Kianne, Dean of Substance // Imbraham, Dean of Theory

| Art by Ryan Pancoast | Alterations by Naomi Krause

This better not awaken anything in me

Most of my napkin scribbles on this site have been about tossing older cards into Scrooge McDuck vaults and seeing if we can force them to kinda work. I mean there was that Tetzimoc, Primal Death

The reason my articles tend to focus on old cards is because nowadays, whenever an interesting Commander is spoiled, people will figure out combos and builds in a flash and put them on stupid sites like EDHrec god what a stupid site who would run such a bad site geeze. So we're left with only a handful of legends with untapped potential. Untap pun.  

That said, Kianne, Dean of Substance // Imbraham, Dean of Theory

Kianne

Let's break these folks down one side at a time. First off, we have Kianne, Dean of Substance

Anyways, Kianne excels at exiling cards off the top [SENSEI'S TOP GET IT AHAHAHA SUCK IT] and drawing into an extra land occasionally. It's not a particularly strong ability, but one that gets much more interesting once you introduce Untappers to the gene pool. Now you're exiling a loooooot of cards and drawing a loooooooot of extra lands. Also Life From The Loam

This half of the deck is all about finding Untappers and making sure you can put those extra lands in your hand to use. There's probably an argument for an Ayula's Influence

Since we're a smidge better at deckbuilding than whoever threw together that voltron precon, we're going to toss in a few other cards that synergize with our untap target permenant tribal theme. Arcanis the Omnipotent

Imbraham

Moving on, let's gossip about Imbraham, Dean of Theory

This half of the deck is all about finding Ramp. Specifically ramp that actively taps for a lot so we can weave it together with all of our Untappers. That's why I love these deanalingalings; both halves are unique, but they flow together so well. Kianne can set you up for extra lands while Imbraham can help you dig for Untappers.

A lot of the time, MFDCs feel like they sort of work together but not really. Even the other Deans in the cycle suffer from this.

Uvilda gives cards crappy suspend and when you cast them Nassari gets.... a +1/+1 counter. Coooooool. Then Nassari's first ability doesn't have anything at all to do with Uvilda. They must be the school administrators that dab all the time and secretly hate eachother. Kianne and Imbraham excel at proactively improving their other half the next time you bring them down, so they're clearly the cool principals that... uh hmm my principals were all awful and emotionally abusive so I have no frame of reference for that. Ok Kiane and Imbraham are like Spongbob, perfect.

Wincons

So we're doing cool skateboard tricks to exile a ton of cards and convince freshmen's parents to donate to our pyramid scheme, so what? How does that help me get a job? How do we actually win the game? That's where our old buddy Food Chain

A lot of people have asked me, "Hey Naomi, where are you supposed to play these decks? What power level do they fit into, cEDH or casual?"  Great Question!

So Food Chain

Of course, this can go horribly wrong and we can exile our Food Chain without being able to retrieve it right away, but the nice thing about Dean Pelton is that his ambiguous sexuality puts Study counters on every card exiled with them. So we can grab one of those peanut bars whenever we feel like, even if we have 0 mana to pay into Imbraham's X.

Highlights

In case things go horribly awry and our deck is being torn apart like a proverbial cowboy star wars paintball game, we have a few hail marys to grab cards we really need. Riftsweeper

There's also a backup Isochron Scepter

Mind Over Matter

Oversimplify

Oh yeah because Akroma's Memorial

Chromatic Orrery

In Conclusion

I hate to say it because this series is mostly a thought experiment focused on seeing if it's possible to make bad commanders good given unlimited resources, but you could 100% build a budget deck with these nerds and have a ton of fun with it. The flip flopping deans may only excel at one very specific niche strategy, but man oh man do they excel. Switching on that turbo mode and giving yourself carpal tunnel with the untap game feels so good, and I highly recommend investing in higher education today.