For my first ten years of playing Magic, I played more multiplayer games that two-player games. I love most casual formats. That said, I’ve always tried to win every game I’ve played. The idea of building a “fun deck” rather than a deck designed to work well is very difficult for me to wrap my head around. I have more fun when my deck’s working. Playing cards that don’t make sense together just frustrates me. EDH gives me enough direction that I can try to build a casual deck, or so I thought.
My theory on building an EDH deck is to choose a general that pulls you in an obvious direction and then build the deck that general would want built around them. I like an EDH deck to be extremely focused. Decks that are just a collection of cards that are pretty good in multiplayer all run together for me. They lack identity; there’s nothing interesting about them. To me, the format is all about taking advantage of the general.
Somehow, building a synergistic deck appears to result in a deck that’s above the power level of most casual EDH games, no matter what the deck is focused on doing, as far as I can tell.
I’d like this to serve as a call to people to build EDH decks more for synergy instead of filling their decks with Wrath of God, Decimate, Decree of Pain, and Mind’s Eye because they think those are the best things you can do in a multiplayer game. You can do better if you just do something. Yes, Condemn and Spin into Myth are awesome at getting rid of generals, which is a valuable thing to do, but they’re still just cards that hurt one other player. You’d usually be better served by trying to do something that wins.
So that’s how I feel about building decks. Now I’ll talk about the decks I’ve built recently. A significant portion of people who see me playing my Azusa, Lost but Seeking deck ask to see it, ask for a list, or ask me to write about it, which is a lot of why I’m writing this article.
Writing an EDH decklist article like a Constructed article — where I explain why this is the best deck to play and why all the card choices are optimal — is a little awkward, since the point of those articles is generally to convince others that they should be making the same choices, while I think EDH is more about showcasing one’s own designs. “Netdecking” EDH is generally pretty weird. Therefore I’m going to try to focus on the kinds of reasoning used rather than the specific conclusions.
That said, we’ll still need a list to talk about:
Lands: 60
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Blasted Landscape
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Desert
1 Deserted Temple
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Dust Bowl
1 Eldrazi Temple
1 Eye of Ugin
1 Gaea’s Cradle
1 Ghost Quarter
1 High Market
1 Khalni Garden
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Mishra’s Factory
1 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mosswort Bridge
1 Mouth of Ronom
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Petrified Field
1 Scrying Sheets
1 Slippery Karst
25 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Strip Mine
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Temple of the False God
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Treetop Village
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Yavimaya Hollow
Acceleration: 8
1 Exploration
1 Gaea’s Touch
1 Grim Monolith
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Reflection
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sol Ring
Card Draw: 11
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Font of Mythos
1 Harmonize
1 Horn of Greed
1 Howling Mine
1 Mind’s Eye
1 Rites of Flourishing
1 Seer’s Sundial
1 Sylvan Library
1 Temple Bell
1 Well of Knowledge
Search: 3
1 Crop Rotation
1 Expedition Map
1 Sylvan Scrying
Spells: 6
1 All Is Dust
1 Genesis Wave
1 Natural Order
1 Regrowth
1 Rude Awakening
1 Tooth and Nail
Creatures: 11
1 Terastodon
1 Duplicant
1 Eternal Witness
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Primeval Titan
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
General: 1
Azusa, Lost but Seeking
Cards that I’d like to play or have recently cut include Oath of Druids, Seedborn Muse, Life from the Loam, Reap and Sow, Squall Line, Recycle, and Erratic Portal
The idea behind this deck is to play as many lands as possible every turn, which means that the deck has to have an extremely high density of lands and has to draw as many cards as possible. For green, that means relying heavily on artifacts that make both players draw more cards, but that’s not a problem because you can use extra cards so much better than other players, since you can play extra lands, and use all that extra mana to cast more spells.
The cards that search for lands often find Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, which makes the deck function as if it had several more Howling Mines, which are extremely important. Without one, the deck generally just plays a bunch of lands and then sits there.
The deck almost always wins with Eldrazi, specifically Emrakul. Avenger of Zendikar can win, but most of the time it’s just the best mana ramp (working with Gaea’s Cradle), and you still win by using Eye of Ugin to find Emrakul.
In multiplayer games, the deck tries to take infinite turns by sacrificing Emrakul to High Market and finding it again with Eye of Ugin and casting it all in the same turn.
In two-player, the deck usually just tries to Terastodon the other player’s lands before they can really do anything.
I mulligan almost any hand that doesn’t have card draw, although something like Mana Crypt into Primeval Titan counts as card draw (and is among the best possible hands, since I’ll play a Primeval Titan on turn 2 and find Eye of Ugin or Mikokoro with those two cards and four lands). Most hands have some way to get going.
I think this deck makes strong cases for banning Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Mana Crypt, as well as either Strip Mine or Crucible of Worlds, and if I wanted to make the deck more casual, I’d cut those cards, and Terastodon would probably have to go in two-player games.
I haven’t actually played with Genesis Wave yet. I can only assume it’s amazing, since it has almost no misses, and I can easily cast it for amazingly huge numbers.
The deck can have problems with cards like Roil Elemental, although Duplicant, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, and Mouth of Ronom give the deck a surprisingly consistent ability to answer creatures given how many ways there are to find any of those cards.
In one on one, the deck can overpower most other strategies.
Dedicated combo decks and counter decks are the decks most likely to cause problems. If the deck can find a way to resolve Azusa, it should almost always beat a counter heavy deck, and Boseiju, Who Shelters All is very good against them, even though there aren’t that many spells to force through. The real game against those decks comes from the Eldrazi, of course, which they often have few good answers to, although they should be playing Mindbreak Trap and Time Stop.
Combo decks or decks that are well designed to kill quickly can be a problem, but, like most competitive two-player EDH from what I’ve seen, it should mostly come down to who has a better start, which is to say whose start involves more artifacts that should be banned (Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt).
The next deck I built used Rafiq of the Many as its general, and I’m most interested in discussing it as a failure for this format. Rafiq, to me, clearly just wants to get pumped and kill the opponent. He’s the best general at doing 21 damage, and that’s what he wants to do. He should be the entire show.
The deck that I built was designed to be played only in two-player games (Rafiq is a terrible multiplayer general, particularly built like this). This deck is built with the mentality of a combo deck, although the combo is to attack for more than twenty, preferably in a single attack.
For reference, the deck was:
Lands: 38
1 Adarkar Wastes
1 Arid Mesa
1 Azorious Chancery
1 Breeding Pool
1 Brushland
1 City of Brass
1 Flooded Grove
1 Flooded Strand
1 Forest
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Island
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mystic Gate
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 Savannah
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Soaring Seacliff
1 Strip Mine
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Temple Garden
1 Tolaria West
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Yavimaya Coast
Acceleration: 9
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Bloom Tender
1 Chrome Mox
1 Findhorn Elves
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Noble Hierarch
Other Creatures: 6
1 Benevolent Bodyguard
1 Devoted Caretaker
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Mother of Runes
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
Planeswalkers: 2
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight Errant
Counters: 19
1 Avoid Fate
1 Blessed Breath
1 Confound
1 Counterspell
1 Daze
1 Dispel
1 Emerge Unscathed
1 Force Spike
1 Force of Will
1 Mana Leak
1 Mana Tithe
1 Misdirection
1 Pact of Negation
1 Rebuff the Wicked
1 Remand
1 Shelter
1 Spell Pierce
1 Turn Aside
1 Vines of the Vastwood
Pump Spells: 19
1 Barkshell Blessing
1 Berserk
1 Blessing of the Nephilim
1 Distortion Strike
1 Favor of the Overbeing
1 Finest Hour
1 Fistfull of Force
1 Giant Growth
1 Groundswell
1 Invigorate
1 Might of Oaks
1 Might of old Krosa
1 Might of the Nephilim
1 Predator’s Strike
1 Shadow Rift
1 Shield of the Oversoul
1 Steel of the Godhead
1 Stonewood Invocation
1 Unstable Mutation
Card Draw: 5
1 Brainstorm
1 Gush
1 Preordain
1 Serum Visions
1 Sylvan Library
Removal: 1
Swords to Plowshares
General: 1
1 Rafiq of the Many
Other considerations: Niveous Wisps, Condemn, Path to Exile, Negate, Ancestral Vision, Ponder, Akrasan Squire, Sigiled Paladin, Infantry Veteran, Vendilion Clique, Wildsize, Gather Courage.
There are some people who will say that the problem with this deck is that EDH is a multiplayer format, and this isn’t a multiplayer deck. I don’t really believe that. Yes, it was created as a multiplayer format, but there are a lot of people who are interested in a casual format that encourages creative deckbuilding and provides some direction, but who don’t always have more than one other person to play with, or possibly who would prefer to play two-player games. There are many areas where EDH is more commonly played one on one.
The problem with this deck is that it fails at being a casual deck. I’ve only played a few games with it, but they’ve been some of the least interesting games of Magic I’ve ever played. I don’t even have to do anything complicated to figure out how to go off. Just attack with my Rafiq and target him with some pump spells. Counter anything that will kill me or Rafiq. Most EDH decks, from what I’ve seen, are built with a much later critical turn than this one, and because the nature of the format so strongly discourages spot removal, they don’t have nearly enough ways to interact with this deck in time.
The problem isn’t just that this deck will almost always beat most other decks, the problem is that it’ll do it in a way that’s completely uninteresting from both sides. Boards never develop; there’s never any back and forth. Nothing fun or exciting ever happens.
That said, a slightly more tuned version of this would probably be a pretty good deck to play if a two-player EDH tournament were to happen.
Recently, Tom Martell contacted me to ask for my Azusa decklist so he could build it on MTGO to play in the multiplayer room, since there aren’t any relevant formats to play on MTGO right now. After playing the deck for a day or so, he was in the market for a deck that would give other people more of a chance, and I set about designing what I intended to be a less competitive deck.
I built Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper, who I’d been thinking about ever since M11 came out because I think Reassembling Skeletons is a fun card. I built the deck by doing a search for “sacrifice a creature” and “goes to the graveyard,” and added a few cards I knew I wanted in any EDH deck and some I knew I wanted here.
The result was:
Lands:38
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Forest
1 Gaea’s Cradle
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Gruul Turf
1 Khalni Garden
1 Kher Keep
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mosswort Bridge
2 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Pendelhaven
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
1 Rakdos Carnarium
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Savage Lands
1 Scaling Tarn
1 Stomping Ground
4 Swamp
1 Taiga
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volrath’s Stronghold
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
Artifacts: 9
1 Culling Dais
1 Eldrazi Monument
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Diamond
1 Phyrexian Altar
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
1 Spawning Pit
Enchantments: 11
1 Diabolic Servitude
1 Doubling Season
1 Dragon Appeasement
1 Fecundity
1 Goblin Bombardment
1 Golgari Germination
1 Grave Pact
1 Oversold Cemetary
1 Perilous Forays
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
Instants: 2
Chord of Calling
Entomb
Sorceries: 5
1 Buried Alive
1 Death Cloud
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dread Returns
1 Insurrection
Planeswalkers: 1
Sarkhan Vol
Creatures: 33
1 Acidic Slime
1 Algae Gharial
1 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Bloodghast
1 Bloodthrone Vampire
1 Braid, Cabal Minion
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Deathbringer Thoctar
1 Diligent Farmhand
1 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Furystoke Giant
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Greater Gargadon
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Krovikan Horror
1 Mitotic Slime
1 Nether Traitor
1 Pawn of Ulamog
1 Primeval Titan
1 Puppeteer Clique
1 Reassembling Skeletons
1 Sadistic Hypnotist
1 Sakura Tribe Elder
1 Savra, Queen of the Golgari
1 Scarland Thrinax
1 Sprouting Thrinax
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Visera Seer
1 Wood Elves
General: 1
Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper
This deck was fun, interesting, explosive. It did everything I wanted it to do, but I’d often find myself choked on mana when I started to draw a lot of cards with one of my card-drawing enchantments.
That’s when I added Phyrexian Altar. Phyrexian Altar is very fun if you like winning by going infinite. It makes the deck substantially more powerful, probably to a point that’s problematic if you’re looking for a casual game.
It was while I was playing this deck that I heard someone say that he tries to build his EDH decks without any infinite combos. He wasn’t even talking about this deck — it was just something he happened to mention.
I’m not sure why I never would’ve thought of that, but it makes a lot of sense for multiplayer. If you’re trying to play a fun, long game, no one should be able to go infinite and suddenly win. The way to stop this from happening, rather than trying to ban every card that can do it, is just to ask people not to build decks that are capable of it.
This is why I’m not a very good casual player.
This Sek’Kuar deck was originally imagined as a deck that would play an attrition game and do a lot of grinding. In reality, it plays like a combo deck. Nether Traitor + Phyrexian Altar + Sek’Kuar gives you infinite mana and infinite sacrifices. It’s difficult to disrupt because Nether Traitor can be in the graveyard, and Sek’Kuar is a general.
Bloodghast + Perilous Forays isn’t infinite. It’s about as powerful a combo as this format should support though. Similarly, Doubling Season + Spawning Pit isn’t infinite — it just lets you spend mana to make creatures. With Phyrexian Altar, it gets problematic quickly.
The deck is full of fun little combos: anything that sacrifices with anything that comes back, and anything that triggers when something else is sacrificed. Building a lot of these engines is fun. Adding the last piece that makes it instantly end a game is less fun for everyone. That last piece is usually Phyrexian Altar.
Being able to play a lot of spells when you draw a lot of cards
is
fun though. If I were to take out Phyrexian Altar to make the deck more fun, I’d want to try Cadaverous Bloom, which will never be infinite, but makes drawing cards a lot more fun for me.
Insurrection and Death Cloud are other cards on the watch list for just not being fun, since they’re too likely to immediately end a game.
I think this deck has taught me a lot about building a casual EDH deck, so I hope it has a lot of lessons. There’s a fine line between, “Hey, you’re playing Dragon Appeasement, and it’s awesome — that’s cool” and consistently going infinite on turn 5 or 6.
It’s hard to look at lists as long as EDH lists and really make sense of what’s going on, so I’d like to briefly highlight some cards that haven’t been played a lot that are awesome here:
Sadistic Hypnotist is amazing in this deck. It’s another one that people often just want to concede to, but I feel a little better about making people concede if it’s to something niche like that that I had to work for rather than something boring like a Death Cloud.
Perilous Forays I mentioned above with Bloodghast, but I feel the need to mention it again, since it’s another one most people have to read. That card is amazing if you untap with it on most boards, since EDH is a format that very strongly rewards having access to a lot of mana. Also, it finds any land with a basic land type, not just basic lands, so there are fourteen lands in this deck it can find, rather than just eight.
Savra, Queen of the Golgari is another card that has been dramatically overperforming.
There are a lot of fun cards that trigger off sacrificing or that make you sacrifice things, most of which I’m not playing because they cost mana, and they’re just less explosive than this deck wants. If I were trying to power this deck down while keeping the flavor intact, I’d try to find room for cards like Lyzolda, the Blood Witch and Furnace Celebration. You can also cut overpowered cards like Sylvan Library and Survival of the Fittest for weaker combo pieces like Vengevine and Verdant Eidolon.
Figuring out the correct power level for an EDH deck is particularly challenging because the banned list allows so many cards that seem like they’re clearly too powerful for casual Magic, like Sol Ring and Mana Crypt, but the community clearly isn’t about building the most powerful deck with those cards.
The result offers a lot of flexibility, which is good, but it’s important to know what kind of decks you’re going to be playing against to build a deck that plays well against them.
I hope I’ve shown some interesting ways to turn some of those power level knobs and have provided some direction for people who are just overwhelmed by the possibilities in a format that seems so much more open than competitive Magic, since it’s not restricted by the drive to attack a metagame or win a tournament the way most decks I’m used to building are.
Thanks for reading,
Sam