Updated February 11th, 2019

30th EDH Deck - Shimmer Zur

Based on Suasion's Shimmer Zur Storm List

WIP missing 2 more cards


Introduction



"Perfection through Knowledge, Satisfaction through Ruthlessness, Harmony through Acceptance"


I'm the guy who loves playing decks that aren't that popular and will spends thousands of dollars refining them until I deem them complete, yes I am that type of person. I been introduced to Magic the Gathering back in middle school in the year of 2003, the block that I started in was the Kamigawa block and I found it very interesting. During that time I played a constructed deck on and off and eventually life happened and I stopped playing, flash forward almost exactly ten years later and I joined an anime/otaku club. Here I met people playing MTG and I also started getting back into it. Currently I am an avid competitive EDH player who has a tendency to play combo/control decks, I absolutely hate to lose but I enjoy a great match. I've been known in my group as always being threatening and able to win out of the blue so they love to make my life hard and deny me all of my resources, as you will see the reason a lot of my decks are built to win either with flair or questionable commanders. Now enough about me, go read further below that's what you actually came here for!

Zur currently doesn't have a long or rich history as compared to my other decks. He is my newest cEDH deck and spurred from the idea of playing my Kess deck. Ever since I moved away from Doomsday combo and into a mid-ranged Ad Naus gameplan with her, I felt bad that I wasn't making use of the foil Gush my friend got me for my birthday. It was too pretty not to use! I was also not playing my Brago deck as much as my meta always moaned and groaned whenever I play him. So rising from the ashes of my Brago deck came in Zur. I had pretty much all the fast mana rocks with a few exceptions like Mox Diamond as well as Grim Monolith and they were all included into Zur, I had most of the black tutors as well. Now currently Zur is incomplete as I'm missing a couple key cards, but I couldn't wait to play him, so this is the current assembly I have available to me and will be updated as I collect more and more cards for him!


Deck Breakdown


Zur the Enchanter

A couple reasons why Zur is at the helm of this deck as well being why he is the reason of choice for our colors.

  1. Zur is able to fetch us Necropotence consistently. He is essentially our guaranteed Necro in the command zone. With that being said that is a consistent CA engine for us that doubles as our win condition as well.
  2. Costing only is very reasonable in addition being only a 1/4 creature. The 4 toughness means he dodges bolts as well as being able to be a good defender.
  3. Zur's ability is on a attack trigger, so even swinging just once allows us to tutor for an 3 CMC enchantment at will. Our only main issue is protecting Zur, but we run a great protection suite so there is not much to worry.
  4. Being in Esper colors, we run the most efficient of the control theme. We have access to counterspells, the tutors, as well as the removal. We are optimal at controlling the boardstate, playing permission with our opponents, and also finding our combo pieces to win.

There is no other commander in the Esper colors that doubles as a win con. With the way the deck is built we are guaranteed accessibility to Necropotence and from there we can go dig super deep for our combo pieces. That is essentially the biggest and main reason why we run Zur.

Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  : Does our looting, does our flashback, can stack for High Tide turns. Great all around.

Laboratory Maniac : Our alternate win condition with Doomsday .

Notion Thief : Pure value creature for us, shuts down Jhoira, Weatherligth Captain decks as well as any card drawing nut.

Shimmer Myr : Our namesake creature why we built this deck, allows the potential to win instant speed with Aetherflux Reservoir .

Mana rocks are self explanatory.

Aetherflux Reservoir : Our primary win condition. Easy to storm off and gain enough life to end the game.

Helm of Awakening : An enabler to reduce the cost of our spells during storm turns. Makes mana rocks net positive mana as well as our cantrips to give further value.

Isochron Scepter : Alternative win condition in the condition we aren't able to storm off. Goes infinite with Dramatic Reversal and mana rocks that produce at least mana.

Nihil Spellbomb : Selective grave hate with also cantrip value when popped.

Scroll Rack : A card that let's you see an unfair amount of cards when used with Necropotence or Ad Nauseam . Super useful in any situation.

Sensei's Divining Top : Staple in any deck, more broken in this one in particular. With all the synergy we have, this can also double as our win condition with IsoRev combo and Helm of Awakening .

Grasp of Fate : Our anti-enchantment/artifact. Rule of Law type cards really ruin our day so optimally we need a couple of ways to remove them. This is one of the best ways.

Mystic Remora : Value card advantage engine for burst draw or taxing effect. A lot of people hate seeing this card on the field.

Necropotence : Essentially a win condition for us as the earlier we have Necro on the field, the earlier we can combo off as well as win.

Rhystic Study : As with Mystic Remora, it's a more steady and consistent CA engine for us where it gives pressure to our opponents on either slowing down their game plan or giving us value in CA. This is for our replacement Timetwister .

Counterspells are self explanatory.

Ad Nauseam : A win con by itself. When paired with Angel's Grace , it is pretty much a win on the spot.

Angel's Grace : The enabler that allows us to essentially draw our whole deck with Ad Nauseam .

Brainstorm : Staple cantrip that allows us to manipulate cards from our hand to library top as well as manipulate. Great card overall for a measly .

Cabal Ritual : Ritual effects are always great. Enables for plenty of ridiculous plays.

Chain of Vapor : Great for storm, great for bouncing annoying stuff, great card all around.

Cyclonic Rift : When you want to tell someone No.

Dark Ritual : Same as Cabal Ritual .

Dramatic Reversal : Stupid card that can be a win condition as well as a storm enabler. Flexible card.

Enlightened Tutor : Grabs us Shimmer Myr as well as Necropotence . No reason not to run when it can grab us our winning pieces.

Frantic Search : Great for piles or just to dig for more answers, being in instant speed helps tremendously.

Gush : For Doomsday pile almost outright.

High Tide : Value card that allows us to essentially gain double mana that turn. However it does help out opponents as well. Using this in addition with Yawgmoth's Will can be almost unfair...almost... :P

Hurkyl's Recall : Great for dealing with stax pieces as well as storm turns.

Impulse : An efficient card that digs us four cards in.

Lim-Dul's Vault : Great way to find that perfect card we need.

Mystical Tutor : Flexible card as well. 1/3 of our whole deck is instants soooo...makes sense to run it duh.

Opt : Cheap cantrip to draw. Great at any point of the game.

Quicken : Tech card that allows us to instant speed a Yawgmoth's Will , Demonic Tutor , or even a Toxic Deluge . Great value all around.

Silence : Useful utility card that lets me play by myself or telling someone to chill for a turn :P

Swords to Plowshares : Classic staple removal.

Vampiric Tutor : I don't think I need to explain this one.

Dark Petition : Our budget Imperial Seal . Will be swapped once I obtain one. Has synergy for spell mastery and grabbing Doomsday or Necropotence .

Demonic Tutor : Classic tutor, no need to explain.

Doomsday : Our alternative win condition. We have a couple of piles to choose from with this card.

Gitaxian Probe : Essentially a free Peek . Always good to know what people have up their sleeves.

Merchant Scroll : Essentially grabs us our protection spells most of the time.

Ponder : Great cantrip that allows us some minimal library manipulation.

Preordain : Same as above with the exception we get to scry.

Toxic Deluge : Our board wipe that gets around Gaddock Teeg . Just great all around.

Windfall : This in conjunction with Notion Thief can essentially win you the game. Other than that it's great refill as well as disruption.

Yawgmoth's Will : Can be one of our lines to win, great value all around. An unfair card at almost any time.

Our main strengths include:

  • Speed
  • Resilience
  • Flexibility

Shimmer Zur is a strong deck, we have a consistent way to win fast either by Zur fetching us Necropotence or going for a early Ad Nauseam . We are near the top when it comes to rushing out a win as soon as possible. We are also resilient to most decks as well, we have a quality amount of protection as well as answers. Not to mention also there is also a plethora of alternate win condition when one is not available to us.

Our main weaknesses include:

  • Complexity
  • Ad Nauseam
  • Stax

As with most storm decks, any sort of stax like Null Rod , Spirit of the Labyrinth , Rule of Law , Trinisphere will severely hinder our game plans. People will also notice you are an Ad Naus deck so chances are they will hit you first and whittle away your life so you won't gain as much advantage for your card draw. Our last biggest weakness is actually the skill level, we have so many options and lines, if you don't know what to go for you will actually be shut down quite easily. Knowing what to do is half the battle and with a deck and highly synergistic it is easy to make mistakes and those mistakes can and will cost you the game.


Deck Piloting


An optimal hand will look something akin to:

  • 2-3 Lands are pure gravy for you.
  • Tutors - Most of the time we will be fetching our Ad Nauseam.
  • 1-2 Mana Accelerators
  • Card Advantage (CA) - Any effects that allows us to have an engine is great.

To be added~

There is several ways to win when playing this deck. Listed below are the win conditions.

This is the main course of our deck and the most often way we will win. Our goal for this win condition is to fetch Necropotence with Zur and go to essentially 1 life to draw as many cards as possible or to use Ad Nauseam with Angel's Grace to draw our whole library.

What we need from here is mana to win, we will net mana casting our 0 cost mana rocks and use effects like Helm of Awakening to reduce the cost. We can short cut this if you have Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal in play to go infinite mana which leads to infinite life as well. Than we can deathstar people.

We can however also do this at instant speed due to Shimmer Myr , which thus makes the deck incredibly difficult to deal with as we can do this all at the end step of our Necropotence as there is an instance where we can still cast spells before discarding down to maximum hand size. By flashing in Shimmer Myr we are able to flash in our win condition all at instant speed as well as net enough mana to cast Aetherflux Reservoir . With this way all we need is to have mana available as well as enough mana rocks to produce for our deathstar . Once we accomplished that we can stack our spells at instant speed and procure enough life to shoot everyone down.

We have the package for Doomsday (DD) also built in for us. We have several piles we can use as well. For new players, the reason we use DD is to shortcut the way we can win with Laboratory Maniac (Labman). By exiling all the in the library to only five cards makes it way easier to draw everything and win. To play with DD, there are certain requirements that have to be met. First you always need an pile opener in your hand, whether it be Opt , Brainstorm , Ponder , Preordain , etc. as long it draws you one card. From there you have to know how much mana you have available and how much cards you need to draw to design your pile.


Here is an example of a classic pile without Lion's Eye Diamond and Yawgmoth's Will using Ponder as an opener.

  1. Gush
  2. Laboratory Maniac
  3. Brainstorm
  4. Gitaxian Probe
  5. Opt

That will be the order you will put the cards into your library in. The requirements for this pile is having + mana as well as two Islands available. To win with the pile you will cast Ponder to draw into Gush , bounce your two Islands into your hand to free cast Gush . Draw Labman and Brainstorm . Cast Labman, than cast Brainstorm to draw out your library and win the game.


Doomsday is highly variable as there are plenty of ways to build your DD piles. An example of a protected pile would look something like this:

  1. Gush
  2. Pact of Negation
  3. Opt
  4. Preordain
  5. Gitaxian Probe

Same as before we will be using Ponder as an opener. The requirements for this pile is having access to + , two Islands, as well as 2 life. Although it costs one more to play with as well as 2 life, it gives you a protection spell so you can stop any form of disruption when going for the win.


Now there are certain tricks and tips as well when your playing with DD piles. Having access to Yawgmoth's Will and Lion's Eye Diamond (L.E.D.) makes our DD piles easier on the mana as well as giving us an unreal amount of advantage. Here is a DD pile using the aforementioned cards. As with before we will be using Ponder as our opener.

  1. Gush
  2. Gitaxian Probe
  3. Lion's Eye Diamond
  4. Yawgmoth's Will
  5. Laboratory Maniac

The requirements for this pile is having 4 life with either + 2 Islands in play or + 4 Islands in play. We win with this pile by casting Ponder to draw into Gush , bouncing two Islands to draw Gitaxian Probe and Lion's Eye Diamond . Play L.E.D., cast Gitaxian Probe in response to cast, crack L.E.D. floating . Draw Yawgmoth's Will . Cast with floating mana. Replay Lion's Eye Diamond from the grave and crack it to float . Cast Ponder again from the grave to draw Laboratory Maniac , cast with floating mana. Now cast either Gush or Gitaxian Probe to win the game.


These are some of general piles used within DD. There are several other ways and sometimes you have to be creative. Hope this helps new people understand how you can win with Doomsday !

Our other alternative is also winning via Demonic Consultation (DC). It is by far our most simplest way to win, but also efficient. The requirements is having Laboratory Maniac on the field as well as and a cantrip in hand like say for example Gitaxian Probe . The steps is as follows:

  1. Cast Laboratory Maniac .
  2. Cast Demonic Consultation , naming a card not in your library. For example Forest .
  3. Flip until you exile your whole library, since we don't have a Forest in our deck.
  4. Cast Gitaxian Probe .
  5. Win the game.

It's that easy! Now taking into consideration, with more mana we can do all sorts of play. For example we can use Demonic Consulation to fetch us our Labman and than grab him, use Yawgmoth's Will to recast Demonic Consultation and than exile our whole library. Cast a cantrip and than win.

Additional uses for DC can be also used to grab the other half of our winning combo piece. Another example would be having Isochron Scepter and all the pieces in our hand to win but not having Dramatic Reversal , we can also use DC as a surefire way to grab it as well, albeit it might be risky since we have to bank on it not being on the top 6 cards of our library.


Clicky here if you like killing people by a Deathstar!

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Updates Add

Had the time to do a little write up, will add in more into the deck strategy section as I pilot the deck a bit more. All experience from before was from playing my Kess (DD) deck before. Feel free to let me know if there is something I should add in!

Comments

Casual

91% Competitive

Revision 12 See all

(5 years ago)

Top Ranked
  • Achieved #32 position overall 5 years ago
Date added 5 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

43 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

18 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.82
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Folders Retired Decks, edh
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