So in my local card store my brother has developed the reputation as the price guide (he know the prices of almost any Magic card out there) and I am known as the brewer. I love to talk about Magic: The Gathering strategy and theory and I am always coming up with the craziest ideas. So rather than play the obvious deck or just use the net deck of the week, I am always good for a good brew or two, which is awesome since no on knows what to expect. Anyways I had more than a few people tell I should blog about my craziest ideas so rather than starting a new blog I am going to have a little MTG (Magic the Gathering) segment on this blog, Shot Not Taken.

I may not be the first one who taught of this idea but for my first crazy brew I have a deck that totally takes advantage of the EDH aka Commander format rules. So basically in EDH, you need 99 cards and a commander that you cast from the commander zone instead of your deck so you are guaranteed to have access to it at all times. Also you can have only one copy of each card of the color of your commander (or colorless) other than basic lands and you start with 40 life. In this brew, you just need Maralen of the Mornsong (commander), Ad Nauseam, Dark Sphere, Sickening Dreams, Elixir of Immortality.

The Deck:

Commander: Maralen of the Mornsong

1 Ad Nauseam

1 Dark Sphere

1 Sickening Dreams

1 Elixir of Immortality

95 Swamps

Basically, Maralen of the Mornsong searches for Ad Nauseam. Use Ad Nauseam to draw your whole deck. With your massive hand, you cast Dark Sphere and and Sickening Dreams for about 40. Dark Sphere keeps you alive and if your opponents didn’t gain a ton of life they should all lose in one swoop. If your combo gets disrupted in any way, you can use the Elixir of Immortality to restart everything. Maralen costs 3 life to fetch Ad Nauseam and Ad Nauseam would cost 3 life to get Dark Sphere, Sickening Dreams and Elixir of Immorality. The Elixir of Immorality gains you 5 life so you lose only 1 life every time you attempt the combo. If they kill your commander, it goes back to the commander zone and you just have to wait to cast it again (cost 2 more every time your commander dies). Also note that you can’t lose to decking when Maralen is on the board since you can’t draw cards.

The beauty of this deck is that it may be the cheapest EDH deck you probably can build. Maralen costs $.75, Ad Nauseam $1, Dark Sphere $1 and Sickening Dreams $.50. You can possibly find the cards even cheaper elsewhere if you look.

As for some tips, you should play weak for most of the game (maybe complain that you are flooding with lands) and you should only cast Maralen the turn before you have access to seven mana. One weakness of this deck you you can’t do anything until that turn. So if you want to spruce it up you can add anything that speeds up you mana with the casting cost of zero (so do don’t take too much damage from Ad Nauseam). So I am thinking of Peat Bog, Crystal Vein, Ebon Stronghold, City of Traitors, Lotus Petal, Lotus Bloom etc.

I got to warn you. You really can’t play this deck more than once with the same group of people. They are going to hate you for this deck. But haters gonng a hate. Let me know what you think!