That's what you Sphinx

Commander / EDH* Competitive Control Mono-Blue Tribal

Feierabend

Instant (23)

• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Capsize
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Delay
• 1x Displace
• 1x Essence Flux
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Ghostly Flicker
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mana Leak
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Nexus of Fate
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Paradoxical Outcome
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Rite of Replication
• 1x Timetwister
• 1x Windfall

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils

Artifact (19)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Kefnet's Monument
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Amber
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Panharmonicon
• 1x Sapphire Medallion
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thought Vessel

Creature (10)

• 1x Amoeboid Changeling
• 1x Argent Sphinx
• 1x Clever Impersonator
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Jwar Isle Avenger
• 1x Mistform Ultimus
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Sakashima the Impostor
• 1x Spark Double
• 1x Universal Automaton

Commander (1)

Land (34)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Cephalid Coliseum
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Glacial Chasm
• 23x Island
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Seat of the Synod

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Back to Basics
• 1x Copy Artifact
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Steal Enchantment

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Really makes you Sphinx

Introduction

This deck is as close as one can get to making a lose approximation of Sphinx Tribal moderately competitive - in reality, It's just leveraging the draw engine in the Commander, Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign.

How does this deck win?

This deck is based on the usual mono U cEDH wincons, but with some alternate lines.

• Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal - Usual infinite mana producer. Capsize is the outlet for this, bouncing Unesh to hand and recasting to filter through the deck to find lab Jace, and keep as much interaction in hand as possible. Alternatively, Blue Sun's Zenith to deck all opponents out.
• Rite of Replication on Unesh - If there is a critical mass of clone effects on board, particular the non-legendary unique ones (Like Sakashima or Spark Double), this is enough to put the entire deck in hand similar to an Ad Nauseum/Necropotence line. Proceed to drop rocks, and go infinite with scepter reversal.
• Nexus of Fate loops - With enough mana on board and either an infinite loop with Unesh, or enough mana on the next untap step and a good line to generate value from Unesh/clones, You can loop Nexus of Fate as the only card in the library (BSZ in hand) to either take infinite combat steps with Unesh in the air, or set up the Lab Jace win line.

Why this card?

• Essence Flux, Ghostly Flicker - cost effective way at bouncing Unesh or other value targets to keep digging for combos. Also helps to dodge things like Fire Covenant and Toxic Deluge in a pinch.
• Kefnet's Monument - Cost reduction for creatures, as well as tapping down mana dorks in the early turns, and high priority targets like Najeela and Kraum in the later turns.
• Crucible of Worlds and Glacial Chasm - A lot of the time you will be pitching lands when given the choice in hands from your opponent, so Crucible pulls its weight. Chasm can be recurred and help to blank incidental damage from more aggro based beat decks.

Why not this card?

• More Sphinxes? - This deck is based on running hard control pieces (FoW, Drain, FoN) and efficient ramp (Mox, Crypt) and chaining Unesh activations as effectively as possible. There aren't actually that many good sphinxes, so the ones that we are running either have huge upside (Consecrated, the flicker effect on Argent) or in fact aren't sphinxes at all, but let us cast them for free using the cost reduction built into Unesh (Universal Automaton and co).
• Omniscience - I've playtested with this card in particular shells a fair bit, and it dilutes the deck way too much for it to be effective.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 32 - 0 Rares 12 - 0 Uncommons 21 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.32
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Manifest 2/2 C