Today's deck is designed to pursue victory through several avenues. In order to avoid building yet another copycat deck, I am experimenting with alternative ways to win while still using Nekusar, the Mindrazer as the centerpiece of a deck.

I don't actually have the Commander 2013 Edition deck with which he was originally included, just this copy of his card. As such, I am building this deck basically from scratch. I haven't even looked up the deck list to see what his default supporting cards were. I do have a fair idea what other net decks include, but I don't want to copy them. I want to use cards I already have and see what I can do with them.

The General

He's a 5-CMC (2UBR) 2/4 zombie wizard with the following card text:

At the beginning of each player's draw step, that player draws an additional card. Whenever an opponent draws a card, Nekusar, the Mindrazer deals 1 damage to that player.

So what does this suggest? Force opponents to draw as much as possible, add anything else that also hurts them even more when they draw, and then toss in some penalties for their inevitable discards. However, this strategy puts a huge target on Nekusar for spot removal because he gets obnoxious fast.

With that in mind, I decided to moderate what would appear to be his typical strategy by incorporating some alternative nasty options. His colors are blue, black, and red. What do these colors all do well? They copy, steal, and kill stuff outright.

Copy/Paste

"Gee, that's a nice card! I want one, too!" Body Double, Cemetery Puca, Clone, Evil Twin, Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, and Reverberate let me adapt to whatever an opponent is playing.

Theft

"I changed my mind. You can't have that. It's MINE now!" Molten Primordial, Act of Treason, Slave of Bolas, Confiscate, Enslave, and Mind Control let me steal whatever cool stuff opponents may play.

Murder

"On second thought, I don't want that, but you can't have it either!" Izzet Staticaster, Doom Blade, Homing Lightning, and Turn/Burn are examples of cards that can take out obstacles by more direct means, especially big beasts or token hordes.

Of course, the deck has a fair amount of forced draw to support the general along with a lot of the usual blue counterspell tools, red destruction, and black graveyard shenanigans too. I even included some cards that may allow a little bit of room for pseudo-group-hug negotiations. I look forward to testing it through a few games to learn whether it needs to be adjusted or redesigned from scratch.

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