Module 1:
Karmic Guide
Reveillark
Mirror Entity
Perilous Myr
(Saffi)
Module 2:
Kitchen Finks
Melira, Sylvok Outcast
Altar of Dementia
Blasting Station
Greater Good
Module 3:
Fiend Hunter
Sun Titan
(Saffi)
(Station)
(Altar)
(Greater Good)
Draw and Tutors:
Elvish Visionary
Multani's Acolyte
Wall of Blossoms
Wall of Omens
Mentor of the Meek
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Sylvan Library
Harmonize
Fauna Shaman
Academy Rector
Green Sun's Zenith
Sylvan Tutor
Worldly Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Survival of the Fittest
Eladamri's Call
Chord of Calling
Congregation at Dawn
Birthing Pod
Defense of the Heart
Board Control:
Sylvok Replica
Acidic Slime
Aura Shards
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
Beast Within
Day of Judgment
Wrath of God
Protection:
Grand Abolisher
Restoration Angel
Orim's Chant
Sterling Grove
Recursion:
Eternal Witness
Genesis
Noxious Revival
Regrowth
Miscellaneous:
Spore Frog
Caller of the Claw
Emancipation Angel
Linvala, Keeper of Silence
Cloudstone Curio
Primal Command
Mana:
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Birds of Paradise
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Viridian Emissary
Somberwald Sage
Solemn Simulacrum
Primeval Titan
Sol Ring
Rampant Growth
9 Forest
7 Plains
Dryad Arbor
Mosswort Bridge
Slippery Karst
Tranquil Thicket
Drifting Meadow
Secluded Steppe
Horizon Canopy
Savannah
Selesnya Sanctuary
Stirring Wildwood
Sunpetal Grove
Temple Garden
Wooded Bastion
Gavony Township
Temple of the False God
Evolving Wilds
Grasslands
Krosan Verge
Terramorphic Expanse
Windswept Heath
General: Saffi Eriksdotter
How It Works:
This deck is basically an aggro-control/midrange-y beatdown deck with the ability to infinite-combo people out of the game. Your standard plan is to just beat people up with utility creatures that you pump stuff like Norn, Township, and Ranger, but you have a couple of other options:
Module 1: Classic 'Lark loop. If you cast Mirror Entity with Lark, Saffi/Guide, and Myr in play, you can activate Entity for 0 and infinite number of times to kill your Lark. Lark will bring back your other two pieces, one of which does some damage and the other of which returns Lark. You then let the next Entity activation resolve and repeat the loop. This module has the benefit of consisting entirely of creatures and therefore being easy to find, but it hinges entirely on Reveillark.
Module 2: Classic Melira loop. Blasting Station kills the opponent, Altar mills the opponent, and Greater Good will find something that kills the opponent.
Module 3: This wasn't intentionally built into the deck, but it's still useful. Basically, with Sun Titan, Saffi/Hunter, and any sacrifice outlet from the second module, you can create an infinite loop: Hunter removes Titan, then gets sacrificed, bringing back Titan, which grabs Hunter with its CiP trigger, which removes Titan, and so on.
Other Stuff:If you're missing a way to win but have one of the modules mostly assembled, you can run it on the end of an opponent's turn a large number of times and then flash in Caller of the Claw, creating an arbitrarily large army of bears.
Current as of 5-v-2012
Last edited by Aggro_zombies; 05-05-2012 at 03:25 PM.
Do +1/+1 counters still negate -1/-1 counters? I thought they changed the rule because of that combo in standard, I'm pretty sure the creature just keeps both counters on it now. That would null a few of your combos.
Team Unicorn: We're horny...get it?
Originally Posted by Ewokslayer
+1/+1 and -1/-1 negate each other yes. They wouldn't change rules because of a combo, they'd ban a part of it if it were too bad.
I thought that they had changed it so that the creature kept aits -1/-1 counter on it even if it has a +1/+1 counter on it. that gets rid of persist tricks.
Team Unicorn: We're horny...get it?
+1/+1 and -1/-1 counter cancel each other out now.
Oh, I'll stop muttering insanities now.
Team Unicorn: We're horny...get it?
So, swinging the thread back in a relevant direction, I dropped Archon and added Deranged Hermit, and that shit is so fucking cash. Basically, it gives you another victory combo with Saffi/Karmic Guide + Reveillark + any sacrifice outlet, since you get to make infinite squirrels. The best part is that it's largely immune to sweepers, because you can sacrifice Saffi in response targeting Reveillark, let their sweeper resolve, then run the loop again and kill them on your turn. It's awesome.
Also, I dropped Natural Order for Privileged Position. Swords on 'lark mid-loop kinda sucks, so this gives me some buffer against that.
Also, removal of mana burn is the best thing that could happen to this deck. It makes Altar totally insane.
Loyal Retainers?
Meh? I have a couple ways to get Saffi back, and it's P3K, which will make it hard to find.
EDIT: Why'd it have to be limited to legendary creatures? It would be so good here otherwise...
You're probably right. Retainers already have a better place in Sisay.
Meh? I have a couple ways to get Saffi back, and it's P3K, which will make it hard to find.
EDIT: Why'd it have to be limited to legendary creatures? It would be so good here otherwise...
Necro because I put this deck back together and updated it.
The last couple of sets have been very good to this deck. Fauna Shaman joins the team as a backup Survival, which is always good; the deck didn't seem to have enough tutors before, and so could be wildly inconsistent. Perilous Myr is a redundant Triskelion for combo purposes, and is very good at holding the ground in the early game. Su-Chi becomes immortal when wearing Nim Deathmantle, which allows me to run infinite loops without needing Lark or Saffi. Asceticism is another way to protect my guys from removal in response to initiating loops.
Other than that, the deck isn't much changed. Mirage-era Diamonds became mana Myr because I wanted more creatures, and Adarkar Valkyrie got replaced by Sun Titan (which is much better when looping, anyway).
Going forward, I'm considering either Hurricane or Squallmonger as an infinite mana sink (making Phyrexian Altar better) and Genesis Chamber to give me something to do with infinite loops that don't immediate win the game (say, immortal Su-Chi + Phyrexian Altar).
Thoughts would be appreciated.
I like Pattern of Rebirth in my Saffi deck. It is nice that your general is a cheap creature that can sacrifice itself.
Last edited by Geeba; 10-28-2010 at 02:52 PM.
The previously discussed Retainers is an infinite loop with saffi.
Pattern of Rebirth seems really good. Sac Saffi targeting something irrelevant, get Loyal Retainers. Or get Twilight Shepherd, cast Saffi and Pattern again and win the game.
Asmira, Holy Avenger is a fun thing to combo with the infinite recursion loops.
Primeval Titan seems good if it's in budget, as always.
Wild Pair seems like it would be the most hilarious thing in this deck, especially since you could tutor it up with Academy Rector. That would also give you Rector -> Pattern of Rebirth -> Win.
Retainers + Saffi doesn't actually do anything, though. It just loops a bunch.
Pattern is probably fine, if I can find one.
Asmira doesn't seem that great. If I'm making infinite loops, I want to win on the spot, not "next turn if no one has a Wrath".
Still only have one Primeval Titan, and it's still in Child. I kind of wish Titan was worth $40 so I could justify picking up more.
Wild Pair seems expensive for what it does. I guess a tutor is a tutor, but...
Wow, this deck is missing a lot of stuff to make it broken - I'll give ya' a couple to get you started:
Academy Rector
Green Sun's Zenith
Well, GSZ wasn't released the last time I had this deck together. And what does Rector get, aside from Asceticism? The biggest problem with this deck is that most of the sacrifice outlets are artifacts, and these colors are short on ways to find them.
Really? What can you get with Rector? Rector targets:
Greater Good - (probably one of the most, if not thee most broken card for this deck)
Mirari's Wake - (another card you should be running)
Survival of the Fittest - (the best card in EDH?)
Mana Reflection - (you may not need it, but why the hell not?)
Defense of the Heart (were you saying you were short on tutor effects?)
Privilaged Position (Weren't you also just saying that one of the biggest problems with "going off" was being targeted?)
Aura Shards (because sometimes you just need control)
Sylvan Library (because Card advantage is good?)
Look, I don't mean to jump all over you here, but the 2 cards I posted were really just primer's to get you moving in another direction and thinking a bit...
Green and White are awesome EDH colors that have A TON to offer, and Saffi is probably the best general to marry those colors and be pretty broken. However, you don't have to go infinate to go broken with Saffi. You could change you card selection a bit and remove the infinate combo's and these things will happen:
1. People won't be annoyed with you as you play with yourself for 5 minutes and then say "I win"
2. Your deck will be more consistent because you won't have combo pieces that do nothing on their own (like blasting station)
3. You will be able to compete against decks with wide ranges of answers (like counter magic) that would currently just destroy you.
4. You won't be ganged up on becuase everyone won't be afraid of you just going infinate at any point.
With any luck, all of those things should lead to the most important item of them all:
5. You'll have more fun.
Bottom line, if you got rid of the cards that are there strictly for combo, and made a few smarter choices about mana accelleration you could cut about 15 cards from the deck and make it a lot smoother to run and over-all much more fun to play...unless you like just playing against yourself...
Any EDH deck can degenerate into infinate combos - and if you start forcing EDH decks in that direction then you force people to play control or faster combo decks...and before long you're just playing a watered-down version of Legacy.
But, see, the point of this deck is to go infinite. If I want to play a deck that has combo potential but is otherwise fair, I would play my Vorosh deck. If I wanted to play a powerful deck that can beat a wide range of answers, I'd play my Child of Alara build. This deck was put together because I like infinite combos but wanted a deck that wasn't storm (which I already have in the form of Oona), and Saffi seemed like a fun way to go infinite.
In the area where I play, you're more likely to die to an infinite combo of some sort than being beaten down (or get beaten down after an infinite combo - hi Tooth and Nail for Kiki-Pestermite). Playing this deck is just defense against that. If you don't go broken in EDH, why bother?
I mean, I don't mean to sound douchey, but I have a bunch of other fair decks and wanted something that could be unfair without being explicitly so. People will refuse to play against Oona unless they build Clique or something. People don't generally refuse to play against Saffi because I don't race to assemble an infinite combo unless someone else is about to go infinite. The versions of this deck I've played previously have been not embarrassing as beatdown decks.
Good catch on the Rector targets, though. I'd forgotten about drawing my deck with Greater Good.
Honestly, I'm just too braindead to identify which pieces are essential to combos. This has sort of inspired me to build a deck that's just trying to use Saffi to get value out of all kinds of ETB effects, but I don't know if something like that is good enough to be worthwhile.
In the meantime, I guess I'll ask what your thoughts on some stuff are:
Caller of the Claw does something with Su-Chi/Retainers/other stupid infinite loops. It's a lot like Asmira though, but less vulnerable to spot removal, and can be done at instant speed. Also a nice end to a chain of 2/2s with Wild Pair.
Wild Pair just seems like an easy way to set up combos, or to just get value out of doing tricks with Saffi that don't involve comboing, but just getting ahead on the board. I mean, tutoring up infinite 2/2s out of your deck seems to be pretty good in this particular circumstance. I don't know how long your games tend to go, but it seems to me that Wild Pair is one of those cards where you win if you untap with it.
In your current list, Rector doesn't get anything, but if you add Pattern of Rebirth/Wild Pair, I think it becomes worth it.
Natural Order? Seems like an easy way to get value out of Saffi early on. I don't know what you'd want to cheat into play, but it seems like it might be worthwhile.
Skullclamp? You run a ton of sac outlets. This might also make Stoneforge Mystic worthwhile as it'd get either Deathmantle or Skullclamp. Dryad Arbor seems like a reasonable fetchland target if you do run Clamp. It's not the worst with some of your sac outlets. Seems interesting at the least.
Cloudstone Curio? Again, I know it's not really an infinite combo piece, but it could be a way to get value out of guys or protect key cards in the mid to late game while you're trying to set something up. Definitely depends on just how fast people are winning games though. Another cool interaction with Dryad Arbor though.
Is Congregation at Dawn any good? you've got a number of ways to draw into the cards, so it might just be triple worldly tutor, which sets up any number of combos.
Well, the combos (and the pieces therein) overlap a bunch, and are listed in the OP.
An aside of sorts: I don't often have this deck together, and it's been a while since I last played it. Generally, my "always together" EDH decks are the ones I have the most fun playing and have priority when trading or placing cards:
Vorosh - midrange dredge, made in December 2009
Child of Alara - board control, made in July/August 2010
And after those two, I have a rotating list of many EDH decks that will stay together for a month or so, and then get cannibalized for cards:
Oona - storm combo, last together in September 2010
Saffi - infinite creature combo, last together in October 2010
Momir Vig - Elfball combo, last together in May 2010
Doran - treefolk tribal / The Rock, last together in June 2010
Geth - Phyrexia "RP" deck, made in November 2010
As you might guess, I don't much like red in EDH, nor do I like Voltron/ramp decks.
So, anyway, this deck hasn't been together for a while because a number of the cards are being used elsewhere. I could get more of those cards, but I'd have to order them, and my poor-graduate-student-level budget would balk at spending money on cards for a deck that drifts in and out of being assembled. That said...
Caller of the Claw: for some reason, I though this only worked if the creatures died because of a spell or ability an opponent controls; I think it has to do with my perception of the card as "Wrath insurance." It seems like a fine guy and a great way to turn an otherwise useless loop into a win.
Wild Pair: the hard part for this deck isn't finding the creatures, it's finding the sacrifice outlets. Currently, there's only one creature in these colors that acts as a free, reusable sacrifice outlet, and that's Mirror Entity - who only works with some of the combo loops. If there were more ways to find artifacts (which most of the sacrifice outlets are), I would be happy. As it is, there have been plenty of games in the past where I'd have all the guys in play for a particular loop, but wouldn't be able to find an Altar or Blasting Station to save my life. I guess Wild Pair helps me set up the specific loops involving Mirror Entity in addition to providing general value, but my second issue with the card is that it's kind of like Tooth and Nail: there's no way to use that card that doesn't involve people immediately identifying you as being dangerous. Unlike TnN, though, it doesn't actually win you the game on the spot.
Natural Order: the green creatures are less important here than the white ones: Reveillark, Karmic Guide, and Mirror Entity are all essential engine pieces. Also, I'm adding GSZ.
Skullclamp: seems fine, but I wonder if I'd need more token generators first.
Cloudstone Curio: there was one point in time where I was working on a Rasputin Dreamweaver deck, which was sort of a white-blue version of this deck that used blinking and bounce to gain tons of value. In that deck, Curio was the stone-cold nuts. Here, I feel like I'd need to add more CiP guys to make it worthwhile, and even then these colors don't generate as much raw advantage out of it as blue-white do.
Congregation at Dawn: if you have a way to draw all three cards the same turn you cast CaD, then yes, it's good. Otherwise, you basically announce your intention to win and then everyone targets you until you die or don't have enough permanents in play to be dangerous anymore. Using Congregation to get just mundane guys is okay, but not the greatest.
I'm thinking of overhauling this deck a bit if I put it back together. A number of the card choices were kind of suspect at the time, and the ratio of creatures to noncreatures was too low. The deck also suffered from the same problems a badly built Sharuum deck does: namely, having too many combos and not enough support or control cards. Just as Sharuum is at her most powerful when you have only a few combos but a lot of counters, draw, and control, this deck would probably be better if I streamlined it to include just the core loops and then made the rest of the deck a midrange control deck with a lot of card advantage. The goal would then be to use your guys to control the board until you can assemble a loop and win.
Last edited by Aggro_zombies; 02-12-2011 at 08:26 PM.
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