Staples for Nekusar
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Dec. 17, 2017, 1:42 p.m. by Guizee
Hello there!
I've been playing Commander for sometime and of all the commanders out there Nekusar, the Mindrazer is my fav. I know I know he is tier 3 and very much hated (just because some people run infect) but I do think he may be competitive, so I just wanna try him in a competitive scenario. (I also acknowledge that there are "better" Grixis commanders like Kess, Dissident Mage and Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge but I don't like them). I don't know if there are other posts already made regarding this subject and I'm not really into searching because I am lazy to spend some time searching in forums but so far, I got these cards:
Underworld Dreams, Liliana's Caress, Megrim, Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, Molten Psyche, Dark Deal, Wheel and Deal, Chains of Mephistopheles, Teferi's Puzzle Box, Reforge the Soul, Winds of Change, Timetwister, Day's Undoing, Fate Unraveler, Magus of the Jar, Memory Jar and Mindcrank.
I need help to build a Nekusar deck based not only on wheeling but also milling so I got this card Mind Grind for some epic group milling and Mindcrank is amazing. I'm wondering: what other cards must I include in my deck? Should I put stax cards? Pillowforts? What about the mana rocks? And cards like Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, High Tide, Drain Power? How many tutors and fetch lands I must put? - Thanks in advance.
goblinguiderevealpls says... #3
hey there, i have a fully tuned nekusar deck with a primer that runs all the staples, check it out here
but as far as staples, all the sorcery wheels are necessary, as well as artifact wheels like Teferi's Puzzle Box, Memory Jar and Anvil of Bogardan, plus clones like Sculpting Steel
discard engines like Mind Over Matter and Dream Halls help you get value out of wheels and combo out. discard value like Waste Not and Liliana's Caress are also crucial. while a titan shuffling effect to stop from decking yourself with wheels like Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Yawgmoth's Will and Mizzix's Mastery let you win once you've filles your graveyard with wheels
creatures like Notion Thief and consecrated sphinx usually draw you enough cards to win
definitely want ramp so artifact ramp like Dimir Signet and Lion's Eye Diamond work wonders, as do good rituals like Dark Ritual, High Tide and Seething Song
he is also weak to creatures so Damnation and Evacuation are quite useful
Crucible of Worlds really helps since you still get lands you wheel away or discard
lastly,ALL THE TUTORS, they help ypu fetch wheels and pain to win games and are staple in edh just like mana rocks
December 17, 2017 6:29 p.m.
Infect. Nekusar's biggest weakness is the fact that he's slow. What keeps him from being great is the fact that he's so slow. He already gets to run lots of disruption, messing with your opponents plan, but he needs a faster clock. This is what Infect gives him.
December 18, 2017 5:13 p.m.
K34 Thanks for the help. I'm thinking about adding some cards like Reiterate, Reverberate and even Swarm Intelligence or Snapcaster Mage and Echo Mage (but the latter is pretty slow compared to Snapcaster Mage). I'm putting Kess, Dissident Mage on my 99 'cause she's very good. I think I should consider adding Nivix Guildmage and Izzet Guildmage because of the copies, but there must be better cards.
goblinguiderevealpls Thanks a lot for the help. I checked your primer and it's amazing, upvoting it! I was wondering if it would harm me to cut off some cards like Propaganda, No Mercy and Dissipation Field in order to favor boardwipers like Black Sun's Zenith, Damnation and Plague Wind but I don't know if they're viable options considering that I have Archfiend of Ifnir. I'm also thinking about adding the cards copy spell cards I mentioned above and also adding drawing spells like Curiosity and Consecrated Sphinx. What do you think?
iAzire bushido_man96 I don't like infect because I prefer wheels and mills (together), and infect cripples Mindcrank, unless I'm giving only Nekusar the benefit of infect.
December 18, 2017 10:02 p.m.
bushido_man96 says... #7
I hear ya, but I think infect might be a more efficient way to go. One wheel effect for 7 cards Nekusar infect is 7 infect to each player. One more wheel effect and that's game. Can you mill everyone in one turn? I haven't played Nekusar yet, so I'm curious as to your setup.
December 18, 2017 10:09 p.m.
goblinguiderevealpls says... #8
i find Fork and the like to be too situational and not consistent enough to be able to fork wheels, since you'd need the fork in the original hand as you cant fork a wheel from your new wheel hand since theyre almost all sorceries
December 18, 2017 10:30 p.m.
PookandPie says... #9
Day's Undoing isn't exactly what I'd call a staple card for Nekusar. You get 0 damage triggers off of it unless you cast it on another player's turn, meaning that it's a wheel that needs support in order to be viable. Time Spiral doesn't require another card to be useful for your game plan and conveniently hasn't been mentioned this whole thread, so obviously include that.
I also side with the addition of Infect, because Nekusar is fairly slow (in terms of speed, with the right cards, Infect > Base Wheeling > Mill. In terms of consistency, Base Wheeling > Infect > Mill). Mill requires more cards to come together and more time than either other strategy, so don't worry about the mill aspect: 40 life is easier to get through that 99 cards. If you have Nekusar/Dreams/Megrim/etc. and Mindcrank, barring an infinite life combo (which Infect bypasses faster, by the way), you will rarely mill someone out before you're able to eliminate their life total through other means. Mindcrank is really only worth it if you're running Bloodchief Ascension- it's super meh otherwise.
Quite frankly, a deck that does half-assed mill throughout the game is asking for your opponents to recur their biggest and best permanents with Karmic Guide, Reveillark, Eternal Witness, Animate Dead, Phyrexian Devourer and the like, and then tell you, "Thanks for letting me dig significantly further through my library than I would have otherwise, now watch me combo out."
December 20, 2017 12:08 a.m.
goblinguiderevealpls says... #10
i agree with pook, days undoing is one of the very few wheels i DONT include in my tuned primer decklist, and also EDH is EXTREMELY graveyard based at this time, so mill is a very bad idea since a majority of the time you're only enabling your opponents rather than hindering them, you would have to deck them entirely in a single turn for it to be even a remotely viable strategy, and even then a lot of decks will have instant speed responses.
secondly, in my ~6 years playing nekusar,i found that he is best played as a damage spike via chaining wheels, for example nekusar + megrim + 2 wheels = 21 damage a wheel if the wheels = 7 cards drawn, for a total of 42 damage to the table with 2 wheels, and that usually wins you the game if nobody is above 40 life, not to mention any extra wheels/damage in addition.
although i dislike infect and i do not need it or want it for my playgroup (they do not approve the use of infect in any form, and i find it makes the deck far too easy to play) but in the likely case that lifegain is present and 42+ damage wont cut it, infect is definitely the most efficient way to kill players with nekusar
December 20, 2017 3:50 p.m.
bushido_man96 says... #11
I hear a lot of hate about infect. People get gritchy about that win condition, and they really shouldn't. They just need to adapt to it and play better.
December 20, 2017 10:53 p.m.
goblinguiderevealpls says... #12
its mainly because edh is THE political format, and infect completely ruins your chance at politics, if your friends dont mind and you can kill them before you get teamed up on, than run infect, but its just a well known and rude mechanic, that said nekusar is rude by nature so with that in mind infect would make sense
December 21, 2017 9:21 a.m.
goblinguiderevealpls says... #15
also i forgot to mention
in my primer i talk about how wheels enable opponents not just due to mass card draw but the aforementioned filling of graveyards, since graveyard interaction is such a huge threat in EDH like this thread has discussed, cards like Bojuka Bog and Rakdos Charm are an absolute must to curb said graveyard threats
theres plenty of other options such as Leyline of the Void but i find the above 2 to be the easiest to cast, and rakdos charm comes with creature hate and artifact removal to boot, and they really help you get value from Timetwister effects when you shuffle your whole deck and they have no graveyard to shuffle away
cheap cmc countermagic like Pact of Negation and Force of Will are also essential, so you can deter major threats to your game plan such as hosers like Spirit of the Labyrinth
lastly, Memory Jar can be extremely abused in nekusar in that you can clone it with Sculpting Steel, Phyrexian Metamorph etc to exile multiple hands of 7 from your opponents deck, and you can discard what you dont want exiled to mind over matter or dream halls to get around exiling your own spells
December 21, 2017 3:44 p.m. Edited.
I'm going to include Bojuka Bog and Rakdos Charm. I'm also thinking about copying my Memory Jar but I also have a combo that will make everyone hates me: Teferi's Puzzle Box + Chains of Mephistopheles + Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar.
December 21, 2017 4:09 p.m.
goblinguiderevealpls says... #17
chains and puzzle box is a nasty combo, i didnt expect the kamigawa card since i never ran it myself but i like the jank :p
puzzle box is also absolutely insane with Notion Thief
K34 says... #2
Have you tried edh.rec? Burning Inquiry may be my personal fave for Nek, especially if you can copy it.
Grixis isn't the best for mana ramping, there are a few good pieces like Gem of Becoming, but by and large your ramp available is going to consist of Dark Ritual and similar cards.
December 17, 2017 3:13 p.m.