Mindflay: Chromium Discard EDH

Commander / EDH Blink Discard Reanimator WUB (Esper)

Rose

Creature (26)

• 1x Archfiend of Ifnir
• 1x Archon of Cruelty
• 1x Athreos, Shroud-Veiled
• 1x Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths
• 1x Bone Miser
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Confessor
• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Diluvian Primordial
• 1x Dream Trawler
• 1x Drogskol Reaver
• 1x Ghostly Pilferer
• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Karmic Guide
• 1x Liliana's Specter
• 1x Magister Sphinx
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Phyrexian Delver
• 1x Skirge Familiar
• 1x Slithermuse
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Soulherder
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip
• 1x Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
• 1x Yorion, Sky Nomad

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Command the Dreadhorde
• 1x Damn
• 1x Dance of the Manse
• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Tragic Arrogance
• 1x Whispering Madness
• 1x Windfall

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Den
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Caves of Koilos
• 1x Clearwater Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkwater Catacombs
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 7x Island
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Nimbus Maze
• 4x Plains
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x River of Tears
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 1x Skycloud Expanse
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Vault of Whispers

Enchantment (9)

• 1x Breathstealer's Crypt
• 1x Compulsion
• 1x Court of Ambition
• 1x Dreams of the Dead
• 1x Feast of Sanity
• 1x Mystic Redaction
• 1x Solitary Confinement
• 1x Teferi's Ageless Insight
• 1x Tortured Existence

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Dakkon, Shadow Slayer
• 1x Teferi, Master of Time

Commander (1)

Artifact (10)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Library of Leng
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Vorpal Sword
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble
• 1x Whip of Erebos

Instant (9)

• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Dihada's Ploy
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Drown in the Loch
• 1x Faithful Mending
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Tolarian Winds

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I originally started this deck idea because I wanted to show one of my friends why I would pick Chromium, the Mutable if I ever built Voltron as a deck. Chromium can't be countered, has semi-haste in flash, and can make himself hexproof on demand, making him very difficult to kill.

However, when building the deck it sort of reminded me why I don't usually play Voltron; it felt linear, and often like if Chromium died, I just couldn't do anything. This deck wound up coming out of trying to figure out how to make use of a free, repeatable discard outlet in the command zone. Though I still kept Vorpal Sword in the deck as both a sign of where the deck started out, and as a pocket wincon.

What is this deck's goal?

At its heart, this deck is a reanimator deck like many before it. However, this one cares a lot more about the act of discarding cards, whereas in most reanimation strategies, the discard is just a tool to enable nasty creatures. This deck still has plenty of those, but it makes the discarding a lot more valuable. Feast of Sanity and Mystic Redaction are some of the best discard payoffs ever printed, and they're basically just MH2 draft-chaff for most people.

Fortunately, there are other discard payoffs that keep this deck from being too dependent on them, as Confessor pads your life total (it will even trigger on opponents' discards), Archfiend of Ifnir can turn any Windfall effect into a one-sided Black Sun's Zenith, Bone Miser is a consistent value engine, and Solitary Confinement basically prevents us from being targeted by 90% of graveyard hate. The gist is that by out-valuing our opponents by profiting off of discard, we can eventually dump many bombs into the graveyard while gaining life, card filtering, and recycling resources.

Fortunately, there are several strong discard outlets in Esper that are repeatble: Chromium, the Mutable gives us one in the command zone, but Ghostly Pilferer acts as one that also draws plenty of cards on his own, Dream Trawler gives us one that can easily dodge spot removal while replenishing cards pitched to it, and Skirge Familiar adds an unorthodox form of ramp while fueling the graveyard.

All the cards for you, none of them for your enemies

Enablers were very fun to find for this deck: Compulsion gives on-demand discard that replaces itself with a card, while also being saccable to avoid Return to Dust and other enchantment exile. Breathstealer's Crypt basically enables you to discard any creature cards for free while forcing opposing aggro decks to repeatedly bolt themselves to keep creatures in their hand. Tortured Existence is basically just as repeatable as Compulsion, since you can actually just pay and swap the same two creature cards around to continuously discard for other effects and bonuses, on top of its obvious recursion capabilities. Any discard outlet can also be readily abused by Slithermuse since you can pitch your entire hand before resolving its LTB ability.

Every wheel in this deck also suddenly has a lot more scare to it, especially since we're not only benefitting off the entire table discarding, but we're also running the obvious inclusion of Notion Thief to potentially wipe our opponents' hands of any answers. Teferi's Ageless Insight has wound up being a house in this deck; not only does it turn every wheel in the deck into an even larger draw spell than intended, it also fundamentally breaks Compulsion and even simple draw effects like Teferi, Master of Time, Dihada's Ploy, and the new Faithful Mending.

How are we getting a lead?

With a lot of grinding. Breathstealer's Crypt will often cause at least 6 discards on its own, Liliana's Specter gives us a blink target that discards, and Court of Ambition doubles as discard and draw, especially since Chromium can become unblockable and make you the monarch every turn. The sheer amount of hand disruption Windfall, Whispering Madness, Jace's Archivist, and Echo of Eons can cause on their own also can't be understated. Tergrid, God of Fright  slotted in nicely, acting as a bomb and payoff.

In trying to find the best reusable reanimation, I found blink to be just as much of an enabler for our creatures. Not only are we running normal reanimator cards for these colors like Karmic Guide, Living Death, Whip of Erebos, Command the Dreadhorde and Phyrexian Delver, we're also running some unique options like Athreos, Shroud-Veiled and Dreams of the Dead.

Dreams of the Dead and Whip of Erebos are generally balanced due to them forcibly exiling creatures you reanimate if you attempt to sac them; however, it turns out that if you blink creatures that are reanimated with these cards, the replacement effect doesn't happen, and the creatures return to the battlefield as normal. This basically means that we can easily use Dreams of the Dead to reanimate, say, Archon of Cruelty, only to let Thassa, Deep-Dwelling flicker the Archon, find him in exile, and bring him back without the cumulative upkeep ability, or his exile trigger. Whip of Erebos works identically to this, and cards like Soulherder, Yorion, Sky Nomad, Athreos, Shroud-Veiled, and even Deadeye Navigator all circumvent the exile zone.

Our Reanimation payoffs speak for themselves: Sun Titan reanimates permanents for free, Archon of Cruelty is generally a 4 for 1 even if it's removed as soon as it hits the battlefield, Drogskol Reaver gains life and cards, Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths is essentially draw 3 on ETB, Magister Sphinx puts any opponent within lethal range, and Diluvian Primordial will virtually always hit a tutor, draw spell, or some removal to make it worth it. The amount of blink in this deck really winds up taking these cards over the edge, especially since many cards will draw more cards that blink or reanimate anything you pitch.

So how does this deck win?

With a convoluted discard loop, of course.

Chromium, the Mutable + Confessor + Drogskol Reaver as well as Chromium, the Mutable + Drogskol Reaver + Feast of Sanity will both cause an infinite life and draw/discard loop, which in the case of the first combo can let you draw into Feast of Sanity, cast it, and then keep looping cards until Feast kills every opponent.

This combo is suprisingly resilient because most of its pieces can easily hide in the library or be interchanged: Chromium can be replaced with Dream Trawler, Ghostly Pilferer, or Skirge Familiar, and even if Feast of Sanity is stuck in your library you can just draw until you find it if Confessor is at least out. You can also replace Feast of Sanity in the above combos with Mystic Redaction to guarantee you mill every opponent before you run out of cards to draw. And surprisingly, even if you're low on cards in your library, you can use Library of Leng to make the above discard loops never deck you out, making them true infinites. It's also worth noting that you can swap out the lifegain loop for Bone Miser as long as you are discarding noncreature, nonland cards. There's even an Aetherflux Reservoir to turn the lifegain loops into one shots.

If any of these enchantments you need are in your graveyard, you can still get them with Echo of Eons by drawing into it from your library, discarding it during the loop, and casting it for . If you have extra mana, you can even use Dance of the Manse to reanimate either enchantment or Aetherflux Reservoir. Dakkon, Shadow Slayer's ultimate can also fetch the Library of Leng or reservoir in a pinch.

Or you can always use Chromium, the Mutable and swing with Vorpal Sword on him. That's way funnier.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 years
Key combos	Chromium, the Mutable + Confessor + Drogskol Reaver Chromium, the Mutable + Drogskol Reaver + Feast of Sanity
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.68
Tokens	Elephant 3/3 G, The Monarch, Zombie 2/2 B