Raffine, Scheming Seer EDH Deep Dive: Deck Philosophy, Strategy, and Card Choices

Every EDH deck is unique and is governed by the author's specific philosophy and approach. Today, I will share with you my specific take on Raffine, Scheming Seer and all the card choices. Let's get in!

Raffine, Scheming Seer as Commander

As you could see in my How To Build a Commander Deck article, I tend to look at every inch of the commander's ability to try to unearth its full potential - and then choose a path. With Raffine, you could take so many different paths, such as Reanimator, Draw triggers, Discard triggers, flyers, counters, voltron, tokens. This and many more stem from the fact that Raffine's ability is simple in resolution, but quite complex in how it affects the texture of the game and what incentives you're presented with to maximise it. 

To be more specific, you'd like to draw as many cards as possible, discard cards you want in the graveyard or redundant lands, attack with as many creatures as possible to make the Connive X huge, and target the conniving creature that benefits from counters or from being bigger in some way. The fact that Raffine costs 3 also poses a question whether you want to always play it on curve, or maybe as a mid-game threat after you've already developed a bit. With all those possible options, let me share with you how I decided to tackle it.

Deck Philosophy and Approach

This is going to be a Bracket 3 deck with no game changers, which also assumes some budget constraints, so it's not all-out on that front either.

The overarching strategy is that of a proactive tempo deck. You want to get on the board early, almost always deploy Raffine on curve, and keep attacking the opponent with mostly evasive creatures, while filtering your hand until it's perfect. Therefore, the deck will contain a lot of cheap creatures and very little actual top-end. The deck is rife with 1-3 drops and curve more or less ends there. There is also a healthy dose of interaction which you're bound to find in the early-mid game and keep the requisite amount, depending on the situation.

The ideal start includes a one-drop into a two-drop, into Raffine, into some multispelling or interaction.

The deck has a small reanimation subtheme. However, typically reanimation invokes the thought of huge creatures like Archon of Cruelty. Here though I opt for small-ball reanimation to just be even more efficient rather than have those very game swingy combinations of cards. What I mean specifically is that on an exemplary turn four, I can Unearth a three-drop I'd discarded with connive just to go a bit wider and effectively pay 1 mana for a creature that would cost 3. While you could do the same with big creatures as well theoretically, it changes the reanimation suite (Unearth or Helping Hand wouldn't work on big payoffs), and my unique upside is that most creatures are also very reasonable to just play on curve with the added bonus of the possibility that it might get reanimated. I'm never really stranded with the creatures I'd like to bring back. Moreover, the package extends to cards that truly care about small creatures like Dewdrop Cure. 

Last but not least, there is also a tiny tokens aspect to the deck which is mainly there to trigger Raffine even more. There are no token payoffs per se, but there are on-curve creatures that happen to make tokens and that's enough for me.

All in all, it's a proactive and interactive tempo strategy with a small-ball reanimation subtheme.

Full Decklist

Link to current list

Let's now dive into specific card choices!

Card Choices

We will now look at all the individual cards but also packages of cards not in isolation but rather through the lens of the philosophy and premise laid out earlier.

One thing I'd like to address immediately is the lack of mana rocks. While possibly surprising at first, it makes sense for me to play none, since the first couple of turns need to conclude with a new creature added to the board. Playing a Signet or Talisman turn two and passing is not the game plan of this deck.

Creature one-drops

In my previous iteration of the deck, I eschewed playing one-drops, because I'd deemed them too inconsequential. A Faerie Seer in EDH? C'mon!

However, I've reconsidered. The truth is that you want to have some number of creatures you can play on curve at every point, including turn one, and then just throw them away with your connives. To that end, if you've played a one-drop, you will be +1 on connives for a couple of turns which just adds more to that filtration.

The one-drops themselves, as you can see, have some card selection attached. These are not generically strong one-drops like Guide of Souls, but rather something to smooth out the early game and ensure land drops. Once I started playing one-drops, I wish every time that my hand includes one - I might even go higher on the number of them because of that!

Creature two-drops

This is the bread and butter of the deck, as these are the best creatures to play right before I deploy my Commander. 

These are the token makers. Ainok and Voice are particularly powerful, as they mean I can connive for as much as four on turn three. They make up for the most busted openers, as they snowball very fast.

These are creatures that will directly benefit from conniving. Duelist is going to be bigger and hit for a ton of damage late in the game when tokens are also involved; Bloodghast is easy connive fodder since it comes back for no mana investment; and Skyray is pure muscle.

Then the rest is a collection of no specific theme, but every card has some utility of its own.

Baleful Strix replaces itself, is nice to topdeck, and keeps opposing creatures at bay.

Faerie Mastermind has some flexibility thanks to flash as I can hold up interaction or deploy him, and provides some incidental card draw.

Gold-Forged Thopteryx is there mainly to grant more protection, but also bump up my life total with its lifelink ability, of which there isn't much in the whole deck.

Ledger Shredder further filters the hand. Not only will the opponents trigger it, but it'll also be pretty trivial for you with such a low curve to multi spell.

Lotho is a way to make more mana, as there is always more things to do with the deck.

Malcolm is somewhat of child between Mastermind and Shredder, giving the flexibility of flash and more filtration.

Catgeist and Psychic Frog provide more raw card draw, which is important to turn endless card selection into actual improvement of the resources you have - as otherwise you do have a perfectly filtered hand, but it won't be as strong if that's two cards total. A perfect 6-card hand is much more powerful.

Selfless Spirit is powerful insulation against (even our own) mass removal spells and is a great target to reanimate to keep fogging Wrath of Gods.

Emperor of Bones is an incidental piece of graveyard hate against opposing strategies. Crucially, it re-triggers when you put a counter on it, so we could do it each combat.

Kinscaer Sentry allows us to put more cheap creatures into play early and snowball our advantage.

Creature three-drops

This is a strange category, as these are creatures directly competing with Raffine. However, that's not how I'd look at it. More so, these are our prime reanimation targets, so cards you'd discard on turn three with connive and bring back on turn four. They are also just strong creatures to play after you've already deployed Raffine.

We have more token-makers at the three mana mark, but each does it a tad differently. Adeline makes them immediately, but a very limited number; Avenger's ceiling is super high especially in the late game; and Hallowed Spiritkeeper is our way to threaten a strong board even when a board wipe happens. Crucially to the last point, if there is a board wipe, we can untap, slam our commander taxed Raffine, and still benefit from a massive Connive trigger.

As this deck lives or dies on board presence, further anti-board-wipe measures are baked into the deck.

Chasm Skulker is pure muscle early, but also threatens a similar fate to Spiritkeeper.

Enduring Innocence gives us that bit of raw card draw, but remains on the field in the face of removal.

Warren Soultrader is more of a roundabout way to beat wraths, but the fact that we can sac our board to then be able to rebuild is huge. It also synergises very strongly with tokens, it can interfere with exile effects by proccing the aforementioned die-trigger creatures, and it can ramp us to our bigger payoffs. Secretly, one of the strongest cards in the deck.

Kiora is definitely on the lower end on both power and synergy with the deck and is quite cuttable. However, the draw effect is even more filtration, she sets up reanimation effect by herself and if she gets to attack, meeting the threshold requirement is trivial in this deck. Overall a decent unit that's not excellent at anything.

Speaking of excellent units, these two are our prime targets for Helping Hand and Unearth. 

Lurrus can replay half the deck and is an excellent post-wrath rebuild tool. 

Oculus snowballs the game super fast by not only putting a lot of power on the field, but also doing it by making a lot of small creatures, which further synergises with Raffine. Last but not least, you can tactically choose to manifest dread a creature away to the graveyard rather than under the manifest for reanimation purposes.

Creature four-drops

There aren't many and the bar for four-drops is pretty high, but I do like this small bundle of threats.

Enduring Curiosity is absolutely ideal for this deck for numerous reasons: it generates insane card advantage, insulates against wrath by both giving us more cards to use and coming back as an enchantment, and synergises with us going wide.

Grim Hireling is a way to generate more mana for which we have plenty of ways to use, especially when we're discarding redundant lands, and can act as a removal spell in a pinch.

Queza, Augur of Agonies is a pretty innocuous card with no enter-trigger or combat-relevant abilities. However, it statically kills opponents at crazy rates by making insane life total swings. This is definitely nonessential to the deck but I like being able to attack one player all-in and use the triggers to kill the other.

Serra Paragon is our bigger Lurrus that replays all the three drops, including Lurrus itself. Great mid-late game threat to rebuild and has evasion itself which helps it get into combat.

Wonder is a Bloodghast-esque inclusion in the sense that it's always meant to be discarded and provides incidental advantage with us spending no resources on it. Most of the deck flies already, but there are some key creatures that don't like Lurrus, Queza, Hireling, or the tokens we make.

Creature Topend

This is a very short section, but nonetheless an important one.

Thematically to the deck, what I call topend is a single 5- and 6-drop. 

Archfiend, when played on curve, is a devastating asymmetrical wrath. You play it, attack with all, likely connive 5+, and the opponents' boards die or shrink massively.

Sun Titan is one of my old favourites. It reanimates the vast majority of the deck and can singlehandedly get us back into the game by reanimating Oculus, Kiora, Innocence, or Lurrus. If done more than once, it absolutely flips the game on its head. 

The Reanimation Package

We know now that we tend to reanimate smaller creatures purely to gain tempo over the opponent. We have a couple of different reanimation spells though that tackle it from different angles.

These are the small-ball reanimations that get us a three-drop back into the game. Clean and to the point.

These are meant to reanimate more than one creature at a time. Call returns two 3-drops, Dewdrop two or three 2-drops, and Victimze doesn't actually care about cost, so this is where we could sneak in that early Enduring Innocence or Sun Titan.

These are proper game swingers. Fix What's Broken is a 4-mana mass reanimation whose additional cost doesn't bother us much, since the costs of creatures are so small. Living Death is a bit riskier, but you're the one who tends to have a much fuller graveyard. Ascend from Avernus is basically 5-6 mana given the deck construction. Rise of the Dark Realms is a proper end-game card, which in most early-mid game situations will just be connived away, but offers that Hail Mary aspect that in some niche scenarios flips the game on its head.

All these reanimations are going to be typically played after someone has wiped you - and they've wiped you because they had to given the snowbally nature of the deck. However, at times those reanimations will be more proactive. For instance, you've connived enough that you just pay 4, Fix what's broken back 6 creatures and present lethal for the upcoming turn. Or, when combined with Warren Soultrader, you can kill your own board, make Treasures, trigger any on-death effects, and bring it all back.

This whole reanimation axis makes the deck super hard to play against and the best tools are specifically mass removal and specifically exile - against which we still have counterplay.

Interaction

We are also an interactive deck that doesn't just swing sideways. I play a mix of removal, mass removal, and countermagic.

Depending on your preferences, you could lean more into onboard removal or possibly counterspells to lead to game states where you've gone so wide and filtered through the draws that your end-game is just a scary board and a couple of counterspells in hand to protect it.

Faithfully to the gods of efficiency, all the removal is super cheap, costing either 0, 1, or essentially 1.

Swords and Flood Maw are catch-alls, Lethal Scheme synergises with our discard and draw effects, and Remorse with Cut take advantage of us fueling the graveyard rather easily.

I also play interaction baked into lands. This is very useful for the purposes of connive, as you can discard a 'land' but still get a counter.

Despite being a full-on creature deck myself, I've opted to play a couple of mass removal spells. The rationale is that I won't always be the most aggressive or most threatening person in the pod, and assuming so would be foolish. Therefore, I need countermeasures for when such situations arise and act accordingly. 

Thanks to the card filtering nature of the deck though, if I am indeed *the* threat, I can discard those mass removals. Moreover, if I am to wipe the board myself, I know that I can reanimate my creatures back rather easily. Given the cheapness of some of the cards, with 7 mana I could play a wipe + Dewdrop/Call and end the turn with 2 or 3 creatures already. Turns that combine my Wrath into Fix What's Broken are absolutely impossible to beat.

Other

The rest of the deck is rounded up with some other uncategorised cards.

Mox Amber is my ramp spell - and with so many cheap creatures in the deck, generating an extra one mana is like half an additional creature.

Treasure Cruise is always Ancestral Recall that happily delves away all the discarded lands.

Smuggler's Copter is our non-creature creature two-drop. Raffine crews it very well.

Monument to Endurance in this deck triggers every mode on every of your turns. There are cards that make it even scarier by using it on non-your turns like Psychic Frog.

Cryptcaller Chariot makes a ton of tokens when we connive which in turn make future connives bigger and make even more tokens. Perfect marriage of effects. And it doesn't die to wraths!

Bitterblossom is a two-mana three-drop. While it doesn't work perfectly on curve when it comes down on turn two, for every turn thereafter it pays off the dividend nicely and offers a steady stream of creatures.

Conclusion

This has been my Raffine deck!

I have enjoyed it immensely. The fact that you have such great card filtration so you're never really screwed, flooded, or draw the wrong half, and that all of this fuels the rest of the deck is such a great feeling. You also have interaction to thwart opponents' plans and reanimation to get back into the game so you don't just fold to a single wrath.

Give it a go if you enjoy decks like these! And I am confident that there are so many other cards that I have not come across that would fit this deck perfectly and further elevate its performance.