Fair warning: Today's deck is probably "bad," at least in the sense it's not very competitive.

I love fast Commander games. I like slow ones, too, that last for hours with plenty of big swings. But there's something really fun about a game where the central question is who will reach zero life last. I'm specifically drawn to a deck that attempts to race to that point, throwing away its own life in an attempt to knock everyone else out of the game first. And when I saw today's commander, that's all I wanted to do.

Poor Neheb. Nicol Bolas really has done a number on the multiverse, hasn't he? On the other hand, the new version of Neheb lets us churn through our deck and make a bunch of extra mana. Red likes mana, because it can use it to power up spells and throw damage around. Damage kills opponents. Let's see if we can make something like this work, shall we?

Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion

• Creatures (2)
• 1 Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh
• 1 Neheb, the Eternal

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Jaya, Venerated Firemage
• 1 Tibalt, Rakish Instigator

• Instants (14)
• 1 Comet Storm
• 1 Fault Line
• 1 Fiery Impulse
• 1 Incinerate
• 1 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Lightning Strike
• 1 Price of Progress
• 1 Sarkhan's Catharsis
• 1 Searing Blaze
• 1 Searing Spear
• 1 Skullcrack
• 1 Smash to Smithereens
• 1 Thunderbolt
• 1 Volcanic Fallout

• Sorceries (18)
• 1 Acidic Soil
• 1 Banefire
• 1 Bonfire of the Damned
• 1 Breath of Darigaaz
• 1 Earthquake
• 1 Finale of Promise
• 1 Fire Ambush
• 1 Fireball
• 1 Flame Jet
• 1 Flame Rift
• 1 Flamebreak
• 1 Incendiary Flow
• 1 Lava Spike
• 1 Molten Disaster
• 1 Red Sun's Zenith
• 1 Rolling Earthquake
• 1 Slagstorm
• 1 Volcanic Hammer

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Ancient Runes
• 1 Mana Flare

• Artifacts (21)
• 1 Argentum Armor
• 1 Barbed Wire
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Coldsteel Heart
• 1 Copper Tablet
• 1 Darksteel Plate
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Elixir of Immortality
• 1 Extraplanar Lens
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Fire Diamond
• 1 God-Pharaoh's Statue
• 1 Hammer of Nazahn
• 1 Haunted Plate Mail
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Loxodon Warhammer
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Obsidian Battle-Axe
• 1 Ruby Medallion
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (40)
• 38 Mountain
• 1 Blighted Gorge
• 1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

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It makes mana with mana rocks like Sol Ring and Fire Diamond. It doubles mana with Mana Flare and Caged Sun. It also plays a ton of basic Mountains, mostly to leverage Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

We've got some equipment to raise Neheb's power. We're going for numbers, here, so we've got Loxodon Warhammer (which is nice because Lifelink may help us win the game), but we've also got Obsidian Battle-Axe for the auto-attach and Argentum Armor for some serious bulk.

We've got some spells which deal damage a piece at a time. Lightning Bolt is, of course, the benchmark, but mostly we're looking for more damage than mana out of our one-use spells. If all goes well, half the time we won't use them; we'll discard them to draw more cards, looking for a way to actually win the game.

We've got those, too, but they mostly come by way of things like Earthquake. It's possible we make enough mana that a massive Comet Storm will get us there, but most of the time it's going to be Earthquake. Count carefully.

We have an Elixir of Immortality. Always play it when you draw it. Seriously. That's our get-out-of-jail-free card if we draw so many cards we might actually deck ourselves.

We've got a couple of things like God-Pharoah's Statue and Barbed Wire to keep our opponent's life totals ticking down no matter what, which should help us when we cast that big ol' Earthquake.

But do you see the problem? If you don't, go back and look. I'll wait.

(If I could figure out how, I'd have a sound file of someone whistling playing right now.)

Yeah. The deck doesn't draw any cards. Like, none. So every time we play a land, it's one fewer card to churn through. Every time we play a Barbed Wire or a Finale of Promise it's one fewer card to loot. Eventually, we're going to get to a point where we are just topdecking... and it's going to happen pretty quickly.

There are two ways to deal with this problem. The first is to attempt to figure out some card draw. There is some! It's limited in Red, but stuff like Mind's Eye or Alhammarret's Archive is around. You can run a Mimic Vat and a Solemn Simulacrum. There are options. Or, we can leave this deck alone as a fun way to burn a lot of damage really quickly then flame out, where we count it as a victory if the game takes 30 minutes or less rather than being the last one alive, and use an Optionboard to change the approach. Since this is Convertible Commander, let's use an Optionboard.

• Granite Shard
• Razortip Whip
• Scalding Tongs
• Scepter of Empires
• Staff of Nin

First up we're going to take out the Equipment that buffs up our Commander. We're going to slap in these five cards to replace them. Then, we're going to switch Commanders to the other Neheb, Neheb, the Eternal.

We still don't draw many cards, but now we can be a bit more thoughtful in our planning and execution. We can stockpile a few burn spells while we play out our stuff that does damage turn after turn, building up for an eventual huge spell to knock out one player or all of them. It may take a bit, but with good threat assessment and a little luck, we'll be able to keep ourselves around long enough to get rid of everyone else.

Truthfully, this deck wants Gauntlet of Might and Storm World, but I don't think the individual cost of those old cards is worth it unless you've already got them. It might be worth running something like Reverberate to copy an Earthquake. The deck will be fun, and should be fast whether it wins or not, but a couple of expensive cards won't make it wildly more competitive.

I'd love to hear how you would build the new Neheb. Please sound off in the comments!

Thanks for reading.