Wheeling and Dealing!
Art:The Locust God
by Lius Lasahido
Welcome to another Installment of Brewed EDH!
Todays Featured Commander is:
Izzet has always loved to draw cards and The Locust God absolutely furthers that notion and keeps doing it, while he may have a higher than average mana cost he can come out pretty early and is a ton of fun to pilot. While we are always drawing cards as much as we can this is very much a multi-faceted deck with many ways to win!
The Deck:
The Locust God Wheels!
Why The Locust God?
We chose The Locust God because he is an amazing Izzet commander that is a great outlet for cycling through our deck with wheels and effects that allow us to draw cards. When The Locust God is on the battlefield we can use this to generate a ton of creatures as well as draw are most important cards. We have a ton of great ways to abuse The Locust God’s ability like Impact Tremors
and Purphoros, God of the Forge
The Locust God does have a high mana cost but can be cast relatively early and allow us to gain a great creature / card advantage and start swinging!
Deck Overview:
Our Deck has multiple focuses and gameplan strategies we can use to take down our opponents and all of these strategies involve The Locust God as they are arguably the best creature in our deck!
Our creatures package main focus is to deal damage to our opponents or assist with our wheel gameplan. For our creature package we have a bunch of great creatures that assist with our drawing like Consecrated Sphinx
which allows us to produce a crazy amount of creatures especially when we activate Jace's Archivist
we can produce on average over 20 creatures combine this with one of our creature ETB cards like Witty Roastmaster
we can easily end the game with just pure creature production. Another of one of our great creatures is Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
which makes our insects from The Locust God unblockable and can be another great way to end the game. Another great creature we have is Psychosis Crawler
which when combined with The Locust God allows us to deal a ton of damage and make him pretty big! We are also packing Magus of the Wheel
which is another one of our many wheels effects and is great when Locust God is on the field. One of our additional Win Cons / combo pieces is Laboratory Maniac
which is another highlight of our creature package. Overall our creature package is full of advantage and utilities allowing us to abuse The Locust God’s ability
We have a pretty small planeswalker package but they both serve important purposes. Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
is our backup Laboratory Maniac if we need him and also lets us draw some cards! Narset, Parter of Veils
is the most important of our planeswalker package since with Narset on the field we can completely deny our opponents on a wheel and make them discard their hand except one card!
Just like our creature package the spell package is another huge part of our deck this includes wheel effects, and a few counterspells. Some of the best wheels we have are Winds of Change
, Echo of Eons
and Tolarian Winds
which are all amazing when The Locust God is on the field. We are arguably light on removal but we do have Rapid Hybridization
and Cyclonic Rift
as our main removal / bounce pieces, we have omitted removal spells in favor of more draw effects. Since we don’t Battle Hymn
is another great card I would like to highlight with The Locust God one the field we can generate a ton of mana which helps a ton with casting X spells like Transcendent Message
to draw a crazy amount of cards. We also have some counterspells like An Offer You Can't Refuse
and Counterspell
we are not packing a ton of counters and we typically save them for protecting The Locust God.
Our Artifact package is great for drawing cards and ramping, one of our best draw cards in the entire deck is Skullclamp
which is a great way to draw a bunch and keep The Locust God triggers coming. For our ramp we have many ways to cast The Locust God as early as possible, we have Sol Ring
, Arcane Signet
and Chrome Mox
just to name a few. One of our Best Artifacts is Ashnod's Altar
combine this with a skullclamp / The Locust God and you can draw your entire deck. Heraldic Banner
is a great secondary artifact that lets us buff the Insects as well as get some mana ramp! Our last artifact that I want to highlight is Teferi's Puzzle Box
which is an artifact wheel effect which is just another great way to draw cards with the added benefit of each players draw step doing it to that player.
Our enchantment package is full of ways to deal damage to our opponents, draw cards and generate a ton of mana. Some of our best offensive enchantments are Impact Tremors, Goblin Bombardment
and Shared Animosity
. All of these are great ways to deal damage to our opponents. Mana Echoes
is a great for us to generate mana and can combo perfectly with skullclamp or for one of our X spells. Kindred Discovery
naming insects is a great way to infinitely draw and can be great with lab man or Jace. for additional protection we have Propaganda
For our Lands we have a pretty typical U/R mana base outside of some basic dual’s and typically lands that produce U/R we have Ancient Tomb
which is a great way for us to ramp early. We also have Reliquary Tower
which is really good for when the draw engine starts. Mystic Sanctuary
is a great land to throw down late and grab a great wheel or counterspell back to the top of your deck.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Easy to cycle the entire deck
- Huge Creature production with Locust God
- Easy to deal crazy damage with our creature based damage outlets
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Weak to Graveyard Hate as we have a lot of spells we can flashback / recur
- Deck can struggle without Locust God
- Needs a lot of mana to get creature / draw going
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Main Win Conditions:
We have many win conditions as well as a few combos!
For our main win cons we typically win by sticking a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries or Laboratory Maniac since we draw so many cards it is really easy to end games with it. Additionally we have damage wins with Purphoros, God of the Forge or Impact Tremors!
Infinite Combos:
The Locust God + Sage of the Falls
Result: Infinite looting. Infinite draw triggers. Near-infinite creature tokens with flying and haste. Near-infinite ETB. Requires: All permanents on the battlefield. You have a way to draw a card. Steps: Draw a card. The Locust God triggers, creating a 1/1 Insect creature token with flying and haste. Sage of the Falls triggers, allowing you to loot. Repeat from step 2.
The Locust God + Skullclamp + Ashnod's Altar
Result: Infinite card draw. Near-infinite creature tokens with flying and haste. Near-infinite colorless mana. Near-infinite ETB. Near-infinite LTB. Near-infinite death triggers. Near-infinite sacrifice triggers. Requires: All permanents on the battlefield. You have a way to draw a card. 1 available. Steps: Draw a card. The Locust God triggers, creating a 1/1 Insect creature token with flying and haste. Equip Skullclamp to the Insect by paying 1. The Insect dies as a state-based action due to having zero toughness. Skullclamp triggers, causing you to draw two cards. The Locust God triggers twice, creating two 1/1 Insect creature tokens with flying and haste. Activate Ashnod’s Altar by sacrificing an Insect token, adding two colorless mana. Repeat from step 3.
The Locust God + Sage of the Falls + Laboratory Maniac
Result: Win the game. Infinite looting. Infinite draw triggers. Near-infinite creature tokens with flying and haste. Near-infinite ETB. Requires: All permanents on the battlefield. You have a way to draw a card. Steps: Draw a card. The Locust God triggers, creating a 1/1 Insect creature token with flying and haste. Sage of the Falls triggers, allowing you to loot. Repeat from step 2 until you draw from an empty library, causing you to win the game
Conclusion:
The Locust God is an amazing commander who is a ton of fun to play, while the main goal is the same we have many different ways to close out the game and have a ton of fun doing it. The Locust God is great if you love drawing cards and creating tokens and doing damage!
Thanks for reading to the end!