I was wondering if you could play this deck without the combos. I know they are the main windontion but could this deck work without them?

@eme

Short answer; Yes and no. It's certainly possible to win via non-infinite combat with the deck as it is, I had to resort to that several times. However it's unreliable way to win with this type of deck.

A bit more elaborate answer; It's possible because the deck can use combat damage to enforce a clock, backed up by Maze of Ith and Minamo, School at Water's Edge to keep Kefnet untapped for defense. However this approach is much slower and has a much wider interaction window. This means that it would be quite hard to keep a tight grip on the game long enough for this plan to work. Additional problem is that interacting for such long period of time (multiple turns) makes it really hard to maintain a 7-card hand size and you can be easily forced to stop the progress because of that. So despite that approach being possible, it would bend more than a few paradigms that shaped up the deck in this form.

If this list is "just" too combo-oriented for your taste, you could try my budget build (KefNOT the Controlfreak; saying "no" on a budget). This one has combos, but it's less about going into Blue Sun's Zenith combo and more about attacking and chaining turns.

If you really dislike combos or such combos are outright banned in your meta, you can;

1) try a more voltron-ish build. There are many Kefnet lists around that are more combat-oriented while keeping some control elements, predominantly in the form of counters. Though they share a commander with my deck(s), these play quite differently from my build.

2) you could give a shot to Dragonlord Ojutai. If we remove the "combo" pillar of my 3-pillar control commander theory, you're left with good body and card advantage engine. Dragonlord Ojutai fills both these roles. With built-in protection in the form of conditional hexproof and a 5/5 flying body, your life total is quite safe. And his Anticipate trigger is an awesome way to keep up with the table. This Anticipate trigger is also a good motivation to attack with your commander. And if you give it vigilance (or untap it using Maze of Ith or Minamo, School at Water's Edge), you got yourself a solid clock with good card advantage. Plus you get an additional good color for control, UW even has a decent manabase on a budget.

I hope this answer will be of help to you. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask and I'll try my best to help.

That's a lot of work on a primer for such a bad commander lol

@Jt5525e10

I understand your sentiment; it's far from a cEDH deck and it could never truly be one. Because whatever it would do, other commanders would do that better (Baral, JVP, Teferi...).

However the deck does really well in the so-called "75%" or "optimized" and that's my only concern, since that's what I use it for. Also, as such player, I like to see a writeup aimed at non-cEDH deck/approach/meta. Even more so for a less popular commander; if someone wants to build Kefnet, they probably aren't going all out cEDH and hopefully this would be of use to them. If people who want to build Tasigur, Teferi or Meren can have their source material (and multiple different ones at that), I don't see why a non-cEDH player interested in Kefnet shouldn't. At the time of this deck's inception (practically as AKH came out) there were next to no pure control Kefnet EDH decks (everyone I heard/saw was going voltron), I wanted to explain why I think control shell would work here. And as I played it more, it became about how such deck does work and I think myself (one of the) first who made and maintained such deck.

And lastly, this is my first EDH brew that worked out. Not only did I make this deck with zero netdecking whatsoever, it's been good to me for a year and a half. It may not be the scariest thing after partners, but the fact that I built this deck from nothing makes me proud, and to this day it has been my signature deck around the LGS no matter how many other decks I build.

Build a kefnet deck based on yours. The most fun commander there is in my opinion! Check it out Kefnet control EDH