Ghen, Arcanum Weaver

Overview

This is a grind deck. There is no primary line — you take what the game gives you, recurring enchantments for value until one of your lines presents itself. Ghen is the inevitability: once he's online, every enchantment you've ever binned is a card in hand, and every rebuy is an enchantment entering the battlefield.

Those enters-triggers are the payoff layer. Grim Guardian and Balemurk Leech drain each opponent, Thoughtrender Lamia strips their hands, Archon of Sun's Grace builds a Pegasus air force, Doomwake Giant shrinks their boards, Forgeborn Oreads pings, and Victor, Valgavoth's Seneschal climbs from surveil to discard to free reanimation as the triggers stack up in a turn. None of these is scary alone; a yoyo-ing enchantment hitting four of them at once ends games.

The lines that present themselves, in practice:

• The drain grind — one or two rebuys a turn (doubled by copies) into the constellation bodies, backed by the discard package (Necrogen Mists + Liliana's Caress + Thoughtrender) hitting all three opponents every turn cycle.
• The Starfield board — at five enchantments, Starfield of Nyx turns your enchantments into an army with a free extra rebuy every upkeep.
• The saga top end — Summon: Primal Odin's Zantetsuken deletes a player on connect; Summon: Bahamut's Mega Flare hits every opponent for the mana value of your whole board.
• The loop — Touch the Spirit Realm + Starfield goes infinite and turns any drain body into the kill (see Combos).

Mana note: red is over-sourced and white/black carry the real pip demand — W and B are the colors to prioritize on land drops and fetches.

Mulligan Guide

The keep question is "can you hit your land drops and keep cards flowing until a protected Ghen comes down?"

Keep a hand with:

• Mana to 3 — with W and/or B in it; red takes care of itself.
• Some card draw — Bitter Reunion, Case of the Crimson Pulse, Black Market Connections, Ripples of Undeath, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker.

You do not need in the opener:

• Ghen-turn pieces. He's a turn 4–5 cast — you're waiting to have protection for him (Alseid of Life's Bounty, Swift Reconfiguration, Teferi's Protection), not racing him out.
• Payoff enchantments. The deck mills and loots them into the yard all game; Ghen finds them from there.

Mulligan hands that are all payoff and no engine — big enchantments with no draw and no third land. The deck's early game is cheap engines, not threats, so a slow hand that draws cards beats a strong hand that doesn't.

Game Plan

Turns 1–3: stock the toolbox

• Land the draw/stock engines: Ripples of Undeath (mills three a turn and it's yard-stocking, not loss), Black Market Connections, Case of the Crimson Pulse, Bitter Reunion, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. Discard enchantments greedily — they're the cards you can get back.
• Cheap shells hit the board doing work: Journey to Nowhere and Oblivion Ring answer early threats, Seal of Cleansing and Aura of Silence sit on artifact/enchantment duty. Every one of them is future Ghen fodder.
• Entomb and Gravebreaker Lamia are tutors that put the target where Ghen wants it — the graveyard.

Turns 4–5: land Ghen, protected

Cast Ghen when you can hold up or pre-place protection: Alseid (sac for protection-from-a-color at instant speed, then it's a spent shell), Swift Reconfiguration (see How Ghen Works), or Teferi's Protection. A dead Ghen with tax mounting is this deck's real losing pattern — the engine is him.

Get him active the turn he lands where possible: Bitter Reunion's sac gives your creatures haste, Thousand-Year Elixir lets him tap immediately, Battlemage's Bracers grants haste and copies.

The engine turns

• At minimum one rebuy per turn. Sac the most-spent shell (a finished Saga or Case, a used Seal, a Journey holding nothing relevant), return the best tool for the board state.
• Copies double everything. Rings (), Illusionist's Bracers (free while equipped), Battlemage's Bracers (), Camera ( + a film counter) — each copy is a second rebuy, and the copy can return the enchantment you just sacrificed.
• Starfield adds a free rebuy every upkeep on top of Ghen's.
• Ondu Spiritdancer turns one rebuy a turn into two enchantments — the token copy triggers constellation again and is free sac fodder (it ceases to exist in the yard, so sac tokens before real cards when the rebuy target doesn't matter).

Closing

Take the line the game presents. Drain the table with the constellation bodies; go wide under Starfield; resolve a Summon Saga; Replenish or Resurgent Belief the whole yard back after a wipe (suspend Resurgent Belief early — two turns later it's a free mass reanimation); or assemble the Touch + Starfield loop. Any of them is the right one when it arrives.

How Ghen actually works

• Targets before costs. You choose the graveyard target before you sacrifice, so Ghen can never return the enchantment he's eating — the original ability, that is. Copies pick their targets later, when the fodder is already in the yard. This is the whole copy-suite doctrine in one rule.
• Auras come back without targeting. An Aura Ghen returns attaches to anything it can legally enchant — including an opponent's hexproof creature. Animate Dead returned this way reanimates again: it enters attached to a creature card in a graveyard and pulls it out. That makes Animate Dead a repeatable reanimation spell in this deck — and note its exit clause: when Animate Dead leaves the battlefield, the creature gets sacrificed, so sac'ing it to Ghen also clears the creature it brought back.
• The O-Ring trick. Oblivion Ring and Journey to Nowhere are two separate abilities — the exile trigger and the return trigger aren't linked as a duration. So: with the enters-exile trigger on the stack, sac the enchantment to Ghen. The leave trigger resolves first and returns nothing (nothing's exiled yet); then the exile resolves and the target is exiled forever — and you got a rebuy out of it. Conversely, sac'ing them at normal times hands the exiled card back, and re-buying them with Ghen re-exiles a fresh target — timing is a real decision.
• Swift Reconfiguration goes on your own Ghen. As an uncrewed Vehicle he isn't a creature: he dodges creature wraths and creature removal — including your own overloaded Damn — and, because the summoning-sickness tap restriction only applies to creatures, a freshly-cast Ghen wearing it can activate immediately. Protection and pseudo-haste on one white mana at flash speed.
• Untaps are extra activations. Sting, the Glinting Dagger untaps its bearer at the beginning of each combat — opponents' combats included — so an equipped Ghen with open mana activates on other people's turns. Thousand-Year Elixir's , untap does the same job once a turn cycle.

Key Loops & Interactions

• The Camera and its resets. Peter Parker's Camera copies Ghen's activation for and a film counter — three copies per Camera. When the film runs out, reset it any way you can: exile your own Camera with Touch the Spirit Realm, then sac Touch to Ghen — Camera returns as a new object with three fresh counters (and Touch is back in the yard for a rebuy). Goblin Engineer's sac-return, Daretti's −2, Sevinne's Reclamation, and Buried Ruin all rebuy it too. The reset is the point; the route is whatever's available.
• Repeatable removal. Seal of Cleansing and Aura of Silence self-sac to kill artifacts/enchantments, then Ghen rebuys them — a removal engine, not a one-shot. Journey/O-Ring/Touch/Elspeth Conquers Death do the same for creatures and permanents. Darksteel Mutation neuters a commander and comes back every time they answer it.
• Academy Rector is a fetch-anything on legs. Any creature sac outlet — Goblin Bombardment, High Market, Phyrexian Tower, Diabolic Intent's cost — turns Rector into the best enchantment in the deck onto the battlefield: Starfield, Sphere of Safety, Smothering Tithe, Debtors' Knell, whatever the game wants.
• Demon of Fate's Design casts enchantments with life, not mana. Once each turn — that's a free Sphere or Starfield deployment alongside your real spells, and its own sac ability is a second enchantment outlet that turns a spent shell into damage.
• The discard engine cuts one way. Necrogen Mists makes everyone discard, but your discards stock the toolbox and trigger Monument to Endurance (card, Treasure, or 3 drain — every turn); theirs just lose cards and pay Liliana's Caress 2 life each. Thoughtrender's constellation trigger piles on. Case of the Crimson Pulse wants an empty hand — with Monument down, its solved upkeep (discard your hand, draw two) is pure profit.
• Victor's third trigger is a free reanimation. Three enchantment-enters resolutions in one turn — a cast plus a Ghen rebuy plus a copy, or an Ondu token — walks Victor from surveil to opponent-discard to putting a creature from any graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. Sequence your enchantment drops on one turn instead of spreading them when Victor's out.
• Mass rebuild beats the wipe. Replenish and Resurgent Belief return the entire yard — after a board wipe under Starfield, or just after a game of milling, either is a haymaker. Sevinne's Reclamation covers anything at mana value 3 or less both ways (it flashes back, and the graveyard cast copies itself). Hall of Heliod's Generosity puts a key enchantment back on top when you need to cast it for the triggers.
• The creature yard is covered too. Phyrexian Reclamation, Debtors' Knell, Elspeth Conquers Death chapter III, and Overlord of the Balemurk's attack/enter trigger recur the bodies — Rector especially, who wants to die repeatedly.
• Fear of Burning Alive needs damage, not drain. Its delirium trigger reads noncombat damage — Grim Guardian and Balemurk life-loss don't count. Its own ETB (4 to each opponent), Forgeborn Oreads pings, Goblin Bombardment, and Mega Flare do — each one Bolts a creature the damaged player controls. Delirium is trivially on in this deck.
• Treasures fund the double-activation turns. Smothering Tithe and Black Market Connections cover the real cost of the engine — plus copy taxes every turn is a lot of colored mana, and Treasures fix it.
• Fable's flip side copies your value creatures. Reflection of Kiki-Jiki copying Gravebreaker Lamia is a tutor-to-yard every turn; copying a drain body before a big rebuy turn doubles the triggers.
• All That Glitters is a kill condition, not an anthem. On Ghen (or a Pegasus) it counts your whole artifact/enchantment board — it gets lethal fast, and it's another card Ghen happily rebuys after removal.

Combos

One combo lives in the list — the exemplar closer. There's no obligation to force it; it's the line you take when the pieces are already on the table.

Touch the Spirit Realm + Starfield of Nyx — infinite enchantment ETBs

Needs: Starfield of Nyx plus four other enchantments on the battlefield (so Touch enters as the fifth+), Touch the Spirit Realm in hand, .

1. With Starfield's five-enchantment threshold live, cast Touch. It enters as a 3/3 enchantment creature (Starfield sets base power/toughness to mana value).
2. Touch's enters-trigger targets an artifact or creature — target Touch itself (it's a creature now).
3. The trigger resolves and exiles Touch — which means Touch left the battlefield, so its own "until it leaves" duration is already satisfied: it returns to the battlefield immediately.
4. It re-enters as an enchantment entering the battlefield. Repeat from step 2, as many times as you want — the trigger is "up to one target," so you stop whenever you choose (no forced draw).

The loop itself is just infinite enters-and-leaves — a payoff body makes it lethal. Any one of these on the battlefield converts it:

• Grim Guardian or Balemurk Leech — infinite drain: each opponent loses all their life.
• Thoughtrender Lamia — every opponent discards their entire hand.
• Archon of Sun's Grace — infinite lifelinking Pegasi (arbitrarily large flying board).
• Doomwake Giant — opposing creatures get −X/−X for arbitrary X: one-sided board wipe.

Assembly notes: Idyllic Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Beseech the Mirror, and Academy Rector all find Starfield; Starfield's own upkeep trigger or Ghen rebuys it from the yard. Touch doesn't have to be cast from hand — a Ghen rebuy of Touch enters the battlefield the same way and starts the loop directly from the graveyard.