Ephara EDH - Paradox Combo

Commander / EDH Combo Hatebears Primer Tempo WU (Azorius)

IustitiaRex

Creature (23)

• 1x Archaeomancer
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Containment Priest
• 1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1x Ethersworn Canonist
• 1x Gold Myr
• 1x Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
• 1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip
• 1x Judge's Familiar
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Mausoleum Wanderer
• 1x Mnemonic Wall
• 1x Naru Meha, Master Wizard
• 1x Palinchron
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Silver Myr
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Spell Queller
• 1x Spirit of the Labyrinth
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Trinket Mage
• 1x Venser, Shaper Savant
• 1x Voidmage Husher

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Supreme Verdict
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Timetwister
• 1x Transmute Artifact
• 1x Windfall

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Rhystic Study

Land (29)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Adarkar Wastes
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 7x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 4x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Windswept Heath

Artifact (16)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Cloudstone Curio
• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Paradox Engine
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Staff of Domination
• 1x Talisman of Progress

Commander (1)

Instant (18)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Disenchant
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Ghostly Flicker
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Snap
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Stroke of Genius
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Whir of Invention

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Maybeboard

Creature (10)

• 1x Academy Rector
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Hushwing Gryff
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Phyrexian Revoker
• 1x Plague Myr
• 1x Shimmer Myr
• 1x Sky Hussar
• 1x Spellskite

Instant (3)

• 1x Illusionist's Stratagem
• 1x Misdirection
• 1x Paradoxical Outcome

Land (1)

• 1x Island

Artifact (1)

• 1x Cursed Totem

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Displacement Wave
• 1x Fragmentize

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Omniscience

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A competitive, no budget cEDH list for Ephara, God of the Polis focused around Paradox Engine and Archaeomancer flicker interactions.

Introduction

So a little about me. I've been playing magic for nearly 15 years now on and off but truly got into EDH about 4 years ago and started with a rather terrible Ashling the Pilgrim deck. From there I found a love for white/x decks, playing a "spikey casual" Karametra, God of Harvests list which morphed into a kikipod Marath list which has been abandoned due to my own personal lack of interest.

Why should you play this deck?

• You enjoy control.
• Bears make you harder than a glacier in Alaska.
• Not wholly reliant on your commander.
• Combo wins with complex convoluted engines are fun.
• You want to meme on kids with your "low tier commander"
• Ephara is t h i c c

Why shouldn't you play this deck?

• You hate not being able to win fast. This deck is slow. People sometimes just concede to the second Timetwister.
• You don't like that you're not playing a "top tier" commander.
• Hatebears give you nightmares. Can't blame you if you're not a fan.
• "But Brago is better". Yeah sure buddy.

Enter the "Shimmer Myr" combo discussion on reddit Zur Ad Nauseum Storm now with 100% more Shimmer Myr. It was this deck, and some inspiration from ShaperSavant's ShimmerZur list that I tried to make a UW version (Shimmer Myr has been cut by now. As well as the omnirector package).

What I ended up brewing here is a UW combo control list that hinges heavily on surviving the early combo decks and transitioning into an overwhelming amount of tempo from permanents. As of writing this on 1/21/2017, the deck is 5-1 in competitive pods on Cockatrice, with the only loss being after I made the first major edits to the deck and the relevant changes would've sufficiently answered Food Chain Tazri. In other words, when playing the list, we are undefeated and that offers a lot of meme economy that we can cash in on.

Why Ephara

Honestly, because I wanted to. This will be covered in the FAQs as well, but Ephara, God of the Polis is a somewhat eclectic choice.

I enjoy the Theros gods a lot and feel Ephara has the potential as card advantage where the other two "strongest" UW commanders, GAAIV (Grand Arbiter Augustin IV) and Brago, King Eternal, have their niches and wouldn't helm this deck as well in my opinion. The few cards we draw, if we ever have the breathing room to cast Ephara, have proven crucial in my games so far.

Other advantages of Ephara: - Dodges most removal. - Is seen as an unnecessary card to counter. - When devotion is met, is a large body that can pressure life totals of decks without much creature presence. - Is a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman god.

Alternate Commander Options: In Azorius

• Grand Arbiter Augustin IV: Offers a nice tax and nice reductions but doesn't draw us cards. He can easily go at the head but will fall victim to mass removal and the occasional random Gilded Drake from Edric lists.

I'm going to expand more on "Why not GAAIV" because it's coming up a lot. GAAIV is a high priority target for your opponent's removal. It's a one sided sphere of resistance that butters your cards to be cheaper too. People will kill him if they can afford to. I'm going to restress this. GAAIV doesn't draw cards. In an average game, assuming you even cast Ephara, she should be netting you 4 cards within 3 turn rotations. That doesn't seem great but people play Phyrexian Arena too. Lastly, GAAIV has been a kind of UW stax. This deck is not full stax. This is a UW combo control deck. We don't expect ourselves to hard lock everyone out of the game.

In Esper:

• Oloro, Ageless Ascetic: Adding black gives more tutors and some other win cons and the lifegain is nice but when you start diluting your mana base when running high tide you have to curve harder towards blue and basic islands, which would hurt our ability to cast bears early on.

• Zur the Enchanter can tutor out our enchantment bears and some stax pieces, but you'd be better off looking for a Zur control deck or just playing doomsday / storm Zur.

Single Card Discussion

Creatures

Archaeomancer: Recursion for counterspells and combo pieces.

Aven Mindcensor: Tutor hate is strong and can blow out players or stall long enough to accumulate cards

Containment Priest: Hurts some strategies. Tooth and Nail, Chord of Calling, Reanimator. Can also be used as a flash blocker. Flexible Slot: Just optional and a meta call.

Eidolon of Rhetoric: Rule of Law on a body. Bane of storm decks. Doesn't hurt us too much.

Ethersworn Canonist: See above. We can sometimes combo through Ethersworn using only artifacts.

Gold Myr: Mana dork, artifact for Transmute Artifact, taps for colored with Paradox Engine.

Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  : Card advantage and combo enabler (double High Tide, double Transmute Artifact). Flexible Slot:A strong card but not entirely crucial to the plan.

Judge's Familiar: Easy to cast, interrupts early tutors, exile fodder for Chrome Mox

Linvala, Keeper of Silence: Insanely strong hate piece into Sisay, Selvala, Necrotic Ooze, Kiki Jiki. It's just good.

Mausoleum Wanderer: See above with Judge's Familiar. Not dual colored, still nice.

Metalworker: Oftentimes a 3 mana sol ring, can possibly steal wins with Staff of Domination or generate a lot of advantage with Paradox Engine. Flexible Slot: Not entirely needed, it's just been working.

Mnemonic Wall: Backup Archaeomancer. Easier casting costs. Good toughness.

Peregrine Drake: Can be used with Cloudstone Curio, Ghostly Flicker + Archaeomancer and other options. Also untaps lands, which is nice and can be used as a card draw to keep mana open into the next turn rotation.

Palinchron: Now testing in Peregine Drake's spot. The extra mana is usually negligible.

Phyrexian Metamorph: Initially included because I was struggling to think of things, proved useful as a copy of Gilded Lotus, copying other key items on the board. Easily tutorable. Flexible Slot: This is the perfect card to switch out for GAAIV and was in the next round of intended edits.

Plague Myr: The worst of the 4 robot dorks we run, but still not bad. Flexible Slot: Not wholly necessary. In the "Notable Exclusions" section I'll be mentioning good candidates to go in the deck for flex slot cards.

Recruiter of the Guard: aka "Butt Recruiter". Grabs combo pieces, hate bears, and is a strong tutor for the colors and what we need to be getting.

Silver Myr: See Gold Myr above.

Spell Queller: Honestly a huge blowout. A lot of cards we are afraid of are 4 cmc and less, this little guy has saved me many times (stole an Umbral Mantle and a Notion Thief so far). Flexible Slot: I'm running it because I like it. Do what you want.

Spirit of the Labyrinth: Yes we're in blue but we don't tend to draw lots of cards each turn. Stopping others from drawing is more important than occasionally inconveniencing ourselves.

Sun Titan: Big guy, gets stuff back. Flexible Slot: Very flexible. Run basically anything you want here. Consecrated Sphinx, smaller things, just nothing too much bigger.

Trophy Mage: Gets Cloudstone Curio, Metalworker, and Staff of Domination.

Venser, Shaper Savant: A potential win condition and pseudo counterspell. Very strong.

Voidmage Husher: Another blowout as well as a self-enabling card for Paradox Engine by bouncing itself back to your hand. Flexible Slot: If you don't have a lot of Yisan, Sisay, Kikis in your meta, maybe not necessary.

Wall of Omens: Goes under the radar but when comboing off its a permanent you can flicker with ghostly flicker to have infinite draw. The body is also relevant sometimes Flexible Slot: I just like it. You can run other things.

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV: Strong cost reduction, makes Ephara UW, hurts food chain decks and combo decks. Flex In: Currently being tested over Phyrexian Metamorph.

Snapcaster Mage: Spell recursion, flash body. Can help with some clutch plays or just getting off a double tide. Flex In: Currently being tested over Plague Myr, which only produced colorless.

Trinket Mage: Grabs a lot of good toys. Not currently in the list but insanely strong. A good candidate to replace Sun Titan.

Enchantment

Aura of Silence: A nice tax on artifacts and enchantments, can double as removal. Nice rattlesnake. Flexible Slot: If artifacts and enchantments are basically not an issue in your meta, swap for relevant hate.

Blind Obedience: Potential win condition via extort, slows down decks, stops Kiki combo. Flexible Slot: If you need more grave hate, this is an easy swap to Rest in Peace.

Grasp of Fate: Oblivion Ring 1 item per opponent. Very nice.

Leyline of Anticipation: Everything this card says is just straight golden goodness. Flash is strong, gives us more lines of play, and grants devotion.

Mystic Remora: This little fish is your lifeline sometimes. Cards are good. Strong turn 1 play. Flexible Slot: Low priority in high creature density metas.

Rhystic Study: Cards are still good, and the tax slows down storm and food chain.

Rest in Peace: Strong reliable grave hate. Can sometimes hit our own pieces but will usually hit other worse. Flex In: Slotting in because of a return to gitrog / daretti in my meta.

Artifact

Aetherflux Reservoir: Win condition.

Azorius Signet: Mana rock and fixing.

Chrome Mox: Mana rock. And fixing.

Cloudstone Curio: Combo enabler, synergy enabler, dank art.

Fellwar Stone: Mana. Rock.

Gilded Lotus: Colored mana producer, combos with flicker + archaeomancer.

Mana Crypt: What rhymes with mana rock?

Mana Vault: Literally an entire vault full of mana.

Mind Stone: Cycles. Rock. Mana.

Mox Diamond: You gotta be catching on by now right.

Paradox Engine: Massive value in a literal engine. Untaps all our mana stones to produce more mana to cast more spells to produce more mana. Thank you based Wizards for this fun card.

Sensei's Divining Top: Filtering, possible win condition with a very jank "future top" setup which requires cloudstone curio, flash via leyline, and paradox engine. Tap top, cast spell, untap top, tap top, draw card and redraw top, cast top repeat.

Sol Ring: MANA ROCK

Staff of Domination: Another win condition. Outlet for infinite mana. Sometimes taps down other creatures for laughs.

Talisman of Progress: This too makes mana.

Sorcery

Fragmentize: Good cheap removal. Flexible Slot: Currently Disenchant.

Ponder: Draw and dig.

Preordain: Dig and draw.

Supreme Verdict: Sometimes you need to watch the world explode. Flexible Slot: If creatures aren't an issue, slot more instant speed interaction or other interaction.

Time Spiral: Refuel. Can make for large flashy turns. Flexible Slot: Run other draw? I dunno man.

Timetwister: Reset your hand, good for strong early plays or killing tutors in hands. Also resets graveyards. Flexible Slot: Its expensive. Run other draw or other grave hate.

Transmute Artifact: Great tutor. Most of our win pieces are artifacts. Flexible Slot: Reshape

Windfall: More card draw. Kills shaped hands. Nice stuff.

Instant

Brainstorm: Digging and drawing.

Chain of Vapor: Multifaceted and cheap removal. Temporary.

Cyclonic Rift: Large removal or spot removal. Temporary.

Enlightened Tutor: It gets things we want.

Force of Will: Flex on them. Do I really have to explain?

Ghostly Flicker: Combo item, can help dodge removal.

High Tide: We run tide because we like lots of mana. We run 7 islands + ABUR and Shockland for this reason.

Intuition: Swiss army knife. Get answers, political interaction, can set up combo sometimes.

Mana Drain: FLEX. ON. THEM. Flexible Slot: Normal Counterspell.

Mental Misstep: FLEX ON THEIR TUTORS. Flexible Slot: Other cheap countermagic. Mana Leak for instance.

Mystical Tutor: Gets removal.

Snap: Removal and potential combo piece during tide with Archaeomancer for infinite storm.

Spell Pierce: FLEXING.

Stroke of Genius: Deck them, draw yourself stuff. Flexible Slot: Blue Sun's Zenith but triple blue is harder.

Swan Song: Flex so hard they turn chicken.

Swords to Plowshares: Flex on their creatures.

Whir of Invention: Tutors a lot of important pieces and combo items.

Disenchant: 1 cmc more than fragmentize but instant speed and unconditional. Flex In Currently being run instead of Fragmentize.

Land

I'm only going to talk about utility lands here. If you don't understand why Tundra and fetchlands are good, we have an entirely different discussion here.

Buried Ruin is pinch recursion. Flexible Slot: You can try Academy Ruins too. Or not run either.

Inventors' Fair tutors win conditions.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. We have a tendency to have at least 3 devotion to either blue or white. Or both. Or more. This guy makes mana and filters efficiently when needed.

Springjack Pasture seemed good on paper. It's very slow but in a long game we can get a card or two and a body to block or two. Flexible Slot: Not necessary. Run whatever you like.

Notable Exclusions

-Conventional Stax such as Winter Orb, Thorn Amethyst, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, etc. If you feel like you could use them better than other hate pieces, be my guest and give it a try.

-Rest in Peace and Helm of Obedience. You can run it. It's not hard. I spoke earlier that Rest in Peace is a massive flex and meta call and Helm of Obedience can easily go in to match it. I don't like the combo overall because we don't have black tutors and Helm is a dead card. Dead cards means we die.

-Future Sight and Magus of the Future + a cost reducer for Sensei's Divining Top. Too many moving parts. We don't have black tutors. We can't afford to have dead cards.

-Not running Palinchron but I have flicker combo. Palinchron is expensive. Just didn't feel like it was necessary. (Note, currently trying it).

-Snapcaster Mage is on the maybeboard. Easy inclusion as a meta call to bolster removal and digging. I was going to drop Plague Myr to try this guy out.

-Cursed Totem is an excellent stax piece and I definitely recommend it if your meta bends in this fashion.

-Gilded Drake is dead into storm, great into creatures.

If I forgot anything it's either in the Maybeboard or I literally didn't think to run it and probably didn't view it as crucial to our gameplan.

Strategies and Playing the Deck

This deck requires you to play defensively in the start. We need to survive the intial onslaught from turn 3 and turn 4 combo decks to safely transition into control.

Bears, cheap bounce, cheap counterspells are all good for an opening hand.

From there, play smart. Evaluate threats. Don't answer everything but try to have an answer. If you feel like there's a slow turn coming up, Ephara is a good play.

Winning is assembling critical mass, tutoring into pieces, and winning. Aetherflux Reservoir with infinite storm with either cloudstone shenanigans, Paradox Engine valueing, or ghostly flicker with Archaeomancer and wall. It takes a keen eye and a solid understand of the interactions in the deck to know how to stumble into a win sometimes which I can't begin to explain on paper because sometimes it's just... Intuition (kek).

In all seriousness, it takes practice and good threat assessment. And the blessing of Ephara.

FAQs

Q: "Why not Brago or GAAIV"

A: I answered this in the "Why Ephara" section. I like her, she draws cards.

Q: "Reeeeeee EPHARA IS BAD REEEEEEEEE THIS DECK SUCKS" - NarejED

A: TOKI WA TOMARE WRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Q: "I'm not winning every game. Is this deck even good?"

A: Winning isn't the most important thing but this deck is not a pub stomper. Games are won with blood, sweat, and your opponents' tears.

Q: "Where's your RiP Helm combo like in GAAIV decks?"

A: RiP is a strong hate piece but the meta at the time I tested this deck in was heavily creature based (selvala, sisay, kiki combo) as well as storm centered (Jeleva, Sram... if you consider that storm). If there were more grave centric decks I'd mainboard RiP. If I mainboard RiP I'd find a slot for Helm of Obedience because its a strong 2 card combo.

Thank you to the /r/cEDH Discord community for being supportive and offering strong and diverse decks to play against. Thank you to ShaperSavant for comments and criticism regarding the future of the deck and where I can take it from here. Thank you for tenrose for being a cool guy and sharing how to do accordion editing.

cEDH Gods Project

UW Ephara: Ephara EDH - Paradox Combo

UG Kruphix: Kruphix EDH - Paradox Tide

UR Keranos: Keranos Blood Moon

Top Ranked	Achieved #15 position overall 7 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	15 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 15 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.54
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Folders	cEDH, ephara cedh, EDH, Competitive/Top EDH, cEDH Gods, Example Decks, Interesting Commander Decks, EDH, EDH, EDH