Spin To Win? Should Your cEDH Deck Play Wheels?
"I'd like to buy a vowel." - Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh
Welcome back, readers! In my previous article on Shimmer Zur, I covered some updates to the deck that put it back on the cEDH map. Part of these adjustments was removing the wheel effects available in those colors: Timetwister and Windfall. While those are a few changes among many that pushed the deck in the right direction, realizing those cards should not be in my deck was among the hardest conclusions for me to accept and act on. It got me thinking about some previous deck tuning experiences where I also cut wheels, and I realized wheels are represented in a lot of cEDH decks that don't actually want to be playing them.
What Are The Wheels?
"Wheels" is a term largely used to describe effects similar to Wheel of Fortune. Despite Timetwister often being considered the most powerful of the bunch and present on the original "Power 9" list, the effects at large are just called "wheels". When talking cEDH, you're generally considered to be playing all the appropriate wheel effects when your deck contains Timetwister, Windfall, and the namesake, Wheel of Fortune. In more extreme cases you may see players reach for cards like Wheel of Misfortune, Echo of Eons, Day's Undoing, and Memory Jar as as well, but these are much less common and not really part of the accepted grouping of wheels when referring to them as a group in the cEDH context. Notably, all three of the wheels that are staples of the cEDH format cost 3 mana and 2 of them draw specifically 7 cards when resolving.
There are plenty of idiosyncrasies that make each of the three wheels unique: Wheel of Fortune can combo with Underworld Breach nicely, Timetwister can be used to disrupt graveyard synergies from other decks at the table, and Windfall is usually better early than late but can get crazy if a player has a ridiculous amount of cards in hand from something like Ad Nauseam. Despite these relevant differences, the scope of the article is largely going to address all three of them as being largely interchangeable.
Wheels are splashy, powerful, and cool, and as a result they are beloved by players and, based on the number of variations of them that exist today, Magic designers as well. My guess as to a big part of their overrepresentation in cEDH comes from this emotional attachment, alongside the fact they are banned or restricted in all of Magic's other supported eternal formats, it's no wonder cEDH players are eager to clear space in their decklists for them. But should they be?
What Do Wheels Offer Your Deck?
In general, there are three primary uses for the wheel effects:
- Wheels used as a combo piece. This is most typically seen alongside some kind of "wheel punisher". Most common examples include Notion Thief, Orcish Bowmasters, Narset, Parter of Veils, and, previously, Hullbreacher. There are quite a few others of these effects.
- Wheels used as card advantage. Probably the oldest and most infamous use for wheels; players in early Magic could dump a ton of Moxen and use the mana to immediately refill their hand of 7 cards while their opponents would still have 6-7 cards, mitigating much of the drawbacks for wheels. While the Power 9 Moxen are banned in cEDH, there is still no shortage of fast mana that can be included to do a solid impression of the very same play pattern.
- Wheels used as disruption. This is easily the least talked about in the cEDH context but comes up quite often in games. If a player has resolved Ad Nauseam or Necropotence and has a powerful, sculpted hand, often the best recourse that doesn't involve straight winning is to resolve a wheel effect to disrupt that and give the rest off the table additional resources to fight back against that threat. Even in spots where you fed a Mystic Remora or Rhystic Study a few cards to develop your mana, following up with a wheel mitigates a lot of that damage by leveling the card advantage field and reducing the chances you get punished for developing your mana.
All three of these applications require your deck to be built appropriately to be interested in leveraging the wheel effects outside of other things you could be doing instead. At a baseline, you have to be in both blue and red to even play all the wheel effects we're discussing at all, and it speaks to how powerful Grixis is as a color combination in cEDH over others that wheels are a staple of the format but decks that do not contain blue or red can't play any of them. Beyond that, your deck has to be able to leverage wheels effectively to be able to actually have them function in any of the above applications. If you want to use the wheels as a combo piece, you have to play wheel-punishers of some kind, which are usually fairly expensive to cast and not all of them end the game on the spot, so you need to have a plan to win the game after you've executed your plan. If you want to use wheels as card advantage, your deck needs to play a high density of fast mana such that casting a wheel on turn 1 or 2 is not only possible but able to be done consistently, and again, have a cohesive plan for winning the game after the wheel resolves either on the same turn or the turn immediately after. Finally if you want to use wheels as disruption, you need to benefit from the wheel as much as the rest of the table, and your deck should almost certainly contain free interaction to help guarantee you get another untap step. If these conditions are not met at the deckbuilding table, your opponents are going to be able to leverage your wheel effects better than you are, and it's going to feel like you are giving away wins when casting wheels.
What Kinds Of Decks Should Play Wheels?
If your deck is built to leverage wheels, the payoff is quite high. Among the best examples of decks interested in playing wheels are "critical mass" storm-style cEDH decks containing the most fast mana you'll see in any given cEDH deck. These decks are also often referred to as "turbo" decks. Some common examples of decks like these are Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh + Silas Renn, Seeker Adept, Dihada, Binder of Wills, and Godo, Bandit Warlord. All three of these go so far as to reach for Wheel of Misfortune to really max out on the viable wheel effects they can be playing. Decks that reach for wheels to use as a combo piece often do so to leverage the fact they want to slow down the game and include some of the wheel-punisher cards in their deck to serve as disruption to begin with. Slower decks that are looking to be able to either grind faster tables out or present quick kills against slower pod compositions are the ones where you see wheels used in this way. This strategy was stronger during the dominance of Hullbreacher, but decks like Armix, Filigree Thrasher + Kraum, Ludevic's Opus and Atraxa, Grand Unifier still represent this combo potential. Finally, decks seeking to use wheels as disruption often have the ability to leverage card advantage in other ways, usually out of the command zone, but still have one they can find when needing to level the playing field or if an opening hand presents itself that can use it as card advantage. Examples of these decks are Tymna the Weaver + Kraum, Ludevic's Opus, Kenrith, the Returned King, and Tivit, Seller of Secrets.
What Kinds of Decks Should Pass on Wheels?
The subset of cEDH decks that are blue or red that are not interested in wheels is less common than those that are simply due to the most powerful cards in red and blue being largely fast mana and free interaction, but there are still decks that want to pass on wheels that could technically play them. There are two primary reasons that decks will pass on wheels that can play them. The first of which is when your deck contains a compact, easily tutored win that does not involve needing a burst of cards from wheel effects. Decks like Najeela, the Blade-Blossom and Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator + Tana, the Bloodsower exemplify this, winning with a single creature paired with the creature in their command zone. Despite having access to all the best wheel effects, neither deck can really leverage the burst of cards as well and would rather have cards that contribute to assembling their creature combo as payoff cards. Incidentally, this is where Shimmer Zur fell as well, except instead of a creature combo it was simply putting Necropotence into play. The second most common reason for passing on wheels is prioritizing developing your board state over winning with cards in hand. Most stax decks fall in this category, and the most common examples I see for these kinds of decks are Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Winota, Joiner of Forces. Both of these decks are interested in developing disruptive permanents that stay in play and have an impact every turn for the rest of the game over leveraging bursts of cards from wheels to achieve victory.
The Wheels Falling Off Is Okay
The above examples are not comprehensive; there are configurations of the commanders mentioned above normally playing wheels that may want to pass on wheels entirely. Not all Tivit, Seller of Secrets decks play any wheels at all, for instance. On the flip side, there are many other decks in cEDH that support some amount of the common wheel effects for niche scenarios. Ultimately, understanding what the wheels offer to cEDH and how best to leverage that is the most important part of determining whether your deck should contain zero, one, or multiple wheel effects. Thank you all for reading, and happy spinning!
