Improvements in Progress:
I currently am in the middle of finding room for Chaos Wand and more importantly Treasure Nabber, as suggested by the wonderful people on Reddit.
Gameplan:
The gameplan is simple, fuel the graveyard with Nicol Bolas and time (as boardwipes are inevitable), use mana rocks to stay on pace with the table, and steal many, MANY cards from your opponents such that they each lose to their own decks.
Upon looking at the list, one my question the lack of many deckbuilding necessities: where is the card draw? where are there more boardwipes? Single target removal? The answer is you won't have them, but your opponents will. Likewise, card like Stolen Strategy provide card advantage despite the lack of drawing cards.
There are two pitfalls to avoid. Firstly, the land count is a bit lower, so be mindful of keeping risky low land hands. Secondly and VERY IMPORTANTLY: when an opponent dies, you lose all of the stolen permanents, so accordingly attempt to eliminate opponents that will result in the least amount of permanents being lost
Background:
Part of the draw of Commander is its variance, no two games can play the same with the hundreds of unique cards present in a multiplayer singleton game. However, I ran into the problem of always being the most powerful in the playgroup. The remedy to the problem, while giving my own deck a greater amount of novelty, was to steal my opponents cards.
I am building a Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
deck, since his front side fuels the graveyards and his back side steals from the graveyards. The deck is jammed with the best ways to play from the top of an opponents deck, from their hand, stolen from the battlefield itself, and most relevant from the graveyard.
I had thought about going Sen Triplets at first, but realized that while white was giving support cards, Sen Triplets draws LOTS of hate when hitting the battlefield, dies to artifact removal, and dies to smaller sweepers like Anger of Gods. I went into red and gained a lot more on theme cards, but when picking my general I was at a crossroads with Marchesa, Jeleva, and Nicol Bolas.
Marchesa, has been done by many people, and is highly commander centric in regards to stealing, putting a counter on, then sacrificing the stolen creature the bring with Marchesa. Ultimately, Marchesa is at her best taking creatures, but I wanted to steal my opponents hopes and dreams, not just their creatures.
Jeleva, as a general of a theft deck, can be highly disruptive towards your game-plan of thievery more than your opponents. She risks exiling your own best cards, which themselves can fall on the artifact or creature side, and if she dies you never have the opportunity to play those cards again. Likewise, she can whiff on opponents just as easily since the most popular themed decks are artifact or creature based according to EDHrec.com.
I settled on Nicol Bolas, the Ravager to avoid table hate, fuel Graveyards, be flexible, and steal from graveyards.
Author's Note: Barring the three on theme lands, the landbase is kept simple while I look through my land collection to provide an accurate assessment of the cost of the deck without a proper manabase. Feel free to throw in all the duals and fetches desired. Rainbow lands are recommended to be able to cast opponents spells through effects like Nightveil Specter and Havengul Lich.
