Weaver of Curses (EDH) (EDH / Commander)

This mardu deck is built around the unique commander Ghen, Arcanum Weaver. It started out with 23 curses and was slowly whittled down to 9. You could say the theme was watered down and.. you'd be right.

Anyway! The enchantment theme is still strong and fun, we have still have the more impactful curses and some potent enchantments like Captive Audience and Starfield of Nyx. I've tried to keep it budget with the exception of Replenish, run it if you have it or proxy or replace with Enlightened Tutor or something.

The game plan is to start out ramping & looting/rummaging while putting strong enchantments in the graveyard until you're ready to play Ghen + activate him.
Ghen's ability sacrifices an enchantment in order to bring back another from the graveyard.
The enchantments we want to sacrifice are Demonic Lore, Treacherous Blessing, Escape Velocity (after it's given Ghen haste), Brilliant Halo returns to our hand after we sacrifice it, Rune of Speed replaces itself, and gives Ghen haste so it's a good target too. Lithoform Blight is manafixing/land hate/replaces itself so it's a fine sac target as well.

We find the sac fodder with cards like Open the Armory, Heliod's Pilgrim and Final Parting. Other good tutor targets are Illusionist's Bracers, Curse of Misfortunes, Gift of Immortality and Benevolent Blessing. Depending on what you need.

So, you've angered your opponents and your curses aren't enticing enough for people to attack someone else. To stave off aggression we have Sphere of Safety, Maze of Ith, Smoke, Silent Arbiter and some zombie tokens. There's also a lot of board wipes to slow the beating down.

There's some quirky interactions, we run all the ability doublers we can; Strionic Resonator, Illusionist's Bracers, Rings of Brighthearth and Lithoform Engine. All of these lets us grab two enchantments from the graveyard with Ghen while only sacrificing one.
We also bypass Hexproof if we grab Reprobation or Darksteel Mutation from the graveyard with Ghen which is very potent against voltron strategies.

So, can we win? Yes, but be happy with a 2nd place. There's a certain inevitability to cards like Captive Audience and Starfield of Nyx and with Replenish, Open the Vaults and Triumphant Reckoning we can easily recur all our curses once a cursed opponents is knocked out.
We also have a sneaky win with Liliana's Contract (most of the time it's just draw 4 though), Starfield of Nyx and Conspiracy (name demons). Your non-aura enchantments are now demons and if you have 4 on your upkeep you win.

I want to explain some cards I've omitted: Overwhelming Splendor doesn't really advance our game plan but it cruelly cripples an opponent, if that's cool with you, run it as one of your curses. Sanguine Bond + Exquisite Blood is a classic combo that's fairly easy to assemble with Ghen, but I wanted to do something more exciting. Include it over the Conspiracy win if you want to. The rest of the Maybeboard are solid cards that are just too expensive, run them if you can/want or proxy. But once you proxy enough 'staples' your decks will become increasingly homogenous.

The mana-base is worth mentioning, I tried to keep it budget without completely slowing it down but it obviously can't 'compete' with fetches and OG duals, the more colours your deck has the more expensive it gets. Try to keep your manabase on par with the people you play with, if that means proxying or including more taplands I'd suggest doing so :-)

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let me know!