Opus Thief [CEDH Primer]

Commander / EDH Ad Nauseam Competitive Multiplayer Primer Spellslinger Wheels

DreamRender

Land (31)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Island
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Spectator Seating
• 1x Spire of Industry
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Training Center
• 1x Vault of Champions
• 1x Watery Grave

Creature (9)

• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Malevolent Hermit  ^Flip
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Thassa's Oracle
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Simian Spirit Guide
• 1x Notion Thief

Instant (25)

• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Angel's Grace
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Demonic Consultation
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Silence
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Brain Freeze
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Delay
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Rakdos Charm
• 1x Tainted Pact HP
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Force of Will

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Burning Inquiry
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Winds of Change
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Grim Tutor
• 1x Praetor's Grasp
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Wheel of Fortune HP
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Whispering Madness

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Teferi, Time Raveler
• 1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

Commanders (2)

Artifact (13)

• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Talisman of Creativity
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Suppression Field
• 1x Underworld Breach
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Smothering Tithe

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My personal spin on the Opus Thief list. This deck has been fine-tuned to compete within my personal meta, as well as the macro-meta of CEDH.

Why play this deck?

As it turns out, playing with no hand and praying for a decent top-deck is an effective way for a player to lose. This deck focuses on the hand control idea, and can leverage the vast amount of card draw to outpace your opponents after you cast a wheel.

This deck uses variants on the current Ad Nauseam meta combos, and follows up with some Underworld Breach lines.

This deck is a disruptive deck that seeks to leverage wheel cards like Wheel of Fortune alongside payoff cards like Notion Thief to rob your opponents of their hands, then use that opening to find a win. This strategy also features a selection of stax cards and hatebears to ensure that enough time will be bought for us to use our main gameplan.

This deck also features proactive strategies in the form of multiple combo lines, and enough interaction to qualify for the adaptive subtheme. This particular list has been stylized to work inside not only the current macro-meta of the format, but also within the usual meta it is played in (for you card-choice hecklers).

FAIR WARNING: This deck requires lots of practice, proper threat assessment, and general skill to play. You will need to be able to think outside the box quickly, and have a general memorization of your deck to pilot this deck efficiently. You must be able to piece together combos, advantage, and value quickly, and be prepared to execute a pivot in strategy at a moment's notice.

Gameplan 1: Wheels on the Bus

This section will explain how to rob your opponents of hope and capability to play the game in three easy steps.

Step 1: Find a Wheel

The term "Wheel" refers to cards that discard everyone's hands and replaces them by drawing cards, and is derived from the card Wheel of Fortune. Other wheel cards in this list are Burning Inquiry, Winds of Change, Windfall, Whispering Madness, and Dark Deal (because I'm not buying a Time Twister). Get one of these in your hand as soon as possible; the more cards it can wheel, the better.

Step 2: Find a Payoff

"Payoff" cards are cards that benefit you in some way after you wheel an opponent's hand. This benefit can be as simple as your opponents not drawing more than one card when they should draw more, like from Narset, Parter of Veils, or as disgusting as a Notion Thief. The point is to rob your opponents of resources to create a disparity that you can try to win from. The other payoff card in this deck is Smothering Tithe. Usually, you will have to find one of these before you need to find a wheel due to the ratio of payoffs to wheels. Either way, get one of these and a wheel in your hand.

Step 3: Spin the Wheel, and Payoff!

This step is simple, but may take some time to assemble. In essence, wheel after your payoff is in play. If you can flash in a payoff, hold priority on the wheel and flash in that card.

This gameplan happens much more often than one would expect, and is a wonderful experience to behold when it resolves.

Gameplan 2: How to Win After Wheeling

So you just wheeled your opponents hands away and got some benefit from it. You may be wondering where to go and what to do now that you have a significant advantage over your opponents for at least one turn cycle. Well, the answer is to try to execute one of the following plans while playing as many fast-mana cards (like Mana Crypt, Mox Opal, Simian Spirit Guide, Dark Ritual, etc.) and other wheels as much as possible. Eventually, you will come across some cards that allow you to setup a win, but you have to know what to look for.

Combo 1: Underworld Breach

This combo can be somewhat complex, but it tends to win regularly. This counts as a good compromise. So the combo goes as follows:

You have probably just wheeled and got a fresh grip of cards, and you see Underworld Breach within the fresh cards you got. You ultimately want to pair this with a Lion's Eye Diamond (LED) and a Brain Freeze/Wheel of Fortune. After the Breach is on the field, you cast LED from your hand and crack it to make enough mana to cast your Brain Freeze or Wheel from the graveyard (make sure you have enough fodder to pay for the escape costs). Make sure to target yourself with Brain Freeze, as the goal is to fill your graveyard with as many cards as possible so that you can keep playing LED and Freeze. Eventually, you will have your entire deck into your graveyard and the capability to cast anything from it using the escape mechanic and your LED.

This combo is mostly an "enabler" combo because it enables you to win with the other combos at your disposal, and it sets up for other combos as well.

Combo 2: Lab Man Style Wins

The term "Lab Man Style Wins" comes from the card Laboratory Maniac, or Lab Man, who allows you to win by drawing from an empty library where you would normally lose. In that fashion, this deck wins from drawing from an empty library, but doesn't feature Lab Man. Instead we have the following:

Get a Thassa's Oracle/Jace, Wielder of Mysteries into play using either a lot of mana or the Underworld Breach combo (described above), then cast a Demonic Consultation/Tainted Pact in response to the ability being triggered (or activated in Jace's case).

That's it, just somehow assemble this combo right here. We have many roads in this deck to get to this destination, but by all means get here. This is how the deck wins.

Gameplan 3: Behold the Meta, Ad Nauseam!

I won't lie to the readers of this primer: Ad Nauseam is a secondary/tertiary strategy in this deck at best. Don't get me wrong, it is a very powerful combo, but I usually don't end up seeing it before I wheel and play the other winning combos.

That being said, this is a very strong card in the deck, and can/will assemble the other combos listed in the previous section.

How to Ad Nauseam

You can definitely find and cast Ad Nauseam with this deck and find a lot of cards with it, but pairing it with an Angel's Grace lets you find all the cards instead. After you do that, play the fast-mana cards, maybe juggle an LED using Underworld Breach for mana, then just execute a Consultation win.

Other One-card Combos

Similarly to Ad Nauseam, there are other potent combo cards in this deck that simply don't get the main spotlight because they usually end up not being seen until after a wheel, or there are more effective options in play. Make no mistake with these cards, they are very powerful engines. I just have them as consistency boosters when the wheels don't roll like they should. These cards are Necropotence and Lim-Dul's Vault.

A Discussion on Card Selection and How to Apply Game Pressure

Stax and Interaction Card Choices

Stax is a very small subtheme for this deck, but running stax can be helpful if you need to slow your opponents down so you can catch up, or if you need to make sure they can't catch up to you.

This part of the deck is what often requires the most thought when building. You must build the stax package to your meta. This list runs the hatebears and stax cards that put in work for its meta, not every meta.

The same statement can be made for the interaction/removal package in this list: You must build the interaction/removal package to your meta. Again, this particular list runs what works for it, but your version may need to run other options. Take some time to actually construct a decent interaction/removal package that works within your meta, and it will serve you much better than just auto-including cards.

A Discussion About the Cards Inverter of Truth and Leveler

This deck will not be using the card Inverter of Truth probably ever. It is simply not good enough. It costs too much for its effect when we have two instants that to a better job for less than half the mana cost (Demonic Consultation/Tainted Pact), and besides the mana cost, it shuffles the graveyard back into the library... That's just bad for this deck... So, yeah, not gonna run Inverter. On a similar note, Leveler will not be played in this list due to mana cost. It is strictly better than Inverter, but still to high a cost for the effect.

Game Pressure and How to Apply it

Pressure in a game is essentially putting more stress on your opponents in the form of low life totals, removing cards in hand, stax, etc. This deck runs a small stax subtheme with effects that this deck isn't affected by as much (if at all), and of course the wheel strategy applies pressure. One of the best ways to apply pressure, however, is to cast your commander Kraum, Ludevic's Opus and start hitting the opponents that rely on their life heavily, such as other Ad Nauseam decks, Birthing Pod decks, etc. This life pressure and the card draw effect of Kraum will definitely put the pressure on opponents.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading this Primer and checking out the deck! If you have any comments or questions, let me know in the comments below.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Exclude colors	G
Splash colors	WUBR
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.06
Tokens	Spirit 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders	CEDH, CEDH Grixis