Full Final Fantasy EDH/Commander Deck - Helga, Skittish Seer: Creature-Storm/Combo
Hi everyone! I'm back yet another new Final Fantasy proxy deck, this time built around Helga, Skittish Seer.
TLDR:
Decklist is here
Drive Link is here
Ko-Fi link is here (in case you want to check out my other decks)
Now for the ramble!
>>> How does it play?
The deck is a bracket 4 creature-storm combo deck that seeks to ramp in the early game and then out-value opponents in the mid-game, winning through infinite draws/mana or mass bouncing all your opponents permanents. Of all the decks I've built, I've found this to be one of the most consistent and fun, and the value Helga provides as both ramp and card draw is immensely satisfying.
>>> What are the combos?
- Food Chain/Misthollow Griffin: Infinite mana generation, also infinite draws when you add a cast-to-draw engine like Helga, Chulane, or Beast Whisperer
- Peregrine Drake/Emiel the Blessed: Infinite mana generation, which can also abuse Emiel further to generate infinite ETB triggers of creatures like Solitude, Craterhoof, or Mulldrifter
- Helga/Chakram Retriever/Blinking Spirit: Draw your entire deck while generating a ton of mana on the way. With 50 other creatures in the deck, Retriever is amazing at untapping Helga for repeatable non-deterministic infinite draws even without the Spirit
- Intruder Alarm: Intruder Alarm goes infinite with a (fairly full) ham sandwich. With enough dorks and Chulane, you can achieve infinite casts/mana/draw. Swap Chulane for Hullbreaker Horror, Tidespout Tyrant, Vesner, Emiel, and Blinking Spirit for similar results
Payoffs: So, you've achieved infinite draws/mana, what next? The two endgame plays are either:
- Play a ton of creatures followed by Craterhoof and Concordant Crossroads (an early-doors Surrak and Goreclaw can replicate this)
- Bounce all of your opponents stuff back to their hand. Both Hullbreaker Horror and Tidespout Tyrant can achieve this, however Tyrant is superior in this respect as it can also bounce lands, all but guaranteeing a win.
Now, to the proxy side of things:
>>> Alternate Frame options:
With the deck being incredibly creature-heavy (52 creatures including Helga) I thought it may be useful/neat to offer alternate frames for the noncreature/nonland cards, to help separate them visually. To that end, you'll find the Google Drive contains a folder filled with Japan Showcase frame versions of the noncreature/nonland cards if you fancy using them.
In a similar vein, it's important to remember that Helga's mana can only be used "to cast creature spells with mana value 4 or greater or creature spells with {X} in their mana costs." so I thought it would help to have to include a couple of cards you can use to track which mana (and of what colours) is Helga-generated or otherwise.
>>> Monsters, Not Main Characters:
As with my Henzie deck, I wanted to focus more on Final Fantasy's amazing bestiary as opposed to main characters. One of the hurdles here was that I don't like to use art I've previously used for different cards as my decks are likely to be played against each other, so I was running out of high-quality art of monsters I like. Thankfully, Final Fantasy Mobius and War of the Visions exist, so there was enough art round out the deck.
>>> Frame Breaks and Flavour Words:
I loved doing these with my Henzie deck, and I loved doing them here. I didn't find as many chances to use frame breaks here compared to Henzie, but I'm still happy with the results here.
Hopefully you enjoy the deck in both play pattern and looks, and as always let me know if you think there's anything that could be improved upon or anything you think is neat!
Enjoy!! ^_^
P.S. I'm currently planning what will likely be my last Final Fantasy deck, a Jodah WUBRG deck centred around FF14 and its many jobs (might as well put all of these powerful lands I've proxied to extra use, right?), so keep your eyes peeled in the coming months!