This deck utilizes the "wheels" strategy to pump opponents' hands full of cards and then punishes them for drawing and discarding. Minor synergies in the deck enable you to take advantage of your graveyard, but this is not a graveyard deck. Various combos, mostly using Hive Mind, can provide an alternative win condition. Gwendlyn Di Corci helms the deck so it is eligible for my low/mid-power playgroup, but the deck is ostensibly a Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck.

This deck was built with the 8x8 method by which there are eight modules of eight cards plus 36 lands.

All my decks have the same four modules, though they are filled with different cards depending on the deck's theme.

  1. Ramp: Since ramp is not a strength of UBR, these are mostly generic mana rocks in the right colors. Note that the most effective of these have been reserved for my Commander Cube.
  2. Removal: About half of these work with the deck's theme, providing card draw, wheel effects, etc., but half are just generically useful in these colors.
  3. Card Advantage: For the most part, these cards are specific to the deck's theme, though the powerhouses like Kess, Dissident Mage would of course be welcome in any UBR deck. Some cards need the deck's theme to be working to be fully operational, while others can double as card draw and win conditions (Blue Sun's Zenith).
  4. "Fun": This suite includes a bunch of miscellaneous effects that look like fun for this deck but are not necessarily part of a more significant subtheme.

These modules work together to give this deck its unique character.

  • Wheels & "Wheels": Half of this suite is genuine wheel effects--cards that force everyone to discard their hands and draw seven cards. The other half is similar to these and definitely fit into the deck's theme, but they do it a little differently, such as drawing and then discarding, drawing only the number cards you originally had, etc.

  • Nekusar Module: These cards, like Nekusar himself, provide all players with additional draws every turn (except Prosperity). In addition, half these cards (also like Nekusar) punish players for those draws. Good times!
  • Draw-Discard Payoffs: These cards extend the latter function of the Nekusar module but without the persistent card draw. Some of these cards punish players (or reward you) for opponents discarding, which happens en masse off the wheel effects and might continue to happen if they end their turns with more than seven cards.
  • Hive Mind Combos: This module provides a bunch of cards that combo with Hive Mind (and each other) as well as other cards elsewhere in the deck. With all the cards you will be drawing, it is actually quite possible to assemble one of these combos as an alternate win condition.
  • Suggestions

    Updates Add

    I did an initial round of goldfishing playtests. Things went well, and I fully expect my playgroup to hate this deck off the table in short order.

    1. The deck was flooded with mana in this game and couldn't really get anything going until the 7th or 8th turn, but all of a sudden it went from 0 to 60 and was able to win on the 10th turn.
    2. This playtest saw Kess and Nekusar come out and won on the 8th turn off Price of Knowledge on the battlefield and Prosperity cast from the graveyard. This is exactly what this deck wants to be doing.
    3. This final round introduced the Hive Mind combo, which enabled a win on the 7th turn. Soul-Guide Lantern was out, so I could exile my "opponents'" graveyards and then play Paradigm Shift (which they must copy due to Hive Mind) to swap their empty graveyards with their libraries, resulting in them being decked at the start of their turns. Yeah, nobody's going to like that...

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    98% Casual

    Competitive

    Date added 2 years
    Last updated 2 years
    Legality

    This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

    Rarity (main - side)

    11 - 0 Mythic Rares

    55 - 0 Rares

    11 - 0 Uncommons

    1 - 0 Commons

    Cards 100
    Avg. CMC 3.58
    Tokens Dog Illusion */* U, Emblem Mordenkainen, Emblem Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor, Zombie 2/2 B
    Folders Commander - Thematic Decks (Low/Mid-Power)
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