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Hippos DON'T Hug - Countdown to the Hiplosion

Commander / EDH GWU (Bant)

GopherKing

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Instant (25)

Enchantment (9)

Land (37)

Creature (9)

Commander (1)

Commander: Phelddagrif

Sorcery (14)

Artifact (5)





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People always assume Phelddagrif is Group Hug. That's lame. Hippo's are one of the meanest, most aggressive, most dangerous animals on the planet. Why the heck would someone think a magical flying hippo would be any different?!

So this is not group hug, no, welcome to the Hipsplosion. A dedicated control/combo deck headed by our resident flying magic hippo, Phelddagrif.

Now you may be wondering, Phleddagrif? What does Phelddagrif add to combo strategies?

And the answer is... not much. You have to think outside the box and get creative, but once you do, Phelddagrif enables some very interesting interactions, and he is - suprisingly - part of our game ending combos.

I have built many, many different Phelddagrif decks throughout the years, and I'll admit, in the very beginning, I was guilty of the great sin of playing group hug. That all changed after I realized two things. First, all too often, group hug just enables one single player to run away with the game. Second, I like it when my opponents have fun, but I also like playing to win.

I didn't want to abandon P-griff, however, so I began my quest to make it into an actual, real deck.

I tried playing equipment voltron for a while. That was fun, but as my meta evolved I came to understand the inherent weakness of that strategy. So I moved on.

I tried using 'Grif to enable Oath of Druids combo, but because of the random nature of Oath, I resorted to running very unfun creatures such as Iona, Shield of Emeria, Blightsteel Colossus, and the Eldrazi Titans. Then I ran a control shell to try and protect them.

Next I tried an Enchantress strategy that was a hybrid of the first two, some ways to kill people with Phelddagrif, but also some Oath of Druid tech. It was fun for a while, but as I evolved as a player it began to feel clunky and inefficient. At that point I set Phelddagrif aside for a while and moved on.

I play EDH with all sorts of people. With my close friends we play full competitive kill-ya-by-turn-4 EDH or just a step below it. With other's I play much slower, lower power level games. This deck falls into that second category. The ultimate goal is to have a dedicated combo deck for more casual tables that won't make my opponent's feel bad if it goes off, and will hopefully get a laugh or two, because I have the most fun when all of my friends are having fun.

So, we have four combo lines, but all of them start at the same place.

Defense of the Heart

Using Phelddagrif, we can guarantee that our Defense will always trigger by giving an opponent three 1/1 green hippo tokens right before our turn starts.

We then use Defense of the Heart to find Great Whale and Deadeye Navigator. Together, they make infinite mana at instant speed. The thing about infinite mana though, is that by itself it's useless. So, at some point (The timing changes depending on the combo) we're gonna dump it all into Phelddagrif and make 10 trillion hippo tokens. This may seem counter-intuitive, because anyone who knows Phelddagrif knows that all 10 trillion of these hippos must go to opponents. That's okay. We didn't want them anyways. Hippos are scary and dangerous, remember?

The combo that gave the deck it's name. With this line, the moment we've assembled infinite mana, we give our opponents their 10 trillion hippos. Now, since our opponents are clearly a bunch of dinguses for fraternizing with such dangerous creatures, it only makes sense to play Dingus Staff. And since we're so kind, and have their best interest at heart, we'll follow that up with Wrath of God or a similar board wipe. This will exterminate all of the hippos, and because of Dingus Staff, our opponents as well. They were an unfortunate - but necessary - casualty of the war against hippos.
So let's say we've assembled our infinite mana combo, but we don't have Dingus staff or a wrath. Our next combo relies on casting Angel's Trumpet, and passing the turn. This is where the fact that we can make infinite mana at instant speed becomes relevant. As each of our opponent's attempt to move to their end phase, we generate infinite green mana, and give them the gift of a trillion hippos. Trumpet will then say, "Hey! Why didn't you attack with these trillion hippos?!" ignoring the fact that they entered post combat. Angel's Trumpet will then kill that player for the insolence of not attacking with as aggressive of an animal as a hippo.
Alright, so we have the infinite mana combo, but don't have Dingus Staff OR Trumpet. Not a big deal, because we obviously have our trusty Crafty Cutpurse in hand, right? Like combo 2, we pass the turn without giving away any hippos. This time, we wait until the end phase of the player to our immediate right. When they attempt to end, we flash in Crafty Cutpurse, then give them an arbitrarily large number of hippos. Crafty Cutpurse will do them the kindness of stealing those fearsome beasts away, allowing them to enter under our control instead. We untap for our turn and show those fools just how aggressive an army of hippos can be!
As always, it starts with infinite mana. We give one opponent a bajillion hippo tokens. Then we Mindslaver them. They untap, and by they untap, I mean we untap for them. We use their (our) bajillion hippo tokens to kill all of our other opponents. We then use infinite mana to offer our slave 101 card draws with Phelddagrif. They obey. All hail our new hippo overlords.
Hmm, I wonder how this combo starts? If you guessed infinite mana loop, you're right!! With infinite mana we can give each opponent infinite hippos, no surprise there either, but if we do this with a Suture Priest out, that's infinite life loss for each opponent.

Crafty Cutpurse, Deadeye Navigator, Great Whale, Suture Priest: D- did you read the combo lines? Read the combo lines. Good talk.

Eternal Witness: Sometimes we really need a specific piece of removal, but we already used it. Solution? Use it again! The same goes for our combo pieces. Someone blew up Defense? Pick it up and slam it.

Kefnet the Mindful, Thrasios, Triton Hero: We spend the early game ramping and spend the mid game leaving our mana up while we prepare to combo. Any leftover mana we left up to be a controlling asshole can be converted into more cards.

Oracle of Mul Daya, Sakura-Tribe Elder: Ramp is good. I liek mana. Oracle also gets astronomically better when ran in a deck with with fetches and/or a lot of ways to shuffle. We are that deck I just described.

Arcane Denial, Counterspell, Cryptic Command, Pact of Negation, Rewind, Swan Song, Dispel: These are called counterspells! They are the signature card of control decks everywhere. When someone plays something you we don’t like, we just get to say, “Nah.”. It’s that simple. When people say the word “Control”, this is what comes to mind. These cards strike fear into the heart of mortals and Timmys everywhere. However, while all counterspells are in fact counterspells, not all counterspells are made equal. Some are better at what they do than others. At the time of writing, I believe Rewind to be our weakest counterspell. Considering cutting it.

Trickbind: Basically another counterspell but deserving of it’s own entry because of it’s uniqueness. It counters abilities… so I guess that makes it a counterability then, huh? Anyways, it stops abilities and prevents them from being activated again that turn. This can be incredible. Stops a surprising amount of infinites too, which is the main reason to run it over Stifle, so that the opponent can't just activate the combo ability again. It also feels reeeeeeally good to counter someone’s planeswalker Ult. Heh.

Beast Within: ANY PERMANTENT? WHAAAAAAAT? 3 mana is a lot to pay for removal, buuuuuuuuuut any permanent tho?! You could kill anything! Gaea's Cradle DEAD. Doubling Season? DEAD. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite? DEAD. Avacyn, Angel of Hope? DEA- oh. Shit. Okay fine, almost any permanent. And giving someone a 3/3 is so whatever for a drawback. Know what eats 3/3s? Magic flying hippos eat 3/3s. And who cares if our magic flying hippo can’t eat an Avacyn? Because…

Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares: Probably the best, most efficient pieces of creature removal in the game. And also they eat Avacyn.

Rapid Hybridization: Not as efficient as PtE and StP, but still hella efficient. Killing some nerd’s commander is often the equivalent of making them skip a turn. Definitely worth the critter they get in exchange, especially considering that critter isn’t even a hippo. Additionally, like with Beast Within Phelddagrif can just eat the critter anyways, so whatever.

Blue Sun's Zenith, Stroke of Genius, Sphinx's Revelation, Pull from Tomorrow: We’re a big dumb control deck. If we don’t need to counter any spells or kill any permanents, and we have lots of mana left, why not dump it into one of these to refill our hand? And if that didn’t convince you, then the looks we get when we say “At the end of your turn I stroke myself six times” will.

Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Worldly Tutor: As a combo deck, winning the game hinges on being able to find our combo pieces. Tutors do that. Enlightened is best because it finds Defense of the Heart, Angel's Trumpet, or Dingus Staff. Worldly grabs Crafty Cutpurse, or an E-wit to recur something. Mystical can grab Tooth and Nail to enable the combo, or almost any control piece. Deglamer, Nature's Claim, Natural State, Return to Dust: Artifacts and Enchantments can be problematic. Here are some good ways to kill them. Notably, Deglamer and Return to dust also hit gods.

Cyclonic Rift: This card is usually back breaking. Does funny things with Day's Undoing.

Fact or Fiction: In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll spell it out for ya, I really like instant speed draw. EoTFoFYL.

Farseek, Into the North, Nature's Lore, Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama's Reach: We are a control deck that wins with a combo. We will not be comboing in the first few turns, and there isn’t much need for control in the first few turns either. Therefore, it makes sense to ramp and build a better mana base.

Austere Command, Day of Judgment, Supreme Verdict, Wrath of God: Sometimes our opponents each have ten trillion hippos. Other times the board is just getting out of hand. For all of the above situations, consider killing everything. Austere command specifically is just such a versatile card. It does work.

Revoke Existence: There is an abundance of Gods in my meta. Exile ‘em. Also, artifacts and enchantments in general are just worth killing.

Regrowth: See Eternal Witness. Sometimes we just want a second copy of a card we already played.

Day's Undoing: Are we low on cards? Or maybe we just dislike the cards we have? Get new ones and have mana up for oppressive controlly things. Also good when we suspect an opponent is filling their hand with their own combo pieces. Really frickin spicy if we can overload a Cyclonic Rift right before our turn starts.

Tooth and Nail: An alternative to Defense of the Heart. Grabs our infinite mana loop. If we already have half the loop in hand, then we can grab the other half and Crafty Cutpurse to enable next turn win.

Angel's Trumpet, Dingus Staff: Didja not read the bit about combo lines?! Go read the bit about combo lines ya dingus!

Mindslaver: This originally wasn't in the list because I thought it picked on one person too much, but in hindsight I realized that doesn't really matter if that one person kills the other two for us. It makes it in as a part of combo line #4. Additionally, unlike a lot of our other combo pieces, it's just a really strong control tool. There will be games where we mindslave someone just to stop them from winning or something.

Sol Ring: This card should be straight up banned in the format. ‘Nuff said.

Scroll Rack: We run fetches and multiple ways to search our deck. Being able to ship an entire hand, get a new one, then shuffle the old away is pretty premium.

Defense of the Heart: The main combo piece of the deck! Everything hinges on this! Read the combo lines!

Song of the Dryads, Imprisoned in the Moon, Darksteel Mutation: Deals with any permanent, almost any permanent, and commanders respectively. Very versatile with the exception of indestructibug, but indestructibug can also permanently remove a commander, and that’s pretty damn good.

Rhystic Study: This card is so god damn friggin’ dumb. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, and yet it IS as good as it is. If people were good at magic, they would just always pay the one. Plain and simple. But people get greedy, and they don’t. Sometimes they don’t even when they have the mana too! There’s always at least one person at the table who will feed you, and even if there isn’t, just slowing down your opponents is fine. Additionally, any removal spent on this, is removal not spent on Defense of the Heart.

Aura of Silence: I have seen entire decks fold to this card. Other times it’s just a really annoying hate piece that eventually kills something.

Sylvan Library: Pseudo Sensei’s with optional extra draw tacked on? Hell yes. Once again, any form of topdeck manipulation gets much better with shuffle effects. We run those.

Sterling Grove: Don’t have Defense? Finds Defense. Already got Defense? Protects Defense. And also our other enchantments. But mostly Defense.

Utopia Sprawl: Cheap ramp. That’s pretty much all I have to say.

Flooded Strand, Windswept Heath, Misty Rainforest: Fetches are, in my opinion, the best mana fixing lands in the format. Even better then original dual lands. They also synergize nicely with Scroll Rack, Sylvan Library, and Oracle of Mul Daya.

Tundra, Savannah, Tropical Island: The original ABU dual lands. Strong mana fixing, but hardly necessary. As you may know, these cost a lot of money. I run them because I got them when they cost significantly less, but this deck can easily be ran without them.

Hallowed Fountain, Temple Garden, Breeding Pool: The ABU duals younger siblings, the shock lands. Usually just as good to be honest.

Glacial Fortress, Sunpetal Grove, Hinterland Harbor: Check lands. Not nearly as good as Fetches, Duels, and Shocks, but good enough. They round out our mana fixing lands nicely.

Command Tower: I lied. This rounds out our mana fixing lands.

Reliquary Tower: I like drawing cards. I dislike discarding cards. We also run the mana base to support this without really feeling the sting of running a colorless source.

Snow-Covered Basics: Oddly enough, it’s our basics that probably need the most explaining. Why run snow lands? Well, the main reason is to give ourselves access to another 2-mana ramp spell, Into the North. It does have some nice side effects though. For example, 90% of the time, if someone is running Extraplanar Lens, then they will run snow basics to try and avoid boosting their opponent’s mana. Running snow basics ourselves lets us have a taste of their doubler.

That's right. We start playing the game before the game even starts.

So. Everyone's locked in their commanders. Assuming your playing with a group that doesn't know the deck, someone will often say something like, "Oh, grouphug." This is where we can start having fun. Use this to your advantage. Personally, when someone says that to me, I like to reply with something like, "Whaaaaat? Group hug? Pshhhhh. I don't know what you're talking about. You're crazy. This is a combo deck." The key is to say the whole thing in a really sarcastic voice. This will hopefully cement it into people's minds that we are totally playing group hug. But we never said that. They did. When we go off, the sweetest words we can hear are: "I thought you said you were group hug?!"

This tactic in particular will only really work with people who have never seen the deck, but it's still fun!

An ideal opening hand would have some lands, some acceleration, and a way too draw cards. If we can squeeze a way to interact with people in there too, all the better. Opening hand combo pieces usually aren't amazing because we aren't going to be using them right away. I would much rather get ahead on mana and/or card advantage and dig for the pieces later than keep opening hand pieces and fall behind.
The first few turns are usually spent building a mana base and establishing a source of card draw. We try and play a land every turn, ramp if you can. We don't need to be too worried about holding up mana yet, as we're still in the early stages.

If we have an Enlightened Tutor or Worldly Tutor it's worth considering using them to find a permanent source of cards such as Rhystic Study or Kefnet the Mindful. Tutors in the late game can help us combo, but a draw engine in the early game will get us to the late game - often with combo in hand.

We should also be assessing our opponents and trying to get an idea of how they're going to win. Is someone playing a Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind deck? Well they're probably going for a combo finish. How do we stop that? Creature removal and/or counterspells. Since they're a blue deck, preferably both. Is another player playing Kaalia of the Vast? Either keep removal ready to put Kaalia down or expect fatties and get ready for board wipes. Someone playing Meren of Clan Nel Toth? Expect Graveyard shenanigans.

If we start thinking about what we'll need in the early game, then we can hold onto the most useful control pieces until the best possible moment. It also helps us to know what to look for in the midgame. If we're far ahead on mana and have nothing better to do, slam Phelddagrif, but only do so if you can leave a blue mana up. Giving an opponent a single card is much preferable to putting tax on our general. Never tap out when you have Phelddyboi on board unless you absolutely have to.

This is when we're going to start wanting to leave mana up. People have started to establish board states and might be turning their eyes towards bigger goals, such as attacking people or just straight up winning the game. Hopefully, we have a card advantage engine on line and some way to interact with people in hand. By interact with people I mean crush their hopes and dreams.

We want to leave mana up as much as we can, but that doesn't mean we should stop playing stuff on our turn all together. If we draw a helpful enchantment or artifact, we still want to play it, but if we have multiple helpful artifacts and enchantments in hand, it's not worth tapping out to play them all and leaving ourselves defenseless. It's at this point that Kefnet the mindfull|Kefnet and Thrasios, Tritan Hero|Thrasios really start to shine, as none - or very little - of our mana will ever go to waste.

Now is also when we want to start looking for combo pieces in earnest. If we have the mana to play Phelddagrif while still leaving mana to respond, but don't have anything else to do, it's worth strongly considering. At his worst, Phelddagrif is a decent blocker. At his best, his abilities are actually good outside of group hug and our combo lines. See neato burrito hippo tech for more details.

People have established strong board states. They may be threatening the win, or have already tried for it. Hopefully they're resources are running a bit low, and ideally, we have a lot of cards and a fair amount of mana. At this point we should know which combo we're going for, and should be actively looking for the unique pieces of that combo. Depending on the matchup, we may also want to have ways to protect the combo. That means counterspells.

If we have combo in hand, go for it - if it's safe to do so. If we're playing against a full control deck, and they've got mana up, we need to think carefully. We are a very unconventional combo deck. Will they stop us? They probably don't know our combo lines unless they've played against us before. How much mana do they have up? Do we have any counters of our own? How would a counter war go down right now?

If there's no control deck at the table, or they're tapped out, that still doesn't mean we should just go all in. Assess the other player's too. Do they have mana up? Have they been playing a lot of removal this game? Have they played any at all? These can mean very different things. Lots of removal might mean that they're out of ways to stop us. If they've played none it might mean they have lots ready, or, it might mean they don't run any - very common at more casual tables. If they've played just a few pieces of removal all game, that's the most worrisome. It means they run removal, but potentially still have a lot in reserve.

Another very important factor to take into account is cards in hand. A player who's fully untapped with an empty mitt isn't fully untapped because they're holding back answers. They're fully untapped because they have nothing to play. A player that's fully untapped with a full mitt obviously has something.

If we feel confident that no one can stop us, or they're unlikely to, we try and go off. If we succeed, awesome. If we don't, we need to start working on contingencies. What's next? Did we lose combo pieces? If so, we need to find a way to recur them.

Our last resort is to just punch people to death with Phelddagrif.

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Top Ranked
  • Achieved #34 position overall 6 years ago
Date added 6 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

38 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

15 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.73
Tokens 1/1 G Creature Hippo, Beast 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Frog Lizard 3/3 G
Folders Fun decks, z Others Decks, meme decks, Dreams, Awesome decks, edh-decks-that-I-think-is-too-cool-not-to-save., Funny, Edh, Yuh
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