Sick Muse - Nekusar EDH

Commander / EDH Group Slug UBR (Grixis)

QuietusEmissary

Land (37)

Enchantment (7)

Planeswalker (3)

Creature (20)

Instant (13)

Commander (1)

Artifact (14)

Sorcery (5)

Maybeboard

Creature (57)

Planeswalker (9)

Instant (40)

Artifact (19)

Sorcery (30)

Enchantment (24)

Land (18)

Sick Muse, a Nekusar, the Mindrazer EDH Deck

This deck is made to be a more casual Nekusar experience that eschews the traditional abundance of wheel effects and instead focuses on ensuring a fast game through group hug draw effects; it only runs one wheel effect, and that spell only wheels the Nekusar player. It still has win cons, but the primary goal is to ensure a fun game where everyone's deck gets the cards it needs to "go off" at least once. If the game goes long enough, the deck has a lot of tools to punish people for drawing cards and having high numbers of cards in hand. Essentially, the deck wants to start the game as a group hug deck, and transition into a group slug deck in the mid to late game.

Gameplan

Early Game - My top priority (other than ramping) is to get a group-hug draw effect out as quickly as possible. The deck can generally get moving pretty well on one extra card per turn, but it really needs that card. The other big goal is to get a card in play as quickly as possible that removes maximum hand size from my list of concerns.

Midgame - My goal is to make sure that everyone is drawing at least 3 cards per turn (total, so including the default 1 card from the draw step). If necessary, I'll cast Nekusar during this part of the game to reach that target number, though I try to avoid that, and I don't cast any other spells that damage people for each card they draw in order to avoid aggro. The goal at this point is to try to make sure that everyone has 7 cards in hand at the end of each turn.

Late Game - I try to capitalize on the cards that I've built up in everyone's hands. This is where I shift from keeping a low profile to unabashedly burning people down for drawing cards and keeping cards in hand. This is usually when I end up casting Nekusar for the first time. This deck wants everyone to have a good, fun game where their deck gets to show off what it's about, but if no one has won by this point, it's time to bring things to a close.

Strengths

This is my favorite deck for "scouting" a new playgroup or a new deck from a friend. Because everyone is drawing so many cards, every deck should have a pretty easy time getting its own gameplan running, so you'll end up seeing what each deck's "thing" is. This also gives me a pretty good read on just how competitive the table is.
In the same vein, this deck basically guarantees that the game is going to be interesting and that no one is going to sit there praying to draw their third land the whole time. That was actually why I rebuilt the deck; I had a game where another player, through no fault of his own, was completely land-screwed the entire game until he was unceremoniously eliminated on like Turn 12 right after playing his third land.
Opponents often leave me alone for awhile because they like the cards that I'm drawing for them.
This deck is pretty good at sandbagging (winning unexpectedly from a weak board state). This is in part because it draws so many cards that it ends up with a lot of options, partly because it has a lot of instant-speed effects, and partly because its large hand size makes some effects that check cards in hand highly potent.
Drawing cards is fun!

Weaknesses

This is a slow deck. It does not realistically win before Turn 9 or 10, and usually not even that fast. That said, it is good at finishing off low-health players, so other decks can accelerate this timeline.
Spending as much mana as this deck does on cards for my opponents leads to fun and exciting games, but it also gives those opponents a lot of chances to win. If you want to play a deck like this, you'll just have to accept that in some games, the deck just draws a lot of cards for other people and then loses.
I'm not currently running all that many creatures, which leaves the deck open to combat damage from more aggressive creature-based decks.
The deck has a lot of instant-speed interaction, but also wants to spend a lot of mana on its turn to set up more draw effects and payoffs. This also requires really good assessment of threats at the table; if I hold mana open for reactions, I had better be right that that was necessary. I've considered adding a Vedalken Orrery to the deck to mitigate this, but since I'm not running tutors, it's unreliable enough that I haven't bothered.
Beyond counterspells, the deck is not great at dealing with noncreature permanents and relies on the other decks at the table to handle them.
The deck doesn't have room for much in the way of recursion. Once key cards are gone, they're gone.
This deck has a really hard time against dedicated life gain decks. They can generally gain enough life to feel okay about taking damage when they draw, and the extra cards they get can often keep them out of reach of my bigger damage effects. It usually turns into a slow grind where I desperately try to break their board before I eventually lose.

Other Thoughts on the Deck

I hold onto effects that damage people for drawing/holding cards until I'm ready move into the "actively trying to win" phase. People will turn on this deck fast when all those fun draws start to hurt.
I always pay the buyback cost on Forbid. When I haven't in the past, I've always come to regret it.
This deck messes with the economy of board wipes and X-for-1 removal spells in a big way. A board wipe costs my opponents time (in the form of mana and potentially summoning sickness), but they'll have new threats right away.

Wincons

Fateful Showdown / Master the Way / Spiraling Embers / The Royal Scions - After I draw a huge hand, these cards let me hit someone for ludicrous damage. Bonus points to Fateful Showdown, which is an instant and also has a decent chance to draw me into another wincon.
Folio of Fancies / Jace, Memory Adept / Mind Over Matter + Temple Bell - Mill/deck opponents after all of the extra cards I've made them draw per turn. MOM + Bell is a quasi-infinite combo, though in most games I'll need to shuffle my graveyard back into my library partway through so that I don't deck myself first. Jace can also draw me so many cards that I win off of other cards (such as Psychosis Crawler or Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind).
Mind Over Matter - Besides the Temple Bell combo described above, this card can also clear blockers, turn cards into mana, grant pseudo-vigilance to my creatures, and cause all manner of other mischief.
Price of Knowledge / Vicious Shadows - Deal an insane amount of damage because everyone has so many cards in hand; tend to end games pretty rapidly if they aren't removed. Vicious Shadows can turn any destroy-based board wipe into a win pretty reliably.
Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind / Ob Nixilis Reignited / Psychosis Crawler - Given how many cards this deck can draw, these three can quickly kill people once the deck has its engine running. The Crawler can also beat people to death if it can get through. Ob Nixilis' ult has the disadvantage of only affecting one person, but his other abilities make him worth including.
Chasm Skulker / The Locust God - Creates a swarm of evasive tokens very quickly.
Jin-Gitaxias - With the size of hand this deck tends to have, casting that hand for free tends to be game-ending. He also clears away enemy blockers, though this deck doesn't have much haste, so it's not a free attack turn in the same way that Cyclonic Rift is.
Thassa's Oracle - Self-explanatory, especially since blue is the deck's primary color.

Other Notable Cards

Tolaria West - This card is here strictly to fetch Reliquary Tower if I need a "no maximum hand size" effect. If I have it already, I can either play Tolaria as a land or use it to fetch a dual land.
Arcane Denial / Baleful Mastery / Dream Fracture / Vex - I chose these because in the late game, making an opponent draw an extra card can actually be worse for them than the main effect of the spell. Also, it's a group hug deck, so these cards felt fitting.

Test Cards

I'm keeping a close eye on some individual cards to see how they perform in-game. Maybe they're on the chopping block unless they really impress me, maybe I think they'll improve the deck and want to verify, or maybe I'm just curious to see what will happen if I try them out. Here are my thoughts/considerations on the deck's current test cards:

Body of Knowledge - How valuable is a hand-based beater without a strong synergy ability (like Psychosis Crawler)? How many cards can I expect this thing to draw me?
Keranos, God of Storms - How useful is the Lightning Bolt effect? How much of a problem is it to reveal my first draw? How often can I expect Keranos to be a creature?
Nezahal, Primal Tide - How many cards can I realistically draw off of Nezzie? Does she really count as a hand size solution when she costs 7?
Stormbreath Dragon - How often am I actually able to activate its Monstrosity ability? When I'm not able to, is a 4/4 flyer with protection from white worth the slot? Once it's monstrous, how useful is it as an attacker/blocker?

Why No Wheel Effects?

My friends hated playing against wheel-based Nekusar, and I discovered fairly quickly that I didn't find it all that interesting to play on my end either. I took the deck apart for a few years before rebuilding it along the theme that it's based on now.

In this version, Nekusar himself is much less of a wincon (though his damage is still no slouch), but I like the gameplay a lot better.

Custom Categories

Most of the custom categories should be obvious, but there are a few atypical ones that I'll explain here:

Hand size - Cards that give me no maximum hand size
Hug - Cards that cause everyone else to draw cards
Refresh - Cards that put my graveyard back into my library; primarily relevant if I set up a Laboratory Maniac win and someone removes Lab Man, or if I'm trying to deck everyone else for the win and need a buffer
Synergy - Cards that trigger off of cards being drawn or that have an effect based on number of cards in hand
Pressure - Cards that deal small amounts of damage over time, generally to all opponents at once (in this deck, generally for drawing cards)
Defense - Cards that penalize or prevent opponents from attacking or targeting me
Protection - Cards that protect my permanents from removal by opponents and/or keep my critical spells from being countered

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Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 weeks
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 45 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.56
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Elemental 4/4 UR, Emblem Ob Nixilis Reignited, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Insect 1/1 UR, Manifest 2/2 C, Squid 1/1 U
Folders	Memes
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