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[PRIMER] No One Ever Suspects the Hippo...

Commander / EDH Group Hug GWU (Bant) Phelddagrif Pillow Fort Primer

LandoLRodriguez

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Land (34)

Sorcery (9)

Creature (15)

Artifact (11)

Planeswalker (6)

Commander (1)

Commander: Phelddagrif

Enchantment (13)

Instant (11)

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Land (3)

Creature (1)

Sorcery (1)

Artifact (2)

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Do you think winning should be way more complicated than killing your opponent? Do you enjoy being duplicitous? Do ya like hippos and anagrams? If so, you should like my Phelddagrif deck! Make friends with everyone then swoop in and steal their victory! Here's how:

Well, I have the same history with Magic a great many people do; I first played quite a long time ago, between the eras of Revised and Urza's Saga. That's when I first met the flying purple hippo and it quickly became one of my favorite cards, of course thanks to its goofy art and overall silliness. In an era pre-dating EDH (to the best of my recollection), Phelddy's effects were mostly just head-scratching, but I still loved this seemingly unplayable monstrosity.

Fast forward past a 17-year break from the game to when I picked it back up during Shadows Over Innistrad and first learned of commander. Phelddy wasn't my first choice when I started making commander decks, but it was recently brought to my attention that my current roster was a bit... mean. So it occurred to me that it is finally time to do something with the most memorable card from my first go-around with the game.

Phelddy is a popular choice for group hug decks, but I didn't want to make a deck with no way to win, so my hippo list comes with sneaky alternate win-cons once I've decided everyone has had enough fun. This includes taking advantage of what does make Phelddy mechanically unique: there aren't a lot of cards that allow you to put a creature into play in your opponents' control, and fewer still that allow you to do so over and over again, for as long as your holds out. So my favorite and sneakiest win-con present is one based on this. After all, as the deck name says, no one ever suspects the hippo...
Everyone is going to want to draw cards and have lots of lands, right? Well this deck is packed with ways to make that happen!

All the while, Phelddy itself (as well as its best friend Questing Phelddagrif) will be giving away life, cards, and adorable 1/1 hippos to wherever they're needed. With everyone having full hands and copious amounts of mana, you'll quickly be everyone's best friend. Excellent...

The pillow fort is strong here as well. With all the altruism we're spewing, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to hurt us. Just in case some malevolent buffoon does though:

While everyone is too busy falling in love with us and perhaps squabbling amongst each other to notice the forcefield we've built, it's time to start pulling away quietly. While we are gaining all the same group benefits this deck generates, we do eventually want to win, so we want more than the draw and ramp everyone is getting.

As we'll explore soon, in order for this deck to win, some very specific pieces need to be available for some of the silly win-cons this deck runs to fire. Having to pitch any of those pieces during discard phase will prove very counter-productive. As such, getting the "no max hand size" effect in play is crucial. There are 9 routes to gaining that in this deck:

Inevitably, someone's gonna not want to play nice. This needs to be nipped in the bud. No one gets to win the game before we're ready. Attempts at doing so must be denied and punished.

  • Let's suppose someone has managed to get something threatening into play. Since we're not trying to be in the business of making enemies (too soon), most of our removal options will also have some benefit for the controller of the removed. Path to Exile, Crib Swap, and Swords to Plowshares all sweep a creature off to exile but offer a little consolation in return. Beast Within and Generous Gift can get rid of any permanent while returning a little buddy. Shadowspear makes sure no one is too hard to handle this way. Finally, Oko, Thief of Crowns and Lignify can take care of a troublesome ability while leaving a body in play.
  • Our small package of counterspells works much the same way. Arcane Denial, Dream Fracture, and Swan Song all give something back. Disallow does not give anything back, but is an insurance policy against powerful abilities (like a planeswalker ult) as well as spells.
  • Anyone who want to ping away at us will have to answer to Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker. This should take care of any permanents that are triggering abilities that damage us (sometimes to the delight of the rest of the table if it's hitting them too).
  • Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and Tamiyo, Compleated Sage can tap down a troublesome attacker/artifact when needed
Assuming everything has gone to plan so far, everyone has been able to dig through their deck and have had all the resources they needed to make the things they want happen. We've been all but immune to the tomfoolery and built up extra resources ourselves. No one has been able to run away with it. There's been laughter, there's been tears. There's definitely been hippos. Now it's time for someone to win. Just because we're playing as friendly king hippo doesn't mean it shouldn't be us. This deck brings the tools to make it happen at varying levels of sneakiness. Here are the routes to victory.

Approach of the Second Sun. The least sneakiest victory mode. The table will be quite aware when this gets cast the first time and will spend the rest of the game knowing what doom may come. Barring any deck shuffling and given how fast we can dig 7 cards deep, it can get back in our hand quick and anyone paying attention will know it's there. It's not the goal of this deck to win as fast as possible though, so we'll be quite content to let this sit in our infinitely large hand indefinitely before casting it the first time. The mechanics of the card itself register it at only a 2/10 on the sneakiness scale.
Triskaidekaphile. Given that this card is one of our routes to infinite hand size, and can hit the battlefield as early as turn 2, it's another one people will see coming. In most cases it will need to spend at least one lap of turns around the table in order to be out for its upkeep trigger to happen, although it can be flashed in with Tidal Barracuda just before our turn. Then, with either the requisite 13 cards remaining in hard, or fewer than that with the mana to sink to draw up to 13, this has the potential to snatch victory out of seemingly nowhere, but still only nets a 4/10 on the sneakiness scale. This is a perfectly valid option to close things out but is more valuable in this deck for its other effects.
Helix Pinnacle. Now we're getting into what will be my preferred victory methods. The goal for a pinnacle victory will be like this: the game has meandered on according to plan. Through some combination of treasures from Smothering Tithe and/or lingering mana pool mana from either Horizon Stone or Dictate of Kruphix, we're sitting on an enormous stockpile of mana. The other players are getting a little nervous, wondering what the plan for this ocean of mana is. Their trepidation is assuaged though. Why? Cuz friendly flying purple hippo, that's why! Then it happens... out of our giant hand drops our win-con. Ideally this will happen just before our turn with Tidal Barracuda or Vernal Equinox, and with a mana stockpile sufficient enough to drop 100 into it immediately. Given the amount of draw that Smothering Tithe should see in a game, this seems very possible to me. I'd give this win potential about an 8/10 for sneakiness, since the opponents will probably know something is up with the way we're hoarding mana leading up to it. Still, I can't wait to actually pull it off in a game.
Happily Ever After (hereafter known simply as HEA). Given how very on-theme this card is, and the convoluted set of requirements it needs met, this is going to be my targeted mode of victory. Let's examine those requirements individually.

  1. Life total ≥ starting life total. This should be the easiest requirement to meet. More of this deck is about protecting ourselves than anything else, and between just Wedding Ring and Venser's Journal, life should be coming in considerably faster than it's going out.
  2. Six or more card types among permanents/graveyard, AKA the "Chubby Goyf" requirement. This one shouldn't really be tough either. With the goal of making the game go long anyway, and all 7 of the more traditional card types represented in the deck at appreciable levels, this requirement should be met comfortably by the time we're even thinking about an HEA victory. Still, I like to hedge my bets, so I've managed to shoehorn a couple of tribal cards in as well (in the forms of Lignify and Crib Swap) just for good measure.
  3. All 5 colors represented on our permanents. Herein lies the challenge, as this will be the most difficult requirement to meet. "Difficult? Nay, impossible!" you say? Well I say shut up you ignorant slut, nothing is impossible! Even in a bant colored EDH deck, we have a couple of methods to get the red and black permanents we need for an HEA win. What will likely be our best way to do it is with Planewide Celebration. In fact, that card is in the deck pretty much solely for that purpose. Celebration can net us between one and four all-color citizens that will satisfy this final requirement. The other method currently present in the deck is with Oko, Thief of Crowns. Assuming we have at least one opponent in the colors we lack, we can casually swap out something of ours for something of theirs that satisfies HEA. Give them something better than what we take to avoid arousing suspicion.
  4. As a matter of due diligence, the following methods of getting all the colors were considered but do not work: Sphinx of the Guildpact and Transguild Courier count as being all 5 colors even when not in play, and as such would be illegal to include in any non-5 color commander deck. There would be no chance to activate Scrapbasket or Scuttlemutt in time to get them to work with HEA. Since the win requirements for HEA come as a long interceding "if" condition, the ability trigger that would occur at the start of upkeep doesn't even happen unless its conditions are already met. While we could activate the basket or mutt during upkeep, doing so would happen after HEA would have needed to trigger, and as such neither of those cards can ever make HEA work. The only other method I can fathom making work is an obscure and seemingly otherwise useless old card from legends called Alchor's Tomb. It would take a couple turns to use that to transform things into the colors we need, and doing so would definitely get opponents knowing I'm up to something. I do plan on eventually getting the tomb in here since quirky, old, and otherwise useless is kind of part of what this deck is about. It has a bit of a hefty price tag though, considerably more than I'm looking to spend on a card with as narrow a purpose as it's going to have here. Possibly somewhere down the road though. I'm not looking to invest too heavily (either financially or with deck slots) into enabling a single win-con that I already have some answers for. I'm certainly interested in other creative solutions to this 5-colors-of-permanents-in-a-bant-EDH-deck problem though (without going all-in with stealing people's stuff), so feel free to fire away with suggestions if you've stuck with me this far!

Once we have color requirements met, and presumably the other requirements as well, we flash in HEA much like the other win methods described above just before our turn, and win on our upkeep with minimal chance to respond! Getting everyone to live happily ever after gets 10/10 on the sneakiness scale if executed properly, and will be the way I'm looking to win most of the time.

Hippos are cute, right? Phelddy sure is! But remember this: hippos are responsible for more human deaths in Africa per year than any other animal (mosquitos don't count, they just carry the really nasty stuff; hippos do their own dirty work). That's around 6 times more than next on that list. Yet, no one suspects the hippo...

Getting this to work is the sole reason for Rite of Replication's inclusion in this deck (although I'm confident it will prove itself useful in some other capacity). The idea is that, when the moment is right (as in, with a large stockpile of mana and or/treasure), cast a kicked Rite of Replication at a to-this-point docile Suture Priest, used primarily to gain our own life. With 6 of its effects now active, every can turn into a hippo and 6 damage for an opponent of our choice. With enough , this turns into victory by hippo trampling.

Since my goal when brewing this deck was to design wins just by alternate win-cons and this is just an irresistible by-product of that shell, this gets 11/10 for sneakiness (and hippos). Thank you to whomever left the 10 year old comment on Phelddy's gatherer page for the idea for this, I wanna try it.


One must keep in mind of course that the bulk of this deck is really first about pillow fort and next about group hug. I have yet to actually put this deck together and play it, so I'm not really sure how hard or easy it will be to actually win games with it. A great many of the group hug deck lists I've looked at say it's the most fun someone has had playing Magic, so I figure it's worth a shot. I plan to keep this list updated and keep working on it.

UPDATE: I've played the deck a few times now, and won twice. The first time was with all 3 other players alive by casting Approach twice in one turn, and once by Hippoing my last opponent. In both cases the game plan worked nicely; kept myself from being a target until I had a large stockpile of mana and a victory mode available, and there was really nothing anyone could do to stop it when it happened. The games lost were to things that were killing the whole table/infinite combos/stuff like that, and Phelddy was fun to play in those games too. Small sample size, sure, but early results indicate that victory is very feasible with this deck that isn't completely geared towards doing so.

The most exciting part of any deck! The most expensive at least. I'm not entirely sure the color balance is where I want it, but I think I have enough methods for getting and fixing mana that I should be fine. I would welcome suggestions if anyone has them on balancing in a deck like this. With a light (at least for my decks) overall CMC at 3.24, 34 seems like a good number of lands to run, with one MDFC in Sea Gate Restoration  .

Islands, Forests, and Plains. These come in untapped and tap for colored mana. They're actually really good, that's why they're in almost every Magic deck ever. Side note: While I don't usually do this with cards I don't actually own, I plan on taking 1 each out and replacing them with proxies of Savannah, Tropical Island, and Tundra as long as the folks I'm playing with don't mind.
Without having played the deck yet, I can only speculate on what is going to give it trouble doing what it's supposed to. While I think I have answers for a great number of deck types, I think mill could cause trouble. Having to depend on a planeswalker ult is sub-optimal, but Tamiyo, the Moon Sage's would shut that down for me, but I wouldn't be able to keep the rest of the table from milling out. I haven't come across much mill so far and I don't know how much I will in a 100 card deck format, so we'll see.
The only other concern I have at this point is that I don't have much for recursion. For the most part, anything that goes to my graveyard will stay there. I might want some specific cards either to zero in on a win or answer a specific threat. Tamiyo, Collector of Tales can do a little work with her -3, but only once in a while between likely whiffs with her +1. Hall of Heliod's Generosity can get enchantments back, and Planewide Celebration can get a permanent (or 4) back in a moment of desperation. As discussed earlier though, that card is meant to serve another very specific purpose. So a little bit of recursion does exist here, but I'm worried I may want more. This is definitely an area I'd love to hear some input.
That's all I can think of at this point, but will keep this up to date as I play the deck.
That about does it for now. I'd like to think I created something at least a little bit novel here and look forward to seeing if playing group hug is really as fun as people say it is. This is my first draft, and I would really appreciate suggestions, especially in the following areas:
  • Any great ideas for how else to get 5 colors of permanents to satisfy Happily Ever After
  • What to cut for Tamiyo, Compleated Sage
  • Suggestions on how to better color balance my mana base, or if it's really necessary.
  • Any ways to interact with my GY that fit my overall concept.
  • Anything else you might want to say, really!
That's all for now, please feel free to Upvote if you like what I've done here, and remember to never underestimate the hippo!

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90% Casual

Competitive

Revision 11 See all

(2 years ago)

-1 Prairie Stream main
Top Ranked
Date added 2 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

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

9 - 0 Mythic Rares

56 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

4 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.26
Tokens 1/1 G Creature Hippo, Beast 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Citizen 2/2 WUBRG, Copy Clone, Elephant 3-3 G, Elk 3/3 G, Emblem Tamiyo, the Moon Sage, Food, Shapeshifter 1/1 C, Spirit 1/1 C, Tamiyo's Notebook, Treasure
Folders Hippo, Commander, Bant WUG, Primers, EDH, Cool Ideas, EDH Decks, Commander, Pheldagriff!, death
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