Eldrazi Broodscale Deck and SB Guide 11/21/2024

New month, new Hammer, who dis?

In all seriousness though, this deck has a lot of play to it, a lot of lines that echo Hammer vibes, is incredibly resilient against basically everything thanks to its backup plans (K Command, The One Ring, Saga, Fleshraker, and Blade beatdown). If you enjoy playing Hammer, you will almost certainly enjoy this one too (and you don’t get KO’ed by Wrath of the Skies)

There are a lot of questions I’m sure people have, and I’ll address that here. Like previous months, I’ve split the Hammer resource and the non-hammer updates into separate pieces to keep the resources easier to access. So if you’re here for the Broodscale Eldrazi list and SB guide, you’re in the right spot! If you’re looking for Hammer, check out the other update I added :)

Decklist

Sideboard Guide

How do we combo?

-If you prefer videos, I explain the combo briefly here, but here is the tl;dr:

-When a creature dies, Blade of the Bloodchief puts a +1/+1 counter on the equipped creature. 

-When Basking Broodscale gets a +1/+1 counter, you create a 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn

-Equip Broodscale, sacrifice a Spawn, triggering Blade. This puts a counter on the Broodscale, which creates another Spawn. This creates an infinite loop where you generate infinite colorless mana and an infinitely large Broodscale. 

-Once you have done this, you can kill your OP in a number of ways:

• Attack them with the unblocked Broodscale.

• Fleshraker kills your opponent immediately with its triggers since it deals damage on each Spawn entering.

• A second Blade means each sacrifice will make 2 spawn. This means you can move the extra blade to another spawn, grow the spawn infinitely large, then repeat to make infinite creatures with infinite power.

• Kozilek’s Command lets you scry your entire deck to find a fleshraker/2nd blade.

Why is this deck good though? Here is the core:

-In addition to the 2 card combo, the deck has both a lot of redundancy as well as good backup plans.

Redundancy: 

-Urza’s Saga acts as 4 additional copies of Blade

-4 Ancient Stirrings find every card in the deck except Halfling and other Stirrings/Rumbles

-4 Malevolent Rumble find both combo pieces, as well as Fleshraker as a kill

Resiliency:

-This deck can threaten a turn 3 combo, but has powerful tools/avenues of attack aside from that:

-The One Ring - Yeah, we can just cast this thing on turn 3 with either Halfling or Malevolent Rumble making Spawn.

-Kozilek’s Command - This is probably the best card in the deck after Ring. It plays incredibly well with basically every card in your deck. It is a way to dig for a key card, ramp with a bunch of Spawn, instant-speed removal, and even acts as incidental graveyard hate.

-Urza’s Saga - Anyone in here should be familiar with just how hard Saga can take over the game. While these constructs won’t generally be as large as when we play Hammer, they are stil 3+ power creatures that trigger Raker and further push damage against a defensive opponent relying on counterspells/spot removal. Plus it can find you bullets like Haywire Mite, Pithing Needle, Vexing Bauble, etc.

-Glaring Fleshraker can deal a ton of chip damage over the course of a game by simply casting your spells. If you have a second Raker though, your opponent is likely dead if you have any number of other spells you’ve drawn. Keep in mind that Raker damage is exponential.

One Raker in play means each colorless spell makes 1 spawn, dealing 1 damage.

Two Rakers in play means each colorless spell makes 2 spawn, which each trigger the Rakers, resulting in 4 damage.

Three Rakers in play means each colorless spell makes 3 spawn, which each trigger the Rakers, resulting in 9 damage.

Additionally, if you cast a colorless creature spell, they will make Spawn and then ALSO trigger the Rakers when they enter.

K Command will just kill them by making 3+ Spawn and dealing an obscene amount of damager.

-Blade of the Bloodchief paired with any combination of Rumble, Command, Fleshraker means that you can suit up one of your idiots and incidentally grow them to level of real threats.

Manabase core:

-Eldrazi Temple acting as 2 lands for Raker, Command, Broodscale (if you’re able to dump the extra mana), and even other cards like Wastescape Battlemage and/or Thief of Existence is very powerful.

-Urza’s Saga primarily acts as additional copies of Blade, but also provides ways to pressure through counterspells, spot removal, and even provides more access to cards like Mite, Needle, Vexing Bauble, Lantern, and can even slowly fix your mana with Drum in a pinch.

-Boseiju is just a very powerful effect to have access to, and does a ton of work by answering some problematic permanents, but also just acting as a green source.

-Prismatic Vista is here primarily to grab basic Wastes, since it makes playing around Blood Moon a much less painful experience.

Specific flex slot choices at the moment (note that I think there are only ~3 slots at the moment in the main):

-2 Wastescape Battlemage - The card is mostly:
“1CG: When you cast this, exile target artifact or enchantment. 

Make a 2/2 colorless creatures.”
The 1U kicker doesn’t often come up, but it is very low cost to add the 4 Yavimaya Coast and turn that on some percentage of the time. Note that this dude is also findable off of both Stirrings and Rumble. Note that you could probably play Thief of Existence in this slot, but I am not quite sold on the card. The body is definitely better, but

-1 Needle - This is one of the best tools we have against Belcher, and it is live in a lot of other matchups. We have a lot more of ‘em in the sideboard, but the first maindeck copy has overperformed quite a bit.

Sideboard

***Note that since this deck is still largely a new competitor, so identifying what matchups need more/less help post-board. As such, this is very much up in the air, but this is what I’m thinking right now.

-4 Veil of Summer - This is probably our best tool against all of the Frog decks as well as Belcher and any other deck using countermagic. Not innovative, but the card is plainly put, very powerful.

-1 Haywire Mite - The extra copy is nice, the lifegain can be relevant, and the idea that it helps juice your Rakers even more is nice. You can also sac it to trigger Blade as a bonus. It plays nicely as an early blocker against Energy that also addresses key permanents like Chain/Prison/Bombardment/Ring

-3 Pithing Needle - You will rarely need more than 1-2 of these bad boys, but against Belcher, you will be very happy to have a pile of them. Not only is having multiples in play a solid plan, but you can protect them from getting bounced by Sink into Stupor with Veil of Summer.

-1 Soul-Guide Lantern - Having access to additional graveyard hate (aside from K Command) post board is a really nice tool to have, and I think SGL serves this role best. It has the nice bailout of using it to draw a card, but also tags something on the way down. Against something like Goryo’s this is very important. P

-2 Vexing Bauble - Once again, Belcher is the biggest concern for us in the metagame since I’ve like my Energy matchup. Bauble turning off all their free countermagic, while also stopping Lotuses from coming off suspend is big game. The fact that it also plays well against Living End is a nice treat.

-3 Damping Sphere - Aside from Belcher, I’ve found that Titan and Storm shells can be a problem. Damping Sphere does a good job addressing the overlap here, and with Kanister’s recent win with Titan, I expect to see an uptick. I was running 2 Spheres and a Boseiju, but I found the utility of the third channel land in the board was less impactful than a third hate piece.

-1 Wastescape Battlemage - Reasonable body with 1+ relevant cast triggers, paired with the ability to find it off of both cantrips is nice. This is definitely a flexible spot, but I don’t know what else I’d play here, so I’m happy to just have a third copy in the 75.

After playing a good bit with Energy, Goryo’s, Necro, and a pile of other MH3 decks, I think Eldrazi Broodscale is likely the way forward for Hammer enjoyers (even in the event Ring gets banned), so I'll keep working on this one.