Unbound and Down [EDH]

[Oversoul]

Apparently, I cannot get enough of of colorless decks. So I took the "Eldrazi Unbound" precon and made it better. The idea is to probably only actually cast the commander once per game, as a big bomb that powers out a bunch of other permanents.

Commander:
1 Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate

1 Abstruse Archaic
1 Agatha's Soul Cauldron
1 All Is Dust
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arcbound Crusher
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Blast Zone
1 Bonders' Enclave
1 Buried Ruin
1 Calamity of the Titans
1 City of Traitors
1 Clock of Omens
1 Cloud Key
1 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Crashing Drawbridge
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Cryptic Trilobite
1 Crystal Grotto
1 Crystal Vein
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Darksteel Monolith
1 Desecrate Reality
1 Drillworks Mole
1 Drownyard Temple
1 Endbringer
1 Erratic Portal
1 Forge of Heroes
1 Forsaken Monument
1 Foundry Inspector
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Grim Monolith
1 Hall of Tagsin
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Inventors' Fair
1 Iron Apprentice
1 It That Betrays
1 Jhoira's Familiar
1 Karn's Bastion
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Mage-Ring Network
1 Mana Vault
1 Manifold Key
1 Matter Reshaper
1 Maze of Ith
1 Memory Jar
1 Metalworker
1 Mind Stone
1 Mindless Automaton
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Mishra's Workshop
1 Mutavault
1 Myr Retriever
1 Mystic Forge
1 Palladium Myr
1 Pentavus
1 Phyrexian Triniform
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Rings of Brighthearth
1 Rise of the Eldrazi
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Scrap Trawler
1 Scrapyard Recombiner
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
1 Skittering Cicada
1 Sol Ring
1 Staff of Domination
1 Steel Overseer
1 Strip Mine
1 Su-Chi
1 Su-Chi Cave Guard
1 Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender
1 Sword of Truth and Justice
1 The Mycosynth Gardens
1 The Ozolith
1 Thopter Squadron
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Throne of Geth
1 Tocasia's Dig Site
1 Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
1 Treasure Vault
1 Tyrite Sanctum
1 Ugin, the Ineffable
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Ugin's Mastery
1 Unstable Obelisk
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Urza's Saga
1 Voltaic Key
1 Walking Ballista
1 War Room
1 Wasteland
1 Zhalfirin Void
1 Zoetic Cavern

1 Steel Hellkite
1 Ancient Stone Idol
1 Scaretiller
1 Conjurer's Closet
1 Nim Deathmantle

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck twice last night. First game I took a big hit thanks to Dictate of the Twin Gods, and couldn't effectively rein in all of my opponents, although I could probably have dealt with any one of them. Through bad luck, poor sequencing on my part, and one opponent's deck working well, I failed to find an answer and died horribly, although I did manage to kill one opponent and outlast another.

 

[Oversoul]

Second game with this deck was a long one. All four players at the table built up some kind of board state and navigating that became a challenge, although I felt like my deck was always the one presenting the strongest threats. Things became precarious for me at a couple of points. I thought that I might get to turn my commander's death trigger into something good (manifested 10 cards), but no, not really.

I got to cast Rise of the Eldrazi, which is an amazing new card.


This let me set up Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith + Staff of Domination.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck again. I won with, of all things, regular old beatdown from my growing commander. I cast Omarthis on my second turn, and no one killed my commander the whole time. Sword of Truth and Justice put in work. By the end of the game, Omarthis had a dozen +1/+1 counters.

 

[Oversoul]

Haven't gotten to try this one out so much yet. Used this deck for my final game tonight. Although I did lose, it was a pretty epic game. I was up against the dreaded Themberchaud deck, and the pilot there seemed to navigate this one pretty much perfectly. We held each other in check, then both had to be held in check by the other two players at the table. Eventually, he used Blasphemous Act to damage his own dragons. With Wrathful Red Dragon on the battlefield, this gave him 3 triggers for 13 damage. He pointed all of them at me, ascertaining that once I was out of the picture, he could win the game against the remaining two players. So yeah, not a bad way to go. I'll take that loss.

 

[Oversoul]

Omarthis certainly isn't the strongest commander and is kind of lacking in cohesion. But this deck remains fun. I kept and opening hand with both Sensei's Divining Top and Mystic Forge, which should have been pretty good. Well, after my Metalworker was exiled and I didn't have a lot of other action, I was stuck trying to use Sword of Truth and Justice as my only means of pumping Omarthis. Not ideal, but it worked. Punched through for lethal commander damage against a mono-white deck (couldn't block Omarthis because of the Sword). My two remaining opponents forced me to finally let my commander bubble burst (I had Ashnod's Altar to protect against exile effects), and I manifested 11 cards. Still didn't have a win at that point, but Memory Jar got me Ugin, the Ineffable. From there was able to use Buried Ruin to recover Basalt Monolith, then Forsaken Monument + Basalt Monolith for infinite mana and Walking Ballista for infinite damage.

 

[Oversoul]

A minor revision...

-1 Ancient Stone Idol
-1 Conjurer's Closet
-1 Scaretiller
+1 Drillworks Mole
+1 Iron Apprentice
+1 Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender

 

[Oversoul]

Haven't seen the new cards come up yet. I played this deck twice on Wednesday night. First game I had a mediocre start, but some potential was there. One of my opponents made the strange decision to cast Urza's Ruinous Blast at a time when it essentially only hurt me and didn't affect the other three players. My board state was unremarkable at the time, and I never recovered from this setback. I sat around, helpless, for several turns. Meanwhile, two of my opponents ignored the third, who was drawing tons of cards off The One Ring and using those cards to draw even more cards. After they continued to let this player, with no defenses to speak of, draw through most of his deck, he eventually got Mind Over Matter and was able to combo off with Laboratory Maniac. Whoop de do. Wasn't a great game anyway, but I really felt like poor play patterns by my opponents ruined this one.

Second time I tried this deck, it was the last game of the night. Again, I had a pretty lousy start. This time, the game got really weird though. One of my opponents used Collective Voyage, and I was the only one who couldn't benefit from it. Another opponent had Aura Shards, so any artifact I could deploy that might give me a substantial advantage might get targeted. I was in a rough spot, but I really only ate one big attack. The advantages my opponents had over me were balanced out by their need to deal with each other, which gave me a strange measure of safety. Things were still looking bad, but if I got another turn I was going to cast Rise of the Eldrazi, and that's not nothing. Well, we ran out of time. Had to shut the game down because the store was closing. There was no real winner in sight anyway. I still had some lines that might have led to victory if Rise of the Eldrazi drew me good cards. Would have been cool if I had been able to pull off a win under these circumstances. Oh well.

 

[Oversoul]

Bah. Lost to mana screw with this deck. Ancient Tomb kept me going for a while, but it wasn't enough. I got picked off first because, despite my hampered mana production, I was actually deploying some cards that made me look reasonably threatening. If I'd just had one more land early on, I think I'd have won this game. Bad luck.

 

[Oversoul]

Another minor revision...

-1 Nim Deathmantle
+1 Agatha's Soul Cauldron

 

[Oversoul]

This deck took down a game in the "Kingdom" variant. I was a bandit, and was able to keep my nature hidden until I was ready to spring my trap. It was a pretty simple one: Forsaken Monument + Basalt Monolith gave me infinite mana. Since I also had Ashnod's Altar, I could sac and recast my commander to manifest my whole library, then sac Mirror Retriever to get back Walking Ballista for infinite damage to the king's face.

 

[Oversoul]

Despite never missing a land drop, my most recent game saw this deck underperform. I couldn't get going. Because I was the weakest threat at the table, I was saved for last, which bought me just enough time to cast a desperate Rise of the Eldrazi. This drew me into an infinite mana combo and I was able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

 

[Oversoul]

Lousy luck in my most recent game with this deck. I was stuck on both mana and cards when one of my opponents used Chaos Wand to rip Rise of the Eldrazi off the top of my library. Despite how this opponent was using Chaos wand to abuse my deck's composition, the rest of the table mostly ignored it. The player himself didn't even seem to realize how well this could work in his favor, but he did keep putting pressure on me, and I didn't have much to defend myself. Eventually, I got some extra mana and cast some bigger spells, but nothing that really protected me or gave me an advantage. I cast Kozilek out of continued desperation, then the same opponent from before used his suspended Phthisis, which I did not know about, to kill me. Despite milking those advantages, he lost soon after. I felt like it was a scumbag move, though. I couldn't see his cards across the table with his awful, glossy sleeves. Obviously if I'd known there was a Phthisis about to come off being suspended before I'd even see another turn I wouldn't have dropped a 12/12. At the time, I was just a bit annoyed because the whole game was going so poorly for me anyway. But after giving it a day to sit, it dawns on me that I got pretty egregiously cheated with this game. I think I'd still have lost soon anyway, but so what? It's just not OK.

 

[Oversoul]

-1 Steel Hellkite
+1 Arcbound Crusher

The first of my end-of-year deck revisions.

 

[Oversoul]

Won a long game with this deck last night. After opening with Mishra's Workshop into Mind Stone and Drillworks Mole, things started to go awry. I was not drawing artifacts, so the Workshop was dead weight. The card that kept me in the game was Agatha's Soul Cauldron. Exiling my own Drillworks Mole with the Cauldron let me keep threatening to stack counters on Omarthis, which affected how my opponents responded. One a couple of occasions, two of them banded together against me, but never all three opponents, so I was able to weather those attacks. Agatha's Soul Cauldron kept putting in work, and exiling Mindless Automaton allowed me to dig for more cards (at one point, I had 24 +1/+1 counters on Omarthis). This engine drew me into Staff of Domination, and I used the Scrapyard Recombiner ability (also on Agatha's Soul Cauldron) to fetch Metalworker and the Crashing Drawbridge ability (also on Agatha's Soul Cauldron) to give Metalworker haste.

 

[Oversoul]

Can't seem to catch a break with this deck now. Lost twice, and both games saw my deck struggle a lot.

 

[Oversoul]

This deck continues to fare poorly. I am tentatively planning on dismantling it and building a new version of my Rosie Cotton deck. Might also build another Omarthis deck in the future. I have kind of fallen for this commander. Note to self: do not run Calamity of the Titans. You never cast it.

 

[Oversoul]

After a drought, this deck pulled off a dominant performance. I kept a very inadvisable opening hand, but it had Arcbound Crusher. It turns out that Arcbound Crusher is even better alongside Omarthis than I'd imagined it would be. None of my opponents could kill Omarthis, and I didn't find a sac outlet either, but that didn't matter. I built up an overwhelming board presence and picked my opponents off one-by-one.

 

[Oversoul]

I drew a bunch of good cards that gave me substantial board presence in this game, but couldn't find anything super-explosive. After a pitched battle, I drew through enough cards to assemble Forsaken Monument + Basalt Monolith + Sensei's Divining Top + Mystic Forge.

 

[Oversoul]

Both Ugins put in work last night! I built up a significant board presence and was going to try to either tick Omarthis up or get him killed and try to use the manifested cards. I went from being the player with the strongest board presence to being the one with the weakest board presence in two fell swoops. First, one opponent exiled Omarthis with Deadly Rollick, then another opponent cast Akroma's Vengeance. This one-two punch left me with only my lands, Darksteel Monolith, and Ugin, the Ineffable. I figured that I probably couldn't win, but I topdecked Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and was able to copy planeswalker loyalty abilities with Rings of Brighthearth. A couple turns later, I was able to ult Ugin, copy the ability, and totally dominate the game. Ashnod's Altar gave me the mana to use Inventors' Fair and grab Basalt Monolith, which gave me infinite mana to sink into Staff of Domination, which let me kill the rest of the table with Walking Ballista.