In this week’s experiment, we take a Grixis-colored Vampire from Innistrad and use her spellcasting superpowers to warp time and infect our opponents with the plague, leaving them with nothing but full graveyards and dwindling life totals.

With Commander (2013 Edition) on the horizon and already fully previewed, I thought it would be fun to investigate at least one of the new cards and see what we can do. While there are a few combo-friendly pieces coming out November 1, it appears that most of the cards are more aligned to multiplayer Timmies than they are to combo-loving Johnnies. But I wouldn’t let that stop me.

After all, casting free spells is a territory rife with opportunity.

She’s been known for a while, ever since her reveal at PAX East, but at the time, I only saw her through the lens of multiplayer Commander. Of course, that’s to be expected since that’s what she was printed for, but it’s important to keep in mind that these cards aren’t restricted to multiplayer—or to Commander at all. I saw her as a Grixis milling card with occasional upside—without manipulation, I expect her to rarely hit relevant free spells, at least off her first couple casts. However, if we’re able to more finely control our library and jam-pack a sixty-card deck with powerful spells, we just might be able to lock up a game against a single opponent.

Making Time

My first instinct was that it would be awesome to hit Time Warp effects off our Jeleva. We attack, and we take an extra turn, allowing us to attack again! Unfortunately, our Vampire only hits for 1, and even in an ideal world wherein we hit four of our own Time Stretches and four of our opponent’s Time Stretches, that’s still only sixteen turns, giving Jeleva time to deal only 17 damage. For a totally unrealistic scenario, that’s not very high upside.

While I still like the idea of filling our deck with Time Warps, it’s clear we’ll need other options. Spelltwine will allow us to reuse a Time Warp or Time Stretch. It doesn’t have good synergy with Temporal Mastery, but I couldn’t help but include the Avacyn Restored card for its miracle cost. The deck is built around casting expensive spells for cheap, and when we don’t have a Jeleva around, it could be nice to take an extra turn for only 2.

Feeling Sick

In Grixis colors, when investigating expensive spells, it’s hard to overlook Cruel Ultimatum, a powerhouse from its Standard days and no less impressive now. The biggest downside of a free Ultimatum with this deck is the potential lack for creatures in our graveyard to return. We’ll be focusing on our Vampire here, along with her spells, so we don’t want to pack in a bunch of Raise Dead targets for the Ultimatum. Of course, drawing three cards, gaining 5 life, draining our opponent for 5, and forcing him or her to sacrifice a creature all stack up quite nicely as well. And the Lava Axe portion is especially relevant as we try to kill our opponent with Jeleva and her 1 power.

A few other big spells I considered were Cabal Conditioning, Sorin's Vengeance, Mind's Desire, and Dragonstorm. By casting a precombat spell or two and then the opponent’s potential instant or sorcery first, we could build up a storm count of three or four for our Mind's Desire or Dragonstorm, but that doesn’t seem like quite enough to ensure a good Mind's Desire turn, and playing with Dragonstorm would mean squeezing a few uncastable Dragons into our deck. Bogardan Hellkite is great and all, but I’d rather stick with spells. Sorin's Vengeance does a lot of work, but it will never be enough on its own, and if I only have a window to cast one free spell, I’d rather have it give me extra turns or deny my opponent resources—as in life or cards; only the last point of life matters.

Cabal Conditioning is fine as well, forcing our opponent to discard four cards off our Jeleva’s mana cost. Wit's End would be better in that regard, taking the entire hand. But I’m actually a pretty big fan of Undercity Plague. Casting it once during combat will allow us to immediately encode it onto Jeleva, letting us cast it afterward when she hits. If we snuck in quickly enough in the game with our Vampire, our opponent may be down to only one or two lands, drastically reducing the number of options available to stop us and our Jeleva. While the Plague doesn’t greatly increase our clock, it does have the potential to simply lock our opponent out, probably drawing a concession.

Sort It Out

One of the keys to this deck will be having the correct pieces at the right time. I recommend some Demonic Tutors, if you have them, or, ideally, Scroll Racks. However, I think Diabolic Tutor and its ilk are too expensive for what this deck’s trying to do, which is: Quickly produce a Jeleva, Nephalia’s Scourge and then lock the opponent out of the game with Time Warps, Cruel Ultimatums, and Undercity Plagues.

But there are some more affordable options to help us both find Jeleva and set up a nice suite of cards on the top of our library. Mystical Tutor is a bit cheaper than Scroll Rack or Demonic Tutor, and Brainstorm and Frantic Search are nice options for these tasks. Brainstorm can take a handful of expensive spells and turn them into free-spell fodder for Jeleva, and Frantic Search is great for when it’s a gift from Jeleva—casting it free means generating mana for a post-combat spell, which could be a Time Warp we just drew off the Search.

Pay the Costs

The goal of this deck is to cast Jeleva, Nephalia’s Scourge on turn three or four and be attacking on turn four or five. Attacking for the first time on turn five feels a bit late, so we have some tools to speed up the process.

First, we have one of each Ravnica Signet that matches Jeleva’s Grixis colors. When we draw one, it will speed up our clock by a turn, though we don’t want fistfuls of them, as two Signets actually don’t put us ahead in terms of turns, and they will clog up our Jeleva reveals. Unlike Commander, we don’t have the luxury of paying exorbitant amounts of mana for her—we’ll always only see four cards, so let’s hope they’re expensive spells and not Signets.

Another nonspell here is Simian Spirit Guide. This Planar Chaos edition of Elvish Spirit Guide is like a Pyretic Ritual that doesn’t force us into . Essentially, we gain 1 mana for one card, which is the same as the Pyretic Ritual, and this Ape Spirit will let us go off on turn three with a Signet and a Reckless Charge or, you know, earlier than we otherwise could depending on whatever other cards we do or do not draw.

Oh yeah, did I forget Reckless Charge? This sweet Odyssey card pumps Jeleva’s power by 3 to help close out games, and it can do it twice with its flashback cost. The haste is key here as well; without a card like this, I doubt I’d bother with the Spirit Guide. While I don’t want to build my whole deck around Spirit Guides and Reckless Charges, including both of them does offer us occasional explosive games and rare super-explosive games. If you want to try out a different haste enabler, I recommend Crimson Wisps.

Wrap It Up

Finally, we have a couple more cards. Snap is here to generate mana in the way Frantic Search does, to clear away potential blockers and force the opponent to sacrifice the lands needed to recast them (after hitting with the encoded Undercity Plague), and to reset Jeleva. Once we’ve cast our one or two spells with her, it may be nice to return her for a second shot at the big time. Of course, the new legend rule works in our favor here, as we can just cast a second copy and put the first into our graveyard, but we won’t always have a second copy available.

I also snuck in an Army of the Damned because, as you may know, I love that card.

"Nephalia Time"

• Creatures (6)
• 2 Simian Spirit Guide
• 4 Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge

• Spells (34)
• 2 Snap
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Frantic Search
• 1 Army of the Damned
• 2 Cruel Ultimatum
• 2 Reckless Charge
• 2 Spelltwine
• 2 Temporal Mastery
• 2 Time Stretch
• 3 Undercity Plague
• 4 Time Warp
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Rakdos Signet
• 3 Scroll Rack

• Lands (20)
• 2 Island
• 2 Blood Crypt
• 2 Temple of Deceit
• 2 Watery Grave
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Steam Vents

Buy This Deck

I hope you enjoyed this week’s experiment with the new Innistrad Vampire from Commander (2013 Edition). May you go out and suck the spell-blood of your enemies.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com