This is currently my main EDH deck, and it is by far my favorite to play. It has the potential to have insanely explosive starts, and with a perfect draw it can win as early as turn 4-5 (trust me, I've done it before!). I have designed this to be around a 75% deck, and have chosen a strategy more based around fun than pure win-percentage.
Maelstrom Wanderer
does one of the most powerful things you can do in Magic: it circumvents mana costs. As long as the spell costs less than 8 mana, you can cast it for free. This allows the pilot to get out huge creatures such as
Pathbreaker Ibex
and
Avenger of Zendikar
for free, sometimes drastically increasing the power of your board.
Two important notes about the cascade mechanic:
- The cascade triggers on cast, not resolution. So if
Maelstrom Wanderer
gets countered, then both cascade triggers go off.
- 2nd is the order of resolution of the spells. When you cast
Maelstrom Wanderer
, it goes on the stack, then both of the cascade triggers go on the stack. So if nothing gets countered, then the first cascade trigger resolves, and you reveal until you find a castable spell. Then that spell goes onto the stack on top of both the
Maelstrom Wanderer
and the 2nd cascade trigger. The spell from the 1st cascade resolves, and then you repeat the process for the 2nd cascade trigger. Finally,
Maelstrom Wanderer
itself resolves. This may seem trivial, but with lots of ETB effects on the creatures and many spells that shuffle your library, the order of resolution can sometimes make the difference between winning and losing.
The 2nd ability on
Maelstrom Wanderer
is often overlooked, but it can sometimes be as important or even more important than the double cascades: Creatures you control have haste. This means that any creatures that you also cast that turn, either traditionally or via cascade, can all attack that same turn. No longer do you have to pass turn and pray that nobody casts a wrath or kills your most important threat. With a good cascade, you can go from no board state to winning the game on the spot, and this wouldn't happen anywhere near as often if you had to wait for a full rotation of the table before swinging.
One of the weaknesses of
Maelstrom Wanderer
is that at 8 mana, it isn't exactly a cheap commander. However, with the ramp package I have, I often am able to play it by turn 5-6, which isn't too bad. Secondly, because of the way cascade works, any spells that cost more than 7 mana wiff on
Maelstrom Wanderer
's cascade trigger, so I run no spells that cost more than 7. This limitation prevents me from playing any of the large Eldrazi, as well as some common bombs in EDH such as
Terastodon
. Finally, the cascade ability means that
Maelstrom Wanderer
is inherently very random. Sometimes you play your general and you cascade into
Llanowar Elves
and
Izzet Signet
. However, that is part of the fun of the deck, as sometimes you can play
Pathbreaker Ibex
and
Avenger of Zendikar
for free, create a dozen Plant tokens, then swing for more than 100 damage with your hasty army.
What is your gameplan with this deck?
This deck is all about casting the biggest creatures on the field as quickly as possible. You just want to play huge fatties and turn them sideways. The goal of the deck is to quickly create the most threatening board state, then use them to kill your opponents as quickly as possible.
To help with this, we have a very sizable ramp suite. We run most of the good sorcery ramp such as
Kodama's Reach
,
Cultivate
, and
Skyshroud Claim
. We also run some of the good mana rocks. In addition to the traditional
Sol Ring
, we play all three of the Signets in our colors, and we run
Thran Dynamo
to power out our bigger spells. As for larger ramp spells, we only run
Boundless Realms
, as by the time we get to 7 mana, we want to be casting our huge creatures instead of ramping anymore. For enchantment ramp, we run both
Exploration
and
Burgeoning
to help put multiple lands onto the battlefield each turn rotation. These do become irrelevant somewhat quickly, and cascading into one is painful. But this is outweighed by the power of dropping
Burgeoning
on turn 1 and having 5 lands on the battlefield on turn 2. For creature ramp, we play a strong selection of mana dorks, both 1 drop dorks such as
Birds of Paradise
and
Llanowar Elves
, and larger dorks that produce more mana such as
Somberwald Sage
. Creatures such as
Oracle of Mul Daya
and
Courser of Kruphix
allow us to play lands from the top of our deck, filtering through to get to our big threats quicker. And
Lotus Cobra
effectively reduces the cost of our land-based ramp, as the Landfall trigger gives us a one-mana refund for each land we play.
As for the big creatures, we run plenty of them. 7 mana might seem like a lot, but this deck often gets that much by turn 4-6. Value-oriented creatures like
Soul of the Harvest
can quickly bury your opponents in card advantage, and Landfall creatures such as
Omnath, Locus of Rage
and
Rampaging Baloths
fill your board with fairly beefy tokens, allowing you to go wide if your fatties are being dealt with.
Avenger of Zendikar
can drop in and create an instant army of chump blockers, and the Landfall trigger combos with
Boundless Realms
to nauseating effect.
The main finisher in the deck is card that in my opinion is very underrated:
Pathbreaker Ibex
. Whenever it attacks, it buffs all of your creatures by the power of your biggest creature and gives all of them trample. This effect can be insanely powerful, and usually this creature ends games if you can swing with it more than once, although sometimes once is enough. If you have
Maelstrom Wanderer
on the field, all of your creatures get +7/+7 and trample, which usually can kill at least 2 players on that turn. Some people might ask "Why not
Craterhoof Behemoth
?" Well for one, that card is $30 and I'm broke right now. But the main reason is that it costs 8 mana, so you can't hit it off of
Maelstrom Wanderer
's cascades.
The deck also runs a small number of tutors to help find your threats if need be. Sticking
Pattern of Rebirth
on a smaller creature essentially gives it unblockable, as your opponents rarely want to block and risk letting you tutor for any creature and put it directly onto the battlefield.
Tooth and Nail
almost always searches for Avenger of Zendikar + Pathbreaker Ibex
, which often can win you the game on that turn. One interesting fact about cascade is that you can still pay additional costs such as Entwine or Kicker on spells that you cast. So if you cascade into
Tooth and Nail
, you can pay 2 for the Entwine cost to get both effects.
Weaknesses:
Board Wipes are a very real problem for this deck. One of my friends in my play group plays with his "tribal wraths" deck based around
Child of Alara
, and playing against his deck can often be very scary. Getting blown out by an overloaded
Cyclonic Rift
or a
Rout
can be backbreaking for this deck, and it can sometimes be hard to recover. Traditional sorcery speed wraths such as
Wrath of God
and
Merciless Eviction
aren't as effective due to
Maelstrom Wanderer
's ability to give haste, but if I have to wait for a turn rotation, usually at least one of my three opponents have a board wipe. The main counter to this is
Maelstrom Wanderer
himself. Giving all of my creatures haste often negates sorcery speed wraths, as they are dead before they get the chance to play them. The key to playing around this is to save your threats until you can have a single explosive turn and do as much damage as possible. This can often happen off a good cascade from
Maelstrom Wanderer
or an Entwined
Tooth and Nail
.
Questions?
Feel free to comment below with any questions or suggested upgrades for my deck!
