Unesh, the Fair (Comboless Artifacts)

Commander / EDH Artifact Casual Control Mono-Blue Multiplayer

BosmaTheNL

Lands (33)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Mirrorpool
• 1x Mishra's Workshop
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mouth of Ronom
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Sanctum of Eternity
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 14x Snow-Covered Island
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Tolaria West
• 1x Urza's Saga

Sphinxs (9)

• 1x Argent Sphinx
• 1x Guardian of Tazeem
• 1x Sakashima of a Thousand Faces
• 1x Sakashima the Impostor
• 1x Shapesharer
• 1x Spark Double
• 1x Sphinx of Foresight
• 1x Sphinx of Magosi
• 1x Sphinx of the Second Sun

Untappers (8)

• 1x Clock of Omens
• 1x Filigree Sages
• 1x Hidden Strings
• 1x Mind Over Matter
• 1x Teferi, Temporal Archmage
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Unwinding Clock
• 1x Voltaic Key

Passive aggressive control (16)

• 1x Back to Basics
• 1x Edifice of Authority
• 1x Forbid
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Guardian of Tazeem
• 1x Kefnet's Monument
• 1x Kozilek, the Great Distortion
• 1x Lux Cannon
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Null Brooch
• 1x Oblivion Stone
• 1x Possessed Portal
• 1x Spine of Ish Sah
• 1x Steel Hellkite
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Thought-Knot Seer

Value (12)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Lithoform Engine
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Thassa's Oracle
• 1x Trading Post

ETB abuse (6)

• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Master Transmuter
• 1x Mimic Vat
• 1x Panharmonicon
• 1x Sword of Hearth and Home
• 1x Thassa, Deep-Dwelling

Panic Button (3)

• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Unstable Obelisk

Commander (1)

Ramp (16)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Basalt Monolith
• 1x Empowered Autogenerator
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Jeweled Lotus
• 1x Kefnet's Monument
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Metalworker
• 1x Mishra's Workshop
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Unstable Obelisk

Tutors (9)

• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Tolaria West
• 1x Transmute Artifact
• 1x Trinket Mage
• 1x Trophy Mage
• 1x Urza's Saga

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Blue shenanigans. Artifact shenanigans. No combo, no stax, no MLD, no extra turns, just shenanigans. This deck is built in a casual friendly way, but at the same time to make junk like Lux Cannon, Edifice of Authority, Null Brooch look degenerate. Goals: drown in card advantage and mana, control the game with our artifacts and abuse the hell of them untill you can kill with an arbitrarily huge Sphinx of Magosi or an arbitrary number of sphinxs courtesy of Mimic Vat. And you'll have the pleasure of playing Mind Over Matter and Paradox Engine fairly.

Strategy

The deck follows two main strategies to achieve victory:

1. Using untappers to abuse a number of artifacts with activated abilities and generate mana using multiple mana rocks.

2. using Unesh, various sphinxes and multiple ways to abuse ETB to Fact or Fiction numerous times plus other ETB creatures.

Both strategies meld very well. First, most of the etb abuse enablers are artifacts with activated abilities like Crystal Shard, Mimic Vat or Tawnos's Coffin which benefit from the untappers. Second, sphinxs offers great card advantage and quality to feed the machine while artifacts offers mana to cast sphinxs (even multiple times) and control of the game . Third is the great artifact support that offers the mono-blue color identity of Unesh. And as an extra you have Grand Architect tapping sphinxs to cast and activate artifacts.

Deck History

Built a Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur artifacts deck based in the famous Kozilek deck with an stax package and capacity of playing a turn 2 Jin -> got called things -> tried again with Azami, Lady of Scrolls artifacts going infinite in various ways -> got called things -> ditched inf combos, because I don't enjoy them, and stax, because I became a better person, to build a fair mono-blue artifact deck with Unesh. So Unesh, the Fair saw the light.

Sphinxs

Besides our general, we have three main sphinxs that outclasses everyother one:

• Consecrated Sphinx: The most straight forward one. Everyone know what it does, but now with reduced cost and ETB Fact or Fiction.

• Argent Sphinx: One of the main engines of this deck and an all star. For you get a new trigger. Every single turn, not only yours. And it doubles as built in protection. What else do you need? With an extremly easy Metalcraft to accomplish here in particular, you'll be Fact or Fiction like a madman in a four pod game.

• Sakashima the Impostor: The only thing better than Unesh is two of them. Shakashima, thought not an sphinx himself, will net you for two triggers when ETB, two triggers for every other sphinx and an stacked reduction in sphinxs cost of . And for another you get recursion and, of course, built in protection.

After these three behemoths, the rest of he sphinxs comes:

• Sphinx of Uthuun: The original Fact or Fiction sphinx, now with reduced cost and more Fact or Fiction. If you can abuse his ETB, the value you get will steamroll your opponents.

• Sphinx of Magosi: Big body, draws cards, gets bigger boddy. This fat sphinx will be one of our means to close the game when you are untapping mana rocks and generating abusive amounts of mana, drawing more cards and getting really obese.

• Chancellor of the Spires: Can go nuts with the right spell in our opponents graveyard since it doesn't exile.

• Shapesharer: You get a trigger for from this underrated clone. Opponents will think twice before playing spaghetti monsters. His activated ability is less versatile and mor expensive than Mirage Mirror's one, but you get to Fact or Fiction.

• Curator of Mysteries: Cheap sphinx with a decent body you can cycle for if you need to.

• Guardian of Tazeem: Cheap sphinx that will benefit most of the mono-blue nature of the deck, evolving the permanent based control we are trying to achieve.

• Sandstone Oracle: An sphinx good on its own with an -etb effect that stacks very well before the Fact or Fiction trigger. Is an sphinx and is an artifact, so it won't lack support from the deck.

Untapping

One part of the main strategy is untapping the various artifacts we have to generate value, mana and control. For this task we have a handle of cards that does the job quite good:

• Filigree Sages: It transforms extra mana in extra untaps without any othe downside. pay , untap an artifact. Doesn't matter how many times you do it, only if you have mana to pay it. With Gilded Lotus you can filter all your colorless mana into bluu mana and with Metalworker you can trade blue mana for a high amount of colorless mana. By far, the best mana sink of the deck.

• Mind Over Matter: Too many cards after too many Fact or Fiction? MoM acts as one of the best cards in the deck and acts as a card advantage sink (yeah, that exist in this deck), recycling useless excess cards into crazy value. with mana rocks it allows you discard half your hand to dump the other half and allows you more relevant untaps per turn than any other card in the deck. It can even pull its weight as a control card tapping problematic permanents.

• Paradox Engine: Cast something, untap all your artifacts. This card will generate a massive amount of value just by playing Magic: The Gathering. It feels even too powerful sometimes, winning the game by itself.

• Clock of Omens: Not as crazy value as the other cards but it will generate more revenue that you may expect with other artifacts that don't mind to be tapped.

• Unwinding Clock: In multiplayer it will untap every artifact for every single opponent's turn. This card allows Lux Cannon, Edifice of Authority to contol the game and Null Brooch to create a nice counter-wall.

• Synod Artificer: Really straight forward and effective, it will serve as a multitarget Voltaic Key.

• Voltaic Key: Never leave house without it.

• Teferi, Temporal Archmage: Doesn't win games on its own but you are never sad to draw it. It will offer four nice untaps per turn and most of the time will offset his cost inmediately. Can serve as card advantage in a pinch. It generates lots of value and make your game smoother. With fat flyers and creature control it is much easier to defend than in most decks.

• Tezzeret the Seeker: It untaps and it tutors directly into the battlefield. What else do you need? Easy to defend for the same reason as Teferi, Temporal Archmage.

ETB abuse

The other part of the strategy is abusing ETB trigger courtesy of Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign and other creatures like Thought-Knot Seer, Trinket Mage, Trophy Mage. Most of it is artifact based with some bouncing attached in highly versatile cards.

Non-artifacts:

• Deadeye Navigator: The ETB abuser. The navigator will give you a new trigger of whatever ETB effect for and comes with protection for himself and the creature you are abusing once the soulbond trigger resolves. You can even bounce himself to abuse another different creature.

• Mystic Confluence, Cryptic Command and Paradoxical Outcome: Can bounce your own creatures. See the Panic Buttons section.

• Jace, the Mind Sculptor: Offers bouncing your own creatures along many other features. As with Teferi, Temporal Archmage and Tezzeret the Seeker, this deck has a fine time defending planeswalkers with flying fatties and creature control.

• Mirrorpool: Clone whatever sphinx or another ETB creature. The fact thet the effect comes in a land is nice. Cloning sorceries and instants ads extra versatility.

Artifacts:

• Panharmonicon: All star in this deck. Double your ETB triggers without any added cost. Can win games on its own and even works with Spine of Ish Sah.

• Mimic Vat: Can be abused with untapping, gets you triggers steadily and act as a win condition putting an arbittrary amount of whatever fat flyer you have at your disposal. Won games by killing my own sphinxs to imprint on the vat.

• Conjurer's Closet: Really straight forward and an stable in any deck that wants to abuse ETB. Gets you one trigger at the end of all your turns.

• Crystal Shard: Played over Erratic Portal because it can be fetched by Trophy Mage and is cheaper to cast. Can be abused easily with untapping and can pull its weight in controlling the field. Can be used to defend your own creatures.

• Tawnos's Coffin: Exile your own creatures and untap: profit. You can use it to defend them. Very good at controlling the board with untapping and stack shenanigans.

• Proteus Staff: Tuck your creatures to get new ones, and the trigger they bring. With enough untapping and mana you can cycle through your creature pool and get a lot of triggers. And can get rid of problematic creatures.

Ramp

Lands:

• Ancient Tomb: Taps for two and the life loss is meaningless most of the time. We all know this land.

• Mishra's Workshop: Extremly relevant in this deck. With so many artifacts, a land that produces three mana is huge. The only downside is that you can't use those for casting Unesh.

• Myriad Landscape: Slow but resilient ramp. And adding two islands matter for cards like Vedalken Shackles and Guardian of Tazeem.

• Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: We can milk the most of this card in mono-blue and very important colored ramp mid to late game.

Mana rocks, the meat of our ramp:

• Sol Ring and Mana Crypt: Autoinclude in 99% of decks, and more in here with capacity to abuse them.

• Mox Opal: In any artifact deck, the same of above.

• Mana Vault and Grim Monolith: Fast ramp easily untapped in this deck. Allows Unesh turn 3.

• Coalition Relic: Why this one and not other costed mana rocks? Basically Coalition Relic benefits the most of untapping for crazy ramp and allows turn 4 Unesh.

• Thran Dynamo and Gilded Lotus: Mid to late game ramp very abusable with untapping for big mana.

• Metalworker: In this deck with so many artifacts and card advantage, can tap for 6-8 mana easily. Despite the summoning sickness, this is one of the best rocks in this deck and can steal games if unresponded.

Cost reducers:

• Urza's Incubator: Reduce the cost of every sphinx in and allows Unesh turn 4.

• Kefnet's Monument: Why play this when Sapphire Medallion cost less and works with all blue spells? Probably Sapphire is the better card, but the monument accomplish almost the same, furthers our passive control gameplan and, most importantly, is way cooler.

Other:

• Grand Architect: Taps himself and other sphinxs to give an important amount of mana for casting and activating artifacts. Never been sad of drawing it.

• Mana Drain: Cheap hard counter that can ramp us and let us cast Unesh a few turns earlier.

Tutors

Thought not a combo deck, it is important to find the right pieces to stop what our opponents are doing, the right untapper or artifact ot even ramp early on to play an smoother game.

• Expedition Map: Finds you the right land and makes an engine with Academy Ruins to change a draw + for any land you wish. Other than that, every deck should run this.

• Fabricate: Straight forward sorcery tutor for any artifact in the deck.

• Tolaria West: Finds you any land, Mox Opal, Mana Crypt and Pact of Negation. Can function as a land early on if needed.

• Inventors' Fair: A tutor for any artifact attached to a land. Very good. Reusable with Crucible of Worlds.

• Trophy Mage and Trinket Mage: Tutor attached to an ETB effect ready to be abused. Both can tutor very relevant cards. Both can function as ramp.

• Transmute Artifact: Tutors for any artifact and puts it into the battlefield. Sacrificing an artifact is not as painful as it looks.

• Whir of Invention: Instant speed in to the battlefield tutor to do crazy stuff. Its cost can be reduced.

• Tezzeret the Seeker: Untaps and tutors into the battlefield. Can be used more than once and is easily defended in this deck.

Passive aggressive control

This mono-blue deck doesn't control the game using a huge counterspell suite. Instead we are using a more subtle, permanent based control that grows overtime.

Stopping creatures:

• Edifice of Authority: Really underrated card, easily achieving those three counters, and when it does can take creatures out of the game without even taking them out of the battlefield. With untapping, you won't need to worry about beaters and creatures with activated abilities for the rest of the game.

• Guardian of Tazeem: An sphinx that takes care of creatures in a similar way than Edifice of Authority.

• Kefnet's Monument: Little brother of the two above but with it's added cost reduction is nice and cool.

• Proteus Staff: Tuck that mighty creature away or you're own for more value! Really nice card when you activate it multiple times.

• Tawnos's Coffin: Exile you're opponent creatures and abuse it to death with untapping shenanigans. Exile you're own and the untap for more juicy triggers.

• Vedalken Shackles: Thought not that abusable as Tawnos's Coffin but more powerful. Gets rid of nasty generals without the option to be returned to command zone. Does nasty things with Proteus Staff and Conjurer's Closet.

Blowing up things:

• Lux Cannon: The card that triggered building this deck. The most pleasant card to abuse, jank in 99% of the decks, but it can blow more than ten permanents per game in this deck. The card that will make your opponents scoop the most.

• Spine of Ish Sah: Pay , blow whatever you want. Recur it in various forms, mainly Trading Post.

• Strip Mine: Blow lands, recur with Crucible of Worlds. Keeps Cabal Coffers in check. No one gets to keep nice lands.

• Mouth of Ronom: Blow small creatures. Recur with Crucible of Worlds.

• Steel Hellkite: A pet card of mine, and for a reason. Keeps tokens in check and blows whatever you want if you manage to connect a hit with it, which is not hard because it flies.

Prevention:

• Null Brooch: An all star in this deck. You can handle creatures with a pletora of other cards, but this one handles non-creatures entirely by its own and enough untappers. Never leave home without it.

• Thought-Knot Seer: This card stops the unstoppable like the mighty Krosan Grip. The cards it exiles never comes back, it's abusable because ETB trigger and let you choose the opponent who draws the card when it leaves for extremly fun politics.

• All the Panic Buttons section fits in this category.

Silver bullets:

• Arcane Lighthouse: Gets rid of those pesky hexproof and shroud so we can target them.

Panic buttons

Though this deck is not built to be a permission deck, we have an small suite of counterspells that fits quite nice the deck strategies and offers needed protection in the right moment. The counters:

• Pact of Negation: Fetchable with Tolaria West, this counter will stop anything at any given point even with all mana producers tapped, making it the most decissive of the list most times.

• Cryptic Command: Incredible card that made its way into the list by its sheer versatility, allowing to hard counter anything while drawing a card, bouncing our own creatures for more ETB or dangerous creatures on the opposing side, and even act as a fog.

• Mystic Confluence: Cryptic Command's little brother has almost the same versatility and can be even better with the three choices clause. The downside is not being a hard counter, which can leave you in a bad stop if the other side of the table has enough mana. But all in all, Mystic Confluence is everything but a bad card that always has something to give in almost every situation.

• Mana Drain: Cheap counterspell that stops everything and let us progress with our game with ramp. Good both early and late game.

• Whir of Invention: How is this card listed as a counter? This amazing tutor has the ability to surprise with an instant speed Null Brooch stopping a plethora of unwanted non-creature spells. Aswell can get you out of other sticky situations with instant speed Vedalken Shackles, Spine of Ish Sah, Edifice of Authority, etc.

Non counters:

• Cyclonic Rift: No explanation needed.

• Paradoxical Outcome: Though yet in testing, this card made the list by pure versatility. It saves your permanents, recycles your fast mana and lets you reuse your ETB while drawing you an important number of cards. In conclusion, it is an instant speed card that protects your staff from both wraths and targetted removal while generating value.

Engines

Besides abusing untapping and ETB, the deck has various cards or synergies that works on their own:

• Argent Sphinx: Explained in the last section, this cheap sphinx along our commander will generate a Fact or Fiction per turn for just without the need of any other piece besides a ridiculously easy metalcraft to match.

• Deadeye Navigator: Creates a repeatable stream of ETB triggers with any sphinx or the other creatures with ETB efects. Can asemble a machine pretty fast Soulbonded to a Trinket Mage or a Trophy Mage, control the game with Thought-Knot Seer or generate huge card advantage with any sphinx or Unesh.

• Crucible of Worlds: Will generate an endless stream of Snow-Covered Island with our four fetchlands and, in a slow but rampy manner, Myriad Landscape. Will punish our opponents with the classic Strip Mine and the underrated Mouth of Ronom. Will be a recursion engine with Buried Ruin and a repeatable tutoring engine with Inventors' Fair. Reuse Mirrorpool for extra value.

• Master Transmuter: Pay with Spine of Ish Sah to destroy any target permanent. Pay with Sandstone Oracle generate crazy card advantage. Same with Phyrexian Metamorph and other sphinx. Do it as many times you can untap Transmuter. Use to draw cards with Sensei's Divining Top if needed. Exile creatures forever with Tawnos's Coffin.

• Academy Ruins + Expedition Map : Trade a draw + for any land you wish. May be slow but is worth it when you have enough mana or you foresee a long game. Having those key utility lands wins games. Add Crucible of Worlds to max value.

• Proteus Staff + Vedalken Shackles : Both tutorable with Trophy Mage, will do nasty things together. Steal creatures and tuck them while you cheat your own and get some nice ETB triggers. Conjurer's Closet + Vedalken Shackles lets you keep the stolen creatures.

• Spine of Ish Sah + Trading Post : Recur Spine, draw a card. Simple, mana hungry but can be decisive with enough mana and untappers. Spine of Ish Sah + Transmute Artifact is kind of good, and you can even bring Trading Post if you foresee a long and slow game.

• Mimic Vat + Trading Post : Trading Post serves as a sac outlet for Mimic Vat if needed, but the real meat rest in the vat feeding the post (after you got those juicy ETB triggers, of course) to get a recursion engine.

Value cards

Some of the cards in the deck are just in because the amount of value they bring.

• Academy Ruins, Buried Ruin, Trading Post and Crucible of Worlds: They all offer good recursion and are key parts in some secondary engines this deck uses to gain advantage.

• Jace, the Mind Sculptor: Offers card advantage before Unesh can come out, let's you abuse your ETB creatures and bounces problematic creatures to gain some tempo.

• Padeem, Consul of Innovation: Protects your artifacts and offers early card advantage before Unesh can come out.

• Rings of Brighthearth: Copy the numerous activated abilities our artifacts provides. Feels as another untapper as it feels like you untapped the artifact for another activation. An staple in this deck.

• Oracle's Vault: With all the untapping it will be no issue to get those three counters and then it will just put you ahead from everyone else. One of the favourite cards to untap hundreds of times.

• Phyrexian Metamorph: Copy any artifact or get a new ETB trigger from any creature. Pure versatility.

• Sensei's Divining Top: Really good earlygame and lets you draw extra cards with untap shenanigans.

Changes

Caged Sun => Jace, the Mind Sculptor

• Reasons Caged Sun was in: Good doubler for late game that gives much needed blue mana.

• Reasons it isn't anymore: Too mana costy, didn't accelerated me when needed and was underwhelming.

• Why Jace, the Mind Sculptor: With how easy it is to defend planeswalkers in this deck, Jace offers tons of value and versatility. Brainstorm stacks really well before Fact or Fiction and fetches, Fateseal goes well with the passive aggressive control approach and bouncing enables ETB and getting rid of problematic creatures for a while.

Windreader Sphinx => Deadeye Navigator

• Reasons Windreader Sphinx was in: It may be the weakest sphinx in the deck, but with enough fat flyers on the field it will draw you tons of cards.

• Reasons it isn't anymore: Underwhelming sphinx at best. It only drew you cards when already winning.

• Why Deadeye Navigator: Though not an sphinx, it can trigger Fact or Fiction on his own and serve as a repeatable engine to abuse ETB triggers.

Snow-Covered Island => Master Transmuter

• Reasons Snow-Covered Island was in: It is an island.

• Reasons it isn't anymore: Testing the deck with 33 lands. Is not hard to hit enough land drops untill you hit ramp and cast Unesh or card advantage to get you more lands. Once Unesh is out, land drops are a non issue.

• Why Master Transmuter: Cheats and protects artifacts, built in protection and a engine with Spine of Ish Sah and Sandstone Oracle, exiles creatures permanently with Tawnos's Coffin and can be abused with untaping.

Snow-Covered Island => Mirrorpool

• Reasons Snow-Covered Island was in: It is an island.

• Reasons it isn't anymore: No problem to achieve enough blue mana most of the times.

• Why Mirrorpool: Can duplicate any creature for extra ETB or even copy one of our tutors or a modal spell for extra value. A fair price for coming tapped.

Top Ranked	Achieved #12 position overall 7 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	3 years
Key combos	Spine of Ish Sah + Transmute Artifact Spine of Ish Sah + Trading Post Proteus Staff + Vedalken Shackles Mimic Vat + Trading Post Conjurer's Closet + Vedalken Shackles
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	15 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.52
Tokens	Construct 0/0 C, Copy Clone, Emblem Teferi, Temporal Archmage, Goat 0/1 W
Folders	Interesting Commander, U/G