Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
was spoiled on September 2, 2016, and I began brewing with her that very day. A brilliant scientist from Kaladesh, she is one of the few people in the Multiverse aware of the Blind Eternities that does not possess a spark themselves. Her creation of the Planar Bridge has massive implications for the current storyline, attracting Nicol Bolas's interest in claiming the artifact for his own machinations. Her goal of simply creating a teleportation device for the Inventor's Fair re-opened the potential for inter-planar travel in a Post-Mending Multiverse.
The goal of this deck is straight forward, but the lines of play it has are not. This deck has many of the traits that mark most Simic decks (heavy-ramp focus from green, with control elements of blue used to draw cards and make threats stick), but there is a nice twist that Rashmi offers. In the eyes of this deck, her ability makes the first spell you cast on EACH turn (we'll get back to this) into a cantrip+, where (with the right setup) you can potentially cast the revealed card for free.
As a commander, the fact that she has a relatively innocuous effect (a 4-drop 2/3 that does nothing the turn she comes down), makes her significantly less frightening than other more flashy, impactful effects (like the threat of a hasty Narset, an on-the-spot win from Prossh, or the combo potential of Thrasios). This puts the deck exactly where it wants to be: sitting back, reacting to the spells its opponents cast when necessary, and creating an efficient engine where they can control the game by countering spells without worrying about the fact that you countered one spell from one of the three opponents you are playing against, since you are getting either an additional cast/draw off each spell.
The deck is grouped into seven categories:
One of the most under-utilized parts of Rashmi's effect is the fact that it triggers from the "first spell each turn" that you cast. Since we, preferably, would like to cast one spell on each of our opponent's turns (as well as our own) to get as much value off triggers as possible, having flash-esque enablers is huge. These effects come in the form of
Leyline of Anticipation
,
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
,
Vedalken Orrery
, and
Alchemist's Refuge
. Additional creatures with flash, such as
Venser, Shaper Savant
,
Mystic Snake
, and
Stunt Double
, and every instant in the deck overlap with the Control category and ensure that we're getting the most out of our commander.
Another underappreciated aspect of Rashmi's ability is the fact that it cares about the converted mana cost of the spell you cast, not the amount of mana spent to cast them. Alternate mana costs are amazing in this regard, allowing already powerful spells with Delve and Miracle to cheat in expensive spells for as little as (
Treasure Cruise
,
Temporal Mastery
, and
Gush
).
Frantic Search
and
Rewind
are essentially free to cast, so we love them.
As Foretold
is a match made in heaven with Rashmi, and with even one counter can push you ahead with both card and tempo advantage on each player's turn.
With our mini-cascade enabler in the command zone, making sure that the top of our library is the card we want it to be is vital. Standard top-of-deck manipulation like
Sensei's Divining Top
,
Brainstorm
, and
Sylvan Library
are useful even when Rashmi isn't on the field. Cards like
Vizier of the Menagerie
,
Courser of Kruphix
, and
Oracle of Mul Daya
give us virtual card advantage, information about the top of our library, and (in the case of the last two) the ability to remove pesky lands that we would rather not reveal of Rashmi's ability. They also overlap nice with the next section of the deck...
Ramp is very important due to the volume of spells we will be casting. A basic land ramp package of
Three Visits
,
Nature's Lore
, and
Explosive Vegetation
, along with a couple dorks and artifacts that were too strong to pass on (
Sol Ring
,
Mana Crypt
, Tricket Mage, and
Birds of Paradise
). A massive amount of our deck's mana, however, is due to how frequently our deck hits its land drops fueled by putting lands to hand with Rashmi. Games tend to run very long, and it isn't uncommon to have 7+ cards in hand, with 2+ of them being lands waiting to be played.
Burgeoning
is useful in this regard, along with
Reliquary Tower
to boot.
This section is shorter than any other deck I have, since our gameplan is to prevent the worst threats with our control pieces. Some are too good to pass up, such as
Krosan Grip
,
Beast Within
, and
Rapid Hybridization
, and
Rite of Undoing
is too good to pass up, performing double duty in the Reduced Costs Section, while additionally allowing us to bounce our own creature to reuse an ETB trigger.
-
Control
This is our core game plan. Disrupting the opponent's game plan and gaining more and more value off our commander as the game progresses. Many of these spells overlap with our other categories, and the countermagic we play is interesting since we sometimes want to pay more than the 2 mana maximum for ultra-efficient counterspells since we can potentially cast other spells in addition to the upsides these counterspells have (
Aethersnatch
,
Plasm Capture
,
Mystic Confluence
).
Venser, Shaper Savant
and
Mystic Snake
have the added bonus of being recurrable counter-locks when paired with one of our main win-conditions,
Deadeye Navigator
.
-
Payoffs
Our most common way to win involves
Deadeye Navigator
. Difficult to remove, allows recursive ETBs from Mystic Snake and Venser, Shaper Savant, and can finish out a game by generating infinite mana with
Peregrine Drake
or a couple flickers of
Craterhoof Behemoth
. It also can be coupled as a card advantage engine/top-of-deck manipulator with
Coiling Oracle
or
Mulldrifter
This list is pretty adaptive, in the sense that it can respond effectively to most situations (either preemptively through counters or from a tempo sense through timely bounces). Threats that are hard to respond to (namely graveyard recursion and hexproof/shroud) should be focused to avoid being out-valued. Play conservatively, think about what is most important to the decks your opponents are running, politicize/frame your spells to be for the good of everyone. If the deck becomes the archenemy before it is prepared, you will lose; counterplay in a 3 v. 1 game is hard to keep together without a solid plan in place. Take your time, think ahead, and seem innocuous until people realize they've already lost.
