Hippo Hulk (RIP)

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive GWU (Bant) Infinite Combo Jank Primer

ThielAthar

Land (29)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Grove
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Forest
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mystic Gate
• 1x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra SL
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Waterlogged Grove
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Mirri's Guile
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wild Growth

Instant (28)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Brought Back
• 1x Congregation at Dawn
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Flash
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Lat-Nam's Legacy
• 1x Long-Term Plans
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Memory's Journey
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pongify
• 1x Silence
• 1x Summoner's Pact
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Veil of Summer
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Artifact (4)

• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Sol Ring

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Altar of Bone
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Sylvan Tutor

Commander (1)

Creature (26)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Boreal Druid
• 1x Cephalid Illusionist
• 1x Daru Spiritualist
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1x Leonin Relic-Warder
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Nomads en-Kor
• 1x Orochi Leafcaller
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Sidisi's Faithful
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Suture Priest
• 1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
• 1x Thrasios, Triton Hero
• 1x Tireless Tribe
• 1x Volrath's Shapeshifter
• 1x Wall of Roots

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“This is a cool and funny deck” - ShaperSavant

"Born from generosity, with bated breath, the hippo comes, and hugs to death..." - PlayingWithPowerMTG

“The hulk archetype never knew it needed this deck.” - impropriety

“Why didn’t you just go full hippo the first time around?” - LabManiac_Cameron

"A compelling argument to re-ban Protean Hulk.... and Daru Spiritualist." - Mdilthey

“I think it’s a solid hippo deck. One of the best attempts at brewing it I have seen” - Pongo_Pygmaeu5

“I mean it looks like a well built uh... hippo... deck” - LabManiac_Dan

“Why God Why?” - Deco95

Welcome to my attempt at making a competitive Phelddagrif deck! This has been a work of love, high grade pharmaceuticals, THC and friendly collaboration among deck brewers!

What is hippo hulk?

Hippo Hulk was a deranged idea I came up with one morning, a brew that smacked me so hard in the head that it had to be done. “Why must it be done” you may ask? Well frankly who hasn’t wanted to throw infinite hippopotamus at people in a game of competitive EDH? I also built this deck to showcase that though cEDH is a format where people play only the top cards, there is still room for the most crazy and deranged of brews! Over discord, I was able to collaborate with many deck-builders who were excited to see something so fun and so ridiculous that we had to make it work. If you can think it you can do it, and that really is what Hippo Hulk is about. I will be updating this list as it evolves. All comments welcome! Please give a little doot, it makes me feel good ❤️

How does it win?

Our win condition in this deck is to use the Shuffle Hulk method get an instant speed win by first creating unbounded man and suture priest out on the battlefield and give everyone hippos until they die. Just as Richard Garflied intended.

Important rules to note:

Rule 400.7 “An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence.”

Rule 494.2. “Each graveyard is kept in a single face-up pile. A player can examine the cards in any graveyard at any time but normally can’t change their order. Additional rules applying to sanctioned tournaments may allow a player to change the order of cards in their graveyard.”

Rule 404.3. “If an effect or rule puts two or more cards into the same graveyard at the same time, the owner of those cards may arrange them in any order.”

These rules are important as it lets us have control over how our cards enter the graveyard and lets us reuse the Wall of Roots for mana. This is important for establishing a loop when you first go off with Wall of Roots and Orochi Leafcaller to make unbounded mana. Were this not the case, our loops would be indeterministic and we could mathematically be here until the end of time. If that isn’t slow play I don’t know what is!

Flash Hulk: Infinite Hippos, the Shuffling

Step 1 - Deploy the Hulk Flash your Protean Hulk for Volrath's Shapeshifter + Cephalid Illusionist + Nomads en-Kor.

Step 2 - Generate Unbounded Mana We then begin to mill the top cards of your library into our graveyard until the top card of the graveyard is Daru Spiritualist (remember rule 404.3). Target the Volrath copy of the Spiritualist with the Nomad’s ability to give the Shapeshifter an infinitely large booty. We then will mill and shuffle our library (using our Eldrazi as shuffler) until the top card of our graveyard is Wall of Roots, we then use the activated ability of Wall of Roots to put a -0/-1 counter on the Shape Shifter and generate mana. We then shuffle away the wall of roots into the library and then mill until we hit the wall of roots again, activating its ability, before shuffling it away again. Each time you loop a copy of Wall of Roots to the graveyard the game sees that as a new version of the ability, so you can mill the same copy of wall of roots infinitely to reset the ability (See Rule 400.7). Repeat this process until we have unbounded mana. Milling and shuffling again until the top card of our graveyard is Orochi Leafcaller, we then filter our unbounded mana into all colours. In reality we do not need to generate inbound mana, we really only need enough to mana to cast Phelddagrif and create enough tokens to kill everyone... so like 124 mana tops. We are ready to move onto the next step!

Step 3 - The Hippo Has Landed We then mill and shuffle our library until Volrath’s Shapeshifter is a copy of Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. If you draw into Teferi as you are digging out your deck, simply cast him with flash. We then deploy the Hippo from the command zone with flash. We then proceed to put enough Hippo triggers to kill our enemies, and then finally we mill and shuffle until the Volrath's Shapeshifter becomes a copy of Suture Priest and then we let the Hippo triggers resolve, killing our opponents! Note: If anyone tries to interact with our board as we wait for the triggers to resolve, we can always put more Hippo triggers on the stack in response.

Congratulations! You just won with Hippos!

What can go wrong and how do we fix it?

Though god hands do exist, most of the time our opponents are going to be playing to stop us from going off or we draw into pieces we would much rather be in our yard or our library. It is also important to know what pieces of stax are important to remove or what hurts our opponents more than us. I think it is important to note how we get around these problems and how we can move toward our game plan.

I have a combo piece in hand!

Three cards we never want to see in hand are the Nomad’s, the Illusionist and the Shapeshifter, these cards must be in the deck for us to go off.

If we draw into any one of these three it is important that we either use Lat-Nam’s Legacy or Brainstorm them away using our fetch lands to shuffle them into the deck. If we draw into any of the other pieces we need for our combo, luckily there is an easy fix. After we trigger our initial hulk pile we will mill our library until the top card of our graveyard that the Shapeshifter is copying is Tireless Tribe, we then are free to discard any combo pieces that are stuck in our hand at instant speed, shuffle them back into our library and begin our combo lines.

Hatepieces and How to Deal

Cursed Totem/Linvala With the printing of Brought Back in M20 we were given a way to get around Linvala and Cursed totem as a part of our hulk package. Instead of grabbing the primary pile, we trigger the hulk to fetch Sidisi's Faithful Leonin Relic-Warder or Gilded Drake and Spellseeker. We order the triggers that Relic Warder/Gilded drake enters and deals with the hate piece, then the Spellseeker enters fetching Brought Back, we hold priority on the Sidisi’s Faithful trigger and cast Brought Back returning the Hulk to the battlefield. We then allow the Faithful to trigger sacrificing the Hulk to get our primary hulk pile and go for the win!

Rest In Peace/Graffdiggers Cage/Leyline of the Void/Humility

These pieces of hate kill our combos dead and we simply can not go off with either of them on the table. RIP/Void replaces hulks death trigger with exile, meaning the hulk trigger never happens. And Graffdiggers Cage stops us from being able to pull the breakfast combo out of our library with our Hulk. All these cards must be countered, if they hit the table they must be killed or we will never win the game.

Someone tried to exile my Kozilek/my Graveyard!

Luckily the shuffle hulk method is very resilient to most one shot grave yard hate pieces. If someone tries to exile your Kozilek with a Deathrite Shaman, Faerie Macabre, Tormond’s Crypt or another piece of hate, we can mill until we have have Memory’s Journey in our yard. Using Memory’s Journey’s flash back ability we can pay to shuffle Kozilek back into our library and then mill again putting our titan back in our graveyard shuffling it back into safety.

Top Ranked	Achieved #2 position overall 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Primer 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	17 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 21 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.77
Tokens	1/1 G Creature Hippo, Ape 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	edh, Neat stuff, cEDH, decks, CEDH, Decks to try, EDH decks, dual edh to check, decks I love, Jacob