Xyris Attac

Commander / EDH Casual Jank RUG (Temur)

Ocean44

Land (36)

• 1x Barkchannel Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Castle Embereth
• 1x Cinder Glade
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Flooded Grove
• 1x Grove of the Burnwillows
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 4x Island
• 1x Karplusan Forest
• 1x Ketria Triome
• 1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 3x Mountain
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Rootbound Crag
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 6x Snow-Covered Forest
• 1x Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 1x Spire Garden
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Win Con (6)

• 1x Aggravated Assault
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Moraug, Fury of Akoum
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Shared Animosity
• 1x Tempt with Vengeance

Haste Enablers (2)

• 1x Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei
• 1x Mass Hysteria

Interaction (16)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Delay
• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x March of Swirling Mist
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Negate
• 1x Rapid Hybridization
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Vandalblast

Card Draw (9)

• 1x Edric, Spymaster of Trest
• 1x Expressive Iteration
• 1x Faerie Mastermind
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Ohran Frostfang
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Toski, Bearer of Secrets
• 1x Valakut Awakening  ^Flip

Tutor (6)

• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Long-Term Plans
• 1x Time of Need
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Etc. (1)

• 1x Mercurial Spelldancer

Evasion (1)

• 1x Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive

Commander (1)

Mana Advantage (16)

• 1x Battle Hymn
• 1x Cryptolith Rite
• 1x Druids' Repository
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Jeska's Will
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Nature's Will
• 1x Neheb, the Eternal
• 1x Prosperous Innkeeper
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Sanctum Weaver
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Three Visits
• 1x Wild Growth
• 1x Wood Elves

Protection (3)

• 1x Clout of the Dominus
• 1x Diplomatic Immunity
• 1x Lightning Greaves

Recursion (3)

• 1x Bala Ged Recovery  ^Flip
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Regrowth

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Maybeboard

Removed (9)

• 1x Aspect of Mongoose
• 1x Burgeoning
• 1x Chasm Skulker
• 1x Looter il-Kor
• 1x Minds Aglow
• 1x Mystic Reflection
• 1x Primal Growth
• 1x Simic Charm
• 1x Utopia Sprawl

Additions (5)

• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Essence Warden
• 1x Green Slime
• 1x Peerless Recycling
• 1x Wear Down

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Everyone knows wheels is the most optimal way to play Xyris, but what about something more out of the ordinary? What about infinite combats and stuff?

The primary goal of this deck is to be fun to pilot.

Game Plan

In general, we want to do a few things:

1. Ramp a ton. We can never have too much mana. Ideally we can both advance our board state on our turns and hold up mana for interaction.

2. Make our creatures difficult or impossible to block. We have lots of ways to draw cards off dealing combat damage in the early game, and this helps us combo in the late game.

3. Rapidly draw through our deck. We want to see lots of cards to assemble our jank.

These three goals pair nicely with all three of our win conditions. We also have some secondary goals that help smooth out the creases.

1. Protect Xyris. This was more important for earlier versions of the deck, but Xyris is still the surest path to pulling off any of our win cons.

2. Give our creatures haste. This opens up the option to bootstrap a combat loop in some circumstances, turn new snakes into mana, and generally bolster extra combats.

Win Conditions

Combat Damage

The idea is to swing with as many creatures as possible (ideally they are unblockable), somehow generate mana on attack, and loop the process. If Xyris can connect or you have something like Edric, Spymaster of Trest out, you will draw cards each cycle to hopefully help perpetuate the loop.

• Aggravated Assault + Druids' Repository, Nature's Will, Neheb, the Eternal, Cryptolith Rite, or Sanctum Weaver. This is the primary win con.

• Moraug, Fury of Akoum + land ramp.

• Shared Animosity + snakes, Chasm Skulker, or Tempt with Vengeance. All of these options pair well with Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive.

Burn

A secondary (and arguably more powerful) win condition, use Purphoros, God of the Forge and something that generates a lot of tokens to burn your opponents.

• Tempt with Vengeance

• A loaded up Chasm Skulker

• Minds Aglow with Xyris on the field

You can also finish off opponents at low life totals with Goblin Bombardment.

General Deck Principles

One power or toughness

Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive is the cheapest way to make your whole board unblockable, but she requires some build around. Luckily for us, she is incredibly potent when paired just with our commander and her snakes, which makes the opportunity cost of maximizing this synergy low. With the amount of creature tutors we run, we can rely on this benefit to hugely power up our card draw or mana acceleration engines.

1/1 tokens

We heavily leverage small creature tokens for enormous value. As mentioned above, they help us draw cards and make mana, but they also win the game with cards like Shared Animosity or Purphoros, God of the Forge.

Big mana should be red

Aggravated Assault is our best win condition, so we prioritize making bursts of red mana to activate it multiple times.

Card Selections

Win Con

• Aggravated Assault

  As our primary win condition, a lot of this deck is built to take advantage of this card's combo potential.

• Goblin Bombardment

  This gives us a lot of control over what and who gets to stay on the board once we are generating snakes.

• Moraug, Fury of Akoum

• Purphoros, God of the Forge

• Shared Animosity

Tokens

• Chasm Skulker

  I like to use this as a battery for Purphoros, God of the Forge triggers. Plan B is not so bad, either: make a ton of evasive 1/1s.

• Mystic Reflection

  We'll almost always cast this in response to our commander's snake trigger after dealing combat damage, meaning we'll usually get three copies of the best thing on the board. Though we only have a small number of non-legendary creatures ourselves, most of them have effects that are valuable at any point in the game.

• Tempt with Vengeance

  We always want more tokens, and this is often a mana-neutral way to get them. Use in conjunction with any of our creature-based mana generators, such as Battle Hymn or Cryptolith Rite.

Ramp

• Azusa, Lost but Seeking

  In the early and mid game she lets us quickly make use of excess lands, especially when we start drawing cards with our commander. In the late game, she combos with Moraug, Fury of Akoum to help close out the game.

• Cultivate, Sol Ring

  Eat your vegetables.

• Farseek, Nature's Lore, & Three Visits

  Ramping at two mana is great. Ramping and color fixing at two mana is superb.

• Primal Growth

  This one is right on the edge and probably wouldn't make the cut if the lands didn't come in untapped. We definitely want to kick this if possible to essentially make it a one mana spell. Pairs well with Moraug, Fury of Akoum.

• Sakura-Tribe Elder

  He can be an attacker when we need him to be, he's a snake for Shared Animosity benefits, and at worst he's a two mana ramp spell.

• Sanctum Weaver

  We were actually running a fairly high density of enchantments already, and this slots right in. Most notably it combos with Aggravated Assault when we have at least four other enchantments out, which actually isn't super difficult to achieve.

• Wood Elves

  A solid ETB effect on a 1/1 body that we can make copies of with Mystic Reflection if need be.

Protection

• Aspect of Mongoose & Diplomatic Immunity

  These both serve the same simple purpose: protect our commander. If she is already protected, protect a combo piece.

• Clout of the Dominus

  This is low-key one of the best cards in this deck. For one mana we get:

  • Protection for our commander
  • Haste for our commander
  • Two extra cards per combat
  • Two extra snakes per combat
  • An enchantment to fuel Sanctum Weaver

Combo

• Battle Hymn

• Cryptolith Rite

• Druids' Repository

• Nature's Will

• Neheb, the Eternal

Haste Enablers

• Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei

  This is on-demand haste that every one of our creature tutors can grab. That {R} cost is a downside, but the situations where it's prohibitive are going to be edge cases. The fact that he can incidentally make evasive creatures for us is a nice bonus.

• Mass Hysteria

  The fact that this is one mana means everything.

Labs

It turns out that lots of the new mechanics Wizards has been designing could work well with Xyris. Things are good with value engines? Fancy that!

I'll document what new toys we're trying out here and how well they're working.

MDFCs

Verdict: Worth it!

• Valakut Awakening  
• Bala Ged Recovery  

So far these have been great! It's always nice to trade our hand with Valakut Awakening   when we haven't found what we're looking for, and Bala Ged Recovery   offers excellent options, especially since we're a touch light on lands.

Foretell

Verdict: Not worth it

Mystic Reflection is obviously the best of these for us, and it's sticking around since it's cute with Eternal Witness and gives us access to our opponents' best creatures. The rest I tried are simply over-costed and underwhelming, and I was never happy to draw them.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	3 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.39
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Dragon Spirit 5/5 R, Elemental 1/1 R w/ Haste, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Manifest 2/2 C, Snake 1/1 G, Spirit 1/1 C, Treasure