What do you think of Gemstone Caverns and Ponder?

@Spencerbot15 Gemstone Caverns is awesome 7% of the time and pretty bad the other 93%...I don't like the odds.

Ponder was very close to being included. It's basically the same as Brainstorm. I would rather have the instant over the ability to shuffle though.

wtf? no Archeomancer?

oh, and, I think Urza's Rage would be better then seering wind

@DERPLINGSUPREME Thanks for the comment. The theme of the deck is casting for free and copying and Archaeomancer does neither of these. Casting such fat spells from my hand and paying the full mana cost doesn't excite me too much. As for Urza's Rage, Jeleva does not pay my kicker cost and, holy cow, that is one heck of a kicker cost...

Jeleva doesn't pay kicker costs?

Unfortunately, no. From Gatherer:

If you cast a card "without paying its mana cost," you can't pay any alternative costs. You can pay additional costs such as kicker costs. If the card has mandatory additional costs, you must pay those.

This is why you don't want to run any X spells (X will be 0) or kicker spells (you'll still have to pay to make it great).

Sweet deck, but one thing is nagging me: You classified Cruel Ultimatum as a defensive spell. I guess the life loss is negligible but it'll be considered pretty offensive by the target.

its defensive b/c it will force them to get rid of an attacker (probably) and a few cards, some of which might hurt the deck.

Yeah, it could have gone under either I suppose but I put it under defensive for the reason that DERPLINGSUPREME said. Yes, the creature return and card draw is nice for me, but that sac/discard is a killer for someone else.

Liliana Vess's -2 let's you choose a card for Jelava.

And Soothsaying. I'm looking for a Grixis commander, and she might be it :) +1

@TeaIsExplosive Thanks for the comment! Liliana Vess is out of the price range I want for this being a budget deck, but Soothsaying looks pretty sweet and will definitely hit my acquireboard. Thanks for the suggestion!

I'm happy to see another Jeleva player such as myselfConsider running "long-term plans" which acts like a "mystical tutor" in the deck since Jeleva will exile at least 4 cards everytime and it's really cheap :D

Nice set up for being a new player.+1

Thanks @xSean & DimirZer00! And thanks for the suggestion of Long-Term Plans...I'll put it on my acquireboard and do some testing when I can get a copy.

No problem. Happy gaming

Np, have fun!

Great deck, hosshughes!
+1!

I know every creature you put into a Jeleva deck is an Instant or Sorcery you can't, but I love Charmbreaker Devils and Talrand, Sky Summoner with Jeleva.

I also really like a "return to hand" package, so I can recast her when she's out of spells or dodge removal and the resulting Commander tax. Crystal Shard is great (since I can use it on other folks too), and Jilt, Snap, Unsummon, and Voyage's End are all good.

I also run some haste effects, so she can get an attack in before getting killed. I like Fervor, Hammer of Purphoros, and Lightning Mauler. Lose Calm and Act of Treason work too ... they're primarily for the Treason effect, but I can also target Jeleva in a pinch.

I run a budget Jeleva deck too, over at Jeleva, a heleva good Commander; please feel free to check it out if you get a chance!

Thanks for the comment clayperce! I checked out your deck and left you some comments there but allow me to address yours here. Charmbreaker Devils and Talrand, Sky Summoner both used to be in the deck, however my build went with way more bombs than yours so I didn't really care about bringing them back to my hand with Charmbreaker where I might not be able to hardcast them and I'm only casting one spell with Jeleva per turn so the Talrand effect wasn't huge. As for returning to hand, I went instead with more suicide effects. By increasing the commander tax, I can exile more cards upon casting her and have more options. I do agree with you that I need a bigger haste package though.

All in all, this build has done quite well 1v1, but I think Jeleva has a hard time in multiplayer as a whole which is mainly what I play. I am going to be transitioning this into a Narset deck in the next couple of months which I think will fair much better in group play.

I'm brewing a Jeleva deck currently. Saw your comment about this deck not doing well in multiplayer. What was its major problems?

@Marvelman7878: So, a felt a lot of things worked against Jeleva being a strong general in multiplayer:

1) Other decks don't use near as many instants/sorceries so I would rarely get anything very usable from other players.

2) If I did, they would immediately hate on me for stealing something good. Even if I didn't exile an instant/sorcery, they would still hate on me for exiling their precious creatures/artifacts/enchantments. It turned out to be very poor politically speaking.

3) Let's say I finally got Jeleva out and got some decent stuff exiled. First, I'm really going to paint a target on myself when I have an Army of the Damned sitting under her. Even more bad politics.

4) You could make some of these arguments against Narset, which is what I turned this deck into. However, Narset is hexproof (and even first strike) so is MUCH harder to remove than Jeleva. Second, and here is the biggest reason of all of these, Jeleva can only cast one instant/sorcery per attack (barring a Strionic Resonator) whereas Narset can cast 4 instants/sorceries/artifacts/enchantments per attack.

One huge bomb was usually enough to tilt the game in my favor 1v1, but not in multiplayer. Hope that explanation helps!

hosshughes Those all seem like pretty good points! Thanks! I can see how Narset would possibly be a better commander in that instance. With my own Jeleva deck, I'm going to add many cards with haste and protection for Jeleva. If anything, I think that was one area your deck could be lacking. I want to be faster than any of my opponents when I cast her and swing, only giving them once chance to stop me from casting a nasty big spell. Hopefully then I can bounce Jeleva or kill her in the process to cast her again. I also tried to include some protection for myself with fat creatures. Let me know what you think, if you take a look. Jeleva, the Mindbender

Yeah, I was trying for an uber budget version. The more (good) haste and (good) protection the more expensive. I still think Jeleva is a tier 2 multiplayer commander at best (probably more like tier 3), but it could be decent.

Hi! Super glad that you made this deck! I've just finished an Alesha deck but I've always been drawn to Grixis so I decided to build Jeleva.

That being said, what would be the framework of a Jeleva deck and what are some budget staples? (Looking to build my own instead of stealing yours XD).