Cheap and Powerful Dimir Clone Deck! - $50 The Master, Formed Anew Budget Deck Tech
The Master, Formed Anew | Illustrated by Simon Dominic
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another installment of BathroomBrews. For this week's article, I am excited to showcase some more Doctor Who commanders, but with a twist this time: let me show you the power of The Master, Formed Anew along with their companion, Gyruda, Doom of Depths. This is a Dimir combo deck that wants to turbo into Gyruda, then using The Master's ability to exile Gyruda so The Master can enter the battlefield as a copy of her.
Before you ask, yes, I could make a Gyruda deck, so why bother making a companion list? Well, seeing as The Master is only two mana compared to Gyruda's six, he's a bit easier to cast if he gets removed several times. Also, this seemed like more fun to me, and EDH is meant to be fun, so let's dive in and showcase what this budget deck is capable of!
Gotta Go Fast
Let's kick things off with the ramp package of the deck. This isn't the most exciting part, so we'll get it out of the way early. The goal is to get Gyruda out as fast as possible, which means we need to ramp pretty fast, so I've included 15 pieces of ramp in this deck. Also, because each card in the deck has to have an even mana value, we lose out on Sol Ring and all of the three-mana rocks, but we can include artifact dorks, such as Myr Convert, Silver Myr, and Leaden Myr, and the best two-mana rocks in Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet, and Talisman of Dominance.
No, I'm The Real Spiderman!
Of course, a key aspect of a clone combo deck is going to be the clones. These will let us copy Gyruda or The Master repeatably, letting us hopefully mill out the entire table in one or two turns. Some of the best are Auton Soldier, giving us a nonlegendary token copy with myriad, everyone's favorite clone, Spark Double, and, one of my personal favorites, Mirrorhall Mimic. The back-side of Mirrorhall Mimic can enchant any creature, including our opponents', so keep that in mind if an opponent has a creature you want.
Back To Thy Hand
Aside from the variety of clone effects, I wanted to add cheap ways to return our commander to our hand thanks to their low mana value. First was a card from Planeshift, Cavern Harpy. Not only can this return The Master to our hand, but it can return itself allowing us to cast The Master, then this, and return our commander back to our hand. The next card that came to mind was Venser, Shaper Savant, and the last card is a pseudo board wipe in Flood of Tears. With this, we can put our commander back into play pretty easily, allowing us to quickly develop a massive board while everyone else rebuilds.
Removal
Speaking of removal, I tried to include as much removal on creatures as possible. We have Amphin Mutineer to exile creatures, plus it has encore if we mill it. Maybe you want to steal some cards, so give Hostage Taker a try. You do need to cast the creature you take, but it is still worth the inclusion. You can also exile your own creatures under it if you want to trigger their ETBs again later on. Finally, we have Callidus Assassin from the Warhammer 40K decks. Not only does this enter as a copy of a creature, but you can destroy the creature it copies. I also included Massacre Wurm as a board wipe on a stick.
Noncreature Pieces
Even though this deck does want a critical mass of creatures, there are some powerful instants and sorceries you should include to round out the deck. Thankfully, blue has plenty of powerful and budget options. There's Planar Incision, Illusionist's Stratagem, and Siren's Ruse for flicker creatures. We have the delayed blink effects with Teferi's Time Twist and Voidwalk. I also included token-creators, such as Irenicus's Vile Duplication, which should be in every blue deck, along with Stolen Identity, which has cipher, allowing us to get even more clones. Finally, See Double lets us either clone a creature or spell, but if our opponent has eight or more cards in their graveyard, we can get both options, which should be the case 99% of the time.
Because this deck loves to fill up our graveyard, I wanted to add a small recursion package. The best of the bunch is Dread Return because we can flash it back by sacrificing three creatures. Next is Persist, which is a budget Reanimate that has the caveat the creature can't be legendary, and Endless Obedience, which we can convoke to return any creature from any graveyard onto the battlefield under our control. I also added Fake Your Own Death, which I know isn't actual recursion, but it's still a great way to protect our commander.
Personal Favorites
Before we get into the win conditions, I want to showcase some of my favorite cards in the deck. First up is the board wipe Extinction Event. This is great because we can always name odd-mana-value cards to make this as one-sided a board wipe as possible. Of course, we don't want those pesky green decks ramping ahead of us, so Sire of Stagnation will hopefully slow them down quite a bit. We also have Hoarding Broodlord. Yes, eight mana is a lot, but it does have convoke and we can cheat it out with Gyruda's ability.
Winning
The primary win condition of this deck is going to be the combo kill. If you can chain enough clone effects together, oftentimes you can easily mill out an entire table in just a few turns, but even if you only get three or four triggers before you fizzle, often your board will be so massive you can just swing in for damage, which is why I included Wonder as a way to give our entire board evasion. Also, because we're restricted to only even-mana-value cards, I couldn't include Syr Konrad, the Grim, but we have Dreadhound as a replacement for him. Don't be afraid to make a copy or two of it to help close out the game that much faster.
Upgrades
If you're looking to make some upgrades to the deck, the first things to add would be more clones, like Phyrexian Metamorph, Clever Impersonator, and Phantasmal Image to start. After those I'd suggest adding Thassa's Oracle as a win condition to the deck. While it is boring, it has a powerful effect that will help you close games out. Next would be Scroll Rack so you can put any clones you may draw back on top of your library to mill. Lastly, throw in Thassa, Deep-Dwelling to flicker creatures at your end step.
The Master, Formed Gyruda - $50
View on ArchidektBuy this decklist from TCGplayer
View this decklist on Archidekt
This has been another installment of BathroomBrews; make sure to check out my YouTube channel, BathroomBrewsMTG, for weekly MTG content and the accompanying video. Also, make sure to check out my Patreon if you want to take your support further.
