Deck Rating: 8 out of 10
Deck Strategy: Combo, Group Slug, Lifegain
Piru, the Volatile sat unused in my rares folder for months and months. Every time I flipped past her, I was intrigued, but I could never really see her working in an EDH deck. That is, until I grabbed a Theros: Beyond Death collector boosterbox on Black Friday, and found myself flush with God cards. Suddenly, the little 'non-legendary' rider on Piru's LTB trigger clicked, and everything fell into place.
This deck slots into a highly unusual niche I'll call 'Mardu Control'. It plays in the space, with little of the wedge's normal rapid aggression. This deck should only attack to kill; and should all its pieces fall into place, even that will not be required. What we want is to build up a sizable defensive board of (indestructible) blockers to insulate ourselves against creature-based assaults. Let your opponents build their board without interference where possible; if they go wide, all the better. Once you've established a solid board and acquired 8 mana, it's time to shift gears, and bring out Piru. Now your opponents will take note, and the keener ones among them may already realize they are in deep trouble. From this juncture, you can choose one of two paths:
-
Maintain Piru. Though Piru is in this deck primarily to die, she is a 7/7 lifelinking flyer that deals commander damage. There may be situations where keeping her around is the superior choice. Don't be afraid to choose this option, especially if you have a sacrifice outlet available (more on this later).
-
Let Her Die. Whether you decline to pay for Piru or throw her into a sac outlet, her death will kick off a brutal winnowing. As she leaves, she blasts every single nonlegendary creature for 7 damage. Most of your opponents' creatures will not survive this violence; many of this deck's tools are geared towards making sure ours do. Yet the most important factor in Piru's death throes is her lifelink keyword. Every single creature that gets hit takes 7 damage, for which you will gain 7 life. All of this is resolved at once, giving you a single, massive burst of health. A sizable board with 40+ creatures and tokens already yields 280 (!) life in a single blast; if your opponents like making dozens of tokens, the number can be much, much higher than that.
So, after the Piru-Plosion, ideally your opponents' boards are in shambles, and you are sitting pretty on triple-digit life. So how now do we win? This deck has a number of avenues:
- Swing out big and smash through opponents' weakened defenses. Our indestructible creatures can survive Piru's healing fire without a scratch, while our legendaries are not targeted in the first place. The odds are good that we have a creature advantage, with which we can punch our foes out no problem.
- Leverage our huge life-gain to kill our opponents. With cards like Aetherflux Reservoir and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, a single Piru detonation often means their days are numbered. Alternatively, we can use cards like Ad Nauseam, Promise of Power and Erebos, Bleak-Hearted to gain tremendous card advantage over our foes.
Making this deck work consistently requires a number of support pillars, each of them integral in building to the Piru-Plosions that win us the game:
- Ramp is a dire necessity in this deck, as without it we cannot use Piru - an 8-mana commander is no slouch, especially one that has dying as a hobby! To that end we run lots of rocks (Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Conviction, Talisman of Hierarchy, Talisman of Indulgence, Coalition Relic, Darksteel Ingot) and dual lands that fix our colors (Brightclimb Pathway
, Clifftop Retreat, Command Tower, Drossforge Bridge, Goldmire Bridge, Rustvale Bridge, Goldmire Bridge, Isolated Chapel, Nomad Outpost, Savai Triome).
- Spot Removal is essential in removing those pieces on our opponents' boards that resist the Piru-Plosion, or interfere with our combos' operation. For big stuff we run Despark and Generous Gift, while Aura of Silence suppresses artifacts and enchantments with a removal option tacked on. For pesky recursive targets, Arrest and Banishing Light will put them in an infuriating timeout limbo.
- Sac Outlets allow this deck to keep its combo going off consistently. Erebos, Bleak-Hearted and Phyrexian Altar make it possible for us to get rid of Piru at instant speed, allowing us to set the combo in motion whenever we want. More importantly, they provide an insulating layer against exile or bounce effects that would negate our commander's LTB trigger. As an example, if someone Swords to Plowshares Piru, just throw her into the Phyrexian Altar and her trigger will go on the top of the stack, beating out the exile effect.
- Recursion ensures that Piru can come back to explode again and again. Most recursion that we run does not return to hand, but to the battlefield (Obzedat's Aid, Unburial Rites, Athreos, Shroud-Veiled, Artisan of Kozilek). This allows us to keep Piru out and ready to blow without having to keep a minimum of 8 mana up. Other recursion cards like Oversold Cemetery, Squee's Embrace and Athreos, God of Passage serve mainly as recycling centers for our other creatures; while we prefer to make them indestructible so they can survive Piru, that should not stop us from using her if the time is ripe. These cards allow us to do so without fear.
Combos and Interactions
This deck runs a number of value-enhancing combos, and some of our cards interact with each other in interesting ways. Let's take a look:
- Damage-transferring and damage-triggering creatures combo very well with Piru. Cards like High Priest of Penance and Silverclad Ferocidons are a nightmare for your opponents' boardstates, and Nykthos Paragon can forge you an army of titans with a single Piru trigger. Meanwhile Boros Reckoner, Spitemare and Truefire Captain turn Piru's shots into targetable 7-damage bolts that can overwhelm creatures merely wounded by Piru, slug opponents' faces, remove planeswalkers, or even target the High Priest or the Ferocidons for even more Staxy goodness!
- That Which Was Taken + Nesting Grounds, and to a lesser degree Kindred Boon. One of the few limiting factors of the divinity counter cards is their inability to protect themselves. No more! Enter the Besty Nesty: now we can just shift the divinity counters right back to where they are most needed - the place where they're made. Once you've secured that in place, you can set about making your whole damn board indestructible!
- Token makers such as Secure the Wastes, Murder Investigation, Reverent Hoplite and Alliance of Arms feed Purphoros, God of the Forge for mighty damage across the board, and set up many additional targets for Piru to blast. Alliance of Arms is especially excellent for this latter purpose, as it forces creatures onto your opponents' boards, which some inattentive players might even help you pay for!
- Speaking of blasting big boards, Toralf, God of Fury
and Kazarov, Sengir Pureblood make it more fun by enhancing Piru's utility. Toralf enhances Piru's (and other pingers') damage tremendously by turning any creature and planeswalker it overkills into more targetable damage. To give you an example, I once redirected the excess damage from 25 tokens hit by a Piru blast into an indestructible Silverclad Ferocidons - instant victory. Kazarov operates in a similar space; you can use his activated ability to pump him, or selectively ping Ferocidons / High Priest of Penance. If he is big enough to survive Piru or indestructible when the dragon bomb goes off, Kazarov's going to hulk out into a game-closer himself.
- Brash Taunter and Stuffy Doll plus their Equipment understudies Blazing Sunsteel and Fiendlash form the backbone of our blocking force. Their triggered abilities disincentivize attrition attacks, and when hit by Piru, they can redirect her damage into players' faces to boot!
Pet Cards
To me, Commander is a format where fun is first, and competition second. As such, almost every deck I make will have some cards that are probably not the best choice for inclusion. They're there to stay, though, for no other reason that I like their art/flavor/design.
- Kismet - Gwendlyn di Corci's AKA Grandmama Stax's flavor text on this holds true, even twenty years later. Make your opponents wait for what they need, and you will have power over them.
- Doom Weaver - God, I love the Soulbond keyword. Piru is the most straightforward target for this one (she likes to blow up, after all), but any big-power creature will do. Refilling your hand is just a little death away.
- Lancers en-Kor - I've had this card forever, but he leapt into focus in this deck as a perfect fit. He can survive Piru's blast with ease by shunting the damage to indestructible creatures, and even selectively ping our damage-triggered boys. Fun!
- Idyllic Tutor - I'll be honest, when I earmarked this one for inclusion, I was only thinking about it as a tutor for my utility enchantments. It wasn't until I had played a few games with this deck that I realized it could also fetch all the Theros gods! Talk about accidental value :'D
- Kaldra Compleat - Man, getting the various Kaldra Equipments when Mirrodin block was new blew my teenage mind. They were so cool, and they did a Voltron thing to boot! When I pulled this one from a MH2 booster recently, it brought all the memories flooding back. It's in this deck mainly for nostalgia, as it doesn't synergize with out-of-combat damage. Still, it'll make one of your blockers a hell of a lot scarier, and indestructible to boot!
Maybeboard Musings
I'll keep adding maybeboard considerations to these decks, as they're a good place to discuss the has-beens, coulda-beens and also-rans that didn't make the cut.
- Commander's Sphere. I didn't have a spare one when I made this deck, and I was unsure whether the deck required yet another mana rock. Might change my mind on this later.
- Greed. Man, would I love to have this card. It's absolutely perfect in this deck; if I come by it, it's going straight in.
- Bolas's Citadel. A single Piru-Plosion would fuel this artifact's card advantage ability to an insane degree. I don't own it; if I ever do, it's going in the deck.
- Fiery Emancipation. My god, the damage this would cause. Every damage-dealing thing in this deck, Piru included, deals it in triplicate instead. Don't own it; would have used it otherwise, naturally.
If you liked this deck, please leave an Upvote, or write a comment below! If you want to see more mechanically interesting decks with detailed write-ups, head to my user page. Here you can easily find all of my decks, listed by color combination, commander and mechanics!
