Background
I love [[Primal Surge]] decks. The restriction of only being able to play permanent spells scratches the ooga booga part of my brain. The problem with these decks, though, is the payoffs are really inconsistent. You don't get access to hardly any instant or sorcery spells unless they come with a body (adventures and prepared spells are great ways to cheat this!) but on the top end if you stick a primal surge you just win the game
To improve consistency we need lots of draw and cards that can tutor for instant/sorcery attached to a permanent. There aren't many of those!
Budget
Right now this deck is hanging out around $100. I'm trying to keep the cost-to-me low so I'm mostly running cards that I already own. The few cards I don't are cheap (Ex: Volo) or are good in a lot of decks and I don't mind splurging for (Ex: [[Formidable Speaker]] is nuts)
Gameplan
Enter [[Page, Loose Leaf]]. It has an ability that would tutor, directly to our hand, any instant or sorcery as long as it's the only one in our deck, which Primal Surge would have to be anyways. The stipulation is that we have to discard Page to itself to make this happen. That basically means we need to copy Page
I settled on [[Volo, guide to monsters]] as the perfect commander for this deck because he's green and he creates copies of creatures with novel types.
The basic combo is:
Have Volo on the battlefield
Play Page
Legend rule the original page into the graveyard and leave the copy on the battlefield
Use a regrowth effect to return Page to your hand (ex: Eternal Witness)
Discard Page to Page's ability to tutor Primal Surge to your hand
Play Primal Surge and win the game with [[Laboratory Maniac]]
Then if that doesn't work we try to win with Simic Bullshit :tm:
Simic Bullshit
The rest of the deck is mostly Ramp stabled to creatures, removal stapled to creatures, draw stapled to creatures, protection, eternal witnesses, and various ways to grab Page. There are several tutor lines you can go down. For example, [[Fierce Empath]] grabs [[Brutalizer Exarch]] which gets copied by Volo so you can both grab a combo piece AND get some removal
We also have one copy of [[Invasion of Arcavios]] which acts as a second copy of primal surge but it isn't tutorable so it's not as consistent
[[Combine Chyrsalis]] can turn this into a beatdown deck (can be grabbed by [[Tribute Mage]] if you don't want to grab Page and go that route)
[[Ulvenwald Hydra]] can be used to grab [[Burried Ruin]] if you need a regrowth effect for the combo or you can use it to grab [[Planar Nexus]] and a tron land
Lastly, since this deck really wants ramp and draw I'm running a few creatures that double up on creature types (especially elves and humans). Besides the regrowth effects the decks also run a few graveyard hate effects to clear duplicates out of the yard. In testing this hasn't been super relevant but I haven't tested this deck in game yet.
Conclusion
I'd love to hear people's thoughts and suggestions for this deck. At the time of building EDHrec had 0 Volo decks running Page so I'm confident this is a new brew and I'd love to keep refining it
https://archidekt.com/decks/22046639/volo_and_the_monster_manual