Hi everyone, Pongo here. Today, I want to talk a bit about some new Protean Hulk technology.

First, let’s review the state of Flash Hulk decks in mid-2018. This isn’t meant to be exhaustive and will necessarily leave quite a few things out for the sake of brevity.

At this time, the majority of Hulk decks either relied on the ‘Breakfast combo’ (a combination of Nomads en-Kor and Cephalid Illusionist allowing you to dump your entire library into the graveyard to assemble another, typically sorcery speed, combo) or else one of a few different Blood Artist combos (a combination of Blood Artist with other creatures permitting their controller to loop sacrificing recursive creatures an arbitrary amount of times). The most well-known decks that used these strategies at the time are Breakfast Hulk proper (which uses its namesake combo and additionally gets Grand Abolisher to protect itself from nearly all forms of interaction), as well as a few different decks (e.g. Hulkweaver, Definitely Not Varolz, etc.) that, broadly speaking, rely on either Karmic Guide or Persist combos with Blood Artist to win.

Both strategies are still widespread in the cEDH meta, are extremely powerful, and serve as something of a reference point for all other Hulk combos. However, neither is without its flaws. Breakfast Hulk’s sorcery speed limitation means that you can’t always take advantage of openings provided by other players fighting each other on the stack over another game-winning threat. Blood Artist lines, by contrast, allow you to win while other spells remain on the stack and on other players’ turns but typically require a second Hulk death trigger which provides opponents a window to disrupt your combo.

Alright, now let’s flashforward (flashback? flash…hulk!? :why:) to about 5 months ago. It was around this time that u/SleepyJackdaw inadvertently brought about one of the most important recent innovations to Flash Hulk technology. By bringing everybody’s attention to the existence of a combined “Breakfast + Blood Artist” loop that provides instant speed wins in a single Protean Hulk death trigger, interest in brewing decks with Flash Hulk was suddenly renewed. Thus, the “Shuffle” pile was born. By combining the ability to take advantage of openings at instant speed, along with the inherent protection of needing only a single Hulk trigger (and an additional layer of protection in Memory’s Journey as the cherry on top) it was said that “The Holy Grail of Hulk piles” was finally discovered. Around this time, myself and many others started brewing a few different decks incorporating this pile.

Here’s where things get interesting: whereas brewers such as u/SirOzzsome and u/synchrobot started exploring the space for Shuffle decks with extra combo pieces enabling efficient Hulk piles to beat any single stax piece or card stuck in hand, u/ShaperSavant and myself—put off by bad experiences drawing into combo pieces and lots of graveyard hate—started exploring decks that aim to maximize card quality by incorporating the smallest amount of combo pieces. This approach incorporated a slot-efficient, synergistic backup line capable of beating even the most oppressive board states and unfortunate draws using Spellseeker and Laboratory Maniac in conjunction with Tainted Pact at the cost of some mana efficiency. Additionally, the extra A+B combo of Lab Man + Tainted Pact combined with the super low cmc of the deck (and no eldrazi titan) meant that the deck could play Ad Nauseam to great effect.

It’s in the spirit of this brew that I then started experimenting with even more extreme approaches to improve the card quality of Flash Hulk while simultaneously enhancing the deck’s ability to play Ad Naus and value Tainted Pact. The obvious step to do this was to try cutting pieces that are mostly dead outside of the combo but are also crucial to not have exiled. This ultimately led to a brew I affectionately dubbed “JUMPMAN” that aimed to get around the fact that it’s impossible to fit a draw effect into a Hulk pile with Lab Man and the Breakfast combo. By milling into Radical Idea and casting it from the graveyard, it was possible to reduce the amount of totally dead combo pieces in the deck to just Lab Man and the Breakfast combo (since Radical Idea can, at minimum, be cycled away). With the only card of importance now being Lab Man, Tainted Pact suddenly became a card that could be played for value. Cutting otherwise useless combo pieces made Ad Naus even better. Four mana to win the game at instant speed is an obvious disadvantage compared to the Shuffle pile, but it was hardly a hurdle in my control and stax-heavy meta (where waiting to cast Flash at the end of a counter war is especially useful) and only mildly inconvenient in racing situations. All those freed up slots got converted into more interaction as well as powerful mana and draw engines to help with grinding against the well-represented midrange decks. In other words, a Flash Hulk deck that is also a midrange Ad Naus (MAN) deck.

Almost immediately after brewing this deck, u/elfric brought an easily overlooked, old card to my attention: Sacred Guide. All the loose strings of my previous experiments suddenly came together; Sacred Hulk was born.

Sacred Guide W Human -- Cleric 1W, Sacrifice Sacred Guide: Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a white card. Put that card into your hand and exile all other cards revealed this way. 

By running no other white cards, Sacred Guide effectively turns into another copy of Tainted Pact for the purposes of exiling our library. Importantly, it only costs 1 mana so it can easily be fit into a Hulk pile alongside Lab Man. This leaves space in the pile for Hapless Researcher for a guaranteed draw. Finally, either Blood Pet or Sylvan Safekeeper can be included in the pile using the last CMC to either discount the win to 3 mana (Flash + activating Sacred Guide for 1UW and sacrificing Blood Pet) or get free protection. The biggest loss is terms of white cards is Silence although Autumn’s Veil does a reasonable impersonation. Eladamri’s Call can be cut for Sylvan Tutor. Finally, losing Enlightened Tutor isn’t so bad as in this shell it mostly a redundant copy of Mana Crypt, Sylvan Library or Mystic Remora.

“But why is this an improvement?” you may ask; the answer lies in the even more elegant layering between the deck’s three pillars: Flash Hulk, Tainted Pact and Ad Nauseam. Compared to JUMPMAN, Sacred Hulk’s Flash Hulk pile can be pulled off for only three mana (again, with no timing restrictions). This puts Sacred Hulk much closer to other Hulk decks in terms of speed and offers a lot of turn 2 and protected turn 3 win potential. Tainted Pact suddenly becomes even more of a viable value play since, like JUMPMAN, we don’t have to worry about exiling much beyond Lab Man while using it. Having the redundant library exiling effect means that we are even more able to play Tainted Pact and not have to worry about recurring it for use later (or about exiling one of two different Breakfast combo pieces). Finally, this redundancy makes Ad Nauseam even more consistent at assembling an A+B combo which, when combined with any cantrip or a Tymna draw, can allow us to win through common Hulk hate such as Grafdigger’s Cage, Rest in Peace, Cursed Totem and Leyline of the Void. The final (and perhaps biggest) appeal of Sacred Hulk is that, compared to other Hulk decks, we have very few dead draws.

Where other decks find drawing into Dread Return, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Karmic Guide inconvenient, drawing into Lab Man opens lines where we can use a creature or general-purpose tutor to find either Sacred Guide or Tainted Pact and win from there. Drawing into Sacred Guide opens tutoring Lab Man. Drawing into Tainted Pact is just fine. Basically, drawing into combo pieces is no longer a potential roadblock; an opening hand with one of our combo pieces can be a plan in-and-of-itself. Finally, stax pieces that would force other Hulk decks to scramble for an answer are only mildly inconvenient for us since we can just assemble one of our two card combos that operate through most types of stax.

I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and introduction to some new Hulk shells and technology! If you have any questions or comments (or just want to hang out and chat) don’t hesitate to post here or join us at the Unified Hulk Discord: https://discord.gg/ZaEtFCd

Love,

Pongo

S2E9 of The Spike Feeders, reporting for duty!

We’re back for another competitive commander game! This week Jim is pretending S2E8 never happened, reprising PST. Will he be able to show off what the deck is actually capable of? You’ll have to watch to find out!

Decklists:

Jim: Paradox Scepter Thrasios (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/paradox-scepter-thrasios-1/) deck credit to /u/ShaperSavant and /u/SFRG

Eliot: Tatyova (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tatyova-benthicc-druid-3/)

Jan: Food Chain Tazri (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/food-chain-tazri/) Deck credit to /u/ShaperSavant and /u/BigLupu

Jerry: Niv Mizzet Storm (https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/08-10-18-niv-mizzet-storm/)

Critical Decision Points

In this section we like to call out some of the key decision points of the game. This section contains spoilers. Watch the video before you keep reading!

22:13: Eliot sandbags his [[Cavern of Souls]]. He could have played it from his hand, then used it to make Tatyova uncounterable. Instead, he held onto it because he wanted to draw an extra card off the landfall trigger. Should Eliot have gone for the sure thing or the glory?

33:34: On Jim’s winning turn, he starts digging for an answer to Niv-Mizzet using [[Thrasios, Triton Hero]]. The rate per card here is 6 for the first card (2 to cast Thrasios and 4 to activate), and 4 for each card after that. /u/biopower pointed out yesterday during our exclusive Patreon preview on Discord that Jim could have activated Sensei’s Divining Top’s draw ability, and – holding priority – activate [[Isochron Scepter]] to untap the top and activate it again. This allows me to draw the top and recast it. Rather than paying 4 to dig 2 cards deep, taking this line allows me to dig 3 cards deep for every 5 mana spent, which is a much better rate

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S2E7 is a game of cEDH using only mono-coloured commanders! Click here to watch it.

Decklists

Jim: KSai

Eliot: Naru Meha’s Infinite Bounce House

Jan: Wake Me Up Before You Godo

Bill: Omnath High Tide. Huge thanks to /u/Tartaras1 for this sweet decklist!

Critical Decisions

In this section we like to provide a little more context behind the decisions we make in the game. This section contains spoilers, so go watch the video before you keep reading!

6:00 Bill casts [[Rites of Flourishing]]. If you read Tartaras’ primer for the deck, mana doublers play a prominent role. Was this the right time to slam it down?

6:54 Eliot casts Mystic Remora. You see throughout the rest of the game that this was an excellent time to play it, because the rest of the guys seem perfectly content to let him draw cards. If you were in Jan’s, Jim’s, or Bill’s position, which Mystic Remora draws might you have avoided?

28:53 Eliot chooses to draw his entire deck while shortcutting his loop. Jim makes a point of drawing attention to this, because having an empty library before Labroatory Maniac hits the field briefly puts Eliot in a vulnerable position if anyone can make him draw a card. Now, given that Eliot has 80+ cards in his hand it’s unlikely that anyone at the table can resolve a spell, but sometimes bluffing like this can throw people off their game enough to make sequencing errors.

Did we miss anything here? Let us know in the comments below!

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S2E6 of The Spike Feeders is comin’ in hot!

Today’s a special day in The Spike Feeders universe, and I’d like to start things off with a story. Way back in August of 2018 when we started filming Season 1, Jan frequently played a [[Mishra, Artificer Prodigy]] deck that had a tendency to draw games out – especially if I was playing my [[Nin, the Pain Artist]] stax deck at the same table. Our first go at recording a game with Mishra at the table went for over 2 1/2 hours and filled up the tiny little SD card that came with our overhead camera, so we scrapped the game and Jan decided that Circu had a more robust win condition.

Folks on our Discord have been prodding Jan to dust on Mishra for an episode, and his day in the sun has come!

Decklists

Jan: Mishra Stax

Eliot: Consultation Kess

Jim: Kambal White Nauseam

Bill: Najeela Flash Hulk

Critical Decisions

As always, we reserve this section for the points during the game where critical decisions were made. This section contains spoilers. Go watch the episode before you keep reading!

3:43 Jan casts [[Nether Void]]. I’ve actually written an article about situations like this: The Metaworker – Who Does This Benefit?. Jan is on his way to MagicFest Toronto at the moment and is unavailable for comment, but I think his rationale was that he thought he could make his third land drop and cast Mishra much sooner than he did.

12:04 and various: Bill focuses on attacking Jan with Najeela, eventually knocking him out of the game first. If you were in Bill’s shoes, how would you have divided damage?

15:32: Jim casts [[Abolish]] targeting [[Survival of the Fittest]]. Jim mentions an alternate line that involves Abolishing one of his own mana rocks to enable a [[Fatal Push]] later in the turn. Were there any other lines Jim could have taken?

17:48: The card that Eliot drew was [[Doomsday]]. What would you have done in Eliot’s position?

19:00: Jim hints that he doesn’t actually know when the optimal time to activate [[Aetherflux Reservoir]]. He ends up using it to get rid of the [[Zulaport Cutthroat]], but there might have been a better time to do it. Thoughts?

19:21: Bill topdecks [[Protean Hulk]]. If he hadn’t, did he have any lines that would enable an immediate win?

MagicFest Toronto

If you’re at MagicFest Toronto this weekend, be on the lookout for our very own Jan de Vlaming! He is judging at the event and will likely get in at least one game of Commander.

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https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/26-01-19-arcum-dagsson/

So I am still new to CEDH and assembled this deck based on my own research. As a result, I think I put a lot of sub optimal pieces in the deck. As a result I feel the deck is really janky in at least one aspect, maybe it doesn’t have enough protection? Not sure…… any help would be appreciated as to what exactly I may be doing wrong. As the title states, my budget does not currently include some of the more optimal mana rocks like Mana Crypt/Mox Opal/Mox Diamond/etc.
Main win cons are Rings/Monolith, Power Artifact combo or Metalworker/Staff of Domination combo if that doesn’t work.

Tymna and Kraum’s Divergence

​

What is midrange in cEDH?

​ In short, Midrange decks focus on value and card advantage, disruption, and an efficient way to win. Win conditions tend to require (a) as few cards as possible and that (b) individual cards have a use outside of winning the game. This is the essence of “card quality,” with each card chosen for maximum impact and for fitting in lockstep with other card choices, synergies, and functions.

​ TKD supports these goals by having several draw engines in addition to the double-general powerhouse. About 1/3 of the deck is Instants and we include a comprehensive suite of 25 pieces of interaction via targeted/mass removal (12), disrupting stax (2), and countermagic (12). A one-card tutor that wins on resolution is the namesake card, Divergent Transformations (DT) to find our targets as a clear way to plan winning lines in addition to the powerful Ad Nauseam lines.

​ Threatening to win via a single card combo is a powerful aspect of the deck that forces opponents to adjust their play styles. After initial disruption, opponents are often on the back-foot, torn between trying to recover and holding up their own disruption as the midrange deck threatens to win.

​ One powerful example of a synergistic package of individually powerful cards includes the stax piece Counterbalance and its supporting ensemble. Counterbalance works extremely well with topdeck manipulation such as tutors, Sensei’s Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Necropotence, and even draw engines like Mystic Remora and Kraum. With a draw engine, unpredictability ensues, with fresh shots to free-counter spells when opponents “test the waters” to see the top card and try to play around it. Scroll Rack also synergizes with shuffle effects, lots of card draw engines, Ad Nauseam, and refreshes the library for Niv Mizzet. Every card in the package plays multiple roles that collectively empower one another. ​

Why the choice of generals, you ask?

​ Tymna and Kraum both generate turn-after-turn no-mana-required card advantage or make opponents to play around their abilities. ​ Having partners also means we can have a one-card combo in Divergent Transformations for Niv Mizzet Parun (NivMP) and Tandem Lookout with only our two generals (more on this below) without needing any other cards to get there. ​

Why Divergent Transformations?

​ When built around correctly, DT (Divergent Transformations) can be played as an instant-speed win for 3R. Ultimately, this is the reason to play and craft a deck around the card and strategy. However, DT has three serious limitations in that it: ​ * Requires 2 creatures to “transform” away * Puts exactly 2 creatures into play on resolution * Limits deck construction to only 2 creatures in the entire 98/99

​ To enable DT, we have a combination of: ​ * Partner generals * Blinkmoth Nexus * Smuggler’s Copter * Token-producing utility cards * Mnemonic Betrayal and Reanimate (for opponent’s creatures)

These resilient and otherwise useful cards also provide (mostly evasion) bodies to generate card draw with Tymna. ​ Our targets are NivMP and Tandem Lookout. Once soulbonded they create a loop, triggered any time their controller draws a card -OR- when ANY player casts an instant or sorcery spell:

​ Draw –> Ping opponent –> Draw… and so on until opponents are dead (with ways to refresh your library as needed). ​

Why these creatures over other DT options? ​ * Compactness – only two cards (the creature targets) are required to win, meaning no need to dedicate any more card slots to win conditions. * Efficiency – the NivMP and Tandem Lookout often win without even needing additional mana via our draw step. * Utility – Tandem Lookout is virtually a second Tymna and has great synergy with her and tokens. * Flexibility – NivMP is also an outlet for Isochron Scepter and (while very difficult to cast) NivMP also produces a lot of card advantage and represents a way to clear out small creatures even without Tandem Lookout. ​

The MAN (Midrange Ad Nauseam) Plan

​ Ad Nauseam, Paradox Engine and Isochron Scepter respectively also provide another axis on which to play and win. Without delving into to much detail, these cards form the backbone of many cEDH powerhouse decks, including almost every Storm deck, an entire archetype of Midrange Ad Nauseam decks in all colors and a wide array of Paradox-Scepter Thrasios decks. They all require having a low mana curve, non-land permanents to produce mana, and a spell that can double as a way to win when repeatedly cast (e.g. Winds of Rebuke or Swan Song). ​ It is worth noting that unlike Thrasios decks, producing infinite mana does not deterministically win here. Often, those combos pair up with or follow Ad Nauseam (or another turor, draw, outlet, or combo piece). This fits into the strategy of having many card draw engines and focusing on disruption while creating a consistent flow of card draw. ​

Metagames: Where does Tymna and Kraum’s Divergence fit?

​ Midrange decks like this generally fare well in unknown or open environments as they are flexible and can shift roles during games depending on the situation. ​ In particular, we do excel against decks that rely on creatures, as Thrasios Tymna decks often do as well as opponents like Chain Veil Teferi, Food Chain Taziri, and Midrange Consultation LabMan decks that can win through most disruptive stax pieces played in other hate-bear or midrange decks. Having a way to win that is not reliant on our life total means having more options when getting beat down by opponents. ​

Brief Thanks

​ /u/Bigpoppawags aka Lilbrudder who has been an amazing collaborator, tirelessly testing many individual cards and builds for DT MAN decks and to the Midrange Ad Nauseam (MAN) discord for your engagement, feedback, tweaking and testing both this version and my/our other crazy ideas. ​ Feel free to check out the decklist for a full primer, credits, and other builds and versions of Divergent MAN decks! ​

TL;DR

​ Lots of card and mana advantage engines, instant kill, high card quality and density of disruption. Few if any “dead” cards (i.e. are only useful to win with but do nothing else).

​ Divergent Transformations owns games. Niv Mizzet Parun is a boss and Tandem Lookout is Tymna’s lost sibling.

​ There’s always a winning line, you just haven’t found it… yet.

​

Edits: Formatting