The Wheel // Nekusar, the Mindrazer

Commander / EDH Card Draw Matters Discard UBR (Grixis) Wheels

Oakiegg

Land (36)

• 2x Snow-Covered Island
• 2x Snow-Covered Mountain
• 2x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Urza's Saga
• 1x Ancient Tomb *list*
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Blightstep Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Clearwater Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Riverglide Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Training Center
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Witch's Clinic
• 1x Xander's Lounge
• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1x Gemstone Caverns

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Bloodchief Ascension
• 1x Liliana's Caress
• 1x Megrim
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Underworld Dreams
• 1x Waste Not

Creature (17)

• 1x Bone Miser
• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Harmonic Prodigy
• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Kederekt Parasite
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Nightscape Familiar
• 1x Orcish Bowmasters
• 1x Fate Unraveler
• 1x Edgin, Larcenous Lutenist
• 1x Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph
• 1x Kess, Dissident Mage
• 1x Sakashima of a Thousand Faces
• 1x Sakashima the Impostor
• 1x Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1x Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
• 1x Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip

Sorcery (15)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Incendiary Command
• 1x Molten Psyche
• 1x Past in Flames
• 1x Peer into the Abyss
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Wheel of Fate
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Whispering Madness
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Winds of Change

Commander (1)

Instant (15)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Baleful Mastery
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Deadly Rollick
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Imp's Mischief
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Wheel and Deal

Artifact (10)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Jeweled Lotus
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Memory Jar
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Teferi's Puzzle Box

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Maybeboard

Land (10)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Dust Bowl
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Wasteland
• 1x Watery Grave

Instant (4)

• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Perplex
• 1x Swan Song

Artifact (2)

• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Lightning Greaves

Creature (1)

• 1x Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might  ^Flip

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Glistening Oil
• 1x Phyresis
• 1x Underworld Dreams

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Capture of Jingzhou
• 1x Timetwister

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v4.3

As an avid lover of all the possibilities card draw mechanics can bring to the table, I've always been delighted to provide my friends and fellow Commander players an opportunity to see all the cards in their decks swiftly and efficiently. Watching them consider the possibilities of their hand and the sudden shock of it all fading away as the next week burns through their prospective movements and the follow-up draws into new possibilities as their life totals dwindle is just one of the few savory details in why I love my Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck.

You may find this build to be too competitive for your table, and even in my own meta is a play-once kind of deal that usually nets me a 3-KO count in the game due to its ability to overwhelm so efficiently. An in-kitchen arms race between myself and my dear friend has led us to achieve a dizzying height of power in our most beloved commander decks, and I would encourage players to have a Session Zero conversation about power levels and the desired gameplay style before building this out. But, if you've had the conversation and are ready to play with a high-octane Nekusar, welcome to THE WHEEL!

General Strategy

The first and foremost strategy of this Nekusar deck is to get our Draw or Discard Damage cards out early, and begin wheeling.

Our big hitters here on the Draw side besides Nekusar, the Mindrazer himself are going to be Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Underworld Dreams, Fate Unraveler, or Kederekt Parasite paired with another red permanent such as Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph. For discard, we are running Megrim and Liliana's Caress.

Once we've established a board state to get our opponents taking (optimally) 2 damage per card draw, we can begin Wheeling. Wheel of Fortune, Memory Jar, Molten Psyche, Windfall and Whispering Madness are some of our monsters in this realm. Time Spiral is another beast of a hitter that can easily combo into more wheeling after the ability resolves.

Once we start wheeling, we put our opponents on the defensive and will immediately become target #1 for the entire table, so it's our duty to politic and buy ourselves at least more more turn so we can hit for a table-wide lethal.

Finally, as an all-in strategy, we can cast Peer into the Abyss with just a single Card Draw pinger for an instant kill on resolution if we detect a major presence on the board that we need to deal with immediately.

Protecting our Engagement

The deck is running a slue of low-cost, high-efficieny countermagic that we are going to use primarily to ensure our wheels hit their target and resolve, or countering any gimmicky white shenanigans that would buy our opponents another turn such as Teferi's Protection. Some of my favorites here are going to be Force of Will, Pact of Negation, and most especially, Mana Leak. Imp's Mischief can act as a clever little surprise against opponents who think it's safe to cast big bombs on us without our blue mana up!

There are a few cases when the counter magic will be appropriate for dropping enemy bombs, and that's absolutely up to your discretion on when and where to use your counter spells. Remember, if you wheel your countermagic it will be gone for the next wheel combo, so it's important to consider when best to use the spells that we have open.

Some of the more strategic protection placed in the deck can be found in one of the funnest cards I've gotten to play with in a while that's particularly potent if the game is moving a bit slowly. Edgin, Larcenous Lutenist can be a great way to dump some of our wheels or countermagic into layaway to cast at another time for reduced cost. a {R} Wheel of Fortune into {U}Windfall is pretty damn nice after all, and if you can hide that behind a Force of Will that was sitting in exile, you've got yourself a nice little combo.

I'm also running a full set of the Grixis Commander Free-Spells, Deadly Rollick, Deflecting Swat, and Fierce Guardianship. These are all going to be used primarily for protecting Nekusar, shutting down our opponents commanders/creature pieces, and in very lucky or niche cases, reflecting a Deflecting Palm.

Boseiju, Who Shelters All is a wonderful Cavern of Souls for our wheels for the low price of 2LP per colorless mana.

Propaganda, mostly for early placement or pitching to FoW, this card can be clutch against some go-wide strategies that we can't kill off with Orcish Bowmasters or Cyclonic Rift.

Combo Pieces & Interaction Considerations

Some of the best cards in the deck that I haven't covered yet I will begin to here.

Orcish Bowmasters is a single-target hitter that, on a single classic Wheel resolve, can hit any target for 21 individual pings of damage in a classic game of commander. I more often than not use this as board control, wiping away opponent's creatures so to avoid combat damage and open up avenues for a creature Ciphered by Whispering Madness to get a second wheel in; perhaps even bowmasters themselves can make the fateful hit, but I would prefer the cipher to be on a creature that cannot get bolted on attack. Nekusar or Sheoldred are better targets for that specific ability.

Solphim, Mayhem Dominus and Harmonic Prodigy can both get Nekusar to an outrageous state, and it's often that I have both active on the board pinging every card draw for 4 damage from a single Nekusar trigger. Solphim's ability to discard and pay for an indestructible counter should almost always be used, as keeping him on the board accelerates our gameplan by 2x at the least.

Sakashima the Impostor and Sakashima of a Thousand Faces both make an appearance as a great 4 drop copy on Nekusar, Sheoldred, or Solphim. Use them when you can on whatever you can, the chaos of the wheel won't let these cards sit in hand for long and often times I find myself using Sakashima or some of the "shuffle wheels" as pitch for FoW or Pact.

It is possible to get a Turn 1 Nekusar on the field with the cute little combo of Jeweled Lotus + Chrome Mox + Land drop.

In a world of miracles, if all the above plus Gemstone Caverns and Mana Crypt in our opening hand and not first to play, we can have a staggering 8 mana Turn 1 if used on a commander, or up to 5 mana to cast on anything else. The odds of this happing are astronomically unlikely, but you just know there's a table somewhere where this happened, and turn two was a wheel of concedes, hahaha.

Utility Pieces & Chaos

We run a nice set up of tutors to help our wheels along and give ourselves more consistency across the board. Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Mystic Tutor all make an appearance, along with Gamble that can be used to fetch ourselves something nice to work with, but frankly every time I've ever used it I have gotten burned by a friend drawing the card I tutored for out of my hands, so use it at your own risk!

Waste Not and Bone Miser give us so good potential for wheeling when we don't have a piece we need to do damage, both can lead to a very strong board state of Zombie tokens or refill our hand and mana well to cast a few more goodies before we end our turn.

Witch's Clinic is a fun interaction with Nekusar, the Mindrazer as Lifelink triggers on any damage dealt. This means in a single wheel rotation with Nekusar and Clinic, we can gain ourselves a lovely 21LP and continue playing without fear of dying to combat damage anytime soon. This effect is matched and amplified of course by Exquisite Blood which will proc on any damage we or anybody else deals, and will likely be the target of enchantment removal.

Bloodchief Ascension is another card that, if cast early on, can really pop off. If Ascension is out while Nekusar has a single pass, it will trigger immediately on our turn and any creatures that get sacrificed or die will hurt their owners and give us life. This, as well as our friends Dauthi Voidwalker and Tergrid, God of Fright   can be massive hits to Graveyard decks, and benefit even more from wheeling away our opponents creatures. It's all about the wheel, baby.

Teferi's Puzzle Box is a bit of a relic for me in this deck that I may plan to swap out at sometime for a more productive or efficient wheel, but in dire circumstances it can be quite effective to use the chaos of the Puzzlebox to keep our opponents on the floor thinking of ways out rather than having a solid attack strategy at the beginning of their turns. This, just like any other wheel, gives our opponents more access to interaction that will deal with our presence one way or another, and is one of the more nuanced interactions I love about Nekusar Wheels in general: We give opponents the opportunity to interact, but will they?

This Nekusar build has been a labor of love ever since I first built him several years ago, and my deepest dive into Commander in general. I don’t think there is any other color combo that matches my play style better than Grixis {2}{U}{B}{R}, and my obsession with drawing and drowning my friends in options that are swiftly wheeled away has been a fun journey that I’m sure to continue evolving. The deck has changed so much in the past few months that I felt it was important to re-write the entire summary here, and I’ll include the first two summaries in the dropdown below, as well as updates from here on out.

Thanks for visiting and please leave an upvote, and let me know if there are any other fun changes or interesting effects you think should be included. Cheers!

Old Summaries

Patch 2 Summary:

2022 - Q2 2023

The name of the game in my current iteration and in many similar decks is wheeling other players with cards whose designs are all reminiscent of the original king, the eponymous Wheel of Fortune. Some of the Allstars that come to mind are Windfall, Jace’s Architect, Magus of the Wheel, Whispering Madness and Winds of Change. There’s more in the deck to be sure, some on creatures, some in instants, but these are some of the most bread and butter when it comes to dishing out the pain, and Nekusar ensures there will be plenty of pain to go around.

Speaking of pain, there are many more lethal pieces in the deck than the Commander himself. Nekusar is an excellent piece and a menacing face to slap on top of the 99 in a special sleeve, but his appearances on the board are becoming less common thanks to the ease of access to wheeling effects and a variety of triggered abilities that proc on draw or discard. We’re mostly looking for Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, whose release in Brothers War has been one of the most significant buffs to this deck just the same as her presence has been felt across the format and beyond--cheers to all you salty standard players hahaha. Others who really get the job done on the card draw front are Underworld Dreams, Fate Unraveler, and Kederekt Parasite, while on the other end of the wheel, we have the highlights in Megrim, Liliana's Caress, Bloodchief Ascension, and Raiders' Wake. Peer into the Abyss sits as our one-cast K.O., and Chasm Skulker can become a force to be reckoned with that gives back a bit even after a board wipe occurs, assuming it’s not an exile or Boomerang effect.

Utility is a new focus I’ve made for the deck, bringing in cards like Bone Miser, Waste Not, Kess, Dissident Mage and Tegrid, God of Fright really give us a lot of incentive to keep the wheel combos going and disregarding our graveyard to ensure others are taking swaths of damage as they discard and draw. A bit of insurance/lifegain is built into the deck as well as giving Aristocrat players a pain in the neck with a few of the aforementioned hard hitters along with Sangromancer and Exquisite Blood, we want to make sure we are still around and gaining more while others are getting hurt. Another big utility card that might be overlooked is Harmonic Prodigy, whose triggered ability hits not only Nekusar but also Bone Miser and Sangromancer. The harmonic trigger can get even more cumbersome when Solphim, Mayhem Dominus is on the field, with a few test plays yielding up to 8 damage per card draw by turn 5. Other little pieces of utility come in the form of us not decking ourselves, or running out of gas in the wheel department if we happen to discard all of them in a single-wheel run. Time Reversal can save us if we are getting dangerously low, and in the case we don’t have Kess out, we can cast Echo of Eons from the graveyard to refill our library - preferably after Bojuka Bogging the reanimator’s graveyard, of course.

The land base is as efficient as I can afford currently, and I’m proud to say the deck doesn’t contain any proxies; yep, real Badlands! There are a few lands like Geier Reach Sanitarium we have that let us get a little extra card draw out if we want to keep some mana up for a Counterspell, though most of the counter magic we have will be focused on ensuring our big hitters—particularly Sheoldred, Nekusar, or Tegrid—stay alive, or our wheels hit the field intact.

I've tossed in a few things shuffled over from my old Legacy Trix deck, particularly Demonic Tutor and Force of Will for the try-hard insurance policies.

Patch 1 Summary:

2019 - 2022

What began as a curious endeavor into a fun obsession with Howling Mine has become my most adored commander deck and playstyle. Nekusar, The Mind Razer thrives on a fast-paced and definitive game plan that gives players unlimited opportunity in place of freedom of choice, setup, and at the price of life. It's fun for everyone!

Really though, through about 2 years of playing Nekusar, I have found that setting up your own board state to succeed is only secondary to the chaos that you should be enticing with a constant flow of wheeling gameplay. Players will often plan their turns a few moves in advance based on the hand they have, even choosing suboptimal openings for a key card in their hand. Our job is to use cards like Winds of Change, Dark Deal, or Windfall to keep them on their toes or in turmoil over their lost "big play". Everyone knows they would have won if they were able to make the perfect play for the next 5 turns, and somehow in EDH that is more ubiquitous a sensation than any other format. I encourage you to wheel your enemies - and yourself! - even if you don't have Nekusar, The Mind Razer or any of his engine companions to punish players. The mental anguish is literally the name of the game here, and we want to ensure we are playing with our opponents' heads as much as the possibilities in their hands.

Speaking of engines, it's important to note that while Nekusar, The Mind Razer is a great key player here and very fun to get out, there are others that work just as well or even better in some instances. Fevered Visions, Underworld Dreams, Kederekt Parasite, and Fate Unraveller all do Nekusars damage for cheaper and proc off our wheeling spells and abilities. Spiteful Visions may come as a pain to us, but we may avoid harming ourselves in the end with a pivotal and often overlooked card, Library of Leng. Why is the Library so good? Because while your opponents all must discard and draw, you may discard to the top instead. Couple that with infinite hand size, and you are able to strategize to your heart's content while your opponents struggle to deal with the massive life loss and a new hand to piece together.

Our discard keys are just as - if not more - important than our drawing pieces, as they all do either more damage or provide more utility than most of the draw abilities. Liliana's Caress, Megrim, and Raiders' Wake all do twice the damage as the drawing pings, but double up with a quick Jace's Archivist or Whispering Madness and players are looking to redraw quite a hefty price. Simply having one discard engine and one draw engine is enough to deal some serious damage, coupling with some utility discards and draws from Waste Not and The Locust God can get out of hand fast, all puns intended.

I have always loved the lore and vorthos of Liches, necromancers, and the undead, as well as drawing more cards than I need and just having everyone do the same. I take a lot of fun from that playstyle, and I couldn't have asked for a more perfect commander to encapsulate the Lich fantasy. I hope your Nekusar deck is just as rewarding to build and play!

Recommendations and discussion are welcomed and encouraged. Leave a Like and thanks for checking it out!

If you are looking for a more budget-friendly iteration of Nekusar, please check out my other build, The Deal // Budget Neukusar, the Mindrazer!

Top Ranked	Achieved #30 position overall 1 year ago Achieved #28 position in Commander / EDH 1 year ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Discard 1 year ago
Date added	3 years
Last updated	3 months
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	15 - 0 Mythic Rares 66 - 0 Rares 9 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.98
Tokens	Construct 0/0 C, Orc Army, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Deck inspirations/Favorites, A fine addition to my collection, Deck Ideas, Commander, Nekusar, Interesting Decks