Sometimes you make a random Google search and are just blown away by the results. I encountered this deck while trying to find ‘budget edh decks’ or something along those lines. Amidst the infinite posts of people saying: “Ashling, the Pilgrim and 99 Mountains. LOL”, this little gem was unearthed. Granted, surprise is a big factor in this deck’s success as it will probably not work twice (then again…). Boseiju gives you that extra oomph! to overcome counterspells when you want to ‘combo off’.

 

Warning: this deck is

 

Dark Sphere Dreams Commander Format Creatures: 5 1 Maralen of the Mornsong 1 Memnite 1 Ornithoper 1 Phyrexian Walker 1 Shield Sphere Instants: 2 1 Ad Nauseam 1 Dark Ritual Sorceries: 1 1 Sickening Dreams Artifacts: 12 1 Expedition Map 1 Dark Sphere 1 Elixir of Immortality 1 Everflowing Chalice 1 Feldon`s Cane 1 Jeweled Amulet 1 Lotus Bloom 1 Lotus Petal 1 Spellbook 1 Venser`s Journal 1 Welding Jar 1 Astral Cornucopia

Lands: 80 72 Swamp 1 Peat Bog 1 Ebon Stronghold 1 Reliquary Tower 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All 1 Glacial Chasm 1 Buried Ruin 1 Crystal Vein 1 Gemstone Caverns

 

The deck is simply trying to accomplish one thing: Cast Ad Nauseam and win (preferably cast an end-of-turn Ad Nauseam). There are a few more cards we can maybe add to the main deck in order to increase our chances of surviving the early game, but I wanted to just reall focus on how little this thing actually costs to make. In fact, here`s the bare bones version you can make (you don’t even have to sleeve your deck at this point since the sleeves will be worth more than the deck itself… unless you use penny sleeves)

 

Remember these babies ? Probably from your first ever MTG deck?

You win by casting a Sickening Dreams with a full hand (aka. your whole deck give or take) then discarding a bunch of cards ( roughly 50? depending on how much life other players are at). You then activate the ‘awesome’ Dark Sphere to halve the damage to you from Sickening Dreams. Of course, counterspells will ruin your day, so you can set up by getting a Boseiju early on with Maralen on turn 4 or an earlier Expedition Map. The rest of the deck is there to accelerate us, even a turn 3 Astral Cornucopia is fine if we have the Ad Nauseam already in hand so we can ‘go off’ on turn 4. You need colored mana though, so Sol Ring is surprisingly absent (2 black required on turn 3 if you are casting Maralen on that turn). The other lands are mostly accelerants or buy us time (Glacial Chasm) or can recur a countered spell (Dark Sphere). Elixir of Immoratality can allow us to start over everytime we whiff our combo as well (Assuming Maralen can remain in play). It’s definitely an under 50$ commander deck and then under 10$ if you go with the ‘no frills’ version.

1 Maralen of the Mornsong

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Dark Sphere
1 Sickening Dreams
1 Elixir of Immortality
95 Swamps

It doesn’t even merit its own little decklist box thingy, that’s how cheap it is.

For those of you that are in the mood for upgrading the deck in value, tricks or resilience you can go ahead and run some Gatherer searches. So far I’ve got:

Ivory Tower
Mishra’s Bauble
Urza’s Bauble
Phyrexian Tower
Slaughter pact
Duress/Thoughtseize

You can always keep it lying around and troll newer players with it, kinda like a ‘Magic Trick’ in its own right. Right?

“Save a child, rip up a Dark Sphere today” – the Fun Police

PS: Yes, it actually took me a while to find a ‘DDT’ in Magic: the Gathering but it happened. Thank you mark Tedin for drawing such an awesome card (Repentant Vampire). Also, thanks to Sasha who asked me for this card, since I would have probably never stumbled upon it on my own.