite donations. Alternatively, if Mirror of Fate can get my hand, library, and graveyard down to a combined 7 cards, and I have 6 lands that tap for 9 mana total (likely from Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx), then Narset's Reversal and Time Spiral can deterministically make infinite mana and use Mirror of Fate to find a win condition. Side note: Narset's Reversal, much like Venser, Shaper Savant, is neat to hit off Mind's Desire to bounce it to hand and recast laster.

Chaos Warp could theoretically be the spout for Bonus Round/Narset's Reversal, warping opponent's away until they have neither lands nor threats left, but that would be incredibly tedious. Instead, we can slot it into yet another silly Mirror of Fate combo. This one uses Precursor Golem and Mirror of Fate: having cast Zedruu at least once, cast Echo Storm targeting Precursor Golem. Have the Echo Storm copy target Mirror of Fate, then resolve all the Echo Storms, ending with 2 Mirrors, 2 Precursors, and 6 vanilla golems. Activate the first Mirror to exile the library, then the second to Doomsday from that exile pile choosing a win condition made of permanents. I recommend Sakashima the Impostor/Opalescence/Detention Sphere/Pandemonium. Then cast Chaos Warp targeting the real Precursor Golem. Because there are 8 and 7 are tokens, you'll hit every card in the library if they're all permanents. If Sakashima comes out last of those 4, you do that combo and win. Otherwise, copy a golem with Sakashima, and the second Precursor trigger will radiate Chaos Warp back onto Sakashima to reset the cloning process.

Having said that, I want to get all 4 cards into the deck, which requires cutting 4 cards. The first cut I picked was Archangel Avacyn. I'm just going to go without a boros legend for the moment. Someday they'll print a perfect boros legend for me, but it doesn't exist yet. Other than Avacyn, I wanted to avoid cutting anything interactive, and ideally anything that's a 4 card combo piece. But once I set aside lands, interaction, and combos, I was left with only like a dozen cards, and most of them are ramp. My second cut was Throes of Chaos, which seemed a reasonable swap when adding Rest in Peace back in. The third cut I looked at either Phyrexian Metamorph or Mirrormade as non-essential parts, and decided to prefer Mirrormade at least for now. And at that point the only things left in the entire pile were mana rocks, flash enablers, and Golden Guardian, so I did the responsible thing and cut a mana rock because I love Golden Guardian a weird amount. So Thought Vessel is sidelined for not fixing colors. Considering the goal was to add interaction to hopefully slow down the game ending plays, I think cutting 3 cards that often just pushed my win cons out faster is a reasonable thing to do. Especially when Narset's Reversal and Chaos Warp are both potentially ramp spells themselves.

And one more minor change, I'm trying Thespian's Stage in place of Riptide Laboratory. I had someone copy my bounce land the other day, and I was jealous. It can also be slow color fixing, a man-land, a flipped Golden Guardian, or a way to borrow other people's busted land effects. So we'll see how that plays out.

Edit: for the record, when setting aside cards that belong to 4-card combos, the total count was 37 or 38. Maybe some day it will hit 50.

[tstorm823]

Here's the next question on my mind:

How Bad is a 4-card Combo?

If you have experience playing magic, especially if you like playing bad combos like me, you intuitively understand that requiring an extra card for your win condition makes it immensely less likely to actually happen. In theory, the difference in probability when adding pieces to a combo is literally exponentially worse. If you draw half your deck looking for 1 card, you're 50% to find it, 25% to find two necessary pieces, 12.5% for 3, and 6.25% for 4. A normal deck in a normal game is probably going to draw half of that, which cuts probabilities to 25%, 6.25%, 1.56%, and 0.39%. If you've got 1 4-card combo in a deck with no substitutes and need to draw into it naturally, it not likely to happen, possibly ever. To have a better than 50% chance to draw all 4 pieces in Commander, you need to see the top 84 cards of your library. And that's just considering the odds of drawing it, not the pile of mana you need and the weakness to more answers.

After recently counting up 38 cards that can slot into 4 card combos, I was left wondering how frequently I could expect to actually draw a full combo. In most magic decks, calculating real odds is a completely unreasonable amount of math, but between the singleton nature of Commander and my own refusal to play tutors, it's not too daunting for me to attempt it for this deck. Unfortunately for anyone reading, my math is in an excel sheet that I'll keep to myself so that you can't find any mistakes I may have made, but you all trust me, right?

To get straight to what I wanted to know: with the pile of combos available, how many cards on average does Zedruu need to see before finding a complete 4-card combo: 42. Between the 10 different varieties of combo and all the substitutes available, it takes ~42 cards before I can expect to find a complete combo. That is slightly easier to find than putting a single 1-card win condition in your deck and no tutors to find it, and several times more difficult to resolve. 1 copy of Tooth and Nail with Mike and Trike is more likely to naturally combo kill than my whole deck combined until you've drawn through half the deck. That is how bad 4-card combos are. And this matches my experience: just drawing into a combo and winning is incredibly rare, maybe 1% of games. Most wins come after drawing through 1/3 to 1/2 of the deck, and clean 4-card combos aren't any more common for me than more complicated combos or non-combo win conditions.

So if anyone has ever had any doubts as to whether the 4-card restriction was strict enough, there's some numbers to back it up. A deck with dozens of combinations of 4 cards that go infinite is still that unlikely to find a combo, and again that's without even considering the ~15 mana required to cast these things and the number of answers they're disrupted by.

[MeowZeDung]

Narset's Reversal with Bonus Round can make infinite Turnabouts, which means infinite mana, infinite untapping any creature, artifact, or land, and infinite copies of any instant or sorcery. Which means there are a half-dozen cards that can act as a spout for this

Ever since you clued me into the three card base of this combo and I jammed it in Kykar, Wind's Fury, I've been looking at uses for it. My build, being a token swarm deck that benefits from a high storm count, is usually content to just get the infinite storm/mana and tap down opponents' creatures before a massive combat step, or with Impact Tremors/Goblin Bombardment available and Kykar in play I don't even have to bother with combat. However, even apart from a Kykar list, if you add Electrodominance or Expansion // Explosion into the BR/Tunabout/NR mix, you've got a proper 4-card combo. Heck, technically Lightning Bolt or whatever random damage spell does it, but Electro/E//E are far less tedious, requiring only as many casts as you have opponents (fewer for E//E which kills one opponent and mills another per cast), and they have applications outside the combo. Not sure if you're interested in either card or if they have a way to slot into another one of your combos, but I thought I'd float it out there.

Re: 4-card combos - so, if it takes ~42 cards deep for you to find a combo in this list, the question is how consistently you dig that deep? I'm sure that number will vary and is nearly impossible to calculate, but what would be your best estimate based on experience?

[tstorm823]

Ever since you clued me into the three card base of this combo and I jammed it in Kykar, Wind's Fury, I've been looking at uses for it. My build, being a token swarm deck that benefits from a high storm count, is usually content to just get the infinite storm/mana and tap down opponents' creatures before a massive combat step. However, if you add Electrodominance or Expansion // Explosion into the mix, you've got a proper 4-card combo. Heck, technically Lightning Bolt or whatever damage spell does it, but Electro/E//E are far less tedious, requiring only as many casts as you have opponents (fewer for E//E which kills one opponent and mills another per cast), and they have applications outside the combo. Not sure if you're interested in either card or if they have a way to slot into another one of your combos, but I thought I'd float it out there.

Yup, any damage to the face does it, so Jeskai Charm and Firestorm are actually kill conditions. Mind's Desire, Temporal Cascade, Temporal Mastery, Jeskai Ascendancy and a non-summoning sick Nin, the Pain Artist are good enough to get me to a win condition. Walking Archive with infinite mana draws everyone to death on their upkeep. Potentially game winning are Catch // Release gain control of every permanent and then sacrifices everyone else's stuff, or Saheeli, Sublime Artificer/Golden Guardian to make infinite tokens. There are already tons of 4th cards for this combo in the deck. It's the third most likely combo to draw in the deck, behind Mirror of Fate/Rest in Peace/Temporal Mastery in second because Zedruu as a potential 4th piece who doesn't need to be drawn, and Barren Glory in first which has redundancies for more than one piece of the puzzle.

Re: 4-card combos - so, if it takes ~42 cards deep for you to find a combo in this list, the question is how consistently you dig that deep? I'm sure that number will vary and is nearly impossible to calculate, but what would be your best estimate based on experience?

Best estimate based on experience. Probably around 80% of my wins are because I drew that many cards, regardless of how I actually ended up winning, with maybe 10% of wins being a naturally drawn combo and 10% cheesing people out with things like Mirrorweave. And at a 4-person table, I expect to win more than my fair 25% of games in general. Not much more, probably like 1-in-3 games. This deck is downright bad at 1-on-1 against a well-tuned opponent, so the worst matchup is one strong opponent and two weak opponents. But it more than makes up for it against players who either haven't played against me and don't know how to react yet or have played against me but aren't using a deck with appropriate answers. (example: my one friend has a deck with all permanents except Primal Surge. It's not a weak deck overall, but it can't answer Zedruu.) So estimating 80% of my wins while winning 1/3 of the games, that's 27% of the time. Maybe round up to 30% for the occasional games where I dig super deep right at the end and fail to find an answer.

Mind you, I'm not often going to get 42 cards deep by playing a Howling Mine and then letting the game go for 17 more turns. I could draw with Jeskai Ascendancy, or Mindmoil. Or Vanish Into Memory or Mindmoil. Dig 5 deeper with Azor's Gateway or Mindmoil. Play Chance to rummage 10 cards, or Mindmoil. Draw 7 with Time Spiral, or Temporal Cascade, or Mindmoil. Play Bonus Round before those draw spells, or Mindmoil. Chain damage onto Swans of Brynn Argoll, or Mindmoil. Make 5 copies of Knowledge Pool, or Mindmoil. Put Mind's Desire into Eye of the Storm, that empties the deck real fast. Or also, I could play Mindmoil. There are tons of ways around like turn 6-10 to just sift through half the deck all at once. My primary win condition here is drawing cards.

Edit: unrelated, but I want to explain some reasoning I skipped over a couple posts ago. I picked Mirrormade over Phyrexian Metamorph largely for Possibility Storm. They're both 3 mana clone effects that hit mostly mostly artifacts for me. Because my creatures are mostly artifacts as well or legendary, Metamorph hits only Vedalken Plotter, Cavalier of Dawn, Swans of Bryn Argoll, and Inferno Titan as extras. Those are minor advantage plays. Mirrormade also has two of those in Dictate of Kruphix and Detention Sphere, and two more powerful options in Pandemonium and Jeskai Ascendancy, that I think balance the scale to even at that point, where Mirrormade is stronger but harder to cast. The deciding factor for me is that Mirrormade copies Possibility Storm, which is a really, really unique and powerful thing to do. It's just double every spell, and my other ways of getting multiple Possibility Storms are all based on luck. With Vedalken Orrery or Leyline of Anticipation, you can do a really sweet endstep play where you cast Mirrormade and respond to yourself with Possibility Storm to get Mirrormade through the Storm while resolving second, and then untap to abuse the spell doubling before anyone else.

[MeowZeDung]

Mind you, I'm not often going to get 42 cards deep by playing a Howling Mine and then letting the game go for 17 more turns. I could draw with Jeskai Ascendancy, or Mindmoil. Or Vanish Into Memory or Mindmoil. Dig 5 deeper with Azor's Gateway or Mindmoil. Play Chance to rummage 10 cards, or Mindmoil. Draw 7 with Time Spiral, or Temporal Cascade, or Mindmoil. Play Bonus Round before those draw spells, or Mindmoil. Chain damage onto Swans of Brynn Argoll, or Mindmoil. Make 5 copies of Knowledge Pool, or Mindmoil. Put Mind's Desire into Eye of the Storm, that empties the deck real fast. Or also, I could play Mindmoil. There are tons of ways around like turn 6-10 to just sift through half the deck all at once. My primary win condition here is drawing cards.

I feel this in my bones. I'm a huge fan of Mindmoil and Arjun, the Shifting Flame. Some of the most underated EDH cards ever imo.

What's your preferred method of funneling damage into Swans of Bryn Argoll? That's another card that is criminally underplayed imo, including by me. Have you done anything ridiculously busted with Swans + Arcbond? Maybe with Nin, the Pain Artist? EDIT: actually, now that I look harder, I don't think Swans + Arcbond works since swans prevents damage and arc requires damage to be dealt. Oops. Nevermind.

[tstorm823]

I feel this in my bones. I'm a huge fan of Mindmoil and Arjun, the Shifting Flame. Some of the most underated EDH cards ever imo.

What's your preferred method of funneling damage into Swans of Bryn Argoll? That's another card that is criminally underplayed imo, including by me. Have you done anything ridiculously busted with Swans + Arcbond? Maybe with Nin, the Pain Artist? EDIT: actually, now that I look harder, I don't think Swans + Arcbond works since swans prevents damage and arc requires damage to be dealt. Oops. Nevermind.

You would be shocked by how frequently opponents see Mindmoil for the first time and ask if I'm planning to donate it to someone because they see it as an inconvenience.

Swans of Bryn Argoll + Arcbond isn't nothing, because sometimes you can block or be blocked and Arcbond your own creature in combat to draw off of Swans. It doesn't come up often, but it's not nothing.

Nahiri's Wrath with Swans is genuinely gross. 3 mana, "draw cards equal to the converted mana cost of your whole hand, and you may as well board wipe while you're at it." Pandemonium with Swans is more repeatable damage. Golden Guardian with Swans has, at minimum, the ability "2: draw 4 cards and transform", though I've done dirtier with the boros angels that have hung around the deck.

[MeowZeDung]

Nahiri's Wrath with Swans is genuinely gross. 3 mana, "draw cards equal to the converted mana cost of your whole hand, and you may as well board wipe while you're at it." Pandemonium with Swans is more repeatable damage. Golden Guardian with Swans has, at minimum, the ability "2: draw 4 cards and transform", though I've done dirtier with the boros angels that have hung around the deck.

Oh, that's spicy. . .

Geez it's a shame that folks don't see Mindmoil as the treasure that it is. It's been one of my favorite pet cards since the first time I had it out alongside a Psychosis Crawler. The value is incredible. Most look at it and see the "downside", I look at it and see it as "keep seeing fresh hands and play nothing but the best card available in each", which is rarely a drawback.

[tstorm823]

Oh, that's spicy. . .

Geez it's a shame that folks don't see Mindmoil as the treasure that it is. It's been one of my favorite pet cards since the first time I had it out alongside a Psychosis Crawler. The value is incredible. Most look at it and see the "downside", I look at it and see it as "keep seeing fresh hands and play nothing but the best card available in each", which is rarely a drawback.

Clearly people are too Azorius. They think the Izzet's impulse for learning is too much like impulse and too little like learning.

[MeowZeDung]

Clearly people are too Azorius. They think the Izzet's impulse for learning is too much like impulse and too little like learning.

Just like a certain Dracogenius, we have no patience for minds that do not inspire us or explode by trying.

[tstorm823]

Just like a certain Dracogenius, we have no patience for minds that do not inspire us or explode by trying.

Well, if they spent more time harming Swans, the would quickly learn their lesson.

[darrenhabib]

4 card combos are BAAAAAAAAAD *in a goat sound*

But of course it depends on number of tutors, if those tutors can get you multiples of the cards needed and of course if the cards that are part of the combos are fine on their own merit plays a part.
Also if you can play out some of the combo pieces over time so that they don't cost you to cast them all at once. Some have special funky timing right, so much harder to assemble.

If your commander is part of the combo, then I feel you can say its more like a 3.5 card combo

[toctheyounger]

From memory, you don't really need tutors per se for this deck. At some point a critical mass of card draw happens and you just see enough of the deck to cobble something together. So long are you're doing something, something will happen. Vaguest sentence of all time, but it's true, especially when everything you cast happens under Mindmoil. That card will show you your whole damn library if you give it enough fuel. Or if you have it with Possibility Storm in play.