The deck-building process is a creative process. An idea sparks from somewhere - a card, a group, something you see, or someone you play against - and sets the mind working, looking to create an outlet for that idea.

The iteration part begins. You do internet searches, open binders, read articles, and just spend time in the tank, thinking about what might go into the deck, how it might be constructed.

Sometimes, everything falls into place. The Commander you need exists! That unusual effect you need to create can be created! There are enough Crabs to make a viable Kindred deck!

Sometimes, it doesn't, and you have to make a call: press on? Or live to fight? Does the Commander or idea demand more variety? A change in perspective? A different win condition? Or does the deck die with the idea, and you move on to the next thought?

Creativity requires a delicate balance of focus and openness. You have to remain focused on the idea that started the whole thing. Without that, you're just dropping cards in a pile and hoping they work. But if you don't remain open to new ideas, new interactions, and new thoughts through the process, you're limiting everything the deck can be.

Today's deck is a funny one, and it starts with my misreading the card. Let's take a look at Gwenom, Remorseless.

First of all, Mono-Black, my favorite. I'm already there. Not to mention, two of my favorite characters in the Spider-verse are Gwen and Venom, so I'm all-in here (though I admit, I'd never heard of this character until I saw this card).

But when I read the card, I first saw her as a better Ad Nauseam - she attacks, and we can just roll through our deck with our life total. That seemed like it would be faster and more reliable than an Instant we have to find in our 99, and I thought it might be fun to see if there were a cEDH deck in her.

Then I read the card again. Gwenom doesn't draw like Ad Nauseam. She allows us to play the spells from the top of our Library, except instead of paying mana, we pay life equal to the mana value. So, life total becomes a resource we can leverage to cast more stuff, but nothing goes to our Hand in the process. Also, without a way to play more than one Land per turn, a single Land on the top of our Library stops our chain cold, life or no life.

I still liked Gwenom, though, so I abandoned the "let's pretend we have Ad Nauseam in the Command Zone" idea and pivoted to value. We can use our life as a resource, lean on Gwenom to gain some of it back (there are other effects to do that too), and power out some ridiculous threats both early and more often than our friends by casting them off the top.

There's a fun deck here! We get to cast things like Kokusho, the Evening Star and Bloodthirsty Conqueror off the top of our Library, then use them to beat up our opponents and make them feel like there's no hope. Bloodthirsty Conqueror is particularly great, because whenever one of our Creatures gets through or we do damage or make an opponent lose life in some other way, we gain it back, giving us more fuel to cast off the top. So, I started looking at more ways to get that effect.

Enter: Exquisite Blood. This classic combo piece just made sense; we want this effect pretty badly, and we need the life to keep going, so it seemed obvious.

But the thing is, once you play Exquisite Blood, Sanguine Bond starts to look pretty great. This infinite combo has been around a while, but now there are even more ways to make it happen. Enter: Defiant Bloodlord, Enduring Tenacity, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. If we get one of each of these (one that cares when we gain life, the other that cares when they lose life), we can start a chain that kills everyone with a single bit of damage anywhere.

So, rather than being a value deck with good stuff cast for life points, we've kind of become a combo deck. We don't have a bunch of tutors to go get the pieces, rather we're just running a bunch of different possible elements to assemble as a pocket combo. We're running Insatiable Avarice as a way to manipulate the top of our Library, but also as a card draw spell, so that's not really a tutor because it doesn't get us the whole combo.

But if we're going to be a combo deck, we may as well lean into that a little bit. So we have a Doomsday package.

For those of you who haven't encountered Doomsday, it's an old card for that lets you search your Library and Graveyard for five cards, order them, and put them in your Library. Everything else (the rest of your Library and 'yard) get Exiled. You lose half your life in the process, but we can work with that.

The idea is to get (1) Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Kokusho, the Evening Star, (2) Viscera Seer, and (3) an old Enchantment called Mortuary, which makes it so when a Creature goes into your 'yard from Play, you move it to the top of your Library instead. You cast Mortuary, Viscera Seer, and Gary (you need to have at least 11 Life when you start this or you'll die in the process) off the top of your Library in that order. Gary will do a minimum of six damage to everyone else (six Black pips on the board with the three Creatures and the Enchantment). Then you sacrifice Gary to the Seer, it goes to the top, and you cast it again. It costs you five life each round, but you'll gain enough back each iteration to make it pay off. (Kokusho works the same way except it's a fixed amount of life each time.)

The rest of the deck is Lands, ramp, removal, card draw, and especially Scry effects. Sensei's Divining Top is quite powerful here, given the nature of Gwenom's ability. With the Top on the 'field and Gwenom's ability active, you can order the cards on top of your Library then either play the top card for life, or swap with the Top so you can play the other card with mana and pay one life for the Top. This also lets you move Lands into your Hand or further down. Scroll Rack is another sweet trick to order the top of your Library with the cards in your Hand.

There are a ton of fetch Lands used here to shuffle away Lands on the top of our Library should we want to. Feel free to reduce that number if you don't want to put the expensive ones in, and more importantly don't be afraid to use them when you need mana - don't sacrifice playing the game for a potential shuffle later. But it's nice when there's a War Room on top keeping you from doing anything else to crack a Polluted Delta and take another shot at something you can cast on the top.

Gwenom, Remorseless | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Gwenom, Remorseless

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Bloodthirsty Conqueror
• 1 Chancellor of the Dross
• 1 Crashing Drawbridge
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Defiant Bloodlord
• 1 Doom Whisperer
• 1 Enduring Tenacity
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
• 1 Noxious Gearhulk
• 1 Shadowgrange Archfiend
• 1 Shard of the Nightbringer
• 1 Vilis, Broker of Blood
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 1 Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
• 1 Liliana Vess
• 1 Professor Onyx

• Instants (6)
• 1 Archenemy's Charm
• 1 Consuming Corruption
• 1 Defile
• 1 Fell the Profane
• 1 Go for the Throat
• 1 Infernal Grasp

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Doomsday
• 1 Exsanguinate
• 1 Insatiable Avarice
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Profane Command
• 1 Read the Bones
• 1 Repay in Kind
• 1 Sign in Blood
• 1 Tendrils of Agony
• 1 Torment of Hailfire
• 1 Toxic Deluge

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Black Market Connections
• 1 Exquisite Blood
• 1 Font of Agonies
• 1 Mortuary
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Sanguine Bond

• Artifacts (18)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Bontu's Monument
• 1 Candy Trail
• 1 Charcoal Diamond
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Jet Medallion
• 1 Lavaspur Boots
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Lotus Bloom
• 1 Lotus Petal
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Scroll Rack
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 The Darkness Crystal
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (40)
• 16 Swamp
• 1 Bad River
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Castle Locthwain
• 1 Crystal Grotto
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Isolated Watchtower
• 1 Marsh Flats
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rocky Tar Pit
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Study Hall
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 The Grey Havens
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Vesuva
• 1 War Room
• 1 Witch's Cottage
• 1 Zhalfirin Void

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This deck sits in a funny place in my head. It's not worse than a Bracket three deck and honestly should be about even with Bracket two... except it's actively trying to combo. Kind of. It doesn't really look for combo pieces, but it runs enough of them so a combo is very likely to be how this deck wins; beats are possible, but unlikely. It's probably going to get run over by a tuned cEDH deck, but it can eek out enough turn five and turn six wins to play at the highest levels of casual.

However, it's mean for a casual deck. Losing to a combo that kills everyone (especially kind of out of the blue, like when exactly the piece you need to complete the combo is on top of your Library when you attack with Gwenom) feels bad, and doesn't feel like casual, where we let people do their thing. Tread carefully.

One option would be to simply remove the combos and instead just run more Lifelink Creatures to stem the bleeding from Gwenom. Then it becomes the value deck I initially envisioned. That's fun and actually pretty darn cool, and would be a fun mono-{B} deck to have at a table (often those decks are just oppressive no matter what). But the creative process didn't take me there, and I decided to let it lead.

Thanks for reading.