Decklist

https://moxfield.com/decks/5SPi33RewkmGSldOwH15xw

Credit: Hydrax

Primer

https://moxfield.com/decks/jI2xeHLYKkG1Y1Q1hGDMaQ/primer

Introduction & Gameplan

It’s been a very long time since a Grixis commander really caught my eye, but Obeka, Splitter of Seconds is that commander and she is bringing with her a value train the likes of which Thunder Junction has never seen.

She’s got a very simple ability:

• “When Obeka deals combat damage to a player, you get that many additional upkeep steps after this phase.” I love this. It’s not extra turns, it’s not even extra draws, it’s literally just a bunch of upkeeps. So the obvious question is, what are our options in Grixis colors for abilities that trigger on our upkeep? Well, here is a Scryfall search showing all of them. There’s quite a selection to choose from, the strongest of which are the Monarch Courts (Court of Locthwain, Court of Ire, etc.). But there are only 6 total in our colors.

What else can we jam into this deck? Well there is The Initiative mechanic! The Initiative lets us venture into the Undercity whenever we take the initiative and on our upkeep if we have the Initiative. Like The Monarch, the Initiative can be lost if we take combat damage but can also be reclaimed if we deal combat damage to the player who has it.

Now let’s remind ourselves that Obeka’s whole schtick is dealing combat damage to opponents and then giving us a bunch of upkeeps immediately after. And just like that, the deck is coming together!

I’ve packed this build full of every card in Grixis that grants us the Initiative as well as the six Courts that grant us insane triggered abilities if we have the crown. I’ve also loaded up on ways to make Obeka unblockable. Sure, she has built-in Menace but guaranteeing combat damage is how this deck completely blows its opponents out of the water with multiple upkeep triggers. And finally, there was some consideration for voltron pieces that give her a power boost as well as cloning effects such as Shaun, Father of Synths, but then I noticed the Forge room in the Undercity and having that option of buffing her with +1/+1 counters allowed for a lot more room in the 99 for other utility.

Anyway, let’s get into the gameplan!

Early Game

Obeka, Splitter of Seconds provides the most value in this deck if we’ve got at least one upkeep trigger to take advantage of. So, as obvious as it sounds, don’t play her unless we’ve got some way to claim the Initiative on the following turn or we have a permanent with a triggered ability that triggers on upkeep.

We’ve also got 9 ramp sources that can be played on turn 2, thus guaranteeing a turn 3 Obeka. It won’t happen every game, but it’s worth noting.

Notice the inclusion of several cards that grant us the Initiative when they enter (Aarakocra Sneak, Passageway Seer, etc.). These guys let us venture into the Undercity as soon as they ETB, and then Obeka connecting with combat damage means we get to venture at least two more rooms.

The standard play pattern is:

• Cast Obeka, pass turn
• Play an Initiative card, swing with Obeka because she’s not summoning sick, venture through Forge to buff her followed by Arena to goad the most threatening creature at the table
• Next turn repeat, except this time Obeka has 4 power so we get even more upkeeps

The reason we like the Forge room is because Obeka grants us extra upkeeps based on how much combat damage she does so she’ll definitely appreciate those +1/+1 counters. And in the early game, goading an enemy creature from the Arena room will help keep the attention away from us. This path also leads us to the Archives room which draws us a card and who doesn’t like card draw? And finally, in case it wasn’t obvious, the first room in the Undercity is quite useful for making sure we don’t miss land drops!

There is also an alternate play pattern if we have access to a Haste enabler:

• Don’t cast Obeka, instead cast a Haste source like Frostcliff Siege or Lightning Greaves
• Cast an Initiative card or Court or any Upkeep-triggered permanent
• Next turn, get Obeka on board with Haste and swing with her for immediate value

This play pattern is sometimes necessary because she is very much kill-on-sight. The deck has a few Haste sources that require additional mana like Reckless Charge and Swiftfoot Boots so if we’re relying on any of those for Haste, we need to account for the mana needed to cast Obeka and the spell itself.

But other than that, this is the early game in a nutshell. We’re grinding through the Undercity and playing any other upkeep-centric permanents we can get our hands on such as Creeping Bloodsucker, Thopter Spy Network, any of the Courts (which are discussed in detail later in the primer), etc.

Mid Game

In the mid game, I would highly advise holding up mana for instant speed protection. Obeka is going to be a removal magnet once opponents see how much value she is generating so be sure to keep mana sources untapped if there is a counter spell in hand or something like Mithril Coat or Silver Shroud Costume.

If she’s properly protected, the repeated ventures through the Undercity will put us in a huge lead. The Archives room in particular will help us dig through our deck until we find one of our Courts.

• Court of Cunning, Court of Vantress, Court of Embereth, Court of Ire, Court of Ambition and Court of Locthwain are the real powerhouses in this deck.

Each of these gives us something on our upkeep, but they give an even better effect if we’re the Monarch on said upkeep. Obeka must connect with combat damage for this deck to really do its thing. So even if somebody else has the crown, if we’ve built correctly, Obeka should have no issue taking it back. Then we move to our additional upkeeps and reap the full rewards from our Court enchantments.

Seriously, just a couple of these triggers will put us very far ahead of our opponents.

Late Game

If the game hasn’t come to an end, there are a couple of failsafes in this deck.

The first is Hatred. This card can be cast at instant speed just before combat damage is dealt. Swing with Obeka, work out blockers (if there are any) and just before she hits, we can cast Hatred and pay as much life as we can afford to give her a massive power boost.

That amount of damage translates to that many upkeeps. Now imagine venturing 30 times or having one of the courts mentioned above on our field. Imagine one of those triggering 30 times with the full monarch benefit. Court of Ire, Court of Embereth and Court of Ambition can straight up just KO everyone. Court of Cunning can mill everyone out with just 10 triggers and Court of Locthwain can give us a treasure trove of options to play with.

Hatred ends games if they haven’t ended already (but only if we’ve got a payoff for all of those upkeeps). Be sure to save this card if you draw into it, and preferably save a counter spell to make sure it resolves.

And finally, there’s Mechanized Production. If we’ve got this on the board, that means we’ve enchanted an artifact, so just 7 more upkeeps and it’s game over. Or we can be cheeky with it and put it on one of our Thopters (from Thopter Spy Network) while we have several of them, such that one swing from Obeka will give us enough upkeeps to make enough Thopters to trigger the game-winning number 8.

Pros, Cons & Power Level

✅ Pros

• There are a lot of cool abilities that trigger on upkeep but the Initiative mechanic combined with Monarch in one deck leads to a total slug fest. The two mechanics encourage players to actually attack and take the crown for their own benefit which usually leads to faster games.
• Aside from that, the deck is just some of the most fun I’ve had in Grixis in a very long time.

❌ Cons

• I get that not every playgroup is created equal. If your pod hates the idea of “solitaire”, they will likely be annoyed when you go to resolve several dungeon rooms and upkeep triggers after Obeka connects. I play at high power so this isn’t an issue for me (in fact there are decks that take way longer turns). But it is something you should be aware of if you plan on running this exact build.
• It is heavily reliant on its commander, hence the inclusion of some strong counter magic and protection equipment. Luckily, however, you only really have to resolve her once or twice with the proper permanents on board to set you up nicely for the rest of the game even if she does get removed.

☢️ Power Level

• This deck is high-power casual.
• It generates insane value by venturing through the Undercity and it will eventually close the game out with one of the Courts absolutely crippling opponents with repeated upkeep triggers. If that fails, there is Hatred which can exchange life to give Obeka a power boost, which translates to a ton of upkeep triggers.
• Please don’t ask me for a number. I don’t believe that using a 1-10 scale to gage power is meaningful. Describing what your deck does and how it wants to win is much more relevant.

Quick Reference Mechanics

This section provides a reminder of how the auxiliary mechanics work just in case you forgot or would like to keep this primer open on your phone while you’re playing.

The Monarch

The Monarch is not a part of an EDH game by default. The only way to introduce the mechanic is for a player to play a card that has the text “You become the Monarch”. An example would be Court of Vantress.

Once the Monarch has been introduced into the game, all players can participate. The player who initially plays the first monarch card becomes The Monarch. That player can have the title taken away from them if another player deals combat damage to them. At that point, the crown goes to the player who dealt the damage.

Being The Monarch lets the crown-holder draw an extra card on their end step. Otherwise, it provides no other benefits on its own. There are, however, cards such as Court of Vantress that provide additional benefits if their owner holds the Monarch crown.

Ways to take the Monarch from a player who has it:

1. Deal combat damage to them
2. Play a card that says “you become the monarch”, at which point the crown automatically goes back to you

The Initiative/Undercity

The Initiative is not a part of an EDH game by default. The only way to introduce the mechanic is for a player to play a card that has the text “take the initiative”. An example would be Bloodboil Sorcerer.

When you take the initiative, one of two things happen depending on whether or not you’re in a dungeon:

1. If you’re not in a dungeon and you take the initiative, you must venture into the Undercity (you cannot choose another dungeon to venture into).
2. If you are in a dungeon and you take the initiative, you move to the next room in that dungeon.

On each of your upkeeps, if you still have the initiative, you must venture to the next room of whichever dungeon you’re in. If you lose the initiative, you do not get kicked out of the dungeon. Just keep track of the room you’re in and you will continue on if you take the initiative back.

Ways to take the initiative after it has been introduced into the game:

1. Deal combat damage to the player who has the Initiative.
2. Play a card that says “you take the initiative”.

I would highly advise you bring 4 copies of The Initiative card if you’re playing this deck in person. So that you can hand them out to players who take the initiative and make things easier to track.

Outlaws

Outlaw - a batching term that includes the following creature types:

• Assassin
• Mercenary
• Rogue
• Pirate
• Warlock

Any card that cares about Outlaws (such as Laughing Jasper Flint in this deck), cares about the above five mentioned creature types.

Packages

Ramp (12)

• Nightscape Familiar reduces the cost of our red and blue spells.
• Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet, Izzet Signet, Rakdos Signet, Talisman of Creativity, Talisman of Dominance, Talisman of Indulgence and Sarevok’s Tome all produce mana on their own.
• Dungeoneer’s Pack and Loot Dispute can create treasure tokens we can exchange for mana.

Removal & Interaction (13)

• Court of Ire can deal burn damage to a permanent.
• Cyclonic Rift can act as targeted removal or a board wipe if we overload it.
• Chaos Warp can deal with any permanent. Enchantment removal is hard to come by in Grixis colors which is why I chose to run Chaos Warp.
• Bitter Triumph can get rid of a creature or planeswalker.
• Suspended Sentence can be used to repeatedly take out enemy creatures, especially with fast upkeeps thanks to Obeka.
• An Offer You Can’t Refuse, Swan Song, Fierce Guardianship, Deflecting Swat, Silver Shroud Costume and Mithril Coat can all be cast in response to removal on the stack to save Obeka.
• Ring of Xathrid can regenerate the equipped creature in response to destruction and Ring of Evos Isle can give the equipped creature Hexproof in response to targeting.

Card Draw & Card Advantage (9*)

• Caves of Chaos Adventurer, Sarevok’s Tome, Plargg and Nassari and Court of Locthwain let us impulse draw cards and play them for a limited time.
• Twilight Prophet gives us an extra card on our upkeep.
• Dungeoneer’s Pack and Fiery Islet can be sacrificed to draw us a card.
• Laughing Jasper Flint doesn’t draw cards but it does let us play with our opponents’ which effectively serves as card advantage.
• Passing through the Archives room in the Undercity also draws a card each time.
• Our 6 Courts all grant us the Monarch, which means we get to draw a card on our end step if we have the crown.

Ingenious Infiltration (8)

• Obeka, Splitter of Seconds has built-in Menace so she can swing freely at opponents who only have one creature to block with.
• Silent Arbiter makes it so only one creature can block, which means Obeka becomes unblockable (Menace requires at least 2 creatures to block). Silent Arbiter also makes it so only one creature can attack, which makes any retaliation attacks from our opponents much less painful.
• Thassa, God of the Sea can make Obeka unblockable with her activated ability.
• Brotherhood Regalia, Silver Shroud Costume, Whispersilk Cloak, Aqueous Form and Aether Tunnel can all make Obeka unblockable while they’re attached to her.

Keep It Up (32)

• Dragonmaster Outcast, Mechanized Production, Thopter Spy Network and Extravagant Replication can all create tokens on our upkeep.
• Plargg and Nassari and Laughing Jasper Flint give us access to opponents’ cards on our upkeep.
• Creeping Bloodsucker and Twilight Prophet can all gain us life on our upkeep.
• Twilight Prophet gives us an additional card on our upkeep.
• Thassa, God of the Sea lets us Scry on our upkeep, very useful for digging for specific cards if we have multiple upkeeps going off.
• Ring of Xathrid and Ring of Evos Isle put +1/+1 counters on Obeka on our upkeeps.
• Suspended Sentence is a cool little card that destroys an enemy creature upon resolving and then puts itself in Suspended exile until its time counters run out, at which point we get to cast it again and repeat. Normally it’s pretty slow value but when we’re fast forwarding our upkeeps, this spell can snipe multiple enemy creatures in a single turn.
• The 6 Courts all have upkeep triggers as well, but they’re discussed in detail in their own section further down in the primer.
• And there are 15 cards which grant us The Initiative, which triggers on our upkeep to let us venture further into the dungeon.

Notable Includes

The Outlaw Initiative

This section quickly points out all of the cards in the deck that let us take The Initiative when we play them.

Aarakocra Sneak, Bloodboil Sorcerer, Caves of Chaos Adventurer, Passageway Seer, Ravenloft Adventurer, Stirring Bard, Vicious Battlerager, Feywild Caretaker, Rilsa Rael, Kingpin, Underdark Explorer, Tomb of Horrors Adventurer, Sarevok’s Tome and Loot Dispute all grant us the Initiative when they ETB.

From the Catacombs is the only non-permanent spell that does so and finally, Dungeoneer’s Pack must be sacrificed for it.

You might be looking at these thinking “Some of these look really bad…”

It doesn’t matter, the point is to see one of these as soon as possible so that we can get the Initiative going and start grinding value from the Undercity. Their secondary abilities are mostly irrelevant.

That Crown Belongs to Me

This section discusses the six Monarch Courts in-depth.

Court of Cunning

• I usually only use this to mill everyone out in one big swing with Hatred.
• In fact, it’s rarely even played unless I have access to Hatred. Randomly milling people for 2 cards here and there isn’t meaningful and in some cases could even help them.
• If you’ve got it on board though, no big deal, because the milling trigger is completely optional.

Court of Vantress

• Oh boy, this one is INSANE with Obeka and the sizeable number of enchantments we’re running.
• I’ve used this to make multiple copies of other Courts like Court of Ire. Then move to next upkeep, deal some burn damage and make another copy of Court of Ire, then move to next upkeep and deal EVEN MORE burn damage with yet another copy, and so on.

Court of Ambition

• Forcing a double discard or 6 life is a very tough choice, and with enough upkeeps it basically means an empty hand AND several instances of 6 life loss.

Court of Locthwain

• This one is a little weird because while we can exile multiple cards with multiple upkeeps, it still only allows us to cast one of them for free.
• Still, we have access to several cards from our opponents decks and can sometimes cast more spells from among them if we have the mana to spare.

Court of Embereth

• Just a massive board of Knights AND immense burn damage to opponents’ faces.

Court of Ire

• 7 targeted burn damage I often use to scorch enemy creatures to keep the board clear of threats.
• And if enough upkeeps go by and there aren’t any more threats, well then 7 damage to an opponent’s face feels just as good.

Combos

Wanted to discuss Hatred and just how much life should be paid to end games with certain Courts on the field. You can consider these “Combos”. Each scenario assumes Obeka, Splitter of Seconds is at her base 2 power. If you don’t have Monarch, be sure to attack the person who is the Monarch.

Combo 1 - Cunning

Court of Cunning + Hatred (minimum 7 life paid) = 9 power Obeka

• Assume opponents have 90 or less cards in their deck at this point in the game
• 9 upkeeps means opponents get milled out for 90 cards

Combo 2 - Ambition

Court of Ambition + Hatred (minimum 9 life paid) = 11 power Obeka

• Assume opponents have 7 cards in hand and 40 life
• 11 upkeeps means the first 4 upkeeps will strip their hands, the next 7 upkeeps means 42 life lost

Combo 3 - Embereth

Court of Embereth + Hatred (minimum 6 life paid) = 8 power Obeka

• Assume Obeka is your only creature to start with
• Assume opponents have 40 life
• 8 upkeeps means 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 44 burn damage to opponents

Combo 4 - Ire

Court of Ire + Hatred (minimum 16 life paid) = 18 power Obeka

• Assume all three opponents have 40 life
• 18 upkeeps means 6 instances of burn damage aimed at each opponent. 6 x 7 = 42, enough to burn each of them out.

Combo 5 - Mechanized

Mechanized Production enchanted on any artifact + Hatred (minimum 5 life paid) = 7 power Obeka

• Assume you only have the original enchanted artifact and no copies to begin with
• 7 upkeeps means Mechanized Production makes 7 copies of the artifact and on the 7th upkeep, it sees 8 artifacts of the same name so you win