Wheels On The Bus Discard All Hands

The Wheels archetype is a unique Commander playstyle that has you focus on attacking hands. You are constantly making them be discarded and refreshed, dealing burn damage along the way. It’s unique in that it doesn’t fight your opponents in the traditional sense, using abilities on creatures to deal damage instead of dealing damage directly.

What Is Wheels?

A Wheels deck is one that makes everyone discard their hands and draw new ones. The name comes from Wheel of Fortune, which is the basis for this effect. Cards that share this kind of effect are referred to as “wheel effects.” Wheel effects have been printed in ways that effect every player, or sometimes just one.

What Colors Is Wheels In?

Cards with wheel effects only appear in Blue and Red . Very rarely, it can appear in Black as well, but no other color.

Wheels Staples

Cards in the Wheels archetype are more specific due to the kind of playstyle Wheels has. You want cards that punish opponents for drawing cards, cards that force discards and draws, and, of course, cards with wheel effects.

Wheel Effects

Wheel effects are the most powerful cards in the archetype as you’d probably expect. While Wheel of Fortune is one of the best Wheels cards, it is on the Reserved List, so it has a very high price tag if you’re not proxying it. You alternatively have Magus of the Wheel which has the same effect, just much slower. There are multiple cards that force everyone to discard their hand and draw cards equal to the highest number of cards discarded by a player. These include Windfall and Whispering Madness. Dark Deal is another wheel effect, but the number of cards drawn depends on the player.

Burn Cards

Wheels deck win by burning your opponents with permanents that deal burn damage when opponents draw. You want cards such as Underworld Dreams, Fate Unraveler, and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse that hurt opponents for drawing cards. It is a Game Changer, but Orcish Bowmasters is excellent for Wheels decks if you’re in a higher bracket. It doesn’t trigger on discards, but since you usually are included in wheel effects, Psychosis Crawler helps do burn damage when you draw.

Extra Draws

You aren’t always going to have access to your wheel effects. As such, you want permanents that force extra draws onto your opponents. This will help to trigger your burn effects to close out games quicker. Spiteful Visions both gives everyone an extra draw and deals burn damage. Kami of the Crescent Moon gives everyone an extra draw at their draw step. Dictate of Kruphix has flash, letting you cast it whenever you’d like when the right opening comes.

Discard Payoffs

Since Wheels decks make your opponents discard so frequently, you want to run cards that benefit from that happening. Geth's Grimoire turns your opponents’ discards into card draw for yourself. Waste Not can give you a ton of different effects when specific cards are discarded. Even if all the cards are discarded at once, each card triggers Waste Not separately. Both Liliana's Caress and Megrim do the exact same thing, burning damage for every card getting discarded.

Complimentary Wheels Cards

Wheels decks have you draw a lot of cards, and there’s a lot of cards that benefit from you drawing cards. Niv-Mizzet, Parun deals burn damage to any target when you draw a card, and gets you card draw when anyone casts instants or sorceries. The Locust God turns card draw into tokens with flying and haste on the battlefield. Chasm Skulker grows in stats with every card you draw, and when it dies you get a ton of tokens equal to its power.

Wheels decks tend to have a sub-Group Hug theme, giving players extra cards. This helps you to stay in the game while you work toward your win conditions. Kwain, Itinerant Meddler lets any play choose to draw a card and gains you life. Edric, Spymaster of Trest encourages your opponents to take one another, as each creature dealing damage to your opponents draws them cards. The Second Doctor lets everyone draw cards and prevents them from attacking you if they do.

In many cases, Wheels decks aren’t too aggressive with creatures. As such, cards that slow the combat down are especially useful. Crawlspace, Silent Arbiter, Ghostly Prison, and Propaganda are all great ways to deter attacks from coming your way.

General Gameplay

A Wheels decks often play a mixture of Group Hug, Control, and Burn strategies. Wheels decks attack the hands constantly, punishing opponents with cards like Underworld Dreams. You want to load up the battlefield with these kinds of permanents, then start playing your wheel effects such as Reforge the Soul and Winds of Change. This is your main source of damage, and the main way you’ll be draining your opponents’ life totals.

Wheels decks generally don’t get going until you have access to a lot of mana. Many cards with wheel effects tend to cost a fair bit of mana, so you’re going to take a while to get going. A lot of your best permanents are creatures, so you want to be wary about board wipes. Instead, utilizing targeted removal like Void Rend, Anguished Unmaking, and Terminate tends to be better. Alternatively, you can counter spells with Dovin's Veto or Counterspell to take care of them before they ever hit the battlefield.

In Wheels decks, you are forcing your opponents to draw cards. Don’t be afraid to put someone ahead of anyone else, and don’t be afraid to target others. You are providing a ton of cards to everyone, so naturally, you’ll get your opponents to their win conditions faster. Hand hate such as Thoughtseize and Duress can ensure that you discard those cards before your opponents will have a chance to play them. You may also luck out by wheeling a win condition out of an opponent’s hand naturally.

How Wheels Decks Win

You win with Wheels deck through burn damage. Permanents such as Underworld Dreams, Fate Unraveler, and Razorkin Needlehead all have their effects stack with one another, and trigger every card being drawn. That means if you have all three on the battlefield, just one card being drawn equates to three burn damage. Since most wheel effects make opponents draw seven cards, that’s a lot of burn damage from just one trigger.

Since you draw a lot of cards in Wheels decks, you can win with many different alternate win conditions. You’re affected by wheel effects frequently, so your libraries can dwindle quickly. This makes it easy to win with Laboratory Maniac or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Triskaidekaphile and Approach of the Second Sun are two other ways you can easily win with, especially the latter since one wheel effect lets you get Approach of the Second Sun back into your hand right away. These are all late-game win conditions, but ones that are very achievable if the burn game plan doesn’t pan out.

Wheels Commanders

Wheels commanders are a little narrower in options. Unlike many other archetypes, you have to stay within certain colors in order for your deck to function. There isn’t a large number of viable Wheels commanders, but this article will give you three different options for a Wheels deck.

Nekusar, the Mindrazer

Nekusar, the Mindrazer is one of the best choices for a Wheels commander, as its effect burns opponents when they draw. This stacks with similar permanents such as Scrawling Crawler, Fate Unraveler, and Spiteful Visions. Since you have so many variations of this effect, you can win the game without ever actually casting your commander. Having Nekusar, the Mindrazer on the battlefield is nice, but it’s not backbreaking if it doesn’t stick around.

You have a lot of slow burn effects, but you can make these effects amplified with ways to make the one-damage pings much more threatening. Solphim, Mayhem Dominus doubles all noncombat damage your sources deal. For your red sources, all that one-damage pinging can turn into four damage minimum with Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might. If you manage to grow its stats, the extra burn damage can be even bigger. It’s not as big a boost, but Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph can push your damage output higher. Since this deck’s win condition is burn, you want these out on the battlefield as quickly as possible.

As opposed to winning through burn, since you have access to Black , you can also win with infect. You can give Nekusar, the Mindrazer either Phyresis or Grafted Exoskeleton, both cards that grant infect to whatever it’s attached to. Since its Nekusar, the Mindrazer dealing damage, instead of dealing damage, it will provide poison counters. It only takes 10 poison counters for an opponent to lose the game. This is a great backup plan if you’re up against Lifegain decks, or if the burn strategy is too far out of reach.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. This one is closer to the bracket 4 level, but could be played in bracket 3 as well. If budget is a problem, you can cut some of the more expensive cards in favor of more control cards like counterspells and removal.

Winter, Misanthropic Guide

Winter, Misanthropic Guide is a Wheels deck that doesn’t just make your opponents discard and redraw their hands, but makes sure their hands stay small. Its delirium effect makes all your opponents’ maximum hand sizes smaller, preventing them from ever having a lot in their hand. Wheeling naturally sets up your own graveyard, making it trivial to turn delirium on. You can make hand sizes even smaller with Gnat Miser. Delirium is almost always going to be active for you, so Osseous Sticktwister is great to force opponents to sacrifice permanents or have to discard even more cards from their hands. The more card types in your graveyard the better, as that makes your opponents maximum hand sizes even smaller.

Your opponents will rarely ever have many cards in their hands, even with Winter, Misanthropic Guide drawing them two cards every upkeep. This makes cards such as Bandit's Talent even better since hand sizes will likely be low. The downside is Winter, Misanthropic Guide will prevent the level 3 effect from going off, but it can be useful if Winter, Misanthropic Guide ever gets removed. It doesn’t matter if your opponents are drawing extra cards with permanents like Howling Mine and Font of Mythos, as they’re being forced to discard them. If you manage to get your engine going early enough, you can force your opponents’ win conditions into the graveyard before they ever have the mana to cast them.

In a Winter, Misanthropic Guide deck, your opponents are discarding a ton of cards very frequently. You want permanents that reward you for this such as Entropic Battlecruiser that does a hefty bit of burn damage along with Megrim and Liliana's Caress. You can also get card draw or tokens with Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck can play in the higher levels of bracket 3, or the lower bracket 4 levels. The deck can be a bit annoying to play against with how quickly it can dismantle hands, but if you’re aiming to win, Winter, Misanthropic Guide is a great Wheels commander.

Xyris, the Writhing Storm

Xyris, the Writhing Storm is more unique in terms of Wheels commanders in that it’s less about direct burn damage, but generating a ton of creature tokens with Xyris, the Writhing Storm‘s effect. It creates tokens every time an opponent draws a card except for their first draw during their draw step. This turns every wheel effect into a ton of token generation with just one effect. If you make all your opponents draw seven cards with Echo of Eons, that’s a total of 21 1/1 tokens you get. Time Reversal does the same, and lets you get all your best wheel effects back into your library for future use.

As opposed to burning opponents for drawing cards, you’re instead burning them with permanents like Agate Instigator, Impact Tremors, and Purphoros, God of the Forge that trigger on creatures entering. If you have multiple versions of this effect on the battlefield, they all trigger separately. Just one wheel effect can lead to massive burn damage, allowing your tokens to close out games.

If you find yourself struggling to win through burn damage, you can also use your army of tokens to win through combat. Beastmaster Ascension and Craterhoof Behemoth both provide a hefty stat boost to all of your creatures when you’re ready to attack. Triumph of the Hordes gives all your creatures infect and trample, so you only need ten damage to connect to take someone out of the game. With how many tokens you have, this is easily accomplished.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck plays at the higher bracket 3, lower bracket 4 levels. If you add in some more fast mana, you can close out games quickly. Wheels decks usually are more passive, but if you want a more aggressive flavor of Wheels, Xyris, the Writhing Storm is the commander for you.

In Conclusion

The Wheels archetype is a midrange playstyle, focusing on setting up for massive swings of burn damage and winning in the late-game. They tend to have slow starts, but trades that early-game damage for haymaker effects in the end-game. It’s not uncommon for Wheels decks to completely turn the tide of a game in just one turn.

If you like messing with players’ hands or the chaos of forced draw and discards, look no further than a Wheels deck. It’s a bit more interactive than traditional burn, so if you like untraditional combat and damage-making decisions, Wheels decks are perfect for you.