Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder Commander Deck Guide

Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder | Illustration by Krharts

cEDH games aren’t fair at all, as players want to win with the most broken strategies you can imagine. If you have the resources and are curious about a cool 4-color deck to use at your next cEDH event, you may like this one.

Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder is the cascade master, and I’m here to show you how this One Punch Man commander only needs one hit to win the game.

Are you intrigued by what this deck looks like and how it plays? Let's dive right into it!

The Deck

Mystic Reflection | Illustration by YW Tang

4-color decks let you slam together many key cards whose effects aren’t otherwise available in other colors. Basically, you pack every cheap spell in this Yidris deck to win the game with its cascade ability.

The Commander

Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder may not seem it like does much, despite being four colors; in reality, it packs very good synergy with what this deck is trying to achieve. It's a combo deck whose goal is to win in one turn most of the time.

Yidris plays a huge role in crafting it as a post-combat engine. The idea is to have Yidris hit, then go crazy and start casting spells for free, thanks to the cascade ability.

With many cards that let you manipulate the top of your library, you’ll be casting and crafting your way to victory with ease.

The Removal

You need to play some form of interaction to enable your commander to get through or to stop your opponents from accomplishing their plans. In this deck, you run a mix of different forms of removal in your commander’s colors, primarily instants.

The cheapest ones are the red ones like Lightning Bolt and Pyroblast. The latter is very cool as it can also act as a counter most of the time, but once in a blue moon, it can help you to get rid of pesky blue permanents like Rhystic Study.

Lightning Bolt is notably good at removing creatures that may want to hose you, like Notion Thief, Drannith Magistrate, and Opposition Agent. On a bad day, you can also use it to finish off one of your opponents by sending damage to their face.

Assassin's Trophy and Abrupt Decay are really good at removing permanents, and Assassin's Trophy works excellent if you control cards that tax your opponents for searching libraries, like Opposition Agent.

Some permanents may be problematic to deal with, as they probably won’t die to conventional removal. You have access to bounce spells like Snap or Repeal to bypass them, the former being great at chaining multiple spells on a single turn. At the same time, the latter can be used at the end of your opponent's turn, and you’ll get a free card. The other utility this bounce spell has is to help you protect your spells from your opponents' removal.

The Counter Magic

Of course, this deck also runs a decent package of countermagic in the form of cards that a blue deck can never miss: Counterspell and Force of Will.

Then, you’ve got Counterbalance, a permanent that can counter an opponent’s spells if the spell’s mana value is equal to the mana value of the top card of your library. While this deck has very cheap spells, mostly 1-mana ones, you have ways to manipulate the top of your library to ensure you always get the right spell for when your opponents try to resolve theirs.

Other counterspells in this deck are Pact of Negation, Mental Misstep, and Swan Song. While each has its specific niche, having some variety at your disposal is always a good idea.

The Taxes

Cards like Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora are must-haves in Commander decks. In cEDH tournaments, they’re every blue mage’s bread and butter to gain card advantage each time your opponents play spells.

Storm decks tend to want as many cards as possible, and these two powerful enchantments give you the tools you need. Paying the tax each time may be almost impossible for your opponents, who otherwise may lose tempo by spending the extra mana.

Notion Thief and Opposition Agent are some other tax elements this deck runs. The former shuts down your opponents' search effects, and the latter is great at “stealing” card draw from them beyond the first draw on each of their draw steps.

The Tutors

Tutors are critical for finding win conditions or spells you may need at any given time. This deck, like many others, runs the cheapest ones available in each color. From Vampiric Tutor to Wishclaw Talisman, this deck has multiple cards to put you in a favorable position at any given point in the match.

The Win Condition

This deck has multiple win conditions. The first one is Brain Freeze. The idea here is to generate enough storm to mill your opponents out or mill yourself to cast a Thassa's Oracle and escape it from the graveyard with Underworld Breach to win the game.

Speaking of the devil, remember that this is primarily a Demonic Consultation deck. The goal is to win by casting it or Tainted Pact to resolve Thassa's Oracle and win.

Other Key Cards

Peer into the Abyss and Ad Nauseam are the spells that this deck can’t miss.

While they’re somewhat expensive to cast, they give you a lot of card advantage to find the pieces you may be missing to win the game, so they’re critical to your plans.

One cool addition to the deck is the flexible inclusion of Mystic Reflection. You can have your commander enter the battlefield as other creatures, like Dockside Extortionist or Opposition Agent, or negate opposing Thassa's Oracle wins. This card has tons of potential, and while the foretell mechanic may not help much because it's the only foretell spell in the whole deck, it has greater upside than one may think.

Waste Not and Notion Thief are great when paired with the “wheel” effects this deck runs. These effects let you discard your hand and draw cards in exchange, with Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Misfortune, and Windfall as the wheel effects for this deck.

Lastly, Song of Creation is a cute engine this deck runs to go off in a turn and potentially win the game on the spot by finding your win conditions or tutors that can search for them.

Remember that this deck's average spell costs 1-2 mana, making it very easy for you to cast as many spells as you like. Some of them are virtually free, like Manamorphose, Gitaxian Probe, or the 0-mana mana rocks, which in turn synergize very well not only with Song of Creation, but with the deck as a whole. This is an Ad Nauseam deck, after all.

The Mana Base

Like many cEDH decks, this deck runs all kinds of mana rocks. Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are at the top of the list to enable potent starts, while cards like Talisman of Creativity or Dimir Signet help you filter your mana and cast your commander a couple of turns ahead of schedule.

The other way of ramping this deck is through 0-mana artifacts like Lotus Petal or Lion's Eye Diamond. While they can be used only once in theory, in practice, you can replay them from the graveyard.

Other ramp options this deck runs are Deathrite Shaman and Birds of Paradise, which, unlike mana rocks, are susceptible to removal but help fix your mana in the early stages of the game.

There are niche cards like the rituals (Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual) that can add tons of mana to cast multiple spells, or utility permanents like Carpet of Flowers that benefit from your opponents' mana bases.

Speaking of mana base, this deck runs what you expect from cEDH decks: a mix of dual lands in all our commander's colors, including fetch lands and shock lands.

While 29 lands may seem low, consider that you run 19 other ramp spells in the deck. The fewer lands you run in a storm deck like this, the better.

One last card I’d like to mention is Gemstone Caverns, a land that can ramp you up even before the game has started as long as it's in your initial hand and you aren’t lucky enough to be the starting player.

The Strategy

By looking at the cards, you may have already guessed that this deck is fairly skill-intensive. You mostly dedicate the early portion of the game to using your ramp spells to put you in a favorable position to cast your commander and then protect it at all costs.

If it survives, you’ve won half the battle. The other part is making it deal combat damage to a player so you can cascade your spells for free.

That said, you can win without your commander, and while that's easier to do after Yidris has dealt damage to an opponent, the deck is more than capable of winning without it.

At the end of the day, this is a Thassa's Oracle combo deck, and it relies heavily on the Oracle to win most matches, if not each one. All your plays should be aligned with that in mind.

Combos and Interactions

While casting a Demonic Consultation into a Thassa's Oracle may not require much skill, there are some deck lines that you should be aware of that may not seem very obvious at first glance.

• Pyroblast is capable of targeting spells or permanents that aren’t blue. This may not seem very intuitive, but it can contribute to the storm count.
• With Counterbalance and Rhystic Study in play, you can always stack your triggers differently to draw spells from the latter if your opponent doesn’t pay the tax and change the spell you have on top.
• Noxious Revival is also very cute at manipulating the top of your library. Like Vampiric Tutor or Mystical Tutor, it has strong synergy with Counterbalance.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Given the fact that this is a cEDH deck, you’re mostly expected to run any broken synergies and interactions you can think of, and your opponents will, too. No Rule 0 to worry about. Just make sure that they’re also in the same line of thought as you, and don’t try to bring this to kitchen table Magic unless you would like to get banned or lose friends.

Budget Options

cEDH decks aren’t very well-known for playing affordable spells. However, there are some cards you may want to try instead of investing in some of the most expensive ones.

Sometimes, relying on Spell Pierce isn’t enough, so An Offer You Can't Refuse can help you in a rough spot or prevent your opponent from going for the kill. While giving two Treasure tokens isn’t great, it’s better than losing on the spot.

Bring to Light is a replacement for any of your most expensive tutor spells. While it's significantly more expensive in terms of mana, it allows you to cast all but your most expensive spells for free, as the cap on converge usually stops at four colors.

I like Pick Your Poison because it's very versatile in what it does. What’s insane about it is that it doesn’t target an opponent, but rather affects the whole table. While your opponents may be happy with resolving a Rhystic Study each, you’ll just have a greater smile on your face by removing them for 1 mana, all at once.

Narset, Parter of Veils is a strong card in conjunction with your wheel effects, as you can leave your opponents with only one random card in their hand to play.

If you’re looking for good ways to protect your combo, you can rely on Dosan the Falling Leaf, which prevents your opponents from casting spells on your turn. Just remember that Dosan's ability only stops players from casting spells; it doesn't stop triggered or activated abilities.

Other Builds

Instead of focusing on Thassa's Oracle combo, you could in theory just be a wheel deck by adding more wheel effects.

Reforge the Soul, Dark Deal, and even Dragon Mage are good wheel effects, and you can combine them with the likes of Megrim, Liliana's Caress, or Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

You can also rely on spells like Whispering Madness to win the game, but that would imply relying more on your combat phase with Yidris.

Commanding Conclusion

Peer into the Abyss | Izzy

While being a skill-intensive deck to run, Yidris Storm is a Commander deck that may have only a few lines of winning games, but is definitely one of the strongest ones out there.

I know everybody hates Thassa's Oracle decks, but they're by far one of the most solid strategies for winning cEDH games, and I wanted to show you a deck that uses them at their peak potential.

What would you change about the deck? Would you use a secondary approach for it? Let us know in the comments or at the Draftsim Discord!

As always, it's a pleasure writing and diving into decks for you to read, make sure to follow us on our socials to never miss a post.

Take care and see you next time!