A month or two ago i cooked up this extended primer for Obeka, Brute Chronologist, and how i think is the best way to run her in B4 EDH, hopefully this is insightful and helpful to people who want to pick up this awesome deck. I had made a couple of other posts about this deck, but the deck has evolved and improved massively over the past year.

Here is the start of the primer, the rest can be found on my archidekt page, along with the decklist here -> https://archidekt.com/decks/2172726/obeka_cheat_and_copy_with_primer

I hope you enjoy and learn something!

Feel free to ask questions and feedback is always welcome.

Obeka: Brute Chronologist, EDH Bracket 4 Deck Primer

By Mockingbird

Introduction

Hello again! This is an extended primer on the Obeka, Brute Chronologist deck! I’m writing this because after making my original Obeka video, it got me thinking about how to improve the deck, and the resulting brainstorm lead me to change almost a quarter of the cards in the list, and it is for this reason that I have come back to rewrite this primer. So, strap in because this is going to be a long one! And I hope you enjoy reading about, and playing, the most fun deck in EDH!! 

- Mockingbird

What can you expect/Is Obeka for you?

Obeka is an incredibly unique and aggressive extra turns combo deck, taking advantage of the three red time walks; Final Fortune, Last Chance and Warrior’s Oath, and copy effects to attempt to set up an infinite turn loop as early as turn 4. With extra turns comes extra combats, and the deck is well positioned to take advantage of this, with combat damage and attack triggers filling a large part of the deck’s value plan. This combines into a deck which can quickly get out of hand, deploying multiple copies of game ending threats to finish people off. Unlike a typical combo deck, the combat phase is integral to this deck’s game plan, which leaves a strong mid to late game of attacking people down if we are prevented from comboing off. So, if any of this sounds appealing to you, then maybe Obeka just might be the deck to play! 

 

What does Obeka do?

In the age of paragraph-filled, double-sided legends, Obeka’s one line of text is deceptively simple.  

“{T}: The player whose turn it is may end the turn.” 

It’s not particularly impressive on a surface level glance, is it? Let’s have a look at her reminder text to understand what activating this ability actually does. 

“Exile all spells and abilities from the stack. The player whose turn it is discards down to their maximum hand size. Damage wears off, and “this turn” and “until end of turn” effects end.”  

The part of this ability that matters the most for the deck is the very first sentence. Obeka gives us the ability once each turn to choose to exile everything on the stack. 

If we use this ability in combination with cards that are beneficial effects with downsides as triggers at the end of the turn, we can reap all the rewards and suffer none of the consequences, tapping Obeka and exiling all triggers at the end of the turn. 

The strongest cards that this applies to is the three red time walks, all of which, for two red mana, read as follows. 

“Take an extra turn after this one. At the beginning of that turn’s end step, you lose the game.” 

With Obeka, when the trigger of losing the game goes on the stack at the end step, we can tap her to exile that trigger forever, and we have a 2 mana extra turn for no cost. 

The cards to look out for in this deck where this is relevant is anything that says, “At the beginning of the next end step, -------.” Expect to use these cards to their full effect with none of the requisite downside. 

A full list of such cards is here: 

• Emperor of Bones 
• Possibility Technician 
• Redoubled Stormsinger 
• Jaxis, the Troublemaker 
• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 
• Quantum Riddler 
• Rionya, Fire Dancer 
• Starwinder 
• Determined Iteration 
• Underworld Breach 
• Fable of the Mirror-Breaker//Reflection of Kiki-Jiki 
• Final Fortune 
• Devastating Onslaught 
• Ideas Unbound 
• Last Chance 
• Molten Duplication 
• Twinflame 
• Warrior’s Oath 
• Saheeli Rai

 

A use case for Obeka’s ability which comes up surprisingly often is that you can activate it in response to an opponent’s spell to let the player whose turn it is choose to exile that spell by ending their own turn. Most often this will be someone pointing a kill spell at something you have on your turn, you can simply activate Obeka and end the turn in response and you will save whatever was going to get killed. This is helpful for defending Obeka against being killed during crucial combo turns and can keep you alive in a tight spot. 

While it is possible to build Obeka to counter other triggers, for example the end of combat triggers that creatures with myriad have, it is much better to build our deck so that all of our triggers are concentrated at the end step, so that we can exile all of them at once. It also means that we don’t have to sacrifice our whole second main phase, which is a big deal. 

Additionally, with the exception of our extra turn spells, the downside from our effects is not backbreaking and will typically just entail losing a temporary thing that we gained this turn, like a token copy with Twinflame. There are some lists playing things like Avaricious Dragon and Psychic Vortex, which give a benefit with a catastrophic downside of discarding your hand if you don’t manage to avoid the trigger. Don’t play these cards, they are bad. 

With the commander explained, let’s get into the meat of the guide, how to play the deck! 

  

How to Play

As stated previously, Obeka is an extra turns combo deck. It intends to create a game state where the only person untapping for another turn is yourself, and winning from there, however, due to the nature of how I have built this deck it is not tunnel visioned into this singular goal, and each combo piece is just as serviceable outside of going for infinite turns as it is within it. 

The deck, whilst utilising the ability of the commander does not fold without it, there are multiple redundancies in the deck, like Sundial of the Infinite, and even if you are locked out of ending your own turn, your opponents still have to contend with your extensive card advantage pieces and a suite of efficient threats, copied and with haste. 

To this end, the deck plays to an aggressive combat-oriented strategy just as well, with the ability to output staggeringly high damage numbers, extra turns after all, means extra combats. With creature copiers like Rionya, Fire Dancer and Molten Duplication, we can have multiple of our best creatures with haste and ready to attack immediately which can and will quickly pressure our opponents down. 

The creature suite of the deck is comprised of creatures that are either excellent to copy, or copy creatures themselves, and the specific creatures chosen are either best in class for their desired effect (Spellseeker, Starwinder and Professional Face-Breaker), and/or scale incredibly well in multiples (Possibility Technician, Redoubled Stormsinger and Pyrogoyf). 

 It is an unusually low creature count for a combat deck, at only 25, but if we have even one creature on the battlefield, each copy spell in our deck becomes effectively another copy of that creature we could draw, which helps balance it out, and means we only need to play the absolute top tier creatures. 

A large amount of these creatures draw cards, and in large quantities, especially when copied, which means that we are likely to see some notable combo pieces when we put the top quarter, half or even more of our deck into our hands, with which we can then end the game. 

With that said, here is a compilation of the infinite combos in the deck. These are not the only ways to win, and arguably not even the only combos, but I will cover those later as they pertain to individual cards more than these do. This deck can seem like a storm deck if you squint hard enough, extra turn spells do generate mana after all.

 - Continued in the primer....

A month or two ago i cooked up this extended primer for Obeka, Brute Chronologist, and how i think is the best way to run her in B4 EDH, hopefully this is insightful and helpful to people who want to pick up this awesome deck. I had made a couple of other posts on the main EDH sub about this deck, but the deck has evolved and improved massively over the past year. I only just found this subreddit and it seems like the perfect place to finally post this somewhere.

Here is the start of the primer, the rest can be found on my archidekt page, along with the decklist here -> https://archidekt.com/decks/2172726/obeka_cheat_and_copy_with_primer

I hope you enjoy and learn something!

Feel free to ask questions and feedback is always welcome.

Obeka: Brute Chronologist, EDH Bracket 4 Deck Primer

By Mockingbird

Introduction

Hello again! This is an extended primer on the Obeka, Brute Chronologist deck! I’m writing this because after making my original Obeka video, it got me thinking about how to improve the deck, and the resulting brainstorm lead me to change almost a quarter of the cards in the list, and it is for this reason that I have come back to rewrite this primer. So, strap in because this is going to be a long one! And I hope you enjoy reading about, and playing, the most fun deck in EDH!! 

- Mockingbird

What can you expect/Is Obeka for you?

Obeka is an incredibly unique and aggressive extra turns combo deck, taking advantage of the three red time walks; Final Fortune, Last Chance and Warrior’s Oath, and copy effects to attempt to set up an infinite turn loop as early as turn 4. With extra turns comes extra combats, and the deck is well positioned to take advantage of this, with combat damage and attack triggers filling a large part of the deck’s value plan. This combines into a deck which can quickly get out of hand, deploying multiple copies of game ending threats to finish people off. Unlike a typical combo deck, the combat phase is integral to this deck’s game plan, which leaves a strong mid to late game of attacking people down if we are prevented from comboing off. So, if any of this sounds appealing to you, then maybe Obeka just might be the deck to play! 

 

What does Obeka do?

In the age of paragraph-filled, double-sided legends, Obeka’s one line of text is deceptively simple.  

“{T}: The player whose turn it is may end the turn.” 

It’s not particularly impressive on a surface level glance, is it? Let’s have a look at her reminder text to understand what activating this ability actually does. 

“Exile all spells and abilities from the stack. The player whose turn it is discards down to their maximum hand size. Damage wears off, and “this turn” and “until end of turn” effects end.”  

The part of this ability that matters the most for the deck is the very first sentence. Obeka gives us the ability once each turn to choose to exile everything on the stack. 

If we use this ability in combination with cards that are beneficial effects with downsides as triggers at the end of the turn, we can reap all the rewards and suffer none of the consequences, tapping Obeka and exiling all triggers at the end of the turn. 

The strongest cards that this applies to is the three red time walks, all of which, for two red mana, read as follows. 

“Take an extra turn after this one. At the beginning of that turn’s end step, you lose the game.” 

With Obeka, when the trigger of losing the game goes on the stack at the end step, we can tap her to exile that trigger forever, and we have a 2 mana extra turn for no cost. 

The cards to look out for in this deck where this is relevant is anything that says, “At the beginning of the next end step, -------.” Expect to use these cards to their full effect with none of the requisite downside. 

A full list of such cards is here: 

• Emperor of Bones 
• Possibility Technician 
• Redoubled Stormsinger 
• Jaxis, the Troublemaker 
• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 
• Quantum Riddler 
• Rionya, Fire Dancer 
• Starwinder 
• Determined Iteration 
• Underworld Breach 
• Fable of the Mirror-Breaker//Reflection of Kiki-Jiki 
• Final Fortune 
• Devastating Onslaught 
• Ideas Unbound 
• Last Chance 
• Molten Duplication 
• Twinflame 
• Warrior’s Oath 
• Saheeli Rai

 

A use case for Obeka’s ability which comes up surprisingly often is that you can activate it in response to an opponent’s spell to let the player whose turn it is choose to exile that spell by ending their own turn. Most often this will be someone pointing a kill spell at something you have on your turn, you can simply activate Obeka and end the turn in response and you will save whatever was going to get killed. This is helpful for defending Obeka against being killed during crucial combo turns and can keep you alive in a tight spot. 

While it is possible to build Obeka to counter other triggers, for example the end of combat triggers that creatures with myriad have, it is much better to build our deck so that all of our triggers are concentrated at the end step, so that we can exile all of them at once. It also means that we don’t have to sacrifice our whole second main phase, which is a big deal. 

Additionally, with the exception of our extra turn spells, the downside from our effects is not backbreaking and will typically just entail losing a temporary thing that we gained this turn, like a token copy with Twinflame. There are some lists playing things like Avaricious Dragon and Psychic Vortex, which give a benefit with a catastrophic downside of discarding your hand if you don’t manage to avoid the trigger. Don’t play these cards, they are bad. 

With the commander explained, let’s get into the meat of the guide, how to play the deck! 

  

How to Play

As stated previously, Obeka is an extra turns combo deck. It intends to create a game state where the only person untapping for another turn is yourself, and winning from there, however, due to the nature of how I have built this deck it is not tunnel visioned into this singular goal, and each combo piece is just as serviceable outside of going for infinite turns as it is within it. 

The deck, whilst utilising the ability of the commander does not fold without it, there are multiple redundancies in the deck, like Sundial of the Infinite, and even if you are locked out of ending your own turn, your opponents still have to contend with your extensive card advantage pieces and a suite of efficient threats, copied and with haste. 

To this end, the deck plays to an aggressive combat-oriented strategy just as well, with the ability to output staggeringly high damage numbers, extra turns after all, means extra combats. With creature copiers like Rionya, Fire Dancer and Molten Duplication, we can have multiple of our best creatures with haste and ready to attack immediately which can and will quickly pressure our opponents down. 

The creature suite of the deck is comprised of creatures that are either excellent to copy, or copy creatures themselves, and the specific creatures chosen are either best in class for their desired effect (Spellseeker, Starwinder and Professional Face-Breaker), and/or scale incredibly well in multiples (Possibility Technician, Redoubled Stormsinger and Pyrogoyf). 

 It is an unusually low creature count for a combat deck, at only 25, but if we have even one creature on the battlefield, each copy spell in our deck becomes effectively another copy of that creature we could draw, which helps balance it out, and means we only need to play the absolute top tier creatures. 

A large amount of these creatures draw cards, and in large quantities, especially when copied, which means that we are likely to see some notable combo pieces when we put the top quarter, half or even more of our deck into our hands, with which we can then end the game. 

With that said, here is a compilation of the infinite combos in the deck. These are not the only ways to win, and arguably not even the only combos, but I will cover those later as they pertain to individual cards more than these do. This deck can seem like a storm deck if you squint hard enough, extra turn spells do generate mana after all.

 - Continued in the primer....