(Uvilda, Dean of Perfection | Art by Jason Rainville)

Technically Playable - Uvilda, Dean of Perfection/Nassari, Dean of Expression

Welcome to Technically Playable, where our mission statement is "Every commander is Technically playable" (the best kind of playable). The way this works is every article will have a commander generated using EDHREC's random button, I'll talk through the card and then write about how we can build around it!

This week's random commander is our first modal double-faced card (MDFC), Uvilda, Dean of Perfection.

Since Uvilda and Nassari are quite different, I'm going to structure this a little differently. I'll start by talking about cards that go well with Uvilda, then cards that go well with Nassari, and then cards that work well with both.

Building Around Uvilda

Uvilda's ability is pretty much giving Suspend 3 to any instant of sorcery in your hand. The difference being that with Suspend, you have to pay the mana upfront rather than when you cast the spell. While this means you don't need to hold up any mana to cast the card later, it does mean that you need the mana when you Suspend it to cast the card. The beautiful thing about Uvilda is that it allows you to slam down a ten-drop spell and let it sit there taunting your opponents, letting them know their doom is coming and it's just a case of when.

This is the kind of Spellslinger deck I adore. A lot of the time, when you hear someone say "Spellslinger" they actually mean pseudo-Storm; where they spend 20 minutes playing Solitaire and then win or lose. I'll always think of Melek, Izzet Paragon when I refer to Spellslinger; casting huge spells that completely alter the state of the game. One of my favorite sorceries, Aminatou's Augury, is perfect in this deck since you can use it on curve after casting Uvilda. As long as you don't miss a land drop between Uvilda and the last counter being removed from Augury, you'll be able to cast it. And this spell is massive. Being able to cast a nonland of each type for free is already amazing, add to that all of the cast-from-exile payoffs we want in this deck and you've got the perfect eight-mana sorcery.

You can synergize this with Mnemonic Deluge. This is a huge powerhouse on its own, but you can use it to recast Aminatou's Augury three times for some wild boardstates. This section wouldn't be complete without mentioning the dirtiest term in all of Commander: Extra turns. While it's not my favorite thing to do in the format, I know a lot of people do like to take extra turns. Uvilda is amazing at this; making Alrund's Epiphany cost three mana, Expropriate (ew) cost five. and the iconic Time Warp cost the same as the banned Time Walk. And if you're anything like me, just put Soulfire Eruption and a ton of massive spells in your deck for more damage than you could ever need.

But massive spells aren't the only fun thing you can do with Uvilda. Because her ability gets you to cast the spell you put into exile, this means you can even cast spells without a mana cost. This is a great way to cheat around Suspend costs. From the cards available in Izzet colors, the best are probably Inevitable Betrayal, Wheel of Fate, and Ancestral Vision. These are all cheaper versions of some of Magic's most iconic and powerful cards. They may seem weak next to options like Aminatou's Augury, but these cards give you other options that cost you no mana to cast. This makes them solid options if you want to hold up some interaction while getting the benefit of Uvilda's ability.

Uvilda's biggest weakness is that her ability needs her to be tapped. This is an issue for two reasons: First, she needs haste to activate the ability straight away before possible removal. If you want her to have haste without the need for Equipment, cards like Mass Hysteria or Need for Speed are great options. Need for Speed may look like a bit of an iffy option since you have to sacrifice a land for it, but remember that whatever you exile from Uvilda is going to cost four-mana less.

Secondly, getting the most out of Uvilda requires you to activate her multiple times before she dies. This is fine if you know your pod is a little light on removal, but if you play in a group like I do, we have interaction coming out of our ears. The best way to get around this is to untap Uvilda a bunch of times in one turn. Staff of Domination is a good option since it also has other utility in case Uvilda isn't in play. I also really like Chakram Retriever (not just because I love dogs) and cards like Fatestitcher. Chakram Retriever has amazing synergy with Uvilda and any cheap cantrips, or even when Uvilda's exiled cards are eventually cast they suddenly become cheap options to untap Uvilda with.

I also love graveyard shenanigans. Fatestitcher is a phenomenal option after a board wipe as it allows you to recast Uvilda and for just one blue mana, untap her immediately. And not even just with board wipes either, your pod will know how much of a threat Fatestitcher is after seeing it once, making it a removal lightning rod that recurs or eats an exile spell intended for Uvilda.

Building Around Nassari

When I look at this pair, Nassari is the one that really speaks to me. Etali, Primal Storm is one of my all-time favorite cards, and I think Etali, Primal Conqueror is just wildly hilarious (as long as it's not in your command zone, that's just obnoxious). When Strixhaven: School of Mages was first released, Nassari just stuck out to me, but like Tor Wauki the Younger I never actually got around to building the deck.

Nassari is effectively a copy of Stolen Strategy in your command zone. They allow you to stop your opponents playing cards in their deck by exiling them and letting you steal them by casting them. This isn't quite as stupid as Etali, Primal Storm since they're not free, but it does allow you to play a lot of cards outside of your color identity. Of course, this means you're effectively drawing three extra cards a turn and you need a lot of mana to play them. Ramp isn't something that's really in the card pool of Izzet decks, but there are some options that can make it work. Luckily, Nassari says you can use mana as though it were any color, meaning those cards we showcased last time like Jeska's Will and Mana Geyser that make tons of mana allow us to cast (probably) all of these cards. We can also use generic mana as colored mana, so we want to make sure we're loading up on Thran Dynamos and Worn Powerstones.

Nassari also has a built-in payoff for casting from exile by putting +1/+1 counters on themselves each time we cast a spell. Ideally, you want to get a ton of cards that let you cast from exile for free. The best of these is probably the aforementioned Etali, Primal Storm. Others are the new Chimil, the Inner Sun, as it gives you a repeatable Discover.

The thing that makes Chimil so good is that it happens at the end of your turn unlike Stolen Strategy or Nassari that have to survive an entire turn cycle to get a benefit out of their high mana costs. Chimil also makes our spells unable to be countered. Talking about Nassari, Plargg and Nassari is one of the team-up cards from March of the Machine: The Aftermath. This card acts like a second copy of your commander but with some fun politics involved by playing the game of trying to get an opponent to keep the card you want to cast and then casting them for free. A must-include in this deck.

And again if we look back at the Tor Wauki the Younger deck from before, there's another card we can steal from, Throes of Chaos. This card lets us turn our late game lands into cheap spells that we cast for free with Cascade.

Nassari steals cards, making them a prime target for hate and removal from your opponents. To keep them alive, we want to make sure we're making use of some of the really good Equipment like Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves. In most decks, I like to play Swiftfoot Boots because I want to equip or enchant other things onto the commander, but since Nassari buffs themselves and doesn't necessarily need to connect, we can just make use of their ability to steal cards. The small benefit of equipping for free makes me like Greaves in this deck a bit more.

Because we're still an Izzet deck, we can run a nice Counterspell package. I like actual, factual Counterspell, but I also feel that Counterflux is often overlooked. Being uncounterable allows you to shut down counter wars and having Overload lets you deal with any pesky stacks or Storm cards.

Building Around The Pair

Both Uvilda and Nassari work around casting cards from exile. Uvilda wants you to slam down all of your big spells, wait a bit, and then cast them with a hefty discount. Nassari is a menace to society who commits heinous crimes. I'm going to break this down into three sections: Value, Win Conditions, and Universes Beyond.

Value

I define value as anything that gives you a benefit when you take another game action but isn't something that will win you the game. A solid example of that is Sage of the Beyond. It works with Uvilda by making the spells you cast off of her ability cost six mana less. With Nassari, it means any cards you steal from your opponents cost two less, making it much more likely that you'd be able to cast multiple exiled cards. Paradox Haze is another phenomenal card with both commanders, triggering their abilities during upkeep and simply having more upkeeps is a great way to maximize impact.

Jumpstart sets have some really amazing options when it comes to their unique cards and Mizzix, Replica Rider is a real standout from these options. Not only is Mizzix riding a mecha-Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind in the art but she also allows you to copy any spells you cast from anywhere that isn't your hand. And that's not a typo, it's a spell, not instant or sorcery. Any permanent you cast comes in as a token copy with haste that's sacrificed at the end of your turn. This can have hilarious implications with cards like Etali, Primal Storm and lead to some really powerful turns.

I feel like the power level of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy overshadows a lot of other Merfolk Looter-esque cards in Commander. One of my favorite looters that I think is really underplayed is Jacob Hauken, Inspector. Jacob isn't just a looter, but also has late game potential by being able to cast the cards you exile with his ability. This works amazingly with Paradox Haze, and allows you to cast some of the massive spells you have in your deck for free, as long as you can keep Jacob around long enough to flip. Another amazing piece of card advantage in this deck is Oracle's Vault. While it synergizes less with the commanders specifically, it works well in conjunction with the rest of the deck. In a low-power pod it can have a massive impact when given the time to build up Brick counters to the point of casting spells for free.

Win Conditions

One of the most obvious win conditions for this deck is actually not even in the deck. It's your opponents' win conditions. Using cards like Etali, Primal Storm and Plargg and Nassari, you could potentially build a control shell with a ton of interaction and ramp that then plays into ways of stealing your opponent's cards to win. However, if you want to win with your own deck, we've got options there too. Given the access to instants and sorceries in red and blue like Talrand, Sky Summoner, and Murmuring Mystic give us ways to build up an army of evasive tokens to bypass our opponent's boards and get in damage. If you can keep them alive and make a huge board, you can then use Surge to Victory as a red spell-based Craterhoof Behemoth equivalent.

If you don't want to have to deal with permanents in play, like most Izzet mages you can just rely on big spells. Using a massive Epic Experiment or Mind's Desire to cast your deck for free is another proven way that Izzet mages have been winning since the conception of the format. Big burn spells like Comet Storm or even a Brass's Bounty to generate a ton of mana are equally good ways to win. I personally love to play some of the "unplayable" massive sorceries to win Commander games. Stuff like Apex of Power, Dance with Calamity or Crackle with Power always lead to fun stories.

Additions From Universes Beyond

I'm only going to cover a handful of Universes Beyond cards here because there are so many from the Doctor Who, Baldur's Gate, and Warhammer 40,000 precons that interact with casting cards from exile that I could be here all day talking about them.

Warhammer 40,000

We've got a couple of really powerful permanents here that both build up incremental value and also work to close out the game. The Lost and the Damned is a token-generating machine, creating a 3/3 body when you do pretty much anything from exile. This enchantment comes down early at three mana and churns out enough bodies to block any non-evasive threats and to get chip damage in on players, planeswalkers or Battles. Of course, 3/3s aren't going to win you the game quickly, but their utility shouldn't be downplayed. On the other end of the spectrum, these precons also gave us Keeper of Secrets, a Demon that allows us to throw damage around based on the cost of the spells we cast. For Uvilda, this is amazing since we'll most likely be playing some big hefty spells but can also slowly chip down our opponent's life totals with Nassari if we can cast enough spells off of their ability.

Battle for Baldur's Gate

Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated sets in a long time. Since the Baldur's Gate 3 video game came out however, more and more people seem to be going back and noticing some of the absolutely amazing cards that the set gave us. For this deck, two stand out: Passionate Archaeologist and Nalfeshnee. Just like Keeper of Secrets before it, Passionate Archaeologist gives us a way to close out games simply by casting our spells (from exile). The main difference between this card and Keeper of Secrets is that while it dodges a lot more removal than Keeper, we also need our commander in play for it to have any effect.

There are pros and cons to running it over Keeper, but you should be running both. Nalfeshnee isn't a massive win condition, which is a shame with its hefty six-mana price tag, but it does generate more value than any other card in the deck by effectively doubling up anything that we cast from exile. This works perfectly in tandem with Etali, Primal Storm to create a mess of permanents and doubled spells that will probably win you the game, or at least put you in an amazing position to close it out another way.

Doctor Who

There are so many cards from these precon decks that work in Uvilda and Nassari. Since I'm a red player at heart, I couldn't leave without talking about Flaming Tyrannosaurus. This is an amazing win condition with Nassari especially, but both Uvilda and Nassari work perfectly with this card. Being a mini Keeper of Secrets that lets loose a steady stream of Lightning Bolts and also buffs itself like Nassari does while also threatening a ton of damage with Menace and a death trigger thatFlings it at each opponent makes this a must-exile card that will quickly close out games if not dealt with. I love it so much.

Another card that isn't a win condition at face value but that is a kill-on-sight piece for this deck is The Twelfth Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor allows you to pop off in your games by doubling up all of your cards from exile while also giving other players a copy so that you can build some alliances. In addition, copying these spells also makes The Twelfth Doctor a massive threat. While he has no evasion, a huge enough creature can threaten to end games eventually, so get ready to contest your opponent's removal spells.

Conclusion

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a look at Uvilda and a few of the cards that make Uvilda and Nassari as commanders tick. There are so many ways to build this deck that I honestly can't see two versions ever being the same. I love decks that have that element in their deck-building.

Let me know in the comments below if you play Uvilda or Nassari, if you want to build a deck around them, or even if you just enjoyed this article!

Take a look at Uvilda, Dean of Perfection on EDHREC for more card suggestions and to see an average decklist.

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