Budget Magic: 18 Rare Zada Pop Off (Brawl)
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! Brawl is one of my favorite Arena formats to play while I'm waiting for a new set to drop and shake up formats like Standrd, Pioneer and Modern, so today we're heading to Brawl to play with an infamous budget commander: Zada, Hedron Grinder! The goal of our deck today is two-fold. First, make a Brawl deck that is super cheap to build for players who might want to try out the format for the first time. Second, the deck has to be fun to play and do something spectacular! Zada, Hedron Grinder is perfect for this since the main combo pieces for Zada are common and uncommon token makes and cheap spell that can target Zada! What wild things can Zada do in brawl on a 18 rare budget? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Zada Brawl
The Deck
Since we're dealing with 100 singleton cards today, I'm not even going to try to talk about every single card in our deck. Instead, I wanted to focus on the decks primary plan in case you decide to give it a try yourself. Our deck is all about our commander Zada, Hedron Grinder. We are a very all or nothing deck. Games where we manage to stick a Zada tend to be spectacular, but, on the other hand, if our opponent can keep Zada off the battlefield our deck probably won't do much of anything. Our deck is built around Zada's ability to copy a spell that only targets it so that spell targets each of our creatures one time. To power up this ability we need two things...
First, we need creatures on the battlefield. The more bodies we have, the more powerful Zada, Hedron Grinder's ability is. As far as creatures, they mostly fall into two groups. The first is Goblins. Not only is Zada a Goblin, but playing some Goblins opens up some extra synergies with Skirk Prospector to make mana and Krenko, Mob Boss to make even more bodies. Second is cards that add multiple bodies to the battlefield. While some of these cards, like Dragon Fodder or Hordeling Outburst, also make Goblins, many don't, like Forbidden Friendship, Ral's Reinforcements and Rally at the Hornburg, all of which add two bodies to the battlefield with a single card.
The second thing we need to pop off with Zada, Hedron Grinder is spells to target Zada, Hedron Grinder (and copy for all of our other creatures). Here we once again have two important types of spells. The first is spells that draw a card like Ancestral Anger, Crimson Wisps, Expedite and more. These cards cost a single mana, target a creature, and draw a card, which means with Zada and some creatures on the battlefield we can use them to draw several cards for just one mana, which is pretty busted. Second are spells that target a creature and make mana, like Ancestors' Aid, which makes a Treasure and targets a creature. If we combine these two types of spells together, we can have massive combo turns where we draw tons of cards, make tons of mana and eventually win the game, either with a finisher or with pump spells like Lunar Frenzy or Temur Battle Rage.
Finally we have a few important individual cards that don't fit into the first couple of groups. Storm-Kiln Artist, Birgi, God of Storytelling and Runaway Steam-Kin are super important for our big combo turns as mana engines. All three cards give us back a mana (in one way or another) whenever we cast a spell, which makes it easy to cast a bunch of spells in the same turn, possibly after playing Zada that turn to help avoid removal. While all three are great, Storm-Kiln Artist is especially busted in our deck because of magecraft which allows is to not only make a Treasure when we cast a spell, but also when we copy the spell with Zada, Hedron Grinder. This means that with a Storm-Kiln Artist on the battlefield any spell we cast on Zada works like an Ancestors' Aid, making massive amounts of mana.
We also have three cards that let us reuse our graveyard, which allow for even more spectacular combo finishers since we can play all of the card draw, pump and ramp spells from our hand and then cast them all again in the same turn, generating an absurdly massive board and a huge amount of power to win the game!
Finally, we have one backup combo that can win the game out of nowhere from pretty much any position in Dualcaster Mage with Electroduplicate or Molten Duplication. We want both spells in our deck anyway because they are absurd with Zada, Hedron Grinder. Once we have Zada on the battlefield wither Electroduplicate or Molten Duplication will copy each creature we control for the turn and give them haste, which is a great deal for just two or three mana. Since we wanted to play both of these cards anyway the cost of tossing in Dualcaster Mage for infinite combo potential is too easy to pass up.
If you don't know the combo, here is how it works: you play Molten Duplication or Electroduplicate targeting a random creature on the battlefield. With the spell still on the stack you flash in Dualcaster Mage to copy it. At this point we are infinite. The copy targets the Dualcaster, which targets the original spell still on the stack, which targets the Dualcaster and so on and so forth until we build an lethal board of hasty 2/2 Dualcaster Mages to win the game. It's basically spellslinger Splinter Twin, and while it doesn't come up often in our deck, it's nice to have a way to win the game even if we're super far behind if we happen to draw the right cards.
Wrap Up
So just how good is 18 Rare Zada Combo? Record wise we went 11-7 with the deck, good for a 61% win rate, which is pretty solid. More importantly, the deck does some really cool things and has some massive turns.With a good draw it's pretty realistic to win on turn four or five, which is pretty fast for a brawl deck. As I mentioned in the intro, Zada is a very all or nothing deck. When things go well it feels broken, although if our opponent is playing a removal or counter heavy deck the easiest way to beat Zada is to keep Zada from every sticking on the battlefield (you can also keep all of our other random creatures off the battlefield, since without extra creatures Zada's ability doesn't do much of anything). Thankfully the good games far outnumber the bad, just keep in mind that you will have some games with the deck where you don't do much of anything, that's priced into playing Zada, Hedron Grinder, but if you are looking for a super fun, super cheap deck to try out in brawl as we wait for Tarkir: Dragonstorm, give Zada a shot! It's a blast to play and, at least in my experience, surprisingly competitive too!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
