River Song Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on January 22, 2024

River Song | Illustration by John Di Giovanni

“How are they gonna represent time travel in the Doctor Who decks?” This was our big question before spoilers when this project was announced. It turns out there are a few ways. Suspend and saga shenanigans in the Timey-Wimey deck, and River Song in the Paradox Power deck, which is my favorite card released in quite some time from a brewer’s perspective.

It breaks one of the cardinal rules of the game, and every time WotC makes a card that does that, I want in! How do we use a card that draws off the bottom of the library? Well, we break some older cards, that’s how! Is any of it good enough? Let’s see!

We’re going to brew a deck that reflects River Song’s unique abilities, and this is much needed since the rest of this proecon doesn’t really synergize with it (which may be in keeping with the lore of the character but isn’t exactly fun!).

The Deck

Archmage Emeritus | Illustration by Caio Monteiro

The Commander

We’re all about getting cards off the bottom. That’s it.

The trap on River Song is the second set of text, which adds counters and dishes out damage whenever opponents scry, surveil, or search their libraries. There’s no way this does enough to win a game, especially given the state of cards with that kind of text, which, for an Izzet Commander deck, usually have that word “may,” seen on cards like Noble Benefactor and Eager Construct. That opponent choice is why hardly anyone builds a deck around Ob Nixilis, Unshackled as a commander.

So if we focus on getting cards to the bottom, we’ve got to use that for card selection. We want effects that allow us to order cards on the bottom of our library, allowing us to reserve one or more for the top of the library, which we’ll not be using when River is on the battlefield, giving us exceptional selection. That’s partially why we don’t have a lot of scry cards in this deck, as they work with River, but their rate isn’t as useful since they’re costed as if anyone might use them to manipulate the top of their library. We want something more!

Turning that into a win really needs combo finishes. There are other classic Izzet wincons you can try, like tokens or direct damage, but that takes up card space to enable, and the downside of a deck like this is that if the commander isn’t on the battlefield, all the durdly overcosted card draw spells do very little. I’ll highlight those options at the end of the piece, but I’ve suggested a few combo finishes to take advantage of the commander. If a few highly disruptive infinite combos violate your playgroup style, be sure to check out that section.

Bottom Feeders

We literally need cards that feed the bottom of the deck! Most of the deck consists of these cards, and we’re focusing on extraordinary rates, even in something as simple as Anticipate or Glint-Nest Crane. We have a few cheaper cards like Preordain in here, mostly to help us out while we wait for River Song to safely arrive on the battlefield.

But the majority here are cards that let us really start stacking our deck, usually for 3-4 mana. These are unexpected cards like Sanity Grinding, Stomping Slabs, Petals of Insight, etc. You probably own these cards in your bulk boxes, and until now they haven’t been worth using. But ordering 10 cards on the bottom of your library is huge!

Our biggest hits here are two creatures that can really set up our wins: Neera, Wild Mage and Timestream Navigator.

We’ve also got some artifacts that do really weird stuff with the bottom of our library, like Heirloom Blade, Lantern of Revealing, Tel-Jilad Stylus, and Proteus Staff. We’ve also got Goblin Charbelcher in maybe the only deck where it’s not a combo finisher. If that’s gonna make you a target, swap it out for an Opt!

Finally, both planeswalkers are here for bottom effects as well, Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Mordenkainen. They can do powerful things if they have time.

Interaction

There isn’t much, and most of it involves deck manipulation, like Erratic Mutation, Fire Prophecy, Prophetic Bolt, and Volcanic Spite. Into the Fire is a modal mini sweeper. Not really enough to handle anything big, but this deck can’t handle the burden of holding up counterspells given how much sorcery-speed stuff we’ve got to run. The exceptions are the potentially everlasting Spell Crumple and the flexible Supreme Will.

Combos

You have two, and yes they are infinite. But they’re also super disruptible and they’re old school combos everyone kind of knows about and can see coming from a mile away. Check below for advice on Rule 0, but I think you could legit argue that this commander can only win via combo, and that you’ve been pretty tame about all of it. Look sternly over your glasses at the Craterhoof Behemoth player at the table while you do this.

You’ve got Niv-Mizzet, Parun and Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind with Curiosity and Ophidian Eye. Infinite shotguns.

There’s also the Sage of the Falls and The Locust God combo that used to be part of the Indomitable Creativity deck in Historic. Infinite hasty flyers.

The Mana Base

Some dual lands, some artifact ramp like Sol Ring, as you’d expect. What’s different here than usual are fetch lands. I try to avoid those in my EDH decklists, as they’re expensive and if you already own them you don’t need my advice to include them. They’re key in this deck, though, because you’ll often want a shuffle effect, for the same reason you see them paired with Brainstorm in constructed formats. 

The Strategy

If they’re not going to let your commander live, you’ll have a hard time finding the pieces for your wincons. And you don’t have a ton of counter magic. The key to this deck is to play the cards to stack the bottom of your library with your wincons and then play River Song to get them. Draw off the top until you need to and then switch to drawing from the bottom. Remember that most of the cards that stack the bottom allow you to draw a card first, which means you can play River and then one of those, grabbing the wincon you need off the bottom before dropping more cards down there, if you need to.

That’s it. Find your combo and win. This is primo glass cannon. Don’t let them talk you out of it!

Rule 0 Violations Check

So yeah, we’ve got a few infinite combos here. We could have more. You could add Underworld Breach, Lion's Eye Diamond and Brain Freeze or Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator and Glint-Horn Buccaneer, or the variety of Thassa's Oracle cEDH wins to really get going. But I think The Locust God combo with Sage of the Falls and the Niv-Mizzet, Parun and Curiosity combos are fine. They’re creature based and easy to see coming.

So talk to your playgroup, but I think this whole deck is so much less powerful than other “fair” decks that are a drag to play against, like Prosper, Tome-Bound, Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow or other obnoxious nonsense commanders!

Budget Options

This deck is pretty budget except for the fetch lands, including the wincons. The fun of this deck is we’re playing stuff that doesn't really have other homes. If you have to you can do without the fetch lands. It’s not the worst thing to fold in the Mirage slow fetches like Bad River or the Streets of New Capenna fetches like Maestros Theater instead. And you could add more of that if you wanted to as you build the deck anyway.

Other Builds

How does Izzet () win games aside from combo?

One classic option is tokens. You can replace our combos in this deck with a stack of token-makers like Talrand, Sky Summoner, Ovika, Enigma Goliath, Young Pyromancer, Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, and Third Path Iconoclast. You’re not casting the cheapest of spells, so this isn’t the best way to win compared to a deck with a lot of 1-drop cantrips, but that does up the value of the harder to cast Ovika.

Another route is direct damage from spells with cards like Fiery Emancipation, Guttersnipe, Unruly Catapult and the like. I really don’t think these work all that well in every Izzet EDH build, and this deck, full of more expensive spells, is even worse than usual. River helps aid in this quest, and perhaps folks won’t really notice the incidental damage for a while until you start popping down more enablers? Seems like wishful thinking to me, but hey, that’s part of why we play a game where 75% of the table loses every time.

Still, what this deck does for those strategies is find the payoffs a bit easier. You could stack the bottom with the wincons and then start dropping tokens when you’re ready. It’s like this deck is a slow speed tutoring machine, and I’ll bet it sometimes works that way.

Commanding Conclusion

Niv-Mizzet, Parun | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

I’m looking forward to this deck! I’m obsessed with building Commander decks that use cards that no one cared about until this new card or mechanic was printed and made them good again!

I have little faith that anyone will let me win with this after they see it pop off once, but that might just be enough, especially since I’m probably getting the Paradox Power deck anyway so River Song will be looking for a home.

Thanks for reading and come tell us if you have a plan for River Song below or on Discord!