I'm totally playing this deck. Thank you for the awesome primer!

AgelessMelek Do it and have fun :)

Dank as fuck

Read your post on cEDH reddit, love your work dude. This looks like a blast to play. Refreshing to see something besides a doomsday labman.dec :)

protip: win the die roll against stax heavy pod.

Is it worth running Memory Jar for the additional draw?

Memory jar is in there, and yes it is definitely worth running for the additional draw. You most often fizzle by running out of gas.

my bad! completely missed it haha. i figured it would be a solid inclusion if you ever ran out of gas

Have you considered Lightning Greaves? It seems like a good inclusion in a control heavy meta and has the added bonus of letting you bounce/sac and recast selvala as a poor man's untap. It also allows you to utilize your tap effects that you draw when you are going off, like Yisan and Priest of Titania. I apologize if you have already addressed this.

PyreStarter yes we did try lightning greaves but we didn't find ourselves needing it often. It curves awkwardly. However, if your meta is high on removal, I think you can try to find room for it. Greaves and crossroads are great for getting you back into the game by letting you cast selvala and go off the same turn. You may also want to bring vines of vastwood and/or blossoming defense over some of the other pump spells. This list optimized for speed and explosiveness.

asm Gotcha, that makes sense. I have to say, great job on the deck and primer. I've actually been playing this list to great success in the few metas that I have access to. Against the other dedicated combo decks in my meta (Scion Hermit Druid, Tefferi, and Git-gud Frog), this deck is faster 9 times out of 10. Against more control/stax heavy decks, it still sits a t 25% rate in a 4 man pod. I do have a few questions, though:

If you are trying to optimize the list for speed and explosiveness, why are you running cards like Yisan and Sylvan Library? These seem to be way better at playing the long game and digging you out of bad situations and don't lend themselves at all to the (absurdly consistent) turn 3 win.

In my list made the following changes:

• Carpet of FlowersThis has yet to contribute to a turn 2 Selvala for me and is too often a dead card. As such, I have deemed it too slow in my meta.

• Sylvan LibraryThis does not lend itself to the explosive fast win at all, and has done very little for me in the later games, as I am generally finding myself just wishing it was another tutor.

• Hunted TrollThis card has done good things for me, but the 4 mana became a very relevant restriction in trying to go off on turn 3. I felt that each creature that was in the deck as a pseudo ritual needed to be useful as the first ritual of the turn.

• Lightning GreavesFor reasons listed in previous comment

• Mwonvuli Beast TrackerI wanted another tutor and while it isn't the best, it hits Great Oak Guardian and Phyrexian Dreadnought, so I thought I would give it a test run.

• Brutilizer ExarchIt is an answer for the stax cards that aren't hate bears while also being a creature tutor and it itself is tutor-able by Fierce Empath. Another card I thought was worth testing in my meta.

And this is not be disagreeing with your choices, I just thought I would let you know how the deck is performing for me and what changes I am making to adapt to my meta. Let me know if you think I am making any huge mistakes, as I am pretty new to the cEDH scene.

So in addition to my various typos, I didn't even review my formatting like a scrub. What I meant was

OUT:

-Carpet of Flowers-Sylvan Library-Hunted Troll

IN:

-Lightning Greaves-Mwonvuli Beast Tracker-Brutilizer Exarch

Sorry for any confusion

PyreStarter those are some astute observations re: library, yisan, troll. In the original list published with this primer we did not have Sylvan Library or Troll. They are indeed a little awkward ... and while they dont usually contribute to the turn 3 kill they are small concessions to the long game and the observation that we wont always have the pieces we need when we start. When you do fail to fire, its usually because you didnt find a cheap fatty and troll is the next best thing. Yisan gets us around stax and sets up a clean turn 4 kill by going t2 yisan, t3 selvala, t4 dreadnought and go off.

PyreStarter you are spot on with your observations. I'll tackle each point you bring up:

Yisan - You are correct that Yisan is not fast, but he is explosive. He helps you get around stax, and he is effective at setting up t4 wins by fetching dreadnought. Additionally, when you fizzle or someone stops your combo, landing a Yisan lets you win in 1 turn cycle by fetching a series of untappers and chaining up to a fatty + temur sabertooth + removal for stax pieces without casting a single spell. This is becomes more important when there are multiple stax pieces out, as you don't have easy way to get rid of more than one.

Sylvan Library - Yep, we don't love this card, and indeed it wasn't in the original list in the primer. However, there aren't many good cards left lending to powerful starts, and library is very good at helping you recover when you get shot down or someone lands a linvala.

Carpet of Flowers - A hasty t1 elf. It's a meta choice. Great where I play, maybe not so much in your playgroup. Can sometimes be a ritual by playing it main1 and passing to main2.

Hunted Troll/Mwonvuli Beast Tracker - I had tried the beast tracker before with the same dream line of getting dreadnought. However, it is the same speed as Hunted Troll in terms of making you wait to turn 4 to go off, but unlike troll, it telegraphs your plans quite loudly. I don't love troll, but he's the next best fattie.

Lightning Greaves - If you want to fit greaves in, I actually prefer defense grid. It's a card I've been trying to find a way to fit back into the deck. It was in many iterations of the list and I was always happy to have it but ended up cutting it for crossroads.

Brutalizer Exarch - We've considered exarch but haven't playtested much with it. I don't think it is good enough. Woodland bellower does a similar job in relation to fierce empath, by empath chaining for bellower for reclamation sage.

I don't think you are making any huge mistakes, since we walked the same path in considering those cards. These changes have very small impact on the deck overall, making it difficult to evaluate which is better, so if your preferences lean one way, go for it. We don't claim that our list is perfect. Lastly, I am glad you are finding success in your metas :)

tw0handt0uch asm Thank you for giving such detailed responses. I am really enjoying this deck and the relatively low cost has allowed me to join in the cEDH community, which I greatly appreciate. As for your suggestions, I am not necessarily disagreeing, just being sure that we understand each other.

Yisan / greaves- I actually really like Yisan, and owe multiple games to his existence. I just thought that since Lightning Greaves were not included because of the curve making them slow, I figured the same logic would apply here. After testing, I actually like Yisan a lot more with the include of greaves. The greaves lend themselves only slightly to the potential protection from removal and their power seems to come a lot more from being a pseudo crossroads.

Hunted Troll / Mwonvuli Beast Tracker - So, the idea behind the Beast Tracker was that it is usually pretty easy to draw the top card of my library with Selvala when I am going off. I will say, however, that I did not consider that the troll is the biggest mana ritual on a GREEN creature body, which turns out to be way more relevant than I thought it would be. I am actually kind of torn between these now.

Brutalizer Exarch - I think the main reason I liked this is that it completed a chain for turning my narrow tutors into unrestricted tutors i.e. Bellower > Empath > Exarch > that thing you really want like Dearblade or Sabertooth. The non-creature removal was just icing on the cake.

Again, I can't say enough how awesome this deck is. Literally everyone I have shown the deck to has been incredibly impressed and appreciative of it's uniqueness. You guys rock.

This decks a beauty was going to suggest Omnath but he is a win more card so decide against it.

Blackshadow415 Thank you! We did test Omnath at one point and while he has some neat utility - he doesn't let you start the combo so you need another fatty or pump spell and if you have those you're probably going off anyways... so you're right - win more

So usually I am opposed to recommending staples as they usually aren't used to their full potential cause, every one runs them not because there good but because people say their good (an example is your sol ring and mana crypt which I agree are good enough to include but are actually a bit lackluster).

Skullclamp, this card seems like it would have crazy amounts of utility now, before you start yelling about weenie packages or to slow let me explain:

1. this card, once cast will increase cards drawn by Life's Legacy and co. FOR FREE here is how: eg without skull clamp, cast Lupine Prototype draw a card, tap selvala for 5, cast life's legacy, drawn 6, float 3 eg with skull clamp, cast lupine draw a card, equip skull clamp, tap Selvala for 6 cast lifes legacy, drawn 9 (lupine has one extra power plus 2 for dieing, float 4 (but we had to use one extra mana to get started so we break even)
2. Let's say we have started storming, now are skull clamp helps keep it going... You have a grand total of 14 creatures that will die by having skull clamp equipped, and every critter would be more than glad to have skull clamp equipped before being Greater Gooded things like Elvish Spirit Guidewould go form saccing for 2, to saccing for 5!
3. and now we have squeezed every thing we can out of skull clamp, Just kidding! skullclamp is an, albeit clumsy, way to draw our deck if we have assembled infinite mana but no card draw:Cloudstone Curio, Eternal Witness/Skullwinder, and a creature with 1 toughness. cast the other critter, equip skull clamp (draw 2), cast Eternal Witness returning the other critter to your hand, cast the other critter, bounce eternal witness etc... of course kind of hard to believe that you can't already win if you have cloud stone curio, infinite mana, and a eternal witness, still... think of it as a fringe benefit and judge the card on my first two points

also I assume Harmonize is two lack luster when compared to Soul's Majesty?

Dunadain We used to have it in there way in the beginning. It might be worth revisiting - but we thought it was too few cards for too much mana.

And Myr Superion is too many hoops to jump through? seems better than Hunted Troll at least

Superion doesn't quite cut it because it's very hard to cast it without tapping Selvala to help pay... which will get us a card but usually pass the turn. We really need fatties that can enter and use Selvala immediately. Troll isn't perfect - it's on of the last 5 in the 99, but it does the trick most of the time and gives us our biggest natural order, gsz, and summoner's pact target.

Sounds reasonable, weirdest game I've had yet (I'm practicing because I am the worst storm player ever)

1. Gemstone caverns, forest, Mana dork
2. Selvala, forest, mana dork
3. invigorate on selvalva, Umbral mantle, infinite pump selvala, and my two dorks, swing at three open opponents, the look on all of our faces =D

That works too lol. I have yet to win by inf mantle and swinging with some dorks.

Hold up, Can you explain how this loop works with Memory Jar and Scroll Rack works again. I don't know why I am having a hard time understanding it completely I am usually fine with this weird stuff, but i feel lost lololol...