Well, I guess this is my starting point. I guess I can get to some of how and why my build looks the way it does.
Voltron - Neheb is a 5/4 trampler for 4 mana with an ability that cares about connecting to opponents. Lets not sugar coat it, he wants to suit up and hit people.
Graveyard / Discard / Flashback / Madness - Given that he is given incentive to throw cards around I tried to focus on cards that cared about and did want to be discarded. You will see a number of cards that have interactions after being discarded and this was to get some additional synergy from those cards. This is mono red after all.
Ramp - I figured if I draw into ramp after my opener I can kind of just throw it out. I went a little heavier focusing on 0-2 mana ramp especially with a focus of getting Neheb into play earlier. I did consider a number of other options as well such as things like the Moxen but ultimately I didn't really see a lot of need to do card disadvantage ramp considering that two mana stones still ramp him the same (most of the time). Obviously dropping a mox on turn one into a 2 mana stone is different but I still want to have a hand after I play him.
Modular - I actually consider Neheb to be somewhat modular in that you can carry hate packages based on your meta. You will see in my build that I opted for several token swarm hate cards such as Silent Arbiter, Shard Phoenix, as well as several damage sweeper effects that won't kill my commander. I think some other packages like Pithing Needle, Torpor Orb, Forks and other packages could also be considered depending on what metas look like. The nice thing about Neheb is that he can cycle these cards if they don't look quite right in that game but I think its still important to run cards you think will be highly relevant in your meta.
So I guess this is my first draft for Neheb. Let me know what you think.
The idea of the deck is to continuously cycle through your deck with infinite attack steps via Aggravated Assault and by continuously discarding Kozilek so you always have cards to draw. Once you have a way to draw more cards then you discard via Sword of Fire and Ice/Rogue's Gloves/Mask of Memory/Alhammarret's Archive you can hopefully draw your deck every turn and create enough mana every turn to cast every card in your deck enough turns. Alhammarret's Archive is the fastest way to achieve this.
No Helm of the Host? It seems like a nice way to close the door, considering how much digging Neheb enables.
Also, why no Aggravated Assault or other combat step enablers? They seem to have super powerful synergy with Neheb in play.
Helm of the Host I considered it but it seems really expensive and the deck is already fairly focused on Neheb so I questioned if it was kind of winmore. Its also kind of a pain in that Neheb gives mana for post combat and this is something that you really want to bust out and equip pre combat. It felt a little too clunky to me.
Aggravated Assault it goes infinite. The only purpose would be to go infinite and I don't do that. If you want to be optimal I agree it should go in but I don't execute infinite combos.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I would also be sooner to run more extra combat step cards than a Helm of the Host but even then those don't accumulate the same way they do with Neheb 2.0
Already a very promising list, gotta give you that.
There are a few cards i've been wondering about:
Library of Leng - This card should be absolutely nuts with Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, because the "discard" to the top of your deck still counts, you get to filter what you want to keep and no maximimum hand size can come in handy, as not to run out of gas despite vomiting out your hand over and over again. Key to the City - Like Library of Leng one of the champs in my Lazav, the Multifarious build. Making your commander unblockable through discarding sounds like two things you really want to do in this deck as well. Three things, considering Anger wants to go to the yard ASAP and you're running a lot of Madness cards. Strionic Resonator - Usually i'm a bit hesitant with this one, because you need 4 total, but with this commander this is easily negated, if you're able to wheel for mana an additional time. Empyrial Plate - Considering you should be able to keep a full grip rather easily this can make achieving lethality quite easy.
I would also be sooner to run more extra combat step cards than a Helm of the Host but even then those don't accumulate the same way they do with Neheb 2.0
Helm would get better with more extra combat step effects. I might consider more of them but I was avoiding the enchantment because of its capability to infinite combat step. The next one that I would probably run after that would probably be Savage Beating just because I am avoiding infinites such as Hellkite Charger.
Already a very promising list, gotta give you that.
There are a few cards i've been wondering about:
Library of Leng - This card should be absolutely nuts with Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, because the "discard" to the top of your deck still counts, you get to filter what you want to keep and no maximimum hand size can come in handy, as not to run out of gas despite vomiting out your hand over and over again. Key to the City - Like Library of Leng one of the champs in my Lazav, the Multifarious build. Making your commander unblockable through discarding sounds like two things you really want to do in this deck as well. Three things, considering Anger wants to go to the yard ASAP and you're running a lot of Madness cards. Strionic Resonator - Usually i'm a bit hesitant with this one, because you need 4 total, but with this commander this is easily negated, if you're able to wheel for mana an additional time. Empyrial Plate - Considering you should be able to keep a full grip rather easily this can make achieving lethality quite easy.
Library of Leng - hummmmmm its an interesting thought. I can see some upside for sure if there are a number of cards you are holding onto you could use this to generate mana from them but still retain them. The no max handsize is also something that might be worth having as well given that bigger hands give us more cycle options. I have been working on getting a Reliquary Tower in here as well but I am fighting with how many directions I want the utility of my landbase to cover lol. I guess the question I have with Library of Leng is the question of if no max handsize is worth a card on its own. Most of the deck that I am building is kind of with the concept of moving the cards in mind. I will have to give it some thought and maybe put it as something to test in the future. I might shelf it for now but I think its an interesting suggestion to the point that I might need to get some hands on experience before I can really judge it better. Key to the City - evasion wise I would probably prefer Whispersilk Cloak or Rogue's Passage over it. Its not bad but I am also not crazy about it. Strionic Resonator - it could work. I guess my reluctance is that it doesn't really add to my ability to connect. It seems like it might be a little winmore. Empyrial Plate - I always forget that this is a card lol. I guess my reluctance is that I want to see what kind of hand sizes I regularly have with this deck before I run something like this. Similar to the no max handsize effects my concern is that a lot of these kind of effects dont seem that impressive if I end up with a small hand size so I want to see how it plays first before I go deeper on them.
I originally had a lot more cards in my list and I had to trim VERY aggressively to get down to 100 cards. I think there are a TON of great potential cards that did not make my list but my starting point was probably something like 130-150 cards before I trimmed back to get to 100 cards. I will do my best to describe whey and where I did my cuts and my reasons that a number of these didn't make my list.
Scrap Mastery - I felt like this plan plays more towards a longer drawn out game with more back and forth. Its a strong card but you want to have filtered a LOT of cards and or have been wrathed before its a good card. I think it can totally work here but it questions how much you are throwing away your artifacts and for the most part I found that I wanted to be casting my artifacts rather than throwing them away given they don't really have madness, flashback, or much else going on giving me reason to be proactively filtering them unless they just aren't relevant. This leads me to kind of question how much setup time this card would take and or be reactive to being blown out on artifacts rather than proactive but I wanted to be more proactive into the game which I felt was a better playstyle for me. So my answer here is mostly a speed and juggling issue as well as not wanting to be discarding most of my good artifacts in the first place.
Past in Flames - I think its fine if you want to make room for this one given that it does have the flashback. I just felt it was a slow card to cash in and a lot of the spells in here aren't actually that good to cast on their own but are good due to madness and or their reusability. I had Recoup in the list for a while as well but decided to cut both of them feeling them both a bit slow and not that necessary. Both effects felt slow and reliant on drawing other specific cards as well as not eating grave hate. I think both of these cards are fine to include but I was trying to move a little faster than they felt to me right now. If I find I need more card value / card advantage these are places I plan to explore later.
Mizzix's Mastery - its just incredibly slow and a lot of the spells I am running don't all cast at the same time together nicely. There are X mana spells and reactive spells. In a good situation I maybe get a few kill spells from this and I didn't find that good enough.
Chandra's Phoenix - I just don't really intend to be shooting my damage spells at players I guess. I didn't really think I would be getting it back due to this which is why I didn't include it.
Hammer of Bogardan - Its like, one of my favorite cards ever printed so I guarentee it was one of the last cards I cut from the list. The reason I cut it though and not some of the others such as Repeating Barrage and Thunderblade Charge though was because it has to be paid for during your upkeep where as the others play more towards the strength of Neheb in that I could pay for them before or after cycling cards and generating mana from Neheb. I get to see my card for the turn and I get to cycle cards for the turn with my commander around these cards as I want. I could even potentially pick up Repeating Barrage back to hand, cycle it with Neheb, and then pick it up again if I was really hard pressed for cards in hand. I love Hammer but ultimately it felt like it didn't have as good of natural synergy with Neheb as the others.
Firewing Phoenix - I had it in the maybe list but ultimately, its kind of a vanilla creature with a high recovery cost for being just a vanilla creature. I think its fine but I felt ultimately it was a little weak for commander.
Magma Phoenix - I like it on defense potentially but I ended up not including it because of the fact that I didn't really have sac outlets. I really like this creature with sac outlets but without the ability to control its death it feels more awkward for me. Depending on how many aggro decks you encounter though I could see including it I just feel its a little awkward at times without those sac outlets.
Punishing Fire - I had it in the list but cut it. Its hard to really rely on what your opponents will be doing as to how good it will be. If its something you think you can recover a bunch in your meta then run it. I just hate relying on opponents for cards to be good.
Skarrgan Firebird - The recover cost isn't bad and if I need more card value its something I will consider but its a vanilla 6 drop. The main redeeming value is that its cheap to recover but outside of that I didn't think it was that useful.
Bedlam Reveler - its a big question of how often you want to ditch your hand to draw three cards. If I have more than three cards then I really don't want to do that given my commander can do this effect and give me more cards. Its only good if you don't have cards in hand but if you find yourself in that situation often then it might be better to ask how to recur and draw more regularly.
Charmbreaker Devils - I have found it to be really slow and clunky. Its a six mana fragile creature with no value until your next turn. Even if it does live I think there is a question of why not just play something like The Immortal Sun or Sunbird's Invocation instead which are probably better less fragile cards even though they aren't cool synergy adds.
Devil's Play - Its probably fine. The flashback just isn't amazing but its something that we can cycle off and get value from in grave. I don't think its great and I don't think its terrible. The efficiency of killing creatures with the flashback is just a little weak when you consider its 2RRR to kill a 2/2 and it just goes up from there. Neheb does have some mana generation though so I think again its probably fine if you want to run it.
Feldon of the Third Path - I found my actual creature count didn't feel high enough for me to feel like he was going to reliably do anything. I would probably want to be at 20+ creatures to run him especially given there are some of my creatures like say Squee and Anger that wouldn't be good to copy anyways.
Goblin Welder - I think he is relatively solid. He is in my list and part of that was to fill in my Goblin Matron / Imperial Recruiter packages. He is kind of fragile but I think he also can act on a lot of different plans by either recovering important artifacts, swapping mana stones out for more relivant things, or screwing with opponents artifacts. He is in my list right now.
Recoup - very similar to Past in Flames and I mention it there. Check that I guess.
For now, I wanted to reply to everything but I do like the suggestion of Psychosis Crawler (but have no idea what I will change for it). There were other good suggestions as well but I think the crawler is perhaps a priority I have to figure out yet.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
You can use Scrap Mastery as a Shatterstorm in the early game, so it's not like you have to set it up.
Admittedly you'd want more an artifact centric deck to make it better, probably playing Daretti, Scrap Savant in the 99 as well.
I'm really interested to see how Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion plays out in the long run, I think it's the second most appealing commander to build around so far for War of the Spark, so I think eventually I'll look to make a deck. So when you get to play some games, please post some results of what worked well and what didn't
Runehorn Hellkite looks great. You can do it at instant speed, so you can do it just before your turn, to get the first turn on using the cards.
So I guess this is my first draft for Neheb. Let me know what you think.
1 Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion
CREATURES (14)
1 Goblin Welder
1 Goblin Matron
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Imperial Recruiter
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Anger
1 Silent Arbiter
1 Shard Phoenix
1 Godo, Bandit Warlord
1 Soul of Shandalar
1 Knollspine Dragon
1 Sandstone Oracle
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
ARTIFACT (21)
1 Mana Crypt
1 Expedition Map
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Blackblade Reforged
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Endless Atlas
1 Fire Diamond
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Mask of Memory
1 Mind Stone
1 Thought Vessel
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Fireshrieker
1 Obsidian Battle-Axe
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Hammer of Nazahn
1 Alhammarret's Archive
1 Mind's Eye
1 Senseless Rage
1 Blood Moon
1 Manabarbs
1 Berserkers' Onslaught
1 Gratuitous Violence
1 Rage Reflection
INSTANT (9)
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Skred
1 Impact Resonance
1 Starstorm
1 Chaos Warp
1 Fiery Temper
1 Violent Eruption
1 Volcanic Offering
SORCERY (10)
1 Shattering Spree
1 Vandalblast
1 Avacyn's Judgment
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Insult // Injury
1 Repeating Barrage
1 Thunderblade Charge
1 Fiery Confluence
1 Seize the Day
1 Alchemist's Greeting
PLANESWALKER (1)
1 Chandra, Flamecaller
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Buried Ruin
1 Cathedral of War
1 Drownyard Temple
1 Dust Bowl
1 Flamekin Village
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Hanweir Battlements
1 Homeward Path
22 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Opal Palace
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Strip Mine
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1 Wasteland
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Also, why no Aggravated Assault or other combat step enablers? They seem to have super powerful synergy with Neheb in play.
The list I would think about playing:
1x Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion
Mana Sources (16)
0x Mana Crypt
0x Chrome Mox
0x Mox Diamond
1x Mana Vault
1x Sol Ring
1x Voltaic Key
2x Fire Diamond
2x Mind Stone
2x Coldsteel Heart
2x Ruby Medallion
2x Thought Vessel
2x Grim Monolith
3x Basalt Monolith
4x Thran Dynamo
5x Gilded Lotus
5x Neheb, the Eternal
Rituals (4)
1x Rite of Flame
2x Pyretic Ritual
2x Desperate Ritual
3x Seething Song
Card Draw (13)
1x Faithless Looting
1x Chromatic Star
1x Chromatic Sphere
2x Cathartic Reunion
2x Mask of Memory
2x Rogue's Gloves
3x Wheel of Fortune
3x Sword of Fire and Ice
5x Alhammarret's Archive
5x Memory Jar
6x Chandra, Flamecaller
7x Sandstone Oracle
10x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1x Assault Strobe
2x Temur Battle Rage
3x Fireshrieker
4x Blood Mist
5x Berserkers' Onslaught
6x Rage Reflection
Extra Combat Steps (5)
3x Aggravated Assault
4x Seize the Day
4x Relentless Assault
5x Savage Beating
7x Fury of the Horde
Utility (11)
1x Gamble
1x Goblin Welder
2x Lightning Greaves
3x Trash for Treasure
3x Obsidian Battle-Axe
4x Hammer of Nazahn
4x Daretti, Scrap Savant
4x Helm of the Host
5x Scrap Mastery
6x Godo, Bandit Warlord
Removal (9)
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Pyroblast
1x Red Elemental Blast
1x Rolling Earthquake
1x Subterranean Tremors
1x Vandalblast
2x Abrade
2x Mizzium Mortars
3x Chaos Warp
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Cursed Totem
3x Magus of the Moon
3x Blood Moon
4x Stranglehold
Lands (31)
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Buried Ruin
1x Hall of the Bandit Lord
28x Mountain
The idea of the deck is to continuously cycle through your deck with infinite attack steps via Aggravated Assault and by continuously discarding Kozilek so you always have cards to draw. Once you have a way to draw more cards then you discard via Sword of Fire and Ice/Rogue's Gloves/Mask of Memory/Alhammarret's Archive you can hopefully draw your deck every turn and create enough mana every turn to cast every card in your deck enough turns. Alhammarret's Archive is the fastest way to achieve this.
UB Dralnu, Lich Lord
RBW [Primer]-Kaalia of the Vast
BUG [Primer]-Tasigur, the Golden Fang
GWU [Primer]-Arcades, the Strategist
WUB Primer-Aminatou, the Fateshifter
UBR Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
Helm of the Host I considered it but it seems really expensive and the deck is already fairly focused on Neheb so I questioned if it was kind of winmore. Its also kind of a pain in that Neheb gives mana for post combat and this is something that you really want to bust out and equip pre combat. It felt a little too clunky to me.
Aggravated Assault it goes infinite. The only purpose would be to go infinite and I don't do that. If you want to be optimal I agree it should go in but I don't execute infinite combos.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Psychosis Crawler may be a thing in a deck like this.
There are a few cards i've been wondering about:
Library of Leng - This card should be absolutely nuts with Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, because the "discard" to the top of your deck still counts, you get to filter what you want to keep and no maximimum hand size can come in handy, as not to run out of gas despite vomiting out your hand over and over again.
Key to the City - Like Library of Leng one of the champs in my Lazav, the Multifarious build. Making your commander unblockable through discarding sounds like two things you really want to do in this deck as well. Three things, considering Anger wants to go to the yard ASAP and you're running a lot of Madness cards.
Strionic Resonator - Usually i'm a bit hesitant with this one, because you need 4 total, but with this commander this is easily negated, if you're able to wheel for mana an additional time.
Empyrial Plate - Considering you should be able to keep a full grip rather easily this can make achieving lethality quite easy.
You've already listed some graveyard recursion, but here are some more in case you missed them;
Chandra's Phoenix, Hammer of Bogardan, Firewing Phoenix, Magma Phoenix, Punishing Fire, Skarrgan Firebird.
More advantages with discarding cards;
Bedlam Reveler
Charmbreaker Devils
Devil's Play
Feldon of the Third Path
Goblin Welder
Recoup
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Helm would get better with more extra combat step effects. I might consider more of them but I was avoiding the enchantment because of its capability to infinite combat step. The next one that I would probably run after that would probably be Savage Beating just because I am avoiding infinites such as Hellkite Charger.
Ohhhhh I didn't think of Psychosis Crawler. Thats a cool idea.
Library of Leng - hummmmmm its an interesting thought. I can see some upside for sure if there are a number of cards you are holding onto you could use this to generate mana from them but still retain them. The no max handsize is also something that might be worth having as well given that bigger hands give us more cycle options. I have been working on getting a Reliquary Tower in here as well but I am fighting with how many directions I want the utility of my landbase to cover lol. I guess the question I have with Library of Leng is the question of if no max handsize is worth a card on its own. Most of the deck that I am building is kind of with the concept of moving the cards in mind. I will have to give it some thought and maybe put it as something to test in the future. I might shelf it for now but I think its an interesting suggestion to the point that I might need to get some hands on experience before I can really judge it better.
Key to the City - evasion wise I would probably prefer Whispersilk Cloak or Rogue's Passage over it. Its not bad but I am also not crazy about it.
Strionic Resonator - it could work. I guess my reluctance is that it doesn't really add to my ability to connect. It seems like it might be a little winmore.
Empyrial Plate - I always forget that this is a card lol. I guess my reluctance is that I want to see what kind of hand sizes I regularly have with this deck before I run something like this. Similar to the no max handsize effects my concern is that a lot of these kind of effects dont seem that impressive if I end up with a small hand size so I want to see how it plays first before I go deeper on them.
I originally had a lot more cards in my list and I had to trim VERY aggressively to get down to 100 cards. I think there are a TON of great potential cards that did not make my list but my starting point was probably something like 130-150 cards before I trimmed back to get to 100 cards. I will do my best to describe whey and where I did my cuts and my reasons that a number of these didn't make my list.
For now, I wanted to reply to everything but I do like the suggestion of Psychosis Crawler (but have no idea what I will change for it). There were other good suggestions as well but I think the crawler is perhaps a priority I have to figure out yet.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Admittedly you'd want more an artifact centric deck to make it better, probably playing Daretti, Scrap Savant in the 99 as well.
I'm really interested to see how Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion plays out in the long run, I think it's the second most appealing commander to build around so far for War of the Spark, so I think eventually I'll look to make a deck. So when you get to play some games, please post some results of what worked well and what didn't
Runehorn Hellkite looks great. You can do it at instant speed, so you can do it just before your turn, to get the first turn on using the cards.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
Click images for decks->
-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith