Ashe Seeketh Embers; Neheb, Dread Champion Primer

Commander / EDH* Artifact Burn Discard Land Destruction Minotaur Mono-Red

Ashen0ne

Sorcery (23)

• 1x Assault Strobe
• 1x Bonus Round
• 1x Boom / Bust
• 1x Burst of Speed
• 1x Cathartic Reunion
• 1x Epicenter
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Fury of the Horde
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Khorvath's Fury
• 1x Magmatic Insight
• 1x Mizzix's Mastery
• 1x Past in Flames
• 1x Recoup
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Relentless Assault
• 1x Scrap Mastery
• 1x Seize the Day
• 1x Thoughts of Ruin
• 1x Tormenting Voice
• 1x Trash for Treasure
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x World at War

Instant (7)

• 1x Accelerate
• 1x Crimson Wisps
• 1x Expedite
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Ricochet Trap
• 1x Savage Beating

Artifact (19)

• 1x Alhammarret's Archive
• 1x Coldsteel Heart
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Fireshrieker
• 1x Hammer of Purphoros
• 1x Library of Leng
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mask of Memory
• 1x Memory Jar
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Ruby Medallion
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Strionic Resonator
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1x Treasure Map  ^Flip

Land (34)

• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 27x Mountain
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 1x Thespian's Stage

Commander (1)

Creature (11)

• 1x Bloodlust Inciter
• 1x Bloodsworn Steward
• 1x Combat Celebrant
• 1x Combustible Gearhulk
• 1x Generator Servant
• 1x Goblin Welder
• 1x Grenzo, Havoc Raiser
• 1x Humble Defector
• 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Stonewright

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Aggravated Assault
• 1x Blood Mist
• 1x Fervor
• 1x Need for Speed

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Chandra, Torch of Defiance

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Hello, and welcome to my Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion deck!

If you like the direction it’s currently going or just enjoy Neheb in general please leave an Upvote! It helps a lot!

Disclaimer:

This is still very much a work in progress. As testing continued cards are moving in and out to see which synergizes best with the overall strategy. Check back not and then to see progress as I work out the kinks.

Our Lord of Cinder

Neheb has gained a reputation for being powerful in red. Neheb, the Eternal is a powerhouse for a burn deck because of his ability to ramp through damage dealt. This version of Neheb has proven to be more tricky to work with and my first iterations of the deck, admittedly, didn’t function as well as I thought they would in my head. Just in case others are still confused or baffled by him break down his card text and see what he brings to the table.

Trample: At 4cmc Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion comes out early. Even so early as turn 2 if you get a lucky enough opening hand. With 5 power and an inherent trample getting through to hit an opponent shouldn’t be too difficult.

Whenever Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion deals combat damage to a player or planeswalker, you may discard any number of cards. If you do, draw that many cards and gain that much . Until end of turn, you don't lose this mana as steps and phases end.

This is where the true power of this new Neheb, or Newheb as I may refer to him as throughout this primer, lies. But that power is not inherently obvious at first glance. At least it wasn’t for me. Discarding what is currently irrelevant to dig for something useful sounds great. Getting mana on top of that? Yes, please! But as I started playing my first version of the deck I quickly found myself with the age old problem frequently found in red. I ran out of gas… Why?

Newhebs ability allows you to discard any amount of cards you want. In doing so you ensure you can draw that many cards and look for more useful cards. He provides the Illusion of Card advantage but he himself isn’t card advantage at all. To reference one of my favorite animes he is the embodiment of the law of equivalent exchange. If you discard 5 cards you get 5 back. You also get 5 but if you were to cast one of those 5 cards you just drew now you’re down to 4. Which means you can only discard at maximum 4, and will only get 4 mana back. See the problem here?

For every spell we cast from our hand we find ourselves at the disadvantage of having less to turn into more cards and mana and as we run out of cards to pitch so too do we run out of ways to keep our engine going. Red isn’t known for its ability to draw cards without having to sacrifice some. Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion has proven no exception. So then the question becomes how do we benefit from using him? More importantly how do we win?

This particular deck has 3 goals in mind:

1. Loot more than you ever thought possible in a single game.
2. Achieve enough recurring combat steps to kill our opponents
3. If that cannot be achieved destroy everyone’s lands so they can’t retaliate

The Deck

You Might Like This Deck If…

• You Like Red
• You like drawing lots of cards
• You like extra combat steps
• You Want to win (or lose) very quickly

You Might Not Like This Deck If…

• You don’t like red
• You prefer a more grindy midrange strategy
• You actually want to cast the vast majority of the cards in your deck every time you play it
• MLD is a no-no in your playgroup

Card Draw

Alhammaret’s Archive is an all-star here. It doubles the amount of cards we draw so that when we pitch cards to neheb we get a positive return instead of an equal exchange. Keep in mind though that this does not also give you twice the mana. Newheb doesn’t care about how many cards you’ve drawn. Only how many you threw away. However this card does set us up for explosive ramps in terms of mana, especially if we can achieve multiple combat steps or double strike.

Wheel of Fortune , Reforge the Soul , and Memory Jar are also important in that they can refill an otherwise empty hand to ensure we get maximum value off our Neheb trigger

Looting is a major theme of the deck and every card that supports it has been selected because they allow us to do so without neheb and without leaving us with a negative return to cards in hand.

These Include: Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion himself. He’s the greatest tool this deck has when it comes to digging through our cards to find our win. With double strike he becomes even crazier as his ability triggers on damage. Double strike means he damages them twice and therefore triggers twice.

Cathartic Reunion discard 2, draw 3. Dig while breaking even

Faithless Looting is good in pretty much every single red deck. It’s going to sound weird but it’s actually not good for this one. For once you’ll actually not want to cast this thing from hand because the card itself minus the two we discard leaves us at a -1 return on cards in hand. That’s bad.

Khorvath's Fury Lets use wheel while hurting everyone else. The fact that it lets us draw the amount in our hand plus 1 means it replaces itself. Breaks even

Magmatic Insight pitch a land to draw 2. Breaks even. Neheb only costs 4 and only 2 of those sources have to be red. We aren’t too attached to our lands once we can cast him.

Pirate's Pillage not the most cost effective but it does allow us to dig while breaking even and provides us with a little ramp as well. We run with a very tight curve to kick things off so that little bit of ramp is relevant.

Tormenting Voice is more looting that breaks even. See the theme? Equivalent exchange is a law we have to run by for him.

Knollspine Dragon won’t be one that you cast often but boy can you draw some cards the turns you do.

Combat, Combat, and More Combat

This deck takes a very simplistic idea and turns the intensity of that idea up to 11. We are trying to turn our commander sideways enough times to kill everyone through commander damage. Preferably we will accomplish this on the same turn we cast him or, if all else fails, the turn after.

Haste Show

Ideally we want to have a means to allow Neheb to swing the turn he is cast. That way the 4 mana we spent to get him onto the board can be recouped that turn and we can start looting through our deck for our many enablers to keep him swinging.

Bloodsworn Steward not only does he give Neheb haste but he buffs him by +2/+2 as well. This makes killing our enemies through commander damage much simpler and more efficient to accomplish.

Generator Servant allows us to ramp into our commander as early as turn 3 and it gives him haste so we can start poking in at our opponents.

Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are commander staples for a reason. Their cheap and provide natural protection in the form of shroud and hexproof. Hammer of Purphoros and Fervor are nice early game enablers and they fit in line with our curve pretty nicely. Cast them and then next turn cast him so we can get the ball rolling.

Expedite and Crimson Wisps are our single shot haste enablers. If by the time we cast Neheb we haven’t found anything else use one of these. Even more importantly they replace themselves. Equivalent Exchange

Combat Show

It’s important to remember that Neheb’s ability allows us to store mana through steps and phases as it will no longer vanish from our pool so long as it remains our turn. So if we have more mana then we need we can still attack and draw into something else we could use while also ramping into more mana. To help make sure we can keep swinging without mercy we have:

Aggravated Assault The linchpin in the deck. The easy win. Land this with 5 cards in hand to pitch for Neheb and that’s it. You won’t have to worry about casting anything because youll just draw 5, pitch 5, until everyone is knocked out through commander damage. As you’re moving through look to give him double strike. Makes it way easier and it’ll net you enough mana to actually play something if you DO want to.

Relentless Assault : 4 mana is easy to achieve and if it means punching a second time, worth the card loss from our hand count to discard.

Savage Beating will ideally give our commander both double strike and another chance to attack. If we are short the two for both though we will always go for that extra combat and hope to find something more in the next wheel.

Seize the Day We can pitch to Neheb’s ability and then cast from the grace with flashback to ensure we don’t lose out on any card advantage. Bonus points because it’s even cheaper as a flashback than it is to cast outright.

World at War costs a little more but comes with the benefit of rebound so that even if we can’t finish the game the turn we cast it we know it’ll set us up for next turn.

Plan B Show

This is red, of course, so we can’t always guarantee that we’re going to find the means to kill our opponents in a single turn. In the event that should happen I’ve also included some MLD elements. Because once we have Neheb we don’t need them, and if our opponents don’t have them they can’t play anything to retaliate anyway. Best way to bank that we won’t lose him for the rotation until it gets to us once more.

Boom/bust can either blow up one really problematic land like Glacial Chasm or it can alternatively blow up all of them.

Epicenter has the threshold clause but we achieve that with ease.

Ruination will ideally kill our opponents lands instead of our own.

Thoughts of Ruin destroys as many as we have cards in our hands. Which is usually all of them.

Protection

Blue players exist. There will always be someone who wants to ruin your day, especially if you’ve used Neheb to kick their teeth in like a boss straight out of Dark Souls before. Cavern of Souls is there to help ensure he himself can’t be countered. We’re also running Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast in the event that we need a cheap counter for their own, or even a bounce spell if they’re just trying to slow you down. He’ll come out early enough that they will run out of mana to stop you before you do. If you’re worried about the counter wait the extra turn just to ensure you have that counter ready.

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth is in to make sure we don’t deck ourselves in the event we churn through it faster than we kill our opponents. In the event that we cast him he’s beneficial in the form of extra cards to pitch for extra looting. Just be sure you can finish them off before you deck yourself because if he’s on the board he can’t reset our library.

And that’s all for now folks! I hope this Primer has done its purpose and shed some light on this new Legend for us Red fans. Even this form of Neheb is extremely powerful in my opinion. Just not in the same sense as the one who came before him. Try the deck out on here if you feel so inclined and let me know what you think of him. It’s kind of a rush to burn through your deck at light speed but maybe that’s just the adrenaline junkie in me.

Shout outs

Suns_Champion is also working on his own version of the deck and as a fellow Deckwatch member we have tossed ideas back and forth and assisted one another in pounding out our own form of the deck. MLD was his idea. He’s a master of red and his work on Neheb both old and new is a thing of beauty.

Ashes Can’t Be Embalmed

Dango is another Deckwatch member who has recently begun working on his own Iteration of this commander and where mine blitzes toward the win as fast as possible his is going for a more slow and steady midrange strategy. Check it out and give him your support if you like the ideas or just love red in general.

Neheb Mid-Range

I’m still working on this bad boy so please throw any and all suggestions my way. Take a minute and playtest the deck if you’ve got the time. See how you feel with it. Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion has proven to be a unique and unorthodox build for red but I’m having a blast with him so far. Can’t wait to make people feel like their trying to kill and overwhelming DS boss!

Smash That Upvote!

Top Ranked	Achieved #4 position overall 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Artifact 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Burn 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Discard 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 34 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.88
Tokens	Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Enchantment Golem 3/3 C, Treasure
Folders	My builds, A Very Cool EDH Folder, Fun playstyle, Red, EDH, cEDH