Hit 1975 Single by Gary Wright [EDH]

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Coming up in October, the group formerly known as Magic of Browns Point (relabeled South Sound Magic) will be running an "Utter Chaos" event, where we build $150-budget Commander decks for other players who pilot. I had the oldest commander in the "Infinite Summer" $200 event, and I thought it might be fun to let players pilot something much older, something they wouldn't normally see or get a chance to use.

So I challenged myself to squeeze a deck out of a budget that was mostly gone due to this guy...


I could submit my list and then the deck would probably be over-budget by October, but that would be fine if the list was valid at the time of submission. Well, I made it work. I came in just below the maximum, at $149.58 just as I was about to submit it...

...and then I realized that, unlike the summer event, this one prohibits two-card infinite combos. Rasputin Dreamweaver + Eldrazi Displacer is a two-card infinite mana combo, and is kind of Plan A for this deck. Oops.

So I've scrapped the whole thing. But I already have the decklist I was going to use. So here it is...

Commander:
1x Rasputin Dreamweaver

1x Acrobatic Maneuver
1x AEtherize
1x Anticipate
1x Arcane Denial
1x Artisan of Kozilek
1x Azorius Locket
1x Bane of Bala Ged
1x Blink of an Eye
1x Brainstorm
1x Catalog
1x Cloudblazer
1x Cloudshift
1x Deceiver of Form
1x Decree of Justice
1x Desolation Twin
1x Displace
1x Dovin's Veto
1x Drift of Phantasms
1x Eldrazi Displacer
1x Elite Guardmage
1x Elixir of Immortality
1x Emergency Powers
1x Ephemerate
1x Essence Flux
1x Essence Scatter
1x Exile
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Fiend Hunter
1x Frantic Search
1x Fumigate
1x Ghostly Flicker
1x Holy Day
1x Impulse
20x Island
1x Kor Cartographer
1x Lat-Nam's Legacy
1x Lavinia of the Tenth
1x Luminate Primordial
1x Meteor Golem
1x Mind Spring
1x Momentary Blink
1x Myr Battlesphere
1x Nevermaker
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Ojutai's Command
1x Opt
17x Plains
1x Precognitive Perception
1x Prismite
1x Prophetic Prism
1x Pull from Tomorrow
1x Reflector Mage
1x Release to the Wind
1x See Beyond
1x Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep
1x Soul Warden
1x Soulherder
1x Supreme Will
1x Think Twice
1x Thraben Inspector
1x Time Wipe
1x Treasure Cruise
1x Wash Out
1x White Sun's Zenith

Now I need to come up with something else.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spoiler alert: I didn't come up with anything else!

So here's what the final decklist looks like...

Commander
1x Rasputin Dreamweaver

1x Acrobatic Maneuver
1x AEtherize
1x Anticipate
1x Arcane Denial
1x Archaeomancer
1x Artisan of Kozilek
1x Azorius Locket
1x Bane of Bala Ged
1x Blink of an Eye
1x Brago, King Eternal
1x Brainstorm
1x Catalog
1x Cloudblazer
1x Cloudshift
1x Deceiver of Form
1x Decree of Justice
1x Desolation Twin
1x Displace
1x Dovin's Veto
1x Duplicant
1x Elite Guardmage
1x Elixir of Immortality
1x Ephemerate
1x Essence Flux
1x Essence Scatter
1x Exile
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Fiend Hunter
1x Frantic Search
1x Fumigate
1x Ghostly Flicker
1x Holy Day
1x Impulse
20x Island
1x Kor Cartographer
1x Lat-Nam's Legacy
1x Lavinia of the Tenth
1x Luminate Primordial
1x Meteor Golem
1x Momentary Blink
1x Myr Battlesphere
1x Nevermaker
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Ojutai's Command
1x Opt
17x Plains
1x Precognitive Perception
1x Prismite
1x Prophetic Prism
1x Pull from Tomorrow
1x Reflector Mage
1x Release to the Wind
1x See Beyond
1x Signpost Scarecrow
1x Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep
1x Soul Warden
1x Soulherder
1x Supreme Will
1x Think Twice
1x Thraben Inspector
1x Time Wipe
1x Treasure Cruise
1x Wash Out
1x White Sun's Zenith

And because a random player in the event will be piloting this abomination, here's my "brief description, including goals" as was required in the event submission guidelines...

There aren't going to be a lot of good cards in this deck, so don't go looking for them. I'm sorry, OK? It's really hard to build a Rasputin Dreamweaver deck for only $150, but I had to go and try to do it anyway. If I used Eldrazi Displacer, it could have maybe worked better, but that would constitute a two-card infinite mana combo, which is not allowed under these rules. So you're just going to have to play this as a white/blue control deck. You can do that, right? Azorius Control? My deck has a lot of disruption. You can probably use that strategically and stuff, so that you protect yourself. Instead of letting your opponents kill you, don't. Counter some spells. Block attackers and then use Flicker-like spells to save your blockers and get extra EtB triggers off them. Value. Squeeze value out of these $0.40 cards. You're going to need to do that to survive. Don't be afraid to wipe the board if you have to.

Goals? Alright, I'm going to level with you. This was supposed to be a combo deck. I built it back in August and it was focused around the Rasputin Dreamweaver + Eldrazi Displacer interaction. Really went all-in on that sweet combo. Then I realized it was against the rules. Oops. Well, now the deck submission deadline is coming up and I don't have any other ideas. I'm so sorry. Here you are, showing up to play in a fun Magic event, and I had to go and ruin it by providing you with an Azorius Control deck that can't even afford Sol Ring because I'm an idiot.

Yikes, this is bad. This is really bad. You're going to be so mad at me. How could I not even make room for Sol Ring? How could I do this to you? What did you ever do to me to deserve this? Ow wow, I hope you aren't too upset right now, but you probably are. How can I make it up to you? Let's see. Well, there's no Eldrazi Displacer, so that's out. And of course I couldn't afford Eldrazi titans or any of that. They'd push this deck way over budget. Um, here's something. So if you get the commander and also have Archaeomancer, Displace, and either Prismite or Signpost Scarecrow, you can make infinite mana of all colors and then use that to loop Displace with Archaeomancer and any creature that has an EtB trigger. That's a five-card infinite combo. It's doable, right? You could totally pull that off. Almost as good as Eldrazi Displacer, really. You might not even notice the difference! Oh, who am I kidding? You're doomed and it's all my fault.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
This event was a lot of fun! Having people play with decks they were unfamiliar with did come with some frustrating aspects and rounds tended to run long. But we all got to play with cards we might not normally have played with and there were a lot of cool moments. Possibly my favorite one of those didn't even have anything to do with me. The player across from me in the second round had brought a modified version of her Okaun/Zndrsplt deck and as the round started mentioned being worried that it wouldn't be good enough for the event. Within a couple of minutes, we heard "Attack with Okaun for 48" from the table behind me.

I was randomly paired with the cheapest deck in the event (just under $80 worth of cardboard), and one of the ones that was most judiciously targeted and eliminated out of well-placed fear. It was called "Edric's Budget Beatdown." Edric decks are infamous among EDH veterans and I was eliminated first in half of my rounds, but still had fun. Even when I got stuck with only two lands for an inordinately long time, I still managed to keep playing and try to climb back from a bad start. At the end of the grueling final round, I managed to kill two of my opponents and was in a strong position to take down the last one (who happened to be piloting my deck), but ran out of extra turns to finish the job.

As for my deck, besides taking things to an extreme that South Sound Magic has never seen before and probably will never see again ($115 commander in a $150 budget event), it actually worked out. Fortunately, one of the event organizers was the random pilot for my list and was an experienced control player, so he was able to make the most of the pile he was paired with. It was not the strongest deck in the event, but it always held its own. I managed to catch it making some awesome plays after I was eliminated in my own games. So I'm pretty happy with what started out as a pretty tenuous idea.
 
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