This is a
Fast-Combo deck with a commander that provides synergy with the London Mulligan so the question is, how aggressively should we mulligan? Some Grenzo pilots believe that an aggressive mulligan strategy in Grenzo is
the strategy but, the truth is that it isn't (at least not in this deck). We often need to mulligan but, there's a point where the cards we draw are good enough for us to play VS us continuing to mulligan which, is always a gamble.
The London Mulligan was exciting for Grenzo pilots when it was first announced. Every Grenzo Pilot dreamed of the mulligan to 5 with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Zealous Conscripts on the bottom and enough mana to cast Grenzo as a 3/3 and combo out the same or following turn. Then reality set in--the chance of drawing that type of hand is close to zero. There are occasions when a mulligan allows us to bottom a creature then bring it back out with Grenzo but, it often adds little or no value and for as long as we remain committed to cheating it out with Grenzo it blocks our tutors and fetch lands. Some players try to mitigate the problem by playing fetchless lists (I tried this early on, when the London Mulligan was first added to EDH). Removing fetch lands slightly improves the odds of abusing the London Mulligan but, it also makes playing around effects that target non-basic lands much more difficult and renders Lake of the Dead unplayable. Without fetch lands there's also a higher likelihood to end up short on a color (usually ). Ultimately, removing fetch lands was pointless because most good starting hands contain a tutor which, should be cast as early as possible instead of holding the deck hostage to a creature mulliganed to the bottom.
More About Grenzo's Fetch Lands
Fetch lands provide a lot of extra utility beyond the basic role of mana-fixing. In this deck, fetch lands help:
- Mana Fix
- Build the Yard (Cabal Ritual, Underworld Breach, Yawgmoth's Will)
- Deck Thin (it isn't much but, it improves the chance to top-deck a powerful spell and/or hit a creature with a blind use of Grenzo's ability)
- Play around stax such as Blood Moon, Magus of the Moon and Back to Basics - If you sit at a table with an opponent who's likely to run one of these cards then it makes sense to use early fetch lands (t1-2) for basics
To the Bottom!
Bottoming a creature after a mulligan does offer a couple benefits but, how often does it offer a tangible advantage? Out of the deck’s 17 creatures, only a few of them are truly impactful early without meeting specific conditions or having additional combo pieces/utility in hand or play. However, there are two small benefits that all of the creatures offer and an additional benefit combo pieces add:
- Sacrifice fodder for: Culling the Weak, Infernal Plunge & Diabolic Intent
- A way to build board-state with fewer cards in hand (mitigate card disadvantage)
- Partial combo assembly
Individual creature-to-bottom values are outlined below
High-Value/Low-Floor
These creatures are guaranteed to add value early with no additional combo pieces/utility required:
- Dualcaster Mage - We'll find something good to copy (Bonus that it can combo with Twinflame if it's in hand and we control another creature)
- Opposition Agent - Steal an early tutor or land and lock out searches
- Dauthi Voidwalker - A single pass of the table is likely to yield some sort of gas
Medium-Value/Low-Floor
No conditional needs or additional combo pieces/utility required--medium/moderate value:
Low-Value/Low-Floor
No conditional needs or additional combo pieces/utility required but, has low value:
Duds
Creatures we want in our hand not on the bottom:
- Simian Spirit Guide - we want to exile this guy from hand for . Off the bottom this card is a pretty big whiff
High-Value/High-Floor
In addition to mana, these scenarios require additional cards for them to have early-game value off the bottom:
This deck currently runs 17 creatures and of those 17 only 10 can cheat in from the bottom, for value, without the need for additional combo pieces or utility cards in hand/play. Of those 10, only 3 have immense value, another 2 have moderate value and the other 5 have fairly low-value. This deck isn't suited for an aggressive mulligan strategy that focuses stacking creatures on the bottom of the library because too few of the creatures offer stand-alone, early-game value off the bottom.
Another reason we want to avoid aggressive mulligans is because we're at a disadvantage when it comes to draw-power. Our draw-power can't keep up with decks in U/G or those with Tymna the Weaver in the Command Zone so the last thing we want to do is cut ourselves off at the knees by aggressively mulling to 4 cards (literally gambling) just for the sake of maybe hitting a draw that lets us try a t2-3 combo which coincidentally, reduces in chance with each mulligan. Even if we do hit the nut at 4 or 5 cards, we significantly reduced our chances to protect it. Early combos (t1-2) have a higher chance to go unanswered but, by t3 the chances of getting away with an unprotected combo are close to nil.
So, what does a Rakdos cEDH playable hand look like in this deck? The deck typically draws hands that fit a fast-combo profile but occasionally, will draw hands that play better to a mid-range strategy. The raw-power of Rakdos also throws intermittent curve-balls of hands that make us choose between a fast Doomsday or powering out card advantage. The answer here is usually to go for the fast-combo and if it fails lean into card advantage.
A fast-combo hand (win attempt t1-3) is generally keepable as long as it has the minimum value of each of the following:
A slower, but, playable hand (win attempt t4-5) would look more like:
The reality of MTG is that our cards are randomized and then randomized again with each mulligan we take. Randomization is especially brutal in our 99-card singleton format. We can't always get what we want and that's true of our starting hand. Sometimes we have to make concessions and keep an imperfect hand rather than gambling with the mulligan system and losing. Maybe our fast-combo hand has everything but, protection or maybe we draw 4 rocks and only 1 land. Thanks to the deck's tutor density and situational adaptability, we can make small concessions to keep hands that are 1 or 2 pieces away from optimal.
