How They Brew It - Antiques, Made to Order

Michael Celani • November 21, 2023

Deckbuilding
Sedris, the Traitor King
 | Illustrated by Paul Bonner

Hey you! Do you find yourself exhausted by modern design sensibilities that make you feel like the robots already took over? Do you yearn for some colorful art on your wall, or perhaps a clock that's not built into a microwave, coffee machine, or garbage disposal? Indeed, if you're looking to add a little character to your home, preferably a tiny, clumsy Brontosaurus named Stumbles, who trips over his stompers as he trots along but makes up for it by cooking the best damn pancakes you've ever tasted, then you're in luck, because all that and more is just a train ride away at The Antique Boutique! Located at the singularity where Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico merge into something more, The Antique Boutique is the United States' most concentrated collection of artifacts since last year's ill-fated MeTV MeeTup in The Villages, Florida. Our prices are so low, you'd think that our goods aren't subject to inflation! Act fast, because it won't stay old forever!

We're Playing Vintage

Good evening, and welcome to The Antique Boutique! My name is Michael Celani, and I got into antiquing because as someone who's rapidly approaching the age of thirty, I needed to find something more ancient than myself to stave off my midlife crisis. Unfortunately, this presents a problem: statistically speaking, the older the antique, the more likely that it was stolen by the British. That's why I've personally handcrafted each piece you see here to appear as ancient as possible, because I'm a legitimate businessperson, not a fence. Yes, my store is the only ethical consumption under capitalism, and don't you forget it.

Helping me along in this endeavor is Sedris, the Traitor King

, who can unearth a creature for the low, low cost of . The idea behind our enterprise is simple: we unearth an antique from the graveyard, we make a pristine copy of it, and then we discard the definitely-tainted-by-history original. Since our duplicate is made with modern techniques, the new copy will not only last longer, but it can also improve upon the real deal, making it even better at being an antique!

One Man's Trash

The first step into creating new vintage art is finding old pieces to shamelessly plagiarize get inspiration from, and you know what that means: it's time to go dumpster diving! Yes, to unearth a creature, Sedris, the Traitor King

needs that creature to be in the graveyard to begin with. Thankfully, with access to blue, black, and red, we've got no shortage of options when it comes to filling our bin with useless junk priceless pieces of history. Let's take a look!

Rummage Sale

Looters and rummagers make it trivial to replace the creatures we can't cast with spells we can, which both keeps our hand full of interaction and stocks up our graveyard for later. Looters refer to cards like Merfolk Looter

: they're permanents with an ability that draws a card, then discards a card. Dimir has access to some of the best looters in the game, such as Likeness Looter
, Rona, Herald of Invasion
, and Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator
, each of which loots for free, costs only two mana, and has extra abilities stapled onto them for good measure. There's a couple of artifact looters as well, like Collector's Vault
, which generates Treasure over time, and Relic of Sauron
, which is also a mana rock. Rummagers, on the other hand, discard the card first and then draw. Moria Scavenger
 is the only rummager in the deck, but it makes up for it by being a great blocker and generating a steady stream of chumps if you're not willing to give him up. By the way, all these cards pair beautifully with Teferi's Ageless Insight
, as it doubles your card draw while still only forcing you to discard a single card.

Millionaire

If looting is precise, like a sniper rifle, then milling yourself is like a flamethrower: both have great results when you apply them to your mother's priceless mahogany dresser which she inherited from her beloved great aunt, so try it at home, kids! Our main method of mill will be invoking the will of The Ancient One

, because not only does it act as a (rather expensive) looter, it's also an 8/8 that lets us stock our graveyard with as many cards as the cost of whatever we discarded. This deck's running ten-drops, so there's a pretty decent chance you can make a tenth of your deck visible to Sedris, the Traitor King
 while also drawing a card and putting a huge reanimation target in the 'yard to begin with. Other than The Ancient One
, our list uses Nephalia Drownyard
, Invasion of Amonkhet
, and The Everflowing Well
 to round out this category with some incidental mill, as well as Convergence of Dominion
, which is mostly here for its static ability that reduces the cost of unearth.

The Drawing Board

And of course, there's a couple of spells here that simply draw and discard cards. Faithless Looting

is an obvious choice here, letting us draw two and discard two, and it's only one in a bevy of reanimator all-stars, like Chart a Course
 and Tainted Indulgence
. You've probably seen these spells before, and they each do the same thing, so we won't be going over all of them. However, there's one newcomer here, and that's Wail of the Forgotten
, which will very quickly triple as removal and discard in addition to stocking the graveyard.

Lightly Refurbished

Now that we know the method, it's time to get to the madness (no, not that

). What's worthy of the The Antique Boutique name? It turns out, not what you'd expect. Which, considering you're reading How They Brew It, might be exactly what you expect. Shoot. Maybe one of these days I'll write something straightforward, just to trick people. Nah, just kidding, that'll never happen.

The Big Boys

Call your parents, because the rumors were true: we're running extremely expensive creatures, and the prospect of paying three for them instead of nine sounds like quite the steal. These all have absolutely terrifying enters-the-battlefield effects, too. Cyclone Summoner

returns most permanents everyone controls to their owners' hands when it hits the field, acting like a Flood of Tears
 with a 7/7 attached. Similarly, Deathbringer Regent
 and Dread Cacodemon
 can completely clear the board of threats, whereas Bringer of the Last Gift
 does that and resurrects the rest of your stacked graveyard. Breaching Leviathan
 leads to a blowout attack after it forces your opponents to go shields-down. And if you thought that was busted, let's not forget about all the Myojin! Myojin of Cryptic Dreams
 can remove its indestructible counter to copy any of your permanent spells three times, while Myojin of Grim Betrayal
 and Myojin of Roaring Blades
 are a mass-Reanimate
 and huge burn spell, respectively. Myojin of Seeing Winds
 effectively draws you twenty cards, while Myojin of Night's Reach
 effectively undraws your opponents twenty cards. Finally, you can cut an enemy's life in half and take it for yourself with a Shard of the Nightbringer
 trigger. All of these can be reanimated for just three mana!

Authentic, New Antiques

Astute readers may have noticed a severe problem with the creatures I chose to reanimate in the last section; absolutely none of them work together with unearth. All of them required that we cast the creature in order to get their overpowered effects, but unearth doesn't actually cast anything; it's not like flashback or jump-start. Unearth puts the creature onto the battlefield straight from the graveyard, no spellcasting required, meaning no, those creatures are actually just glorified french vanilla beaters now. If that's the case, why bother putting them in a Sedris, the Traitor King

deck anyway? One word: fraud. Once we've retrieved our ill-gotten goods from the drop point, we need to make a convincing enough forgery of them that the game thinks we've played the real deal. Luckily, clones like Mirror Image
 are all we need.

When we cast a Clone

, it enters the battlefield as a copy of one of our creatures. Legally, it was cast, and if it were to enter as, say, a copy of Shard of the Nightbringer
, then it would get that federally mandated drain trigger. This ends up being cheaper than simply casting the creature
 directly, and since our deck is nothin' but Clones
, we can keep casting Clone
 into Clone
 into Clone
 to overwhelm our opponents with overpowered effects. And as Wizards prints even more cards "balanced" around the idea that you need to cast those cards from your hand for them to be useful, this deck will get even more tech that you can exploit!

Something New

Thanks to this revolutionary new fraud technique, you, too, can own a piece of the past without carrying any of the baggage that entails. Speaking of baggage, this here is an authentic faux-leather astroturf fur carrying case from the distant past of 1973, made from the grass where legendary baseball player Mick Jagger hit his game-winning touchdown to finally defeat the Whig Army once and for all. That'll be five hundred and ninety-nine U.S. dollars, and... wait, where are you going?

If you enjoy How They Brew It, please check out the Discord and my other projects at my website. On my Discord, you can vote for whichever deck you want to see next, talk about the weird decks you have, or just hang out with other like-minded brewers. I hope to see you there!

Antiques Made to Order (Sedris, the Traitor King EDH)

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Michael Celani

Michael Celani

Newly appointed member of the FDIC and insured up to $150,000 per account, Michael Celani is the member of your playgroup that makes you go "oh no, it's that guy again." He's made a Twitter account @GamesfreakSA as well as other mistakes, and his decks have been featured on places like MTGMuddstah. You can join his Discord at https://gamesfreaksa.info and vote on which decks you want to see next. In addition to writing, he has a job, other hobbies, and friends.