Last time, I discussed the idea of not always playing the optimal card choices because I like to make things a little more interesting. Well, let’s take a look at a decklist.

"Maelstrom Wanderer Decklist"

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Aeon Chronicler
• 1 Bloodbraid Elf
• 1 Brutalizer Exarch
• 1 Carven Caryatid
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Elvish Visionary
• 1 Etherium-Horn Sorcerer
• 1 Mindclaw Shaman
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Ondu Giant
• 1 Roaring Primadox
• 1 Shardless Agent
• 1 Stampeding Wildebeests

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter

• Spells (46)
• 1 Early Harvest
• 1 Evacuation
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Hunting Pack
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Long-Term Plans
• 1 Opportunity
• 1 Prophetic Bolt
• 1 Reiterate
• 1 Reverberate
• 1 Visions of Beyond
• 1 Concentrate
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Deep Analysis
• 1 Deep Reconnaissance
• 1 Earthquake
• 1 Explore
• 1 Explosive Vegetation
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Far Wanderings
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Foresee
• 1 Gaea's Blessing
• 1 Harmonize
• 1 Journey of Discovery
• 1 Mind's Desire
• 1 Mystic Retrieval
• 1 Ponder
• 1 Praetor's Counsel
• 1 Preordain
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Ranger's Path
• 1 Runic Repetition
• 1 Search for Tomorrow
• 1 Wheel of Fate
• 1 Ceta Sanctuary
• 1 Omniscience
• 1 Sunken Hope
• 1 Armillary Sphere
• 1 Crystal Shard
• 1 Elixir of Immortality
• 1 Firewild Borderpost
• 1 Gruul Signet
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Runechanter's Pike
• 1 Simic Signet

• Lands (32)
• 10 Island
• 9 Forest
• 9 Mountain
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

• Dragonstorm Combo (5)
• 1 Dragonstorm
• 1 Bogardan Hellkite
• 1 Worldgorger Dragon
• 1 Changeling Berserker
• 1 Changeling Titan

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Now, there’s a lot going on with this decklist, but a lot of that is not what we’re here for today. But if you looked closely, something might have stood out to you. Well, something should have; I gave five cards their own little subheading. Check out this gang:

When I first built my Maelstrom Wanderer deck, it seemed a little durdley. I wanted to add something to the deck that would reward me for just playing a sequence such as Gruul Signet, Explore, Ponder, storm spell. A Brain Freeze or Tendrils of Corruption—while popular storm-based win conditions in other formats—wouldn’t be particularly potent in a deck trying to be somewhat fair (read: not playing Ad Nauseam), and a Hunting Pack—which the decklist does include—would be fun but not quite game-ending with a storm count of only four or so, but a Dragonstorm with the right collection of Dragons in the deck could serve as a way for the deck to win without an explosive start or massive incremental advantage (other than land count).

Plus, using Changelings as Dragons seemed silly and fun. The combo satisfies a Johnny impulse I didn’t know I had: Making both the changeling keyword and the champion keyword relevant to a single combo is pretty neat.

Instant-speed removal pretty much means you lose the game, but otherwise, you win the game. In addition to dealing as much damage with Bogardan Hellkite as you want, you reiterate all of your other enters-the-battlefield triggers and can generate infinite mana (because your lands keep entering the battlefield untapped). If you want to do something other than turn your opponents to cinders with the Hellkite, just champion a creature other than the ones specified above to break the loop. You can also manually assemble the combo without Dragonstorm, and if you have the Dragonstorm but one or more pieces is in your graveyard, Elixir of Immortality can fix that.

Now, as it turns out, this deck is not super-durdley, and it does not need a one-card-infinite-combo win condition to be good. It can start out slow, but it’s always drawing cards and ramping, and casting Maelstrom Wanderer twice in one turn off a Crystal Shard and then casting Early Harvest followed by a Hunting Pack can mean good game (note the hastiness of the Beasts thanks to your Elemental commander). Omniscience, Praetor's Counsel, and Mind's Desire are all powerhouses as well.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is: I need to make this deck worse. I’m going to cut the previous five cards and replace them with the following five cards. Let’s take a look at the new plan.

I just replaced a one-card combo with a four-card combo. Here’s how it works:

First, cast a kicked Rite of Replication on your Fire Servant. You now have six Fire Servants. What would be good now? A Lightning Bolt. A Lightning Bolt for 192. That’s what would be good.

Would you prefer a single card resulting in five minutes of an infinite trigger loop or a single bad card amped up to 64?

Unfortunately for us, Fire Servant has a pesky qualifier on the types of spells it can enhance, which means we’ll have to use a little Illusion—of Illusion // Reality fame. By making the spell red before it resolves, our six Fire Servants will do their work. When the Hornet Sting is resolving, the first will double it to 2, the second will double that to 4, the third will double that to 8, and so on, until we end up at 64. If we happen to lose a Servant somewhere in the middle, it’s at least 32, which should be enough later in a Commander game, and if it’s a sixty-card game, 32 should be plenty, and even 16 could be enough.

The alternative to making Hornet Sting red is to change Fire Servant’s text to say “green” with something such as Glamerdye. The problem is that the copies of Servant won’t share the text changing, so unless you want to Radiate a Crystal Spray, I’d stick with the Illusion // Reality plan.

Before I go, let’s see what a sixty-card deck built around this plan might look like.

"Hornet Sting K.O."

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Fire Servant

• Spells (32)
• 1 Opportunity
• 1 Stroke of Genius
• 2 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Hornet Sting
• 4 Illusion // Reality
• 2 Blasphemous Act
• 2 Concentrate
• 4 Explosive Vegetation
• 4 Farseek
• 4 Mizzium Mortars
• 4 Rite of Replication

• Lands (24)
• 4 Forest
• 4 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 4 Steam Vents
• 4 Stomping Ground

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For now and for some indeterminate time further into the future, I’m Andrew saying, “Fire hornets sting the hardest.”

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com