Deadeye Navigator
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Deadeye Navigator

Creature — Spirit

Soulbond (You may pair this creature with another unpaired creature when either enters the battlefield. They remain paired for as long as you control both of them.)

As long as Deadeye Navigator is paired with another creature, both creatures have ": Exile this creature, then return it to the battlefield under your control."

Belfore on Miirym Copy Clone Dragons

1 week ago

Why not Temur Ascendancy over Fervor. plus no Asceticism , Astral Dragon , or Deadeye Navigator?

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

1 week ago

Sometimes when I'm deckbuilding, I focus less on the commander and more on an interesting concept/combo that I want to use or exploit. This is the case with one of my favorite decks in my profile and actually one of the first commander decks I ever built. This deck began years ago when Magic finally started caring about the EDH format. It was a more simple time then, Rhystic study was $1.27 (exactly the price I paid for mine over 10 years ago), Cyclonic Rift was a bulk rare, and demonic tutor could be found for $10.

The combo that I was interested in was Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator. The latter was my favorite card at the time and is still one of my favorites. It was a great tool and with all the ETB effects that were out around then it was an underrated and uber powerful card. In fact, the entire blink mechanic was and is a very powerful strategy.

When I built this deck, I played a few times in shops and was quickly told that edh is a casual format and interaction of any kind is not fair (was told this by a land destruction deck...) So this deck is definitely more on the competitive side, but it would be the distant fringe of cedh. Alright with that let's get into it.

Initial thoughts

So we have a combo that we like Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but we don't even have a commander yet and going mono-blue seems not great, so we want to figure out what color(s) to add and what commander to choose. In a combo deck, there are generally three things that I like to make sure I include beyond the normal ramp, and card draw. That is redundancy, the ability to tutor up my combo pieces, and ways to protect my combo. So when thinking about tutoring up my combo pieces, I generally like to have the best tutors. Those are in black. So things like Wishclaw Talisman, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal (if you have money to burn or your playgroup is fine with you proxying the best cards so you can obliterate their precons j/k I proxy all my expensive cards and put them in a binder in case someone has an issue).

So we have Blue and Black and we can certainly add another color if we wanted to, but at the time I liked Dralnu, Lich Lord because Snapcaster Mage was in standard and flashback was cool. So I stuck with it when I revamped it, but decided that I wanted something that could ensure I can protect my combo from any threat and then also use it to win if I wanted to. The answer came in the form of Ertai Resurrected. He can counter basically anything from spells to activated abilities (which will come in handy) or he can take a threat on the field at the cost of letting your opponent draw a card.

So now that we have our commander, how to build the deck?

Redundancy

Combo decks need redundancy. If you don't get your two cards or one of them gets exiled, you need a backup plan, or scooping is your only option. Fortunately, there are some great redundancies here. We have Ghostly Flicker and Displace. Both of these will blink your creatures (ghostly flicker will also blink artifacts). Displacer Kitten can be helpful too, but I don't own it and it is a little more chaotic than I need it to be. Palinchron is great because you can return it to your hand and potentially play it again and create infinite mana through the use of High Tide, but a similar combo that has added benefits is Peregrine Drake, Archaeomancer, and Ghostly Flicker. This bounces both the drake and the archaeomancer untapping 5 lands, and returning ghostly flicker to your hand. Rinse and repeat for infinite mana. Archaeomancer also will help in returning key counterspells and tutors to your hand. Nothing like doing double duty. Mnemonic Wall and Great Whale also fit here. The great thing about this combo is that each component is useful in and of itself. Bring out your Great Whale early untap some lands and do some other stuff or play out the rest of your combo with the untapped lands. Cast Archaeomancer to grab a used tutor for another combo piece.

One note here, if you get Peregrine Drake (or one of the other two) paired with Deadeye Navigator and you generate infinite mana you can now draw your deck with Ertai as commander: Step 1: Bounce Deadeye, when he enters don't soulbond with anyone.
Step 2: Cast Ertai, don't choose anything or if you want kill one of your opponent's creatures. It doesn't matter.
Step 3: Soulbond ertai and deadeye. Step 4: Bounce Deadeye and while that is on the stack bounce Ertai. Step 5: Ertai enters the battlefield counter the Deadeye bounce on the stack Draw a card Step 6: Soulbond ertai and deadeye again rinse and repeat. Draw as many cards as you need. Which means draw until you find your wincon.

Wincon

Since this is an infinite mana combo we need something to use all that mana. Obviously the activated ability on deadeye is great, but we need something to actually win with. I went with Commander's Insight and Blue Sun's Zenith. Both of these cards are useful even when they aren't being used to force your opponents to draw their cards. Blue Sun's Zenith works nicely because once you cast it goes back into your deck, which I showed above you can draw as many cards as you need so you cast it once, put it in your library draw again until you find it, cast it again on the next opponent, then again. You can also tutor them up or bring them back from the graveyard with the tutors or the archaeomancer/mnemonic wall from earlier. I like this more than straight damage, because if you don't have infinite mana these cards will still draw you cards.

Tutors

This is a fairly simple step, we need some good tutors. There are a number of good choices in black so I won't belabor that too much. I don't have some of the standard ones and feel like the deck performs fine with the ones it currently has. I do have a Tribute Mage in the deck because nearly all my mana rocks are 2 mana and so is Wishclaw Talisman. I found that the consistency with the deck is vastly improved by being able to tutor up my ramp. Also with deadeye I can bounce it multiple times and get more rocks or the talisman.

Protecting the combo

So I needed to figure out how to protect my combo and do so in a way that is flexible or can be used as needed. So Counterspell. Honestly, this part was fairly simple, most blue counter magic is here. Only reason Fierce Guardianship isn't here is because I don't have it. Other than that we have the typical cards here Force of Will, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, etc.

I also have a couple other standouts. Venser, Shaper Savant is great here as it can be bounced with Deadeye Navigator to essentially boomerang my opponent's board and all their spells. Ertai Resurrected also protects the combo and with deadeye becomes a nice repeatable counter/removal spell.

glen_elandra_archmage can be bounced when she has her -1/-1 counter allowing her to be used again and again to counter noncreature spells.

Typical stuff

There is a lot of ramp in the deck, so Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and other mana rocks including some larger ones like Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith to really get the ramp going, the sooner you can get to 7-8 mana the sooner you can combo out.

For card draw some key performers here are Rhystic Study, Black Market Connections, Phyrexian Arena, The One Ring. Mystic Remora. In my initial hand I want to have 3 lands, and one of these/tutor to find one or I typically mulligan.

Special notes

A couple other cards deserve mention here. Time Stretch and Time Warp. These are both repeatable with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall and I can honestly say that if I'm able to resolve either of these, it is unlikely that I'm going to lose, especially Time Stretch. With the ramp in the deck or a well timed Dark Ritual/High Tide I can play this fairly early and get a huge advantage.

Lands

Since this deck tends to be fast, you don't want lands that come into play tapped, so this deck uses fetch lands, shock lands, and duals that have the ability to come in untapped. (there are a couple that come into play tapped, but they are fetchable so I fetch them only when I know that I'm not going to be able to use the mana and only on an opponent's turn.)

I've had this deck for a while and it performs far better than any of my other decks. It always presents interesting lines that if followed will lead to surprising victories. As always let me know what you think in the comments and if you have a commander in mind that you want to see me build put it in the chat.

Here is the final decklist: Unlimited Power!

TypicalTimmy on How is the New Ghalta …

4 months ago

As a Timmy, I can tell you I would absolutely blink him with Sneak Attack or Deadeye Navigator. And if you have something such as Elemental Bond, you can replenish your hand. If you have Fervor, you can swing en mass.

But, it's also going to mean you are public enemy number 1

If you don't build for that, you'd basically want to unload only what you need to secure a minor win in that position, and not lose your entire grip to something stupid

TypicalTimmy on Card creation challenge

8 months ago

seshiro_of_the_orochi, in the correct deck Glassdust Hulk is extremely powerful. Based on its wording, it does not say "one or more", meaning the ability to gain +1/+1 will stack. Additionally it doesn't say "nontoken", meaning Treasure tokens and other such artifact tokens will fire it off. For example, Deadeye Navigator has the blink ability everybody knows about. You could blink something such as Palladium Myr. If you were to give Palladium Myr haste, you could tap it and use its ability to add when it ETBs. Unfortunately this is not mana, so you'd need to also color-fix it into blue.

Now, you can tap Palladium Myr for , spend it as to blink it and when it ETB you can repeat the cycle.

Infinitely. And since the +1/+1 stacks, your Glassdust Hulk gets infinitely bigger. And since he also can't be blocked that turn, he becomes a wincon. Or, more precisely, a "losecon" as he can deal lethal damage, no matter their life total. All you'd need to do is ensure he is protected for the turn.

Now obviously this is a bit of a messy and high-costed infinite combo that, really, only plays out against one opponent. Unless you, of course, Clone it. Either way, Glassdust Hulk is actually a sleeper. He's a Glass Cannon, if you will. You just haven't been playing him right. :)

Anyway, this just serves as one example. There are many more. I believe there are some infinite Myr token combos, and some infinite Treasure token combos, which is why that part is also important - that tokens trigger him, as well.

Cyb3rguerrill0 on Dude, where are your cards? *WIP*

11 months ago

Now let's add some flicker: Thassa, Deep-Dwelling, Ghostly Flicker, Deadeye Navigator (no budget though), Essence Flux and some other suggestions: one of my favorites is this one Maddening Cacophony, Drown in Dreams, Curse of the Swine of course. Keep it up, looks interesting.

ThatguyDJ on Power 9 when?

11 months ago

Garth One-Eye + Deadeye Navigator + Thousand-Year Elixir = infinite mana (tap to make Black Lotus, crack black lotus naming blue, use 2 to flicker Garth, he re-enters battlefield with 1 spare blue mana. Repeat infinite times) to deck all of your opponents with the Braingeyser

Rhadamanthus on Merieke Ri Berit and Karn, …

11 months ago

Deadeye Navigator works but you need to steal the creature before the soulbond happens. Note that the reminder text for soulbond says the creatures remain paired "for as long as you control both of them", so trying to bond with an opponent's creature doesn't work. After you steal the creature, pair it and activate the ability, the object will return to the battlefield under your control. The effect isn't written to be dependent on whether the object is still a creature at that point.

Nightmare Shepherd works. "Dies" triggers and other leaves-the-battlefield triggers use information from the last moment an object was on the battlefield to determine if and how they trigger. A nontoken creature you controlled died, so you will get the effect of the Shepherd's trigger.

CamraMaan on Merieke Ri Berit and Karn, …

11 months ago

Say I turn an opponent's artifact into a creature with Karn, flicker Deadeye Navigator and soulbond it to that artifact creature, steal it with Merieke, then flicker the artifact creature with Deadeye Navigator... I'm assuming the fact it comes back as only an artifact will not prevent it from coming back into play under my control, correct? It's not a cheap way to go about stealing artifacts, and my opponent can also potentially flicker it and reset the whole process, but it's worth it with some artifacts if I can keep them.

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