"Boom Headshot" - Rielle EDH (Primer)

Commander / EDH* Spellslinger UR (Izzet) Voltron

Savage1988

Draw (& discard) (28)

• 1x Attunement
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Breakthrough
• 1x Burning Inquiry
• 1x Careful Study
• 1x Cathartic Reunion
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Fateful Showdown
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Goblin Lore
• 1x Ideas Unbound
• 1x Izzet Charm
• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Library of Leng
• 1x Magmatic Insight
• 1x Magus of the Bazaar
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Prismari Command
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Sea Gate Restoration  ^Flip
• 1x Teferi's Ageless Insight
• 1x Thirst for Knowledge
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Thrill of Possibility
• 1x Tolarian Winds
• 1x Wheel of Misfortune
• 1x Windfall

Ramp (7)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Baral, Chief of Compliance
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Prismari Command
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity
• 1x Thought Vessel

Interaction and Protection (22)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Circular Logic
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Fateful Showdown
• 1x Firestorm
• 1x Foil
• 1x Izzet Charm
• 1x Misdirection
• 1x Nahiri's Wrath
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Not of this World
• 1x Prismari Command
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Rites of Refusal
• 1x Shatterskull Smashing  ^Flip
• 1x Shenanigans
• 1x Smoke
• 1x Stubborn Denial
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Turbulent Dreams

Combat buffs (9)

• 1x Anger
• 1x Artful Dodge
• 1x Defy Gravity
• 1x Psychotic Fury
• 1x Runechanter's Pike
• 1x Seize the Day
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Temur Battle Rage
• 1x Wonder

Other (3)

• 1x Conflagrate
• 1x Mystic Retrieval
• 1x Surly Badgersaur

Commander (1)

Lands (36)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Cascade Bluffs
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Desolate Lighthouse
• 1x Forgotten Cave
• 10x Island
• 1x Jwari Disruption  ^Flip
• 1x Lonely Sandbar
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 7x Mountain
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Sea Gate Restoration  ^Flip
• 1x Shatterskull Smashing  ^Flip
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Spirebluff Canal
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Training Center

Tokens (3)

• 1x Ominous Seas
• 1x Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
• 1x The Locust God

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Maybeboard

Draw / discard (17)

• 1x Bazaar Trademage
• 1x Bedlam Reveler
• 1x Boon of the Wish-Giver
• 1x Careful Consideration
• 1x Chart a Course
• 1x Dangerous Wager
• 1x Forgotten Creation
• 1x Hieroglyphic Illumination
• 1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip
• 1x Kinetic Augur
• 1x Magmatic Channeler
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Obsessive Search
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Shreds of Sanity
• 1x The Magic Mirror
• 1x The Royal Scions

Group slug (11)

• 1x Aria of Flame
• 1x Brallin, Skyshark Rider  ^Flip
• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Electrostatic Field
• 1x Firebrand Archer
• 1x Glint-Horn Buccaneer
• 1x Gravitic Punch
• 1x Guttersnipe
• 1x Psychosis Crawler
• 1x Sentinel Tower
• 1x Thermo-Alchemist

Alt win-cons (4)

• 1x Drake Haven
• 1x Niv-Mizzet, Parun
• 1x Psychic Corrosion
• 1x Thousand-Year Storm

Evasion (3)

• 1x Aqueous Form
• 1x Key to the City
• 1x Maximize Altitude

Protection (9)

• 1x Dispel
• 1x Dive Down
• 1x Keep Safe
• 1x Miscalculation
• 1x Negate
• 1x Nimble Obstructionist
• 1x Rites of Refusal
• 1x Turn Aside
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

Sniping (5)

• 1x Blazing Shoal
• 1x Fists of Flame
• 1x Invigorated Rampage
• 1x Raking Claws
• 1x Unleash Fury

Tutor (1)

• 1x Muddle the Mixture

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"I can dance all day!"

The General

Rielle, the Everwise's ability to draw cards when discarding is very powerful. A drawback on a lot of powerful spells like Windfall, Nahiri's Wrath or Breakthrough is that, in addition to their awesome effect, you have to discard cards, usually a very great cost to pay. With Rielle out however, this disadvantage instead becomes an advantage, since the first time you discard each turn, you get to draw that many too.

Pair this with graveyard synergies (Flashback, Anger, Wonder) and the fact that Rielle's power is based on the amount of instants/sorceries in your graveyard and you can see which way the deck is going.

The Plan

Headshot your opponents

Since Rielle's power grows with each instant and sorcery in the graveyard her power will naturally grow during the game as you play your spells. However, there are a few different ways that we help her take down our opponents:

1. Looting: We have a ton of ways to speed through our deck (see section "Draw / Discard"), finding mostly more draw to keep the "wheels" churning

2. Accuracy: When we go for the kill with Grandma we want her attack to be swift and sure. Anger and Wonder are unfortunately creatures, but their effect is very strong. They allow her to soar over potential blockers, and grant haste to be able to attack as soon as she's cast. Alternatively, Artful Dodge can provide unblockability after we've looted it away.

3. Combat modifiers: Since we want to find one window to deal a ton of damage instead of multiple attacks on the same person, it's essential to be able to buff Rielle a bit. Equipping Runechanter's Pike, taking another combat step, or giving her double strike will double her output, halving the required number of spells in our graveyard, whereas Seize the Day may even kill multiple opponents. The dream here is to kill an entire 4 player table by flashing it back in the same turn.

4. A backup-plan: No creatures? No problem. Firestorm, Fateful Showdown and Conflagrate are our secret tech to set fire to our opponents later in the game. Once we've dug ourselves so deep into our library and been drawing all these cards, this is a great way to use them.

Note on Firestorm: You can only discard as much cards as you have potential targets, which also limits the damage. Having a lot of tokens can help here too, though we should probably already winning by then. Hopefully our opponents go wide if we need it ;)

1. Protection: Our opponents will quickly know what's up when they see how many spells we get into our graveyard quickly. Thus, for Gramps to live long enough to see herself become the villain we need some protection on her. There's a lot of counterspells in here, but most notable are the "free" ones: Foil, Not of This World and Misdirection

So that's the core plan of the deck! Of course there's ramp and other synergies built into it, details on those sections can be found below :) You will notice some cards show up in multiple categories, that's because they fulfil multiple roles!

Below are the different categories of cards with their respective roles and reason for their inclusion. I've added some considerations in each category, feel free to argue about those with me! You will finds some cards are included in multiple categories, this is because they serve multiple roles :)

I hope you enjoy the deck as much as I have in playtesting, let me know in the comments what you think. The deck is still pretty much a work in progress and your input is very valued.

Categories and considerations

Draw / Discard (and thus Draw again)

The bread and butter of our Venerable Overlady. Draw cards, discard cards, it's all the same, as long as our spells go to the grave and we get new ones in their place.

Wheels

1. Tolarian Winds
2. Wheel of Misfortune
3. Windfall
4. Fateful Showdown
5. Jace's Archivist

Loots (other discard/draw combinations)

1. Attunement
2. Brainstorm
3. Breakthrough
4. Burning Inquiry
5. Careful Study
6. Cathartic Reunion
7. Desolate Lighthouse
8. Faithless Looting
9. Frantic Search
10. Goblin Lore
11. Izzet Charm
12. Ideas Unbound
13. Magmatic Insight
14. Magus of the Bazaar
15. Thirst for Knowledge
16. Thrill of Possibility

Other

1. Gitaxian Probe
2. Merchant Scroll - see below for a cheatset what we can get
3. Harmonic Prodigy
4. Sea Gate Restoration  

Hand extenders

1. Thought Vessel
2. Reliquary Tower
3. Library of Leng - take note of this card: It's sneaky good in this deck. A lot of effects either wheel our hand away, or ask us to discard X cards where we want X to be as high as possible. With the library in play we can choose to discard to the top of our library instead of our graveyard, thus allowing us to keep key-pieces we may want for later.

Merchant scroll targets

• Arcane Denial - counter
• Brainstorm - cheap desperate look if no commander
• Circular Logic - counter on loot
• Counterspell - counter
• Defy Gravity - evasion
• Dig Through Time - best spell to find other cards
• Foil - free counter depending on hand
• Frantic Search - free draw 4 discard 2
• Misdirection - free redirect
• Narset's Reversal - efficient redirect
• Reality Shift - removal
• Rites of Refusal - protection + loot
• Stubborn Denial - cheap protection
• Thirst for Knowledge - draw 5 discard 2
• Tolarian Winds - biggest loot if big hand

Considerations

• Brainstorm is only drawing three and putting stuff back good enough? It can protect some spells in our hand when we want to wheel, but we have very few shuffle effects so it's just an extended look into the library mostly.
• Dig Through Time is a great spell that we'll often cast for just two blue, I wonder if we are often enough looking for anything specific other than protection though.

Combat buffs

These are explained in the "General Strategy" section.

Output boost

1. Seize the Day
2. Runechanter's Pike
3. Temur Battle Rage
4. Psychotic Fury

Evasion

1. Artful Dodge
2. Defy Gravity
3. Wonder

Haste

1. Swiftfoot Boots
2. Anger

Considerations

• If we need more output a good consideration could be Unleash Fury because of how well it works with double strike.

Interaction & Protection

Protecting our general when we're happily drawing cards or moving in for the kill is essential. When we're not there yet we want to be able to keep our opponents off our back.

Counterspells

1. Arcane Denial
2. Circular Logic
3. Counterspell
4. Foil
5. Stubborn Denial
6. Rites of Refusal
7. Izzet Charm

Other Protection

1. Swiftfoot Boots
2. Misdirection
3. Narset's Reversal
4. Not of This World

Removal

1. Chaos Warp
2. Reality Shift
3. Shenanigans
4. Izzet Charm
5. Fateful Showdown
6. Conflagrate
7. Shatterskull Smashing  

Sweepers

1. Firestorm
2. Blasphemous Act
3. Nahiri's Wrath
4. Turbulent Dreams

Notable: Turbulent Dreams, Nahiri's Wrath, Conflagrate and Firestorm synergize so well with our commander it just makes me hyped.

Considerations

• Circular Logic is pretty expensive to cast, and enabling the madness and leaving up 1 blue may be a bit too much to ask.

Tokens

Making tokens helps us stay alive. Need to keep an eye on all of these. In playtesting i never really wanted to cast these but then I didn't need any blockers against the gold fish ..

1. Ominous Seas
2. Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
3. The Locust God

Considerations

Ramp

Every commander deck needs a good chunk of ramp.

1. Baral, Chief of Compliance
2. Sol Ring
3. Arcane Signet
4. Izzet Signet
5. Talisman of Creativity
6. Thought Vessel

Considerations

• Baral, Chief of Compliance and Goblin Electromancer may be a tad too ineffective because our spells have a lot of colored pips, but when casting multiple spells or wheels in over a turn their advantage over regular rocks can run up quickly. We'll keep an eye on them for as long as we need.
• I've cut Goblin Electromancer for this reason until i see how well baral performs (since baral does it better, is easier to cast and has additional functionality)
• I considered cutting Sol Ring because it only makes colorless mana and I may not have enough places to put it.

Other

Seemed good

1. Mystic Retrieval
2. Surly Badgersaur

Lands

No real shockers here. I've focussed on having as much untapped colored mana as possible each turn and limit the utility lands.

Considerations

• Ash Barrens, Lonely Sandbar and Forgotten Cave enable us to use Rielle's discard clause in other people's turns more easily, it could be the tap-lands are just hindering us too much though, we'll keep an eye on this.

Deck development

Testing:

• Rites of Refusal > Drake Haven - could be wrong to take out the haven, but the rites seem at least worth a try.
• Harmonic Prodigy > Teferi's Ageless Insight - doubling rielle's triggers is not as much draw as the insight provides and the prodigy is weaker, but 2 is a hell of a lot less than 4.

Top considerations:

• Octavia, Living Thesis seems interesting. It’s an easy 8/8 hexproof for 2, that can pump rielle’s power by 8 with just 1 spell.

Potential cuts:

• ?

Other considerations

• Chandra's Ignition to dome the table for a bunch
• Thirst for Meaning to have more looting on oppo's turns
• Goblin Electromancer for cheaper spells
• Chasm Skulker and Talrand, Sky Summoner for more tokens
• Collective Defiance as it does double duty as removal and wheel
• Swan Song (obvisously great, just pretty expensive)

Group slug options (for a slightly different take on the deck):

• Aria of Flame
• Brallin, Skyshark Rider  
• Electrostatic Field
• Firebrand Archer
• Glint-Horn Buccaneer
• Guttersnipe
• Psychosis Crawler
• Thermo-Alchemist

Thanks for reading! hopefully by now you have some idea of what the deck is trying to do. Any questions, feedback, recommendations or other discussion about the deck is very welcome.

Happy hunting!

Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 0 Mythic Rares 29 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 26 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.57
Tokens	Insect 1/1 UR, Kraken 8/8 U, Manifest 2/2 C, Servo 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders	Izzet/Prismari Decks