This is What Glory Looks Like: a Savage Beating (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

This is What Glory Looks Like: a Savage Beating

Commander / EDH Burn Casual Combo Mono-Red Ramp Red Deck Wins

FenIsABasicSwamp

Land (35)

Enchantment (6)

Artifact (21)

Instant (11)

Planeswalker (2)

Commander (1)

Creature (14)

Sorcery (10)

Maybeboard

Creature (7)

Planeswalker (1)

1x Jaya Ballard

Artifact (5)

Enchantment (1)

1x Vicious Shadows

Instant (3)

Sorcery (2)

I have always wanted to build a burn deck in EDH and Neheb finally provided the perfect opportunity. For those who are curious just how good this deck actually is, in its first two weeks of play across a very diverse local meta in 4 different stores, including an EDH FNM (during which it went undefeated), this deck has won 11/14 games before July 30, 2017. This deck will pull everyone in the game, including the pilot, into an ever-burning ring of fire. Cue the music.

What makes this deck the best deck ever: the 84 damage Lightning Bolt

You can cast Lightning Bolt targeting a player, using Pyromancer's Goggles with Satyr Firedancer , Furnace of Rath , and Repercussion on the board. The bolt will be copied by the goggles and each one will deal 6 damage to the opponent, which will be reflected to two creatures that player controls and doubled to 12 each, which will be reflected back to the player by Repercussion and doubled to 24 each. So for 1 mana, you just dealt a total of 84 damage, 60 of it to an opponent. Go to combat, no attacks, go to post-combat main phase, float 60 mana.

A different take on Neheb

This deck is perhaps a little slower than a lot of the other builds I'm seeing on this site (since it runs few low-cost mana rocks), but as with most of my decks, I'm aiming for the mid- to late-game value. A lot of my card choices are engineered to generate explosive turns that come out of nowhere to create an unstoppable burn engine. A nuance I think a lot of people are missing about Neheb is that Afflict triggers when he's blocked, but if he has trample, and they try to block him to cut some of the commander damage, his Afflict triggers and the trample still goes over. Giving him deathtouch and trample is ideal, but there's just not room in my deck for Basilisk Collar at the moment and Quietus Spike is irrefutably perfect for this deck.

Coalhauler Swine is amazing and hilarious, especially if it's indestructible. I was originally planning to run Stuffy Doll and the swine but quickly realized that the doll makes one player resent you for picking on them, while the swine just prevents people from swinging into you so they don't take damage. Then of course you burn the shit out of the swine yourself, Comet Storm + Fortune Thief + Furnace of Rath anyone?

Combos & Synergies

Another couple combos I really want to fit into the deck are Wildfire Eternal and Wheel of Fate , because Wildfire Eternal lets you actually cast the Wheel for free and you don't have to suspend it. Playing Inspiring Statuary makes all your utility artifacts and equipment into mana rocks essentially for your instants, sorceries, creatures, enchantments, and planeswalkers. Price of Glory is critical to this deck I have realized after a few play throughs because it brutally punishes control decks for trying to interrupt you exploding on your turn. Sacing your own lands is usually significantly less detrimental as you get so much mana from Neheb, and even most of your instants you want to cast on your turn. One really neat synergy in the deck is with Nim Deathmantle . Many of the burn spells in this deck can and will kill its own creatures. With the abundant mana you can float in the post-combat main phase from Neheb, you can cast something like Inferno or Blasphemous Act and kill all the creatures, and then bring your own back to life with the Deathmantle which triggers separately for each of your creatures that dies. Nim Deathmantle has the added benefit of making Neheb a little bigger and sort of evasive with the Intimidate ability as well as situationally protected from many black targeted destruction spells.

Note on absence of traditional mana ramp (i.e. "mana doublers")

Mana doublers ( Caged Sun , Extraplanar Lens , Doubling Cube ) are great, but what I've discovered so far is that they're totally unnecessary wasted card slots in this deck. Neheb can already generate such incredible amounts of mana that you can end up running out of cards to play, and seriously overextending yourself into dangerous boardwipe territory. In that case, the mana doublers will serve no further purpose other than letting you reliably recast Neheb. Hopefully the deck will run smooth enough that that won't be a problem, but we'll see how it evolves with more testing. There's a good amount of card draw/advantage in here specifically because you can burn through your hand really quickly.

Reasoning for the absence of tons of X spells:

The only other X spell I want to include is Molten Disaster . I'm generally not a fan of X spells as they feel fairly boring and unsatisfying to win with. I'd rather play Coalhauler Swine + Repercussion + Fortune Thief + Eldrazi Monument + Furnace of Rath into Blasphemous Act and watch all my opponents explode for .

Reasoning for absence of damage and lifegain prevention cards:

I love Leyline of Punishment and Sulfuric Vortex and tried to run them, but I realized quickly that Leyline nixed my protection from red coming from Akroma's Memorial and the two Swords of X and Y, which are key pieces to keeping my limited creatures from getting wiped out by my own symmetrical burn spells. And vortex does the damage not on my turn, which is suboptimal. Moreover, I'm sort of fine with my opponents gaining a little life here and there because then they're more likely to let me hit them up for more mana because they'll feel like they have a safer cushion.

Discussion of card draw/card advantage choices for this deck

It will be distinctly noticeable to experienced EDH players that typical card draw staples found in monored decks are largely absent from this deck. Instead I have chosen cards that really thrive off the narrow game plan of Neheb in particular. So Knollspine Dragon and Commune with Lava are obvious choices because they "draw" you cards equal to the amount of damage you've dealt, which is the whole idea of the deck. Infiltration Lens , Prophetic Flamespeaker , and Sword of Fire and Ice all provide card advantage from combat effects. Infiltration Lens in particular is a very overlooked card as it triggers for every creature blocking the equipped creature. Also, in a deck with multiple combats where you are putting enormous pressure on your opponents' life totals, they really have to block if able as often as possible, giving you cards and Afflict triggers. Slate of Ancestry can be decent to amazing: oftentimes I'll end up hellbent or with just lands in hand after dumping my hand in my post-combat mainphase and I can just draw a couple cards. When it becomes truly backbreaking is when you get Hostility out and cast something like Inferno to get 18+ Elemental tokens, which means with the slate you can draw a ridiculous number of cards. Young Pyromancer also works for this line of play.

I really want to run Loreseeker's Stone because again it gives you consistent great card draw; if you're Hellbent then it's perfect, and even if you have cards in hand, you usually have as much mana as you could want anyways.

Thanks for reading and please upvote and share this deck to get the word out about how awesome Neheb, the Eternal is! Let me know if you build it and give your opponents a Savage Beating .

Note on the mountains in this deck: all of the mountains are unique (completely mismatched) and almost none of the arts shown on Tapped Out are correct. They are all just mountains that have art I love and fit Neheb's burny, dark theme.

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96% Casual

Competitive

Revision 15 See all

(6 years ago)

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 6 years ago
Date added	6 years
Last updated	5 years
Exclude colors	WUBG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	15 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.68
Tokens	Elemental 1/1 R, Elemental 3/1 R, Elemental Shaman 3/1 R, Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Morph 2/2 C, Monarch Emblem
Folders	Future EDH, Favs, neheb, Decks to try, likes, EDH-Idea, edh decks, I like this, Decks I Like, DDECKKS
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