Naru Meha Can't Wait

Commander / EDH Mono-Blue

kerbang

Interaction (26)

• 1x Archmage's Charm
• 1x Blink of an Eye
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cryptic Command *list*
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Engulf the Shore
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Into the Roil
• 1x Legacy's Allure
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pongify
• 1x Rapid Hybridization
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Remand
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Tale's End
• 1x Thassa's Intervention
• 1x Unsubstantiate
• 1x Venser, Shaper Savant

Utility (4)

• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Sigil Tracer
• 1x Stunt Double

Draw (16)

• 1x Augur of Bolas
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Castle Vantress
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Midnight Clock
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Opt
• 1x Overwhelmed Apprentice
• 1x Peer Through Depths
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Pulse of the Grid
• 1x Watcher for Tomorrow
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Witching Well

Ramp (31)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Saprazzan Skerry
• 24x Snow-Covered Island
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Svyelunite Temple

Stax (4)

• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Null Rod
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

Commander (1)

High Tide (8)

• 1x Baral, Chief of Compliance
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip
• 1x Naiad of Hidden Coves
• 1x Reset
• 1x Sapphire Medallion
• 1x Snap

Tutors (6)

• 1x Long-Term Plans
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Whir of Invention

Combo (2)

• 1x Ghostly Flicker
• 1x Riptide Laboratory

Win Conditions (2)

• 1x Sunscorched Desert
• 1x Walking Ballista

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Maybeboard

Other (5)

• 1x Drift of Phantasms
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Turnabout
• 1x Urza, Lord High Artificer

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This is a Combo-Control deck that uses Naru Meha, Master Wizard to unlock infinite mana combos that can win at instant-speed on the stack. This means with the right combo you can be prepared to win at any time your opponents' counter defenses are down or on the stack in response to a winning play from an opponent.

In this version of Naru Meha, my goal is to create the most slot-efficient list possible. I've pared away many of the spells that are primarily useful post-combo (like Whispers of the Muse or Blue Sun's Zenith in order to maximize interaction slots on the way to getting the 7 mana you need to be 'live' with the combo.

I've also given some thought to the primary win conditions being instant-speed in order to win in response to another player's winning play on the stack, and having a variety of ways to win including both decking opponents out and dealing unlimited damage.

**Ultimately, this deck is about a one-card combo that:

• makes unlimited mana
• draws your deck
• exiles your opponents' libraries
• returns all permanents to your opponents' hands
• forces unlimited draw
• deals unlimited damage to every opposing player and creature.

...at instant speed.**

Principles at play: - If you can draw your deck with unlimited mana, you win.

• Maximize the useful control cards that double as "if you flicker loop with this in hand/in play, you win".

• Play the best card that prevent opponents from advancing their game plan. Synergize with the many bounce effects in the deck.

• Minimize the cards that only provide significant value as part of the combo.

Core Combo

Ghostly Flicker + Naru Meha, Master Wizard is the core combo, which can lead to an instant-speed win from hand. The first step is generating unlimited :

1. Cast Ghostly Flicker, hold priority
2. Cast Naru Meha, Master Wizard, resolving it to trigger the ETB, targeting Ghostly Flicker.
3. Resolve ETB trigger to create a copy of Ghostly Flicker, targeting Naru Meha and an Island.
4. Tap the Island for .
5. Resolve copy of Ghostly Flicker, exiling and returning Naru Meha (generating another ETB trigger) and the Island (now untapped again).
6. Repeat 3-5 to generate unlimited

Outlets

Unlimited and flickering of any artifact, land or creature lets us get to a win condition:

• Flicker Sunscorched Desert to kill the table. This is actually the main wincon and the deck is built to be able to get it into play whether it is in the library, hand or graveyard using Reality Shift, Brainstorm and Midnight Clock (see loop breaks below).

• Flicker Venser, Shaper Savant to bounce all opponents' permanents including lands. Venser can then bounce the original Ghostly Flicker or Naru back to hand as well so you can make another follow-up play on a subsequent turn.

• Flicker Overwhelmed Apprentice to mill all opponents out so they lose on their next draw steps (situational).

• Cast a massive Walking Ballista to kill the table. Can be flashed in with Shimmer Myr / Teferi, Mage of Zalfir

• Use Midnight Clock as an instant-speed personal Timetwister. With Riptide Laboratory (see below), you can "twister loop" at instant speed to find and re-use any card in your deck enough times to win the game, e.g. Reality Shift to exile your opponents' libraries or Archmage's Charm to deck your opponents.

If none of those Win Conditions are available, there are also a number of outlets to dig them out at instant speed to still keep the whole win on one stack:

• Flickering Spellseeker tutors all 2-cmc or less instants and sorceries in your deck.
• Flickering Augur of Bolas draws every instant and sorcery in your deck.
• Flickering Witching Well will let you put any 2 cards in your library on top of your deck, which can then immediately be drawn by sacrificing it.
• Flickering Castle Vantress or Overwhelmed Apprentice allows you to scry any pair of cards to the top of the deck where another draw ability can draw them.
• Pulse of the Grid can (if you can get your hand smaller than an opponent's) be cast and retrieved from the graveyard repeatedly to loot through your deck.

More Unlimited Mana Outlets

In addition, a combination of our interaction spells can be used in conjunction with Naru as outlets for the unlimited mana from the Ghostly Flicker combo as long as you either put them on the stack first OR have a way of returning Naru to the Command Zone or your hand. Note that some of these require legal targets on the field (another creature or nonland permanent) in order to initially cast for Naru to then begin copying.

• Blink of an Eye or Into the Roil can use unlimited mana to bounce and re-cast Naru, drawing the deck and generating storm.
• Reality Shift can be copied to repeatedly exile Naru and manifest the top card of your deck until Sunscorched Desert is manifested, at which point you can go back to copying the Ghostly Flicker that is still on the stack to flicker it back face-up and execute the win condition. I do really love this one...
• Winds of Rebuke can be repeatedly copied to bounce and re-play Naru, milling the table.
• Riptide Laboratory and Frantic Search combo with Naru and unlimited mana to loot your deck (Riptide bounces Naru to copy Frantic Search, which untaps Riptide).
• Riptide Laboratory allows you to insert Remand into the Ghostly Flicker combo stack and copy it with a bounced Naru to counter the original Remand with the copy. This draws you a card and puts the original Remand back in your hand, and the Ghostly Flicker copy can then resolve to flicker Riptide Laboratory back untapped, which can bounce Naru again to re-enter and copy Ghostly Flicker. One cycle later you can have Riptide untapped and another Ghostly Flicker copy on the stack targeting it to do the loop again, netting you a card every time.
• Riptide Laboratory and Time Spiral can play the same trick (requires Sorcery-speed play)

Breaking the Loop

Pulling off some of the really fun flicker shenanigans requires you to break the Ghostly Flicker loop in order to use Naru to copy a different spell.

Once you have unlimited and Naru has re-entered the battlefield and put her ETB trigger on the stack targeting the original Ghostly Flicker, target her with a bounce effect: Riptide Laboratory, Into the Roil, Snap, Venser, Shaper Savant's ETB, etc. Then resolve the bounce effect to put Naru in your hand.

From here you have a few lines:

• Cast a new loopable spell (one that makes Naru re-castable) like Reality Shift or a kicked Into the Roil, then cast Naru to copy it (targeting Naru with the copy) using your unlimited mana to repeat this process and loop the spell.
• Activate Midnight Clock to put the shuffle+draw trigger on the stack, then hold priority and re-cast Naru Meha to copy Ghostly Flicker again, targeting Midnight Clock as one of the targets. When the copy resolves, Midnight Clock will be a new object and you can resolve the shuffle+draw trigger without exiling it. Then you can allow the initial Naru ETB trigger to resolve, copying the original Ghostly Flicker and resuming the loop, with your Midnight Clock ready to go again.
• Cast Remand targeting Ghostly Flicker, then re-cast Naru to copy Remand, targeting the original Remand with the copy. When the copy resolves, it will counter the original, returning it to your hand and drawing you a card. Then the Ghostly Flicker loop can resume.

The latter two lines above are repeatable with the powerful land Riptide Laboratory - since you can flicker it to untap it every loop and repeat the effect. In fact, Riptide lets you copy ANY instant in your deck an unlimited number of times:

1. With her ETB trigger on the stack, break the loop by bouncing Naru to hand with Riptide Laboratory
2. Cast the spell to be copied, hold priority.
3. Re-cast Naru Meha, and target the original Ghostly Flicker with her ETB trigger.
4. Use the copy of Ghostly Flicker to target Naru and Riptide Laboratory and resolve it, generating a new ETB and untapping Riptide.
5. Use the new ETB trigger to copy the "spell to be copied" from step 2. Resolve the copy.
6. Activate Riptide Laboratory again to bounce Naru.
7. Return to step 3.

With this line, an even larger portion of instants in your deck can become a win condition. Archmage's Charm can deck your opponents, Opt can draw your deck, Swan Song can create unlimited 2/2 flying Birds, etc. Riptide Laboratory is pretty good.

High Tide

The High Tide package is there to facilitate combos under tighter mana conditions.

• High Tide because we're all Islands - tutorable in several ways.
• Jace, Vrynn's Prodigy for looting and that double High Tide action.
• Baral, Chief of Compliance, Naiad of Hidden Coves and Sapphire Medallion discount spells.

• Reset, Snap and Frantic Search to untap lands under High Tide as well as pseudo-storm your way to the combo.

Weaknesses

A few key weaknesses of this deck:

Many interaction opportunities. Instant-speed removal of Naru Meha, Master Wizard or any other Ghostly Flicker target will cause Ghostly Flicker to fizzle. This is not a 'resilient combo'.

No Commander value-engine. Many great Commanders can come down early and provide value on your way to the win. Naru bides her time in the command zone.

Mana hungry combo. It costs to kick off the combo. There are ways around that, but this is not ever going to be a turn-2 combo.

Alternate Combo Lines

If you lose access to Ghostly Flicker, it does shut off a lot of the lines for the deck. But there are still ways to leverage Naru to win, just with more cards in the combo:

To generate infinite mana,

• Snap with High Tide and Sapphire Medallion or Naiad of Hidden Coves allows you to use Naru to copy Snap, target Naru with the copy and repeat to net extra mana on every loop.

• Riptide Laboratory and Reset combine with Naru and enough islands to go infinite.

• Riptide Laboratory can even go infinite with Frantic Search if you’re able to double-cast High Tide using Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  , Snapcaster Mage or Naru herself, so each Island generates 3 mana. That’s a high mana cost corner-case but it’s possible!

Once you have infinite mana, the non-flicker based outlets are available to you to win: Into the Roil and Blink of an Eye to draw your deck, and Walking Ballista to deal unlimited damage or using the untapping effect of Snap to leverage Riptide Laboratory into repeat-casting Venser, Shaper Savant to bounce all your opponents' permanents.

Notable Exclusions

These are the cards or lines I've thought about and decided against.

Illusionist's Stratagem

Although this is a powerful combo with Naru that can draw as much of your deck as you want, winning with it still requires at least two additional mana to cast Reset or the inclusion of untappers like Cloud of Faeries or Pestermite in order to generate some additional mana while you draw. In addition, initially casting Illusionist's Stratagem means having a creature under your control (to set the 'mode' of the card to one target, or two if you want to go off with an untapper ETB as well) and in this deck that is just too high a hurdle. By comparison, Ghostly Flicker can be initially cast targeting two islands, then copied to change those two targets to Naru and an island - which is easy enough.

For all those reasons, I'm not including lines that start with this combo.

Aetherflux Reservoir

There are a few ways to get infinite storm for Aetherflux Reservoir, outlined below. Ultimately, these just didn't seem necessary with the other wincons so cutting Reservoir opens up more room for useful early and mid-game cards (a common theme here).

• Naru Meha, Master Wizard + Release to the Wind is another secondary storm combo with Aetherflux Reservoir. To generate infinite casts, we play Release and Naru, copying Release, target Naru with the copy and re-cast Naru on a loop. I wanted to include this as an entirely alternate line in case Ghostly Flicker was somehow removed from the deck. Release to the Wind has the advantage of being tutorable by the same methods as Ghostly Flicker and also has utility as removal.

• I was considering Baral's Expertise + Naru Meha, Master Wizard as another storm combo, but the drawbacks are that it's mana-intensive to get going (9 mana before any cost reductions), is sorcery-speed, and only generates storm count (doesn't draw cards or generate mana). However, it does have the benefit of being able to either clear a Torpor Orb before the core combo or clear your Null Rod to make Aetherflux Reservoir a more realistic Win Condition to include. Probably the best thing about it was that storm-comboing with Baral's Expertise would let you resolve two final copies to cast both Aetherflux Reservoir and any other eligible spell from your hand on the stack for free to gain unlimited life and then blast the table. Not having to play Aetherflux before you combo off is pretty cool. However the costs of the cards make it feel too slow.

However, it can do this neat trick:

1. Say your Null Rod is in play. Cast Baral's Expertise targeting the Null Rod

2. Hold priority and cast Naru Meha, Master Wizard to copy Baral's.

3. The copy targets and bounces Naru, who you can re-cast for free, copying the first Baral's.

4. Repeat this cycle to generate unlimited storm.

5. The last copy of Baral's resolves and instead of re-casting Naru you cast Aetherflux Reservoir from hand.

6. The original copy of Baral's resolves, bouncing Null Rod and letting you cast a spell for free (say, Naru again).

7. That spellcast triggers Aetherflux Reservoir, generating unlimited life.

8. You're now free to activate Aetherflux Reservoir to blast the table to death.

Other Cards

• Blue Sun's Zenith, Whispers of the Muse and similar draw spells that specifically work with unlimited mana post-combo have been cut over time to focus on slot efficiency pre-combo. Cutting these is an effort to shore up early-game weakness.

• Codex Shredder would be a flicker target to either a) mill the table or b) mill yourself and then use its second ability to draw a wincon to hand once it hits your graveyard. I really love Codex Shredder here as it has utility to ice top-deck tutors/scrying or recur a key piece from the GY outside the combo for the low price of one mana! Which is something Altar of the Brood can't do. However, it's another example of not enough pre-combo utility to justify the slot.

• Reality Spasm combos with either Sigil Tracer or Naru Meha, Master Wizard and Riptide Laboratory to untap enough mana to copy and repeat + 1. With Sigil Tracer and one other Wizard, X=5 becomes infinite mana (untapping both Wizards and three islands). But this is pretty card and mana-intensive to get going and pay off and the Release to the Wind combo has plan B fairly well covered.

• There are other interesting Wizards like Naban, Dean of Iteration, and Wizards like Sage of Fables or Sea Gate Oracle can act as draw outlets with the core combo, but ultimately these didn't feel worth the slot compared to filling out the ability to control the game and turbo through the deck to find tutors or combo cards.

• Two particular cards that have sometimes been in the deck are Null Rod and Cursed Totem. These nonbo with some of the secondary wincons and backup plans (Midnight Clock, Walking Ballista, Sigil Tracer), but because there is still a clean line to win through them I have them as maybes that could earn slots again as I optimize this. Especially with the recent addition of Whir of Invention, I feel like there could be a strong reason to bring them in as accessible silver bullets.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	4 years
Key combos	Ghostly Flicker + Naru Meha, Master Wizard Naru Meha, Master Wizard + Release to the Wind Baral's Expertise + Naru Meha, Master Wizard
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Mythic Rares 30 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 21 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.12
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Manifest 2/2 C