Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Coastal Piracy
Shadowmage Infiltrator
Cold-Eyed Selkie
SturmgeistEdric and Coastal Piracy turn every creature you’ll ever play into an Ophidian look-alike, and Edric himself serves as a potent political tool; most players will take the bait and swing at each other rather than risk missing out on drawing cards. The other three, meanwhile, all sport some form of evasion, with the Selkie mirroring our generals’ ability to potentially draw several cards in one hit and the Geist acting as a potential game-ending beater all on its own.

The “Gradual Draw” cards all provide a steady stream of extra cards, typically in a less explosive fashion than a Mind Spring. If we don’t get as much bang for our card, then why are we playing with these guys? The answer is pretty simple: return on investment. The gradual draw category comprises cards that are all essentially one-card advantage engines. In the typical long game EDH promotes, cards with an initial investment that continue to churn out small benefits without further input are very valuable. On the potential vs. impact chart, these tend to be lower in impact and higher in potential.

Phyrexian Arena
Bloodgift Demon
Consecrated Sphinx
Ceta Sanctuary
Mindmoil
Sylvan Library

Typically innocuous enough to avoid instant destruction, Phyrexian Arena and Ceta Sanctuary are nevertheless going to garner enormous advantage over the course of a game. The sheer number of cards that pass through a hand when Mindmoil is in play can be astonishing, and enables one of the primary victory strategies of this deck. Meanwhile, the notorious holy Sphinx breaks all the conventions; not only does this guy (gal?) have huge potential, his (her?) power level is through the roof as well. Sticking one or two of these bad boys, or girls or enchantments or demons, will put you in a position to take over a long game.

The other side of the coin from these proactive draw spells are the activated card drawers. Rather than a constant trickle, these bursts of cards require you to make a conscious decision about when to pull the trigger. These tend to draw more attention, although generally still less than dramatic on-board plays will, and are valuable because they tend to provide a whole boatload of power in a single card. In some games, there just isn’t time to wait around for the right card to come along. Sometimes, you need to draw a whole bunch of cards right now, and these are the tools for doing just that:

Greed
Griselbrand
Rush of Knowledge
Krosan Tusker
Magus of the Library
Reforge the Soul
Wheel of Fortune
Time Spiral
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

Greed is practically the theme song for this deck, and the big papa demon Griselbrand, though sadly lacking functional hands,  can put our own hand size over the top. The Rush tends to draw at least four cards, but has the potential to draw as many as ten with Kozilek in play. Incidentally, Cosi is often used as much for its shuffle effect as for its huge body and the glad Tidings it brings. Krosan Tusker and the Magus are both utility and pseudo ramp with smaller effects, but also a proportionally lower cost, while the various Wheel effects are typically the knock-out punch at the end of the game. Don’t forget, though, that a properly timed Wheel can really frustrate a combo-player’s plans, and Time Spiral can do the same for graveyard decks.

Shall We Dance (through the red zone)?

With a decent set of saboteurs and a general thoroughly capable of winning through general damage, it behooves us to include a series of enhancements to guide our fighters through the battlefield unscathed.

Filth
Wonder
Anger
Diviner’s Wand
Mask of Riddles
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of War and Peace
Loxodon Warhammer

The three Incarnations here, as well as Genesis later on, interact with the discard subtheme the Glint-Eye promotes. It’s not uncommon to swing in with a previously quite blockable team and have them suddenly take to the skies with a surprise discarded Wonder. While the Swords and the hammer are known quantities, it should be noted that the lifegain they provide is intended to help offset your Greed. The Mask continues the theme of build-your-own Scroll Thief, but the big one here is the Diviner’s Wand. The power/toughness boost granted by the Wand, especially in conjunction with all of the various draw sources in the deck, can turn even the most innocuous critter into a player-killing machine.

Nothing Else Matters (but drawing cards)

Card drawing is a lot of fun, but it’s not an end in and of itself; it’s only the means to an end of having more stuff to do than your opponents. Unless, that is, we could find some cards that let us win just by drawing and holding onto cards, and in fact there are! The first set of cards cares only about the potential for drawing cards, and replaces them with other effects, while the second set actively rewards getting more cards in hand and keeping them there.

Abundance
Grave Scrabbler
Genesis
Life from the Loam
Words of War
Words of Wilding

Empyrial Plate
Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
Bulwark
Psychosis Crawler
Archmage Ascension

Library of Leng
Venser’s Journal

There’s a lot going on here, but hopefully it’s all fairly self-explanatory. Niv-Mizzet and the Crawler can do some pretty solid work closing out games, especially with an active Mindmoil or Consecrated Sphinx. Meanwhile, Empyreal Plate turns all your creatures into Maros, which is a substantial power boost given all the drawing, and is especially funny (and exponential) on the Glint-Eye Nephilim. The various better-than-Spellbooks are often quite handy, especially the lifegain from the journal, and the several draw replacement effects can all be quite powerful. More importantly, they are all optional, so they won’t prevent your Crawler or Niv wins. If ever there were a deck for Archmage Ascension, the poster child of win-more, it would be this most greedy of lists. Sylvan Library becomes downright terrifying when it’s tutoring you three cards a turn.

Fifty Ways to Redirect Your Lover

Adept application of table politics is perhaps the single most valuable skill to multiplayer Magic. Learning how to bend other players to a common goal will let you wins games that, from a power-level standpoint you had no right winning. Table talk is the quintessential weapon in the political player’s arsenal, but a good number of cards allow you to manipulate your opponents in-game without having to rely on their good will. Giving opponents extra resources with group-hug cards like Phelddagrif rarely results in actual goodwill from opponents; typically they’re quite happy to turn around and beat you over the head with the new toys you just gave them. In a similar vein, pillow-fort cards like Ghostly Prison can be reasonably effective against some, but just pique others to attack you even more frequently. My preferred method of direction involves incentivizing my opponents to do what I want, with cards like these:

Curse of Bloodletting
Curse of Stalked Prey
Pain Magnification
Misdirection or Redirect
Reiterate
Wild Ricochet

The curses and Pain Magnification allow your opponents to get more bang for their buck, but only if they do things a certain way: your way. The reason this is even marginally effective, though, is due to the multiplayer nature of most EDH games. At least one opponent will probably be okay following your lead, and the benefits that player accrues will put him or her ahead of the rest of your opponents; essentially, you get to place your opponents in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Edric, Spymaster of Trest functions in a similar manner here. The redirection effects are a bit less subtle, but no less fun; there’s no flow moment quite like totally upending a game with a perfectly timed Wild Ricochet.

(Mana) Fix You // Breaking Down

The final section of this article is typically the first that I pay attention to during deck construction: the nuts and bolts, ramp and removal. Every deck ought to have some method of jumping the curve or at least fixing its mana, and just as important, every deck should have some bare minimum number of ways to interact with opposing players’ plans. The trick with these two sections, the key that turns a deck from competent to elegant, is to incorporate the main themes of the deck into the utilitarian spaces too. So how do we ramp in a deck full of card draw?

Azusa, Lost but Seeking
Exploration
Explore
Oracle of Mul Daya
Solemn Simulacrum
Yavimaya Elder
Dreamscape Artist
Silverglade Pathfinder

By banking on having extra cards in hand, of course! The classic Exploration and its variants allow you to dump every land that wanders into your hand onto the battlefield, should you wish. Meanwhile, Sad Robot and the Suicide Hippie (another potential band name!) both provide lands and extra card drawing, and the spellshapers allow us to turn any spare card into a Harrow or Rampant Growth, respectively.

Meanwhile, in the removal department, we have a small but select group of spells running interference between us and the nasty critters our opponents are playing.

Big Game Hunter
Spiraling Embers
Rending Vines
Decree of Pain
Maelstrom Pulse
Sever the Bloodline

Big Game Hunter and the flashback on Sever are, of course, nods to the continuing discard subtheme; a Madness-ed Hunter makes for a great combat trick! Rending Vines and Maelstrom Pulse can deal with those permanents that totally prevent us from winning; usually they’re conserved for problems like Possessed Portal or Vicious Shadows, things that would really ruin our day. The black Decree is still one of the best draw spells ever printed, and also just so happens to be a wrath. Lastly Spiraling Embers, which can provide some surprising reach, especially in the late game. In conjunction with Reiterate, you can drop opponents from out of nowhere.

The final step is, of course, the manabase. For this deck, the colors are fairly balanced, with a preference for at least one green early game, two red in the mid game, and as many black as possible for the late game. Other than that, a contingent of cycling lands adds a final layer of innocuous filtering, Reliquary Tower provides one final Spellbook, and Volrath’s Stronghold works in some recursion that, given our ridiculous levels of card draw, doesn’t even clog the top of the deck.

With all of that combined, we get the following list:

I Spy With My Glinting Eye – Glint-Eye Nephilim EDH

General – Glint-Eye Nephilim (I hope you didn’t need this line)

Gibson Haynes

@KaipaLin on Twitter and MTGSalvation