Every once in a while, I feel like I'm being stalked by a particular Legendary Creature. The same face keeps sliding out of those booster packs, and I have to wonder if it's a sign from the universe that I need to build a new deck.

In early January of this year I wrote a column about an Izzet Goblin with a really interesting party trick. Sanar, Innovative First-Year was a fun build and I even played the deck in a Tabletop Simulator game. You can read about that build here. Sanar is back in Secrets of Strixhaven and he's been popping out of my booster packs at an alarming rate. I don't have a full playset yet, but I'm close and I'm taking it as a sign that I need to take another look at this little guy.

Sanar, Unfinished Genius is a two-mana Goblin Sorcerer in Izzet colors. He's one of the many cards in this new set that enters Prepared. Cards that have Preparation abilities have a second spell in their text box, and when they become Prepared they exile a copy of that spell and let you cast it for as long as the Creature is under your control and is Prepared.

In Sanar's case his Preparation spell is Wild Idea, a five-mana Sorcery that lets me search my library for an Instant or Sorcery card, reveal it, put it into my hand, and shuffle.

Sanar also has the ability to tap to create a Treasure token, but he can only do that if I've cast an Instant or Sorcery spell this turn. That tap ability effectively offsets one mana from the cost of his Preparation spell.

Sanar's Wild Idea

I've been playing a lot of Bracket 2 and Bracket 3 Commander in recent years, and I've been avoiding Game Changers and most non-Land tutors. It's made my decks weaker but that has also made any wins I get all the more satisfying. Today's deck is a departure from that trend, but it's hard to get too worked up about a five-mana tutor spell that can only get an Instant or Sorcery spell.

The biggest concerns about Sanar's Preparation spell are that it is both expensive and it is a Sorcery. I'll reveal whatever I get, and I'll be unlikely to have the mana to cast the spell I tutored for unless it's a fairly low mana value Instant or Sorcery. I'm not going to pay five mana to tutor up a Pongify unless I desperately need to remove one specific Creature, but it's nice to know I can tap Sanar, make a Treasure token, and cast that Pongify using my Treasure mana.

The real key to unlocking Sanar's potential lies in finding ways to cast Wild Idea on the end step of the player before me in turn order.

Quicken is the kind of spell I'm unlikely to play in most Commander decks, but it's perfect for Sanar. For one Blue mana, the next Sorcery card I cast this turn can be cast as though it had Flash. I'll also draw a card for my trouble. I'm also running Emergence Zone, a Land that can be sacrificed for one mana to give my spells Flash this turn.

A couple of classic staples find their way into today's list in Leyline of Anticipation and Vedalken Orrery. Leyline can begin the game in play if you've got it in your opening hand. I'm also running a bunch of other Flash enablers, including Tidal Barracuda, a four-mana Fish that lets any player cast spells as though they had Flash. That's a risky thing to include in a Commander deck, but it also locks your opponents out casting spells on your turn.

Borne Upon a Wind, Valley Floodcaller, High Fae Trickster, and Final-Word Phantom give me redundancy for this effect but I left one Universes Beyond Flash enabler out of this list.

Gandalf, Friend of the Shire didn't make the cut. This Avatar Wizard has a number of variants with artwork I absolutely love, but I generally shy away from mixing universes together. I'm not keen on the Fortnite-ification of Magic, but if you don't care about such things, you might want to run this Gandalf in Sanar, Unfinished Genius.

How We Win

This deck is aiming directly at Bracket 3 so I'm comfortable running a bunch of cards and combos that I might otherwise not even consider. Any card that lets you search your library, even if it's for only a certain type of card, is begging to be built into a combo deck. I'm not only going to give in to that temptation, I'm going to embrace it.

Mystical Tutor is a Game Changer for good reason. It's an Instant that lets you tutor up an Instant or Sorcery card and put it on top of your library. It works perfectly with Sanar because if you've got the mana and a Flash enabler in play, you can tutor one half of a combo to your hand with Wild Idea. You then tap Sanar and use your Treasure to cast Mystical Tutor, putting the other half of the combo on top of your library to draw into on your turn.

One of the bigger hurdles to this plan is the fact that most Izzet combos don't involve only Instants and Sorceries. Fabricate is the perfect card to solve that problem, tutoring up an Artifact from my library to my hand. Having an Artifact tutor expands the range of combos I can shoot for.

I'm also running Inventors' Fair as a second option to grab an Artifact, though I'll have to have three or more Artifacts and four mana to use that Land's activated ability to search my Library for an Artifact.

One notable combo that feels perfect for this list is the Dramatic Reversal/Isochron Scepter combo. With both of these cards in hand and enough mana rocks to tap to generate three or more mana, you can cast Isochron Scepter, exile Dramatic Reversal, and then pay two mana to cast the exiled spell.

Doing that will untap Scepter, along with all of your nonland permanents including your mana Rocks and Sanar, Unfinished Genius. He can now be tapped to make a Treasure token, making it even easier to launch into this combo. All it does is make a ton of mana and a huge pile of Treasure tokens.

Another fun combo Sanar, Unfinished Genius involves tapping and untapping him a lot.

Both Freed from the Real and Pemmin's Aura are Enchantment - Auras that can be used to untap enchanted Creature. Sanar can tap to create a Treasure token, which can be used to untap him so he can tap again. Doing "The Twist" like Chubby Checker might be entertaining, but it takes a bit more to make this worth the effort.

Illusionist's Bracers will copy the equipped Creature's activated ability, so tapping him will make two Treasure tokens instead of one. That means infinite Treasures and therefore, Infinite mana. It also means infinite Artifact enter-the-battlefield triggers, which means if I have Weftstalker Ardent in play, I should be able to kill the table.

If my Weftstalker Ardent is missing in action, that's fine. Making a ton of mana may not win the game on its own, but it can set up a bunch of other wincons.

Mechanized Production is a four-mana Aura I can use to enchant an Artifact I control. At the beginning of my upkeep I'll make a token copy of enchanted Artifact. Then if I control eight or more Artifacts with the same name as one another, I win the game. Those Artifacts will probably be Treasure tokens.

Hellkite Tyrant is a six-mana Dragon with Flying and Trample, but it's in today's list for its triggered abilities. Whenever it deals combat damage to a player, I'll gain control of all Artifacts that player controls. At the beginning of my upkeep, if I control twenty or more Artifacts, I'll win the game.

Winning the game is the point, but making infinite mana can accomplish that in more direct ways than alternate wincons. Comet Storm and Fireball can be used to simply hit each opponent for enough direct damage to kill them. They can also be used in a pinch as removal spells, but they'll be most useful as a way to finish off the table if I've hit a combo and made a ton of mana.

One Percent Inspiration

According to Thomas Edison, genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. With the amount of burn damage this deck should be able to push out, you might just get your opponents to perspire a little. As soon as you generate an insane pile of Treasures or a huge amount of mana, they'll be sweating wondering if you're sitting there with a wincon in hand or if they're going to live to see another turn.

The tap/untap combo included above is something I only came up with after I had what I thought was a finished list. The perspiration in Edison's quote means hard work, and sometimes that work comes in the form of play-testing and just thinking about the deck a lot.

It's not uncommon for me to only see a really cool interaction when I'm already in the process of writing a column. These things don't always show up when you want them to, but this time my inspiration showed up in time.

Sanar, Unfinished Genius | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Sanar, Unfinished Genius

• Creatures (19)
• 1 Academy Manufactor
• 1 Archmage Emeritus
• 1 Archmage of Runes
• 1 Dualcaster Mage
• 1 Faerie Mastermind
• 1 Final-Word Phantom
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Goblin Electromancer
• 1 Goldspan Dragon
• 1 Hellkite Tyrant
• 1 High Fae Trickster
• 1 Ledger Shredder
• 1 Stella Lee, Wild Card
• 1 Storm-Kiln Artist
• 1 Stormcatch Mentor
• 1 Terror of the Peaks
• 1 Tidal Barracuda
• 1 Valley Floodcaller
• 1 Weftstalker Ardent

• Instants (19)
• 1 Aetherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Borne Upon a Wind
• 1 Cerulean Wisps
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Comet Storm
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Deflecting Swat
• 1 Dramatic Reversal
• 1 Fork
• 1 Ghostly Flicker
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Quicken
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Reiterate
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Wild Magic Surge

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Brass's Bounty
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Fireball
• 1 Mana Geyser
• 1 Past in Flames
• 1 Rite of Replication

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Ral, Storm Conduit

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Freed from the Real
• 1 Leyline of Anticipation
• 1 Pemmin's Aura
• 1 Mechanized Production

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers
• 1 Isochron Scepter
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Pyromancer's Goggles
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Vedalken Orrery

• Lands (37)
• 13 Island
• 13 Mountain
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Emergence Zone
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Frostboil Snarl
• 1 Inventors' Fair
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Training Center

Buy This Deck Export text

I ended up dropping out all Game Changers but Mystical Tutor, which still positions this list in Bracket 3. If you were dead set about dropping the power level so it could play in Bracket 2, you'd need to drop out that tutor and you might want to reconsider this list's basic game plan. I'm digging for game ending combos, but in Bracket 2 you're more likely to want to use your tutors for answers instead of ways to win the game out of nowhere.

I doubt Sanar, Unfinished Genius is going to do much in Bracket 4, but you still have plenty of room to make this list more powerful. Adding in a Rhystic Study and Fierce Guardianship makes a lot of sense, but the biggest decision you make will probably be which wincon to focus on.

I really like variety in my Commander games, so I'm prone to run a few too many subthemes. If you narrow your focus to just one or two ways to win the game, you're much more likely to have room for all of the interaction you need to compete in higher bracket play.

Final Thoughts

I think Sanar, Unfinished Genius is the kind of Legend that gives you some really interesting puzzles to try to solve. Tutoring for an Instant or Sorcery card is a powerful ability, but at five mana it's not the sort of thing you'd be doing on turn two in a cEDH game. I do think combo is the natural playstyle for this Commander, so it will likely fit more naturally into playgroups that focus on slightly higher powered play.

It's worth mentioning that the combos I've outlined in this column generally involve lots mana and/or lots of cards. Playing a Flash enabler, playing Terror of the Peaks, casting Wild Idea to tutor up Rite of Replication, and then casting a kicked Rite of Replication isn't exactly a compact wincon, even if it might look like a two card combo to some of your opponents.

If you do play in lower powered pods or with newer players, it's worth remembering that their enjoyment of the game is as important as yours. If your combo deck is reliable and wins a lot, maybe consider having other decks you can pull out so they're not staring down the same wincons in every game.

The amount I don't know about cEDH could just about fill the Grand Canyon, so while my gut instinct is that this little guy can't hang at those tables, don't let me stop you from trying to make Sanar as powerful as you want to make him. A tutor in the Command Zone is very powerful, even if it's a limited tutor that without a Flash enabler is only at Sorcery speed.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading!