The Mindrazer's Court

Commander / EDH* Discard Midrange Theme/Gimmick UBR (Grixis)

halloway747

Land (37)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Cascade Bluffs
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Haunted Ridge
• 8x Island
• 1x Izzet Boilerworks
• 4x Mountain
• 1x Rakdos Carnarium
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Shipwreck Marsh
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stormcarved Coast
• 1x Sunken Ruins
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Watery Grave

Utility (8)

• 1x Clever Impersonator
• 1x Dream Halls
• 1x Kess, Dissident Mage
• 1x Library of Leng
• 1x Lier, Disciple of the Drowned
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Vedalken Orrery

Draw (4)

• 1x Geth's Grimoire
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Teferi's Ageless Insight

Pain (12)

• 1x Bloodchief Ascension
• 1x Fate Unraveler
• 1x Fevered Visions
• 1x Kederekt Parasite
• 1x Liliana's Caress
• 1x Megrim
• 1x Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted
• 1x Phyrexian Tyranny
• 1x Raiders' Wake
• 1x Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1x Spiteful Visions
• 1x Underworld Dreams

Discard Wheel (10)

• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Incendiary Command
• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Khorvath's Fury
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Wheel and Deal
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Whispering Madness
• 1x Windfall

Removal (7)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Pongify
• 1x Rapid Hybridization
• 1x Terminate

Commander (1)

Ramp (11)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Misc Wheel (6)

• 1x Day's Undoing
• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Molten Psyche
• 1x Teferi's Puzzle Box
• 1x Time Reversal
• 1x Winds of Change

Payoff (4)

• 1x Sangromancer
• 1x Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip
• 1x The Locust God
• 1x Waste Not

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Maybeboard

Other (4)

• 1x Goblin Electromancer
• 1x Magus of the Jar
• 1x Memory Jar
• 1x Wheel of Fortune

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Would you like to buy a vowel?

One of my very earliest commander decks, Nekusar, the Mind Razer has seen likely more reworks and tweaks than any of my other OG decks (those being Prossh, Skyraider of Kher and Meren of Clan Nel Toth). From the very first build, an unfocused and mismatched pile of card draw, wheels, and misguided infinite combos, to the now typical Howling Mine style brew, which was vastly too slow and mana starved to keep up with our opponents insane card draw, and was nuked out of existence by a single well placed Swords to Plowshares to this version, laser focused on wheeling and damning the consequences.

This version of the deck eschews the typical group draw effects, like Font of Mythos or Kami of the Crescent Moon and places all of our eggs into the wheel theme. No longer does the deck rely on Nekusar to draw us additional cards and attrition our opponents life totals. This tech stuffs as much punisher redundancy as is possible, from Underworld Dreams and Fate Unraveler to mimic our Commander's ability to Megrim and Waste Not to punish discarding. Phyrexian Tyranny is a personal favorite, as a must answer threat that taxes mana and life totals at an obscene rate.

We're aiming for a critical mass of wheel effects here, most of which lean heavily into discard, such as Windfall and Magus of the Wheel. Others, like Echo of Eons deal slightly less damage from our punishers but still add to the constant churning of hands we so desperately need.

Auxillary cards like Library of Leng help us keep the cards we want when we discard and Kess, Dissident Mage help us reuse wheels we've had to dump into our graveyard. Vedalkan Orrery gives us incredible flexibility to double up on our wheels, or give us the opportunity to respond at the last possible moment.

I don't run any counter magic in this build, instead focusing on redundancy with our wheels and punishers. I did previously run a pretty substantial counter package, including Arcane Denial and Dream Fracture but I found that holding them to ensure our wheels go through or to protect Nekusar was always an uphill battle, and the frequency of wheels means we can rarely count on them staying in our hand long enough to actually use them when they mattered.

Our mana base feels much more consistent to me in this iteration than in previous. We're running a bunch of mana rocks to help get us consistent big mana, which isn't as much of a problem for us anyway, since we don't relay on recasting Nekusar as much anymore, but does still help when trying to cast multiple wheels in a turn to close out a game. I was never a big fan of Wayfarer's Bauble in theory, I guess because it showed up in budget deck techs constantly and I was kind of sick of it, but I've been genuinely surprised by its usefulness. Early game, it's a fantastic way to ensure a land drop or ramp us a little, and late game it's a low enough cost that we can cast it and maybe even activate it in the same turn with minimal disruption to our game plan. Consider me a convert.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 41 - 0 Rares 25 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.29
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Insect 1/1 UR, Zombie 2/2 B