[Mid]: This deck is designed for mid-power games as defined by PlayEDH--very expensive cards and highly-efficient wincons are deliberately excluded.
One of my regular opponents is a fan of anime, particularly a variety called isekai, which seems to revolve around young men being hit by trucks and sent to a magical realm based on medieval fantasy. He's also a fan of recursion loops that repeatedly return something pernicious to his hand. These two facts together gave me an idea--why not build a truck that could send his entire deck to anime world? I've been refining the concept through gameplay for nine months now*, and I think it's ready to hit the streets and create some chosen heroes of legend.
*As of original upload date
Early versions of this deck included Psychic Surgery (hence the name), but I found it wasn't getting enough mileage. There was also a lot more focus on the "entire deck" part than there is now; I found that it's more effective to focus on exiling enough things, and the right things, as opposed to everything. The basic mechanism of the deck remained the same, though:
- Efficient mill cards shotgun away large swaths of opponents' decks,
- Targeted removal surgically isekais priority threats, and then,
- Umbris wins the game through unholy amounts of combat damage.
The deck is essentially big-blue control at heart, with much the same strengths and weaknesses, but it's particularly effective against self-mill and other recursion-heavy themes.
While I have the deck in the mill and Horror hubs, please note that those are subthemes, not core aspects of the deck. If you want to run a Horror/Nightmare tribal deck that focuses on mill, you're better off with Captain N'ghathrod. Mill is, of course, viable as an altcon here, particularly thanks to Bruvac, but it takes very little time to pump Umbris to block-or-die levels and very little investment to make it evasive. Plan A is shotgun/surgery -> Umbris. Plan B is getting rid of whole libraries.
Because it's Magic's only true isekai truck.
- It's a wincon in the command zone. As long as your opponents have twenty cards in exile, it's block or die to commander damage, and in a mid-powered game, that's not a hard number to reach.
- Your opponents can get rid of Umbris, but it still stays pumped, and you can pump it before you even cast it. Getting cards back from exile is hard; most decks can't do it at all, and even the ones that can do it can't do it en masse.
- Umbris pumps itself a little on EtB. It probably won't be your main source of exiled cards, but the fact that it happens at all is very helpful.
- is the best color identity in the game. For an exile theme, specifically, the only better ident is , but that ident has no commanders that directly benefit from mass exile.
While Umbris is currently the best possible commander for this gameplan, it still has deficiencies that effectively bar it from CEDH and probably also from high-power decks. These deficiencies matter less at mid power but still have to be managed in order for the deck to keep pace.
- Five CMC + limited ramp options = slow. Slow + no natural defenses besides a potentially big butt = particularly vulnerable to being commander-taxed out of your price range through removal. This drawback is partially mitigated by the ability to win without ever casting Umbris, but it still hurts, and dedicated mill decks will always get that altcon out faster.
- The psychological effect of putting cards in exile does is likely to draw hate disproportionate to the actual threat your deck poses. You can remind your opponents as much as you want that any deck that beats them takes away their access to every card they haven't already played; most of them are still going to consider this deck more oppressive than one that consistently wins more quickly but lets them imagine they were going to recur those cards.
- Umbris encourages you to dedicate card slots to Horror/Nightmare tribal, but Horrors and Nightmares are not great tribes and generally don't do much to directly advance your strategy other than just being Horrors and Nightmares. Some of the most synergistic creatures available don't actually proc Umbris. The longer I've run this deck, the more I've come to see the tribal bonus as a low priority.
- Thoracle lines: To keep the deck mid-powered. You could obviously slot them in if you're feeling cheesy.
- Most tutors: To keep costs down, to keep the deck mid-powered, and because the deck should be too linear to need them. They would make it easier to get a mill victory, but remember, altcons are Plan B. There are much better commanders for going all in on mill.
- Recursion: So there's no opportunity cost for exiling your own graveyard to get someone else's, and so decks that steal or copy Umbris are less effective against you. I made one exception for Mystic Sanctuary because you're extremely likely to have three other islands.
- Cards that gain advantage from opponents having cards in graveyard: So there's no opportunity cost for exiling other people's graveyards.
- Fraying Sanity: It makes mill wins a lot easier... as long as you don't have anything out that automatically dumps graveyards into exile. That means advancing Plan A or building toward a Helm of Obedience win turns Fraying Sanity into a dead slot. I've tried it in the deck, and it's great situationally, but that situation is one the rest of the deck is built around avoiding.
Shotgun Surgery is not a combo deck. It's deliberately light on tutors and recursion in favor of repeating the same effects and focusing on Plan A. That being said, it's possible to get so efficient with the shotgun that it's capable of removing entire libraries.
- Helm of Obedience is absurdly good in this deck because, in conjunction with any card that redirects graveyarded cards to exile, it can exile a library quickly and cheaply, potentially as early as turn two. There are several second pieces for the combo, all of which are still great without the Helm. Leyline of the Void affects only opponents and can be played for free on turn zero. Planar Void drops for one mana. Dauthi Voidwalker can essentially be traded for the option to Praetor's Grasp a card before the targeted player leaves the game.
- Bruvac the Grandiloquent + Maddening Cacophony
mills every other library to zero. It's fairly expensive and relatively easy to stop, but it hits every opponent simultaneously, and if you're also sending graveyarded cards to exile, it's basically irreversible.
- Umbris is a bit expensive and a magnet for removal. It's often a good move to hold off on casting it until it's pumped up and you're able to protect it.
- If you have Umbris and Nightmare Shepherd on the board, Nightmare Shepherd is going to be the first target for opponents' kill spells, so think of it as a bodyguard rather than as the Umbris-trigger machine its rules text suggests.
- A player who loses the game has no cards in exile, so spread the love around, and don't focus your exile effects on a player you're about to finish off.
- Horrors and nightmares have more value when Umbris is on the table, but don't be afraid to drop a few early.
- A copy of Umbris sets off two Umbris triggers if the original is still on the table; Umbris is usually the best target for Spark Double.
- Because most decks run about 34 lands, the average number of cards exiled with one Umbris trigger is about three. It's good, and it can run away and get much more than that, but it's not likely to be your main source of exiled cards. (Of course, if you have reason to believe someone currently has a non-average concentration of lands in their library, you can game this effect, but you should still generally aim to keep the total cards in exile per player as even as possible.)
- The graveyard bombs (Relic of Progenitus, etc.) can activate cheaply at instant speed, so don't detonate them prematurely. Use them in response to damage to or from Umbris, enemy recursion, or removal of the bomb.
- If table politics is a big deal for you or for your playgroup, consider the following: on top of being built on a mechanic most people will find frustrating, this deck suffers unless it frustrates everyone else equally, it wins by eliminating one player per turn, and it telegraphs its being in position to win. Unless someone else is clearly the biggest threat, this deck is particularly likely to have the rest of the pod conspiring against it and to have people kingmake just to keep it from taking first place. You're looking at decks because you're cool with playing the villain, though, right?
