For over a decade now, I've been known for playing one particular kind of Commander deck: Sharuum the Hegemon. Sharuum was my first real deck and became a list I curated and updated slowly over the years. I loved the things that could be done with it and the shenanigans often involved with recurring artifacts from your graveyard. As such, I'm always on the lookout for cool new cards for the deck, and even wrote about my list a few years ago when Emry, Lurker of the Loch was previewed for Throne of Eldraine.

Since Emry, however, there have been very few times where I've updated the list. In fact, after the list upgrades with Emry, the only real additions were Rebecc and Glacian from Commander Legends as they both worked quite well with the deck's themes. Glacian had great synergy with Sharuum and the couple other graveyard recursion and Rebecc worked great with the various artifacts - especially Mycosynth Lattice.

By and large, though, what you see in the aforementioned article is still the same as it was then. I've optimized it enough in my preferred way that it's hard to squeeze in new cards. Every once in a while, though, something sweet shows up in a new set. As it happens, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is shaping up to have a decent number of them as is! Here's three that have so far really caught my eye:

Each of these seems seriously awesome with a lot of potential for different builds. Reality Heist can find you some key artifacts at a dirt cheap rate if you have just a couple artifacts on the board, making it extra sweet. While I've never been the biggest fan of the abilities, Roar of Restoration and Open the Vaults are often popular in Sharuum builds. I don't like the fact that it benefits opponents as well, but thankfully Brilliant Restoration does good work here. The only real problem is the four White mana pips, but there's enough ways to fix your mana that it can work out fine for you.

The one card I really like, however, is Tameshi, Reality Architect. Tameshi rocks because he provides you with yet another outlet to recover artifacts from your graveyard, which is especially helpful in a deck like Sharuum. Not only does it do that, but it also helps draw cards whenever you pick up the lands to get back those artifacts. That got me thinking that he might make a decent Commander on his own in a similar yet different vein to Sharuum herself!

Let's look at a list!

Tameshi, Reality Architect | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Tameshi, Reality Architect

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Aphetto Alchemist
• 1 Auriok Salvagers
• 1 Emry, Lurker of the Loch
• 1 Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore
• 1 Hanna, Ship's Navigator
• 1 Memnarch
• 1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1 Patron of the Moon
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
• 1 Sai, Master Thopterist
• 1 The Reality Chip
• 1 Urza, Lord High Artificer
• 1 Walking Atlas
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Jace Beleren
• 1 Karn, Scion of Urza
• 1 Tezzeret the Seeker

• Instants (10)
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Forbid
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Reality Heist
• 1 Return to Dust
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Thirst for Knowledge

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Emeria's Call // Emeria, Shattered Skyclave
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Ondu Inversion // Ondu Skyruins
• 1 Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (11)
• 1 Attunement
• 1 Aura of Silence
• 1 Elspeth Conquers Death
• 1 Energy Field
• 1 Ghostly Prison
• 1 History of Benalia
• 1 Kiora Bests the Sea God
• 1 Mirrormade
• 1 Mystic Remora
• 1 Pemmin's Aura
• 1 Propaganda

• Artifacts (18)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Courier's Capsule
• 1 Crucible of Worlds
• 1 Darksteel Forge
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Khalni Gem
• 1 Lotus Bloom
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mindslaver
• 1 Mishra's Bauble
• 1 Mycosynth Lattice
• 1 Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Tormod's Crypt
• 1 Unstable Obelisk

• Lands (37)
• 4 Plains
• 6 Island
• 1 Academy Ruins
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Field of the Dead
• 1 Gates of Istfell
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Glacial Chasm
• 1 Glacial Floodplain
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Halimar Depths
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Hengegate Pathway // Mitigate Pathway
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Irrigated Farmland
• 1 Kabira Crossroads
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Secluded Steppe
• 1 Sejiri Steppe
• 1 Terrain Generator
• 1 Tolaria West
• 1 Treasure Vault
• 1 Urza's Saga

Buy This Deck Export text format

When crafting this deck, one of my goals was to try sticking a little bit close to what I did in my Sharuum list. The idea was to have it play similarly with a lot of sweet cards and interesting endgame goals, but to do its own thing as well. A lot of critical cards are lost here without the Black mana that Sharuum provides, however. There's fewer discard outlets and no cards like Demonic Tutor, Rune-Scarred Demon, Time Sieve, or Magister Sphinx.

What you do still get are some of the same iconic cards and comparing lists, it's easy to see a lot of the overlap. Tezzeret the Seeker, Phyrexian Metamorph, Raff Capashen, Fabricate, Sai - tons of great cards! I even stuck my favorite sneaky infinite mana combo in here with Aphetto Alchemist, Khalni Gem, and Pemmin's Aura in here. There's also the old Mycosynth Lattice and Darksteel Forge combo - particularly evil with Nevinyrral's Disk - but it's notably more difficult to sneak out here than with Sharuum.

What makes the deck unique is the other kinds of cards that you get to play in place of all the cards you lose from Sharuum. Sharuum's great because it's an effective one time use that gets back real big artifacts on the cheap and provides a great beater in the process. Tameshi, on the other hand, works great because he gives you the opportunity to repeatedly bring back cards - not just artifacts but enchantments and lands as well. What this means is that you can create one heck of a value engine using a ton of cards that might just otherwise be okay.

Courier's Capsule was always a favorite of mine in Sharuum as a card that you could get back in a pinch to sift a little deeper into your deck. With Tameshi, however, it provides a continual way to draw more and more cards every turn. It's far from the only one, though. Mishra's Bauble, Tormod's Crypt, Expedition Map, Mind Stone, Commander's Sphere, History of Benalia, and so on all provide ways to continually get tons of great value from your graveyard recursion. There're even a couple cards like Mystic Remora and Energy Field that become really sweet with their ability to go to the graveyard only to come back soon after.

There's even another neat infinite mana loop here where you can utilize Lotus Bloom in conjunction with Tameshi. With Patron of the Moon, you can continually replay the lands you put back into your hand and continually recur Lotus Bloom. This not only can give you infinite mana like with the earlier mentioned Aphetto Alchemist nonsense, but it can give you nonstop land triggers too. This often isn't the biggest deal, but can be huge with cards such as Field of the Dead, Kabira Crossroads, and Mystic Sanctuary to get infinite creatures, life, or spells.

The fact that you return lands to your hand also provides Tameshi with some interesting lines as well. You can easily play your lands that cycle, for example, only to return them to your hand and then cycle them away later on once you have a full board. Use Crucible of Worlds and you can get a fairly unique card draw engine online. What's also sweet here is it gives you the opportunity to play a number of the cards from Zendikar Rising that have a spell on the front and a land on the back. You can play the spell as a land and then later pick it up with Tameshi to use the spell itself. This similarly can be extremely useful with Crucible of Worlds, especially with the likes of Emeria's Call // Emeria, Shattered Skyclave and Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn.

What you get in the end is a deck all its own, and I love it. It takes a lot of the things I love about my all-time favorite Commander deck and provides its own unique take on it in the process. It does lack some of the discarding and tutoring without the Black to help get your chain going, but there's still plenty of excellent options (Attunement is a fantastic one, for example). Tameshi looks excellent and I can't wait to try him out when Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty drops in just a few weeks. I hope you will too at your next Commander night once the set comes out!

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal