This here is my first attempt at building an EDH deck from scratch myself, and so far in its testing on Cockatrice, it's been a fun deck to play and has been capable of some pretty silly things - not least milling out an opponent by making them draw 116 cards off a single Blue Sun's Zenith!
What does the deck do?
In short, it draws cards, and lots of them!
The core of the deck is based on maximising our card advantage, allowing us to run through our deck to find what we need and also to keep our hand stocked with answers for whatever threats we may face.
Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist encourages opponents to go after one another in a similar vein to Edric, Spymaster of Trest - who is also in the deck - allowing the deck time to sit quietly and build its position until it has the resources to win. Besides Ludevic, the deck has a few other political tools to divert aggression away from itself. Propaganda is a blue commander staple that further discourages attacks against us, while the new Commander 2017 card Curse of Verbosity provides other players at the table yet further incentive to swing their creatures at people that aren't us!
To provide more incentive to keep us around for longer, there are a few grouphug tools that draw lots of cards for everybody, including Horn of Greed, Howling Mine, Font of Mythos, Rites of Flourishing, Jace Beleren and Dictate of Kruphix.
Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix turns all those extra cards the deck can draw into big ramp; when this is combined with the likes of Kruphix, God of Horizons and little combos like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and a big Psychosis Crawler or Overbeing of Myth can help generate silly amounts of mana to cast big X spells, to the point where we can deck out an opponent by making them draw their entire library in a single turn!
Because we're drawing so many cards, there are a fair amount of cards that ensure we get to keep those cards in our grip - redundancy is a pretty useful thing in Commander! - so the deck runs Reliquary Tower, as well asLibrary of Leng, Venser's Journal, Thought Vessel and Kruphix.
How does it win?
The deck has many ways to win the game beyond simply forcing through damage with creatures.
We have the option of wearing our opponents down by simply drawing cards. Psychosis Crawler is the best option or this; we also have Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, but the fact he deals damage to a single target rather than to each opponent means we have to draw a lot more cards to make him a viable win condition. The Locust God also turns our card draw into raw power, giving us hasty insects for each card we draw in a turn - suddenly turning an empty board into a huge swarm of evasive threats that can be difficult to deal with.
If our opponents run decks that gain them a lot of life, we can go for alternate means of victory. As mentioned before, we can force our opponents to simply draw so many cards that they deck out, even with a comparatively full library if set up correctly - the incremental card draw from all those group-hug artifacts and enchantments mounting up, before targeting an opponent with a huge Blue Sun's Zenith or Stroke of Genius to mill them out completely.
Failing all that, we have Laboratory Maniac, so we can win the game simply by drawing all the cards in our own library, too!
Why no tutors or accelerants?
Tutors and mana accelerants like Sol Ring are a staple part of EDH, yet my deck doesn't run any. This is primarily for two reasons.
The first is to maximise the number of deck slots I could give over to my core game plan of drawing as many cards as possible. This feeds into the second reason: The deck is capable of drawing so many cards so quickly that more often than not we simply draw whatever it is we might need anyway!
Potential tweaks and upgrades: The Maybeboard
Braingeyser - Another 'target player draws X' spell to give a little more redundancy, and another way for us to win the game if needs be.
Cerebral Vortex - could be used in tandem with something like Blue Sun's Zenith to deal a huge amount of damage to an opponent out of nowhere and take them out of the game.
Master the Way / Spiraling Embers - Potential extra wincons as they let us turn the cards we draw in a turn into damage to our opponents' face.
Bulwark - a potential extra damage source, if not a wincon, but given the number of unilateral draw effects it may not be very effective.
Mind Unbound - A costly enchantment but provides exponentially greater card draw each turn with no further investment, which can then be turned into ramp with Kydele.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor - repeatable Brainstorm is pretty much the consideration for running this one.
Praetor's Counsel - provides a 'no max hand size' clause that can't be removed in any way, plus recurs the graveyard for us.
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger - Powerful ramp on a strong body, but paints a big target on both itself and us
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur - 7 extra cards a turn that can be turned into ramp for a big instant spell in our end step, and could work well in tandem with Bulwark, but like Vorinclex, paints a target on us.
Conclusion
I've found this deck to be fun, very enjoyable to play and quite effective at what it does - it's won more games than I thought it would in testing - and I'm looking forward to finishing this deck in paper form.
Any questions about the deck are welcomed, as are suggestions for tweaks and improvements.
Updates
Post Ixalan update
After a suggestion from Despite_Myself and some playtesting, Tishana, Voice of Thunder has been added to the deck in place of Overbeing of Myth. I've explained my reasoning for this switch in comment #3 below.
