Realm Eruption

Posted on September 26, 2013

In my Commander play, I’m not really into group-hug tactics, nor am I interested in overt political play. As a result, Zedruu the Greathearted never appealed to me. However, one unassuming Theros card jumped out at me as something I wanted to combo with, and Zedruu really pulls the pieces together. My deck for today won’t be a Commander deck, but it does make use of the Political Puppets Minotaur.

These two cards really have nothing to do with each other. I suppose one possibility is to Donate a Mountain and then Peak Eruption it to deal 3 damage, but that comes at the cost of 6 mana and a land, whereas a Lightning Bolt could have done the job much easier. In fact, ending up with Zedruu in my deck in the first place was a few steps removed from my start at Peak Eruption.

My first leap in logic was that I wanted to destroy all my opponent’s lands with one Peak Eruption, thus dealing a significant—possibly lethal—amount of damage. In order to destroy all my opponent’s lands, all my opponent’s lands need to be Mountains. There are a few cards that can turn lands into Mountains.

Dream Thrush is pretty sweet, but it only terraforms one land per turn, though we could augment that with Illusionist's Bracers and/or untap effects. Shimmering Mirage also only terraforms one land, and it only works once, though we do draw a card for it. Realmwright or Prismatic Omen are persistent effects, but they apply to our own lands.

Now, we also want to actually destroy the lands, and no matter how many of our opponent’s lands we terraform, Peak Eruption can only hit one of them. However, as you may know from the time when I transformed all permanents on the battlefield into 3/3 Beast tokens and then gained control of them all, I do love Radiate. And like Ice of Fire // Ice fame, Shimmering Mirage has a draw-a-card line, so in Radiating it, we’d draw a significant number of cards.

However, to pull of that combo would require Shimmering Mirage, Peak Eruption, two copies of Radiate, and . And as you may have caught onto already, Zedruu the Greathearted allows us an alternative, less mana-intensive way of executing our plan.

Though Realmwright only affects our lands, we still are able to make the Mountain choice and then Donate the Ravnica architect through our legendary Minotaur’s graciousness. And once we’ve done that, we can simply Radiate a Peak Eruption to destroy all of our victim’s lands and deal to him or her 3 times that much damage.

To assist us in staying alive to the point at which we can enact our plan, we have Wall of Omens and Mnemonic Wall, both of which help us refuel and set up. Kor Cartographer is a [common] rare piece of white, nonartifact acceleration, and not coincidentally, all three of these creatures have enters-the-battlefield effects.

This means that they enter the battlefield and grant us benefits, and if they’re not needed, they can be Donated with Zedruu to draw us more cards and grant us a life cushion while we prepare for the oncoming volcanoes. In addition, we are able to play such fanciness as Momentary Blink to reuse our enters-the-battlefield abilities or to protect our precious Zedruu.

Momentary Blink’s flashback ability is a great form of card advantage, virtually acting as copies of Think Twice with our card-advantageous enters-the-battlefield triggers. However, Momentary Blink also has a weakness: It can only target our own creatures, and there is actually a lot of potential value in Flickering opposing things.

Incidentally, cards like Momentary Blink are often referred to as Flicker effects because of this eponymous card. Its downside is the lack of flashback, but the upsides, especially for this deck, are multitudinous. First, image we’ve Donated a Kor Cartographer. Our opponent attacks us with it, we Flicker it, and it returns under our control, granting us another Plains. We can then block with it.

Playing well with Zedruu is also Oblivion Ring, which can exile a target and then sit on the battlefield uselessly. We can give it away and benefit from it through Zedruu’s upkeep trigger and through the fact that it continues to lock up whatever we chose.

And to top it all off, if we pair Flicker with any of the copies of Radiate already in the deck, we can create a huge, potentially unpredictable board swing. Anything we lent out will return to our control—granting us triggers—creatures will be removed from combat, Auras will drop away, counters will be reset or removed, Oblivion Ring targets can be reset, and so on. And if we had a couple Mnemonic Walls, we can even return both the Flicker and the Radiate to our hand.

Normally, I skip over most of a deck’s lands, but a few points here are important. It is a three-colored deck, meaning we’ll want mana-fixing. Kor Cartographer fetches Plains, so we’ll want to run those, and Hallowed Fountain is a great Plains. Sacred Foundry seems good, but it’s also a Mountain, making it eligible for eruption when we Radiate.

While it might not be a huge deal if we’re winning the game that turn anyway, especially since we can arrange the Peak Eruption copies and have them resolve in the order we like, the 3 damage could matter in theory, especially: in the face of counterspells, if our opponent doesn’t die from the Radiated Peak Eruption, or if we have multiple opponents. That said, we may sometimes want red mana and be otherwise unable to find it, so running one Sacred Foundry for Kor Cartographer to fetch seems like a good idea. The Cartographer can’t fetch Steam Vents, which are also Mountains, so let’s just forego those altogether.

Finally, the new Temple cycle of lands from Theros has received its fair share of flack, in part because of their rarity (in comparison to Ravnica’s Guildgates) and in part because scry 1 isn’t respected (in comparison to the 1 life-gain of Zendikar’s Refuges). However, scrying is a very powerful effect for smoothing draws, and combo decks need all the draw-smoothing they can get their hands on.

"Realm Eruption"

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed this look at how to blow up all your opponents’ Mountains—and what to do if they don’t have Mountains to start with. For an extra bit of fun, throw in Shifting Sky and Glare of Heresy. Or play with more colors, using Prismatic Omen instead of Realmwright. Or just add a Radiate, a Realmwright, and a Peak Eruption to your Zedruu the Greathearted Commander deck, using the cards as a Pocket Combo.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fFissionessence at hotmail dot com