@MCJennings I'm glad that I could arouse your interest in this formidable weapon :) I have just teted it yesterday at my local FNM and it did great work. I managed to copy an opponents Boundless Realms by using Sunforger to cast Fork ... This was probably one of the greatest plays I've ever done :D

I like your way of thinking about the "huggy ramp" There's one card that came to my mind immediatly: Oath of Lieges seems to fit in this category perfectly... gods be merciful... Now I need to overthink the decklist again...

Transcendence truly is a great and absolutely insane card! I had it in the deck for a long time but I am switching my wincons, trying new things from time to time. I'm sure it will make its way back into the deck at some point though, as it is one of my personal favourites... I remember one particular situation: One of my opponents was casting an Exsanguinate for 35, killing all players but me and himself. I had a Render Silent at hand... but also had an Enlightened Tutor ... I decided to use the tutor, fetching me the enchantment in question. The Exsanguinate-guy at first didn't get what I was up to, telling me that this wouldn't help me to survive his next turn. This was until I gifted him the enchantment gracefully... :D

I know what your talking about... it's the evil goat speaking out of you there... I do love my Perplexing Chimera ... so much chaos... just perfect. I just recently stumbled upon the Divine Intervention ... I. Need. This. Card. It's just everything my deck want's to do: Spreading a lot of chaos doing some unintelligible nonsense, prolonging the game for about 15-20 turns just to cast a card like this...

I wanted to brainstorm with you an old card I just discovered because of MTG Goldfish. What are your feelings about Anvil of Bogardan in place of Howling Mine ? Obviously it's not card advantage, but it is one more means of having no maximum handsize and still digs deeper. Same cost card type and general function does make them comparable.

I think I am going to work it into my list but I'm still mulling it over.

@ MCJennings The Anvil of Bogardan looks very sweet to me and I think that it might just be better than Howling Mine indeed. Very often I'm hording valuable enchantments and artifacts in my graveyard to cast an Open the Vaults , most of the time resulting in a powerfull bordstate unexpected by my opponents. The Anvil should be able helping me by filling my graveyard over the time with valuable goods... I'm making some changes to my Zedruudeck at the moment, trying out some new things to spice it up. So I did just cut the Howling Mine for Torpor Orb (SCREW YOU, Bane of Progress !!) . I'm going through some testing right now and I will update the deck sometime next week here on tappedout :)

I'm looking forward to seeing it! I love Torpor Orb for the fact that what's often the removal for it is Acidic Slime , Reclamation Sage , Bane of Progress , Knight of Autumn , etc. You see your opponents face light up for a moment after drawing as they've found their answer... Only to realize it wont work.

@ MCJennings , Update's out, now I only need to revise the whole deck-description... might take some time :D

This looks to be the funnest zedruu build I’ve seen on tappedout. Excellent job on the deck and primer. Big +1 from me.

@ KayneMarco , thank you for your kind words :) I put my heart into this deck and it means much to me... maybe too much when I'm thinking about it :D

Zedruu is love, Zedruu is life

Looks like a solid enchantment/control build. You've got all the pillow fort enchantment MVPs, and a flexible-looking suite of responses. Points for the creative use of Forbidden Orchard + Trading Post in that silly Mindslaver combo - I wouldn't have thought to donate Orchard for combo fuel, but it's quite clever and totally on-theme for Zedruu.

Your take on Zedruu definitely has a different strategic focus than mine, and as you mentioned a significantly different budget level, so I'm not sure how relevant my input will be. But... since you brought it up in a comment above, I'd heartily endorse Oath of Lieges as hug-ramp. I've gotten some serious mileage out of that card. Zedruu can guarantee it triggers by donating land to the targeted player, which also serves as a political bribe AND fuel for Zedruu's ability.

Combined with Surveyor's Scope + Brand it's absolutely brutal - Scope can leapfrog you from least to most lands in a 4-player game AND THEN you can take back all the lands you've donated with Brand. I thought this would be a riskier combo (giving away lands seems sketchy) but so far the biggest problem I've encountered playtesting it has been decking myself early with the ridiculous card draw.

Also, if you're consistently getting out Paradox Haze early via tutors/whatever, you might want to consider Orzhov Advokist . It may not mesh with your creature-light shell, but Paradox Haze is enough to turn it into a hilariously game-destabilizing monster.

Anyway, cool deck man.

Oh yeah - I forgot to mention that Oath of Lieges also synergizes with Paradox Haze , ramping you for 2 while everybody else (except the target) gets only 1. You can hand out lands like party favors and still not fall behind the curve.

@ SentientRhombus , thank you for your feedback/ suggestions :) I had Oath of Lieges in my decklist for quite some time and made good use of it, that was until my playgroup made some changes regarding the overall powerlevel... Suddenly the good old Oath was enabling them to much, resulting in game-wins in my opponents side as early as turn 5/6 (My Zedruu-deck usually can't win before turn 11/12... most of the time later, regarding its ridiculous wincons...). So I sadly needed to cut it from the list. I never thought about using it together with Paradox Haze though... that's awesome <3 I think I will give it another chance. Your Idea to combine it with Surveyor's Scope is also brilliant, I just don't know if I can fit that one in...I really want to try it though... so many cards, so many choices... Brand just hasn't been of much use for me as the deck stands right now, I totally see its value in combination with cards mentioned above though so I might look that through as soon as I try it out ;)

Hi love what you’ve created! I was wondering is there a primary win condition for the deck?

@ Skullclamped , Hey, glad you like it :)

As the deck stands right now, the primary win condition would be to copy the Illusions of Grandeur multiple times with Copy Enchantment , Estrid's Invocation or Clever Impersonator . The deck also contains enough enchantment-recursion like Hall of Heliod's Generosity , Replenish , etc. to regain the Illusions back from your graveyard. While this is pretty janky, the deck somehow manages to win relatively consistently, as it doesn't look very threatening and most of the time flies under the radar until it's to late >:)

Another way to win that's even more janky might be with Dance of the Manse through combat-damage... never tried that one out yet though :D

Giver of Runes could be a tad better than Mother of Runes because you can also pick colorless or just put them in. Great deck keep us up notice you made some updates. Her downside is she cant protect herself.

@ THCue ,

Yeah, your absolutely right about Giver of Runes probably being better than our beloved mother. I just do like the mother's artwork much better <3 (Did you ever notice the little dwarf-thing in the bottom-left corner? )

I will update the Primer in the next few weeks, I just wanted to make sure that the decklist won't have changed again halftrough the writing-process :D

Maybe you could add a section on tutor targets to help us better understand your thought process in a game. When piloting the deck I tend to go for Wild Research first since it can fill up the yard with enchantments to be brought back with one of the many recursion spells

I tend to get to the late game 1v1 pretty easily but find it hard to close with the illusions combo

The problem is that it often requires a tutor + donate + removal which is a pretty hefty amount of mana (not taking into account if you have to recast zedruu). Usually it happens over 2 turns and everyone sees it coming

How do you win reliably with it? And do you think the deck needs a secondary wincon as well? Eg adding some wheel effects Windfall,Wheel of Fortune, Winds of Change, Dockside Extortionist and Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer to turn all treasure tokens into hasty beaters without changing the decks primary game plan. Thanks!

It might be wise to add in your maybe list two lands that are not the OLD duels alot of people can't run them and would love to find a nice replacement for the two. I'm digging around looking as well if anyone can give some ideas that would be awesome.

@ Skullclamped ,

This will be done in the very near future as I'm working on a huge update for the primer :) Wild Research is a good target, Mystic Remora or Smothering Tithe should also be very helpfull to get you through the early game.

It's very true that it's hard to pull of the combo with the Illusions of Grandeur . This deck isn't designed to win a lot of games after all though. While the value-engine and overall performance of this deck is working perfectly fine, I softened up the wincons by a fair bit over the cause of time. With all the tutors, card-draw and mana-accelerants it's pretty easy to pull of a win in my experience. At least for casual games within my playgroup the Zedruu-Deck has been way to powerfull and won most of the games. Even with this Jank-wincon I win my fair share of games. As you say it's easy to get to 1vs1 in the late game. Most opponents tend to have blown of nearly all of their ammunition at this point, while we can recur most of our stuff to pull of a win, even if it takes us 2-3 turns to pull it off. However this applies to my own playgroup, while you might have made slightly different experiences. So I'll list a few of my former win-conditions below:

1. Approach of the Second Sun ... only one card, boring but easy.
2. Wild Research , Nexus of Fate and Library of Leng ... take infinite turns and let Zedruu kill them all with commanderdamage while cyclonic rift clears the path.... way more flashy and surprisingly consistent.
3. Swapping out a bordwipe for Austere Command and including Enchanted Evening doesn't only generate a ton of mana with Serra's Sanctum but also allows to blow up everyone's board while using Teferi's Protection to phase out laughing. Boros Charm might also be usefull in this scenario...

@ THCue , yeah you're absolutely right about the deck not being very budget-friendly... I'm thinking about building a budget version of this deck in the near future to make it more affordable for everyone. Adding some land-alternatives to the maybe-board might do it for now though :)

NetholonTheArchmage

Very Very Great update my friend. Now I have alot to read and already Ordered the cards LOL. Minus the guilded drake I had to just throw in Giver of Runes until I can trade or you have something you would toss in for a great place holder. Also missing 2 of the old duels and Serra's Sanctum

Great update!

@ THCue ,

I'm glad you like it. Giver of Runes seems like a perfectly valid placeholder for me, it's always helpful to have more ways to protect our goat. If you think you can afford to raise the CMC for a tiny bit, Sun Titan might prove quite useful with this list, as it mostly consists of low-cmc-permanents. Another card that just didn't make into the list is Phyrexian Metamorph, which is very versatile and sort of a slightly weaker Clever Impersonator. Also it does allow even more Perplexing Chimera-copies... >:)

Have fun playing!

March of the Machines What is the main reason for this card? Reason is I kind of see more harm than good? Thoughts?

@ THCue, March of the Machines is a key-part of two game-winning combos. Look it up in the "Ending the game" -section of the primer. I hope this helps. :)

The new Nine Lives would be a fun way to eliminate an opponent. Delusions of Mediocrity is another big-life-swing enchantment.

When you say: "Estrid's Invocation might be the most fun out of the bunch, as the enchantment removes itself from the game during their owners upkeep, causing him to loose 20 life just to re-enter as just another version of the Illusions of Grandeur under your control again, gaining you 20 life and starting the whole game again." This is not true because the card tell that the controller MAY exile this enchantment so the opponent will never choose to exile it.

@ bushido_man96 , I'm currently working on a major update to this primer - Nine Lives has made it into the decklist and allows for some nice shenanigans...

I always found the Delusions of Mediocrity to cost-intensive for a drainfor10-effect, yet I would consider it in a budget-list!

@ gozzi26 , You're absolutely right with that. I don't know how we could miss this all this time... Seems like neither I nor my opponents bothered to read the card correctly :D I'll make sure to change that within the next update!

Hi NetholonTheArchmage !

One year has passed and I'm always in love with your deck.

I was wondering why you were playing Minamo, School at Water's Edge . You've nice synergies, especially with Serra's Sanctum , but that's all the card does.

I spended many time to change some cards of your deck. I find that Pendant of Prosperity , Tolaria West and Dack Fayden fit very well in the deck, as Humility or Land Tax , but you probably already know for those ones.

Arcane Lighthouse and/or Shadowspear are great cards to deal with shroud/hexproof/indestructible, depending your playgroup. It's same for graveyard hate, but I'm still looking for a good card cause I also play with my graveyard.

I considered many time Nine Lives to Phyrexian Unlife , but still prefer the unlife to avoid loss of life cards, like Exsanguinate (where Nine Lives protect only for damage).

Trying to replace Robe of Mirrors (I don't like aura, they vanish with board wipes), I find Spiritual Asylum , wich seems perfect on the spot. But I don't feel confortable with the shroud effect it give. Sure, it protect your creatures and (most important) your lands, but it cancel the Zedruu's ability on lands, wich I'm used to give . Still keeping in mind Lightning Greaves , but it can't be tutored with Wild Research

I'm not a big fan about Illusions of Grandeur when you play Solitary Confinement . Why gaining 20 LP when you can never lose them ? I honestly find the combo unreliable and too much slow.

Finally, thank you for your work. It really make me love Zedruu, and gived me the strength to start building a deck (I mean, ctrl c - ctrl v your deck). Best of luck to you, can't wait for next update