[EDH] Wort, the Raidmother: Conspiring Against You

[Davran]

General:
Wort, the Raidmother

Creatures:
Mogg War Marshal
Sakura-tribe Elder
Scavenging Ooze
Vexing Shusher
Zhur-Taa Druid
Eternal Witness
Vithian Renegades
Boartusk Liege
Ogre Battledriver
Oracle of Mul Daya
Acidic Slime
Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Siege-gang Commander
Charmbreaker Devils
Dragon Broodmother
Inferno Titan
Rampaging Baloths
Avenger of Zendikar
Giant Adephage
Hornet Queen

Instants:
Artifact Mutation
Comet Storm
Signal the Clans
Beast Within
Chaos Warp
Chord of Calling

Sorcery:
Devil's Play
Gelatinous Genesis
Tempt with Vengeance
Clan Defiance
Firecat Blitz
Hull Breach
Regrowth
Cultivate
Kodama's Reach
Harmonize
Past in Flames
Skyshroud Claim
Collective Unconscious

Artifacts:
Mana Vault
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Sol Ring
Ashnod's Altar
Chromatic Lantern
Oblivion Stone
Thran Dynamo
Mirari

Enchatments:
Earthcraft
Goblin Bombardment
Sylvan Library
Beastmaster Ascension
Hammer of Purphoros
Mana Echoes
Parallel Lives
Purphoros, God of the Forge
Doubling Season

Planeswalkers:
Garruk Wildspeaker
Sarkhan Vol
Xenagos, the Reveler

Lands:
Command Tower
Copperline Gorge
Dryad Arbor
Fire-lit Thicket
7 Forest
Grove of the Burnwillows
Gruul Turf
Jund Panorama
Karplusan Forest
Kessig Wolf Run
Khalni Garden
Kher Keep
Mossfire Valley
Mosswort Bridge
7 Mountain
Mountain Valley
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Raging Ravine
Rootbound Crag
Stomping Ground
Strip Mine
Taiga
Temple of the False God
Winding Canyons
Wooded Foothills
Yavimaya Hollow

The deck has two main game plans:

1. Tokens. Tokens everywhere. Many of the creatures and spells produce some number of tokens, which can be cashed in for cards or just swung into the red zone. Burn at the Stake and Purphoros, God of the Forge conveniently turn tokens into damage as well.

2. Conspiring spells for fun and profit. The large number of tokens provides the ability to generate numerous instances of conspire, which can set up a fireball to the face for victory.

I've deliberately excluded the Kiki + Conscripts "combo" from the deck for being both boring and predictable. If you're looking for easy combo wins, by all means find some room.

Maybeboard:
Mana Geyser
One Dozen Eyes
Zealous Conscripts
Sprout Swarm
Green Sun's Zenith
Red Sun's Zenith
Awakening Zone
Harrow
Primal Growth
Polis Crusher

Wishlist:
Imperial Recruiter
Temple of Abandon
Xenagos, God of Revels

Pimp progress:
Foil: 49/100
Not Foilable: 5/100

[TsumiBand]

I'd sneak Comet Storm in there. Also, Mana Echoes is stupidly good in such a deck. Just casting Wort nets you colorless; spells like Gelatinous Genesis, One Dozen Eyes, Tempt with Vengeance, Crush of Wurms, and so on… pretty much incredible.

So is Xenagos's ultimate just not even part of the allure of running it? I know ultimates are typically throw-aways, but I figured I'd ask because (…and I might be paranoid in this…) I just hate exiling my own things in EDH, that H is capital for a reason :( That's just me being weird, so if you find it works out, so much the better I guess.

Very interesting list. I've got a WTRm list sitting around here somewhere as well, and I do enjoy that deck something fierce.

[Davran]

I'd sneak Comet Storm in there. Also, Mana Echoes is stupidly good in such a deck. Just casting Wort nets you colorless; spells like Gelatinous Genesis, One Dozen Eyes, Tempt with Vengeance, Crush of Wurms, and so on… pretty much incredible.

So is Xenagos's ultimate just not even part of the allure of running it? I know ultimates are typically throw-aways, but I figured I'd ask because (…and I might be paranoid in this…) I just hate exiling my own things in EDH, that H is capital for a reason :( That's just me being weird, so if you find it works out, so much the better I guess.

Very interesting list. I've got a WTRm list sitting around here somewhere as well, and I do enjoy that deck something fierce.

Comet Storm is probably just better than Banefire since it's instant speed and all. I'll make that swap for sure.

Holy balls is Mana Echoes the perfect card for this deck! I'll definitely have to pick up a copy next time I order cards.

As for Xenagos, yeah...his ultimate might as well not even be on the card. I've included him because he makes red and green tokens and piles of mana...which are two things this deck wants a ton of. I mean, depending on the stage of the game it could easily +1 for 8+ mana, which is pretty good for not even really trying.

I waffled for a while on One Dozen Eyes - this is actually the first EDH deck I've built where I had a pile of cards larger than the number of slots in the list. It's definitely on the bench should something else under-preform over time.

So...yeah:

- Banefire, + Comet Storm

[TsumiBand]

Comet Storm is probably just better than Banefire since it's instant speed and all. I'll make that swap for sure.

Holy balls is Mana Echoes the perfect card for this deck! I'll definitely have to pick up a copy next time I order cards.

As for Xenagos, yeah...his ultimate might as well not even be on the card. I've included him because he makes red and green tokens and piles of mana...which are two things this deck wants a ton of. I mean, depending on the stage of the game it could easily +1 for 8+ mana, which is pretty good for not even really trying.

I waffled for a while on One Dozen Eyes - this is actually the first EDH deck I've built where I had a pile of cards larger than the number of slots in the list. It's definitely on the bench should something else under-preform over time.

So...yeah:

- Banefire, + Comet Storm

Anecdotally speaking, I don't think I've ever resolved One Dozen Eyes and lost, but that's correlation assuming causation. It's a hefty mana cost even for this deck, especially if it's anything like the last time I sat down at the table and no one allows Vernal Bloom or Vorinclex to live on your side of the battlefield, but it happens to work well with the kinds of things this deck wants to do; have a shitpot of guys for Conspire and/or just go to Fuckyou Town with a ton of guys and any number of creature enhancing effects; Craterhoof Behemoth, Beastmaster Ascension, any generic Overrun effect, and so on.

EDIT: I'm not positive that I kept up on the decklist, so this list might be a little behind the times, but this is my (mostly) current WTRM build. I'll abstain from polluting the thread with the whole list. I think some of the stated goals of my build are a little different than yours and I do have some incidental infinite combos which I may just take out, but then sometimes I dunno, games just need to be over yanno?

[Davran]

Anecdotally speaking, I don't think I've ever resolved One Dozen Eyes and lost, but that's correlation assuming causation. It's a hefty mana cost even for this deck, especially if it's anything like the last time I sat down at the table and no one allows Vernal Bloom or Vorinclex to live on your side of the battlefield, but it happens to work well with the kinds of things this deck wants to do; have a shitpot of guys for Conspire and/or just go to Fuckyou Town with a ton of guys and any number of creature enhancing effects; Craterhoof Behemoth, Beastmaster Ascension, any generic Overrun effect, and so on.

The trick is finding room for all of this stuff. I think we need super dragon highlander or whatever where the deck has 150 cards or something. I dunno. I'm sure something will turn out to be a big vortex of suck and I'll be looking for a replacement.

EDIT: I'm not positive that I kept up on the decklist, so this list might be a little behind the times, but this is my (mostly) current WTRM build. I'll abstain from polluting the thread with the whole list. I think some of the stated goals of my build are a little different than yours and I do have some incidental infinite combos which I may just take out, but then sometimes I dunno, games just need to be over yanno?

Thanks for the link. For whatever reason I can't view tappedout at work (apparently that crosses some sort of line into "games" territory for our net nanny), so I'll have to take a look later.

The problem I have with going infinite is that I can't help myself from doing it. Why do something janky like conspire a Chaos Warp on my own tokens when I can just Kiki + Conscripts the table to death? Once I get to that point, the deck slowly becomes all about finding and assembling the combo...and I get bored pretty fast. Not to mention that my opponents aren't all that happy about it either. Of course, that means that I'm mostly stuck in the 2 hour long game that's going nowhere fast...but it's quite rare for that to happen around here.

That said, the list in the OP is one Cloudstone Curio and Aluren away from "infinite" town (Burning-Tree Emissary and some other dork generate "infinite" mana) or one card off the Kiki + Conscripts plan. You could also add Maze of Ith for Argothian Elder to go nuts with some land that produces 2 mana or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Deserted Temple. If that's your thing, go nuts.

[Amon Amarth]

I'd like to say a little on the unassuming Earthcraft. I didn't play it in my token spam decks because it looked underwhelming. Well, I gave it a try one day and holy fuckballs is that card sweet. You just get so much mileage out of it and you don't even need to go infinite with it to go nuts with the card. It's crazy good. Find a spot for that guy.

[Davran]

I'd like to say a little on the unassuming Earthcraft. I didn't play it in my token spam decks because it looked underwhelming. Well, I gave it a try one day and holy fuckballs is that card sweet. You just get so much mileage out of it and you don't even need to go infinite with it to go nuts with the card. It's crazy good. Find a spot for that guy.

I really want to fit it in here (it's at the top of the maybeboard), but I'm not sure what to cut.

It might be better than Seething Song because it theoretically hangs around for longer...but I'm not sure. Maybe Mana Vault is the cut as the "worst" of the mana rocks?

[Amon Amarth]

I never played with Manamorphose or Seething Song but those cards look pretty weak here. Vault seems fine since it ramps hard and you can buy it back later on. Those are the first two I'd look at. :)

[TsumiBand]

I never played with Manamorphose or Seething Song but those cards look pretty weak here. Vault seems fine since it ramps hard and you can buy it back later on. Those are the first two I'd look at. :)

Yeah I agree -- the handful of one-shot rituals I tried were all pretty disappointing. Getting 4 mana + two cards for 2 mana, or getting ten Red for 3 mana does seem on its face to be good - but really, your mana production is coming from having dorks to tap.
Consider that, much like Aether Vial and Show and Tell can be considered "ramp-by-proxy" for their ability to cheat creatures with a higher mana cost into play than you actually pay, Conspire can be thought of as an analog for "Tap two creatures you control: double the mana in your mana pool" if you're using it to copy spells, in particular X spells. So a ritual effect is second banana to something like a spell that retrieves or creates a creature, because there's no upper bound to the mana they could represent.

In particular if you're playing a list that has Mana Echoes, those spells like Gelatinous Genesis or Goblin Offensive are going to provide so much more mana than any ritual, even if it is just colorless, and really that's where the biggest crunch comes in for this deck (or at least, *my* version of WTRm seems to prefer Mana Echoes to rituals) is figuring out where all that bloody colorless mana is meant to come from.

[Davran]

You both make good points RE: the rituals. I'll try out Earthcraft in the Seething Song slot.

I'm still hoping to pick up a Mana Echoes. It's the perfect card for the deck.

[Amon Amarth]

Echoes was another card I never played until recently. Card is pretty sweet with tokens. It gets pretty silly really quick. I also recommend it, perhaps in the slot occupied by Manamorphose?

[Davran]

Echoes was another card I never played until recently. Card is pretty sweet with tokens. It gets pretty silly really quick. I also recommend it, perhaps in the slot occupied by Manamorphose?

Yeah, that's where it's going to go as soon as I can pick one up. Card seems excellent for the deck.

[FTW]

Play Zealous Conscripts. It's a good card. Stealing Planeswalker ultimates and fatties is fun. If you don't want to play the Kiki combo, then just don't target Conscripts with Kiki LOLOL. No one forces you to use a combo just because it exists in your list (unless they Mindslaver you I suppose).

[TsumiBand]

Play Zealous Conscripts. It's a good card. Stealing Planeswalker ultimates and fatties is fun. If you don't want to play the Kiki combo, then just don't target Conscripts with Kiki LOLOL. No one forces you to use a combo just because it exists in your list (unless they Mindslaver you I suppose).

Aye, good cards are good. The only thing I'd say against this is that with too many monocolored creatures you do run the risk of having the wrong color if creatures for your Conspire to actually work. Since you can't tap Red guys for Green spells, it can reduce the effectiveness of the commander a little. That's rarely a reason not to run a Good Card, but it is a thing that can happen.

sent from phone, don't be a dick

[Davran]

Play Zealous Conscripts. It's a good card. Stealing Planeswalker ultimates and fatties is fun. If you don't want to play the Kiki combo, then just don't target Conscripts with Kiki LOLOL. No one forces you to use a combo just because it exists in your list (unless they Mindslaver you I suppose).

Yeah...I should probably be running it somewhere in here. It's just so...predictable. Also, I don't run very many sacrifice outlets...so stealing some fatty is less good than usual. There's also the little problem of not knowing what to cut...

Quick change to the list:

- Forest, + Winding Canyons

Canyons should have been in all along...for some reason I passed right over it when building the mana base.

So far, this deck is getting nothing from Born of the Gods...although that minotaur that copies a creature when he is untapped is interesting, especially with Earthcraft around to tap him first.

[TsumiBand]

Yeah...I should probably be running it somewhere in here. It's just so...predictable. Also, I don't run very many sacrifice outlets...so stealing some fatty is less good than usual. There's also the little problem of not knowing what to cut...

Quick change to the list:

- Forest, + Winding Canyons

Canyons should have been in all along...for some reason I passed right over it when building the mana base.

So far, this deck is getting nothing from Born of the Gods...although that minotaur that copies a creature when he is untapped is interesting, especially with Earthcraft around to tap him first.

There might be a few goodies in BotG. Unravel the Aether - 1G, Instant, Choose target artifact/enchantment. Its owner shuffles it into his or her library - could potentially be a playable way to tuck anything from an artifact commander to just some terrible enchantment thing. Though if anyone in your meta builds against one of the Gods from Theros block they might take it personal, heh.

If you do end up getting a Mana Echoes, Fated Intervention might be an okay card. There's not a ton of draw in your list (on purpose?) so at least, one could scry a little while putting 6 power on the board? If Conspired, so much the better.

Good call on that Minotaur though, I didn't even realize that it's kind of a weird Kiki-Jiki. 1 less to cast, easier to cast, however much more conditional to activate, but can target legendary creatures… yeah, there's probably some rofl in that copter. I can dig it.

[Davran]

There might be a few goodies in BotG. Unravel the Aether - 1G, Instant, Choose target artifact/enchantment. Its owner shuffles it into his or her library - could potentially be a playable way to tuck anything from an artifact commander to just some terrible enchantment thing. Though if anyone in your meta builds against one of the Gods from Theros block they might take it personal, heh.

Deglamer exists now too. I almost ran it over Hull Breach, except that card is pure value and an excellent conspire target. The most likely slot for either of the tuck cards is Vithian Renegades, except the Renegades play better with both Wort and Kiki.

If you do end up getting a Mana Echoes, Fated Intervention might be an okay card. There's not a ton of draw in your list (on purpose?) so at least, one could scry a little while putting 6 power on the board? If Conspired, so much the better.

There's just not a ton of draw to be had in these colors. I could run Wheel of Fortune or Memory Jar I suppose...although I'm not sure they interact all that well with the rest of the deck. Fated Intervention might be worth it though, for sure.

Good call on that Minotaur though, I didn't even realize that it's kind of a weird Kiki-Jiki. 1 less to cast, easier to cast, however much more conditional to activate, but can target legendary creatures… yeah, there's probably some rofl in that copter. I can dig it.

Yeah, it seems like it was made for this format. It would probably be pretty fun in a UR shell with like Pemmin's Aura and other wacky stuff like that too.

[TsumiBand]

Deglamer exists now too.

Ohh hmmm, forgot about Deglamer. Well, meh.

There's just not a ton of draw to be had in these colors. I could run Wheel of Fortune or Memory Jar I suppose...although I'm not sure they interact all that well with the rest of the deck. Fated Intervention might be worth it though, for sure.

Yeah obviously RG draw spells are a little lacking, but there are still some very solid things that could be in the deck -- I just assumed you were trying to something something Spirit of the Format, or something. Greater Good and Momentous Fall are all but EDH staples, Soul's Majesty is derpy enough to go in any deck with big Green mans, and Collective Unconscious is real good as well.

Red's draw is a little weird but not bad. I think I start every Red list for EDH with Faithless Looting now, and Wild Guess is not the *literal* worst card in the world (I think I cut my copy a long time ago though, even if my current list doesn't reflect that). Apart from that you start getting into Wheel effects, which are… well they're Wheel effects, they are what they are :P

[Davran]

Yeah obviously RG draw spells are a little lacking, but there are still some very solid things that could be in the deck -- I just assumed you were trying to something something Spirit of the Format, or something. Greater Good and Momentous Fall are all but EDH staples, Soul's Majesty is derpy enough to go in any deck with big Green mans, and Collective Unconscious is real good as well.

Red's draw is a little weird but not bad. I think I start every Red list for EDH with Faithless Looting now, and Wild Guess is not the *literal* worst card in the world (I think I cut my copy a long time ago though, even if my current list doesn't reflect that). Apart from that you start getting into Wheel effects, which are… well they're Wheel effects, they are what they are :P

Spirit of the Format (TM) be damned. I want a deck that's fun to pilot. To me, a deck that's fun to pilot does more than one "thing", and won't typically wind up as the Archenemy (TM) or that guy that just sits there doing nothing. This list is definitely getting there.

Greater Good might be better in a deck with more fat. I have some dudes that fit the bill, but I'm mostly making tokens. It's a pretty big game with Giant Adephage I guess...but if I'm smashing in with that guy to the point of extra copies to sacrifice for cards Greater Good is probably a little win-more.

Momentous Fall is a card I always pull out of my box-o-jank when I'm brewing something green, and I always end up putting it right back. That said, casting this with Conspire could be all kinds of great.

Soul's Majesty is kind of meh here, I think. There aren't that many targets in the deck that make it "worth it" to spend 5 mana on this spell.

Collective Unconscious seems strong. Why the heck didn't I know this card existed? I think this could be the best draw spell for the deck, so I'll have to pick up a copy. I guess it's time to break down and put in an order somewhere. Damn LGS and their poor selection of random old rare cards...

As for the red card draw, I'm pretty meh on it here. Faithless Looting is a good magic card, but ultimately I don't think I need two cards that badly. Same with Wild Guess. The various Wheels are kind of meh too.

[Davran]

Broke down and ordered a couple cards:

Out:
Manamorphose
Recollect

In:
Mana Echoes
Collective Unconscious

Mana Echoes is a much better Manamorphose with more potential for abuse. Overall this is a pretty easy switch.

It was harder to find a cut for Collective Unconscious. I didn't want to cut a creature because those are increasingly important in the list and interact directly with Collective Unconscious. That left the non-creature spells. Up for consideration were Recollect, Crucible of Worlds, and Sarkahn Vol. I kept Crucible around because of the unique effect and the potential need for protection on some of our lands. Sarkhan Vol is a case of me just wanting to play with the card. His +1 can be occasionally relevant, so whatever. Recollect is essentially a 3rd copy of Regrowth/Eternal Witness, so it seemed like the best choice.