Princess Lucrezia's Bouncy Castle

[Oversoul]

Having already done a Sunastian Falconer deck years ago, I've been somewhat stumped as to what approach I want to take with building decks helmed by the two other mana dork legends among the original 55. I was trying to think of an appropriate "princess" theme of some sort, and the art got me thinking "Princess Lucrezia's Bouncy Castle." The idea took on a life of its own.


As an old fan of Warped Devotion, I thought it might be a reasonable "secret commander."


I threw this pile together.

Commander:
1 Princess Lucrezia

1 Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Aetherize
1 Anvil of Bogardan
1 Aphetto Alchemist
1 Arcane Denial
1 Archon of Cruelty
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bone Miser
1 Boomerang
1 Brainstorm
1 Capsize
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Clever Impersonator
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Dark Deal
1 Dark Petition
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Evacuation
1 Ever After
1 Faerie Squadron
1 Fatestitcher
1 Force of Will
1 Geth's Grimoire
1 Hoodwink
1 Hullbreaker Horror
14 Island
1 Library of Lat-Nam
1 Lim-Dûl's Vault
1 Mana Drain
1 Marsh Flats
1 Maze of Ith
1 Megrim
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Mirrormade
1 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Notion Thief
1 Otawara, Soaring City
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
1 Rankle, Master of Pranks
1 Reanimate
1 Recoil
1 Repeal
1 River's Rebuke
1 Sanitarium Skeleton
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Seal of Removal
1 Season of Weaving
1 Sheoldred
1 Snap
1 Strip Mine
1 Surgical Skullbomb
9 Swamp
1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
1 Temporal Adept
1 The Haunt of Hightower
1 The Mirari Conjecture
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Time Elemental
1 Tourach, Dread Cantor
1 Tradewind Rider
1 Underground Sea
1 Unsummon
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Victimize
1 Void Snare
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Warped Devotion
1 Waste Not
1 Watery Grave
1 Wheel and Deal
1 Whispering Madness
1 Windfall

 

[Oversoul]

To my complete bewilderment, this bad deck won the game in its very first outing. I think it's a bad deck. I'm almost sure of it. The commander is virtually dead weight and I threw this together almost entirely out of miscellaneous cards that I hadn't sorted back into my collection after using them in other EDH decks. While this deck does have some powerful staples and the control theme is decent, EDH tables move too quickly these days, and the mana ramp creep in the format has made decks like this outmoded.

I kept a two-land opening hand, with the only spell I was able to cast initially being Waste Not. This got a bit of a reaction from the table because one of my opponents was running a deck based around Captain Howler, Sea Scourge and had had already cast Kisa, Otterball Elite. The reaction turned out to be warranted. Once I finally hit a third land, I cast Windfall and from there both "discard" decks snowballed, each of us feeding the other. I got both Geth's Grimoire and Warped Devotion on the battlefield. Although I had no creatures other than zombie tokens for most of this, it didn't really matter. The zombie tokens were numerous and the Captain Howler player kept them at bay with goad effects. He discarded a bunch of cards (including lands) in his main phase setting up for a big attack, but I had the mana to overload Cyclonic Rift before he went to combat. He used Invert Polarity on it, but I had Force of Will to protect it.

After the Cyclonic Rift with Warped Devotion, my opponents realized that my library was getting small and started working toward decking me. I ended up using Boomerang on my own Notion Thief just to avoid being decked. I knew that my zombie tokens could kill the other two players, so I set up a turn in which I used Megrim with Wheel and Deal. The Captain Howler player had 25 cards in his hand, so the Megrim triggers were lethal. From there my zombie tokens were easily able to overrwhelm the two remaining players.

Perhaps next time we'll get a more normal game with this deck.