I’m trying to build a toolbox/stax/combo deck and I’ve heard that combo takes away from the toolbox element of a deck but I’m pretty determined to make it work. How do I make these two strategies work together in a fun way?(fun for me not my opponents because this is a stax deck we’re talkin about here)
You already know this is gonna be a wild deck tech... I might make a Youtube video about it but for now ill share a bit of my thought process because a lot of people wanna learn how to build a deck idea like this.
before I begin I have a couple ground rules as a deck builder(they are just my preferences) I like to make my decks at bracket 3 POWER LEVEL(winning position after turn 6/7) and resilient with plan Bs if A goes south. I have no problem with weaknesses such as no enchantment removal as long as its main gameplan has distributable pressure, meaning i can focus the player that could cause me problems with whatever gameplan I have. I dont play generic staples that are blatantly powerful unless they have some unique synergy AND NO BUDGET IF THE COOLNESS FACTOR IS WORTH IT. okay back to the deck tech.
This commander deck is going to have 2 secret commanders being [[Thieve's Auction]] and [[Shared Fate]]. With these two spells in play every permanent will be drafted and every card drawn thereafter will be effectively drafted(close enough man).
But in Izzet colors we cant easily tutor both an instant and an enchantment in any reasonable amount of time. [[Sanar, Unfinished Genius]] can tutor theives auction but his tutor is very mana intensive and it still doesnt tutor the enchanment. So we gotta add a color that can tutor enchantments. we could do white making the deck a jeskai deck but even whites enchantment tutors are very expensive and half the deck would just be tutors to get this combo off and we will probably be dead before then because of it.
So our only bracket 3 option would be Black making the deck Grixis colors. Currently there aren't any grixis commanders that tutor on their own but there is one that can turn our tutors into two tutors freeing up deck space. That commander is [[Kess, Dissident Mage]]. But casting a tutor twice and a 7 mana spell AND a 5 mana spell doesn't solve the billion dollar downpayment we gotta pay before we even start the real game(the draft). So like every other kess deck, were gonna use a lot of rituals like [[pyretic ritual]] or [[mana geyser]].
Kess actually has additional synergy because the graveyard is unaffected by both "draft" cards meaning that we will have an advantage over our opponents as long as we get her first in the draft (which we can always do thanks to thieves auction).
Now you may be wondering what about the cards in your opponents hands? because shared fate (SF from now on) and Thieves Auction (TA from now on) do not replace those. However the cards in their hand probably wont synergize too well with the cards on their battlefield of the cards they draw afterwards. but to prevent the game from feeling exactly the same as before I have a solution...
Solution: Wheels for the table. this kills two birds with on bolt because wheels synergize with kess on their own and in addition forces your opponents to discard their hand and draw (using SF) your opponents cards instead. IN ADDITION if an opponent were to exile your library for cards and exile a wheel they can cast it drawing everybody cards which helps you. and all wheel effects with predetermined draw turn into giant draw spells for the table(because of shared fate). so your opponents might be paying mana to draw you cards to play THEIR deck better than them.
Note: kess allows you to play TA again if necessary but recurring SF would be pretty difficult. Second not playing many permanents helps you benefit much more from TA because you went from no small board state to even board state with everyone else. Next for interaction I suggest not running removal for enchantments outside of bounce spells and counterspells because your opponents wont be able to use removal to put SF in the graveyard unless they bounce and counter your SF which would be a cool play on their part anyway.
Next we still gotta stay alive until the draft and during the draft so were going to be using pillowfort effects like [[propaganda]] and [[hissing miasma]] to prevent us from dying early to mid game and are good first draft picks if necessary. Next if we wanted to lean a little more into being able to play our deck more than others we could put some mill cards in our deck so we can continually get instants and sorceries in our graveyard to cast using kess's ability. But this isnt totally necessary but definitely an effective strategy.
Now you have the shell of a deck that turns EDH into DRAFT and can win at bracket 3. Let me know what you think :)