Welcome back to another Sunday Stream EDH deck tech. This week we built a deck around Zevlor, Elturel Exile, a four-mana Grixis commander that loves copying single-target spells to turn them into huge value.

Zevlor, Elturel Exile

Archidekt Link

While we end up building around Rakdos and Izzet on a somewhat regular basis on the Sunday Stream, Grixis is inexplicably a rarely explored combo for us, so Zevlor is a nice change of pace. Zevlor's activated ability allows to copy our next instant or sorcery that would target a single permanent or opponent, then use those copies to target a permanent controlled by the other two opponents or the other two opponents themselves.

Naturally, Spellslinger is easily the most common theme for Zevlor decks, with roughly 2,000 out of the 3,750 decks following that archetype. However, as is standard practice for the Sunday Stream, we went a completely different direction. Instead of loading up the deck with loads of single target one and two-mana instants, we went with a combination theme of Threaten effects and big mana sorceries that can win us the game with big, splashy effects.

Why Threaten effects? Because stealing your opponents' creatures for a turn is fun and making them do your bidding is even more fun. But, then where did the big mana sub-theme come from?

One of my favorite parts of the stream is taking suggestions from the live chat, and the first card to be suggested for this build was Eternal Dominion, a gaudy ten-mana sorcery with the Epic ability.

Searching each opponent's library for any artifact, creature, enchantment, or land is probably close to a game-ender on its own, but the Epic ability allows to recast this spell THREE TIMES EVERY UPKEEP, which is frankly absurd. The odds of you ever doing that more than once aren't great, since you're either going to win or lose very quickly, but the idea of making that happen is still awesome, so we're throwing it in and doing other cool stuff like that.

Cost Reduction & Ramp

If we're going to be casting lots of instants and sorceries, especially expensive ones, cost reduction and ramp will be critical. Goblin Electromancer and Storm-Kiln Artist are classics of the Spellslinger archetype and will function perfectly in this deck. Storm-Kiln Artist is specifically helpful because it will allow us to bank those precious Treasure tokens to use for our big hitters later on.

Stormcatch Mentor is a new card from Bloomburrow that applies a nice blanket cost reduction to instants and sorceries, and does have Prowess in case we find a reason to make him an impromptu attacker or blocker.

Magda, the Hoardmaster, makes a Treasure the first time we commit a crime each turn. Obviously, we'd like her to create more than one Treasure per turn, but we're going to be #DoingCrime often enough to get value from her consistently.

Do Not Seek the Treasure

Did I mention that we're going to need Treasures? Charming Scoundrel is a great cheap creature to give us that Treasure token as early as turn two.

Big Score and Unexpected Windfall are identical instants that are excellent ways to draw a couple of cards and make two Treasures to keep us moving forward. Let's not reinvent the wheel here.

Decadent Dragon is a nice Adventure spell that has a single target instant spell stapled to a flyer that makes a Treasure on attack, so it's a good double-duty card for this deck. A non-budget version of this deck would probably swap it out for a Goldspan Dragon, but Decadent will do just fine.

DO IT AGAIN

Given that Zevlor's ability does require him to tap, we'd obviously like to find ways to untap him and Do More Stuff. Retreat to Coralhelm lets us untap our commander simply by playing a land. Easy enough.

Chakram Retreiver lets us untap Zlevor any time we cast a spell during our turn. I think you can probably figure out why that's a good synergy for a deck that casts a lot of spells.

Patriar's Seal is mana rock that can produce any color we need, and has the ability to untap Zevlor stapled to it. Perfect.

Vizer of Tumbling Sands is handy creature that will literally never draw targeted removal, and can untap any permanent, which is useful even if Zevlor isn't on the board. If you're in a pinch, Vizier can also be cycled to draw a card and untap a permanent one time.

Let's Get Weird

Arcane Bombardment will forever be a pet card of mine. It creates some really explosive turns by copying more and more spells every turn, and is just a super fun card to have on the board.

Double Vision is a similarly fun card that will almost always trigger on the same spell that Zevlor is copying, so you can turn your extra copy of Threaten into another way to untap Zevlor. That's pretty neat!

Telemin Performance has the power to be a complete blowout spell if we're able to copy it with Zevlor's ability. Suddenly, for the low cost of seven mana, you can have each opponent reveal cards from their library until they reveal a creature, which you will put onto the battlefield under your control, and then any noncreature cards revealed go straight to the graveyard. That's bonkers.

Worst Fears is a hilarious and dumb card that I will hear no objections about. What would you do if you could control the next turn for all of your opponents? Would you tap all of their mana down and cast every spell you could in the dumbest way possible? Would you have them attack each other? DO MORE. Use one of their credit cards to order a pizza for yourself. Steal their car. Legally change their names. The world is your oyster. You paid TEN mana. You deserve this.

Actually, That's Mine

I love the Cipher mechanic. I literally built an entire deck just to play Cipher and Bloodrush together. Stolen Identity combines one of my favorite mechanics in Magic with repeatable single-target creature theft. Not only can you copy the original with Zevlor, but you can also copy any of the future Cipher casts of Stolen Identity, netting you three stolen creatures each time.

Blue Sun's Twilight will, again, steal a creature from each of your opponents, and if you can at least five mana into the X cost, you'll get a token copy of those creatures as well. Potentially huge value available here.

For the low cost of seven mana, Acquire will let you tutor an artifact from all of your opponents' libraries directly to the battlefield. The floor of this card is probably grabbing a couple of Sol Rings and another mana rock, which is very solid.

Threaten here is a stand-in for a number of cards in the deck that functionally say "Gain control of target creature until end of turn and untap it. It gains haste until end of turn." Zevlor lets us steal a creature from each opponent for the duration of the turn, and the ceiling for how powerful this can be obviously depends on the creatures you're able to steal. You could send them back their owners, deal with the life-gain player, or maybe even sacrifice one to Deadly Dispute to gain some more Treasure and card advantage. In a pinch, these cards could also be used to untap Zevlor for another.

Closing Summary

While this deck is far more boom-or-bust than the decks we build typically are, the potential payoffs in this deck make it worth the risk. Explosive turns will be the name of the game here, and that will almost always make this deck fun and interesting to play, even if it isn't necessarily able to hang around at a high power table on a regular basis.

Levi Stevenson

Since first dipping his toes into Commander a a few years ago, Levi has consistently made a point to avoid making a whole bunch of the same kind of deck by brewing lots of different color combinations, only to discover that he just has token decks in almost every color combination. When not playing or talking about Magic, you can find him playing drums in a cover band, writing and talking about Iowa State athletics, or embarrassing his wife in public with outrageously dumb jokes.