Winter, Misanthropic Guide Deck Tech

Winter is Coming

There are lots of ways to take a control stance in Commander: white-based stax, blue-based counterspells, green and black recursive removal... but rarely will you see a discard deck at a Commander table.

It certainly seems a bit strange, as Thoughtseize is a tremendously powerful card across formats and commands a price tag that proves it. I mean... it's not like 1-for-1 removal is bad in Commander, and players regularly ignore card disadvantage for political gain, like Arcane Denial. So why does discard get a bad rap? And why would anyone want to try it anyways?

One of the first Commander decks I played against, way back in the nascent days of the format, was a Nath of the Gilt-Leaf discard deck. Green and black hadn't been buffed yet, so their primary sources of draw were universal cards, like Howling Mine.

Shared draws make sure that opponents have cards to discard and help to alleviate the political issues that come with discard. Players also tend to discard plenty of cards on their own due to hand size, and Duskmourn: House of Horror happens to have a commander lurking in the shadows, hellbent on making opponents... Hellbent.

Core Synergy

Winter, Misanthropic Guide is an intriguing throwback to that Nath of the Gilt-Leaf deck. It does the group hug thing of drawing everyone cards on our upkeep. Once we get Delirium, it reduces opponents' hand size, so opponents will naturally discard at end of turn. In Jund colors, we have access to draw punishers and discard punishers, so we can hit opponents coming and going while also loading up on wheels to make both happen!

Anvil of Bogardan is one of the trickier cards to play in the deck due to the complicated rules of layering. Both Winter and Anvil change hand size, so the effect that stands depends on the time stamp on the permanent. Even if Winter came out first but didn't have Delirium until after Anvil came down, the Anvil's effect would still override Winter's. The same is true of effects opponents might have, such as Reliquary Tower.

The neat thing about wheels decks is that there are some solid wheel effects that double as win conditions. Khorvath's Fury is one of my favorites: it either smacks someone with a huge hand or wheels someone that needs it. With our deck, though, we can hit our opponents for damage no matter which side we choose!

Nature's Resurgence is a sneaky little card, using discard and wheels to fuel massive amounts of card draw. My favorite spells are ones that have no limits, and the Resurgence draws everyone cards equal to the number of creature cards in their grave. If opponents are running creature-heavy or grave-based strategies, we can gas them up, either for political reasons or for incendiary ones.

Win Conditions

The premise of the deck is to hit the opponents coming and going, and there are plenty of cards that contribute to laying the beatdown. Underworld Dreams has been the poster child for this effect since Legends. While triple black is a tough make for a deck like this, the more effects we can stack, the more damage we can deal.

There are few nastier 1-2 combinations in Commander than Kederekt Parasite into Razorkin Needlehead. Follow those up with a Wheel of Fortune and watch the table sweat as their plans go up in smoke and their life total smolders.

Molten Psyche is one of my favorite cards in all of Magic. It combines Winds of Change with a massive burn spell if we have Metalcraft, which we can get from using mana rocks to fix our colors and ramp. It's a universal burn effect, so it hits opponents for all cards drawn, not just those it makes them draw!

Most of the damage is from the card draw, because it's easier to facilitate and it's more political, but when we say we're going to hit them coming and going, we mean it. Megrim and Liliana's Caress accentuate the Underworld Dreams effects, dealing massive amounts of damage and meshing nicely with the wheel effects.

Ramp

Commander's Sphere and Thought Vessel are the more important mana rocks, as one fixes mana and sneaks card draw into our mana rocks, and the other removes our hand size limit to allow us to take advantage of the draw and break parity.

Nothing to write home about here, but it is worth noting that we want the majority of our mana rocks cost , so we can go from 2 to 4 easily. Our commander has a CMC of four, so as long as we have the right colors we should be casting Winter on turn three just about every game. Nothing to be misanthropic about here, either, though!

Again, loading up on two-mana rocks. Not all of them can fix our mana, though, so the Diamonds are here to hopefully provide relevant colors of mana and hit on time. Remember: we want rocks and not Rampant Growth effects because we want to hit Metalcraft for Molten Psyche. It might just be one card, but it's worth it.

Black Market Connections is a superbly powerful card, and even synergistic decks can use some of that. The Treasures from abusing the Market help to attain Metalcraft and to fix our mana, so it's not easy for this expensive card to perform above market value.

The general plan is to ramp on the first couple of turns using two-mana rocks. Once the mana is fixed, we set up Underworld Dreams and Megrim effects. With that setup, we can wheel repeatedly, keeping opponents' hands off-balance and burning them for both drawing and discarding.