Even Zada Wears Prada

Commander / EDH* Aggro Combo Competitive Mono-Red Primer Storm

Apotheosis616

Instant (24)

• 1x Abrade
• 1x Accelerate
• 1x Balduvian Rage
• 1x Battle Hymn
• 1x Boiling Blood
• 1x Brightstone Ritual
• 1x Brute Force
• 1x Built to Smash
• 1x Burnout
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Chaotic Strike
• 1x Crimson Wisps
• 1x Desperate Ritual
• 1x Expedite
• 1x Final Fortune
• 1x Firestorm
• 1x Fists of Flame
• 1x Fork
• 1x Pyretic Ritual
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Seething Song
• 1x Stun
• 1x Titan's Strength

Land (28)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Blinkmoth Nexus
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Inkmoth Nexus
• 1x Mishra's Factory
• 21x Mountain
• 1x Mutavault
• 1x Reliquary Tower

Sorcery (19)

• 1x Dragon Fodder
• 1x Empty the Warrens
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Heat Shimmer
• 1x Hordeling Outburst
• 1x Infernal Plunge
• 1x Inner Fire
• 1x Kari Zev's Expertise
• 1x Krenko's Command
• 1x Kuldotha Rebirth
• 1x Mizzix's Mastery
• 1x Renegade Tactics
• 1x Rile
• 1x Rite of Flame
• 1x Shattering Spree
• 1x Spark of Creativity
• 1x Twinflame
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Wheel of Fortune

Artifact (13)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Helm of Awakening
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Ruby Medallion
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring

Commander (1)

Creature (18)

• 1x Beetleback Chief
• 1x Crimson Kobolds
• 1x Crookshank Kobolds
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Dualcaster Mage
• 1x Imperial Recruiter
• 1x Iron Myr
• 1x Kobolds of Kher Keep
• 1x Magus of the Moon
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Manakin
• 1x Memnite
• 1x Mogg War Marshal
• 1x Plague Myr
• 1x Simian Spirit Guide
• 1x Skirk Prospector
• 1x Treasonous Ogre
• 1x Young Pyromancer

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Blood Moon
• 1x Stranglehold
• 1x Underworld Breach

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Maybeboard

Creature (1)

• 1x Krenko, Mob Boss

Instant (1)

• 1x Panic

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Hello this is my fully optimized Competitive Zada list. This deck regularly threatens wins around turn 4 and 5 but can win as early as turn 2 (you can win turn one but that is truly the "God Hand" and highly unlikely). I decided to make this primer because i have seen several Zada decks on tapped out, YouTube, and Reddit, which all bring out their own ideas of what the deck is supposed to do. However, most of the decks were not from a competitive mindset and therefore lacked a lot of important information regarding how to play this deck to its full potential while also leaving out cards that would make this deck faster and more consistent.

Who is Zada?

Zada, Hedron Grinder is a Legendary Goblin Ally from the plane of Zendikar. Her mana cost is , with Power/Toughness of 3/3, and her triggered ability states "Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell that targets only Zada, Hedron Grinder, copy that spell for each other creature you control that the spell could target. Each copy targets a different one of those creatures".

This means, that a simple card such as Brute Force, is now an instant speed Anthem effect. When Zada becomes targeted by one of our spells, and our opponents instant-speed remove Zada, it does not matter. The copies will still go into effect. This turns fairly 'unplayable' cards into a ridiculous swell that can easily become lethal before anyone is aware. The deck I am posting, in a sense, is a combo deck. We will be cantriping quite frequently and heavily, casting quite a few ritual effects, and pumping a grip of creatures or creature tokens to swing in for lethal.

Card Choices

Artifact Ramp Show

This deck contains your standard package of competitive fast mana rocks. Mana rocks are extremely important because they help get out Zada faster and allow for us to play more cards earlier. Additionally mana rocks paired with paradox engine generate insane amounts of mana.

The following cards were chosen because they are the best at what they do:

1. Chrome Mox: even though we exile a card, the speed and ability to produce red is amazing.
2. Grim Monolith: Pretty good ramp.
3. Helm of Awakening: upside, all your spells cost 1 less to help you storm out easier. downside, everyone's spells cost less. this should only be played the turn you are trying to win.
4. Lotus Petal: quick one use explosive red mana.
5. Mana Crypt: the best mana rock.
6. Mana Vault: very strong. downside, it doesn't untap on your upkeep, but we usually use it the turn we are trying to win anyways. when paired with paradox engine you have a good time.
7. Mox Diamond: much better than chrome mox since it discards a land. again, the ability to produce red mana here instead of colorless is what is really important.
8. Mox Opal: Extremely good if you have 2 other artifacts on the battlefield which is not that hard to do.
9. Ruby Medallion: while this is not technically a mana rock, it serves the same purpose and can sometimes be more effective than these mana rocks. Lets say we were to cast 5 spells in a turn, which is extremely easy, and each spell costs or more, then we just saved 5 mana.
10. Sol Ring: amazing fast mana rock.

Anthem Effects/Pump Spells Show

Now, I do not run any anthem effects in this deck, however, Zada turns all these crazy one mana pump spells into instant speed anthems. This is a section where some competitive EDH players might disagree with me, some other Zada decks do not run any pump spells. I find that being able to kill people with one mana by casting Brute Force on Zada with 8 creatures on the battlefield very good, especially against those greedy Ad Nauseam decks or when the game gets drawn out and everyone looses steam.

Cards such as:

1. Titan's Strength: has the additional bonus to Scry 1 for each creature. If you have 5 creatures, this does not mean you get to Scry 5, it means you get to Scry 1 5 times.
2. Brute Force: The best for its mana cost
3. Built to Smash: Not as good as Brute Force since it has to be cast on an attacking creature, still is very good for the purpose we are using it for.

These cards are used to surprise our opponents because rarely anyone in cEDH wins with combat damage these days. Furthermore, most competitive decks use mana sources such as Ancient Tomb and Mana Crypt that can be very taxing on their life totals over time, this paired with the fact that few decks run a lot of creatures and even fewer decks run creatures they want to block with, allows for us to swing in and deal lethal damage with ease.

Card Draw Show

With Zada, extremely cheap targeted draw spells (cantrips) become mass card draw. Great examples would be Expedite and Crimson Wisps. Basically, these crappy cards become busted in Zada and help us storm out to victory. There are a variety of different card draw spells in this deck, some much better than others but all of them get the job done. For example, there is instant speed card draw, sorcery speed card draw, non-targeted card draw, and what I call delayed card draw (the worst of the four).

Instant speed card draw:

1. Accelerate: has the added bonus of giving your creatures haste. This is really fun for when you surprise someone by playing creatures, giving them haste, and attacking with an army that has the potential to become massive with a card such as Brute Force.
2. Boiling Blood: one of the more expensive draw spells in the deck.
3. Chaotic Strike: can only be cast if you attack with at least one creature, as the opponent(s) will need to declare blockers (whether or not they block doesn't matter). Don't forget that you get to flip for each creature.
4. Crimson Wisps: the very best
5. Expedite: also the very best
6. Stun: good card draw

Sorcery Speed Card Draw:

1. Renegade Tactics: great targeted card draw spell.
2. Rile: best used in conjunction with a card that gives your creatures health so they don't all die Brute Force. Unfortunately has the possibility of killing off all your creatures. This sometimes is necessary though if you really have nothing else.
3. Spark of Creativity: Slightly risky card. Is used just like a normal targeted draw spell, choose to not have it deal damage to the creature and then you exile the top card for each creature you control. These exiled cards can only be played the turn you cast this spell. The risky part is that if you exile one of your win cons and cannot cast it you get screwed, so be careful when using this card.

Non-Targeted Card Draw:

1. Wheel of Fortune: an awesome wheel effect that has two purposes. 1) It can be used to draw 7 cards if you are either out of cards or can't use any of them and 2) to make people discard the cards they tutored for.
2. Skullclamp: effective card draw for one mana, down side you need to sac a creature as well.

Delayed Card Draw:

1. Balduvian Rage I am currently playing this card instead of panic because it doubles as a pump spell. If anything you can cast it targeting Zada for 0 and it will copy drawing you cards for each creature you control. However, you do not have the upside of casting this card on your opponents turn targeting your creatures like Panic
2. Panic I am not playing this card currently, but it was in a previous iteration of this list and performed decently well. One thing to note, you can cast this card on the last person's turn before yours, on your own creatures, when they declare their attack step. This way, you draw the cards on your upkeep without everyone knowing you were going to do so throughout their turn cycles. It is a small thing, but actually matters a lot.

Creatures and Token Producers Show

Creatures can be broken down into further more specific categories while the token produces may also be sorceries.

1. Token Producing Creatures Show

1. Beetleback Chief: a bit expensive mana cost wise, but it pumps out three creatures and they are goblins so it is still pretty good.
2. Mogg War Marshal: 2 mana for 2 creatures is exactly what we are looking for. When Mogg War Marshal dies it creates another goblin in its place.
3. Young Pyromancer: considering this deck is largely made up of instant and sorcery cards this creature is able to pump out a ton of creatures. One unfortunate thing about this card is that the tokens being created are elementals and not goblins.
4. Krenko, Mob Boss: Not currently running this card but I was in a previous iteration of the deck and it performed decently well. It was only good when the game was slowed down considerably or you were able to give it haste from one of the card draw sells like Crimson Wisps.

2. Mana Producing Creatures Show

These creatures are extremely useful as they give us extra triggered ability targets from Zada while providing acceleration into playing more cards.

1. Iron Myr: The best mana dork for zada. produces a red mana which is considerably better than colorless.
2. Manakin: Great little creature that helps us ramp.
3. Plague Myr: Great little mana dork that also has infect. Surprisingly, I have killed many people with infect because of this little guy.
4. Simian Spirit Guide: Not a mana dork, but we only use him for hte ability togrant us one red mana at instant speed.
5. Treasonous Ogre: The backbone of this deck. It allows us to pay as much life as we have to produce mana to combo off with storm.

3. Utility Creatures Show

1. Dualcaster Mage: Besides being an alternate win con with Twinflame, this card has so many uses. It can be your counter magic if someone tries to counter spell one of your combo pieces by flashing it in and copying their counter spell and then targeting their counter spell with your copied version. It can act as a Vampiric Tutor or Demonic Tutor if you wanted to save it and copy someone else's card. It has so many uses I can't even go over all of them.
2. Goblin Welder: this card is great as a reanimation spell for Paradox Engine or Aetherflux Reservoir. Additionally, it has the added bonus of being able to kill of someones win con by making them sacrifice it for a different artifact card in their graveyard.
3. Imperial Recruiter: This amazing card is hella expensive but if you can afford it, it is still probably not worth it because it's so damn expensive, however, if you are heavily invest into magic like I am, then get it because it works wonders in this deck. This card allows us to search for a piece to our wincon Treasonous Ogre along with every creature in our deck except for Magus of the Wheel.
4. Magus of the Moon: I am toying with this card over Blood Moon at the moment. The reason being is that it gives me another creature unlike Blood Moon. With that said though, Blood Moon is considerably harder to remove allowing me to completely shut out some decks.
5. Magus of the Wheel: This card is a one time wheel on a stick. It will often force people to remove it as they want to keep their hands or allow you to use it as another creature for Zada triggers and wheel when you need the extra cards. Still not super convinced this deserves a spot, but it needs more play testing for sure.

4. Token Production Show

Most of the efficient token production cards are in the Sorcery category. These cards provide a lot of the goblins that pair super well with Brightstone Ritual.

1. Dragon Fodder: your simple cost effective token production.
2. Empty the Warrens: this card can be amazing when the storm count is really high. otherwise, after just casting one spell before it, it is mana efficient. Unfortunately, sometimes it is hard to cast a spell before this to make it cost effective.
3. Heat Shimmer: This card is great! 3 mana to target Zada and make a copy of every single creature you control and give them haste! Of course, legendary rule applies and you need to chose which of your legendary Zada creatures to sacrifice (almost always the token), but that is not really a downside for this card. Additionally, it goes infinite with Dualcaster Mage, which I will explain more in the combo section of this primer.
4. Hordeling Outburst: just your mana efficient token creator, plus they are goblins.
5. Krenko's Command: same as Dragon Fodder.
6. Kuldotha Rebirth: this card is amazing the turn you are trying to combo off. You can sacrifice one of the artifacts you have already tapped for mana and create three creatures for 1 mana.
7. Tempt with Vengeance: this card is really fun and I like it a lot. It's great as a mana dumper, the creatures have haste and you have the potential to generate more if someone wants some tokens as well.
8. Twinflame: the better version of Heat Shimmer.

Disruption Show

This deck is fairly fragile, counter magic and cheap boards wipes such as Toxic Deluge tend to ruin our game plan entirely. for this reason, we are running the best form of counter magic in red Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast. Furthermore, cards such as Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon are amazing at shutting down decks, specifically because most competitive decks run a ton of nonbasic lands. Abrade is an excellent form of disruption that hits creatures and problematic artifacts such as Thorn of Amethyst and Hermit Druid. Chaos Warp helps to remove anything that we deem detrimental to our strategy, can make things worse though if they flip over a super good permanent card. Firestorm acts as a wincon but also as creature removal if really necessary. Dualcaster Mage great card for interaction as it can act as a counter-counter spell or copying someones piece of removal.

Why Not More Disruption? Show

Even though our combo is pretty fragile, as in we don't have much interaction when it comes to being counter spelled or mass removal, once we get going and drawing cards, counter spelling a draw spell only stops one of the targets since Zada's triggered ability is on cast not on resolution. In other words, if you cast Crimson Wisps targeting Zada, Zada's ability will trigger putting a Crimson Wisps on the stack for each you control, someone can respond by countering the Crimson Wisps you casted, however, this will not stop all the other Crimson Wisps's from resolving. With this in mind, we don't need to include cards like Reverberate or Fork or even Price of Glory.

Land Base Show

I run 28 lands in this deck. This may seem low, but my Average CMC (converted mana cost) for the deck is 1.85 and I run tons of ramp. This mana base is extremely simple compared to other competitive decks, largely in part because we are only playing with one color.

- A brief description of the lands I chose and why Show

1. Ancient Tomb: a land that taps for two mana, necessary for most fast combo decks. Downside, it hurts a little and only produces colorless mana. 2. Blinkmoth Nexus: produces colorless mana, that it can use to turn itself into another creature. 3. Cavern of Souls: makes Zada uncounterable. 4. Inkmoth Nexus: the better version of Blinkmoth Nexus because it has infect. 5. Mishra's Factory: can turn into a creature. 6. Mutavault: can turn into a goblin. 7. Reliquary Tower: no maximum hand size can be extremely nice.

Why not these lands? Show

Often times people ask me why I do not run any of the fetch lands that are in red for shuffle effects. Here is the reason, the difference between using Treasonous Ogre for 39 life giving you 13 mana or getting 12 or less

Path to Victory

The general path to victory is spitting out ramp in the forms of artifact rocks, mana dorks, and rituals to be able to cast Zada as fast as possible. With Zada on the field, you play some creatures and then cast your single target draw spells, hopefully drawing into more of them and storming off with Treasonous Ogre and Aetherflux Reservoir.

Wincons Show

1. The aforementioned Aetherflux Reservoir + Treasonous Ogre storm win.
2. Beating face by casting Brute Force and other such cards on Zada and full swinging for tons of damage.
3. Assembling the Dualcaster Mage and Twin Flame or Heat Shimmer combo to create infinite hasty creatures to again win by combat Damage.
4. Assemble the Sundial of the Infinite and Isochron Scepter + Final Fortune Combo.

Hands

Here is a brief example and description of what some good and bad hands look like along with why you should and should not keep them.

Good Hand Show

This hand consists of the following:

1. Mountain
2. Mountain
3. Mana Crypt
4. Accelerate
5. Krenko's Command
6. Desperate Ritual
7. Crimson Kobolds

This is a pretty good hand. We have a little bit of everything we need. We got 2x Mountain's to make sure you hit the first two (most important) land drops.

Mediocre Hand Show

this is a meh hand

Bad Hand Show

this is a bad hand

When it comes to choosing whether or not to mulligan, keep in mind that there are three major things your hand needs to consist of. besides lands, you need to have creatures, ramp, and a draw spell.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	4 years
Exclude colors	W
Splash colors	R
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 27 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 33 - 0 Commons
Cards	106
Avg. CMC	1.83
Tokens	Copy Clone, Elemental 1/1 R, Goblin 1/1 R, Treasure
Folders	Commander, Competitive edh, Decks
Based on	Zadaaaaaahhhhhhh JumboCommander EDH