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Paradox Scepter

Commander / EDH Artifact Four Color Infinite Combo Multiplayer Primer Storm

GS10

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Land (35)

Instant (13)

Artifact (19)

Creature (14)

Enchantment (2)

Planeswalker (1)

Commanders (2)

Commander: foil Akiri, Line-Slinger
Commander: foil Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix

Sorcery (14)

THIS LIST IS IN PERMANENT DEVELOPMENT!

The main goal wasn't to build a budget deck this time, but as it turns out, it is possible to do so with a few mana base adjustments. Check the full primer to get details and find different ways to build it either to improve further or reduce costs.

Paradox Engine

INTRO

I decided to make this deck when I saw a friend playing Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder draw into her entire deck out of nowhere. Big alarm bells sounded and she didn't win, since she didn't build the deck to go off like that. But that thought sticked to my head and I decided to go with my own build of that nonsense.

I've been thinking about new generals to diversify my very much graveyard based collection, and I wanted to play a partner commander deck, so the opportunity finally presented, and Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix had to be one of the two. She is our big payoff for drawing most of our deck, and she enables a lot of infinite combos by herself. The question then was what other partner to play. Well, it figures I was playing a lot of artifacts, and I didn't feel like spending 8 times more on Vial Smasher the Fierce because she is seeing some more play now, so Akiri, Line-Slinger was my choice. I lose access to , but gives me different answers, more reliability and win conditions on budget in general.

PLAY STYLE

You want to draw cards. That's it essentially. Most cards in the deck work well together and there is a lot of interchangeability between combo pieces too, so the point of the deck is to unassumingly start drawing into some of your pieces until eventually you can go off. Before you can tap for insane ammounts of mana with Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix you won't seem like the biggest threat, and when you can, usually you are on the brink of winning the game. The deck is not very much creature based, so you have to be careful about board wipes, especially Merciless Eviction, that card alone can wreck this whole deck (or Cyclonic Rift, for that matter, but that is just a bit overpowered in EDH in general).

Arjun, the Shifting Flame

CARD DRAW

Card draw is the most important asset for this deck. First of all, it's a combo deck, so you will need ways to draw into your combo pieces, but not only that. If you can't combo off with anything, card draw turns on Kydele, and that alone amps the power level of the deck to almost insanity. Remember the play I started this primer with, that unassuming play led Kydele to tap for 83 colorless mana. One single activation made more mana than you would ever need. Now go figure what you can do if you untap Kydele over and over. You will eventually find some win condition or worst case scenario, set you up for the next turn. How do you get to draw that many cards?

And eventually, all this card draw will make Kydele tap for enough mana to go infinite with Staff of Domination to draw the entire deck if you want.

UNTAPPING

You don't always need to keep untapping to do insane stuff, remember, Kydele alone can make more mana that your dice can keep track of, but if you can let me ask you something: Do you remember Prophet of Kruphix ?

So untapping everything essentially doubles your resources each time you do it and that is the main way this deck goes infinite, with lots of mana rocks and nonland permanents that let you draw additional cards.

Whir of Invention

FINDING MISSING LINKS AND WINNING

Sometimes you'll only need one card to go off, and that card will usually be an artifact, so there are a few ways to get it from your library:

And there's also a few ways to get them back from your graveyard, in case they get removed or you discard them to your Windfall effects for some reason:

And all the card draw we've talked about before. Summed up this gives you means to get pretty much whatever you need surprisingly soon in the game.

Fireball

What to do then? Lets go through some of the win cons:

  • Akiri, Line-Slinger , to start with the more innocent of the bunch. While you are looking like you can combo off at any time, few players will keep in mind that Akiri can pretty much one-shot them with commander damage, thanks to the whole bunch of artifacts we run.

  • Paradox Engine + Isochron Scepter, the namesake combo. If you get any nonland permanents to generate 2 mana you can go infinite with these two. Imprint a burn spell on the Scepter and that's game. Boros Charm is my favorite imprint target, since it doesn't just burn your opponents, but it allows you to protect from most board wipes and gives double strike to Akiri for commander damage in case your opponents have hexproof or for some reason you don't want to burn everyone at once.

  • Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Fireball, go infinite with Kydele on mana (Staff of Domination is often the easier way, requiring her only to tap for 5 mana to go infinite) and eventually cast Fireball with a large enough X to split damage between everyone at the table.

  • Aetherflux Reservoir, if you start drawing your whole deck and making infinite mana, the Reservoir will let you gain insane ammounts of life and dome everyone for 50 (again Staff of Domination gains you life as well so you can use it to enable the Reservoir too). My favorite way to enable Reservoir though is Arjun, the Shifting Flame since it will literally let you cast all the spells in your deck with Kydele.

  • The big Eldrazi Kozilek, the Great Distortion and Void Winnower , if you feel like it. Kozilek draws cards and goes well with the main plan, also providing some occasional countermagic, while Void Winnower turns the whole game upside down and both are perfect flavour fits in a deck that embraces chaos. Plus, the deck goes infinite on mana in a lot of different ways, so playing big expensive Eldrazi seemed to me like something I'd like to do from the start as an alternative win con.

Kydele Vial Smasher

WHAT IF WE RUN INSTEAD OF ?

Vial Smasher the Fierce, as I've written earlier is the other partner that might work great with Kydele. Not quite for her ability (even though if your looking for a Chaos Deck it doesn't get much better), but for the color combination she provides. While white enables and strengthens the Isochron Scepter combo, black let's us access different and more controlling cards, but I figured the deck wouldn't be as much fun, nor as cheap.

Here are a few that I would suggest running in the list of Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix:

Again, it was not an accident that I decided to play Akiri, Line-Slinger . While she might not look as powerful on her own, access to white makes the deck a whole lot more fun not just for me but for the whole table and I tend to favour decks that allow everyone to have fun, and if you are building the deck on a shorter budget, definitely, white is the way to go. Speaking of a budget, there's a few points about this deck we still need to cover.

Fetch Lands

BUILDING ON A SHORTER BUDGET

As in every budget deck, the first place where you can reduce costs is your mana base. Sure, it might be slightly slower, but it is still playable, and definitely EDH is the format where non optimal mana bases are still playable without that big of an handicap.

You should obviously cut all the fetch lands and shock lands you don't already own and only by doing that you'd be reducing the deck's cost to about half or less. I'd recommend you keep the BFZ Lands though, these are not that expensive right now, and so you should pick up some. These are great in commander, even when you run fewer basics. Why should you keep them if you cut the fetches? Because there are the Mirage Slow Fetch Lands, you should include those, and make sure you have a few fetchable dual lands.

I'd go for the available tri-lands as well, even though they come in tapped, they fix your mana quite well, and while we're at it, the Vivid Cycle is also pretty good to fix your colors. I also usually run Panoramas, but being this a 4 color deck, I prefer lands that tap for more of my colors instead of one that will allow me to fetch one basic at a slower rate.

In a 5 color deck I'd probably suggest Maze's End with all the guildgates instead, but here we can't make it a win con, and a colorless land entering tapped is not where I'd wanna be. But that's an option if you feel like it.

So in short, here's what I'd change on the mana base to go cheaper:

And as you've seen, we've reduced the cost almost as much as we possibly could. There are a few ways you can trim a couple of bucks still without that much of a hit on the deck's playability, but IMO these changes don't make up for the price reduction they represent.

It's much trickier to replace spells in a combo deck than to tweak its mana base. Some cards are irreplaceable, others are simply somewhat better than their cheaper counterparts. The ones I can see being replaced are as follows:

You see, here we're cutting somewhat expensive cards for cheap-ish cards that dont do as well. Tezzeret and Staff don't really have a proper replacement, but we can replace them with cards that emulate part of their individual values.

Temple Bell gives you (and everyone else - if this is an issue Arcanis the Omnipotent is a possibility too) the draw that you could take from Staff of Domination, Magewright's Stone gives you an additional way to untap Kydele and try to go infinite in mana.

Kuldotha Forgemaster gets you the artifacts you need, but you need to sac artifacts in order to do that, you won't have a Myr Retriever all the times, so, unlike Tezzeret the Seeker this might end up setting you back a bit if you won't win on the spot.

As for the rest, Lightning Strike is a fraction of Lightning Helix 's price and doesn't gain you life, but it still wins you the game with the Isochron Scepter combo, so no harm there. Same with Swords to Plowshares, you're giving life to your opponent, but since you will usually win going infinite, that won't matter too much either, and not being pennies, it's way cheaper than Path to Exile.

I wouldn't recommend that you'd change all these in order to spare a few $$, but if you do, keep in mind that the deck won't be as reliable. In the end, it all comes down to how competitive your playgroup is, and these changes might prove less punishing if your playgroup is at a more casual level, so it's entirely up to you how far do you want to go with your tweaks.

I had in mind TappedOut's prices as of the date I'm writing the primer. Naturally prices will change in time, but this is only a rough estimate, since all budget cuts come down to you ultimately and they depend on your LGS prices or online shipping fees as well.

Also, pay close attention to your curve. The deck is only running 35 lands, since all the cheap spells and mana rocks allow that, but if you start including more expensive spells or cutting mana rocks, 35 lands might prove unconsistent, especially if you change the mana base.

Island by Johannes Voss

This section functions both as a way to keep your suggestions tidy and to shout out to the ones who are helping making this deck better. My thoughts and considerations are added to each suggestion as I list them in here.

  • Thanks to @CaptainTempest's suggestion, I'm thinking about including Mycosynth Lattice . For one, it enables Akiri, Line-Slinger to one shot with commander damage most times, but more importantly, it makes mana as if it was of any color, great in a four color deck, bonkers with Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix untaping over and over again. Since we're at it, why not throw in Hellkite Tyrant? People play Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and Triskelion too! Again, this is pretty much bound to your playgroup and personal choice. I might try it for fun, even if not running it consistently to keep things fun and more on theme, rather than all around combo-y. There's the cost barrier for the Lattice, but if you feel like going deep on this deck, I believe its potential plainly justifies the price tag.

  • Mindmoil is an enchantment version of Arjun, the Shifting Flame. It is probably more reliable than the sphinx since there is usually fewer enchantment removal, than creature removal, but even so, I really like Arjun and wanted to play it in the deck (I actually tried to make it a general many times already) even being slightly worse sometimes.

  • Approach of the Second Sun is an interesting card, again brought to my attention by @CaptainTempest (whose deck you should probably check out as well!). With Wheel effects it will win the game in 1 to 2 turns and it goes around countermagic (apart from something like Summary Dismissal ). Without wheel effects it will take 3 to 7 turns to achieve and that might be too much because you will no doubt become the whole table's target. I'll give it a try, but my first idea is that it might be too inconsistent to justify the inclusion.

Thank you very much for taking your time viewing this deck!

Finally, if you like the deck don't forget to upvote and leave your suggestions in the comments, it will be heavily appreciated!

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Date added 7 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

8 - 0 Mythic Rares

33 - 0 Rares

27 - 0 Uncommons

19 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.95
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Squid 1/1 U
Folders EDH Inspirations, Developing EDH Decks, Decks i like , EDH I Own
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