Budget Talrand EDH

Commander / EDH Budget Mono-Blue

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Draw/Hand (22)

• 1x Anticipate
• 1x Bident of Thassa
• 1x Blighted Cataract
• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Desert of the Mindful
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Halimar Depths
• 1x Jace's Ingenuity
• 1x Lonely Sandbar
• 1x Memorial to Genius
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Opt
• 1x Overwhelming Intellect
• 1x Peek
• 1x Quicken
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Remote Isle
• 1x Telling Time
• 1x Think Twice
• 1x Treasure Cruise

Ramp (5)

• 1x Coldsteel Heart
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Seer's Lantern
• 1x Unstable Obelisk
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Counterspells (16)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Cancel
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Disdainful Stroke
• 1x Dismiss
• 1x Dissipate
• 1x Dissolve
• 1x Dream Fracture
• 1x Exclude
• 1x Foil
• 1x Insidious Will
• 1x Negate
• 1x Overwhelming Denial
• 1x Rewind
• 1x Spell Crumple
• 1x Unwind

Instants/Sorceries-Matter (5)

• 1x Jace's Sanctum
• 1x Metallurgic Summonings
• 1x Rise from the Tides
• 1x The Mirari Conjecture
• 1x Trail of Evidence

Defense (2)

• 1x Devastation Tide
• 1x Gather Specimens

Tutor (2)

• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Muddle the Mixture

Non-Categorized-Land (32)

• 32x Island

Commander (1)

Removal (10)

• 1x AEtherize
• 1x Aetherspouts
• 1x Blink of an Eye
• 1x Capsize
• 1x Curse of the Swine
• 1x Detection Tower
• 1x Echoing Truth
• 1x Into the Roil
• 1x Rapid Hybridization
• 1x Reality Shift

Polymorph (5)

• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Mass Polymorph
• 1x Peregrine Drake
• 1x Sphinx of Magosi
• 1x Synthetic Destiny

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I wanted to get back into playing MTG with a Commander deck so I made an under $50 Talrand, Sky Summoner deck that is designed to be fun and still fairly capable of pulling off a win. Being mono-blue, we don't have access to many powerful creatures or powerful removal so this deck is focused around draw, counterspells, defense, and a combo.

We run 22 spells that draw and manipulate the top of our library. Then we have 16 counterspells. And then there are 11 defense/removal/bounce spells that help us deal with things that we can't counter. As a combo we run Peregrine Drake, Deadeye Navigator, Sphinx of Magosi, and Blue Sun's Zenith. By soulbonding the Peregrine Drake with Deadeye Navigator we can abuse the enter the battlefield trigger of Peregrine Drake by producing 5 mana with the untap 5 lands effect for only the 2 mana required by Deadeye Navigator to flicker them both. With this generating infinite blue mana we now can activate the Sphinx of Magosi draw effect until we draw a Blue Sun's Zenith which we can cast on one of our opponents for x=100 to force them to draw their deck + 1 to mill them out. Then because Blue Sun's Zenith shuffles back into the library we can redraw it off Sphinx of Magosi until we mill out each of our opponents.

This combo would be relatively fragile since it is basically a 3 card combo so it would require a bunch of tutors if not for 2 cards - Mass Polymorph and Synthetic Destiny which as long as there are 3+ drakes in play or 1 talrand and 2+ drakes either card will Polymorph those creatures away into the only 3 creatures in the deck which just happens to be our combo of Deadeye Navigator, Peregrine Drake, and Sphinx of Magosi. From there we can win immediately since the Peregrine Drake will untap 5 lands on entering which will give us mana to combo out. Note that when piloting this deck, casting a Mass Polymorph or Synthetic Destiny as soon as able is not the best plan since it will be very important to protect the combo with some of the 16 counterspells the deck runs. This can mean that 9+ mana may be required to combo off. If some of the combo creatures are in your hand the combo can require even more mana because both Mass Polymorph/Synthetic Destiny and that creature must be able to be played in one turn since dropping one without the other leaves the combo very open to the many sorcery speed board wipes that are run in EDH.

Note that this deck isn't entirely a combo deck. The plan of playing control and just generating a bunch of drake tokens and attacking with them still works incredibly well. Additionally on the tokens plan, an enormous Rise from the Tides or a bunch of Metallurgic Summonings triggers can easily finish out the game.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Exclude colors	WBRG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares 19 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 26 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.45
Tokens	Boar 2/2 G, Clue, Construct X/X C, Drake 2/2 U, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Manifest 2/2 C, Zombie 2/2 B
Based on	Talrand Extreme Budget whoniversereview EDH