I am curious. If you exile Food Chain in the top 6 cards of your library with Demonic Consultation, wouldn't the card proceed to exile your whole library as it searches for Food Chain? How can you do anything but die on your next turn once the spell backfires?

Lilbrudder:

Correct; there's no coming back from that.

Such is the cost of consulting with demons.

Ah ok lol. I love the deck. I must have misread the primer and/or discussion on reddit. It seemed to me that you guys were saying that if it fizzles you just get FC back with Riftsweeper.

I have one more question. How many lands in your opening hand is acceptable without having to mullighan? I know its largely dependent on other cards in hand, but do you ever keep 1 land hands? I ask because I have been working on a BUG combo deck that uses Sidisi, Brood Tyrant as the outlet for Food Chain and I am scared to go below 32 lands.

Do you think there is a place for Pull from Eternity in here as a backup plan if you can't get Riftsweeper? I know it's to graveyard and its only one card but I've been thinking about it and can't make up my mind.

Lilbrudder:

There's no hard and fast rule, but you usually want to make your second land drop on turn 2. You'd ideally see 2 lands, a land and a cantrip, a land and a dork, or some other way to draw a bunch of cards, like a line into Necropotence.

The most important thing is that you want your hand to have a plan and the means (mana) to get there. The rest is flexible.

HarroHunter:

It's a meta call. If you're facing a bunch of exile, you'd probably want it. Otherwise, pull-from-exile cards are pretty useless, especially if you see them in the early turns.

I really love this deck! Could you make a more "budget version" of it or could you explain some changes you would consider to make your deck less expensive?~ +1 & cheers

Have you considered Bring to Light? If you pay 3 colors into it it can tutor up and play Food Chain for 5 mana as if you had used Demonic Tutor. It can also tutor up and play CFE creatures or just tutor them to exile if you want. Not sure what I would take out but definitely worth consideration.

Never mind didn't realize it couldn't do enchantments. Derp

Awesome +1

ShaperSavant,
Extremely cool; +1!

Argeaux,
Check out this take on Tazri ... fighting fire with fire may be a good way to put some thump on your combo-y EDH group ...

With 15 (possible forests counting fetches) do you think Orcish Lumberjack would be worth testing? The downside is w/o a forest is a dead card but a R/G lotus could be useful to get the ball rolling. I doubt he could ever find a spot but he's a pet card of mine.

This deck is awesome! Finally, I have something to do with my foil General Tazri :)

This deck is awesome! Finally, I have something to do with my foil General Tazri :)

You may want to consider riftsweeper to protect all the combo pieces from even exile

aahhh nvm i missed that earlier post

honestly if you take out the abur lands, the timetwister, grim tutor, imperial seal, the moxes/crypt this turns into like a <$200 deck and is still suuuuper good.

No blue (currently) in my local meta. Was wondering what to substitute in for Carpet of Flowers

Orcish Lumberjack?

Just playtested the list, had a hand with a first turn EoT Tainted Pact. Decided to just go for the food chain, ended up being the third from the bottom card. Even if I could've played it and a CFE creature there was an Elvish Mystic and a land left in my library. This deck is hilariously awesome.

Tangerinefox It's usually not correct to go past the third ally; don't forget you can stop whenever you want. Playing a dork or some card selection on turn 1 is also usually better than tutoring for win conditions unless it's clear you have a shot at a turn 2.

The ability to rip through the deck is quite fun, though. ;)

I'm curious: what is this weak to? For the decks in your meta, I'm curious what strategies work well against it?

I'm a huge fan of this list. It's a really gorgeously executed combo deck.

jco Thanks!

The best points of attack against this deck are Sphere of Resistance effects (e.g. Grand Arbiter), Rule of Law effects (e.g. Ethersworn Canonist, Arcane Laboratory, Eidolon of Rhetoric), and Abrupt Decay.

The deck is really flexible in what removal you can run. If you're expecting stax, you can board in things like Natural State, Wear//Tear, etc. over anti-interaction cards like Dispel and Flusterstorm. Red Elemental Blast is good in some metas and Misdirection and various Silences are good against Abrupt Decay.

Good meta prediction is always key to tuning your deck effectively.

Can you play Day's Undoing instead of Timetwister? It seems like it would be fine if you want a $3 card instead of a $1000 card, or is the "end the turn" clause that damaging?

Turn8ScornfulEgotist Play Windfall instead!

Check the budget section of the description for a series of budget builds.