Workshop 565 - Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded / memedoni - CLOSED (EDH / Commander)

Just simply dropping nukes for 3 mana. The 50$ budget is for the whole deck, not the upgrades as im building the deck from scratch.

The idea is to ramp out early on, and keep dropping big boi after big boi, turn after turn. Im not really familiar with red overall, and with these types of decks, so any tips are appriciated.

I'd like to make the deck fall into Competetive-focused category.

As mentioned, im not really familiar with these types of decks and red as a color overall so not sure how and if the approach is currently good. I snooped around a bit and took what most people took

The pilot wants to tune the deck, not just figure out the final cut. After sorting the deck into custom categories it can be seen that the deck likes to interact a lot and abuse the graveyard in addition to using Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded's Sneak Attack ability.

GENERAL:

Starting situation:

The deck is light on lands at 35 lands. The number probably needs to be pumped up because there are only 9 pieces of ramp that can ramp Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded out earlier than turn 5. The deck is also mana-hungry late game so it's crucial lands drops are hit on time.

The deck has 9 draw spells which is probably not enough considering Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded burns through cards really quickly and the main strategy to more mana is not to miss land drops. Red doesn't have much in the way of ramp so this category may unfortunately remain rather light.

There's a lot of interaction in the deck. The best interaction are creatures that do something on ETB because those can be cheated into play on our opponents' turns as well to serve as surprise blockers and wipes in their attack step. In general Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded doesn't have much in the way of blockers or board presence so it's best to keep the board as empty as possible - hence it makes sense to have a lot of creatures that wipe the board somehow.

There are two vanilla big beaters which may be removed later because it's best to have extra utility attached to those creatures despite the big beaters' efficient damage dealing potential.

The deck tries to also abuse the end of turn effects taking advantage of cards that somehow put the used up creatures back into our hand or make them stay on the battlefield forever. In addition to that the deck also cheats stuff from the graveyard which would otherwise be somewhat useless to us. There are a couple of cards that cheat more tokens in when our creatures enter the battlefield. Etali, Primal Storm, Clone Shell and Dreamshaper Shaman have the potential to cheat in other creatures.

The deck gets some more damage output from Angrath's Marauders and Torbran, Thane of Red Fell.

Development, round 1:

Land count was upped to 38, the draw section was somewhat completely reworked, interaction tweaked and damage doublers added. The idea is to have enough gas through the late game to take advantage of Purphoros-Bronze-Blooded's ability every turn and that the threats dropped are significant enough to deal massive damage. Among the removed cards were things that don't synergise well with the rest of the strategy - such as sorcery / instant based looting effects - and instead the idea is to double down on big beaters that have additional effects that advance the board state significantly.

ADDITIONS:

Lands were not really touched that much: added Rogue's Passage and a few Mountains to correct for the low amount of ramp in the deck. Hedron Archive is not useful for getting Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded out but it cracks for cards later if needed.

More powerful draw in the form of Magus of the Wheel, Ruin Grinder and Wheel of Misfortune. Also added Tectonic Reformation to get rid of unwanted lands in the hand.

A single Meteor Golem was added in the interaction section just to make sure one can remove any nonland permanent if need be.

End-of-turn cheats were enabled with Assault Suit.

Damage output of the deck is usually low so Gratuitous Violence, Rage Reflection and Terror of Mount Velus were added to increase damage output. These incidentally have lots of red pips in their mana costs so they might help us turn Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded into a beater as well.

Fires of Invention and Minion Reflector are on the "to be considered" list. Fires of Invention enables two free casts of something useful per turn because the deck mostly relies on Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded for attackers. Minion Reflector gets a copy of a creature on the battlefield but it's sacrificed at the end of turn so it might not be as much value as it could be.

CUTS:

Myriad Landscape and Temple of the False God are situationally ok cards but they're not universally better than simple basic Mountains se they were removed.

The looting effects were removed because they're not real card advantage and they're not creatures so they're not very synergistic with the rest of the deck. Same goes for Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion because a) the rummage effect on it is not particularly useful and b) the mana it gives comes in too late, i.e. after the combat step.

Chain Reaction, Abrade and Blasphemous Act were just redundant with all the more synergistic creature based interaction in the deck.

A bunch of creatures that are either dumb big beaters or don't advance the game plan directly: Triplicate Titan, Mindclaw Shaman, Molten Primordial and Myr Battlesphere.

Torbran, Thane of Red Fell does increase damage but not by a lot so its utility value is situational.

Daretti, Scrap Savant is a really good synergistic card for the deck but it's unlikely that it stays alive due to low amounts of blockers this deck sports.

POTENTIAL UPGRADES:

Gamble.

Sword of the Animist / Sword of Light and Shadow + Moraug, Fury of Akoum for infinite combat steps.

Alena, Kessig Trapper loves Aggravated Assault for infinite combat steps.

Sneak Attack as a backup plan if Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded isn't available for some reason.

Fiery Emancipation for even more damage output.

Blightsteel Colossus is a major threat and probably the only "vanilla beater" worth adding to the deck.

Skullclamp for more cards in conjuction with Urza's Saga to let us tutor for it for cheap.

Deflecting Swat, Tibalt's Trickery and Dualcaster Mage can all redirect counterspells which makes them ideal defensive cards.

Conjurer's Closet is another cheat engine.