This weekend at SCG Con Las Vegas, players had the opportunity to try out new MH3 cards in a highly competitive setting. In the Modern $5k,
Nadu, Winged Wisdom
Nadu, Winged Wisdom
Flying
Creatures you control have "Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand. This ability triggers only twice each turn."
surely made its presence felt. Three players in the top 16 rocked Nadu combo decks maximizing the Bird’s synergy with
Shuko
Shuko
Equipped creature gets +1/+0.
Equip {0} ({0}: Attach to target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery.)
. A unique Eldrazi Tron decklist also made it all the way to top four, fully abusing
Ugin’s Labyrinth
Ugin’s Labyrinth
Imprint — When this land enters, you may exile a colorless card with mana value 7 or greater from your hand.
{T}: Add {C}. If a card is exiled with this land, add {C}{C} instead.
{T}: Return the exiled card to its owner's hand.
.
While MH3 is clearly going to have a major impact on the Modern metagame for the foreseeable future, Modern isn’t the only format that’s being affected. MH3 is going to influence Arena formats like Historic and Timeless, Eternal formats such as Legacy and Vintage, and even Singleton formats like cEDH. In fact, an elite Storm deck featuring multiple new cards emerged victorious at the cEDH $8k at SCG Con Las Vegas, boasting a turn one win in the finals!
Given the flashy performance, we think this deck and the new additions deserve some recognition. Let’s start by breaking down exactly what this deck is trying to accomplish.
Main Gameplan
As you might expect from a deck that is utilizing
Underworld Breach
Underworld Breach
Each nonland card in your graveyard has escape. The escape cost is equal to the card's mana cost plus exile three other cards from your graveyard. (You may cast cards from your graveyard for their escape cost.)
At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice this enchantment.
, the goal behind this strategy is to combo kill your opponents. The cards in the deck can mainly be broken down into a few different categories, all of which are essential in helping you emerge victorious.
The first subset of cards are those that can provide you with a big mana advantage. Artifacts like
Mana Crypt
Mana Crypt
At the beginning of your upkeep, flip a coin. If you lose the flip, this artifact deals 3 damage to you.
{T}: Add {C}{C}.
and
Mox Opal
Mox Opal
Metalcraft — {T}: Add one mana of any color. Activate only if you control three or more artifacts.
let you get a big burst right out of the gate. Meanwhile, on turns where you are trying to execute a full combo, cards like
Dark Ritual
Dark Ritual
Add {B}{B}{B}.
and
Cabal Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Add {B}{B}{B}.
Threshold — Add {B}{B}{B}{B}{B} instead if there are seven or more cards in your graveyard.
can enable explosive turns.
The next group of spells are your card advantage engines.
Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune
Each player discards their hand, then draws seven cards.
effects work exceptionally well with all of the deck’s efficient mana producers, ensuring that you don’t run out of gas.
From there, the deck plays a high volume of combo pieces and tutors to help find them. As we will see, this deck can win the game in a multitude of different ways and having cards like
Beseech the Mirror
Beseech the Mirror
Bargain (You may sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or token as you cast this spell.)
Search your library for a card, exile it face down, then shuffle. If this spell was bargained, you may cast the exiled card without paying its mana cost if that spell's mana value is 4 or less. Put the exiled card into your hand if it wasn't cast this way.
to grab whatever you need is extremely important.
Lastly, we have efficient disruption.
Force of Will
Force of Will
You may pay 1 life and exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost.
Counter target spell.
,
Pyroblast
Pyroblast
Choose one —
• Counter target spell if it's blue.
• Destroy target permanent if it's blue.
and beyond not only improve your chances of resolving your own win conditions, but they can break up synergies from the opponents’ sides.
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Winning the Game
While these groups of cards ultimately have different functions, they all further the core objective of winning the game as soon as possible. Your mana producers make it trivial to cast your costly tutors, Wheels, and win conditions on the same turn. Your card advantage engines then find you more sources of fast mana and ways to protect your combos. There are a multitude of avenues you can take to actually win the game, so let’s go over a few of the more commons kill conditions.
Likely the simplest two-card combo to assemble is
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Consultation
Choose a card name. Exile the top six cards of your library, then reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a card with the chosen name. Put that card into your hand and exile all other cards revealed this way.
and
Thassa’s Oracle
Thassa’s Oracle
When this creature enters, look at the top X cards of your library, where X is your devotion to blue. Put up to one of them on top of your library and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. If X is greater than or equal to the number of cards in your library, you win the game. (Each {U} in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to blue.)
. All you have to do is name a card not in your deck with Demonic Consultation to exile your whole library, then cast Thassa’s Oracle to win the game. The best way to do this is to generally cast Oracle first, and try to resolve Demonic Consultation with Oracle’s trigger on the stack. that way, you avoid your Oracle getting countered after you exile your library.
Tainted Pact
Tainted Pact
Exile the top card of your library. You may put that card into your hand unless it has the same name as another card exiled this way. Repeat this process until you put a card into your hand or you exile two cards with the same name, whichever comes first.
accomplishes a similar task as Consultation since the deck contains no duplicate cards. Considering that cEDH is a multiplayer format, you’ll likely have to fight through multiple pieces of interaction.
The presence of Underworld Breach also enables a wide range of combo lines that allow you to close the game even if you haven’t found Thassa’s Oracle. For instance, with access to Underworld Breach,
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Discard your hand, Sacrifice this artifact: Add three mana of any one color. Activate only as an instant.
, and
Brain Freeze
Brain Freeze
Target player mills three cards.
Storm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.)
, you can generate a bunch of mana, mill your whole deck, and win by executing the following steps:
- Cast Underworld Breach and Lion’s Eye Diamond
- Crack Lion’s Eye Diamond, discarding your hand and making three blue mana
- Cast Brain Freeze from your graveyard exiling three cards other than Lion’s Eye Diamond, targeting yourself with each copy
- Use your graveyard fuel to cast and crack Lion’s Eye Diamond multiple times, casting Brain Freeze when necessary to mill more cards
- Once you’ve milled your whole deck, cast Thassa’s Oracle from your graveyard with Breach
Grinding Station can help substitute for Brain Freeze as a self-milling machine and opens the door for other mana rocks to assist your combo efforts. You can sacrifice any zero-mana rock to Grinding Station to mill three cards, then recast the mana rock with Breach to untap Grinding Station and repeat the process.
It may not be clear to players outside of the cEDH community, but a turn one win in this format is very impressive. The stereotype around this format may suggest that these wins are easy to come by, but there is a ton of fast interaction in this format. It is much more difficult to pull this off than you may think. Orry Suen did take down the event with a turn one win.
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New Inclusions
While Breach Storm featuring
Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
Silas Renn, Seeker Adept
Deathtouch
Whenever Silas Renn deals combat damage to a player, choose target artifact card in your graveyard. You may cast that card this turn.
Partner (You can have two commanders if both have partner.)
and
Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh
Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh
First strike, menace, trample
Partner (You can have two commanders if both have partner.)
as Partner Commanders has been a top tier option in cEDH for a while, the deck got some nice upgrades with the release of MH3. According to the pilot of the tournament winning deck, Flare of Duplication is an elite addition to the archetype.
Flare is yet another card that completely abuses the fact that this deck gets access to a zero-mana Commander. Rograkh’s appearance already let you maximize some busted mana producers in
Culling the Weak
Culling the Weak
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature.
Add {B}{B}{B}{B}.
and
Infernal Plunge
Infernal Plunge
As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature.
Add {R}{R}{R}.
, as well as
Deflecting Swat
Deflecting Swat
If you control a commander, you may cast this spell without paying its mana cost.
You may choose new targets for target spell or ability.
as a piece of disruption.
Just like Deflecting Swat, Flare can push your payoffs past opposing counterspells. On top of that, you can use Flare to copy your rituals. When you have access to a red Creature that requires no mana input to play every single game, it makes sense why Flare would shine.
Besides Flare, this decklist also showcased
Necrodominance
Necrodominance
Skip your draw step.
At the beginning of your end step, you may pay any amount of life. If you do, draw that many cards.
Your maximum hand size is five.
If a card or token would be put into your graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead.
. Necrodominance may be a “fixed” version of
Necropotence
Necropotence
Skip your draw step.
Whenever you discard a card, exile that card from your graveyard.
Pay 1 life: Exile the top card of your library face down. Put that card into your hand at the beginning of your next end step.
, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t earn a slot here. It’s still a solid card to put into play early off Dark Ritual and has very high upside. Perhaps the biggest concern is that unlike with Necropotence, if your opponents remove Necrodominance before your end step, you don’t get any card advantage out of the deal. Additionally, the fact that Necrodominance forces you to exile cards that would go to your graveyard means that it messes with your own Breach wins.
That said, Orry himself said that he never found Necrodominance throughout the tournament, so this card’s performance is still questionable.
MH3 may be a set designed for Modern, but there’s plenty of opportunity to make use of the cards elsewhere. In the context of cEDH, other cards like
Shifting Woodland
Shifting Woodland
This land enters tapped unless you control a Forest.
{T}: Add {G}.
Delirium — {2}{G}{G}: This land becomes a copy of target permanent card in your graveyard until end of turn. Activate only if there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard.
and
Nadu, Winged Wisdom
Nadu, Winged Wisdom
Flying
Creatures you control have "Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand. This ability triggers only twice each turn."
have many players excited. cEDH may not personally be my cup of tea, but it’s cool to see all the ways in which these new powerhouses get used, nonetheless.
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