Rant of Valakut: Gifts Unwanted

The holidays have come and gone, we’re facing down a new year, and bracing ourselves for the horror that is Valentine’s Day. As we slowly put away our decorations and presents, it is inevitable that we will once again come across… it.

Everyone has one, whether they got for it for Christmas or their birthday, or some other occasion. It’s that strange widget, a perplexing object you didn’t know existed until you opened it. Now you’re wishing that it didn’t exist so that you wouldn’t have to deal with it. It’s that thing that just takes up space, and yet for some reason you can’t seem to get rid of it.

Back when I started playing Commander, it seemed that everyone was “working on a Zedruu deck,” but nobody had actually built one. The idea of playing a deck filled with awful cards that had to be given away was such a fun and silly idea that every time someone found a bad old card we would exclaim that it was “perfect for Zedruu!” This phrase became code for “this card is unplayable,” and we would all get a good laugh whenever it would come up. We would see cards like Alabaster Leech and Molten Firebird, and we knew just where to stick them: with Zedruu the Greathearted.

The more we would mention it, the more I knew I had to make this deck for myself. It had been a joke for so long, but I couldn’t help but wonder: what if I could actually find a way of making it work? I bought a copy of Zedruu and started brainstorming.

I began by looking at cards that would gradually lock players out of the game, like Aggressive Mining and Steel Golem. If my opponents couldn’t play their cards then surely I could find a way to win! I like to refer to these crippling cards as “poisoned apples” since they aren’t just useless, but actively hurt you by controlling them. The danger, of course, would be getting stuck with these permanents and having no way to offload them to the players around me. I would need to pair them with an assortment of donate effects, or choose ‘poisoned apples’ that would give themselves away. If I didn’t have to rely on Zedruu then it would help ensure that I would always have some way of getting rid of these terrible cards. I quickly realized that this plan would only get me so far, though. Giving cards away was fine, but what I really wanted were ways of EXCHANGING my permanents with those of my opponents. This would allow me not only to lock out the other players, but to simultaneously steal their win conditions. It was a good place to start.

Giving away bad cards and stealing permanents from other players was all well and good, but I would need other ways of slowing my opponents down. I would need cards that would disrupt my opponents’ plans, while ideally also being something I could give away. If I could find cards that didn’t care which player controlled them, then they would be safe to donate with Zedruu, drawing me extra cards every round. Cards with global effects, like Torpor Orb and Stony Silence came to mind, as well as auras like Ghostly Possession and Faith’s Fetters. Even cards like Oblivion Ring and Darksteel Relic (the ultimate do-nothing card) would be safe to give away. Each of these cards would be useful (ok, maybe not the Relic…), but would keep working no matter who controlled them.

I had a plan on how I would slow the game down, but at some point this deck would need to try and win the game. Stealing my opponents’ cards wouldn’t be enough, though. If I could set up some sort of late game combo, that would be ideal. I came up with a pretty classic plan. I would need to draw Capsize and Delusions of Mediocrity so that I could set up the following loop:

It was slow and clunky, but it would work. In fact, it HAS worked; I’ve won games with this loop, but to call it slow is an understatement. Once the deck got to the point of casting its combo it was pretty satisfying, but there was a lot of hard work that went into getting there. Careful table politics helped, but it was the other little synergies in the deck that let me get to that endgame. Some of the noteworthy combinations included:

Humble Defector + Homeward Path

Humble Defector is an interesting card with Zedruu to begin with; it’s a great way to draw two cards, but you have to give it away afterwards. With Zedruu, you get to draw a card every upkeep because someone else controls the Defector… unless someone gives it back to you. Homeward Path removes the drawback of Humble Defector by returning it to your control after you give it away. Additionally, Homeward Path can help reset things if you end up giving away too many creatures (or if someone steals YOUR creatures).

Jinxed Choker + Witchbane Orb