What's our strategy?

We're going to control the board with bounce effects and counter spells while using cycle effects and madness to assemble a game winning combo.

Rocky Morning

First, we'll ramp with Everflowing Chalice, Prismatic Lens, Mind Stone, and Fractured Powerstone.

Chug Some Water

We're going keep the board clear of threats with Whelming Wave, River's Rebuke, Engulf the Shore, Displacement Wave, Devastation Tide, Curse of the Swine, Crush of Tentacles, Aetherize, and Aether Gale.

Look for Clues

We're playing blue control, so often we want to sit on unspent mana to either play counterspells or protection spells. But if we don't need to or can't, we can instead use our mana to draw with Treasure Cruise, Pull from Tomorrow, Kumena's Awakening, Jace's Ingenuity, Hieroglyphic Illumination, and Enhanced Awareness.

Race to Remember

We need to search through our deck quickly to find our combo. Jace's Sanctum helps by reducing our costs and letting us scry. Monastery Siege, Frantic Search, Compulsive Research, and Careful Consideration let us cycle through good chunks of our deck. Even some of our lands, Desert of the Mindful, Lonely Sandbar, and Remote Isle can be cycled if we don't need them.

Going Mad

We can add value from discarding cards by instead casting spells with madness: Welcome to the Fold, Obsessive Search, Nagging Thoughts, and Just the Wind.

Ask for Help

We're going to generate some creature tokens to help us out. With the amount of cycling and wheel effects we have, Drake Haven can generate a small army of drakes with any extra mana we might have.

Summoner's Bane and Geist Snatch can prevent huge threats from entering the field, and Callous Dismissal can bounce one away if it's coming at us.

Other spells serve dual purposes, and are discussed elsewhere: Lazotep Plating, Crush of Tentacles, Orochi Hatchery, Golem Foundry, and Efficient Construction.

How are we going to win?

We're going to build an infinite combo of artifact spell triggers, and either mill our opponents out or create infinite creature tokens.

A Friendly Face

What we need to kick things off is a creature that lets us untap it whenever we cast an artifact spell. We have three chances at this, with Battered Golem, Mirran Spy, and Chakram Retriever.

We're going to search for one of these first combo pieces by using our generated tokens. Because we only have these three creatures in the deck, we can cast Polymorph or Mass Polymorph to turn those tokens into our untapper creatures!

Or better yet, we can cast our Golden Pig, Reweave, which allows us to do this conversion at instant speed. With this card, we can wait until the end of our opponent's turn before revealing that we have our combo online. This is the best way to avoid getting our combo pieces countered or destroyed, which is why it's the golden pig of the deck!

It's All Coming Back

Next, we want to cast one of Banishing Knack or Retraction Helix on our untapper creature. Dizzy Spell allows us to search for either of these two necessary instants, and since there's only those two cards that can trigger our combo, having another card to search for them directly is huge.

Lastly, we cast a zero mana artifact: Tormod's Crypt, Herbal Poultice, Everflowing Chalice, Darksteel Relic, Briber's Purse, or Orochi Hatchery. Then, we use our creature to tap and bounce the artifact back to our hand. We then recast it for free, which will cause our creature to untap. We tap to bounce, cast, untap, etc infinitely!

Keep It Together

Our combo is fragile, so we need to protect it! It's most likely that we'll get our untap creature out and then have to wait until the next turn to actually trigger our combo because the creature has summoning sickness, preventing it from using the tap ability we want to give it. So, we've packed a few protection spells to ensure the creature survives until our next turn: Misdirection, Mage's Guile, Lazotep Plating, and even Herbal Poultice in a pinch. We also have an arsenal of counterspells: Unwind, Spell Pierce, Rewind, Dream Fracture, Dispel, Dismiss, and Censor, which double down as protection for our combo as it's going off.

We Made It Home!

If we've pulled off our combo, we can win with those infinite artifact casts by having Altar of the Brood on the board, which will cause all of our opponents to mill their decks and lose the game. Or, if we have Brain Freeze in hand, we can cast it after a thousand combo loops to also mill out each of our opponents.

Sometimes decks have mill protection, such as Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, so we also have two backup plans for infinite creature tokens. We can generate infinite 3/3 golems with Golem Foundry or infinite 1/1 flying thopters with Efficient Construction. We may have to protect our army for a turn, but if we get the chance to swing with it, we win!

If these combos get stopped, or our opponents build up their board states too quickly, we can also use their own creatures against them with Reins of Power. Since we have very few creatures ourselves, this is a very flexible and potentially game-winning card by itself.

Fblthp, the Commander?

Do we actually use our commander in this deck? No, not really, but he does come with some nice bonuses and weird interactions if we do cast him. He's cheap, so we can use him for extra card draw or chump blocking if necessary. He can be a creature for Mass Polymorph, or a black hole for Misdirection. If he does get targeted, we can let him be shuffled into our deck, because we can get him out for double value with our creature morphs Reweave, Polymorph, or Mass Polymorph!

What are some reasonable upgrades for the deck?

Since we're a combo deck, the most important thing we can do is find our combo pieces.

Ancestral Knowledge can cut through a huge portion of our deck and let us draw into a combo piece or two before leaving the battlefield.

Astral Cornucopia is not only a zero cost artifact, but it can help us ramp by providing extra blue mana at any stage of the game.

Fabricate is a flexible combo tutor that can grab a zero mana artifact, Golem Foundry, or Battered Golem.

Merchant Scroll is a flexible tutor that can fetch one of our two combo instants or protection for our combo if necessary.

Muddle the Mixture is a solid counterspell, but can also fetch Brain Freeze if we need it for the win.

Sol Ring is a good ramp card in any commander deck, but for us it can act as our finishing combo artifact while also generating infinite colorless mana! At 1 CMC, it can be fetched with Dizzy Spell, and the extra mana opens us up to a variety of other win conditions.

Want to buy this deck?

Head on over to https://decks.tcgplayer.com/magic/commander/thebluerage/lost-in-madness/1353490 and give it a shot!