A Night At Sea by Montague Dawson (1895 - 1973). Kraken by Dan Scott.
For a long time I had three different Simic (blue/green) EDH decks. Vorel of the Hull Clade was my first, followed by Ezuri, Claw of Progress and then Momir Vig, Simic Visionary. Each was capable of winning games but they were all decidedly one-dimensional. This month I am playing Ezuri in our EDH League and after one day (two rounds) of play I realized I needed to do something.
The first game was a pretty good one. I was in it to the end and only lost due to some clever shenanigans on the part of an Alesha player. It felt good to outlast two opponents but it would have been nice to seal the deal. I had a Progenitur Mimic on the field as a copy of an Avenger of Zendikar and was ready to pump out 7 plant tokens every turn if the Alesha player hadn't found a way to close the game out. It didn't feel bad, but the second round our table got crushed by a Sheoldred deck. My Ezuri deck was chock full of creatures but had very, very little in the way of answers. I was running no counterspells and didn't even have Cyclonic Rift in the mix. It was the kind of deck that could stomp a casual table but would rarely be able to deal with actual good decks played by good players. I know I can do better, and I'll enjoy my games more if my deck is resilient enough to compete with the better decks in our league.
After working a little more on Ramos, Dragon Engine this morning, I set about unsleeving all three of my simic decks with the plan to assemble the Simic deck of my dreams. Before we get to that part, let's look at what I had to work from.
Vorel of the Hull Clade
This was my first foray into Simic EDH deckbuilding. It was built around Vorel's ability - doubling the number of counters on a permanent. Early versions had the ability to make huge threats but those threats always seemed to get hit by a Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares, and I would have trouble building back from boardwipes.
Running untap dorks and artifacts like Kiora's Follower are key to making Vorel explosive. If you can go from doubling to octupling the counters on something within one turn, you can turn a minor threat to lethal in no time at all. One of my favorite additions to Vorel was Kavu Predator, a little trampler who gains +1/+1 counters each time an opponent gains life. Our playgroup's Oloro player lost at least a few games to this little guy. He starts as a 2/2, the next thing you know he's got 4 +1/+1 counters and if you double, quadruple or octuple his counters opponents are going to die if they can't find some removal.
The last version of this deck was called Vorel Stax because I was experimenting with using Vorel's ability in conjunction with stax pieces. The idea was to get a Smokestacks out, double or quadruple the counters after my own upkeep and then destroy it before my turn came around again. For that second part I ran lots of removal. It wasn't a bad idea but at one point I forgot that Vorel doesn't allow you to target enchantments and I had a game where I was locking everyone down under a Parallax Wave. I had failed to RTFC and felt terrible about wasting everyone's time in that game.
The high point of the deck was probably getting a table of untap dorks, getting a Darksteel Reactor up to three counters and then comboing off to win the game. I also had to win a counterspell war to seal the victory and it just felt fantastic.
More often than not, Vorel didn't have much in the way of card draw and couldn't maintain a decent boardstate. It wasn't terrible and in ways was fun, but I always knew it couldn't compete with decks that run lots of removal, so I wasn't playing it very often any more.
Ezuri, Claw of Progress
My favorite of the three was Ezuri. This build was set up as elf tribal with a ton of creatures and lots of ways to gain experience counters and turn those into a threat. The trick to the deck was keeping Ezuri on the field. If your table lacked removal it was very hard for them to keep up with the level of threat you could generate.
I didn't start out with the Sage of Hours combo but eventually added it in. If you can get enough counters on Sage and nobody can remove him or Ezuri, you get infinite turns. It's a thing... a filthy dirty thing, but it does win games. The deck was also filled with lots of token generators like Whirler Rogue, Hooded Hydra and others. It was OK but not awesome and for a long time it didn't feel like a strong deck to me.
The turning point for this deck was probably adding Sage of Hours and Fable of Wolf and Owl. After Fable joined the party, I had a number of wins in which it allowed me to generate stupid amounts of advantage. Usually even in games I lost, I had a crazy boardstate and was a big threat on the table.
What Ezuri had in creatures it lacked in removal and counterspells. It was able to destroy casual tables but again, couldn't keep up with good decks and situations where I had to stop someone else from winning faster than I was trying to.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
This deck was an experiment in learning how to play combo. I built it around getting Deadeye Navigator out and using it to draw out as much of my deck as I wanted, force my opponents to lose their entire boardstate, gain infinite mana and kill the table - ideally all in one turn.
It was a fairly straightforward build with combo pieces and lots of multicolored simic creatures to allow me to grab what I wanted and win the game.
The basic line of play was to get Deadeye, get Palinchron and use something like Coiling Oracle to draw my deck, destroy my opponents boardstates and win. I built in ramp in the form of enchantments that give lands extra mana generation so that I could use Cloud of Faeries to make infinite mana. Peregrine Drake and Great Whale work as well. I ran staples like Acidic Slime but also old cards like Rishadan Cutpurse (shown above) because it's weird and quirky and something folks might not have seen before.
This deck, like the others, lacked draw. It also was light on removal and counterspells. I won one game with it, saw how little fun everyone else had, and haven't played it since.
Rebuilding Ezuri
The first step was to unsleeve all three decks and pile up the cards by color and type. I was going to build Ezuri, but I wanted to get the best parts of all three of those decks and see if I could make a new version of Ezuri that was better than the old version.
Card Draw
I knew if I was going to build a good, resilient deck I was going to have to add lots of card draw into the mix. I remembered hearing that ten draw spells and ten ramp spells was the way to go, so my first step was to sort through all of those castoff cards and grab everything that said "draw a card" with a focus on any creatures that were power 2 or less. It turned out to be fairly easy to line up my draw package, though most of them were just ETB draw effects. Since we're going to be running a Deadeye Navigator package, that's just fine.
Ramp
The next step was to line up the best 10 ramp spells from the cards that had made up the three old decks. Unsurprisingly, there were more than 10 options so I lined them up by CMC and took the 10 most efficient ones. The list was mostly made up of the usual suspects. Rampant Growth. Sol Ring. Simic Signet. If you've played any EDH at all, these should all be familiar.
Combo
Here comes the fun part. Momir Vig was built around combo. The prospect of turning infinite ETBs of a creature with power 2 or less into infinite experience counters and then putting those counters on any creature sounded much more appealing than just doing it one or two at a time, so I lined up ten cards around Vig, Deadeye Navigator and all those crazy shenanigans.
Goodstuff
When you build as many decks as I have, you wind up with more than a few goodstuff cards. The next set of 10 cards I assembled was a set of cards that were generic simic / counters goodstuff cards. Doubling Season, Deepglow Skate, Murkfiend Liege and others filled out this section.
Counterspells
I didn't wind up adding 10 counterspells but my next set of 10 cards was mostly counter magic and a few other "answers" like Krosan Grip. This is where the deck should be able to hang with the big boys. The ability to stop someone else from winning is a huge part of being competitive. I don't own a Force of Will but I know enough to run counters that are universal. I've had too many instances where I had a counter for a creature spell and needed to counter a Cyclonic Rift, or had a counter for a noncreature spell and needed to counter someone's commander. Universal counters that you can't just pay mana to get around are the way to go.
Toys for Ezuri
The last group of 10 spells I thought of as spells specifically for Ezuri. This is where I put Fable of Wolf and Owl, Whirler Rogue and other cards that I knew would help the deck out but didn't fall into the categories of draw, ramp, combo, goodstuff or counterspells. Cornercase stuff that works with this deck had to be included.
The Final Four
I had 60 cards plus Ezuri, but I didn't want to run 39 lands. Ezuri should be able to get away with fewer so I decided upon 4 extra cards to toss in. Those final four were Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Panharmonicon and Darksteel Reactor. I don't expect to be able to quadruple-tap Vorel in one turn with this build, but Darksteel Reactor is an easy way to explain why Sage of Hours / Infinite Turns means I win, even if my opponents have some crazy boardstate that I'd never be able to get through. Combo off but my opponent has Blazing Archon or Platinum Angel? No problem thanks to Darksteel Reactor.
Final Thoughts
I'll freely admit that tearing apart three perfectly good... well, perfectly midrange decks in response to a bad game might be a bit of an overreaction but I like building and rebuilding decks and this gave me an excuse to do just that. The final deck so far looks strong. It's not a fast, top-tier deck but I think it's going to be able to handle casual decks, keep up with good decks and maybe even help stop the top tier deck s from running away with every game they play. One can dream, right?
I will play it 6 more times this month in our EDH league. We're allowed to change decks anytime we like, even between rounds, so there's no issue with my switching up the decklist. I do like my chances of winning a game or two before the month is out and if nothing else I do crave new experiences in my EDH games. I don't know if I'll have everyone crying for a ban of Deadeye Navigator but hopefully I'll combo out at least once. For a look at the final decklist, check out the link below.
Simic Dreams
Now I'm on to the next project. I've always wanted to build a big dumb sea monsters deck where you make token creatures and then use Synthetic Destiny to turn them into Leviathans, Krakens and the like. I'm sure it will be a decidedly mid-range affair but I'm looking forward to building it anyways.