Infinite Eternities That Also Last A Long Time

Commander / EDH Competitive Control GU (Simic)

Nakhla

Instant (36)

Land (29)

Artifact (11)

Enchantment (3)

Commander (1)

Sorcery (11)

Creature (9)

Note: life circumstances haven't really allowed me much much playing or testing of this deck since Ixalan block, so this may be out of date. Fare thee well, test and make your own judgments, and happy countering!

Rashmi: A Primer

Intro

Introduction

Welcome to my Rashmi primer!

Rashmi is an unusual archetype in competitive EDH: draw-go control. By allowing us to refuel on each opponent's turn, Rashmi helps us make this type of deck function in a multiplayer format, where three opponents is the norm. The deck has evolved considerably from its inception, away from the more midrange brews that initially appeared and towards a hard control build with a lean combo package and a large suite of answers. It's enjoyed quite a bit of success, and is definitely a deck I'd recommend if you enjoy this reactive style of play.

Why Rashmi?

Rashmi, Eternities Crafter is a continuous source of refuel that allows us to answer our opponents throughout the game, without exhausting our own resources.

Why Enter The Infinite?

Enter the Infinite gives us a one-card "I win" route to victory with multiple combo lines after it's resolved, freeing our deck up to run more answers while saving us having to assemble three (or more) card combos in a color identity without unconditional tutors.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

The strengths of this deck are a strong resilience to hate, a small combo package that's comparatively hard to disrupt, and a broad suite of answers that can answer the majority of threats common at competitive EDH tables. Much of the more popular hate in the format has minimal effect on our game-plan. Our win condition involves minimal setup beyond mana, so we can threaten a win any time mid- to late-game.

Weaknesses

In terms of weaknesses, the deck is almost unable to win early game due to its primary wincon being expensive to cast or, if with our secondary wincon of Isochron Scepter, difficult to assemble early. It is also somewhat susceptible to certain tax effects given its reliance on low-cost instants, and relies on Rashmi in play to refuel its steady stream of interaction.

Why Play This Deck?

Why Play This Deck?

If you enjoy piloting reactive control strategies with an eye to the late game, chances are you will enjoy piloting this deck. It has no particularly poor matchups, and has a decent amount of game versus most decks in the format. It performs well in metas with a wide variety, or where midrange and stax predominate.

Why NOT Play This Deck?

If you dislike slow strategies, control, and countermagic, chances are you will not enjoy this deck. This deck cannot close out games quickly beyond a few very unusual hands, which means the majority of the time you'll be playing reactively, answering threats until you can close the game. It is also somewhat poorly positioned in metas where every deck is fast combo (mixed pods featuring fast combo are generally fine, however).

Gameplan

Combo Suite

Like almost all competitive EDH decks, Rashmi finishes out the game through combo rather than combat damage.

1. Draw your deck.

To win, you first need to draw your deck. Our primary route to doing this is casting Enter the Infinite, and our secondary route is assembling Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal, and then using either Stroke of Genius or Sensei's Divining Top to draw your deck (if you run other draw x spells, they can serve the same function).

2. Generate infinite mana.

Once you've drawn your deck, make infinite mana. There are three ways of doing this:

A. Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal

These two and your mana rocks / mana dorks will make infinite mana in all colors easily, but there are some games where we won’t have access to this combo.

B. Seasons Past + Dramatic Reversal

Somewhat similar, with all our mana rocks in play, we can loop Seasons Past, Dramatic Reversal, and any cantrip to generate infinite mana.

C. Seasons Past + Hurkyl's Recall

This is the most complicated route, and one we tend to only use if Reversal is exiled.

i. Cast your mana-positive mana rocks, tapping them for mana.

ii. Cast Hurkyl's Recall, targeting yourself.

iii. Replay Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, Simic Signet, tapping them for mana. (3UUG in your mana pool.)

iv. Cast Noxious Revival, targeting Hurkyl's Recall. (3UU in your mana pool.)

v. Cast Frantic Search, drawing Hurkyl's and Seasons Past, discarding two cards with 4cmc or higher with different mana costs, for example Force of Will and Treasure Cruise. (1UUGG in your mana pool.)

vi. Hurkyl’s targeting yourself. (UGG in your mana pool.)

vii. Replay Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, tapping them for mana. (6UGG in your mana pool.)

viii. Seasons Past for land (to enable Mox Diamond recasts), Noxious Revival, Hurkyl's Recall, Frantic Search, and two cards with 4cmc or higher with different mana costs, for example Force of Will and Treasure Cruise. (2U in your mana pool.)

ix. Repeat steps ii.- vii. to net infinite colorless, and then repeat with Simic Signet in step vii. to to filter it into colored mana.

This loop can be made simpler with having Baral, Chief of Compliance in play or Sapphire Medallion or Voltaic key in your deck if you play those, but the above loop requires the minimal additional resources and all the cards are core to the deck in other ways. (Note: A big thanks to asm for discovering this loop, and helping the deck be less reliant on Dramatic Reversal.)

3. Win the game.

Now that you have infinite mana in all colors, there a number of ways to win.

A. Stroke of Genius

Force your opponents to draw their decks, getting Stroke back twice through some of our Regrowth effects.

B. Seasons Past + Beast Within + Reality Shift

Beast Within any permanent an opponent controls, then Reality Shift it to force them to manifest the top card of their library. Repeat this process by looping Seasons Past, a cantrip, Reality Shift, and Beast Within until your opponents have no libraries.

C. Seasons Past + Beast Within/Swan Song

A similar loop to B, but slightly worse. Destroy all your opponents' permanents with Beast Within, bounce the tokens with any bounce spell in your deck, then cast any permanent you don't mind blowing up, and start Beast Within-ing that to give yourself infinite Beasts. This also works with Swan Song and countering your own spells to give you infinite birds. We don’t have haste, but our opponents not having permanents and us having every answer in our deck makes that turn cycle extremely survivable.

Given the similar nature of these loops, there are many similar versions you can do with cards in the deck or others. The most core cards for winning are Dramatic Reversal and Seasons Past. The current build, short of unusual circumstances, requires one of these two cards to be accessible to close the game. While this isn’t a deck that dies to Praetor's Grasp, keeping an eye on what’s exiled is important.

Strategy

Typically, the early game is focused on defensive plays. We want to cast our early acceleration, some card draw, and answer immediate threats, and start approaching the turn we can safely cast Rashmi. Casting Rashmi as soon as we have the mana for it is often a mistake: she's vulnerable to removal, and frequently we can make it to casting her turns three to five with some mana to spare and/or answers in hand (tapping out with a Force Of Will in hand, for example, is often fine).

It’s easy to run out of steam on the turns just before we cast Rashmi due the asymmetry of one of us, three opponents, so play your early answers cautiously and only to stop someone winning or getting massively ahead. We cannot counter every spell, especially with Rashmi not out. Threat assessment is critical.

Mid- to late-game, we can start policing the table much more aggressively, and work our way towards casting Enter The Infinite or assembling Scepter combo. It's important to be aware of others resources as well, as graveyards and boardstates are being built up even as you counter the most immediate threats.

When finally going in for the win, I recommend only doing so with protection in hand and a clear route to victory. Given we've traded much of the deck space that could be used for combo redundancy for answers, it's harder for us to make multiple attempts at closing the game, especially when our main ways of getting there are a twelve-mana sorcery and a three piece combo.

Mulligans

A good Rashmi hand heavily depends on what your opponents decks are up to, so take a good look at the generals and decide what's relevant based on that. However, I've drawn seven example hands and added my thoughts on them, free of the context of what our opponents are playing.

Breeding Pool ; Snow-Covered Island ; Windswept Heath ; Birds of Paradise ; Natural State ; Rapid Hybridization ; Sylvan Library

This is quite a good hand for Rashmi, despite lacking a really explosive start. Turn one ramp into a turn two Library with some answers in hand. We'll probably be casting Rashmi later on into the game with this hand, but Sylvan more than makes up for this. A strong keep.

Ancient Tomb ; Command Tower ; Wooded Foothills ; Merchant Scroll ; Mystic Remora ; Nature's Lore ; Swan Song

Another good hand, the play here is most likely Command Tower into Mystic Remora turn one, and then if the table seemed good for it, paying for it turn two into Wooded Foothills, fetching Tropical Island if you needed to cast Swan Song and Breeding Pool if not. If Remora is bad into that pod, possibly saccing it turn two and ramping into Tropical Island with Nature's Lore. A keep.

Breeding Pool ; Command Tower ; Snow-Covered Island ; Windswept Heath ; Prohibit ; Sapphire Medallion ; Treasure Cruise

No acceleration, one of our weakest counters, and refuel we won't be able to cast for some time. I would definitely mull this hand.

Snow-Covered Forest ; Snow-Covered Island ; Beast Within ; Grim Monolith ; Into the Roil ; Muddle the Mixture ; Simic Signet

This hand has some answers and acceleration, but a turn three Rashmi would come down unprotected. A very mediocre hand, but you could keep this into a slow pod. I would probably mull.

Snow-Covered Forest ; Dramatic Reversal ; Fellwar Stone ; Mana Crypt ; Mox Diamond ; Preordain ; Treasure Cruise

An interesting and risky hand. Assuming you're not going first, and one of your opponents has a blue or green producing land, there's even a turn one Rashmi here (Mox Diamond or Forest > Mana Crypt > Fellwar Stone > Dramatic Reversal > Rashmi), though taking that kind of risk is down to how likely you feel removal coming your way. This could easily get blown out by a Meltdown or similar, but I would keep this hand.

Command Tower ; Snow-Covered Island ; Grim Monolith ; Mox Diamond ; Rapid Hybridization ; Seasons Past ; Snapcaster Mage

This includes strong ramp and an answer, but feels decidedly weaker than the last given Grim's one-shot role early game, and Seasons more or less being irrelevant at this stage. You could easily get choked on cards or mana if you went for a turn two Rashmi here. A mull, but borderline.

Snow-Covered Forest ; Arbor Elf ; Force of Will ; Simic Signet ; Sol Ring ; Sylvan Library ; Treasure Cruise

This hand is somewhat vulnerable to our Sol Ring getting Mental Missteped, but other than that Forest > Sol Ring > Simic Signet is strong early ramp, we have a Force for emergencies, and refuel from Library. An odd-looking hand, but definitely a keep.

Matchups

Rashmi's matchups are somewhat peculiar in the nature of how games play out. Rashmi doesn’t have an especially poor or good matchup with the majority of the competitive decks played, however, the makeup of the pods is quite important. This will be more of a broad overview than a deck-by-deck comparison.

Rashmi overall fares poorly when confronted with multiple decks that are threatening wins in the turns two to four vicinity. This can push us into unwinnable kingmaker situations early game, where we stop the first pilot after us, then the next, only to be defeated by the third opponent in turn order. This is especially true if you don't manage to land an early Rashmi, or a card draw resource such as Mystic Remora or Sylvan Library.

Storm decks as a family (common examples include Jeleva, Zur, Yidris, and mono black Sidisi) need to be watched carefully. Countering their refuels is often key, as is keep an eye out for the windows they're looking to cast Ad Nauseam in. Keep an eye out for their graveyard, as these decks can often refuel rapidly during the late game by reusing graveyard resources.

Hermit Druid and Flash Hulk decks tend to favor us slightly due to having large combo packages and extra vulnerabilities to stack-based interaction, but there's always a risk of them sneaking in a win before we have the right answer.

Much creature-based fast combo tends to be general-centric, so keeping generals such as Gitrog and Selvala off the table becomes our primary answer there.

As soon as some midrange and stax decks enter the fray, Rashmi's odds go up considerably. While stax effects are somewhat antagonistic to Rashmi's abilities, they push the game past the early stages into a point where we can start actively shaping the direction of the game and have mana to spare. Keeping some interaction in reserve is handy here: while we'll be able to cast less of it, faster decks will also have fewer windows to go off unpunished, allowing us to sometimes piggyback a win off of opponents disruption.

Edric is mostly a matter of countering and removing Edric himself, or, if we haven’t had the opportunity, stopping extra turn chains. Yisan and Sisay can be problematic given how much they play out of their deck, negating some of our card advantage and interaction. Ruric Thar is a problem permanent in himself, but the deck's 99 doesn’t give us too much trouble otherwise.

Tasigur Control and Grand Arbiter can both afford more creature hate and more wraths than us, so be cautious on that front, but in general these decks at the table encourage the flow of the game in a direction we want. Tymna-Tana stax can run some hate that hits hard, like Choke, but is relatively easy to keep off its combo lines if we have a full hand.

Single Card Discussion

Our General

First, let's break down the card itself:

Mana Cost: 2UG

Four mana means, in this format, we'll typically have the ability to cast Rashmi turns two to four with the mixture of mana acceleration available in Simic.

For the purposes of this deck, Simic color identity gives us access to green's mana acceleration and Regrowth-type effects, while access to blue gives us countermagic and good draw, and the two colors' answer suites overlap enough to cover most threats in the format.

While red and white have relatively little we're missing given we're not pursuing a stax strategy, the absence of black is notable for our lack of unconditional tutors, as well as shutting us off from the two most powerful "draw" cards in the format, Necropotence and Ad Nauseam. Simic is also slightly weak in regards to the wraths/sweepers in its card pool compared to the other three colors.

Legendary Creature — Elf Druid

While Rashmi being a Druid is relatively little use, her being an Elf is quite relevant for the purposes of our Priest of Titania - and something to keep in mind regarding opponents' Priests of Titania, too.

Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a nonland card with converted mana cost less than that spell's, you may cast it without paying its mana cost. If you don't cast the revealed card, put it into your hand.

This is why we run Rashmi as our general. Once per turn, our spells trigger Rashmi and cantrip, or situationally, give us a spell we can cast for free. While the latter might seem like the more exciting aspect of Rashmi's abilities, the former is the bread and butter of this deck and what propels us into the mid- and late-game. Rashmi is a cantrip engine first and foremost and a pseudo-cascader secondarily.

It’s important to note that Rashmi's trigger gives you the opportunity to play sorcery-speed cards at instant speed (casting a Fyndhorn Elves off of an Intuition for example), which can be extremely relevant with cards like Sensei's Divining Top in play. It's also worth noting that for the purposes of draw hate such as Notion Thief, Rashmi's ability technically doesn't draw.

A knowledge of how the stack operates is essential to using Rashmi's ability to its fullest. An example play would be: an opponent casts a spell; you cast a counterspell targeting it; an opponent counters your counter; you respond by casting Mystical Tutor to bring a different counter to the top of your deck; their counterspell resolves, countering your original counter; and you draw the counter via Rashmi's trigger, then counter the original spell you wanted to counter as it's still on the stack. This might seem like a once-in-a-blue-moon play, but these types of plays involving the trigger are quite common.

Power And Toughness: 2 / 3

Rashmi fails the bolt test, but passes the Pyroclasm and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite tests, which are frequently more relevant in competitive EDH pods.

Rashmi's Role In The Deck

Rashmi serves our strategy by effectively adding "draw a card" to the first spell we cast each turn, allowing us to be much more aggressive about using our answers than decks without card advantage in the command zone. Something pilots of draw-go control decks in this format often notice that it's quite easy to "run dry" when you're facing three opponents. Rashmi keeps us ahead, as our opponents resources are slowly being exhausted.

As competitive EDH decks go, Rashmi is somewhere in the middle between extremely general-focused decks such as Edric, Narset, and Grenzo and decks such as Jeleva, Tymna-Tana, and Grand Arbiter where the general is in a more secondary role, assisting the deck's strategy. We cast Rashmi almost every game, and a large part of the deck running such a high instant count is to take full advantage of her abilities, but there are games where the ideal window cast her never arises, or where through opponents' symmetrical draw via wheels, our hand is full of answers and the better strategy is to save our mana for answering our newly-refueled opponents.

Lands

Basic Forest and Island

Fairly self-explanatory. Don’t lean too heavy towards Islands as tempting as it may be given the blue-heavy nature of this deck: we want to be able to cast our dorks, and have targets for Nature’s Lore and Three Visits beyond Tropical Island and Breeding Pool. Snow-Covered Islands may be worth it if Extraplanar Lens frequents your meta, but aren’t necessary.

Fetchlands (e.g. Misty Rainforest and friends)

The best lands in the game, and amazing fixing in a 99-card singleton format. The shuffle for Brainstorm and Sensei’s Divining Top, and fuel for Delve, are also worth noting.

Tropical Island and Breeding Pool

Our fetchable duals, notably also Nature’s Lore and Three Visits targets.

Ancient Tomb

A land that taps for 2 at half the cost it has in twenty-life formats. Use with some caution, however: given how long games go, those hits for two life can begin to add up if people are pressuring your life totals.

Command Tower

Taps for green or blue with no real down side.

Hinterland Harbor

Given the relatively heavy focus on basics, comes in untapped mostly.

Yavimaya Coast

Try to use this for colorless as much as possible when the option is there, but painlands are great fixing.

Artifacts

Chrome Mox, Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond, Sol Ring

Fairly standard acceleration includes for competitive decks.

Grim Monolith, Mana Vault

These help us power out Rashmi early and reach Enter The Infinite mana later in the game.

Fellwar Stone, Simic Signet

Two-mana rocks that usually give us both our colors, usually.

Isochron Scepter

Our primary win condition, this is also relatively decent for value mid-game with a counterspell or removal imprinted. As Scepter casts, it triggers Rashmi's ability.

Sapphire Medallion

A continuous discount on blue spells throughout the game is quite relevant given how much our deck is blue vs. green. Plays nicely into stax-heavy metas, keeping our answers castable.

Sensei's Divining Top

Quite a versatile card in Rashmi: as well as its standard utility in expanding your hand by three and top-deck selection, it can also can be used to draw your deck with the Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal combo by untapping it in response to its draw ability to stack draws equal to your deck. There are many useful interactions with Rashmi's trigger, the most common being grabbing a card from the top of your deck, casting it, and then recasting Top for free off the trigger.

Creatures

Arbor Elf, Birds of Paradise, Boreal Druid, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Llanowar Elves

All the 1cmc mana dorks relevant and accessible to us.

Baral, Chief of Compliance

A one-sided discount on Instants and Sorceries (which make up a huge portion of this deck), that loots whenever we counter a spell (which is often). The combination of acceleration and card selection makes this card an all-star in Rashmi.

Priest of Titania

Taps for two green most of the time, often considerably more given the predominance of mana dorks in EDH.

Snapcaster Mage

Instant-speed access to all the instants and sorceries in our graveyard. One of the best Regrowth-type effects in the game.

Enchantments

Carpet of Flowers

Potent acceleration early game that scales into a massive main-phase ritual late game. Something of a meta call, but as most metas feature a lot of blue, chances are you want this.

Mystic Remora

Best in the early game, people will rarely pay four, making it either great draw or something that pushes your opponents to make their plays later in the game, both of which favor us.

Sylvan Library

Powerful draw and topdeck selection. We can’t be quite as greedy as some decks can be with this card, but it can function as an “alternate” Rashmi to keep us refueled as we police the table.

Sorceries

Nature's Lore and Three Visits

Both fetch a Forest into play, untapped, and because Tropical Island and Breeding Pool are cards, that means these are two cmc land ramp cards that bring a blue source into play. I highly recommend running these, but if you don't run them, you may want to increase your land count compared to mine by one or two lands.

Ponder and Preordain

The two best sorcery-speed cantrips in the format.

Enter the Infinite

Our primary avenue to winning. Twelve mana is a lot, but given the vintage-esque type of mana acceleration legal in this format, not that hard to get to twelve mana as early as turn four or five. Typically, it's less casting it that’s the issue as finding the ideal window to do so.

Gitaxian Probe

Free information, free card draw, and often, a Rashmi trigger.

Manifold Insights

A peculiar card: in the typical four-player pod this reads something like "draw three non-lands", and for that, gives us quite a bit of value. Given the large volume of redundant answers in-deck, we'll almost always get something relevant from this card.

Merchant Scroll

Finds quite a lot of our deck, so don't be afraid of those value plays at times when a tutor chain for the win isn’t feasible. Tutoring for a Mana Drain or a Dig Through Time often a valid play.

Seasons Past

One of our core combo pieces, as discussed earlier, it also worth noting that this can be a powerful refuel mid to late game as a massive multi-Regrowth card.

Sleight of Hand

The fourth best cantrip after the usual three, this could easily be Opt or Anticipate.

Treasure Cruise

One of the more flexible spots, this is still Ancestral Recall much of the time given how fast we cantrip through our deck. Delve fuel accumulates fast.

Instants

Counterspell, Dispel, Flusterstorm, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Mana Leak, Mental Misstep, Negate, Pact of Negation, Spell Pierce, Swan Song

Most of these counterspells should be familiar from other competitive EDH decks. The only special note is Force's choice interaction with Rashmi trigger in regards to converted mana cost, and Mana Drain as a route to pushing us to Enter The Infinite mana mid-game.

Pongify and Rapid Hybridization

One cmc removal for problem creatures. Almost all of the creatures in competitive EDH are played for their abilities rather than their size, which means the trade off of giving opponents tokens is much less of a disadvantage compared to what it is in 60-card formats. Additionally, a number of fast combo decks (e.g. Grenzo, Selvala, Gitrog) require their general in play to combo off as fast and as early as they do: setting them back a turn or more can shift the game's tempo in your favor.

Beast Within

Universal removal that doubles as a combo piece.

Brainstorm

Arguably the best cantrip in the game, it plays especially well in response to Rashmi's trigger to cast cards in your hand for free.

Chain of Vapor

The strongest removal spell in blue. It does occasionally lead to Rashmi being bounced, however, always remember you can counter their copy if they choose to do so. Occasionally worthwhile to evacuate some of your own boardstate.

Cyclonic Rift

A bounce spell and a one-sided wrath. Many of the faster decks in the format have begun cutting this card, but in Rashmi it still excels.

Delay

In fast combo decks this has been replacing Counterspell as an almost strictly better upgrade when you're wanting the game to end turns two to five. Rashmi's focus is on the long game, which makes this card comparatively weaker here, however, it's still quite powerful. While Rashmi might not close out the game in the next three turns, that problem card is in exile in the meanwhile, and we are very likely to have some form of interaction the next time it comes around.

Dig Through Time

One of the most powerful cards in blue, it helps us dig, is instant speed, counts as 8cmc for Rashmi’s trigger. We fuel Delve plentifully.

Dramatic Reversal

Primarily here for the combo with Isochron Scepter, it can be useful late game to power out Enter The Infinite or a large Stroke Of Genius.

Fact or Fiction

A nice refuel at almost any point in the game, watch the pile that goes to the graveyard carefully if there is a lot of graveyard exile in your meta; it’s easy to unthinkingly lose a combo piece.

Hurkyl's Recall

Solid disruption both for stax decks and storm decks alike, it does double duty as a combo piece and occasionally a ritual in a rock-heavy boardstate.

Impulse

The best two cmc cantrip.

Into the Roil

Bounce a problem permanent, save one of your own, and draw a card sometimes.

Intuition

A very flexible, instant-speed tutor. Get anything and two Regrowth-type effects; three draw spells; three counters. Fuels delve and gives us access to multiple spells via recursion. This deck is very tutor light, so the Swiss army knife nature of Intuition has been exceptional for me.

Muddle the Mixture

There are a number of tutor lines available with this card, which handily finds both halves of the Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal combo. Don’t be afraid to hold it as a counterspell where that's relevant.

Mystical Tutor

The most powerful blue tutor for a reason. Don’t ignore the option of tutoring in response to Rashmi's trigger to play the spell or at least draw it off the trigger.

Nature's Claim

The best artifact and enchantment removal spell in the format. The life-gain is mostly trivial.

Noxious Revival

Mox top-of-the-library Regrowth, occasionally niche graveyard hate, and a combo piece.

Pull from Tomorrow

One of the newest additions to the deck, this acts as an additional way to draw your deck, as well as a large draw spell that digs slightly deeper than Stroke Of Genius but turns one of those draws into a loot. Downside: it can't target opponents. Worth comparing to Blue Sun's Zenith.

Prohibit

One of the weaker counterspells in this deck, the modal nature enables it to hit most relevant things at two and most all of them at four. A flex slot.

Reality Shift

Creature exile in blue, with a small downside. Another combo piece.

Stroke of Genius

Primarily in as a win condition with Isochron Scepter / Dramatic Reversal to draw our deck, or to kill our opponents post Enter The Infinite through the loops outlined in the combo section. Can be a value play in the late game, but cast it carefully and avoid tapping out with it if you’re still packing interaction.

Submerge

A meta-call card against a meta that leans heavily green, this is almost always a free bounce spell. Triggering Rashmi for five cmc is nice as well.

Budget Replacements

Rashmi is surprisingly budget-friendly for a competitive EDH deck with blue. Not wanting Timetwister helps with much of that (wheels' symmetry tends to disadvantage us, as we can typically use the cards more slowly than our opponents), but it can be paired down by removing Tropical Island, and the fetchlands. Mana Drain, Force of Will, and Flusterstorm can be substituted for more budget-friendly countermagic. The mana rocks are fairly core, but if you include Paradox Engine (a somewhat dead card, but still) the Seasons Past loops are still viable sans Mox Diamond. I made a budget version of my list here, though it is somewhat out of date.

Sideboard & Maybeboard

Rashmi as a deck is primarily a massive suite of answers, a moderate selection of draw, and a very small wincon package, which means the pool of potentially viable cards in this deck is huge, and often interchangeable, as well as being subject to the needs of your meta.

Rather than clutter up the main list with an enormous list of maybe cards, I've put all the ones I've considered in this section.

Cantrips And Draw

Ancestral Vision ; Anticipate ; Careful Consideration ; Flash of Insight ; Opt ; Peer Through Depths ; Serum Visions ; Think Twice ; Thirst for Knowledge

This is a far from exhaustive selection of draw spells and cantrips that my list doesn't run currently, but are all playable in the deck.

Countermagic

Annul ; Complicate ; Condescend ; Disallow ; Dissolve ; Ertai's Meddling ; Forbid ; Logic Knot ; Mindbreak Trap ; Miscalculation ; Misdirection ; Power Sink ; Spell Blast ; Spell Burst ; Spell Snare ; Supreme Will ; Syncopate

I've tried to avoid any counterspells that merely bounce spells, or ones that draw opponents cards (looking at you, Arcane Denial) in these suggestions, but all of these are weaker/more conditional counterspells that are only run as Rashmi wants all the good countermagic, and then some.

You may have to dig a little deeper into these if you're constructing a more budget version of this deck, but these are all - at minimum - playable in Rashmi, albeit nowhere near as good as cards like Swan Song, Force of Will, or Mana Drain.

Regrowths

Eternal Witness ; Nostalgic Dreams ; Reclaim ; Regrowth

In terms of overall versatility, I'd recommend Regrowth and Reclaim the most out of these, but Eternal Witness does prove some nice combo lines you can use to expand your avenues of victory post-Enter the Infinite. However, without the creature synergies of other Simic decks, it's most just a three cmc Regrowth before that, which is less impressive. Nostalgic Dreams is the weakest of these four, but does allow us to get multiple cards back for two green.

Extra Turns

Time Warp ; Capture of Jingzhou ; Temporal Manipulation

Lacking the ability to really chain extra turns like Edric has always made these cards somewhat mediocre in my experience with Rashmi: more or less five mana Explores. That being said, running Capture or Temporal as a one-of is totally viable, either as an alternative to running Hurkyl's Recall or as a tertiary combo piece.

To explain the combos:

A. Post-Enter the Infinite, with Seasons Past as the last card in your libary:

i. Cast your extra turn spell.

ii. Take your next turn, drawing Seasons Past.

iii. Cast Seasons Past, turning the extra turn spell and whatever else you’d like to your hand.

iv. Repeat infinitely, slowly killing your opponents with creature beats.

B. Post-Enter the Infinite or not, with an extra turn spell, Noxious Revival and Isochron Scepter.

i. Cast your extra turn spell.

ii. Cast Isochron Scepter imprinting Noxious Revival.

iii. Either that turn or the next upkeep, activate Scepter to return your extra turn spell to the top of your deck.

iv. Repeat infinitely, slowly killing your opponents with creature beats.

C. With Seasons Past; an extra turn spell, and a tutor that finds Seasons Past (i.e. Mystical Tutor, though in a pinch Intuition works if you run at least two Regrowth effects, or Personal Tutor if you wish to run that).

i. Cast your extra turn spell.

ii. Cast Mystical Tutor finding Seasons Past.

iii. Take your next turn, drawing Seasons Past.

iv. Cast Seasons Past, returning Mystical Tutor and your extra turn spell to your hand.

v. Cast your extra turn spell, then use Mystical Tutor to tutor Seasons Past the top of your library.

vi. Repeat endlessly, taking infinite turns while slowly drawing your deck with Rashmi triggers. Bounce your opponents' creatures and win with creature beatdown over many turns.

The last of these requires at least twelve mana available to start the loop, so like Enter The Infinite, it's more of a late-game win.

Other Cards For Your Consideration

Back to Basics

An extremely powerful hate enchantment, I'd strongly recommend this where your opponents are primarily 3-5 color decks. The preponderance of 1-2 color decks in my meta is the only reason this has been cut.

Capsize

Alright as universal bounce with buyback, this is much better if you're running Paradox Engine where Capsize and enough non-land permanents to tap 5UU will net you mana each cast. Consider it mostly in conjunction with that card.

Cursed Totem

A powerful hate card, this is strong, but also requires a significant retooling of the deck to use properly. Here is an example deck list designed to exploit its potential.

Mystic Confluence

A nice Swiss Army knife of draw, countermagic, and bounce. It's gone in and out of this deck: it's good, but just slightly over-costed for our purposes, especially early-game.

Paradox Engine

I've found this card to have very little utility in Rashmi pre-combo turn, but it does open our combo suite considerably, working with buyback spells and enough permanents that tap for mana; expanding the Isochron Scepter combo to that card, Paradox Engine, and any instant imprinted on Scepter; and making Seasons Past loops net mana without Dramatic Reversal if needs be. That being said, I haven't (so far) found it necessary for this deck.

Personal Tutor

Given how heavily this deck is tuned towards instant-speed responses, Personal Tutor has always felt suboptimal for me. However, finding our wincon and several good draw spells is doubtlessly relevant, if you feel you wish to include it.

Psionic Blast

A very odd, out-of-the-color-pie card that can remove most relevant creatures, and also can double as a win condition if we loop it targeting opponents, after looping Nature's Claim and any artifact to give ourselves infinite life.

Rhystic Study

A powerful mix of stax and draw, this is mostly out do to my meta becoming slower and people paying its tax too readily. Good generally, but best against the greediest decks. I recommend you test it and decide how you feel about this card.

Seeds of Innocence

The best artifact wrath, this might be useful in more stax heavy metas. So far I've felt comfortable enough around stax heavy pods that I've not had a need for it.

Whir of Invention

Significantly better if you're running either more artifact based combos, or hate such as Cursed Totem or Grafdigger's Cage, but in a pinch an instant-speed Mana Crypt, end of turn. The first artifact tutor I'd run in Rashmi, if I wished to run artifact tutors again.

Winds of Rebuke

A solid bounce card that can double as a wincon if looped endlessly.

Notable Exclusions

[Important Note: These are the reasons I personally don't run these cards, not to imply they are unplayable or would make the deck significantly worse through their inclusion.]

As Foretold

Given the glacial pace many Rashmi games proceed at, it would seem to indicate that a gradually increasing discount on our spells would be welcome. The issue with this card is, the vast majority of our answers are clustered in the 1-2cmc range, making the discount somewhat neglible after the first few turn cycles, and three mana for an enchantment with no immediate value is itself problematic. Rashmi is slow to close out games, but what the deck can never afford to be is slow to answer threats, making tapping out early enough to get value off As Foretold conflict with our early-game defensive stance.

Gaea's Cradle

This land I ran for quite some time. It can be powerful late game, but its tendency to be dead early game at our most vulnerable stage gradually convinced me to cut it. I highly recommend testing it and coming to your own conclusion on this matter.

Laboratory Maniac

While Labman does offer a nice clean win post Enter The Infinite, he's also a dead card at any other stage of the game, effectively blanking a draw or a spot in our opening hand. If you've been finding yourself the target of multiple spells like Praetor's Grasp and Extract hitting your other win conditions, he's a worthy inclusion for in-deck redundancy, but otherwise I'd skip this option.

Seedborn Muse

This card has proven itself strong in other reactive decks such as Tasigur control, Thrasios control, and Yisan, so why not in Rashmi? The answer lies in our interaction suite being clustered in the 1-2cmc range, meaning we rarely need the extra mana beyond the first few turns; the relatively high risk of tapping out for a five-drop with the chance of it being removed, and us being unable to react for a turn cycle; and unlike those decks, we can't filter extra mana into activating our general for extra value, giving us a lot less per untap than those decks enjoy.

The Tooth And Nail Variant

This is the original variation of the deck I started with, before I swapped my primary one-card-win to Enter The Infinite and most other Rashmi pilots in our immediate circle followed suit. It has the advantage of being a slightly less mana intensive win, at the cost of being more fragile and easy to interrupt.

Broadly speaking, the combo works as follows: Tooth and Nail for its Entwine cost, tutoring for Tidespout Tyrant and Trinket Mage and putting them into play. Tutor for Mana Crypt with Trinket Mage, casting it, and then returning Trinket Mage to your hand with Tidespout Tyrant's ability. Cast Trinket Mage, tutoring Mox Opal (assuming you have Metalcraft), then use Tidespout's ability to bounce Mana Crypt and Mox Opal endlessly to generate infinite mana in all colors. From there, you can return Trinket Mage to your hand and recast to tutor Sensei's Divining Top, and loop the draw from Top and Trinket Mage's tutoring for it to draw your deck and perform similar loops to the ones outlined in the combo section.

Here is my version of that deck, which I played for a few weeks in alternation with this one until I decided my preference was for the Enter The Infinite build. Some of the winning loops are outlined in the description.

Generally speaking, there are quite a few points at which the above combo can be disrupted, either through countermagic, creature removal, triggered ability hate such as Torpor Orb, or tutor hate such as Aven Mindcensor. Enter The Infinite really only falls to card draw hate (now relatively rare with Leovold being banned) and it being countered. Additionally, a resolved Enter The Infinite puts the full resources of your deck at your disposal, including a number of free counters as well as every other answer you run, making answering this deck's combos after a resolved Enter The Infinite extremely difficult. As the final nail in the coffin for that build, it isn't significantly easier to cast in terms of mana, requiring either 7GGU with metalcraft and 8GGU without, versus 8UUUU for Enter The Infinite.

That being said, this was the build that first gave the deck real traction and is still absolutely playable in the same metas this Rashmi thrives in. Seeing Neosloth pilot the Tooth And Nail build was what made me take up the deck, and BigLupu coming up with this combo was what propelled the deck out the awkward three-card-combo purgatory it had been in for most previous brews.

Fin

Rashmi is one of the more unusual decks to have emerged from the competitive EDH meta in the past year, and through the contributions of many brewers and much play-testing, has become a viable competitive strategy. I'm happy to have been a part of that, and as time goes on I will be adding to, updating, and improving this primer.

A big thanks to BigLupu, Soos, Imoc, Neosloth, and especially, Asm over at the Rashmi discord for all their hard in work brewing and play-testing this deck, and their feedback. Thanks also to Neo and Lobster for providing the outline and formatting.

Other Rashmi Decks

Asm's Rashmi

BigLupu's Rashmi

Infiniteimoc's Rashmi

Neosloth's Rashmi

Soos's Rashmi

My Budget Rashmi

My (Currently Retired) Tooth And Nail Rashmi

My experimental anti-creature build of Rashmi

A Brief Comparison With Other Simic Decks

Edric, Spymaster of Trest

One of the most enduringly popular commanders in the format, Edric is more or less unique in his game-plan of dropping undercosted, evasive creatures, and snowballing into extra turns for lethal damage. Despite both using countermagic to stay the game, it's an entirely a different deck: Rashmi is a weaker draw engine overall, but far less conditional (casting spells is a fairly easy requirement); Edric can draw massive quantities of cards, but in order to shine needs a large portion of the deck to be made up of undercosted creatures, making a comparatively more build-around general. Here is an example decklist.

Prime Speaker Zegana

Zegana is primarily a Food Chain deck, using that card in combination with Eternal Scourge/Misthollow Griffin to make infinite mana then cast Zegana repeatedly draw the deck and win with Laboratory Maniac. The deck has put up competitive results, however it does suffer from awkwardness in Simic's poor tutoring ability for enchantments. Comparing it to Rashmi, the deck is much more midrange, runs some light stax pieces, as well as comparatively more refuel cards like wheels (as Zegana is relatively rarely cast for value alone). It is also much more creature-focused, both for Food Chain and general utility. Here is an example decklist.

Momir Vig, Simic Visionary

Momir Vig essentially vanished in competitive circles between the banning of Prophet of Kruphix and the printing of Vizier of the Menagerie, but is currently back in the form of Hackball, a fast, creature-based combo list that's cropped up in the past few months. Given Rashmi is control and Momir Vig is fairly all-in combo, these two decks are nothing alike, and really show the diversity available in the Simic portion of the color pie in EDH. Here is an example decklist.

A Brief Comparison With Other Control Decks

When this deck first appeared, control decks were almost dead in the format other than a rare Arbiter sighting, but since then, this style has proven itself cEDH viable and the draw-go control archetype has regained popularity in the confines of a slower meta.

Baral, Chief of Compliance

Probably the draw-go deck closest to Rashmi, Baral comes down earlier and gives a discount, but offers weaker filtering rather than draw, so leans heavier on having draw spells in hand. Here is an example decklist.

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Frequently played as more of a stax deck until recently, myself and other pilots have been tweaking the traditional build into more of a draw-go deck with more draw, fewer symmetrical hate permanents, and a small wincon package. While the deck lacks a command zone draw engine, it has a powerful combo of an asymmetrical Sphere of Resistance stapled to a Sapphire Medallion and Pearl Medallion, with the great hate pieces white offers such as Rest in Peace and Humility. Here is an example decklist.

Tasigur, the Golden Fang

This strategy became popular right around the time Rashmi did, and has gotten a lot of exposure through Labmaniacs. Comparing it to Rashmi, it has some advantages in having a win condition in the command zone and access to black tutors, but its draw engine is much more mana intensive overall. Here is an example decklist.

Change Log

2017/05/28 - added a Tooth & Nail Variant section, Notable Exclusions, and other Rashmi lists.

2017/05/29 - expanded Flex Slots to include all the cards not covered in the Single Card Discussion.

2017/05/30 - added Our General in Single Card Discussion, and added Why Rashmi? and Why Enter The Infinite? to the introduction.

2017/07/07 - some fairly large changes with this update.

Out:

In:

Cradle was good late game - but only late game, a time when Rashmi tends to already be ahead. In the first few turns, when the deck tends to be at its most vulnerable, it often a land that taps for nothing. Additionally, our creature count is very low, making Cradle much less explosive. While it's worthy inclusion still, a basic Island gives us more reliable mana in the color we want most. Because Cradle is typically an auto-include in Simic, Cradle has been added to notable exclusions.

Misdirection has always been a pet card of mine, so while tapping out for Rashmi with one more card to protect her is nice, it just wasn't that useful the rest of the time. Meanwhile, while Rashmi plays well into staxy and midrange metas, but that means that there are more artifacts and enchantments that need removing than most metas.

An unrelated swap. Bloom Tender's two cmc and somewhat conditional utility have made it a card I'm not terribly thrilled to see most games, and often have a hard time finding a spot to cast it early game, when I need dorks most. Meanwhile, cantrips more generally have been excellent as early game plays and late game topdeck filtering, so I've added what I see as the fourth best one cmc cantrip, Sleight of Hand. This slot may change in future as instant-speed options like Anticipate and Opt are also in the running.

The primer itself has has something of a reorganization. Rashmi has proved (arguably, disproportionately) popular in the competitive scene, so the original Rashmi "core" listed previously has become increasingly out of date and irrelevant as the various Rashmi lists proliferate. With that, I've chosen to integrate flex slots with the main deck.

I've also added short sections comparing Rashmi to a couple other Simic decks.

2017/12/29

Out:

In:

When I first built Rashmi, the meta was at a very fast phase, and being able to answer threats with as little mana as possible meant optimizing answers towards mana efficiency rather than broad application. Since then, the meta has slowed as there has been a recent trend towards stax and control taking up a larger share of my meta. This has meant Annul and Spell Snare have underperformed lately.

Reclaim has always had a niche as an emergency second Noxious. However, between Snapcaster, Noxious, and Seasons Past, it has proved redundant in a vast majority of games.

Prohibit is a somewhat broader, more modal counterspell than either Annul or Spell Snare.

Submerge is a meta-call for me: my meta is heavily green, meaning it’s essentially always free from turn one or two onwards, and triggering for five cmc for Rashmi is a nice extra.

Manifold Insights has gone in and out of my testing list for Rashmi, but I cautiously lean back towards including it again. It really shines early game, but it’s also a nice late-game refuel.

Added Sideboard & Maybeboard.

2017/12/30 - Updated mulligans, added a comparison to control decks, and generally altered some of the wording given Rashmi's current, well-established status.

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Top Ranked	Achieved #8 position overall 6 years ago Achieved #2 position in Commander / EDH GU (Simic) 5 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 32 - 0 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 29 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.07
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Beast 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Manifest 2/2 C
Folders	Rashmi, EDH, Rashmi, Take Note, Others' Commanders, _Competitive Deck Ideas, Build, edh, cEDH, Other people's awesome decks
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Based on	Rashmi Control asm EDH
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