I feel like wonder, cold-eyed selkie, archetype of imagination, and Judge's familiar all feel kind of weird in a cEDH deck. None of them are strong cards in their own right and I feel like they don't play much of a role in advancing the deck's gameplan.

whitmjo1, thank you for your honest feedback. I don’t disagree with you at all. You will notice that Selkie, Archetype, Wonder, and Familiar all contribute to the an overall theme of evasive creatures.

Evasion is our primary means of exploiting Derevi’s tap/untap triggers, enabling our card draw, and crippling our opponents with a stasis lock.

I do not disagree that these are suboptimal selections for a competitive deck. That said, they are nonetheless carefully selected and serve their purposes modestly.

My question to you is this:

What would replace them with on the same budget?

Thanks!

I think hope of ghirapur would be a good replacement for judge's familiar, and maybe bident of thassa as another way to draw cards that interacts well with your stax effects. Reconnaissance mission is also a good way to draw cards off of creatures hitting your opponents. Sakiko mother of summer gives you another way to generate mana off of creatures hitting your opponents. Nimble trapfinder might be worth it since your running ~15 party creatures. Aqueous form can be good to put on derevi and daxos of meletis is a hard to block creature that provides a lot of card advantage.

whitmjo1, thank you again.

You’re right—-hope of Ghirapur should be included. That’s a great card for this style of play.

Recon Mission and Bident provide excellent card draw. Unfortunately they are unplayable with Gaddock Teeg on board and also suffer from my tax on con-creature spells. Bident is also $1.5. I’ve chosen Toski and Deepfathom Skulker for similar effects that put more bodies on the field and on a budget

Sakiko looks great but is a whopping $2.80 and doesn’t get me closer to my win conditions. I’m more likely to experiment with her in my expensive Derevi deck :)

Keep the recommendations coming if you have more! These are golden!

I see the Drannith Magistrate perhaps a Meddling Mage as well. I would really like to see if there's a way to abuse Stasis in this build. Looks really fun. I likes.

HyrdaDOOM666, thank you for your interest in my decks! Meddling mage would be a good addition—-I’ll probably playtest that. Thanks for the suggestion! As for stasis—this build abuses stasis pretty effectively. Do you have any suggestions to do it better?

Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal + Meekstone + Throne of the God-Pharaoh

You have 11 taplands. 11. When playing cEDH, the most you have is 1. Ever. Yavimaya Coast , Botanical Sanctum , Exotic Orchard , Sungrass Prairie , Skycloud Expanse , Sunpetal Grove , Glacial Fortress , Hinterland Harbor , Razorverge Thicket , Seachrome Coast , Spire of Industry . You'll have to spend a little more, but it's only like $30. And without that, you're never gonna win at a cEDH table.

Also, Edric, Spymaster of Trest , Triton Shorestalker , Mist-Cloaked Herald , Slither Blade , Gudul Lurker .

You're also not running Spell Pierce , Autumn's Veil , Dovin's Veto , Swords to Plowshares , Pongify , Rapid Hybridization , Path to Exile , Dispel , Mystical Dispute , Delay . Those are pretty much necessary. Also, Neoform , Eldritch Evolution , Eladamri's Call .

Most of your combos are . . . not cEDH viable. They require you to run taplands AND bad ramp cards and they require you to have several pieces on top of just needing several cards that aren't good outside the combo.

Now, is this a solid deck that will do well in moderately tuned games? Definitely. But it isn't competitive. And it is totally possible to make a competitive deck without going over $200, you just lose some of the speed and have to build your deck a bit differently to stay in the game.

HyrdaDOOM666, thank you for the suggestions, but unfortunately Dramatic/Sceptre plus Meekstone isn’t in the budget—although I do love those cards in Derevi!

TriusMalarky, thank you for your interest and for your feedback! Unfortunately, your recommended land package costs $40, which is 40% of the decks budget limit of $100. Furthermore, the additional card package you’ve recommended costs an additional $32. Between both packages, you’ve recommended $72 worth of cards on a $100 budget. While I appreciate the thorough feedback and conversation, the suggestions miss the mark. The cards aren’t needed.

The deck’s clearances and synergies are tight enough to account for the trash cards, which are all carefully selected with dollar cost and synergy in mind.

For instance, I run only a handful of noncreature spells to avoid my own tax. The ones I do run win the game (or prevent my opponents from doing so).

Most of the deck consists of inexpensive creature spells.

I especially appreciate your comment that this deck will not win at a cEH table, because it surprisingly does win at cEDH tables and does so frequently (In fact, just last night this deck got passed around a highly competitive table and won 2 of 2 games!)

Part of the reason it is so effective is because cEDH players are not familiar with the jank combos this deck presents, until it is too late. Furthermore, cEDH players are typically uncreative and unable to think outside of their common meta. I have noticed a particular trend that cEDH decks are glass cannons that lose the game if it drags out at all. This deck will drag the game out just so.

The slow crawl of this deck is not a problem when everyone else is crawling too, but this deck is built to crawl and those decks are not.

It is also worth noting that this deck’s core strategy shuts down nearly every popular cEDH general that aims to cheat non-creature spells into play for free.

If you’re more interested in $5000 cEDH decks, go ahead and look at my busted “Derevi, Bant Hate (Hatebear Distuption)” deck: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/derevi-and-his-annoying-bant-friends/

But frankly, I believe the deck before you now is tighter than Bant Hate and more consistent. I will not lie to you and tell you it is optimum—-but i will say it is surprisingly sufficient.

If you don’t believe me, I’d be happy to play you with this deck any time. Let me know, but bring a book as you won’t do much untapping :)

(Take a look at my $75 Talrand cEDH deck as well, and tell me it won’t win at a cEDH table either :))

I say all of this in good fun, and I know you are well-intentioned. I really do appreciate your attention to detail and your well-thought-out feedback for what it’s worth. Thanks again!

<3 0rc

I appreciate you making a budget and viable cedh deck!

Crop rotation seems good in this deck to find your two-mana-producing-lands. Archon of Emeria helps slow your opponents down and doesn't stop you from activating derevi's ability. Verity Circle can be good card draw if you use derevi to tap down your opponents creatures. Yasharn is good fixing and shuts down a lot of what your opponents want to do. Arcanis the omnipotent is also really good with derevi cause you can draw A LOT of cards. Flurry of wings could be fun to try but might not be good enough. Signets/talismans are also good as just ramp cards, and empowered auto generator can be very good with derevi to repeatedly untap it. Hope these suggestions help!

King_marchesa, thank you! I appreciate you being AWESOME and SUPPORTIVE! :)

whitmjo1, I removed Soul of the Harvest to add Arcanis—thanks! He was in my initial draft of this deck but I just needed some reassurance to get him back in :) I also included Archon of Emeria in lieu of Beguiler of Wills. I love the Beguiler but it’s too costed and fragile. Thanks!

Now I have nearly $6 left over for Meekstone, or maybe to improve the mana base per TriusMalarky. Plenty of good recommendations there, but only looking for a $6 slot. I also don’t want to dilute my basic lands in case I need to play Coral Atol or Jungle Basin to win.

IF YOU ALL COULD CHOOSE A $6ish SLOT, WHAT WOULD CHOOSE, AND WHAT WOULD YOU SWAP?

I’d like to add Meekstone or Hinterland Harbor.

Yasharn, Implacable Earth should find it‘s home in this deck.

Housegheist, thank you so much for the feedback! Yasharn would be more welcome in my $$$$$ Derevi cEDH list, to be honest. I do think he’s very, very good. If something drops out of this list, he may slide in. He’s definitely on the short list. Thank you!

0rc ah yeah, I did miss the rogue-jank angle being incredibly effective. I've actually won several games with such a strategy myself.

I personally like playing high power with a budget, but I give my self a little larger budget as I dislike having to deal with tapped lands.

Might I suggest Compost , Verity Circle , and Insight as well? I've seen Circle just act as Rhystic Study against one or two green players, but I haven't tested the other two yet(they look amazing tho). Also, if you can find the budget, Root Maze is god tier when you're trying to use high budgets against people.

Also Yavimaya Coast , Sungrass Prairie and Skycloud Expanse might still be cheap enough. I also really like Hickory Woodlot , Saprazzan Skerry or Remote Farm if you can reliably flicker/proliferate, although that might not be on the menu here.

Quick edit: Compost and Insight look a little bit pricey for the $100.

TriusMalarky Yavimaya Coast , Sungrass Prairie, and Skycloud Expanse are all excellent selections. Since your prior comment regarding the mana base, I have been playtesting those particulars in the deck. Like you, I also identified them as the best budget lands on the list you provided. Thanks!

I have been looking at Verity Circle as well, but am unsure at this point. It is definitely on the short list. Root Maze would be amazing as well. Thanks again!

Definitely! If I think of anything else I'll drop by. I like weird combos(I don't use the normal cEDH ones either) so this is a pretty interesting deck, even if I don't like some of the weird 6-drops and such.

Nice budget deck, but why is it tagged as competitive?

Pikobyte it follows the "unexpectedly good" strategy. While it is possible to build a budget-friendly competitive deck that looks like a competitive deck, you can instead build a deck that is designed specifically to look unthreatening before assembling an entirely off-the-wall not-well-known combo and killing the table.

Basically, this entirely relies on the competitive players not suspecting anything. Which is actually very effective, until you play more than a couple matches with the same people.

Pikobyte because it is competitive. It consistently churns out wins at competitive tables with combos that are difficult to interact with.

What TriusMalarky says is accurate, to an extent. However, I’d argue that most cEDH decks rely on surprise wins, so the same sentiment applies. But this deck can hold down a table effectively as well. I have playtested it extensively against many competitive and hi-powered decks against many of the best players in my locale.

I have never claimed this deck is optimized. But it is optimum for the price.

My goal is for you to buy it and play it. I want you to show up at your next local cEDH tourney with an unsleeved, $100 budget deck and win.

cEDH lists do want to assemble the entire win out of nowhere, however, most of the combos are well known.

Nobody expects Krosan Restorer to even be in your deck. Everyone at the table will need to read it. And then most of the time they will ignore it, because it screams noob. I mean, it takes set up plus 3 mana and then it's a measly colored Monolith that doesn't need to be fed to untap . . . but it's also able to generate a lot more with the karoo lands. It's good, just not obviously good.

So it sits on the table, not being something anybody is afraid of, until suddenly you go off with it.

Same for pretty much the rest of the deck. Nobody is worried about Brave the Sands until it is used as a combo piece to kill them.