When Codie, Vociferous Codex was first spoiled, I immediately knew I had to build a deck around him. A legendary creature that is *a literal book* whose name is Codie. The fact that he is described as "vociferous" is just amazing. The section about him from MTG Wiki reads "the Codex Vocifera is a centuries-old tome of convoluted mystical knowledge that has become grouchily self-aware. It wanders the university in a huff, constantly reading its own text aloud". Can you just imagine that? I did, and was sucked into making my latest pile of jank:

Ways to build Codie

Codie has a very powerful effect. For 4 and tapping him, you make WUBRG and get a pseudo cascade. This means his activated ability is a mana ability and is difficult to respond to. However, the first clause that stops us from casting permanent spells is quite restrictive. Most would think this means Codie decks need to be 100% spells. You can definitely build him like that and take advantage of that cascade-like delayed trigger to cast more spells from your library. A storm build can indeed be strong, but I didn't want to rely on luck to see what I can rip off the top with Codie.

I want to use his ability to guarantee a win.

Permanents? In my Codie deck? Heresy!

How then can we guarantee a solid hit off Codie's ability? When we think cascade decks we usually can consider cheating in strong suspend cards like Ancestral Vision. The cost of waiting a few turns and telegraphing what we are planning on doing isn't what this deck is about, but suspend cards technically have a mana value of zero. This means that we can ensure we hit a suspend card by simply casting a one mana value cantrip after activating Codie. With this in mind, there are two suspend cards that can cheat permanents into play.

Mitch from The Commander's Quarters put out a video about Codie and Living End. Using cycling abilities to get creatures and other permanents into the graveyard, granting you card draw, and then "cascading" into Living End can bring back your graveyard. A very cool concept, but I had something else in mind.

When it comes to mana abilities on commanders, Freed from the Real and Pemmin's Aura are crazy enablers. Even stronger when you can create blue mana. So with Codie and an untap effect like this, you can get some crazy value. Now there are two hurdles that come with this deck. First, without cost reducers we don't net any mana. Second, with Codie on the field, we can't cast Freed from the Real nor Pemmin's aura. Enter our secret weapon: Hypergenesis.

Gameplan

Hypergenesis is worded such that we put creatures, lands, artifacts, or enchantments into play. We don't cast them without paying their mana cost, so this gets around some stax pieces like Lavinia, Azorius Renegade. It also gets around Codie's first clause that prevents us from casting these types of spells. With this in mind, we can hold our entire combo in hand until we're ready to pull the trigger.

Speaking of our combo, let's go over how we plan to win with a combo. We need 5 prerequisites to win:

1. Codie on field with the ability to activate his ability

2. A cost reducer either in hand or on field (Training grounds or Biomancer's Familiar)

3. A one mana value spell in hand (Opt, Crash Through, Ponder, or my favorite Silence)

4. Either Freed from the Real or Pemmin's Aura in hand

5. An outlet for our infinite mana

The line of play is fairly simple. Activate Codie, floating WUBRG. Cast a one mana value spell and Codie's delayed trigger will go into the stack. You will then exile cards from your deck until you hit the single legal target of Hypergenesis. Then you cast Hypergenesis. While the spell is resolving, you can put Freed from the Real or Pemmin's Aura onto the battlefield directly attaching it to Codie. Here's where the real fun begins.

An interesting fact about Hypergenesis is that during the spell's resolution, players cannot cast spells and their enter the battlefield effects *wait* to be put into the stack. This means that while players can get advantage out of Hypergenesis, we can stay in control of our win. If someone attempts to resolve some powerful enter the battlefield effects, we can respond to them by activating the untap ability of our aura, untap Codie, and tap him to generate more mana. Rinse and repeat for infinite WBRG mana. This also will produce infinite delayed Codie triggers, but that shouldn't matter too much for us. With our mana pool full, burning a hole in our proverbial pockets, all we need now is an outlet. My win condition and mana sink of choice is Torment of Hailfire. This is an incredibly powerful and game-ending spell. But the real reason I chose this was because I could just imagine Codie himself ascending into legendary god-like status rivaling Nicol Bolas and summoning an apocalyptic end to all those who ignored him. Perfection.

Protect the Book

Defending our resources and denying our opponents from having fun is a must with this type of glass canon deck. Our primary stax pieces are Hullbreacher, Grand Abolisher, Strict Proctor, Hushbringer, Blind Obedience, and Containment Priest.

Hushbringer is a powerhouse because it stops creature enter-the-battlefield triggers as well as death triggers. With the release of Strixhaven we also got Strict Proctor. I love this card because it covers any ETB triggers. Sure, you can pay to not have the trigger countered, but landfall decks get turned on their heads when they have to be brought back down to Earth and pay for their value. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

Containment Priest is a great include as well because this shuts down reanimation and flicker effects. It also helps us stay more in control should an opponent attempt to bring in some haymakers off our hypergenesis. Dropping Containment Priest on the first repetition of Hypergenesis is smart because it will limit what others can play and block hatebears that leave you dead in the water such as Archon of Emeria and Linvala, Keeper or Silence.

Hullbreacher was a mistake is nearly an auto-include because it is so powerful. A possible back-up win con we could use is a classic breach line of Underworld Breach, Wheel of Fortune/Windfall, and Hullbreacher. We can effectively have access to our entire deck via our graveyard at this point, but not the real reason you came to this lovable book. Right? Right?!

Grand Abolisher is fantastic because it stops your opponents from practically doing anything to stop you on your turn. You don't have to hold up as much countermagic with him on board, which is great. Blind Obedience is also great because of how strong artifact ramp as well as Dockside Extortionist are. Forcing artifacts to come into play tapped helps slow the table down just enough to try and help us push ahead. Creatures entering tapped doesn't have the biggest effect on most tables, but haste aggro decks do exist and can punish us very quickly.

Manabase and Ramp

Five color decks are tricky when it comes to having access to the right colors at the right time. Here at PlayEDH we encourage proxying, so I went for a highly optimized mana base. Fetch lands and dual lands are quite pricey, but that is because they are so dang efficient. I excluded pain lands like City of Brass and Mana Confluence mainly to help pad our life total, as we are weak to creature and spell damage. I am not the biggest fan of tap lands because of how slow they force you to be. However you can replace the dual lands with shock lands or even tap lands, but Codie simply wants to go brrr and who am I to deny him.

A notable include for me is Emergence Zone. I love this utility land. It doesn't come into play tapped, and even though it only produces colorless mana, being able to cast spells during the turn you sacrifice it at instant speed is so strong. It's mainly used as a last-ditch effort to help secure the win, but more times that not it has saved my hide.

Ramp-wise, we are running mana positive rocks such as Chrome Mox, Mox Opal, Mana Vault, Jeweled Lotus, and Sol Ring. Anything to help push us ahead of the table is great.

Draw, Tutors and Mulligans

This deck has a fair amount of draw spells, but they primarily are there to be the start of our turbo Codie engine. With that being said, we need to ensure we have what we want when we need it. For that reason we are running a fairly heavy number of tutors. Unconditional tutors, such as Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Wishclaw Talisman, are our friends. We have other tutors as well, but these are the best we have available to us.

A fun story about one game I played had a hilarious turn involving Spellseeker. Prior to my turn, I had cast a mana drain on a rather large spell, so I had quite a bit of mana coming my way. I had Snap in hand, and when I drew Spellseeker for turn I simply chuckled. I cast Spellseeker tutored a Demonic Tutor to hand, cast Snap targeting Spellseeker, then recast the Spellseeker tutoring a Vampiric Tutor to hand. I then cast the two tutors and won on my next turn. T'was a glorious day for Codie.

Mulligans are also very important to piloting this deck. We obviously cannot keep a hand that has Hypergenesis in it. We need to guarantee we hit Hypergenesis off Codie's so make sure to mulligan appropriately. Being aggressive in our mulligans is the name of the game.

Hold up, Ad Nauseum?! What is this, cEDH?!

Let's talk about Ad Nauseam. For 3BB you reveal the top card of your library, put it into your hand, and lose life equal to its mana value. Rinse and repeat as many times as you want. High power and Max power love Ad Naus because you are able to "draw" an unhealthy amount of cards. The secret is to keep your mana curve low so you can dig deep and attempt to find your combo and then win. That is our plan with using Ad Naus, but it's less efficient here and can possibly stop our combo all together.

If we hit Hypergenesis off an Ad Nauseum, that means we cannot access that spell from Codie's ability unless we can get it back into our deck. Thus, with Hypergenesis in hand, suspending it not an option and our entire gameplan is brought to a screeching halt.

Why do I play it then? Simple, really. It's a crazy good spell. You don't draw the cards, so you dodge Hullbreacher, Notion Thief, and Narset, Partner of Veils. You can play it at instant speed in response to something so you can try and find countermagic. My first experience playing with Ad Nauseum was in Double Masters Draft. I was playing Rakdos equipment and ad naus won me 80% of my games. I've been hooked ever since.

Closing Thoughts

This has been one of the most fun decks I have ever brewed. I personally love five color decks as well as attempting crazy combos. The biggest thing that drew me to EDH as a format was the vast pool of cards we have access to. The number of different and wacky interactions we can try is just so fun. At the end of the day, we are all playing this great game to have fun, and I have thoroughly enjoyed by building and playing this deck. Feel free to reach out to me either on the Discord server or on Moxfield about this build, and I hope to get some games in with you!

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Explosive Engineering - Codie, Vociferous Codex - Mid Power