A Historic Brawl Deck: Emry Nexus of Fartifacts

Week 2 baby, we did it! Wait, didn’t we just do this one? Well, with the amount of people I have seen asking for a historic brawl deck, I thought I would take my favorite deck and attempt to make of it the most degenerate hateful combo deck possible with the help of everyone’s FAVORITE card from last standard rotation, Nexus of Fate!

Yes, I know, that card is rancid. But when you run only one copy of it, it’s more fair right? WRONG! This deck is NOT for you to play with friends, if you intend to keep them. It’s not overpowered by any stretch, but boy once this deck pops off you will find yourself alone at the table playing with yourself. But we love doing that anyways. The plan is simple. Draw and mill through your entire deck with Emry and all your artifacts until all you have left is a Nexus of Fate. At that point you can with with Jace, Wielder of Mysteries if he's in your hand or just loop Nexus while you either beat their face if they don't have blockers or mill your opponent with Folio of Fancies and Millstone. Who has two thumbs and hates fun? THIS GUY!

Getting Mana:

Ah, historic... Mox Amber is an absolutely busted card with our commander. Not only does it reduce her cost by 1 for absolutely no mana, it can tap for U once she's on the board! Delicious. Traveler's Amulet serves as a good way to consistently get our land drops, as we can continually sacrifice it and play it from our graveyard, both making sure we get our lands and emptying our deck at the same time. We only run 12 islands, but getting our blue mana is always good. Arcane Signet is obviously here, and everyone's favorite Treasure Map // Treasure Cove can once again be the jank glue that ties this deck together, allowing us to fix our draws, ramp, and holy moly it makes 3 artifacts when it flips! Emry is SO wet right now. Gilded Lotus is our big boy ramp, and brings our untap artifact abilities to a whole new level. We kind of need it since we need 9 mana at least to loop Nexus of Fate while milling our opponents to death.

Stayin’ Alive:

Historic Brawl can be a scary place, and since we don't really wanna die halfway through our game of solitaire we need some ways to live. Fountain of Renewal is awesome for giving small incidental healing as well as being card draw later on. Almost every artifact that sacrifices itself for a good effect is amazing with Emry. Sorcerous Spyglass is in the deck because since I'm going to be a degenerate running Nexus of Fate why not dump on fun altogether? Vantress Gargoyle is a pretty good blocker in the early game and can serve as a closer later in the game. Transmogrifying Wand is both hilarious and quite good at dealing with any big commanders like Niv Mizzet, Parun or Ghalta, Primal Hunger. Icy Manipulator is a very good way of neautralizing a problematic creature or just be a meanie and tap their mana on their upkeep step. Karn, the Great Creator is here for some excellent artifact hate and can make our bigger artifacts into big roadblocks to our opponent's creatures. Mishra's Self-Replicator can be a closer and a way to muck up the board, as almost all cards in our deck are historic.

Killing Decks:

We wanna see our deck in our hand or graveyard, fast. Witching Well is just excellent with our commander, as is Tome of Legends since we expect to be playing her a few times. Millstone and Folio of Fancies can help us see our deck faster if our opponent isn't posing much threat, and serve as finishers later on. Azor's Gateway // Sanctum of the Sun is one I'm a little unsure about but we do need quite a bit of mana later on and there is a bit of redundancy we can exile to it in this deck. Dilligent Excavator and Sage of Lat-Nam let us get extra value from artifacts and Mystic Forge is our better version of Experimental Frenzy in most cases. Narset, Parter of Veils is once again the fun police, because this deck is for monsters.

Here for Synergy:

Our untap boys Manifold Key, Corridor Monitor, and good ol' Voltaic Servant work overtime in this deck, as we have even more artifacts that tap for excellent effect in Historic. Witch's Oven can help us both stay alive and do the reducing Emry's commander tax trick by sacrificing her in response to removal. Crashing Drawbridge can help us not only use Emry immediately but swing in if we ever amass enough of a board in a turn, which can happen pretty often if we pop off. Portal of Sanctuary once again turbo mills us with Emry and Sai, Master Thopterist is just a spectacular card in this deck, giving utility in both card draw and building the board with most cards in our deck.

How we win:

Ah, the age old question. As stated in the start, the main way of winning is by taking infinite turns looping our one Nexus of Fate. I am EXTREMELY sad to say that we simply cannot do that forever, as the game will force us to take more game actions or suffer a loss :( That is why we have all this other stuff here, as well as our mill plan, so you can pick your poison depending on what you drew or have the mana for. Chaos Wand is honestly just here for you to style on your opponents, though it is a very powerful card if you have a lot of mana. Magistrate's Scepter is our other way of taking infinite turns, and Karn, Scion of Urza can both get us cards or provide us with tremendous beaters. Tezzeret, Artifice Master will draw us a lot of cards most of the time, but you can use him to make thopters if the coast is clear in the air to finish your opponent off faster. Ugin, the Ineffable STILL can't be effed with and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is the most merciful way to put our opponent out of their misery, if we didn't mill him already.

Lands:

Oh god I might have overdone it here but it's historic so let's have fun! We have quite a few more options of colorless utility lands and because of that I thought why not run a Field of the Dead for extra hatefulness? Notable additions are Zhalfirin Void for the scry, Field of Ruin to nuke an important land our opponent might have in play, Detection Tower if our opponents somehow get hexproof to stop our mill plan, Reliquary Tower for the lulz, and Memorial to Genius because we can NEVER DRAW ENOUGH CARDS.

Don't play this deck against a friend. Actually, you probably shouldn't play this deck at all.

Enjoy...?