Matteo's Pyrohammer [EDH]

[Oversoul]

I built this deck for my brother as a Christmas gift.

Commander:
1 Imodane, the Pyrohammer

1 Abrade
1 Ashling, Flame Dancer
1 Blazing Sunsteel
1 Bonus Round
1 Brash Taunter
1 Chain Lightning
1 Chaos Warp
1 Chrome Mox
1 Conspiracy Theorist
1 Demand Answers
1 Desperate Ritual
1 Dictate of the Twin Gods
1 Extraplanar Lens
1 Faithless Looting
1 Fiery Emancipation
1 Fiery Encore
1 Flare of Duplication
1 Grab the Prize
1 Grapeshot
1 Impact Resonance
1 Insult/Injury
1 Into the Maw of Hell
1 Jeska's Will
1 Leyline of Resonance
1 Light Up the Stage
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Geyser
1 Meteor Swarm
1 Mine Collapse
1 Mithril Coat
1 Mizzix's Mastery
1 Mogg Maniac
1 Nahiri's Wrath
1 Neheb, the Eternal
1 Past in Flames
1 Pinnacle Monk
1 Primal Amulet
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Radiate
1 Reckless Impulse
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Rite of Flame
1 Ruby Medallion
1 Runaway Steam-Kin
1 Seething Song
1 Shadowspear
1 Shatterskull Smashing
1 Shivan Meteor
1 Skewer the Critics
1 Skred
33 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Sol Ring
1 Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
1 Spitting Earth
1 Storm-Kiln Artist
1 Stuffy Doll
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Treasonous Ogre
1 Twinflame Tyrant
1 Urabrask
1 Valakut Awakening
1 Wasteland
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Wrenn's Resolve

 

[Oversoul]

I designed this deck a week ago, and got the final pieces of it together on Wednesday evening. Christmas is next week, so I have some time to test it out before passing it to its rightful owner. I wanted to be sure that it packed as much of a punch as I thought it could. Don't want to give me brother a total dud of a deck, after all!

I led with a Runaway Steam-Kin. One of my opponents rushed out a maindeck K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. I spent some burn trying to deal with that, but he managed to save his creature. That player continued to set up and became pretty scary, but so did the prodigious army of saprolings across from him. I got Neheb out (fourth turn thanks to Lotus Petal). Knowing that I might not be able to wait another turn, I went in for an attack on the only player with no good blocks against me, swinging in with both the Steam-Kin and Neheb. After blockers (none) were declared, I flashed in Dictate of the Twin Gods. This let me deal 16 damage, so Neheb gave me 16 red mana for my main phase, with the Steam-Kin granting me another 3 for a total of 19. I cast Reforge the Soul, followed by Conspiracy Theorist, Leyline of Resonance, Imodane, and Impact Resonance on Conspiracy Theorist. The Leyline let me copy the Impact Resonance. I sent the copy at K'rikk. K'rikk's owner was able to use an instant to deal 5 damage to Imodane. I didn't have a second burn spell. If I'd had a second burn spell or if that player hadn't killed Imodane, I would have dealt a whopping 160 damage to all of my opponents. Instead, I didn't hurt my opponents at all. But at least I got rid of K'rrik.

The player after me wasn't willing to let me live after that, and she turned all of her artifacts into flying creatures, taking me out in one hit. Either player could have eliminated her following that, but neither of them did. Instead, the game dragged on for another 90 minutes or so. The Kagemaro player (the one whose K'rikk I killed) would have won if not for me, but the other two players almost gave him a chance to mount a comeback. Eventually, it was the Piper Wright player (who'd I'd reduced to a precarious life total) that pulled out the win against the other two players. But it was close, with a lot of back-and-forth the whole time. All of them had an opportunity to kill any single opponent at various points, but none of them were willing to commit to that.

So yeah, not a win. And it illustrates the critical weakness of this concept: Imodane being killed nerfs the deck's lethality by a lot. But it would have been a fifth-turn win, and the guy who stopped me paid for it in the end. I think Matt will like this deck.

 

[Oversoul]

After having this deck lose pretty quickly in its first outing, I was hoping to try it a bit more before giving it to my brother. Well, the results are in, and this deck slaughtered everything over the course of three different games. Crucially, no one had removal to point at Imodane in these ones. But even if they had, I think that the deck would have held up reasonably well. It's not a total glass cannon, but it does have an obvious weakness. Overall, I think that this is pretty high-power and would almost certainly present a strong challenge to anything that Matt's friends might be running.