Piper at the Gates of Dumb [EDH]

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Commander:
1 The Prismatic Piper

1 All Is Dust
1 Ancient Den
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Arcbound Mouser
1 Arcbound Ravager
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Arena Rector
1 Argivian Archaeologist
1 Argivian Find
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Blasted Landscape
1 Bonders' Enclave
1 Candelabra of Tawnos
1 Cathodion
1 Chief of the Foundry
1 City of Traitors
1 Cloud Key
1 Crystal Vein
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Defense Grid
1 Deserted Temple
1 Dispatch
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Esper Sentinel
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Expedition Map
1 Forsaken Monument
1 Foundry Inspector
1 Foundry of the Consuls
1 Grim Monolith
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Inventors' Fair
1 Jhoira's Familiar
1 Karn, Scion of Urza
1 Karn's Bastion
1 Krark-Clan Ironworks
1 Kuldotha Forgemaster
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Lodestone Golem
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Manifold Key
1 Maze of Ith
1 Memory Jar
1 Metalworker
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Mishra's Workshop
1 Mox Opal
1 Mutavault
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Myr Retriever
1 Mystic Forge
1 Nettlecyst
1 Nim Deathmantle
5 Plains
1 Platinum Emperion
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Rishadan Port
1 Sands of Time
1 Scorched Ruins
1 Scrap Trawler
1 Sculpting Steel
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Serra Ascendant
1 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
1 Sol Ring
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Staff of Domination
1 Steel Overseer
1 Strionic Resonator
1 Strip Mine
1 Su-Chi
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Thought Vessel
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
1 Treasure Vault
1 Triskelion
1 Ugin, the Ineffable
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Urza's Saga
1 Vesuva
1 Voltaic Key
1 Walking Ballista
1 Wasteland
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Zhalfirin Void

I'm allowed to just make dumb decks and no one even tries to stop me. It's pretty great. I don't really know where I was going with this one. At some point, I thought it would be fun to build a mono-white deck helmed by The Prismatic Piper. Then for some reason I packed it with some of my favorite artifacts. This deck isn't really cohesive, but it has enough broken cards in it that it can potentially win anyway.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Because I'm lazy, when I looked for cards to put in this "mono-white" Prismatic Piper deck, I drew some inspiration from my old mono-brown Canadian Highlander deck. Overall, the two lists diverge a ton and the old deck doesn't scale properly for EDH, but certain elements were ones I really wanted to reuse. Play patterns turned out to be kind of similar, though, in a good way.

In order for this sort of deck to work, I really need to be using a surfeit of old cards that have become extravagantly-priced. The new stuff like Urza's Saga, Inventors' Fair, and Forsaken Monument add a lot of power, but only because of how well they work alongside such cards as Grim Monolith, Ancient Tomb, and Memory Jar. So the deck sometimes feels gimmicky just because artifacts and colorless spells are often quite powerful and I use some of the most powerful ones together. But I do find the play patterns attractive because this deck is full of surprises. In my first game, I was able to cast Ugin, the Spirit Dragon on turn two. Despite drawing far too many lands, I was able to get enough of a card advantage engine going with Bonders' Enclave to present a dominant board state and take down my opponents. In my second game, I was mana-screwed, but kept finding ways to recur my own artifacts and stay in the game, although the early drought of land drops eventually put me too far behind and I lost. In my third game, I rushed out multiple attackers and dominated early on like I was playing an aggro deck, but was slowed down by my opponents and eventually, after a series of board wipes, the person with the most broken commander was able to take over the game. In the fourth game, I played more of a slow control role, and after the game dragged on I was able to start assembling pieces for infinite combos, with the rest of the table always finding disruption to stop me, but not following it up with anything that could break through my defenses. We ran out of time, but I think that I'd have won the last game eventually, since I had taken down one opponent and was poised to bring down another. But I can't be 100% sure.

So far, it's been four games, and each one played out distinctly. So now I'm contemplating a more serious deck (perhaps with a commander that is actually useful) using most of these same cards. I won't do it next week or probably even in the next few months. But it's an archetype I want to explore some more. Blue is the superior color for this, really. At some point, I want to do something meaningful with poor old Argivian Archaeologist. It was going to win me that last game, but got picked off by a Generous Gift.

And props to what has been the MVP in this deck, a card I'd never previously played with or against at all...
1643910611201.png
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
This deck continues to be bonkers. I think I'll try to keep it together for longer than most of my concoctions. And after some time has passed, I'll use most of these same cards in some more refined deck. One thing that's been really amusing is that because the commander is a joke and there are only ten white cards in the maindeck, most of my opponents think of this as not being a white deck. But the white cards are almost all superb here! Arcbound Mouser is unremarkable and Argivian Archaeologist is probably not worth it, but stuff like Ethersworn Canonist, Dispatch, and Enlightened Tutor are amazing for this deck.

Mono-white has a bad reputation in EDH, and some of that is deserved. But when it does come to what is essentially a "brown" deck, white is one of the better options as a support color.

Anyway, pretty much every game has been different with this, and it almost always feels like it constitutes a big threat, even when it doesn't win.
 
Top