Last time I was brainstorming about the potential that one of the Fate Reforged Dragons (Silumgar to be exact) has in terms of deckbuilding. Now some time has passed and I'm not yet finished with either another "Brainstorming Commanders"-Post or any Vegan or Minecraft related topic. So I said to myself: "Maybe a showcase of one of my oldest and most tuned decks would be sweet." Well, here we are.
To be clear from the start, my Norin-EDH was never intended to beat face or control the table, I just thought since Norin looks soooooo useless it might be fun to build a deck around him, since the only thing he IS actually good at is surviving forever (he's awary of all the dangers you know ;) ). So the deck became more oriented towards creating chaos at the table, abusing Norin and having fun in general. So let's start where everything began:
From the time I saw him pop up there I knew I would try to build a deck with him at the helm even if it might not be top tier.
Chapter 1 - Norins friends and helpers
The main players, the most impactful cards when Norin is on the battlefield. They aren't many unfortunately...
Basically you want to play every card possible that has a relevant effect starting with "Whenever a creature enters/leaves the battlefield..." in the color identity red.
That said, cards I am still looking to get to add to my deck are Outpost Siege (since its either a draw engine or a damage threat) and the newly spoiled Impact Tremors.
Since I'm playing those cards no matter what I figured it might be fun to add some other creatures that can benefit from those five cards:
The Ogre Menial and the Mardu Scout are kind of experimental for now since I didn't have the chance to play with them yet. The idea behind the orge is that late in the game you can "Fireball" people out of the game no matter how much life they have with 14 mana and a Pandemonium-effect in play. The Mardu Scout on the other hand serves as a Volcanic Hammer with buyback that can also work really well with Confusion in the Ranks - at least in theory.
Chapter 2 - Keep getting fuel
The biggest problem of any mono red deck is how to keep going once you've burned (sometimes quite literally...) through your first bunch of cards. Other colors simply play some amount of these cards but unfortunately red has no access to those types of cards:
The solution I found is the following: Since everyone tries to keep his hand filled with some sort of card draw why not play cards that allow everyone to draw a bunch of cards (including you of course), but since your opponents would've done that anyway you'll get the most value out of it. The main upside here is that those effects usually don't cost much mana. If you then add some other effects that will net you cards in a very slow fashion you can make sure you'll never really run out of gas:
Chapter 3 - Unleashing the chaos
Here comes the fun part of this deck. Thus far the approach was rather competitive, getting cards and making the most out of our triggers. As I mentioned I never wanted the deck to go straight "I want to win the game" and more "Let's have some fun".
While some of the cards are there mainly for complicating the game and messing with everyones mind, others actually do serve a purpose of some sort in the deck. Scrambleverse for example is really good if you play it on an empty board on your side since it will a) most likely break up synergies between cards your opponents have in play and b) you will most likely end up with more than you had before even if the stuff isn't that relevant. As you can see its all random but even the randomness favors you a bit if you manage to wait for the right time (Thieves' Auction is basically the same in a more controlled manner). Another underestimated card is Omen Machine. As I already said, red isn't the best at drawing cards so why not prevent everyone from doing so and since most of the cards you play are high impact hitting any random non-land can get pretty ugly pretty fast.
I won't go over all of the cards but I think you get the idea....
Chapter 4 - Walking some planes
One of the agendas I put upon myself is that I will play any planeswalker that I get my hands on even if it would fit into another deck better. Thus far I managed to gather 4 of them:
Yes Chandra and Tibalt aren't overwhelming but I gotta stick to my rules don't I? And resolving the +1 on Tibalt is just too much fun... And funny enough he even "gains me life" everytime I play him because someone kills him. One day I will get to thet -6 I know it.........
On the other hand Koth is just a plain solid Planeswalker that can even fuel some pretty sick Fireballs which there are quite a lot in the deck. Daretti on the other hand grants good card selection with a +2 and the other two abilites aren't completely useless either.
Chapter 5 - Death by fire
While I don't play the actual Fireball, I do play quite a few X spells that can surprise-kill a player later in the game. Additionally I play 5+ creatures with firebreathing so whenever I generate a boatload of mana I'm likely to have a mana sink that can get very scary:
Hidetsugu and Spawn of Thraxes are cards I added in order to be able to close out games fast enough, because the deck only gets windows of one or two turns to win. And of course if there is a chance to win I will try to go so even if thats not my main goal.
Epilogue
The rest of the deck is pretty much some mass removal, ramp and some utility cards. Allstars like Wayfarer's Bauble and Blasphemous Act, mono-color must plays like Caged Sun and some utility in Mindclaw Shaman and Heat Shimmer. The mana base is pretty much all mountains with the occasional Valakut and Tectonic Edge. If you're interessted in the exact decklist leave a message down below but I figured that simply posting the main players of my deck would leave room for personal modifying and preference.
That's it for now, I hope you liked my deckspotlight, see you around next time (hopefully)!
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