Wheel of MisfortuneWheel of Misfortune| Art by J.P. Targete

cEDH is a resource-intensive format dominated by players hoarding cards, mana, and just about any other sort of advantage they can grab. These days, the bulk of that work is done by engines — things that amass value gradually, like Rhystic StudyRhystic Study, Mystic RemoraMystic Remora, and Smothering TitheSmothering Tithe. However, that's not the whole picture.

cEDH players also regularly leapfrog ahead of their opponents in bursts, thanks to the likes of mana rituals and instantaneous card advantage à la Ad NauseamAd Nauseam. Also in this category is an effect type as old as Magic, that of the wheel. While not card advantage, these do offer the invaluable option of a hand-reset. So, how can cEDH players get the most out of wheels, and why aren't some of them played more often? Let's dig in.

What's a Wheel?

Named after the infamous card Wheel of FortuneWheel of Fortune, wheels are cards which reset each player's hand. Wheel of Fortune has each player discard their hand, then draw seven cards. TimetwisterTimetwister has each player shuffle their hands and graveyards into their library, then draw seven cards. Wheel of MisfortuneWheel of Misfortune (when played optimally) causes most of the players at the table to discard their hands and then draw seven cards...etc.

Wheels are one of competitive Magic's biggest risks. On one hand, drawing potentially as many as seven cards (assuming the wheel you cast is the only card in your hand) for around three mana is an absurd rate that would make any competitive player blush. On the flip side, your opponents will be drawing cards too, which means that an ill-timed wheel can potentially draw your opponents more cards than you or even just draw them better cards if luck works out against you.

In one-v-one Magic, a wheel is an equivalent exchange.

Even if your opponent draws more cards than you (i.e., you cast a wheel with six cards in hand and your opponent has three cards in hand), the end state is still seven cards versus seven cards. In cEDH, however, a wheel is never actually an equivalent exchange. You'll draw seven cards, sure, but your opponents will — in total — draw twenty-one.

Unlocking Wheels: Deck Velocity

This lack of equivalence recontextualizes what wheels actually are in the cEDH arena: these aren't true resets to where you can safely pass the turn after resolving one. Instead, wheels are like Ad NauseamAd Nauseam or the burst of cards from a NecropotenceNecropotence rip — a gamble that, with a few more cards in your hand, you'll be in a much better spot to push for a win.

So, now that we know that wheels are much more effectively cast as burst draw rather than traditional card draw, how does that inform which decks will want them, and how many? That brings us to the next point: deck velocity.

This concept is essentially a deck's speed, except zoomed in so as to focus on how efficiently a deck can make use of resources over the course of a single turn. Naturally, this points towards the likes of Ral, Monsoon MageRal, Monsoon Mage and the partner pair of Rograkh, Son of RohgahhRograkh, Son of Rohgahh and Silas Renn, Seeker AdeptSilas Renn, Seeker Adept, but it also gives some attention to flexible control builds like Blue Farm. (Tymna the WeaverTymna the Weaver and Kraum, Ludevic's OpusKraum, Ludevic's Opus.)

Beginning with the likes of Ral and RogSi, these decks are incredibly fast builds that aim to churn action after action after action. It's not just about the fact that they can win quickly, it's that they can win quickly while taking a lot of game actions in the process.

A turn-one win off of Ral is doable, but there will be a lot of spells cast to get there. This is exactly the type of deck that wants as many wheels as it can muster, because the bet that it is making is that — after resolving the wheel — the odds that the wheel's caster wins before they need to pass the turn are just too great to pass up.

Similarly, these high-velocity decks are also prone to fizzling out if something goes wrong or if they get interrupted, which means that a wheel can jumpstart the combo on a subsequent turn.

Moving to the more flexible control builds out there, these decks are happy to play a wheel or two but don't often run the full roster that our aforementioned high-velocity builds do.

Blue Farm is a great example of this; the deck's main plan is to play a bit of a waiting game — accruing resources behind its engines — but can push for a single, high-velocity combo turn when the opportunity arises. Again, we see wheels playing double duty here: resetting on the next turn if the push fails and turbocharging the resource chain if all goes well.

Wheels and the Graveyard

So, now that we know what wheels are, how they work, and what decks want to play them, it's time to come to the last sticking point to be aware of when it comes to evaluating any given wheel: how does this card work with the graveyard?

Most wheels printed these days are firmly in red's slice of the color pie, which means that they all tend to have players discard cards before drawing their new selection.

That's great for turbocharging Underworld BreachUnderworld Breach, which is the primary reason that red has become the de facto best-in-class color for wheels when building a cEDH deck. Between Underworld BreachUnderworld Breach, Yawgmoth's WillYawgmoth's Will, and a handful of other effects, the graveyard has essentially become a cEDH player's second hand, so feeding a graveyard by resolving a wheel is a very meaningful upside.

Beyond the red wheels, there are a handful of incredibly powerful blue wheels out there, although the most infamous among them — TimetwisterTimetwister — works directly against Underworld Breach.

By forcing players to shuffle their hands and graveyards into their libraries, this card is the closest to a true reset that cEDH has, which means that it's largely considered to be a second-class wheel in the format.

High-velocity decks will still play it pretty consistently, as drawing up to seven cards is just that meaningful for those decks, but undoing graveyards is often too high of a cost for the slower, more flexible decks to pay.

Wrap Up

Wheels are among Magic's oldest sources of burst card draw and have been with the game's competitive scene since 1993.

The newest entrants might look a little different and have some awkward extra effects, but at the end of the game these are still routinely three-mana draw-sevens. Which ones you'll play is up to you, but odds are that each cEDH deck that can play a wheel will want at least one — just be careful about how it interacts with the graveyard.