Zndrsplt/Okaun Shimmer Stax (cEDH)

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive Stax UR (Izzet)

NighthawkBotH

Lands (30)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Cephalid Coliseum
• 1x Command Beacon
• 1x Emergence Zone
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 11x Island
• 4x Mountain
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Volcanic Island

Tutor (9)

• 1x Drift of Phantasms
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Imperial Recruiter
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Transmute Artifact
• 1x Tribute Mage

Stax (8)

• 1x Arcane Laboratory
• 1x Back to Basics
• 1x Blood Moon
• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Planar Chaos
• 1x Stasis
• 1x Stranglehold

Cantrips (2)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Ponder

Interaction (16)

• 1x Capsize
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Izzet Charm
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Negate
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Rolling Earthquake
• 1x Swan Song

Ramp (16)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Basalt Monolith
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Simian Spirit Guide
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thought Vessel

Utility (3)

• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x The Royal Scions
• 1x Voltaic Key

Commanders (2)

Combo (8)

• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Desperate Ritual
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Frenetic Efreet
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Shimmer Myr
• 1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
• 1x Thassa's Oracle

Card Draw (4)

• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Windfall

Coin-Flip Card Engine (1)

• 1x Krark's Thumb

Flex (1)

• 1x Tangle Wire

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Maybeboard

Other (4)

• 1x Chance Encounter
• 1x Emergence Zone
• 1x Goblin Bomb
• 1x Thirst for Knowledge

Combo (2)

• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Comet Storm

Stax (1)

• 1x Mana Web

Flex (1)

• 1x Crawlspace

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EDIT:

While I'm not actively updating this description, I will update the list per the Flash ban. The deck replaces Flash with Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. This means we're going to actively avoid using the former Flash when route when we can, but in exchange gain a creature that is far from dead in our hands. If we set up Iso/Rev at instant speed while going off, we can weave in Teferi to win with Thassa's Oracle (also a new addition) at instant speed. All this will make more sense below. Emergence Zone is also coming back from older version since it opens up an alternative win con when we happen to draw it. (Another possible addition is Vedalken Orrery, but may be too dead of a card)

What the hell is this?

This is a fresh rewrite of my UR staxy/midrange deck. The deck is designed to slow the game down and win with a build-your-own Ad Nauseam in the form of Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom and Frenetic Efreet. Unlike some more funsie chaos versions, we eschew a lot of the more gimmicky coin-flipping cards and are strictly focused on slowing our opponents and gathering a critical mass of resources before comboing off.

Wait what? How does that work?

Zndrsplt is on the field. We play Frenetic Efreet and activate his ability. We hold priority and activate it again. And again. And again... Once we start resolving X amount of triggers, we start flipping coins. What happens to Efreet doesn't matter at this point. Regardless of if we win or lose or first resolution of the stack, we get to flip a coin, which means we get to draw off of each winning flip with Zndrsplt. With enough flips, we are bound to win ~50% of our activations, thus drawing about half of how ever many activations we decided to dump out.

How do you actually win?

Most of our win conditions hinge on resolving Frenetic Efreet with Zndsplt on the field. We can either activate Frenetic Efreet for a certain proportion of your deck for the less committal route, or we can activate Efreet 1,000,000,000 times and go the Laboratory Maniac route. Or both. More on this later. We can also just manually assemble Isochron Scepter/Dramatic Reversal and win off a variety of methods from there as well.

After drawing all or most of your deck you can usually assemble a win via several divergent routes:

• With one leftover mana: Simian Spirit Guide > Desperate Ritual > Shimmer Myr > Isochron Scepter/Dramatic Reversal > ...

• Blue Sun's Zenith everyone to death.

• If you have more life than everyone else: Rolling Earthquake everyone to death. This tends to be the case if you've been harassing with Okaun or just by virtue of playing against a lot of players with incidental life loss with through fetches, Dark Confidant, or other various means.

• If we got enough pieces, we can pivot towards the Laboratory Maniac win: Flash in Laboratory Maniac > Blue Sun's Zenith ourselves for the rest of our deck +1 OR we can flash in Sensei's Divining Top and draw out the rest of our deck with Isochron Scepter/Dramatic Reversal activations.

• ... Or, if for what ever reason we can't go into our Shimmer Myr into Iso/Rev, we can always just do the riskier play and just commit an enormous amount of Efreet draws and Flash in Lab Man before the killing draw trigger.

• We also can just play Krark's Thumb, play Zndrsplt, and just straight up draw an ABSURD amount of cards at the beginning of our combat step. The most I've drawn was 17 cards. Sometimes that's all it takes and we can assemble Iso/Rev manually from there.

We can also intersperse these steps with additional protective measures like Capsize'ing every single permanent on the board, or flashing in artifact stax pieces like Grafdigger's Cage if someone tries to Flash/Hulk over you.

Of course, there is always Plan Z: Smash the strongest face with Okaun. Either with Efreet, or Krark's Thumb, or just having both Okaun and Zndrplt out can provide enough coin flips to get Okaun's power in RKO range of someone's face. We play card:The Royal Scion as a decent looter with a hard to kill body, but also to provide the very important and strangely missing trample to Okaun. I've also had games where I've Efreet'd with Zndrplt and just -8 with The Royal Scions to just laser-erase someone off their chair, then proceed to beat down the last player remaining with a massive Okaun. Bit Magic Christmas-landy, but it happens.

What if we fizzle?

While it's very unlikely, it happens. We activate Efreet 120 times, we score a bit under a ~50% draw rate, and all our pieces are on the bottom 20. One useful thing about Efreet is that sometimes the first activation just phases him and we get another shot next turn. Worst case scenario, he gets sacc'd and we start trying to assemble combo lines manually or use the aforementioned PLAN Z SMASH route. Luckily we have some very strong stax pieces that just lock some decks out from playing. Blood Mooning color greedy manabases sometimes just shuts down players and lets clock down the table. Or some other weird interaction will come up occasionally. Point is, you gotta get creative sometimes when you're playing Izzet.

Why have you wasted so much of your previous time on this planet working on this?

I'm a Johnny by heart. I like taking conventionally terrible cards and pushing them to their absolute ceiling. And despite mainly playing cEDH when I'm playing commander, I appreciate and identify with the duality of Okaun and Zndrsplt. It's a beautiful duality of a cunning and resourceful approach with the primal ME SMASH instinct that bubbles up sometimes. Plus they're both huge eyeballs and oh my god I just realized they are partners because two single eyes make a pair of eyes wow.

Cards Possibly to Cut:

• Lightning Greaves: I really don't like Lightning Greaves in my decks usually, but getting an out of nowhere RKO with Okaun is really fun. Probably biased here as it ends up being a mid-late game dead draw.
• Drift of Phantasms: One of our two tutors for Efreet. Feels necessary, but also so slow and more color intensive than Imperial Recruiter.
• Capsize: Might just be a win-more card.
• Stranglehold: I actually really like this card, but 4 CMC just to have someone fire off their Vampiric Tutors they've been waiting to cast end of turn feels really bad. Huge tempo loss.
• Thought Vessel: Useful when going off with Efreet and getting the Shimmer Myr line going but you end up fizzling. Getting to quick cast it in before having to discard to hand size has its uses. But it's also such a vanilla mana rock.

Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.13
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Treasure
Folders	decks i want to build (not my design), MISC, interesting