The Divine Army of Chris Pikula (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

The Divine Army of Chris Pikula

Commander / EDH Angels Casual Combo GWU (Bant) Infinite Combo Pillow Fort

j2los

Combo (7)

Dig (2)

Invincibility (19)

Mana (39)

Ramp (9)

Survivability (4)

Tutors (11)

Utility (8)

Commander (1)

Sideboard

Other (10)

Maybeboard

Other (22)

THIS IS A CASUAL CONCEPT DECK. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE COMPETITIVE

Discussion/Comments welcome!

What is this?

The original goal behind this deck was to achieve the ultimate pillow-fort: a 100% invulnerable board state. I've invested some real time brewing and tuning and I've not only achieved what I think is a completely unbeatable board state by every magic card, combination and sequence of play, but I took it one step farther. Complete Omnipotence over a game of EDH. The best part: this is NOT a magical christmas land deck. It may not be competitive by strict standards, but it can and has worked consistently enough to play in a real game (4 player FFA for best results).

What ISN'T this?

This is not a Spike deck. It is about as pure a Johnny deck as you can get. As a result, the goal here isn't to convince you to use the deck, win with the deck, or subject your friends to the deck. Some of the feedback I've had about this deck is that they don't understand what the win-condition is or that they don't think it would win consistently enough. I have of course done what I can to make the deck work as consistently as possible given it's function, but only so as to make it conceptually playable, not to be competitive. To borrow a few lines from the official Magic psychographics profiles page:

"Johnny likes to win, but he wants to win with style... ...Playing Magic is an opportunity for Johnny to show off his creativity."
"Johnny enjoys winning with cards that no one else wants to use. He likes making decks that win in innovative ways."
"Johnny is happiest when he’s exploring uncharted territory."
"...Johnny cares more about the quality of his wins than the quantity. For example, let's say Johnny builds a new deck that has a neat but difficult way to win. He plays ten games and manages to get his deck to do its thing… once. Johnny walks away happy."

If this is the sort of concept you enjoy, please read on...

A quick history
You can skip this if you'd like

This deck has been a pet of mine for the last few years or so since I returned to magic, just before Rise of the Eldrazi. I learned about EDH shortly after rejoining the community, and my first instinct was to throw a bunch of angels in a deck and call it good. Treva, the Renewer was my first ever commander. I did include a couple cards like Zur's Weirding and Erayo, Soratami Ascendant before it was globally banned, so I guess I had a bit of a knack for sniffing out cards to be a jerk with even then.

Over the next couple years, I learned a lot more about magic than I ever had when I was younger, specifically what cards were good and what even existed. Then I stumbled across Elspeth, Knight-Errant. It piqued my interest in the concept of an invulnerable board state. I first thought "How hard can it be; this card is already halfway there." I was very wrong.

I quickly learned there were a handful of basic exploits that Elspeth couldn't handle and I lost interest until the release of Avacyn Restored. Once I saw Sigarda, Host of Herons, Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Angel of Jubilation, it pushed me to go a little deeper. I discovered this thread on MTGS and became even more fascinated with just how complicated it was to accomplish:

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/199267-complete-invulnerability-can-it-be-done
There were some really good frameworks in that thread that I implemented in my own deck, but there were still exploits to be handled. At the time Erayo, Soratami Ascendant was still legal, Knowledge Pool lock and various forms of mana lock were possible tactics. However, I felt that was all a bit cheesy and a convenient cop-out of the original concept. I wanted to hide in a pillow-fort, not completely halt the game. I compiled a fairly comprehensive shell from the aforementioned thread and my other learnings and made Jenara, Asura of War my commander.

It didn't take long to reach the conclusion that assembling the board state piece by piece would never happen and there were too many cards that did very little outside of the completed board state. At best this would be bewildering to my opponents. At worst, I would draw far too much hate before I was relatively invulnerable.

As a result, I came up with the concept of using Primal Surge to cascade into the entire lock, or at least as much of it as I had figured out. I also at this time started compiling a list of Problem Cards. These were cards like Bane of the Living, Ixidron, and Hibernation with unique abilities I couldn't protect against yet. There were so many blue and white cards in particular I couldn't handle, that the first version I considered "complete" was to have Iona, Shield of Emeria and a clone naming blue and white. This was legal since I already had Mirror Gallery in to protect against clones being used as removal before the Legendary Rule was changed. Meddling Mage with more clones and Nevermore would handle the problem green cards. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite would handle Bane. Angus Mackenzie also became the commander of the deck, because his fog was so thematically in tune with a pacifist deck and I loved the idea of an EDH deck with an original Legendary.

I was satisfied for a while until new cards would be released that would poke holes in my deck's armor. Cards like Genesis Hydra, Archetype of Endurance and Arcane Lighthouse. I temporarily switched Hexproofing my creatures to Shrouding, Pithing Needle naming Lighthouse and and a Meddling Mage clone for Hydra, but I kept discovering new and old Problem Cards faster than I could find solutions. There weren't enough clones or slots in my deck to protect against them all.

This brings us close to the current version of the deck. I broke down and realized I HAD to devise a plan to make infinite Meddling Mages. Around this time, I also discovered a plethora of colorless anthem-effects that would allow a Bane of the Living (or manifest!) to get onto the board and flip. This sealed the deal, I had to find a combo. I soon discovered Soul Foundry (Prototype Portal can also work) and I was on my way to achieving the goal.

Once the true invincible board state was achieved, I envisioned playing the deck as a sort of mediator of the game for the remaining players. One player gets too powerful, I take an action to level the playing field again. The more I played with this concept, the more perverse the ideas I thought of were. This aspect of the deck is still in early stages of development, but I'm having fun tightening up the deck and adding interesting ways a player can manipulate a game of EDH in a more transcendent way. Eventually, I would like to explore the idea of creating a sub-game completely outside of MtG (e.g. Checkers, TicTacToe, Poker, etc) using the framework of meta-actions I can take to control the MtG game. This may seem confusing but if you get to the end of this deck description, you'll start to understand.

Anyway, that brings us to the current version of the deck.

OK, how do I start?

This deck is comprised of your commander, Primal Surge, Mystical Tutor and 97 permaments.

The singular goal to start is simple. Ramp to 10 mana as quickly as possible, find Mystical Tutor in one of a handful of ways, cast it end of turn fetching Primal Surge and cast it next turn, through Boseiju, Who Shelters All or Grand Abolisher if possible. That's it. Once you have done this, the rest is just procedure and fun (maybe, depending on how well humored your opponents are).

All ramp is in the form of permanents as to not conflict with Primal Surge.

As for tutors, unfortunately all the best permanent-based tutors in Bant look for creatures, so Noble Benefactor is one of your best paths to victory. In addition to the creature tutors, there are a handful of land tutors, such as Tolaria West, Expedition Map and Knight of the Reliquary which help you fix your manabase, ramp with sol lands or even to retrieve a suite of utility lands to help you push through roadblocks Boseiju, Who Shelters All, High Market, Cavern of Souls. Speaking of High Market, it exists to help you sac False Prophet and Noble Benefactor which can be very important actions to accomplish when you need them.

The deck can play fairly defensively if you are having a hard time finding surge. Try not to overextend your critical set pieces as you will later need to retrieve them if they end up in the graveyard. Elixir of Immortality and Eternal Witness are there for that reason.

Any Bant general is fine as it's not the focal point of the deck. I used Angus Mackenzie because he seems to fit the pacifism theme best. He also helps you sit back and fog while you ramp. Seedborn Muse allows you to fog on everyone's turn, which is fun, but honestly, deploying ramp and looking for a path to cast Surge should be your number one priority. Rubinia Soulsinger could be an alternate controll-ish stall option compared to Angus. Jenara, Asura of War could make a good finisher, although finishers are mostly irrelevant to the concept of this deck and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre is a pretty good one, anyway. Finally, Derevi, Empyrial Tactician makes the most sense as it is a part of a necessary infinite mana combo and saves you a card slot in the Commander role, but personally I am attached to ol' Angus.

Problem Cards

The cards in the maybeboard are problem cards that we do not have protection from with our typical set pieces. Previous versions of this deck relied on Iona, Shield of Emeria and clones naming Bant colors since most of the problem cards were in those three colors. As of 8/2/15, I devised an infinite Meddling Mage combo, so we can name each problem card with a Mage and allow players to play more of their other spells, regardless of color. I'll describe each one and why it can't be stopped with normal means. I would love to hear if anyone has alternate solutions to any of these cards, because as of now, this is the loosest (see: cheapest tactic) way to safeguard ourselves from them.

As of the Eldritch Moon set, we now have Brisela, Voice of Nightmares which in tandem with Gaddock Teeg completely locks players out of their spells. This solves many of our listed problems below:

Anthems

Bane of the Living or cheating problematic creatures in with Manifest is a huge problem. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite will normally take care of them, but any anthem effects that boost their toughness even 0/+1 will allow them to survive long enough to flip and do damage. We could make infinite clones of Elesh Norn, but an opponent could make infinite clones of a particular anthem. As a result, we will need to bounce (more on this later) any pre-existing colorless anthems and then name them all with Meddling Mage clones (again, more on this later). Coincidentally enough, Elesh Norn herself is a colorless anthem and opposing copies will need to be handled. This is by far the most numerous of card types we need to name with our Meddling Mage army. We no longer need to ban enchantment based anthems due to Brisela. We only care about the creatures now.

Losing Hexproof

Archetype of Endurance for obvious reasons. The deck used to have a shroud package, but we will need to interact with our own permanents to make clones, so back to hexproof and as a result we need to protect ourselves from these cards. used to be a problem, but is now resolved by Brisela.

Black mass -X/-X spells

Spells such as etc cast in the same turn used to be a problem. No longer.

Cheating permanents into play

Cheating problematic enchantments like Vanishing, Control Magic, any number of -X/-X enchantments into play with Sun Titan, Genesis Hydra or Braids, Conjurer Adept. Ditto any harmful artifacts. Creatures like Kaalia of the Vast can also cheat other harmful creatures into play (5 color deck for Kaalia).

Mass untargeted bounce and exile

Dromar, the Banisher has an untargeted triggered ability that wipes out our clone army.

Ixidron

Ixidron has an "as it comes into play" ability, which means Torpor Orb doesn't stop it's very harmful effect from happening when it's played.

Magus of the Tabernacle

Magus of the Tabernacle doesn't necessarily hurt us as we should have access to infinite mana any time we want. Nonetheless, opponents could technically stack a bunch of Magus clones and make us jump through those hoops. It's pretty much handled, but it's on here to address the solution to an unlikely problem.

But you can't stop [X]...

First of all, Gaddock Teeg and Brisela, Voice of Nightmares addresses more problems than is fair. A large majority of the cards that disrupt our board are spells. If there are any other cards that aren't addressed, I would love to hear about them, though! I have been surprised several times in the past at the existence of a card or tactic that completely breaks down the integrity of the board state and had to go completely back to the drawing board. I'm fairly confident a clone army should stop a future breakdown, however.

Post-Primal Surge

OK, so you've resolved Primal Surge and everything in your deck should be out on the board. If not, you may need to fire off Elixir of Immortality or Eternal Witness and draw the card with Staff of Domination. You can take care of that after you make your infinite mana. Take the following steps to complete the board state:

Bounce our own hindering effects

After comboing out, you should have a ton of mana in artifacts and lands that recently came into play mostly untapped. You will need 14 mana, at least 4 of which comes from lands to continue. Considering all your permanents are now on the board and they generate up to 47 untapped mana (minus the 10 you used for Surge), you should easily meet this requirement unless something insane happened during your game. Use your new lands and sac a useless non-creature permanent, like an unused fetch land, (due to Angel of Jubilation) to activate Dispersing Orb bouncing Null Rod. Now your artifact mana is free to activate. Two more permanents and 8 more mana to bounce Torpor Orb. Now you can abuse Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Infinite Mana

This part is easy peasy. Use Deadeye Navigator and Gilded Lotus to flicker Derevi and untap Lotus. Each time you make one mana. Make an arbitrarily large amount of blue mana first (for Deadeye), then repeat the steps to make an arbitrarily large amount of green and white mana.

Infinite Meddling Mages

Activate Dispersing Orb once more to bounce Angel of Jubilation. Now that you can sac creatures, activate three more times using your now useless ramping elves (or other useless permanents) to bounce Soul Foundry, Phyrexian Metamorph and Gaddock Teeg. Recast Soul Foundry imprinting Metamorph. Use some of your arbitrarily large mana pool and Derevi flickers to untap Foundry and clone as many Meddling Mages as you need. Hate out all problematic cards (cards in the Maybeboard, plus any future cards I haven't encountered or thought of yet). Go ahead and make an arbitrarily large number of extras as well so you have sac fodder for future Dispersing Orb activations. This will come in handy when/if you are manipulating the game later.

The best part about the Clone Foundry is that no matter what card gets printed in the future or what card I have overlooked, there is now an answer to it and it isn't an Iona lock. You are essentially creating your own banlist. Just one of your many divine powers you can explore.

Reset the board state

You are now free to sac some extra clones to bounce problematic pre-existing cards on the board, such as Karn Liberated, Gideon, Champion of Justice, any colorless anthems, etc. When you are done, recast Torpor Orb, Angel of Jubilation, Gaddock Teeg and Null Rod.

You should now be completely invincible.

What Now?

It's likely that before this point, most normal opponents would just concede. If you are playing with good friends or good sports, maybe they will let you have some fun... In my experience some don't believe in your invincibility and consider it a challenge to find a crack in your armor. You'll have the last laugh. You may essentially dictate how the entire match goes with the remaining players from this point on, if you choose.

The one disclaimer is that if you start interfering in affairs and bouncing your permanents, you are not necessarily invincible at any given priority without all the cards simultaneously on the board. You probably are, but for example: you could bounce Torpor Orb to make some mana and then your opponent responds by flashing a harmful ETB creature like Kederekt Leviathan and making it uncounterable with an existing Vexing Shusher. Meddle at your own risk.

This is the point where the deck build can deviate a bit. The build presented here is built around a little known, or at least oft-ignored, EDH House Rule of a 10-card sideboard, listed under the House Rules section of the official EDH page. By these rules, you are allowed to retrieve your sideboard cards with any spells that tutor for cards you "Own outside the game" such as wishes. We can't run wishes, but we can run Ring of Ma'ruf. The deck is flexible enough that if your playgroup doesn't recognize the sideboard rule, you can play it with some or none of the "God" cards in the maindeck and just go for invincibility or just a couple of the fun interactions. In current configuration, I've put all non-necessary interactions in the sideboard and left only Ring of Ma'ruf in the maindeck to retrieve them in combination with Staff of Domination. Since Ring exiles itself, make Ring copies with your Metamorph Foundry.

Some cards you can remove without a large detrimental effect to include the sideboard interactions are the aforementioned Ring, Staff and Metamorph (if you remove this, you can imprint Meddling Mage instead), as well as Eternal Witness and the wrath effects (Disk, Muse, O-Stone). Worn Powerstone is probably my pick for last-in card that won't break the deck if you replace it. You can also replace Angus with Derevi to save a slot.

Exploiting Your Omnipotence
At the Expense of Friendship

At any time, you should be able to bounce and flash every non-land permanent on your board using Leyline of Anticipation and Dispersing Orb. Therefore, you can bounce Torpor Orb at any time, generate sufficient mana, and retrieve Voidslime to counter their spells if necessary. You should be able to shortcut all this anytime you want since you have previously proven the mana combo already. You can also rescue spells from getting stuck on the stack by flickering Venser, Shaper Savant with Deadeye Navigator. The ability to overwrite the stack is particularly useful if some silly mortal wants to attempt a counter war. Voidslime also does double duty as a Stifle effect for triggered abilities.
With this framework, you can permit opponents to take certain actions at any given time by agreeing to bounce Gaddock Teeg, Linvala, Keeper of Silence or other restrictive cards for an approved spell or ability, etc. Be very cautious about what Split-Second vulnerabilities you allow when doing this, particularly Extirpate which won't cause you to lose the game, but can nab your Donate or Voidslime and stop some of your fun.
Flash Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to destroy permanents or set your sights on a particularly oppressive player and Annihilate them.
Activate Angus Mackenzie to fog other player's attacks, even on each other.
Bounce Null Rod and make Metamorph Foundry copies of Oblivion Stone to wipe the board.
Since we no longer care about spells after we combo, use Donate and Memnarch out of the sideboard to move permanents around from player to player. Recur Donate by bouncing Samurai of the Pale Curtain and Null Rod, activating Elixir of Immortality and drawing with Staff of Domination
Your most unearthly powers have not even been exercised yet. Bounce Null Rod, use your Metamorph Foundry to create Mindslaver clones to control other player's turns. You can shortcut this with Time Stop to decide turn orders as well by tapping all opponent's mana and Time Stopping during their upkeeps.
Time Stop is also a safety valve. It is useful if someone tries to exploit you while you are "vulnerable" such as a bounced Brisela which needs an end of turn trigger to reform. You can activate Mindslavers for your opponents then clear the stack and turn with Time Stops and force the game back to your turn so Brisela can reform before your opponents are allowed to proceed.
Venser, Shaper Servant truly lives up to his name by shaping the stack. You can pop any spells off the stack the achieve the desired effect. The one shortcoming I haven't figured out is how to manipulate players actions during turns that aren't their own. With this ability, you could technically have complete freedom in the order of the stack at any time.

Play every turn, every action as you command. You are truly a master of puppets now. While mindslavered, you disallow your unwilling constituents to concede the game. Hours pass. Days. Weeks. Your acolytes grow tired and weak. You will not grant salvation. You demand tribute. You are awesome. Almighty. Omnipotent.

The real point is that once you proof of concept the fact that you can permit, override or alter any game action you desire infinitely at any priority, you essentially control the game. An innocent night of EDH becomes a sadistic exercise in meta-manipulation. You're not even really playing magic anymore so much as you puppeteering an exercise in social suicide.

If you can think of any cards, combinations or lines of play that this deck can't handle in the perfect state, please let me know. I want the deck to ideally have an answer to everything! Thanks for checking out my deck!

Suggestions

Updates Add

Been a while - New Update — April 8, 2020

Edit

Move Pithing Needle to the SB as an individual effect in the mainboard it isn't very helpful. It needs to be cloned a bunch to do anything of value. Added Realm-Cloaked Giant as an additional wrath for survivability

Mana Adjustments — April 8, 2020

Edit

Tutor Change-up — April 8, 2020

Edit

Miren vs High Market — April 8, 2020

Edit

Brisela, Voice of Nightmares — July 15, 2016

Edit

Goodbye Containment Priest — May 19, 2016

Edit

Tightening up the card count — Aug. 5, 2015

Edit

Card changes — Aug. 3, 2015

Edit

Infinite Meddling Mages! — Aug. 2, 2015

Edit

Containment Priest — Aug. 2, 2015

Edit

3/5/15 Update — March 5, 2015

Edit

11/24/14 Update — Nov. 24, 2014

Edit

10/27/14 Update — Oct. 27, 2014

Edit

7/21/14 Update — July 21, 2014

Edit

4/22/14 Changes — April 22, 2014

Edit

1/7/14 Changes — Jan. 7, 2014

Edit

Image View Timeline

Card Odds v1 Draw hand

Add to folder Copy

Download / Export / Embed Code

Comments View Archive

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Comment:

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

Date added	11 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	19 - 2 Mythic Rares 52 - 8 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.41
Tokens	Copy Clone, On an Adventure, Spirit 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders	edh, EDH, commander , Decks, edh idea's, test, Likes, Favorites of ALL TIME, Cool Decks, Commander Folder
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views

Magic the Gathering, FNM is TM and copyright Wizards of the Coast, Inc, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This site is unaffiliated. Articles and comments are user-submitted and do not represent official endorsements of this site.