#unesh

UNESH, CRIOSPHINX SOVEREIGN

Unesh is the key to the whole deck. Without Unesh, this deck doesn’t exist and a Sphinx-tribal deck would be a low-tier casual choice, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Unlike some decks where the commander is there to provide colours or general theming, this deck needs to cast Unesh and keep him on the battlefield in order to really get the party started. Unesh’s cost reduction and ETB Fact or Fiction trigger for Sphinxes is the engine that lets this deck turn into a glorious stormy snowball.

SPHINXES

If we’re going to take advantage of Unesh’s abilities, we’re going to need some Sphinxes to cast. Sphinxes are, on the whole, an excellent set of creatures. All of the blue ones fly, many of them have cool abilities that make the game interesting, and quite a few of them have built-in resiliency against removal. The one downside to Sphinxes is that they tend to be expensive, with a glut of them at 6 and 7 mana. There also just aren’t that many, with only a few mono-blue Sphinxes not present in this deck. A special shoutout to Jwar Isle Avenger, which only costs U to surge out when you control Unesh.

SPHINXES?

Since we’re a bit short on decent Sphinxes, we need to find some reserves. The great thing about Unesh’s trigger is that it triggers when a Sphinx enters the battlefield, so that allows us to take advantage of one of blue’s strengths and use clones and cloning effects to get even more cheap Sphinxes. (And yes, sometimes there might be a non-sphinx we want to copy. Ick.)

NON-SPHINXES

It takes a lot for a creature to make it into this deck if it can’t enter the battlefield as a Sphinx, and only these three have proven worthy. Dreamscape Artist is a key ramp piece for the deck, Deadeye Navigator allows for cheap Unesh triggers and some protection of key creatures, and Teferi gives me some peace and quiet on my turns so that I can storm off in peace.

STORM

The whole point of the deck (aside from casting cool Sphinxes anyway) is to storm off with one of these spells. Mind’s Desire usually hits another storm spell along the way, Brain Freeze can mill out an opponent or two, and Temporal Fissure can just bounce all the permanents that aren’t yours. And Crow Storm, well, you make a bunch of Storm Crows. Enough said. Typically, you’ll be casting these spells with storm counts from about 10 to 30+ or more. None of these are instant wins, but they’re a lot of fun.

RAMP

When a deck’s strategy depends on having a 6-CMC commander in play, you had better believe that the deck is going to be running its fair share of lands and mana rocks. With a decent draw, Unesh can hit the table on turn 3 reliably, and even on turn 2 with some really crazy draws. In general, though, you want to have Unesh in play by turn 4 to really have any advantage. The ramp cards then serve as extra mana and cheap spells to help the deck churn out more Sphinxes and a higher storm count.

COST-REDUCTION

Cost-reducing effects go hand in hand with the ramp to help get Unesh and his cohorts into play as soon as possible. You don’t want or need too much of this sort of effect, though, since it goes to waste beyond a certain point. Ideally, I would like to see one of these cards in hand with one or two pieces of ramp to really set me up well for my first few turns.

BIG MANA

Once you have Unesh in play and are getting cards from playing Sphinxes, you want to set yourself up for the late game, and that means you want to really ramp up your mana production with big mana effects. This lets you cast multiple spells each turn and dig closer to your key combo pieces.

UNLIMITED HAND SIZE

When you start to go off with this deck, you get a lot of cards from Unesh’s trigger. A LOT. This makes it imperative to not have to discard any of those cards if possible, so we run enough unlimited hand size effects to ensure that we get one sooner rather than later.

RECYCLING

Unesh’s triggered ability puts just as many cards into your graveyard as it does into your hand. Eventually, your library is going to get a little thin and your graveyard a bit full just from resolving those Fact or Fiction triggers. So we run these cards to allow us to reuse our resources and keep our library full. Why these specific effects? Because they either shuffle themselves back in (Quest/Elixir), or they can win us the game in the case of Psychic Spiral.

SHENANIGANS

The last set of cards I’ll touch on here are the ones that really supplement the engine and let it get quite out of hand. Let’s go card-by-card:

Crystal Shard: A good safety valve to protect or just allow replaying of Sphinxes or clones.

Mana Severance: When played after a reshuffle effect, this card puts the deck into turbo mode, making sure that there’s nothing but gas left in it.

Mind Over Matter: The perfect compliment to Unesh’s trigger. Usually best used to untap lands like Nykthos for near unstoppability, it can also be used to tap down opponents’ resources to protect your combo.

Omniscience: Easy mode. Once Omniscience hits the battlefield, it’s almost impossible to lose unless an opponent hits it with Krosan Grip.

Panharmonicon: I hear that doubled Unesh triggers are good...