Doctor Claw [EDH]

[Oversoul]

I was most of the way done with this deck on Tuesday evening, but it turned out that Al0ysiusHWWW needed to crash in the spare room where I keep most of my card storage boxes. So the deck that was supposed to essentially be my new deck for this week is really going to be the new deck for next week instead. However, I am working on a totally different new deck, which I might also complete in time to play next week. That way I'll effectively have caught up. Now, I did skip one week in January and I'm not firmly committing to a one-deck-per-week schedule, but I'm hoping that I'll at least have more EDH decks to report statistics on at the end of 2022 than I did for any previous year.

Remember Zirilan of the Claw? The Claw chooses who will go and who will stay. Yeah, I did Dragon Tribal again. But now I've gotten it out of my system. Probably.

Commander:
1 Zirilan of the Claw

1 Anger
1 Apocalypse
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Atsushi, the Blazing Sky
1 Balefire Dragon
1 Belbe's Portal
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Braid of Fire
1 Chaos Warp
1 Claws of Gix
1 Cold Storage
1 Conjurer's Closet
1 Crucible of Fire
1 Dragon Mage
1 Dragon's Fire
1 Dragon's Hoard
1 Drakuseth, Maw of Flames
1 Earthquake
1 Electrodominance
1 Faithless Looting
1 Feldon's Cane
1 Fervor
1 Fiery Emancipation
1 Fire Dragon
1 Firestorm Phoenix
1 Gamble
1 Gauntlet of Might
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Goblin Bombardment
1 Goldspan Dragon
1 Hammerheim
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Hellkite Courser
1 Hoarding Dragon
1 Jeska's Will
1 Jeweled Lotus
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Lathliss, Dragon Queen
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Maze of Ith
1 Minion of the Mighty
1 Molten Echoes
30 Mountain
1 Mox Diamond
1 Nalathni Dragon
1 Obsidian Charmaw
1 Phyrexian Altar
1 Preyseizer Dragon
1 Red Mana Battery
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
1 Safe Haven
1 Scourge of Valkas
1 Shivan Dragon
1 Siege Dragon
1 Sneak Attack
1 Sol Ring
1 Soldevi Digger
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Strip Mine
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Terror of Mount Velus
1 Terror of the Peaks
1 Thermopod
1 Tyrant's Familiar
1 Utvara Hellkite
1 Vengeful Ancestor
1 Wasteland
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Worldgorger Dragon

 

[Ferret]

I was going to suggest Gauntlet of Might (if you had it), but lo and behold, there it was...I would hate to face this deck in multiplayer...

(and the title just brings back memories of "Inspector Gadget"...)

 

[Oversoul]

(and the title just brings back memories of "Inspector Gadget"...)

Yep. I was too young to remember the original run of the show, which ended when I was under 2 years old. But of course I saw reruns. I was trying to come up with a name for a Zirilan deck and remembered the villain from Inspector Gadget. But Dr. Claw doesn't really do much except give orders and talk to his cat (at least in most episodes). And I couldn't think of anything catchy other than just putting the name in as the deck title. I later recalled the line from the Toy Story movie that I quoted in the introduction to this deck, but it's too long to be a proper title, even by my standards.

I had not even thought of how Gauntlet of Might could be Dr. Claw's gauntlet from the show! Embarrassing, but the comparison didn't even occur to me. I included the card because I really like the card and almost always run it in any mono-red EDH deck I build. But let's have that be our little secret. From now on, I'm pretending that the Gauntlet of Might thing was on purpose.

 

[Ferret]

I won't tell if you won't

 

[Oversoul]

Played three games with this one. It's a little slow, but also packs more of a punch than I might have guessed. First game, I was getting force-fed poison counters by a player that had a Fynn, the Fangbearer deck. When I finally got some blockers out, another player wiped the board with Damnation. Looking at the seven-drops in my hand, I knew that I couldn't rebuild quickly enough and that one more hit from Fynn would kill me anyway. Bad luck. Second game had some back-and-forth. I thought I was about to lose, then I topdecked Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. I had Gauntlet of Might on the battlefield and Worldgorger Dragon in my hand, so I was able to cast both creatures and set up infinite EtB triggers on Bogardan Hellkite (copy of Worldgorger Dragon exiles original, then original's ability comes off the stack and exiles copy, bringing everything back again). Third game I had Sneak Attack and I think I didn't cast a single creature all game. Not having blockers would have left me vulnerable, but the two players with the most threatening board states went after each other. Then I used Sneak Attack alongside some of my other cards to dump a bunch of direct damage on the two remaining players and stole the game. Sneak Attack is good.

 

[Oversoul]

Haha, this deck is great. I'll have to pull parts from it at some point next month probably, but I am going to stall on that if possible. It's just a really fun deck.

 

[Oversoul]

I'm just now taking this deck apart. It has been one of my most successful decks of the year for sure. Defensive capabilities early on are minimal, so the deck is vulnerable in games where opponents start immediately attacking me. But the deck is flexible and has come back from really bleak situations. I now think that Zirilan is one of the best old-frame commanders, and a really fun option for anyone who wants to try beating people down with mono-red dragons. Retiring the deck because I need to take something apart for new decks and I want to give my less successful decks more chances to shine. But it's been a blast.

 

[Oversoul]

When attempting to rank all of my 2022 decks, this one came out at the very top. It wasn't as long-lived as some of them, but I got a bunch of games in with it and the deck was consistently fun. A lot of fun. So fun, actually, that I simply have to bring it back.

Here are my changes for 2023:
-1 Claws of Gix
-1 Crucible of Fire
-1 Electrodominance
-1 Feldon's Cane
-1 Fiery Emancipation
-1 Fire Dragon
-1 Firestorm Phoenix
-1 Gilded Lotus
-1 Hammerheim
-1 Nalathni Dragon
-1 Red Mana Battery
-1 Rings of Brighthearth
-1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
-1 Soldevi Digger
-1 Sword of Feast and Famine
+1 Ancient Copper Dragon
+1 Dragon Tempest
+1 Elixir of Immortality
+1 Flameshadow Conjuring
+1 Ganax, Astral Hunter
+1 Hellkite Tyrant
+1 Impact Tremors
+1 Mana Vault
+1 Nim Deathmantle
+1 Patriar's Seal
+1 Pyre of Heroes
+1 Ruby Medallion
+1 Sceptre of Eternal Glory
+1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
+1 Wrathful Red Dragon

 

[Oversoul]

Liking the new version so far. It started out somewhat poorly: I got Jeweled Lotus and was able to cast Zirilan on my second turn. I started setting up to deal with the opponent that was the bigger threat, then another opponent cast Planar Disruption on my commander just because it was the only spell he had the mana to cast. That set me back enough that the player I was actually trying to deal with was able to take over the game. My deck kinda crapped out anyway, so it was pretty disappointing.

Tried the deck again in a second game right afterward. I had a slower start, but Belbe's Portal helped me catch up, then my dragon army took down the rest of the table singlehandedly.

 

[Oversoul]

Need to get more games in with this one. I tried it out again, and fell behind on land drops, so I got stuck for a bit. Another player picked me off just as I was about to finally turn things around.

 

[Oversoul]

I have one change that I can make now that I own the card I've been wanting to run this whole time...

-1 Tyrant's Familiar
+1 Zodiac Dragon

 

[Oversoul]

Awesome. My first game since putting Zodiac Dragon in the deck, and I won with Zodiac Dragon. I fell behind on mana production, but had Zirilan of the Claw, Phyrexian Altar, Sneak Attack, and Lathliss, Dragon Queen. Made 400,000,000,000 dragon tokens and swung in for the win.

 

[Oversoul]

Got manascrewed and fell behind when I tried this deck last night. That's always a risk when playing with a mana curve like this one.

 

[Oversoul]

Won a tense game by fetching Hellkite Tyrant and copying it with Flameshadow Conjuring. I had 1 gold token, 18 treasure tokens, and Lightning Greaves, so my artifact count was just enough to win me the game, and the one player who could deal direct damage to a creature couldn't kill both Hellkite Tyrants. I was generally behind all game and took more big punches than I dished out, but my opponents didn't expect me to steal the win with Hellkite Tyrant. Neener, neener, neener.

 

[Oversoul]

After considerable frustration, this deck won a game that it had no business winning. I went second turn Nim Deathmantle, third turn Dragon's Hoard, fourth turn, Flameshadow conjuring, then proceeded to topdeck six drops for a few turns in a row. In my hand were Scourge of Valkas and Kiki-Jiki, both ready to go if I ever topdecked a fourth land. Zirilan was sitting helplessly in the command zone. My opponents saw that I couldn't do anything, so they focused their efforts on killing each other.

Out of desperation, I used Chaos Warp on my own Nim Deathmantle, which randomly gave me a Wasteland. Now that I finally had some mana available, I cast Zirilan. The player with the new "Doric, Nature's Warden" D&D card as commander was dominating the game, and his Vigor presented a problem. Although it's not what my deck excels at, I was able to provide an answer by using Zirilan to fetch Bogardan Hellkite and Flameshadow Conjuring to copy the Hellkite. After that, he was still able to get things down to a one-on-one. So I used Zirilan again, this time to grab Balefire Dragon, with Flameshadow Conjuring making a copy. He had no flying blockers, so his whole team took 12 damage from my Balefire Dragons. He was unable to recover before I got to use Zirilan again, and fetched enough combat damage to close the game out.

So yeah, I win! Just, you know, not in the way I wanted to. Woe is me? Or something.

 

[Oversoul]

Lost a frustrating game with this one. Opening hand had two mountains an Jeweled Lotus, so I knew that I'd have my commander online quickly. Then I kept failing to draw more lands, so I fell way behind. Eventually, I was able to disrupt my opponents, but it wasn't enough. If my topdecks had been different or if I'd targeted people differently, the game might have gone differently. But I also should have just had more mana. Oh well.

 

[Oversoul]

Too many mana problems again. I've been holding off on reworking this deck until I pick up a copy of Invasion of Tarkir, because that's going straight in here. Also, my "too many mana problems" was partially self-inflicted. One of my opponents was using the infamous Themberchaud ramp deck, and he played a first-turn Myriad Landscape. I couldn't resist the bait and used second-turn Strip Mine to get rid of the Landscape. That move took both of us out of the game, and I was killed by commander damage from Ramos, Dragon Engine before I could resolve a single creature.

 

[Oversoul]

Still looking to revise this deck, but I still haven't. My game last night got off to a lousy start, as I couldn't get enough lands to effectively play. Maze of Ith kept some damage off me, but I only survived because my opponents kept each other reined in. Ended a turn with Zirilan, Flameshow Conjuring, and Terror of the Peaks on the battlefield, then ate attack damage that brought me down to exactly 1 life. Untapped, fetched Worldgorger Dragon, and no one had any responses, so I won. This was simultaneously the most frustrating game of the night and the most satisfying.

 

[Oversoul]

It's overdue. Also, I hate doing it. Whenever I find myself cutting a card that's cool and generally underplayed, it's with considerable reluctance. This deck does everything I want it to do and is one of my favorite EDH decks ever, but it's just too inconsistent, and I know that the land count is just a bit too low. Safe Haven didn't produce mana. And while it irks me to say it, a basic Mountain would be better here. I still like Safe Haven as a Magic card. It's a good card. But in this deck, with this configuration? It's not working out. I believe that this small change should go a long way toward smoothing out the consistency of the deck.

-1 Dragon's Fire
-1 Nim Deathmantle
-1 Safe Haven
-1 Vengeful Ancestor
+1 Invasion of Tarkir
+3 Mountain

 

[Oversoul]

Tried this deck in the "Kingdom" variant. Although I do believe that I've significantly improved the manabase, the deck fell apart. I had three Mountains in my opening hand, later getting a Ruby Medallion, a fourth Mountain, and a Patriar's Seal. I cast multiple support pieces: I think they were Dragon Tempest, Impact Tremors, and Phyrexian Altar. I also got to cast Invasion of Tarkir. Before I died, I even managed to flip the Invasion with Hoarding Dragon, the only creature I ever drew the entire game. A sluggish start and a lack of creatures sealed my fate.