Smash! Smash the Vials!

Commander / EDH* Multiplayer UBRG

Paul.The.Firewood.Salesman

Land (39)

• 1x Alchemist's Refuge
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Cinder Glade
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 4x Forest
• 1x Frontier Bivouac
• 1x Glacial Chasm
• 5x Island
• 1x Karplusan Forest
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 3x Mountain
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Yavimaya Hollow

Enchantment (9)

• 1x Keen Sense
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation
• 1x Mana Reflection
• 1x Mind's Dilation
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Training Grounds
• 1x Vampiric Link
• 1x Wound Reflection
• 1x Zendikar Resurgent

Creature (18)

• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Emrakul, the Promised End
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Kaervek the Merciless
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Sakashima the Impostor
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Seedborn Muse
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Spark Double
• 1x Torrential Gearhulk
• 1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
• 1x Void Winnower
• 1x Zhur-Taa Druid

Sorcery (15)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Cultivate
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Explosive Vegetation
• 1x Expropriate
• 1x Farseek
• 1x In Garruk's Wake
• 1x Kodama's Reach
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Nissa's Expedition
• 1x Skyshroud Claim
• 1x Time Stretch
• 1x Time Warp
• 1x Treasure Cruise
• 1x Volcanic Vision

Commanders (2)

Instant (10)

• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Curtains' Call
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Disallow
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Reiterate
• 1x Swan Song

Artifact (7)

• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Helm of the Host
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Strionic Resonator
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Vedalken Orrery

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This is my take on a Dune-Brood deck led by Vial Smasher the Fierce and Thrasios, Triton Hero .

Deck is heavily based on the decklist made by the Command Zone Podcast and an article by Sam Alpert called Intellectual offering on EDHREc.

Decklists can be found here: "Vial Smasher & Thrasios - JLK | Game Knights #2" by Josh Lee Kwai of the Command Zone

And the article here: "Intellectual Offering" Article by Sam Alpert

Legendary Creature - Goblin Berserker

Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, Vial Smasher the Fierce deals damage equal to that spell's converted mana cost to an opponent chosen at random.

Partner (You can have two commanders if both have partner.)

Legendary Creature - Merfolk Wizard

: Scry 1, then reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped. Otherwise, draw a card.

Partner (You can have two commanders if both have partner.)

Why Vial Smasher the Fierce and Thrasios, Triton Hero?

Vial Smasher the Fierce is the main focus of the two commanders for this deck. Thrasios, Triton Hero is used as the partner for two reasons. First, the access to blue and green. Second, in this deck I feel his ability is more useful compared to Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix . Kydele is arguably one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, partner commander introduced in Commander 2016. And there will be times where Kydele's ability might be better than Thrasios's. However, even if Kydele has a lot of mana to offer it isn't any good if there's no spells to be cast. That's where I feel Thrasios is better. He offers this deck the chance to scry away cards that are no good at that time and lets us get to the cards we want. And with the help of cards such as Zendikar Resurgent and Training Grounds we can do this efficiently and effectively.

What Does Vial Smasher and Thrasios Do for Us?

Vial Smashers ability is the main focus for this deck. Casting a spell each turn will cause his ability to trigger and she will do damage to a random opponent equal to that spell's converted mana cost. Main thing to remember is that this trigger occurs regardless whether or not it is countered. So even if a card like Time Stretch is countered Vial Smasher still gets the opportunity to deal 10 damage to a random opponent. In order to cast these massive spells we use a lot of ramp. More ramp than is normal for most decks. Cards like Nature's Lore and Skyshroud Claim can get us the ramp that we need.

As mentioned we use Thrasios over Kydele for his scry/ramp/draw ability. Four mana cast can be very demanding and there are going to be some games where it will rarely be used if at all. But when we are able to decrease the cost to two or one we can use it all the time. It isn't a tap ability so we can use it as many times as we have mana. As mentioned, Training Grounds and Zendikar Resurgent will make it so we can use his ability for a single land. But if Seedborn Muse is also in play and isn't instantly removed (she typically doesn't stick around for long) we can scry, ramp, and draw a significant amount on everyone's turns. To make sure our hand stay with us though we make sure to run both Reliquary Tower and Thought Vessel

The low CMC of Vial Smasher and Thrasios play an interesting aspect as well. First and foremost, it really helps deal with any infect decks. Assuming you start before the infect player and the infect player drops a turn one creature like Glistener Elf , by your turn two you can put Thrasios on the board and suddenly you're no longer the target for that player.

Another obvious benefit for the low CMC is the ability to recast them from the command zone frequently. They don't get single target removed much anyways due to them not seeming as threatening as some of the bigger, nastier creatures on the board.

How Do We Win?

Vial Smasher is our main win con in this deck. A key thing to note about Vial Smasher's ability is that it's every turn and not just yours. When Vial Smasher is out on the board to get the most bang for your buck you should try to cast on other player's turns when convenient. Cards like Dig Through Time and Curtains' Call can be cast at instant speed and have their casting cost reduced. Even if the cost is reduced the CMC stays the same. So in the case of Dig Through Time, even if you delve enough cards to make it cost only two mana total, Vial Smasher will still get a random opponent for eight damage. Seedborn Muse along with Leyline of Anticipation and Vedalken Orrery can help us cast larger non-instant speed spells such as Emrakul, the Promised End on other players turns while doing a significant amount of damage.

The main game enders tend to be the spells that let us take extra turns. Nine times out of ten Expropriate well be the card. It also lets Vial Smasher hit someone for nine damage. With the right cards in hand this can string into many extra turns. In the case of a four player game (three opponents) you're guaranteed at least one extra turn as the spell resolves. You get to vote as well and there's no reason to vote to take one of your own permanents so it's obvious to take the extra turn. Most of the time our opponents will have an impressive board state and won't want to give up any pieces, so believe it or not our opponents will typically choose to give us an extra turn.

So assuming we have four extra turns and a way to tutor, we grab Time Stretch while we're at it. End turn, next turn use Time Stretch and Vial Smasher hits someone for ten, do whatever else, end turn, recur it something like card:Volcanic Visions and hit someone for seven (while doing ten damage to every creature we don't control), so on and so on.

The Land and Ramp

This deck runs a lot of big spells. Cards like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Void Winnower can be very difficult to cast in a lot of decks. So we run a land base of thirty nine lands, which is on the higher number of lands for me. On top of that we run a lot of ramp spells to get these lands for us. In turns of lands per turn this deck tends to out perform many others. By turn 5 it is very possible to start casting our big Eldrazi.

Due to the lack of creatures this deck can be vulnerable to voltron, token, and any heavy creature type builds. Because of this we need to run some pillow fort cards and we use some lands to fill this role. Maze of Ith is extremely helpful in the case of going up against voltron creatures while Glacial Chasm can buy us some turns against decks that run a lot of scary creatures.

The rest of the land base tends to veer towards green and blue. We run very little in terms of red and black spells so in turn we run fewer red and black lands.

The Rest

Having access to four of the five colours gives us the chance to run a variety of tutors. Black lets us have Demonic Tutor so we can fetch whatever cards we need. While bluelets us have Mystical Tutor . Due to the amount of ramp being used and Vial Smasher's ability it might be worth running Chord of Calling as well. For when it's cast, its CMC is equal to whatever was paid.

We run some but not a lot of counterspells. Disallow is an obvious autoinclude nowadays. deck:Mystic Confluence and deck:Summary Dismissal can be effective counterspells as well. They're mainly used due to their high cmc so Vial Smasher can get a decent trigger. Having the other utility from those cards is handy as well, though.

Last thing I'll mention are board wipes. Where most black decks that don't have white tend to run Damnation this deck can easily use In Garruk's Wake . Much higher cast works well with Vial Smasher, it doesn't hit your board, and with all the ramp it's typically very easy to cast. Besides that, Volcanic Visions, Blasphemous Act , and Cyclonic Rift are all effective board wipes.

The Conclusion

Summed up in a few sentences the deck has one main purpose. Casting big spells while Vial Smasher is out to do the most damage. Even if these spells do not resolve the damage will still be done. But if the spells do resolve then that's obviously a powerful play on their own, regardless of the damage done by Vial Smasher.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 53 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	4.31
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone
Folders	EDH Decks, Retired