A few years ago, before I started writing these articles, I fell in love with a deck featured in an article by Abe Sargent, one of the most prolific ambassadors of our game. The deck was built around a commander now well-known as degenerate. I built my own version of that deck, and it’s one of those decks my playgroup doesn’t let me play anymore. My editor built his version and ripped it apart after one game which he won by taking five of the last eight turns of the game — he didn’t want to be banned from his playgroup.

The thing is, the wizards at Wizards keep messing with different ways to do things, trying to balance the game and create a different experience. Edric can scratch the power-aggro itch for those of us who occasionally find ourselves in a game with a guy playing Moat, but for a group a bit more casual, it might be nice to be able to do something similar, but not quite so broken. Enter . . .  this guy!

This feels a bit like Edric-lite. He creates a reason for us to not be attacked, but not nearly as much of one as Edric. He draws us cards when we do damage, but not as many, and he encourages spreading the attack. He switches colors on us, so we don’t have the mana of but we have the speed of . His power is lower but his toughness is higher, which yields its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Ludevic isn’t a rogue, which actually matters. But the gist of the idea is the same: we encourage our friends to attack each other and not us, and we want to do some damage in order to draw cards ourselves.

Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist ? Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist

• Creatures (34)
• 1 Aether Figment
• 1 Blood Knight
• 1 Boggart Arsonists
• 1 Cloud of Faeries
• 1 Cloudseeder
• 1 Coast Watcher
• 1 Defender of Chaos
• 1 Dragonmaster Outcast
• 1 Dwarven Grunt
• 1 Flitterstep Eidolon
• 1 Goblin Mountaineer
• 1 Goblin Piledriver
• 1 Grayscaled Gharial
• 1 Gudul Lurker
• 1 Guma
• 1 Guttersnipe
• 1 Hanweir Garrison
• 1 Hypnotic Siren
• 1 Invisible Stalker
• 1 Ire Shaman
• 1 Jace's Phantasm
• 1 Koth's Courier
• 1 Legion Loyalist
• 1 Merfolk Spy
• 1 Metathran Soldier
• 1 Quickling
• 1 Scion of Oona
• 1 Sea Sprite
• 1 Signal Pest
• 1 Silumgar Sorcerer
• 1 Spellstutter Sprite
• 1 Stratus Dancer
• 1 Surveilling Sprite
• 1 Triton Shorestalker

• Instants (12)
• 1 Blue Elemental Blast
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Deprive
• 1 Familiar's Ruse
• 1 Izzet Charm
• 1 Negate
• 1 Red Elemental Blast
• 1 Snap
• 1 Unified Will
• 1 Unsubstantiate
• 1 Vapor Snag
• 1 Voyage's End

• Sorceries (10)
• 1 Beacon of Tomorrows
• 1 Distortion Strike
• 1 Expropriate
• 1 Notorious Throng
• 1 Part the Waterveil
• 1 Plea for Power
• 1 Recurring Insight
• 1 Taigam's Strike
• 1 Temporal Trespass
• 1 Treasure Cruise

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Fevered Visions
• 1 Flameshadow Conjuring
• 1 Mind Unbound

• Lands (40)
• 12 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 1 Arcane Lighthouse
• 1 Blighted Cataract
• 1 Blighted Gorge
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Encroaching Wastes
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Foundry of the Consuls
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Hanweir Battlements
• 1 Homeward Path
• 1 Kher Keep
• 1 Mystifying Maze
• 1 Nivix, Aerie of the Firemind
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Spirebluff Canal
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Swiftwater Cliffs
• 1 Tectonic Edge
• 1 Teetering Peaks
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Wandering Fumarole
• 1 IzzetBoilerworks

Buy This Deck

The deck also has a really low converted mana cost, and because we’ll be drawing an extra card or two or three every turn, we’ll hit our land drops pretty reliably. So, we can skip any sort of ramp or artifact mana, and just play lands. Most of our lands come into play untapped, too, so the occasional CIPT (comes into play tapped) land won’t mess us up too badly.

With any luck, we’ll be able to start drawing an extra card starting on turn three. We’ll play out a 2-drop (we’ve got a whole bunch of them) on turn two, then stick Ludevic on turn three, swing with the 2-drop, and draw that extra card. From then on out, we’ll almost always have something that can get through, which helps us keep up because we should be playing two or three cards a turn cycle pretty regularly. Fevered Visions will also draw us an extra card, and because all our opponents will also be drawing from it and Ludevic, the enchantment will help keep life totals going down, plus give our opponents a reason to not kill us, since we’re keeping their cards flowing. We’re trying a delicate balance of assembling enough force to destroy our opponents while discouraging their attacks of us without a traditional board of creatures and without alarming them into killing us.

We’re going to win with, well, that bunch of goofy 2-drops. We can recover from a board wipe pretty quickly with Ludevic, so we can play out what we’ve got and attack. The damage sneaks up, because nothing we have looks big and scary. It’s just a few points here and there and because we’ll attack different players based on the various forms of evasion, we’ll be spreading the love around. Meanwhile, because others will want to draw the extra card, they’ll be throwing their damage around as well, and (hopefully) it will be at our opponents. With any luck, one or two of them will kill each other and we’ll be able to alpha strike for the win.

We’ve got a bit of a Faerie sub theme. They’re cheap, they fly, and they play nicely with Scion of Oona, plus they make Spellstutter Sprite work better. We also have one fun little Easter Egg with Hanweir Garrison and Hanweir Battlements, because if we get both of them out we can get Hanweir, the Writhing Township, a seriously bad hombre. Flameshadow Conjuring gives us a chance to attack right away with most things we play for the low, low cost of . After a wrath, that can be the difference between an extra card and not.

The final thing we’re going to do is take some extra turns. Yeah, some people frown on that, but we’re not going to go infinite with it or anything. We’re just going to cast Temporal Trespass or Expropriate and take one. (Or two or three, I guess, if we get really lucky with Expropriate.) One advantage of all those Faeries is a bunch of them are Rogues, which means we can Prowl out Notorious Throng for an extra turn and a bunch of extra creatures.

Then we’ve got our optionboard. Since extra turns have a way of making everyone mad, we can leverage using creatures which have great evasion in a different way — Equipment!

• Treasure Mage
• Trinket Mage
• Trophy Mage
• Argentum Armor
• Darksteel Axe
• Fireshrieker
• Masterwork of Ingenuity
• Quietus Spike
• Strata Scythe
• Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang

There are some great cards out of reach of our budget. Specifically, Stitch in Time and Walk the Aeons would both be great additions on the “take extra turns” train. If you don’t plan to play with that group ever again, Snapcaster Mage can be vicious. True-Name Nemesis, Glen Elendra Archmage, and Thada Adel, Acquisitor are worth considering. For the optionboard, any and all of the Swords of X and Y would be fantastic, but Sword of Light and Shadow would probably be the first choice. You can also mix and match the equipment. Loxodon Warhammer is a perfectly reasonable choice, and may be better than Fireshrieker (the hammer is good no matter what carries it. Fireshrieker really needs another equipment to be good, but will create a bigger hit when it works. So, safe and reliable or risky and flashy!). Sword of the Paruns can’t be searched with any of the mages, but it would be great. Also, Slither Blade is coming out next week (though you may already have one if you went to a Prerelease) and would be great here.

How would you build this deck? It looks like it would be fun and a bit surprising, though are the extra turns the wrong angle? Please let me know in the comments!

This deck will require some careful play, a little politicking, and a fair bit of subterfuge, but pulling off a win with it will feel really good. In a format of Avenger of Zendikar and Obliterate, what’s better than winning with Guma?

Total cost of Main Deck: $96.95

Total cost of Optionboard: $13.61

Total cost of both: $110.56