Kess, Dissident Mage | Frozen Underworld | PRIMER

Commander / EDH* Ad Nauseam Combo Competitive Primer Storm UBR (Grixis)

TheOneKiko1337

Land (29)

Enchantment (4)

Instant (26)

Sorcery (15)

Commander (1)

Artifact (16)

Creature (9)

Maybeboard

Creature (2)

Instant (1)

1x Dispel

Sorcery (2)

Planeswalker (1)

1x Teferi, Master of Time

Hullbreacher banned :/

This deck is a Underworld Breach, Demonic Consultation and storm centric build.

Kess, Dissident Mage is a commander who has been well known to find a spot in just about any cEDH meta.
It is my opinion that deck, in a blind meta, does the best when focusing on Underworld Breach
as a first class citizen with the ability to still main phase an Ad Nauseam.
The amount of cheap interaction that prevents a manual Demonic Consultation and Thassa's Oracle should be taken into strong consideration.

You'll like this deck if: Show

You won't enjoy this deck if: Show

Wincons Show

We usually win with Underworld Breach or Ad Nauseam as a powerful engine into casting Thassa's Oracle with no cards in library, this can be achieved via a number of different effects.
The most common are Demonic Consultation, Tainted Pact, Brain Freeze.
While this section focuses on how to win the game once you have the cards assembled. Let's talk about how you REALLY win the game. In this deck the real MVP is Underworld Breach AND Ad Nauseam. Opposed to traditional turbo naus decks we may or may not mulligan into a fast Ad Nauseam. Not having Kraum, Ludevic's Opus in the command zone means mulliganning to 4&5 is riskier. The ideal game plan is to mull into mana + engine/win con/tutor + counter(s). Examples of engines include Teferi, Master of Time, Rhystic Study, Necropotence, or wheels + mana rocks. Examples of win cons are Underworld Breach, Ad Nauseam, Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact any of the wheel except Wheel of Misfortune + Hullbreacher or Notion Thief.
Ad Nauseam can be a card that takes 'getting use to'. A turn 2 Ad Nauseam is usually very safe, especially if people were greedy and have a low number of cards in hand and/or little open mana. In blind metas decks are running a balance of stack interaction and permenant interaction which helps us. After turn 2 you have to start being more careful. Between turns 4-6 onwards require typically having 2-3 counters. Other scenarios arise during the mid to late game, in real game play, usually one of the three:
- You assemble a win manually via draws and engines with enough counters to just manually win without Naus
- Someone tried to win and got stopped (almost no counters needed now depending on the size of the counter war)
- Someone is trying to win and you can Naus on top of their win since Naus is instant speed. You won't be able to win on top of them but stop them and then win on your turn.
Another thing to keep in mind while playing Ad Naus decks is that they are designed to win with 0 floating mana and mainphase. This works due to the three pillars above. If you have to use a significant amount of your fast mana for turbo-ing out Ad Naus and if Dockside count is lower than 3-4 you may have trouble mainphasing, but if you are crafty, and take your time you can usually find a line.
So you have the pieces what now:

Breach Lines

Main Breach Line

Play Underworld Breach
Play Lion's Eye Diamond Lion's Eye Diamond
Crack Lion's Eye Diamond for UUU
Escape and crack Lion's Eye Diamond as many times as reasonable given GY size
Technically only 1/3 escaped of Lion's Eye Diamonds need be cracked for non UUU and still pay for Brain Freeze but usually you just get the mana you need after Brain Freezing yourself
Escape Brain Freeze
Repeat step 3 What this does is save about 20 cards from needing to be escaped when you are trying/need to mill everyone. This isn't massively important but can be if you need to win through an angel's grace and have a lot of cards exiled from a necro or forbidden tutor.
Underworld Breach + Lotus Petal
Possible, requires around 66 cards to be exiled to escape, see Breach Math

Breach + to hand tutor

Cast to hand tutor for Lion's Eye Diamond
Cast or escape Lion's Eye Diamond
Using mana or Lion's Eye Diamond, escape the tutor getting Brain Freeze, you are now in the main breach line

Breach + Hullbreacher + Wheel of Fortune or Windfall

Cast Underworld Breach
Cast Hullbreacher
Cast Wheel of Fortune or Windfall This will fill your GY with cards and give you treasures to recast the Wheel of Fortune or Windfall
eventually you'll find one of the other Breach lines

Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Praetor's Grasp

Cast Underworld Breach
Cast Lion's Eye Diamond
Cast Praetor's Grasp
Use Lion's Eye Diamond and PGrasp to find an opponents win con and cast using mana from Lion's Eye Diamond

Special Notes:

This line is typically used when too many things have been exiled from a consult as tutor
PGrasp can often be used to grab breach from an opponent and start this chain

Breach Modularity

Famjii does an excellent job of describing the modularity of Breach, I have copied and pasted his post with a few personal additions and removals not as relevant for this deck list:
Underworld Breach is not a A + B + C combo. Breach itself isn't that replaceable in the combo. Lion's Eye Diamond and Brain Freeze aren't as absolutely necessary and you can go for different lines if either is exiled or you haven't yet found them.
Lotus Petal instead of Lion's Eye Diamond: You can utilize Lotus Petal instead of Lion's Eye Diamond in the main line. However, this will require more cards initially in the graveyard because you will have to escape lotus petal twice to cast a Brain Freeze. Once storm count gets large enough though, Lotus Petal can be used as a pretty good substitute until you hit Lion's Eye Diamond or until you find a more efficent mana source. You can win with just a Lotus Petal but it is considerably more inefficent than Lion's Eye Diamond.
Using Dockside Extortionist and a bounce spell instead of Lion's Eye Diamond: Easiest to achieve with Snap but doable with other bounce spells. Requires your opponents to have at the very least 3 artifacts or enchantments on the battlefield and for you to have 2 lands in play in the case of Snap.
Wheel instead of Brain Freeze: You can utilize Wheel of Fortune or Windfall instead of Brain Freeze with Breach. Although this seems functionally the same, the combo with wheels is much more vulnerable because you are filling up your opponents hands each time with potential interaction (the scariest being Force of Negation). Note that with Lion's Eye Diamond and Wheel, you are only netting one additional card from your graveyard making it hard to escape mana positive rocks and/ or counterspells to protect your combo.
Using Intuition after Breach to assemble a protected win: Depending on which parts of the combo you have you can use Intuition to find the rest and protection to finish out the game safely. Best interaction you have when storming off is Pact of Negation (counter target spell for exiling 3 cards from your graveyard) and Flusterstorm for opposing Flusterstorms.
Intuition is incredibly powerful more discussed in ###Single Card Discussion
Going off with Breach and Lion's Eye Diamond with Necropotence on the Field*
Underworld Breach, Lion's Eye Diamond and Necropotence in play. Brain Freeze in hand or graveyard
Crack Lion's Eye Diamond adding 3 Blue and discarding your hand
Necropotence exile triggers go on the stack
Respond to exile triggers by escaping Brain Freeze
You are now in the main breach line.

Consultation

Thassa's Oracle + Consultation effect
Cast Thoracle
Maintain priority in response to ETB cast consult effect -> exile library
ETB resolves win the game

Consultation effect + GY recursion

Cast consult effect getting Thassa's Oracle
Cast recusion effect (Underworld Breach, Kess, Dissident Mage, Yawgmoth's Will)
Cast Thoracle
With GY recursion recast consultation effect in response to ETB

Demonic Consultation + Tainted Pact

Cast Tainted pact get Thassa's Oracle
Cast Thoracle
In response to the ETB maintain priority and cast Demonic Consultation

Intuition

There is a 'cold' start Intuition pile.
With a GY recursion card such as Kess, yawgs will, or Breach the combination of Thoracle, Reanimate, and Demonic Consultation / Tainted Pact will give you a win in hand regardless of what they pick.

Thief Lines

A: Windfall/Timetwister/Wheel of Fortune + B: Notion Thief/Hullbreacher
Cast your A side
Hold priority and flash in your B side
Winning off the cards with notion thief or the fewer cards + mana is almost promised that turn if not next turn.

Winning Through Angel's Grace

Someone casts an Angel's Grace. Well you shouldn't have binned your whole deck because with Brain Freeze + tutors you only needed to bin ~40 cards + some for tutors etc. What you can do now is bounce everyone's meaningful perms, mill their libraries and cast Wheel of Fortune / Windfall. Now they have no hand, no deck, and nothing meaningful on the battlefield. They will lose when they go to draw a card.

Single Card Discussion Show

Includes

Gamble: usually a single tutor can set us up for a win. Because we can aim for the beginning of the mid game. A Gamble with 2 cards in hand is a 50/50 on what you need to win. With Breach the card it's effectively 100%.
Simian Spirit Guide: Smoothing out t1 and t2 is such an important this as we need to be able to pivot. Gaining flexability means our opening hands struggle more than a dedicated plan.
Praetor's Grasp: It allows us to get either another person's breach/thoracle/protection, really any part of our combo. It is also a win con with breach assembling their win cons.
Value play, you have all the pieces but no protection assuming you have the mana casting grasp to get a FoW or PoN is a pretty decent move. Flusterstorm is one of our best counters on storm turnst too
Muddle the Mixture: I only wish this countered non creature spells. The fact it hits most relevant spells in the meta, and is a tutor for most of our value pieces, and is uncounterable as a tutor, that doesn't feed remora or study, is so good.
Mind's Desire: With the inclusion of Grinding Station it's very easy to use Grinding Station + Underworld Breach to increase the storm count digging and eventually hit Mind's Desire. Even without a Breach combo it's possible to have a storm count 8-10+ fairly easy off a good Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, or Ad Nauseam. The only thing that can really stop MD being Flusterstorm or Silence makes the spell very deadly, especially with the Grinding Station combo.
Red Elemental Blast: This is a little weird, normally people see Pyroblast and think it's better. Let me explain a new card Deflecting Swat.
- card:Deflecting swat can change the target of target spell. REB can only legally target blue spells and blue perms but the mode has already been decided and they can not change that meaning that they can only target a blue spell which is usually the spell you are countering. Had we used Pyroblast they could legally change the target to their Deflecting Swat and Pyroblast fizzles on the stack.
Lim-Dul's Vault: A great midrange card. We focus a majority of our gameplay at instant speed. The problem with playing in that manner if you miss development either by board state/draws ect. Lim-Dul's Vault is a great instant that allows us to not fall behind by playing at instant speed.
Reanimate: Mostly when docksides or thoracles end up in GYs. It's nice to get them + it gives us a full Intuition pile as brownie points.
Wishclaw Talisman: Smooths out post Naus so so so much as a tutor that only requires 2B. Getting any missing card with it is huge.
Intuition: I saved this card for last because how high the ceiling can be for this card. Before anything else, you HAVE to declare target on cast, not resolution. NEVER target the green player. If they give themself hexproof via a veil the spell fizzles. People tend to ask "What is the Intuition pile" This usually undersells how good Inuition is. Intuition is a counter + double Entomb for 2U. This is incredibly efficient. Let's discuss some examples:
- Game winning spell on stack: Cast Intuition for a counter + double Entomb, what you get from Entomb depends on your board + hand.
- You have GY recursion: you can now use it to attempt to win the game with no more set up.
- You breach out or in hand: Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze + Flusterstorm now gets you into a winnable game state
- You have ad naus in hand and there is a game winning spell on the stack: Cabal Ritual + 2 things you want to Entomb
- Food Chain deck has done infinite Food Chain stuff, but no outlet yet: Brain Freeze + 2 things you want to Entomb
Grinding Station: This list is a little more breach focused than Red's midrange, and Famjii's turbo.
- It goes "infinite" with any mana positive, or neutral rock
- - Even if you don't have a mana positive or neutral rock (how?) you will get 3 * n where n is the number of rocks you can escape + pay the difference. That is usually worth the risk
- Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond are weird with this card
- - Chrome Mox: you don't have to imprint a card. You don't net mana but you don't need to
- - Mox Diamond: you can only use it based on how many lands you have in hand. If you don't discard a land it never hits the battlefield, Grinding Station never sees it, big sad.
- Dockside provides n untap triggers be placed on the stack where n is the number treasure made. VERY cool way to dig deep and add cards to the GY to additional sculpting spots
- - in response to the untap trigger tap and sac an artifcact, even one of treasures.
- - This can be used as a win con by milling everyone, see Breach Math
- Yawgmoth's Will: synergizes with Kess as a reduntant effect, turns consult into a one card win con. Put a note worthy interaction with stormy turns is to brain freeze cards into bin then cast yawg's will. This allows you to then cast those cards from GY.
Excludes
Anything that is only good with Kess is out
Fierce Guardianship, Deflecting Swat, and imo Jeska's Will don't make the cut keep that bar in mind.
- - Jeska's Will has additional synergy with Kess that the others don't and powerful with breach to generic mana & cards. I don't think it is worth including, but I could see it in the 99.
- Peer into the Abyss: This card was being tested but without as much all in fast mana it fell short. Mind's Desire synergizes with Kess and Grinding Station very very well.
- - I also want to note the prevelance of breacher makes this a 2 card combo for typically 8-9 mana
- Steal Enchantment: This card is definitely a meta call. That meta call is that people want to resolve a Rhystic Study or a Mystic Remora. I really have enjoyed this card but UU is expensive and decks just don't have a ton of echantments to steal.
- Jace, Wielder of Mysteries: Currently with the focus on Underworld Breach which enables several win lines, Thoracle, Reanimate, Praetor's Grasp, another wincon did not seem needed.
- - Final exclusion largely depends on Grinding Station. If you are more comfortable with consult I'd play JWoM
- Notion Thief: Opens up a true A+B that isn't dead
- Defense Grid: We want to gain advantage over time. Unlike Grand Abolisher we can't just slam it as it shuts offs interaction on opponents turn but to shut off during your winning turn could be huge. Toxic Deluge is great into certain metas but with less midrange green being played it's less required.
- Miscast: In the current meta I believe the reduced cost compared to Delay may be worth it.

Example Hands Show

Compared to Similar Decks Show

Breach Math Show

This deck is more aggressive (or I at least play very aggressively) and may exile lots of things with Necropotence discard effects, or a consult effect. It's important to know when you can or cant win strictly on Brain Freeze. It isn't complete as it doesn't take into account the current storm. It's usually easy to work out from the Equations below if it's close (~40 cards left to exile).

Ok so Breach + Brain Freeze + Lion's Eye Diamond are cards. When I first saw it I thought two things 1) how many times do I need to be able to cast Brain Freeze to mill everyone for the win 2) How do I do as optimally as possible.

Most primers I have seen suggest something along cast breach, cast Lion's Eye Diamond, crack Lion's Eye Diamond cast Brain Freeze using breach cast Lion's Eye Diamond, cast Brain Freeze, cast Lion's Eye Diamond...

These leads to a curve that is roughly milling 3*n^2 where n is the number of times you have cast Brain Freeze (sum of odd numbers * but each cast we milled 3 cards for every number)

Cast breach, cast Brain Freeze cast Lion's Eye Diamond, cast Brain Freeze, Lion's Eye Diamond,... that is roughly milling 3(n+1)n cards where n in the number of times you have cast Brain Freeze

The most optimal way I have found is cast breach, cast Lion's Eye Diamond as many times as possible, cast brain freeze as few times to refuel your yard repeat until you have enough cards in yard cast Lion's Eye Diamond as many times as needed for your mana requirements cast brain freeze off all that mana. This leads to a sum of the following equation. (3n + 1)3n - 3/2(n+1)n This line is always for any n higher than the previous two.

Why do we care? This is why I ultimately didn't program a calculator. Even in worse case scenario the the way I commonly see in a primer requires about 11 casts of Brain Freeze and 11 casts of Lion's Eye Diamond that's 22 spells or 66 cards required to be able to exile. Doing it the way that I have found is the best requires 9 casts of Brain Freeze which can be done from 6 casts of Lion's Eye Diamond for 15 casts total or 45 cards need to be exiled. In 99% percent of cases exiling 21 more cards won't matter. This might matter if we see more RIP or leyline effects but I haven't seen any. These equations are not complete, they all need to include storm count before resolving the first iteration (assuming no more interaction), your graveyard size when starting, and opponents deck size. You may have to cast an extra if someone's deck isn't divisible by 3.

A member of the discord asked me if this was possible to mill everyone with Lotus Petal, doing so optimally from a cold start assuming everyone has 90 cards requires 66 cards to be exiled for the escape cost as seen in this table.

Somehow I can't post images. Just copy/pasta the link below and check out the image.

http://abload.de/img/lotus-petaluyjh9.png

Dockside Extortionist and Grinding Station:

Given the number of cards that need to be milled as n, the amount of treasures dockside makes is t and c is the cost of casting dockside and the bounce spell this equation tells you how many cards you need to be able to exile:

exiled cards = ceiling((n - 3t) / (t-c))

Ceiling is fancy math talk for round up.

The equation can be improved by considering that you only need to mill your opponents not yourself. In that case you need to break this into three steps:

calculate the above where n is only for your opponents This tells you how many you need to exile to mill them
calculate the above where n is only the answer from the above
Add the numbers from steps 1 & 2

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Casual

92% Competitive

Top Ranked	Achieved #53 position overall 4 years ago Achieved #42 position in Commander / EDH 4 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Primer 4 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	2 years
Exclude colors	WG
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 53 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.87
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Treasure
Folders	CEDH, Grixis Goodies, Favorite, Bullshit, cEDH, EDH, Player's Decks, cedh
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