From the Brim to the Trim - Chaotic Plays for Orderly Budgets
(Zurzoth, Chaos Rider | Art by Dmitry Burmak)
The Devil is in the Details
Greetings and salutations from a country where we just experienced a 15°C swing down and then up in a couple of days. Talk about weird weather... Anyway, I'm Arnaud, and I'm delighted to take you on a red journey filled with red spells and red thoughts and red pingers and red devils and... you get the red idea.
Last time, after having some fun with heavyweights, I left you with a new trinity to choose from. It seems most of you were not that enthused by the options, as the poll yielded a total of only 180 votes, quite below our usual average. Last came Cheerios players' favourite Elf, Meria, Scholar of Antiquity, with 52 votes (29%). Second place went to good old bane of Standard and Extended, Geist of Saint Traft, with 59 votes. Our winner then, with 69 votes, is the one and only wreaker of havoc, Zurzoth, Chaos Rider.
Before diving into a short analysis of this bad boy, I'd like to give a shoutout. Cassarah, I hope you're happy, as your wish has come true!
At any rate, let's have a closer look. 2/3 for . Zurzy won't go Voltron, but he's remarkably cheap to cast, which implies decent recursion should he meet his demise. He's also all about popping Devils all over the place, and providing potential quality card advantage, if you're not too unlucky.
I've met a few of these decks in the past, and if left unchecked, they can go wide really fast.
Compiling cards from Zurzoth's page on EDHREC gives us 302 card to play with. Not a bad start.
First Trim - The Cardboard Chainsaw Masssacre
Let's trim, trim and then trim some more. Expensive cards are such a bore. Only $1 cards we want galore. Let's trim, trim and trim some more!
I'll leave the best songwriters among you to find a tune for those abysmal lyrics. Still, you get the idea. Let's get rid of anything costing more than $1, with a $0.10 leniency to account for price variations.
Before throwing them into oblivion's maw, let's see if there are some interesting goodies in the $2 and below range. In case, you know, you wanted to indulge yourself a bit.
There's... a lot of those. 25 cards exactly. And while I'm not going to analyse each and everyone of them, there's a decent number worth a second look.
- Otherworld Atlas: At $1.11, it barely misses the mark. A great way to generate additional devils during your opponent's turns, albeit a tad expensive to play and slow to act.
- Incendiary Command: Pyroclasm, then Winds of Change-ish all in one, netting you three Devils with your commander out. Fun, if a bit expensive.
- Library of Leng: My first real regret. For a puny , this provides fantastic control over what to actually let go from your hand or not.
- Dictate of the Twin Gods: A double-edged sword, but Flash ensures you're the one benefitting from it first. Which is all that matters.
- Battle Hymn: Some will say this is just a glorified ritual, but it can net a lot of mana, more often than you'd think.
- Impact Tremors: With all the Devils you'll be spawning, this has the looks of an auto-include.
- Goblin Bombardment: Same as above. A neat sacrifice outlet.
- Torbran, Thane of Red Fell: Mighty Dwarf goes Boom! This turns all of your Devils into weapons of mass destruction.
- Surly Badgersaur: A fun and versatile creature, with a touch of chaos from your commander.
This leaves us with 5 cards worth between $1 and $1.10:
- Thought Vessel: Classic rock with a nice added benefit. I doubt we'll reach that threshold, but it doesn't hurt.
- Inti, Seneschal of the Sun: With all the draw and discard from our commander, this should net crazy advantage.
- Anger: Let's swing with those Devils right away!
- Liquimetal Torque: I'll never say no to a two-mana rock, and you never know when you might need to turn something into an artifact.
- Sundering Eruption: I mean, why not. At worst it's a land, at best it gets rid of a problematic land, and clears the path for a mighty swing.
With all of that dusting out of the way, we're down to 195 cards already. Looks like this is going to be a swift one folks!
Second Trim - Cardward Scissorhands
Well, I didn't foresee this. There's a massive number of veggies for this mono-red deck. Looks like someone overdid it at the grocery store. Check this out:
That's a lot of card draw. And a lot of ramp. And a lot of removal. Looks like our next section will be a short one.
I'm going to try and privilege some cards over the other.
First, I like common draw. If there's any left from our expensive trim, they will have priority, although I feel like we don't need too much of these, with the way our commander is worded.
Second, we need a somewhat decent ramp package, probably around 12 cards.
Third, Madness looks promising in this deck.
Let's cut the following:
| Draw | Ramp | Removal | Wipe |
I'm going to stop there, as we're reaching a somewhat low count of cards, and I have the feeling I'm going to cut a lot other things in the following section. If worse comes to worst, I'll have some leeway in the draw and removal section.
After giving the land base a healthy makeover, we're down to 146 cards. Let's keep up the pace.
Third Trim - Cutting Off the Rough Edges
Right, let's address the elephant in the room. Players like Devils. Like them, actually, a lot. We have already cut some of those in the second trim, and there's a decent amount left. Another recurring theme is chaos. There are quite a few cards that seem to lean in that direction.
My problem with that is that, basically, neither of these approaches serve our strategy. In my book, the core idea behind a Zurzoth deck is to flood the board with Devil tokens, to be used as reckless chowder to either whittle down our opponents, serve as meat shields or be mercilessly sacrificed, all for the glory of the ping. This is why this list included several damage doublers. A 1 damage ping might not be that impressive. A 2 damage one is something to keep an eye on. With 4 and greater, we're entering game-winning territory.
The other major category is denominated Burn, and includes several additional pingers, lifegain preventers and otherwise fun stuff. Again, I believe there is some fluff to cut therein, although not as much.
There's also a couple of tutors, both of which I'm not a fan of, and we'll have to examine the few token makers and the various sac outlets.
When all is said and done, I'm going to brutally trim the excess fat, ideally lowering our curve in the process. Off with the useless devils, and underwhelming thematic cards. Let's stay focused folks.
| Devils | Burn | Misc. |
Would you look at that, we're already in the final stretch. 10 cards to go, and plenty of room for additional axing. Let's finish this.
Final Trim - Heart-Wrenching Choices
Here we are, the last mile, the cuts to end them all, the definitive burning.
These are the ten cards I would cut to get to our final list. As usual, bear in mind that, at this point of the brew, none of these are bad choices to keep should you choose to do so.
- Big Score and Unexpected Windfall: I would never have thought I'd one day get to cut these two, yet here we are. As much as I love these two spells, we need room.
- Thrill of Possibility: With little Madness left in the deck, I feel I can safely let this one go.
- Collateral Damage and Fiery Temper: Let's be honest. These are glorified Lightning Bolt, with a slight upside given our build.
- Disrupt Decorum: I really like this card, but more often than not your opponents will parlay to keep the situation to a status quo of some sorts. It's a hard decision though.
- Sulfuric Vortex: Don't get me wrong. This is a very good card. But it's also perceived as a slow stax piece, and that will warrant unwanted attention.
- Fellwar Stone and Fire Diamond: The curve has dipped below the 3 mana average threshold, I feel we can lower the ramp count by a smidge.
- Jaya, Venerated Firemage: A tad too expensive for her effect to be justified.
And with that, we're done. I give to you...
Additional Trim - A Look Into the Past
Before we head off, let's take a look at a past Trim and see how it fared.
This week, we're taking a look at one of my old time favourites: Piru, the Volatile. Which makes me think I haven't updated the list in a while, I'll need to sort that out...
Ahem, sorry, rambling and all. However, I need to fill this section in some way, as it seems our beloved Dragon has stood the test of time remarkably well.
There are only three card which has somewhat spiked a bit since a year and a half ago:
- Flameshadow Conjuring: $1.30
- Imposing Grandeur: $1.66
- Gisa, Glorious Resurrector: $1.68
Not bad, not bad at all. I'm going to replace these with the following:
- Waltz of Rage: Feel the Wrath of my Piru while giving me life aplenty!
- Rowan's Grim Search: Very nice on its own, and easy to bargain with the tokens, not mentioning our commander.
- Deadly Dispute: I'm so, so happy this wonderful draw outlet has gone down in price. Lovely.
And just like that, it's done. Not too much work this time. You can find the updated list here.
Conclusion
Despite Zurzoth being a wild ride by birthright, it's been a surprisingly tame journey towards building his army.
What do you think? Anything sorely missing? Any hidden gems? Any gross mistake on my end?
Let me know in the comments below, and I'll see you in two weeks!
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Arnaud Gompertz
Arnaud Gompertz has been playing Magic since 4th Edition, back in 1995. He's been an assiduous EDH enthusiast since 2012, with a soft spot for unusual and casual Commanders. He'll always favour spectacular plays against a boring path to victory. Aside from mistreating cardboard, he's a dedicated board games player, loves a challenging video game and occasionally tries to sing with his choir.
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