I've played Magic for just a couple of months now, and this is my first Commander deck. With a tight budget of ~10USD and cards I already owned, I jammed together this unending mill deck.
The "combo" that inspired this deck: Use
High Tide
to gain obscene mana for 1 turn. Force draws with
Folio of Fancies
and then mill everyone by untapping it with
Corridor Monitor
. You are now the archenemy, and everyone else at the table now has half their deck in their hand.
On a more serious note, this is my take on a ultra budget, totally riveting, mono-blue control deck. With the power of "shuffle your graveyard back into deck" and mill combined, I aim to make play sessions last as long as possible while losing all of my friends.
The Commander:
Gadwick, the Wizened
is one of 3 legendary creatures that I own (Syr Faren and Syr Elenora are the other ones) and the most flexible. In the early game he's a quick draw and control, while in the late game he'll also grab as much of the library as I want. The deck (which is essentially half of my entire blue collection) doesn't have
enough cheap instants to tap a whole board through Gadwick but it still synergizes somewhat.
The Cards:
Following some basic deck guides and ripping through my collection, I realized that mill was the most coherent strategy I could get (thank you past self for buying 3 or 4 blue Eldraine theme boosters).
Lands/ramp
Got some super cheap ramp creatures and a High Tide to get huge value out of my "pay X" cards, including Gadwick. Clearly not the best, but it's better than nothing.
From goldfishing, I feel like I have too many Islands, but I'm not sure how many to cut down to. I went with a suggestion of 37 lands 13 ramp (which I am very close to) but since (more) functional Commander decks run many utility lands I'm not sure how to go about improving this.
Emergence Zone
has fun Gadwick synergy.
The no cards
A solid 1/4th of my deck is dedicated to prevent my opponents from playing the game. Welcome to blue.
Narset is Narset. Good as a floodgate in case my opponents start abusing
Folio of Fancies
no hand size limit effect.
All of my board clears are subpar since blue doesn't seem to be able to destroy anything, but
Crush of Tentacles
can give me much-welcomed board presence while
Mass Manipulation
is just...fun. All your commander are belong to us.
Lazotep Plating
is my only real protection card, and it's pretty good. My knowledge is a bit limited and I'm not sure what else might be good to include, though.
8 counterspells, I especially love
Didn't Say Please
and Didn't Say Please-I mean
Thought Collapse
-for their mill effects. Seems like I could run more but my friends hate me already so I'm not sure.
I also have some debuffing/tapping enchanments and creatures in to make life harder for creatures, as well as just 2 return to hand effects (
Callous Dismissal
and
Turn into a Pumpkin
).
Meteor Golem
was the only hard destroy I could find, while
Scrabbling Claws
is "graveyard hate". Both do their job, I guess.
Oh yeah also [Eyes Everywhere]. All your Commander are belong to us.
Mill
It's actually a really tiny mill package, definitely need to acquire more things like
Archive Trap
. For now,
Folio of Fancies
puts a timer on everyone while
Psychic Spiral
is my one "die right now" card.
Amass Package
Some of my control spells just happened to have Amass on them, and I coincidentally had all of the mono-blue amass cards, so...the chump blockers are pretty good early game, while
Commence the Endgame
can try to finish off a weakened opponent.
Draw/Recursion
Not too much early game draw (maybe more would be good?) and a decent amount of scrying. The real value comes from all of the later-game draws where I just cycle through my deck and then
Psychic Spiral
someone.
Clear the Mind
and
Bond of Insight
are both cool for letting me do it over again.
Finale of Revelation
lets me take a breather but can also put half my deck into my hand.
Fae of Wishes
...house rules.
I think I might've just overexplained a deck again.
Tl;dr I made a low-budget commander deck that tries to survive while milling opponents. Its most glaring weaknesses are a relatively weak overall theme, lack of synergy with the commander, and financial troubles.
Thanks for reading!
