Looking for a new modern deck to try? How about one that wins by making the opponent shuffle themselves to death?
GSGE is a take on the old eggs deck. The old eggs deck run a load of "eggs" cards - cheap 1/2 mana artifacts that, once on the battlefield, could sacrifice themselves for a single draw (often while filtering a colourless mana into any colour). The key card in the deck was Second Sunrise, a 3 mana spell that returned everything you had put to the graveyard from the battlefield that turn back onto the battlefield. So the idea was - lay some eggs, crack them, draw a sunrise, cast it, recrack your eggs, rinse, repeat, until you have drawn your entire library and ping them for 2 with a pyrite spellbomb repeatedly.
Second Sunrise got banned. However, Faith's Reward, 3W for the same effect, did not. Which is where GSGE takes over. The problem with eggs was making sure you could chain your way through the whole library to cycle the spellbomb at the end. With GSGE, you need only put 9 things into the graveyard to win.
The key interaction is between two understandably underplayed cards. Firstly, the 2 mana artifact
Psychogenic Probe
. The effect is simple - whenever a player shuffles their library, they get dealt 2 damage. How do you make an opponent shuffle their library? Gravestorm.
Gravestorm is a keyword that appears on only one card. It copies the spell when you cast it for each permanent put into a graveyard from play this turn. Which is obviously just fantastic in eggs, when you can crack a load of eggs for free, bring them back, crack them again, and build up a gravestorm count in the double digits.
The card gravestorm is on is Bitter Ordeal. It exiles a card of your choice from an opponent's library, and then makes them shuffle it. Which they have to do for each copy. And each time they do, they take two damage. To death.
Key things to note -
Mana Seism
is amazing because it gives you mana you might need to go off while also massively increasing gravestorm, but very high risk. Reshape is great too - for X=0 it can tinker for a lotus bloom, and in a pinch X=2 for a psychogenic probe. Ghost quarter allows you to blow up your own lands, fetching new ones and increasing gravestorm, and you then bring it back with faiths reward.
Here's a turn 3 kill:
T1 Ghost Quarter, Chromatic StarT2 Island, Chromatic Star, Chromatic Star (any eggs will do)T3 Island, Reshape saccing star fetching
Lotus Bloom
. Ghost quarter an island, fetch mountain. Crack 2x star, crack lotus for white, cast Faith's Reward, returning 3x star, lotus, island, ghost quarter. Crack 3x star, crack lotus for black, tap ghost quarter and island - 5 mana in pool, gravestorm of 10. Cast
Psychogenic Probe
, cast Bitter Ordeal for 22 damage.
The T3 kill has a fair bit of variation in how you can pull it off, and on T4 there's so many different play trees it's absurd to try to describe them. But against goldfish you are more likely than not to go off on T4.
Other funny things - an early probe makes your opponents fetchlands worse, but yours equally painful. If you try to go off but don't find a probe, all is not lost exiling 15 cards from your opponents library can really give them a tough time (remove all their basics and your ghost quarter become deadly. Remove all their counter magic, or their wincons. Go nuts).
With no disruption, it basically just goes off on turn 4. It's dumb and will make people laugh. People have to shuffle their library to death. You get to sacrifice all your lands for pure value. Play GSGE today!
UPDATE
-2 Prophetic Prism+2 Eslewhere Flask
-4 Mana Seism+2 Lotus Bloom+1 Reshape
-1 Psychogenic Probe
+2 Open the Vaults
