After four whole years, we FINALLY have the rest of the mane cast to actually make Twilight Sparkle's "everypony wins" effect work! There have been weird workarounds with clones and shapeshifters people have come up with, but nothing felt satisfying. We needed the other four horses!
Luckily, Hasbro has delivered and they are all weird and interesting to build decks around. I couldn't just leave Twilight to a bad equine tribal deck or voltron though. She needs a proper victory where EVERYPONY WINS.
I've put together a stupid, silly, friendly, and combotastic EDH deck that I hope you will enjoy. Expect some expensive cards here, so hopefully hopefully your groups allow proxies or playing online. To make this combo work while being FRIENDSHIP FOCUSED we are going to have to dig into the power cards~
Lets get down to business. Head on below for how we can make Twily and friends rainboom to victory!
There are a lot of ways we can get these guys out on the field followed by triggering Twilight's "Victory" ability. We could throw them all in the graveyard and resurrect them with Rise of the Dark Realms. We could tutor for each individually and cheat them out with something like Omniscience. We can even play them individually and pray no one removes any. This all seems really tiring though, as well as easy to stop, so lets just do it all at once!
Introducing Primal Surge. A spell almost no one runs due to the limits of hoping you don't draw an instant or sorcery to interrupt it, along with that steep 10 mana cost. We are going to do it anyway though, because we are amazing, and friendship is magic and stuff.
This means we will have nothing other than permanents in this deck. Not a single instant or sorcery. The negatives are vast. The concept is dumb. But I want a rainboom victory and this is the most exciting way to do it... I think.
And because we are being friends today with a big victory for all, we are going to run as little removal as possible. Just a few permanents that come in and destroy stuff that harms our combo. How well will this work? Horribly. But again, friendship.
With sorceries and instants out of the question and a single card as our win con, we've got a tall order to make this actually work. It does open up the ability to include a comical amount of mana ramp though, while silently avoiding the rest of the table's ire via just peacefully putting up mana generators. For good reason too. We are going to need a ton of it for some of the garbagetastic tutors we are running to go find Primal Surge.
This deck runs a whopping 22 cards to fuel our shenanigans between dorks, rocks, and regular land ramp. Unfortunately thanks to our restriction of only being able to run permanents, we need to make due with some stinkers. We do have some that shine in a 5 color deck though, like Bloom Tender up there that tends to generate loads. And with access to all the colors, we get to run broken things like Dockside Extortionist and Smothering Tithe. Yeah, we are going to tax em. Friendship ain't cheap.
THE TUTORS
So we have a bunch of mana! Now what...? We DIG. We need that primal surge. Primal surge is everything. And if we get that, we need a few other things to make it work. Sometimes those other things are even more important, so feel free to tutor up a One Ring if you need more cards or a protection card if you are ready to summon the elements of harmony to battle~
Unfortunately, most of our tutors are awful, mana sucking nightmares and we really only have 8 or so viable ones. Wizards doesn't like putting tutor effects on permanents apparently. This also leads us to the issue of needing to pull the tutors out to pull the surge out, which means we want huge a draw engine!
We need to draw! Nothing sucks more than having 8 mana and no cards on turn 3. This deck has 16 ways to get more cards, all of which sit on the field doing it painfully slowly because that's the burden we've chosen with this primal surge nonsense. Some of these double as extra protection for the deck.
We got our combo pieces ready to go, but wait, isn't primal surge super easy to interrupt?? It is. It's garbage. We need protection or we are literally never going to cast a 10 mana spell with 0 counterspells to protect it.
That's where these cards come in, completely disabling people from casting spells during your turn. Hopefully you've drawn/tutored at least one of the seven and have it on the field, otherwise be damn sure everyone is tapped out and then pray you don't get fierce guardianshipped or force of willed.
And in another form a protection, we also run Kozilek and Ulamog. This is for getting our ponies out of the graveyard in the event that someone mills them into it or forces you to discard them. Without the mane 6, you just lose. Kozilek doubles as a last ditch drawpower card, and Ulamog can destroy something that hurts your combo. Or you can swing with them but... that's definitely the opposite of friendly.
THE SURGE
With all of our combo pieces in place, it's time to CALL UPON THE PONIES. A primal surge straight into Twilight's library to get them out here doing their elemental blasty thing.
You may have noticed one more mechanic here in the form of two separate "Creatures you control have haste" cards. We can't blast everyone with friendship if our mares are hungover after studying for hours right? Luckily you don't need to tutor for or cast these. Primal surge will put them on the field and complete the combo all on its own. Unless they are in your hand, in which case you will just cast one with the crazy mana you get from surge.
This is also your last chance to remove anything that might interrupt your combo with those limited removal cards. Terrastodon and Binding the Old Gods can clean up the rare cards that block your activated abilities.
As the mane 6 enter the field, hasted and ready to go along with an army of other random creatures from Fluttershy's menagerie, we need only send 5 of them out to attack. They don't even need to deal damage.
Inspired by her friends charging into battle, Rainbow Dash will immediately become 100% cooler, and once tapped trigger our glorious SONIC RAINBOOM. And with that overwhelming season 1 magic, Twilight Sparkle will receive all five colors to trigger her coalition victory effect, making everyone at the table win! Or really just you. You won. No one is going to be happy about this except you. You will never be able to run this deck again now that everyone knows it's so easy to counter.
Also, in other news, you actually can just win without the rainboom. Twilight
will have every color imaginable from primal surge, but the
rainboom is cooler isn't it? Unfortunately if any important combo piece
is the last card in the deck, rainbooming will kill you once you run out
of cards.
You could make this deck a little better by dropping the haste spells, a few of the drawpower cards, and running more removal. I even ran Craterhoof Behemoth (keeping the haste) for a while which was a very random way to win or alternate way if Primal Surge or one of the ponies is exiled in some way. There are enough creatures to murder people.
I'm sure there are a million other ridiculous ways to make Twilight's ability work, but I loved the idea of comboing her with Rainbow Dash like this (even if technically unnecessary). Hopefully you all enjoyed this ... checks notes ... $7,350.14 stupid deck! I'll be doing a Raibow Dash specific real deck next since she seems like the most viable of the new ponies for actual commandering. Expect that some time in the future.
Anyway, have the full deck list:
Commander (1)
- 1x Princess Twilight Sparkle
Planeswalkers (2)
- 1x Liliana Vess
- 1x Teferi, Time Raveler
Creatures (33)
- 1x Applejack
- 1x Biophagus
- 1x Birds of Paradise
- 1x Bloom Tender
- 1x Consecrated Sphinx
- 1x Delighted Halfling
- 1x Dockside Extortionist
- 1x Dosan the Falling Leaf
- 1x Dragonlord Dromoka
- 1x Esper Sentinel
- 1x Faerie Mastermind
- 1x Fluttershy
- 1x Grand Abolisher
- 1x Hoarding Broodlord
- 1x Ignoble Hierarch
- 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
- 1x Llanowar Loamspeaker
- 1x Pinkie Pie
- 1x Rainbow Dash
- 1x Rarity
- 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
- 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
- 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
- 1x Sire of Stagnation
- 1x Sylvan Caryatid
- 1x Talion, the Kindly Lord
- 1x Tatyova, Benthic Druid
- 1x Terastodon
- 1x Tidal Barracuda
- 1x Toski, Bearer of Secrets
- 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
- 1x Wood Elves
- 1x Yavimaya Dryad
Sorceries (1)
- 1x Primal Surge
Artifacts (17)
- 1x Arcane Signet
- 1x Chromatic Lantern
- 1x Conqueror's Flail
- 1x Dimir Signet
- 1x Fellwar Stone
- 1x Golgari Signet
- 1x Mana Crypt
- 1x Mask of Memory
- 1x Rakdos Signet
- 1x Ring of Three Wishes
- 1x Selesnya Signet
- 1x Simic Signet
- 1x Sol Ring
- 1x Talisman of Dominance
- 1x Talisman of Resilience
- 1x The One Ring
- 1x Wishclaw Talisman
- 1x Enchantments(12)
- 1x Binding the Old Gods
- 1x Black Market Connections
- 1x City of Solitude
- 1x Fervor
- 1x Monastery Siege
- 1x Mystic Remora
- 1x Phyrexian Arena
- 1x Rhystic Study
- 1x Rising of the Day
- 1x Smothering Tithe
- 1x Teferi's Ageless Insight
- 1x The Cruelty of Gix
Lands (34)
- 1x Ancient Tomb
- 1x Arid Mesa
- 1x Badlands
- 1x Bayou
- 1x Bloodstained Mire
- 1x Breeding Pool
- 1x City of Brass
- 1x Command Tower
- 1x Exotic Orchard
- 1x Flooded Strand
- 1x Gaea's Cradle
- 1x Godless Shrine
- 1x Hallowed Fountain
- 1x Mana Confluence
- 1x Marsh Flats
- 1x Misty Rainforest
- 1x Overgrown Tomb
- 1x Plateau
- 1x Reflecting Pool
- 1x Sacred Foundry
- 1x Savannah
- 1x Scalding Tarn
- 1x Scrubland
- 1x Spire of Industry
- 1x Taiga
- 1x Temple Garden
- 1x Tropical Island
- 1x Tundra
- 1x Underground Sea
- 1x Verdant Catacombs
- 1x Volcanic Island
- 1x Watery Grave
- 1x Windswept Heath
- 1x Wooded Foothills
