Unesh Playing Nice with Tribal

Just some fun Sphinx tribal value!

No counterspells, no Cyclonic Rift, no infinite mana combos or stax cards, just a bunch of big flying beaters made cheaper to cast by Unesh and his friends! So much value that you'll likely get through every card in the deck (maybe more than once!) if you stick around long enough. Once the Unesh party train takes off, you'll find yourself holding onto a grip full of 20+ cards pretty quickly.

Best part is that Sphinxes are really cheap $-wise and mono color means the mana base is cheap too. This deck can be really cheap and easy to use, but so much fun passing around your cards 4-5 times per turn. Only expensive Sphinx is Consecrated Sphinx, and I added him really late to the deck after I had been playing the deck for several months, so it definitely functions without it. I tried to pick Sphinxes that have some other value (Scry, etc.) rather than cram all of them in because there are a few others.

This deck has several win conditions and they seem to grow as time goes on and more interesting and good Sphinxes are printed.

1. Commander damage from Unesh himself! I facilitate this usually through Empyrial Plate.
2. Thassa's Oracle because win or lose I usually draw every card in the deck - twice!
3. Speaking of drawing cards, with a grip full it likely means there's enough different CMCs to make Atemsis, All-Seeing work. This card is a fun shocker for the table.
4. Mill! That's right, mill. A recent addition to the deck with Sphinx Mindbreaker has made that possible when considering all of the blink and copy effects used in the deck to coincidentally trigger Unesh's ability more anyway. This sneaky bad boy will mill each opponent for 10 on ETB, but will mill each opponent for an additional 30 (with 3 opponents) when equipped with Blade of Selves or an additional 50 ( ! ) when targeted by a kicked Rite of Replication! Other copy or blink effects add to the milling, and this is all not even considering if there's a Panharmonicon on the field! Sounds fun and on Sphinx flavor to me.
5. There is one infinite combo in the deck: Timestream Navigator + Helm of the Host for infinite turns. Land the Navigator and equip the Helm to it, then on combat spend the mana and tap the hasty copy to take an extra turn. It take a bit of mana and is meant as a fun blue-esque way toward multiple combats with beefy fliers to close the game out, but can gain time to dig for the other win conditions if needed.
6. Well, swing in with a team of big flying Sphinxes if you can! I've won plenty of games just by doing this at the end. Not as unique or flashy as the other ways to win, but it's there.

After playing this deck for over a year, I retired (disassembled) it in 2018 - but now it's back from the grave circa Feb 2020! Realizing that the price of cards have gone up since then, the initial idea behind the deck (budget friendly and friendly tribal) has crept away from itself, so I decided to cut some cards that were over the $10 mark and replace them with cheaper alternatives that still make the deck function absolutely well. Cuts for budget include:

• Herald's Horn (almost $19!) is replaced with Kefnet's Monument. The real draw to the Horn (no pun intended) was the mana reduction to the Sphinxes as an addition to or in backup for Unesh, but that effect is replicated with other cards with pros and cons. Kefnet's Monument pro is that it still gives the same mana reduction to all of our Sphinxes - plus the few other blue non-Sphinx creatures - and the con is that there's no 20-25% to draw an extra card from revealing a sphinx. Really with about 20 sphinxes in the deck, it doesn't seem worth it to go for the Horn, especially considering this deck does not struggle with card draw or card advantage, but can indeed sometimes struggle late-game to keep the mana reduction of sphinxes up if Unesh has already been cast a few times. The mana reduction outweighs the card advantage on the Horn and so a very functional cheaper alternative is Kefnet's Monument.

• Kindred Discovery (creeping on $25-30 at this point!) is replaced with Bident of Thassa. Again, this deck is not wanting for more card draw. If you're casting Sphinxes with Unesh out, you should have plenty of fuel to keep things going and this is very much a win-more kind of card in this particular deck, so I decided to cut it for, IMO, a much more interesting Bident of Thassa. The difference in card draw is attack trigger vs damage trigger, which is not that great of a difference when the attacker has built-in evasion of flying. The Bident gives a nifty ability of forcing your opponent's creatures to attack, possibly putting key creatures in harms way of dying in combat and acting as an indirect removal tool. It's unlikely the creatures will attack into a wall of 5/5+ flying Sphinxes, but if down to 1v1 it could make the difference in the game.

• Path of Ancestry (about $8 at this point) didn't seem worth it after further review. It comes into play tapped, only produces a single blue mana in this deck, and allows for the occasional scry. Again, doesn't seem wholly powerful and I've decided to turn it into an Island at this point while considering some other lands.

• Sphinx Ambassador (~$10) is replaced with Riddlemaster Sphinx. Ambassador is a fun card, but certainly not necessary in this deck where there's plenty of other Sphinx with decent or better abilities stapled onto them. I've chosen to replace it with a relatively newer Sphinx family member in Riddlemaster Sphinx. Besides, Sphinx Ambassador always drew a lot of table hate for what it can do and Riddlemaster Sphinx ability fits the ETB theme more, so overall I think a better fit.

I'm debating cutting a couple more cards to really keep it in that budget sweet spot, such as Consecrated Sphinx especially because I know the deck functioned perfectly well without it for so long before. Relatively pricier things such as Thought Vessel and Venser's Journal are still quite needed for the deck though.