MTG Salvation

It is the will of Zedruu that this game fall into complete chaos. Here, have this Shared Fate.

I'll be over here, drawing extra cards. From your deck.

So, Zedruu's by far my favorite of the new precon legends, and I really wanted to make a deck around her. At the same time, I also really wanted to make a chaos deck, because I revel in the hilarity of a good chaotic board state. I wobbled back and forth on whether to make a "normal" Zedruu build or a chaos version, and finally decided on chaos...



This isn't purely a griefer deck(though I freely admit to being an unapologetic griefer); I did build it with chaos in mind, and it does try, to some degree, to actually use the effects of certain chaos cards to its own advantage. For example, since the deck has so few non-permanents, Warp World will typically set me back less than everyone else, and it'll most likely dump out a stack of chaotic effects that'll make it even harder for people to recover. Likewise, since most of my permanents don't really care about who controls them, a Scrambleverse or Thieves' Auction can get me a lot of useful permanents from other players while giving everyone else stuff that really doesn't accomplish anything for them - and I can start drawing extra cards and gaining life from Zedruu.

The deck has a number of wincons: As mentioned above, I can potentially set myself far ahead off certain chaos effects and win from that, but it's not very reliable, since of course these are chaos effects. I can win with some typical Zedruu shenanigans like giving non-white decks Celestial Dawn, or using Thought Lash to exile someone's whole deck, etc. There's also Rite of Replication, which can always do crazy things when kicked. Enduring Ideal also serves as a potential wincon.

I understand that chaos decks are generally pretty unpopular, but I'd still like to hear people's thoughts.

It is the will of Zedruu that you have this Celestial Dawn.

I'll be over here, drawing extra cards and gaining extra life while you are unable to cast anything.

Zedruu runs very few creatures. Rise of the Hobgoblins helps when you've got Confusion in the Ranks out. It helps pretty much any switcheroo. You run a lot of cards that make you the target of attacks, like Kismet. Bad idea. Your deck does too much griefing and not enough killing your opponents.

Let's not kid ourselves: by the very nature of being a chaos deck, this deck will be the target of attacks. There's really no ifs, ands, or buts about that, I think. Most people just hate this kind of deck, so regardless of whether Kismet or any other card that will make me a target is out or not(or even in the deck or not), people will still be going after me in most games.

I do like the idea of Rise of the Hobgoblins. I could probably put it in place of Kismet or Frozen AEther, which are completely redundant with each other.

Neat build, I've been working towards a Zedruu deck and I see some cards I haven't considered. How's Storm Cauldron and Sands of Time working for you? I haven't seen them in other builds.

I'd cut Confusion in the Ranks. I cast fog bank thanks for Zerduu.

First of all, sorry for the long delay in my reply. I didn't even realize people had posted in this thread.

VoodooGremlin: Sands of Time is sometimes useful for slowing down opposing creatures(since they have to wait a turn for summoning sickness and then another due to being tapped by the Sands), and it combos with Equipoise, but barring those cases it's pretty lackluster. I'm considering cutting both it and Equipoise(which is pretty irrelevant without Sands most of the time).

As for Storm Cauldron, it works incredibly well with all the Propaganda effects in this deck. Everyone hates you when you have it out though, so you really need a Propaganda, ideally at least two, to really help dissuade people from attacking you. It's pretty stellar in this case, but you have to be careful you don't hurt yourself too much with it.

BigTexs: I actually have a "destupidified"(as I like to call it) version of this deck which cuts most of the chaos, and Confusion is indeed one of the cards I cut, but in the main build it's mostly there to cause crazy chaos in multiplayer. I'll post the destupidified version if people are interested.

Im interested on the destupidified version, i`ve build this deck and now all my friends aim at me first

Due to some combination of laziness, absentmindedness, and general incompetence, I haven't updated this in almost a year. Well, approximately a million changes have been made, too many to log here. I'm leaving the old build in the first post for the time being just for ease of comparison. This is the current "destupidified" build.

This build has much less pure chaos than the main one, but still keeps enough of it to use as a strategy. Grip of Chaos really is one of the best cards in the deck, as it messes up lots of commonly played cards, but since all the exchange effects in this deck(as well as Zedruu's donation) have multiple targets, this deck suffers a great deal less than everyone else. Teferi's Puzzle Box is also great since it lets you put things that you'd rather get out via Enduring Ideal back into your deck, while also ruining everyone else's ability to plan ahead.

The ideal plan to victory is to hide behind lots of Propaganda and rattlesnake-type cards, giving away useless(like, say, Kobolds of Kher Keep tokens) or actively detrimental cards(for instance, Pyromancer's Swath) and using a few chaos cards to disrupt everyone else and accrue card advantage. Eventually you ideally resolve Enduring Ideal, and from that lock out the game under some combination of Humility, Dovescape, Form of the Dragon, Solitary Confinement, etc. You can also win via Niv-Mizzet or Psychosis Crawler combined with Zedruu drawing lots of cards, or just by donating certain things with Zedruu/Puca's Mischief(Celestial Dawn comes to mind, or Illusions of Grandeur if they're at lower life). If you want to be funny you can drop Divine Intervention, I treat the game ending through that as a victory. And as with any chaos-type deck, everyone else scooping in frustration is also an acceptable wincon.