Mishra Tamer vs Eminent One
First, I'm a gigantic fan of all things Phyrexia and The Brother's War. I've decided to finally try and build a Mishra deck but I've got some hang ups. I know both decks are primarily artifact decks but I want to build them to play differently from each other.
For [[Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa]], this deck is incredibly obvious: it's a self mill/discard deck. Load your deck with all kinds of artifacts (key ones being [[Mesmeric Orb]] and [[Sundial of the Infinite]]), chuck them in the graveyard and unearth them for value. This form of Mishra is incredibly powerful because he gives protection to all your stuff (through his Ward ability) and he is pseudo card advantage (every artifact is accessible as long as he is in play but he's not true card advantage because you have to have something that throws artifacts in the graveyard first). My first couple rough drafts of the deck was basically a couple graveyard tutors (entomb, unmarked grave, goblin engineer, goblin welder, etc) to find Mesmeric Orb + Sundial as quickly as possible and find combo pieces (involving Disciple of the Vault or Reckless Fireweaver and infinitely looping artifacts in and out of play or Top + Citadel + Aetherflux) but I wanted something more interesting. I'm a big fan of thematic consistency (and consistency with the story) so I decided to instead put all of Mishra's artifact creatures from the brother's war in it but the wincon is still too damn slow (even if you load up with good ramp, Mishra's not coming down until T4 but he's usually coming down T5 and then you might be spending another turn or so to find Sundial, which is very important or you can't keep anything that you've unearthed and then you've got like 2 turns to potentially kill everyone with combat which is waaaay to slow). I know that throwing [[Mishra, Claimed by Gix]] into the deck (since [[Phyrexian Dragon Engine]] is going in anyway) is a great option to speed up winning but are there are any secondary suggestions to speed it up? The goal is to shoot for a win by T9 or T10 (in bracket 3).
For [[Mishra, Eminent One]], I originally was at a loss for how to build him but I decided to try and make him the combo deck instead (didn't want both decks to be combo) because he already generates copies (which are easy to exploit for combos) and blue gives him more card draw + easier to protect his combos. However, I won't lie, I feel like I'm missing something else with him. My usual deck plan (with all decks) is T1-3 ramp + find engine pieces, T4 commander, T5 start engine and Eminent One just feels like I haven't found an by T5 yet because he just gives slow, yet incremental value. Also, to ensure saturation of card draw (artifacts entering/leaving that allow you to draw a card), it feels like I have difficulty fitting everything in the deck (sufficient removal, sufficient draw, engine pieces, blockers etc) that it just makes me feel like I'm missing something with him (for example, Tithing Blade was put in the deck as a form of removal as well as Grave Pact/Dictate, because Mishra's warform dies anyway and it gives board control, but all of these effects are sorcery speed and it feels like if I put more instant speed removal, then there's not enough draw/not enough engine pieces as mentioned earlier). I also don't like to build my entire deck around one combo (makes gameplay too linear and boring): I prefer to have multiple combos that work as modular pieces like 'blood artist effect + sacrifice outlet + recurrable creature' and put like 3-5 of each piece and draw a ton until I find enough pieces to start a loop and win. With Eminent One I know this equivalent is 'artifact enter/leave + sacrifice outlet + way to loop artifact' and I've got some ideas on how to do this (one plan is to just loop turns 'gonti's + reckless/disciple + mishra's token + artifact token generator = infinite turns, each opponent loses life on each ETB/LTB so that's a clean wincon) but some other ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks for coming to my convoluted and OCD plea for help.
Posted Feb 16, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC