Lorehold, the Historian Commander Deck Guide

Lorehold, the Historian | Illustration by Joshua Raphael

Lorehold, the Historian was one of the first Secrets of Strixhaven commanders to be spoiled, and it’s a whopper that gives all your instants and sorceries miracle . With such an exciting text box, it's no surprise that it captured the hearts of brewers.

This build keeps things casual, with Magic's biggest and flashiest instants and sorceries to aid the elder dragon in his quest to understand the depths of history.

The Deck

Velomachus Lorehold | Illustration by Raymond Swanland

This is a pretty casual Commander deck; I'd feel comfortable playing it in Bracket 2, though it could mingle with Bracket 3 decks. The focus is on big, flashy instants and sorceries, the cards on which you want a steep discount from miracle. Backing these up is a suite of interaction and a deep ramp package; you could consider this a battlecruiser-style deck, except it plays 7+ mana instants and sorceries rather than creatures.

The Commander: Lorehold, the Historian

Lorehold, the Historian provides card selection and incredibly swingy plays. When you miracle the big spells, the game swings wildly in your favor. Since Lorehold rummages at the beginning of each opponents' upkeep, you can even see that value multiple times per turn cycle.

In addition to the big spells, this deck’s ramp package supports Lorehold; it's not impossible to play it and hold up the mana to miracle a spell the same turn cycle, plus the mana acceleration helps to recast your expensive commander even if it eats a removal spell.

If you want a general snapshot of how to build a Lorehold deck, check out this video from our YouTube channel, The Daily Upkeep:

Big Instants and Sorceries

These are the focus of the deck, the cards that make it worth running; these are great to miracle or just to ramp into ahead of schedule.

Creative Technique feeds off the other cards in the deck; while 5 mana isn't as steep a discount on an individual card, demonstrating this nets two. And if you ever miracle the Technique and then demonstrate it… well, giving your opponent one spell won't feel too bad.

Surge to Victory and Mizzix's Mastery also rely on these other cards, but from the graveyard by recasting them. While we have very few creatures for Surge to Victory, Lorehold’s haste and flying go a long way to help you deal combat damage, and there's always the Storm Herd dream.

Approach of the Second Sun provides an alternate win condition that's useful since this is, at its heart, a control deck with lots of board wipes. Between those and Lorehold letting you see three additional cards each turn cycle, you have plenty of time to dig toward it.

Emeria's Call drops some angels into play. It’s admittedly one of the less exciting big spells, but the flexibility of a modal double-faced card makes it questionable not to run it.

Hit the Mother Lode could be anything, even a big instant or sorcery! Don't expect this to discover into one of the big ones—most of them cost 7 or more mana. Rather, this excels as a set-up piece: You'll often hit a board wipe or ramp or a synergy piece, plus create a surge of Treasure. This miracle is less about immediate impact and more about long-term rewards.

Volcanic Vision isn't the first spell you want to miracle, but it often works out to be the last since it deals so much damage to the table. It deals up to 12 if Rise of the Eldrazi finds its way into the bin, but you can expect it to hit for 7 or 8. By the time that matters, you probably have the mana to recast whatever you recurred.

Call Forth the Tempest bridges the gap between your big spells and removal as a big board wipe that drops a few cards. It's a little risky, I'll admit; sometimes you hit Mind Stone and Talisman of Conviction and don't kill much. But the average feels pretty good.

Soulfire Eruption might be the most exciting spell to resolve because it does so much. It burns your opponents, wipes the board, and draws cards! It's worth all 9 mana in the corner, and it’s obscene when you cast it for .

Storm Herd creates an instant board state. It tends to get worse as the game goes long, and it always feels bad to find it after a big swing, but you're unlikely to have a super low life total until you're dead.

Rise of the Eldrazi is the biggest and baddest in the deck, and one of the biggest sorceries. Bundling the cast triggers of the three OG Eldrazi titans into one package does a little of everything. Of note, this deck isn't wholly reliant on miracles to cast it; several mana rocks make multiple colorless mana, so triple colorless is within reach.

Interaction

The deck is chock full of interaction, though it's largely focused on board wipes—since the deck has so few creatures, it leverages them exceptionally well.

Ondu Inversion is similar to Emeria's Call. It's not the ideal board wipe in a deck full of mana rocks, but the opportunity cost on it is so low, and it's better to sweep the board than to die (unless the game has already gone on for like an hour).

Sunfall and Terminus are catch-all sweepers that leave mana rocks untouched but wipe away nearly anything that poses a threat. Terminus works with your miracle setup, and both are better than Wrath of God because they get around indestructible protection. Blasphemous Act also gets a nod here, though it's less useful since more things protect against it.

Austere Command is a nod to enchantress decks, though it's also quite useful when it destroys small creatures; you can devastate the token player while keeping Lorehold around.

Speaking of keeping Lorehold around, I chose three board wipes for that purpose: Starfall Invocation, Promise of Loyalty, and Single Combat handle wide boards without removing your commander. The latter two leave your opponents with creatures, and that can backfire, but the risk is worth the reward since these often buy time to find an additional removal spell.

Board wipes are well and good, but you won't be the only player with removal spells, so you need protection to interact with opposing interaction.

Since this deck doesn't have a team of creatures to protect, just Lorehold (the others have enters abilities, so it doesn't matter if they die), most of the protection is single-target. The exception is Dawn's Truce, an acknowledgment that Vandalblast ruins your day.

Galadriel's Dismissal generally protects Lorehold from anything, though don't overlook its potential to remove an opposing team before they deal combat damage.

Bolt Bend basically always costs since Lorehold has 5 power. In addition to this, Untimely Malfunction and Return the Favor redirect spells with a few bonus modes thrown in.

Final Showdown rounds out the section as both a protection spell and a board wipe, at instant speed no less. The mini Humility effect also works in a surprising number of spots.

Lorehold Synergies

These are a hodgepodge of cards that work with Lorehold, either because they reward you for discarding or help to set up miracles.

Currency Converter is one of my favorite Magic cards, and it does extremely well here. Lorehold puts plenty of cards beneath it, plus the loot effect provides a mana sink for any spare mana left floating around.

Monument to Endurance has the Standard spotlight as a key part of Izzet Lessons, but it deserves accolades in other formats as one of the best discard payoffs in the game. Lorehold gets three triggers every turn cycle; since each trigger is on a separate turn, you can choose the same mode repeatedly.

I consider Impulsivity a discard payoff as well, both because encore makes it an excellent card to discard and because recasting spells from your graveyard is a payoff for rummaging through your deck.

Library of Leng has an essential combo I’ll examine later; for now, know that it's one of the best ways to set up a miracle from your hand.

Brainstone sculpts the top of your library. Since two cards go on top of the library, you can set up several turns of miracles.

Scroll Rack is one of the strongest topdeck manipulation cards because you can use it repeatedly to keep moving instants and sorceries from your hand to the top of your deck. It's also sneaky tech against discard decks since it keeps your important spells safe.

Sensei's Divining Top might be the most recognizable topdeck manipulation card in Magic, both for its power and how long it takes to resolve. But you can't do much better. It’s super cheap to activate it and cast it, you don't have to draw the card to set up the miracle, and Top even enables a miracle itself by drawing a card.

Less recognizable is Penance, an old enchantment that finds new life in this deck by putting cards back on top of your library. That's about all it does, but it does so for no mana invested past the casting cost.

The Mana Base

The deck contains a lot of mana rocks; basically all the good 2-mana rocks available in Boros plus Ornithopter of Paradise. But one extra mana source isn't enough to support a curve like this, which makes cards like Hedron Archive, Worn Powerstone, and Thran Dynamo necessary. All this ramp pushes your spells out fast, keeps Lorehold in play, and enables setups like Lorehold + miracle a spell, or activating a topdeck manipulation effect before you cast a cascade spell.

Beyond that, the mana base is pretty standard. In addition to the previously noted MDFCs, Witch Enchanter and Pinnacle Monk squeeze extra spells into the mana base and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire removes things in combat.

Urza's Saga finds Library of Leng and Sensei's Divining Top, two of the deck’s best cards (though I indulge in Currency Converter more often than needed).

Boseiju, Who Shelters All eats away at your life total, but I'd rather pay life than have a counterspell ruin an excellent turn.

The Strategy

This deck is straightforward. Certain cards have complex interactions and require attention to resolve correctly, namely Scroll Rack and Sensei's Divining Top, but the game plan should be familiar to battlecruiser players.

Spend the early turns ramping. Ramp is, without exaggeration, the most important aspect of the deck. You need it to pull ahead and play these explosive spells at a reasonable point in the game. Don’t piddle around and cast Lorehold on turn 5, then maybe get a spell out on turn 6. If the hand doesn't have ramp, mulligan it unless you have insider knowledge of your pod that tells you it's better to keep a hand with three wraths.

Focus on pulling through the mid game with your board wipes. With a good curve, you can start dropping them as early as turn 4. These buy time for Lorehold and the miracles to do their thing: Overwhelm the table because you're either spending more mana per turn or getting more value per mana spent.

Pay attention to how you sequence your mana sources, because it's often possible to play multiple spells in a turn when done correctly. Let's say your starting hand contains Plains, Elegant Parlor, Mind Stone, and Currency Converter. You could go Plains into Converter, but what does turn 2 look like? Instead, play the Parlor, then play Plains and Mind Stone, and you can then tap the Mind Stone to play Converter. You end up with more Magic played per turn this way.

Combos and Interactions

Probably the spiciest interaction in the deck is Lorehold, the Historian with Library of Leng. Library has a replacement effect that allows you to put discarded cards on top of your library if they were discarded as part of an effect. Lorehold's loot trigger counts as an effect, so you can discard a card, put it on top of your deck with the replacement ability, then draw it as the second half of Lorehold's trigger. This lets you miracle a card from your hand.

This trick also works with Currency Converter by making the discarded card the next one you draw for Lorehold or the native miracle costs on Terminus and Reforge the Soul. Note that this does not work when you discard the card as part of a spell or ability's cost; you can't get cute with Unexpected Windfall or Big Score.

The next interaction combines Scroll Rack with Land Tax for a wonderful card advantage engine straight out of Premodern. You can use Scroll Rack to ditch cards you aren't interested in, then use the Land Tax trigger to shuffle them away and “fix” the top of your deck. Additionally, Land Tax finds three lands, which you can put on top of your deck to draw three cards via the Rack.

This would normally be unexciting since you’d draw them over the next turns, but again, Land Tax is a shuffle effect, so you can ditch them and draw fresh for your draw step—after putting three more lands in hand to Scroll Rack away, of course. It's basically Ancestral Recall in mono-white if you squint and don't know what Ancestral Recall does.

Rule 0 Violations Check

This shouldn't violate any Rule 0 conventions. Though the game plan is strong, your opponents have ample opportunity to interact, and it takes time to get off the ground. I could see some players objecting to the volume of board wipes in Bracket 2, but you can easily amend that by trimming one or two of them for extra card draw or ramp as suits you. I’d start by removing Sunfall and Austere Command; prioritize keeping the board wipes that leave Lorehold in play.

Budget Options

The mana base will forever be the first place to make cuts. You can save so much money when you trim Arid Mesa and Sacred Foundry for budget lands like Temple of Triumph and Furycalm Snarl. As for the utility lands, feel free to cut them for basics. This includes the MDFCs—I added them to the deck as part of the mana base, so you should replace Pinnacle Monk with a Mountain, not an Ardent Elementalist.

Scroll Rack and Sensei's Divining Top don't have great alternatives, at least in a non-blue deck. Hidden Retreat helps with miracling cards. Beyond that, maybe another draw spell? Also, if you cut Scroll Rack, you should cut Land Tax because it's here exclusively for their interaction. Similarly, if you cut cards like Top and Library of Leng, Urza's Saga effectively does nothing. You’ll save a bunch of money when you trim those extra cards.

Monument to Endurance and Currency Converter don't have great substitutes since you mostly rummage on opposing turns. Tersa Lightshatter and Ardent Elementalist could be interesting includes since they benefit from a full graveyard.

Galadriel's Dismissal and Call Forth the Tempest boast ludicrous prices since they were only printed in a supplementary product, and you can replace them with any protection spell or big spell, respectively.

Other Builds

While this Lorehold, the Historian build goes casual, you could make it stronger. For example, Approach of the Second Sun plus Lapse of Certainty create a winning, if expensive combo; you could also use the looting to dig towards and enable infinite combos—Mana Geyser + Reiterate becomes way easier to pull off when Geyser costs 2 instead of 5.

There might also be room for a lifegain build. White has impressive instants and sorceries like Beacon of Immortality, Invincible Hymn, and Reverse the Sands that generate huge bursts of lifegain. All you need are ways to capitalize on it.

Commanding Conclusion

Velomachus Lorehold | Illustration by Karl Kopinski

Lorehold, the Historian won’t break Magic anytime soon, but I expect it to be one of the more popular commanders from Secrets of Strixhaven. I love the balance between big, crazy spells and the small effects like Scroll Rack to set them up, and I can’t wait to see what other players do with it.

What’s your favorite card to miracle? Would you take Lorehold down a different path? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

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