There's something about Homunculi that I just love. They have names like Mklthd, Fblthp and Zndrsplt. They have a very cartoonish look to them, somehow managing to be cute even when they're exasperated or outright angry. There are a decent number of Homunculi in Magic, but not enough to easily put together a strong kindred deck around that creature type.

Today I'm going to be exploring how I built a deck around the latest Legendary Homunculus, a one eyed freak from Aetherdrift with an interest in drawing cards.

Vnwxt, Verbose Host is a 2-mana 0/4 Blue Homunculus with some neat party tricks. He'll give you no maximum hand size, and he's got a weird "level up" ability designed to match the odd racetrack vibe of the Aetherdrift expansion set. In Aetherdrift there are cards that will let you increase a "speed" trait that you, as a player, will now have. It's not a counter, it can only go up once on your turn, and it currently can't go above 4. If a player has a speed of 4, they are considered to be at "max speed."

As with everything else in Magic, nothing is sacred. When they release the inevitable MBCU (Mel Brooks Cinematic Universe) expansion set, I'm sure a Spaceballs card will suddenly let you go up to 5, which of course would be "Ludicrous Speed". Let's just hope those cards are Universes Beyond, though maybe by then it'll all just be part of the Magic multiverse.

You increase your speed by causing an opponent to lose life on your turn. Vnwxt, Verbose Host isn't the only card in Aetherdrift that cares about being at max speed, but he is one of the best. Anytime you would draw a card, you'll draw two cards instead. Every draw is done separately, so a Mulldrifter will draw me four cards instead of two.

The delay in getting up to max speed is enough that I don't think this card will see cEDH play, but any commander that gives additional card draw should be able to lead a pretty decent deck. Vnwxt doesn't give me any obvious build paths, so I'm going to need to find my own flavors for this brew.

Neapolitan Vnwxt

I'll leave it to you to decide which of my three main themes is the chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry, but I'm definitely going to build this deck with three flavors. For me that makes it more interesting to build and play. I'm in mono-Blue so I'll be laying down a familiar foundation of mana rocks for ramp, a few Blue card draw staples, and some efficient and powerful removal spells. You can probably guess them all, but that's not where things get interesting.

The first theme I'm going to run is pingers. These are generally three mana creatures that can tap to deal 1 damage to target creature or player. They can do some minor cleanup duty for problem creatures with 1 toughness, but I'll usually want to use them to hit a player on my turn in order to increase my speed.

Prodigal Sorcerer is widely known as "Tim" for his resemblance to Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He is joined in this list by Apprentice Sorcerer, Capricious Sorcerer, Zuran Spellcaster, and Rootwater Hunter. Thornwind Faeries is in the list as a pinger, but might come in handy as a blocker for a flying threat. Staff of Nin costs twice as much as the rest of my pingers, but will give me an extra card on my upkeep. With both Vnwxt and Staff of Nin on the field, at max speed I'll be drawing four cards at the start of my turn!

Vnwxt is a Homunculus, and I have a soft spot for that creature type, so I decided to have my second theme be Homunculi.

Jeering Homunculus might be the first of this odd little creature type to really catch my eye. When a card's art not only tells a story, but also does a great job of imparting a strong feeling or emotion, you know you've found something special. Mklthd had always hated crowds... and they had always hated him. Our Jeering Homunculus is Mklthd, and he will let you goad target creature when it enters the battlefield. Maybe someday this misanthropic little fellow will be put on a legendary creature card, but until then, I'll always enjoy seeing his angry little face when I draw a card.

Fblthp, the Lost, is a confused little fellow who has popped up on a bunch of cards over the years, most notably on the five mana Gatecrash instant Totally Lost, where he's looking totally lost. Fblthp will draw me a card, and if I'm able to put him into play from my library I'll draw two instead! If he becomes the target of a spell, I'll shuffle him into my library, but if I'm lucky he'll pop up again eventually.

Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom is a partner with Okaun, Eye of Chaos, and together they can lead a very powerful and explosive casual EDH deck. As I write this, I faced one in a game last night, and while we got very lucky with that player's die rolls, I always felt like we were on the verge of getting killed out of nowhere with a huge Okaun and a Chadra's Ignition. In this deck Zndrsplt will sometimes draw me cards, and if I'm lucky, it'll draw me a whole bunch.

I'm also running some less impressive Homunculi. Referee Squad is in the list. It can tap target creature an opponent controls and put a stun counter on it when Referee Squad enters the battlefield. Homunculus Horde is a 2/2 Homunculus from Foundations who will make a token copy of itself whenever I draw my second card each turn. Scute Swarm is better, but in a Vnwxt deck I should be able to draw a lot of cards and make a lot of copies of it.

My third theme is a result of my decision to build this list with Snow-Covered Islands instead of regular Islands. That works nicely with Extraplanar Lens, as I'd be making snow-covered Islands tap for an extra mana. Chances are good I'll be the only one with any, but if I just ran Islands, I'd be helping out every other Blue player at the table. They're in Blue - they don't need the help.

I might need help, as I decided my third flavor for Vnwxt would be snow!

One thing I can get by running snow creatures is a presence in the air. In some games having a flying blocker can be a matter of life and death. Blizzard Strix is a five-mana flyer with flash. When it enters the battlefield, if I control another snow permanent (I will) I can exile another permanent and the exiled card will return to play at the beginning of the next end step. That can remove an attacker, remove a blocker, kill many Hydras, protect a key permanent you don't want destroyed, or even reset a Planeswalker.

Chillerpillar is a 3/3 Insect that can be made monstrous for six mana, turning it into a 5/5 (3 power plus two +1/+1 counters) flyer. I think of Mothra when I look at Chillerpillar and I always run it in my Blue snow decks. I also always run Rimefeather Owl, another Bird with a whopping 7 mana cost. For five and two Blue, I'll get a flyer with a power and toughness equal to the number of snow permanents in play. That will likely be at least 8, and possibly much more if it's the late game or if another player is also playing snow lands.

I'm running my first snow EDH commander, Heidar, Rimewind Master. He can tap to bounce something, but only if I control four or more snow permanents. I've also got a Yeti, a Kraken, a Hawk, a couple of other Wizards and Ascendant Spirit, a snow Spirit with the ability to level up to gain additional abilities and stats.

Ascendant Spirit starts as a one mana 1/1 and costs a total of nine snow mana to eventually turn it into a 4/4 Spirit Warrior Angel with two +1/+1 counters, a flying counter, and the ability to have you draw a card when it deals combat damage. That's not bad, but it's also not cheap.

I'm also running Coldsteel Heart and Replicating Ring, though I drew the line at Arcum's Astrolabe. All my lands are snow-covered except for Reliquary Tower so I'm pretty comfortable with this third flavor for the deck.

How We Win

This isn't some fancy high-powered or cEDH build, where I can walk you through the lines of play that will get you to your compact, efficient wincon. I could have leaned into a Laboratory Maniac type finish where you draw from an empty library to win the game. If this deck proves to draw cards at a fast enough clip, that's always an option for a future upgrade.

I am building this for mid powered play so there is a focus on creatures, and I have the ability to swing for decent amounts of damage. Rimefeather Owl can pack a wallop if I've got enough lands in play.

I also have a few Krakens in the list. Stormtide Leviathan will turn all lands into Islands and creatures without flying or Islandwalk can't attack. Scourge of Fleets will bounce my opponents' creatures if they have a toughness less than the number of Islands I control. Icebreaker Kraken will keep one opponent's creatures tapped down. Tidal Kraken is unblockable. Deep-Sea Kraken is unblockable and can be cast for a suspend cost of 3 mana.

I do expect to be drawing a lot of cards, so I decided to include Twenty-Toed Toad. This Frog Wizard gives me a maximum hand size of 20, and when it attacks I win the game if I have twenty or more counters on it, or twenty or more cards in hand. Timestamps will determine which of the hand-size-modifying abilities wins out. If Twenty-Toed Toad gets played and then Vnwxt, Verbose Host gets played, I'll have no max hand size, as Vnwxt entered last.

My last hope, and it would be truly a desperate measure, would be to send Vnwxt into battle. He's got zero power, but if equipped with a Blackblade Reforged, he'd get +X/+X where X is the number of lands I control. I could see running a more equipment cards with the goal of playing votron on "hard mode." Winning with commander damage could happen, but only with help. Strata Scythe would be my next pick, but it's not in this first draft. A commander damage win is probably only looking attractive if an opponent has a huge life total and Twenty-Toed Toad isn't showing up.

Playing defense with counterspells, a bit of removal, and mass bounce spells like Aetherize, Aetherspouts, and Cyclonic Rift, is a huge part of being able to make it to the finish line in mono-Blue. If you find you're having trouble winning but you are drawing a ton of cards, I'd suggest adding in more draw and aiming for that Lab Man / Jace, Wielder of Mysteries / Thassa's Oracle win.

Early Results

I almost titled this section Results and Regrets, but that's not fair to the deck. I was able to get in a game with this list and came away from it with things I would definitely change.

I think I started out with a hand that included four lands, Sapphire Medallion, Aetherize and Aetherspouts. If nothing else, I figured I would be able to protect myself long enough to be able to be relevant in the game. This playgroup's meta aims for low-to-mid powered builds and games tend to resolve through combat, with combo and alt wincons as the exception rather than the norm.

I ended up drawing more lands and not many bodies to put on the field, while two of my tablemates were spamming out tokens at an alarming rate. I got to the point where I had Caged Sun, Extraplanar Lens, and Sapphire Medallion in play, I had gotten to my Max Speed, but just wasn't seeing any of my card draw. I hadn't imagined that would be a problem, but in this one game sample size, I was hellbent in the end game.

I was still relevant in the game and even pulled into cards that could have given me the win with a little luck.

I allowed a tablemate on Dynaheir, Invoker Adept to "do his thing" even when that thing let him take three extra turns. I could have stopped him, but I wasn't the problem and was hoping he'd help deal with the player who had dozens of tokens and token generators in play and was gearing up for an alpha strike. It was a risky move, but the Dynaheir player hadn't done much in the game yet and I wanted him to have his deck do something cool. It sure did.

He put a bunch of damage triggers on the stack to kill the tokens player, who was on Hazezon, Shaper of Sand. The Hazezon player tried to resolve a Teferi's Protection, but I countered that with a Swan Song. It was a wonky turn, as the initial attempt to shortcut the process had to be rolled back so we would know exactly when the Teferi's Protection would be put on the stack. I was at the highest life total, but I knew I couldn't beat three players with my meager board, so having one of them gone would make my job that much easier.

I had used that Aetherize to buy the table some time, and was able to play out my Rimefeather Owl as a flying 10/10, but it wasn't enough. I saved the Dynaheir player from death with my Aetherspouts, but then drew into a pair of mana rocks and saw a Kraken I had played, and then my beloved Owl get exiled by a Duplicant before it was all over. The Dynaheir player was killed before me, but in the end it was a pretty frustrating game.

My initial takeaway was that I was playing too low powered of a deck for that table, but it's entirely possible that luck played a part in how things played out. My only major threats - an 8/8 Kraken and my 10/10 Owl, both got exiled by that Duplicant, and I never got to see my deck go crazy the way the other players' decks had. In building the deck I was aiming towards a lower powered game and I may have aimed a bit too low, but that's been happening with that playgroup lately. Also, a one game sample size may not be a fair way to really evaluate a deck.

Vnwxt, Verbose Host

After that sample game, it's hard to imagine wanting to power this deck down, but for every cEDH player out there, you'll also find a player or an entire playgroup where they are building and playing at an incredibly low power level. If you wanted to tune this list down, I think you'd drop out the Cyclonic Rift and Rhystic Study, along with a few of the better mana producers like Extraplanar Lens and Caged Sun. Those Snow-Covered Islands might also need to go, which means the snow creatures could get replaced by a bunch of small unblockable creatures like Gudul Lurker.

I'm more inclined to want to push this deck up in power if I were to build it in paper or play it again in Tabletop Simulator. I'd start by dropping out the pingers to add in those unblockable guys I can play early on and swing for damage. Getting Vnwxt out on turn two is fine, but it has zero power so you're probably not going to get any early game combat damage triggers from your commander. I would then drop out a bunch of the weaker snow creatures and homunculi and would replace them with Blue card draw creatures like Archmage Emeritus and a bunch of low mana spells to draw me cards. I would never want to have another game with Vnwxt where I was hellbent at the end.

The reality is that my ability to make a ton of mana let me play everything I was drawing into. I don't think every game with this list would end up that way, but I also think this list would need more card draw if you're aiming to play in higher powered pods.

Scheming with Raffine | Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 Vnwxt, Verbose Host

• Creatures (37)
• 1 Apprentice Sorcerer
• 1 Arcanis the Omnipotent
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Ascendant Spirit
• 1 Avalanche Caller
• 1 Berg Strider
• 1 Blizzard Strix
• 1 Bonded Fetch
• 1 Capricious Sorcerer
• 1 Chillerpillar
• 1 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Deep-Sea Kraken
• 1 Fblthp, the Lost
• 1 Frost Augur
• 1 Frostpeak Yeti
• 1 Furtive Homunculus
• 1 Heidar, Rimewind Master
• 1 Homunculus Horde
• 1 Icebreaker Kraken
• 1 Jeering Homunculus
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Pilfering Hawk
• 1 Prodigal Sorcerer
• 1 Referee Squad
• 1 Riddlekeeper
• 1 Rimefeather Owl
• 1 Rimewind Taskmage
• 1 Rootwater Hunter
• 1 Scourge of Fleets
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Sphinx of Uthuun
• 1 Stormtide Leviathan
• 1 Thornwind Faeries
• 1 Tidal Kraken
• 1 Twenty-Toed Toad
• 1 Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom
• 1 Zuran Spellcaster

• Spells (13)
• 1 AEtherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Graven Lore
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Reality Shift
• 1 Strix Serenade
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Totally Lost
• 1 Spectral Deluge

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Rhystic Study

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Coldsteel Heart
• 1 Extraplanar Lens
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Replicating Ring
• 1 Sapphire Medallion
• 1 Staff of Nin
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (38)
• 37 Snow-Covered Island
• 1 Reliquary Tower

Buy This Deck Export text

Any deck in Blue that isn't focused on playing out big beaters is going to have games where you find yourself hanging out watching the tokens decks and the Green decks feel like they are running away with the game early on. It's just very hard to put out as much of a board presence as those other decks, so you just do your thing, try to survive and not look like you're the problem. Usually, you aren't the problem until you are. That playstyle of being behind the leader and trying to make sure you can repel the alpha strike and win on the crackback is risky and can be frustrating at times when you come up short.

I'm not sure how much of my sample game was a result of a power imbalance and how much of it was the result of the way a deck like this just naturally plays in a game. I often ascribe a lower power level to these new decks when they come up short, but in reality I was in a position to win that sample game. The deck absolutely needs more draw, but I also probably had some bad luck with the winning player getting repeated use out of that Duplicant. Is this really a mid-powered list and I just had some bad beats in that game? Maybe, but I'd still tune this list up before playing it again. Pingers are cute, but they're slow and my deck needed to be faster.

Final Thoughts

If you just scan my columns for decklists I think you're robbing yourself of context. Many of my columns attempt to tell a story. Sometimes my story is of a great idea, a crackerjack EDH deck, and the glorious victory it earned in its first game or two. Sometimes I have to explain how I had an idea and it didn't work out as well as I might have hoped in its first game. A single win or less may not represent how a deck will play over a long run of games, but for me a big part of the fun comes from tweaking and evolving a deck over time.

You get to see the first step in that process, but if you just skip to the decklist, you will rob yourself of the chance to understand why I put together that first draft, how I felt it played, and how I would change it going forwards. If you're one of my readers who takes the time to get the full picture and reads the entire column - I see you and I appreciate you! Not ever first draft is perfect, but every deck has its place even if that place is at a lower powered, slower meta than you are used to.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that Vnwxt, Verbose Host belongs in the 99 of a deck, rather than being the commander. I do think you could build a fun deck around him, and at the right table today's list could definitely be fun to play. The problem with Vnwxt being in the 99 is that if you draw into him late game you may not have time to get up to Max Speed unless you've already been playing other cards that care about that mechanic.

You may have noticed I didn't dive into the "race car" mechanics in this list. I wouldn't suggest they are bad, but they do leave a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't start playing Magic to relive my childhood love of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, and I don't love that this set feels more like Mario Kart than Magic: the Gathering. Any regular reader knows my disdain for UB sets, especially ones that are so far away from the Medieval Fantasy roots that I still tend to associate with this game.

I may pick up a few Aetherdrift cards, and if you love this aesthetic please don't let me "yuck your yum". By all means, start your engines, try to get up to max speed, and see if you can get to the finish line first. Just don't expect to find me in the grandstands.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!