Mayael the Chaos Machine

Commander / EDH Creature Cheat Ramp RGW (Naya)

TheSilverBlade

Land (40)

• 1x Ancient Ziggurat
• 1x Canopy Vista
• 1x Cinder Glade
• 1x Clifftop Retreat
• 1x Command Tower
• 6x Forest
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Jungle Shrine
• 1x Kessig Wolf Run
• 1x Krosan Verge
• 1x Mossfire Valley
• 1x Mosswort Bridge
• 4x Mountain
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Naya Panorama
• 4x Plains
• 1x Rootbound Crag
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 1x Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1x Spinerock Knoll
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Sungrass Prairie
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Turntimber Symbiosis  ^Flip
• 1x Windbrisk Heights
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Cheat (5)

• 1x Elvish Piper
• 1x Ilharg, the Raze-Boar
• 1x Illusionist's Bracers
• 1x Kodama of the East Tree
• 1x Lurking Predators

Ramp (18)

• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Druid of the Anima
• 1x Faeburrow Elder
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood
• 1x Keeper of Progenitus
• 1x Knotvine Mystic
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Nikya of the Old Ways
• 1x Sacellum Godspeaker
• 1x Seedborn Muse
• 1x Selvala, Explorer Returned
• 1x Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Trace of Abundance
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wayward Swordtooth

Cards (11)

• 1x Battle Mammoth
• 1x Cream of the Crop
• 1x Dragonborn Champion
• 1x Drumhunter
• 1x Etali, Primal Storm
• 1x Gilanra, Caller of Wirewood
• 1x Greenwarden of Murasa
• 1x Paleoloth
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Soul of the Harvest
• 1x Sylvan Library

Wrath (2)

• 1x Realm-Cloaked Giant
• 1x Wrath of God

Commander (1)

Aggro (14)

• 1x Godsire
• 1x Iroas, God of Victory *list*
• 1x Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Marisi, Breaker of the Coil
• 1x Quartzwood Crasher
• 1x Rampaging Baloths
• 1x Siege Behemoth
• 1x Spearbreaker Behemoth
• 1x Spellbreaker Behemoth
• 1x Surrak, the Hunt Caller
• 1x Vagrant Plowbeasts
• 1x Windbrisk Raptor
• 1x Xenagos, God of Revels

Removal (9)

• 1x Aura Shards
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Decimate
• 1x Highcliff Felidar
• 1x Hull Breach
• 1x Kogla, the Titan Ape
• 1x Nessian Boar
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Where Ancients Tread

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Maybeboard

Other (72)

• 1x Aggressive Mammoth
• 1x Apex Altisaur
• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Battle Mammoth
• 1x Battlemage's Bracers
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Burgeoning
• 1x Castle Garenbrig
• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Cleansing Nova
• 1x Colossal Majesty
• 1x Contested Cliffs
• 1x Court of Bounty
• 1x Crater Hellion
• 1x Crush Contraband
• 1x Dawnglade Regent
• 1x Day of Judgment
• 1x Dismantling Wave
• 1x Doomskar
• 1x Dragonborn Champion
• 1x Elder Gargaroth
• 1x Elemental Bond
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Garruk's Uprising
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Grave Sifter
• 1x Heliod, God of the Sun
• 1x Heliod, Sun-Crowned
• 1x Heliod's Intervention
• 1x Ilharg, the Raze-Boar
• 1x Ilysian Caryatid
• 1x Kenrith's Transformation
• 1x Krosan Tusker
• 1x Mana Tithe
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Nessian Boar
• 1x Nikya of the Old Ways
• 1x Nylea, God of the Hunt
• 1x Nylea, Keen-Eyed
• 1x Realm-Cloaked Giant
• 1x Regal Behemoth
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x Rishkar's Expertise
• 1x Sarkhan's Unsealing
• 1x Sawtusk Demolisher
• 1x Seal of Cleansing
• 1x Seal of Primordium
• 1x Search for Tomorrow
• 1x See the Unwritten
• 1x Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1x Shatter the Sky
• 1x Shefet Monitor
• 1x Sunbird's Invocation
• 1x Sunder Shaman
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Terror of the Peaks
• 1x Thorn Mammoth
• 1x Thunderfoot Baloth
• 1x Titanoth Rex
• 1x Trapjaw Tyrant
• 1x Tribute to the Wild
• 1x Turntimber Symbiosis  ^Flip
• 1x Valley Rannet
• 1x Verdant Sun's Avatar
• 1x Vivien, Champion of the Wilds
• 1x Vivien's Arkbow
• 1x Wear / Tear
• 1x Wild Growth
• 1x Wilderness Reclamation
• 1x Winds of Abandon
• 1x Woodland Bellower
• 1x Zacama, Primal Calamity

Theme (3)

• 1x Beacon Behemoth
• 1x Relic of Progenitus
• 1x Soul's Majesty

CheatEffect (1)

• 1x Champion of Rhonas

Ramp (1)

• 1x Faeburrow Elder

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OVERVIEW

A take on Mayael that focuses on consistently churning out free or reduced cost creatures. I love to revel in the prospects of randomly ripping a creature off the top of my deck!

Overall Gameplay

Overall changes to make

Lower this deck's mana curve

Add some low-cost card draw engines

Replace single-target removal with better, attrition-based removal

Deck Strengths

You'll like this deck if:

TIMMY LIKE BIG STUFF

You like having access to a lot of mana.

You don't mind keeping track of triggers, and can easily keep track of large numbers. (When this deck goes off, there are several triggers that go off during each turn **and** you will often have to add together the power and/or toughness of a dozen or so creatures.)

You like decks that have a strong theme, but do not need their commander to function.

You find friendly, chaotic cards like Guild Feud to be a lot of fun.

You like having access to a lot of answers without being too oppressive. (Song of the Dryads, Swords to Plowshares, etc.)

Deck Weaknesses

You like playing control decks.

You prefer complex strategies.

You like having a smaller, more competitive mana curve.

Meekstone-type effects, Blue/black theft decks, or board wipes run rampant in your meta.

You don't want to paint a giant target on your forehead.

You, or your friends have difficulty keeping track of all of the triggers this deck causes. Additionally, some cards, such as Omen Machine, can be confusing for new players.

Gameplay tips

Unless you have a haste outlet, try to activate Mayael during your opponents' end steps if possible. This is important for a few reasons. The first is that you get to threaten your opponents with a giant rattlesnake... most players will not swing into you when they know you'll drop a giant creature in response. The second is that you'll avoid drawing attention to yourself for longer; having giant creatures on the board (literally) makes you a huge threat, and its best to bide your time until you can start swinging.

While most players are terrified of Mayael, we don't actually care too much about keeping her around. While it's nice to have her, our deck runs perfectly fine if we're hard-casting creatures out of our hand. Realistically speaking, she represents a way to eke out an incremental card advantage or to dig for fatties if our hand doesn't have anything that suits the current board state. Frankly, I'd much rather that a Path to Exile is aimed at her instead of Godsire or xenagos.

Deck Building Tips

In general, Mayael decks are luckily pretty straightforwards:

Mana, mana, and more mana. You'll need to put in a combined total of roughly 50 lands and ramp spells into your deck, as this deck **cannot** function without at least 5-6 mana for this deck to come online. This is exasperated by how you'll usually only have 3-4 lands in your starting hand. Thus, I recommend choosing spells that net you more than one land, as they'll make sure you don't run out. Thus, Tempt with Discovery, Explosive Vegetation, and Cultivate are better than Rampant Growth and Sakura-Tribe Elder. Similarly, lands that can net you more than one mana are sweet, like Myriad Landscape or Gruul Turf.

If you want to consistently hit a creature when you activate Mayael, you'll need at least 25-30 creatures in the 99.

Don't run creatures just because they're big. If you've read this far, it's probably obvious that between 50 cards in the manabase and 25-30 creatures, you really don't have that many slots remaining in the deck. Thus, if you want to have enough room to have plenty of utility cards in the deck, the smartest thing you can do is to play big creatures that provide utility. Don't play Worldspine Wurm or Malignus when Terastodon and Gruul Ragebeast can serve as both beat sticks and removal. Likewise, Iroas, God of Victory and Siege Behemoth have more synergy with the deck's theme than Akroma's Memorial.

Manage your curve. While big, splashy creatures like Ulamog, the Ceaselss Hunger **are** really fun, it's also important to keep your curve semi-manageable, even if that seems counter-intuitive. At the end of the day, you can only afford to spend so many turns durdling around with ramp, and it can be tough to hit 7+ mana before you're wiped out by another player. Thus, adding in a few creatures that only cost 4 or 5 mana can really help you along while making sure you can

Card Selection

Synergy

Cream of the Crop: If you're playing green, then I would recommend that you take a serious look at Cream of the Crop. Considering that most Mayael decks run up to 33-35 creatures with power 5 or greater, this means that any time we play a creature (Hint: That's going to happen on a pretty frequent basis.), we get to look at the top 5-9 cards of our library, pick the best one, and throw everything else to the bottom of our library for free. In a Mayael deck, this card puts even Sensei's Divining Top to shame, especially if Lurking Predators is on the field.

Illusionist's Bracers: This is probably one of the dumbest cards in the deck. It's extremely easy to cast and equip the bracers during the early game, making Mayael's ability significantly more powerful. In particular, Illusionist's Bracers becomes overwhlemingly powerful when combined with Seedborn Muse or Cream of the Crop.

Cheat Engines

Remember kids: It's important to do things other than slamming down big creatures... it's also important to play cards that help you repeatedly churn out big creatures for free! Each of these cards will flood the board with creatures if left unattended, causing your opponents to suffer the drawback of "getting beaten to death".

Lurking Predators: This is, hands down, one of the most ridiculous cards in the deck. Left unchecked for 2-4 turns, this will net you so many creatures that your board will consistently turn into a huge, messy pile of beasts.

Guild Feud: It looks extremely janky, but it's important to remember that you get to pick who this targets. For instance, enchantment, artifact, or spellslinger decks, such as Talrand, Sky Summoner, will often only be running about 6-12 creatures! You can also target people who run a lot of small creatures; Sea Gate Oracle is almost never going to kill a Godsire.

Omen Machine: This card is deceptively powerful because of how it'll likely shut down most other decks at the table. They're probably hoping to draw a bunch of cards and cast a bunch of little spells. With Mayael, we're going to continue our gameplan of ripping big spells off the top of our deck while ALSO activating Mayael to get ANOTHER card from the top five cards of our deck. Omen Machine forces everybody to play Timmy's game; Timmy wins big in Timmy's game.

Cheat Outlets

Mosswort Bridge, Spinerock Knoll, and Windbrisk Heights: Being in naya grants us access to the three best hideaway lands in the game. Mosswort Bridge comes online with only two big creatures on the battlefield, and Spinerock Knoll can be activated if one of our larger creatures connects with an opponent. In particular, Spinerock Knoll can be met if ANY opponent happens to take at least 7 damage during anybody's turn; it does not have to be damage that you deal to them.

Elvish Piper: One mana for Godsire? Sign me up! This is cheap enough that you should easily be able to cast two creatures per turn! Has great synergy with Illusionist's Bracers, and I recommend using it at the end of your opponent's turns, rather than activating it during your main phase.

Quicksilver Amulet: It's not quite as cheap as Elvish Piper, but it's at least immune to board wipes and doesn't need haste.

CREATURES

Rather than just shoving Worldspine Wurm and all of the Eldrazi into this deck, I tend to look for cards that either buff the entire team or provide utility outside of combat. Frankly, there is no "correct" roster of creatures, as there are heaps of creatures that I'd love to shove in here! When building your version of Mayael, just look for any large creature that has cool abilities. In particular, because so much of the deck is taken up by ramp, lands, and big creatures, it's important to utilize our creature spots to provide a large portion of the deck's removal, artifact/enchantment hate, and protection for our team. Do NOT select creatures just because they are large.

Removal

Gruul Ragebeast: Makes your big dudes fight their little dudes. 90% of the time, this means that you get to kill opposing creatures for free, though this can sometimes backfire. Beware of opponents who can buff their creatures or give said creatures deathtouch. Also, it's important to note that your creatures MUST fight enemy creatures, so once Gruul Ragebeast hits the field, you're committed to it.

Magmatic Force: It's about as simple as it looks. Though there won't always be stuff that's small enough to kill with Magmatic Force's free copies of Lightning Bolt, you can always just aim for the face to turn it into player removal. 12 damage per turn cycle is no joke.

Moldgraf Monstrosity: Two free resurrections? Granted, the random clause is a bit annoying, but everything in the yard should be beefy enough that it won't disappoint you. (Note: If Moldgraf Monstrosity and many other creatures die simultaneously, then the creatures that died with Moldgraf Monstrosity cannot be resurrected by its ability. Try to deploy it *after* one or two of your things have died.)

Steel Hellkite: Expensive, but recurring removal. Steel Hellkite is especially potent against tokens, as you can pay = . One of the cards I'm more liable to cut in the future, as I've never been particularly impressed by it and having Mayael summon artifact creatures feels thematically off.

Aggro

This is the most common type of fatty in the deck; the "aggro" category encompasses any and all creatures that help us win through combat damage. As such, I'm using this as a catch-all for creatures that produce a ton of tokens, provides a buff to allying creatures, or makes our creatures hard to block or kill.

Spearbreaker Behemoth and Vagrant Plowbeasts: Admittedly, these are mostly Alara-themed pet cards, but they're still pretty useful here. When you start pulling ahead, your opponents will often start aiming kill spells and wraths at your board, and these suddenly make it a lot harder for your opponents to catch back up.

Marisi, Breaker of the Coil: I **ADORE** Marisi in this deck. He's from Naya, his ability is insane, and he only costs FOUR.

Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs: Kazuul makes it much, much harder to race you. If your opponents spend all of their mana paying his tax, then they won't be able to play their spells, and they'll fall behind. If your opponents don't pay the tax, then you'll be able to block and kill their creatures with the ogre tokens. If they don't attack you, you can continue swinging out and bringing their life totals low.

Rampaging Baloths, Godsire, and Quartzwood Crasher: Each one of these is an "army in a can". If they're left unchecked, they'll proceed to quickly take over and end the game.

Iroas, God of Victory: Both of Iroas's abilities are amazing here! Menace makes your creatures impossible to chump block, and preventing all damage to your attacking creatures makes blocking with larger creatures equally frustrating. Though I don't love how off-theme Iroas is, his low mana cost and explosive power make him one of the deck's all-stars.

Xenagos, God of Revels and Surrak, Caller of the Hunt: These both serve as relatively low-CMC haste enablers; Xenagos's power boost is also very nice here.

Windbrisk Raptor: Have you ever seen someone try to race against a team of giant lifelinkers?

Siege Behemoth: I mean, it's not making the team unblockable, but unblockable certainly isn't a far-off approximation of what the behemoth does.

Ramp

Wayward Swordtooth: Absolute all-star of a card in this deck. While the actual ramp effect of the swordtooth isn't particularly impressive here, it helps to significantly push down our mana curve, and can serve to quickly put pressure on our opponents once you've ascended.

Nikya of the Old Ways: Nikya's "drawback" isn't really applicable to our deck; the only non-creature card in the deck that costs more than her is Lurking Predators. Her upside, however, is that she occupies a low slot on our curve (well... a low slot for a giant creature) and immediately allows us to spam Mayael activations while hardcasting monsters from our hand. With a proper draw-engine out, we should quickly take over the game.

Removal

Highcliff Felidar: Hits your opponents' three biggest (and probably scariest) creatures.

Kogla, the Titan Ape: Kills an enemy creature and acts as a repeated Disenchant.

Nessian Boar: SO, this is one I'm trying out, and I fully understand that thoughts are going to be mixed on it. However, I think the big pig is a serviceable card that helps push down my mana curve and significantly increase the deck's tempo. In my mind, Nessian Boar serves the same function as cards like Whelming Wave; you're trying to bottleneck your opponents' mana, not their cards in hand. Additionally, you have the option to attack into the opponent who is screwed over the most by this 10/6. Though token decks, aristocrats strategies, and reanimator shells are probably not great targets, spellslinger, voltron, and combo strategies will be completely hosed by this card Nessian Boar.

Why Don't You Run...

Blighsteel Colossus, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Vorinclex, Vigor, and Avacyn, Angel of Hope: Honestly, I just don't like these cards; they feel kind of oppressive to me.

The Eldrazi: So this boils down to two arguments. The first is that most Eldrazi have abilities that trigger upon being cast, which doesn't work with the deck's theme of cheating them into play. My second point of contention is that I dislike annihilator as a mechanic.

Warstorm Surge: I used to love running this card back in the battlecruiser days of EDH, but the format's just sped up too much.

Rings of Brighthearth and Scroll Rack: Very powerful, especially with Mayael, but I hardly spend $10 on a card, much less $20. (Note: There are some fairly expensive cards in here, but I bought most of them when they were $10 or less.)

Tooth and Nail and Chord of Calling: Mayael's decklist is pretty restrictive. You're going to need 40ish lands, 12-15 ramp spells, and 30ish big creatures. That only leaves you 15-18 slots for everything else the deck needs to run, and I REALLY don't think Mayael's mana curve needs any more big, expensive finishers.

Harmonize, Shamanic Revelation, Soul's Majesty: I think the problem with these cards is that by the time you get to these, you want to be casting big creatures, not tapping out to draw cards. I think the smarter play is to spend your earlier turns setting up with cheaper draw engines like Garruk's Uprising.

Zur-Taa Ancient, Heartbeat of Spring, Mana Flare, and friends: It's nice to get to our end game quickly, but not if it also helps somebody land Omniscience.

Date added	10 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	99
Avg. CMC	4.10
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Beast 4/4 G, Beast 8/8 RGW, City's Blessing, Dinosaur Beast X/X G, Foretell, Ogre 3/3 R, On an Adventure
Folders	EDH Fun Decks