Magic Monday: My Obeka, Splitter of Seconds Deck

The upkeep phase is, for most decks, just a mechanical formality. It can often be a brief, blink-and-you-miss-it moment where you untap your lands, pay a cost if you absolutely have to, and move immediately to the draw step. But when I sit down at a Commander table with my Obeka, Splitter of Seconds deck, the upkeep isn’t a transition phase. It is the main event.

The concept behind the deck is beautifully chaotic: Obeka gives you extra upkeep steps equal to the amount of combat damage she deals to a player. By loading the deck with ways to make her unblockable and doubling her damage output, a single clean swing can easily hand you four, five, or six upkeeps in a single turn. I think my record was twenty-four upkeeps. Suddenly, old-school, slow-burning cards that were designed to take rounds to wind up start firing off like automated turrets. I fell in love with this deck because it takes a fundamental rule of Magic and completely shatters it. There is nothing quite like the look on your opponents’ faces when you explain that, following a successful combat phase, you are about to trigger the same enchantment four times in a row.

Making this engine hum requires a very straightforward, two-step formula. Because Obeka’s ability scales directly with the amount of combat damage she inflicts, the deck’s entire blueprint boils down to a simple mathematical loop:

Buff + Connect = Profit.

At a baseline of 2 power, Obeka initially only buys you two extra upkeeps if she connects. That’s a fine start, but we want to break the game, not just bend it. The first order of business is ensuring she can safely attack without dying in combat.

Her built-in Menace also helps you to connect in the early game, before opponents have multiple blockers. I then run a heavy suite of evasion and protection to guarantee she slips through enemy lines unnoticed. Enchantments like Aqueous Form and equipment like Whispersilk Cloak ensure she can’t be blocked, while tools like Key to the City pull double duty by discarding dead cards to clear her path. Another fun way to make her functionally unblockable is to get Silent Arbiter onto the table. This ensures that only one opposing creature can block, whilst she, with menace, cannot be blocked with fewer than two creatures. What fun. Once she’s unblockable, we inflate her damage numbers. This is where things get truly silly. If we can give her double strike using Fireshrieker or Lizard Blades, Obeka hits twice.

Once that damage resolves, the game pauses, the clock fractures, and you step into a pocket dimension of successive upkeep steps where your opponents can do little more than watch.

Once Obeka connects and fractures the timeline, you need cards that turn those extra upkeep phases into immediate game-ending value. Normally, upkeep triggers are balanced around the fact that you only get one per round. When you get four or five back-to-back, that balance completely disintegrates.

Here are the star players in my list that turn the upkeep step into a weapon of mass destruction.

If there is one mechanic that completely runs away with the game in this deck, it’s the Monarch and the Initiative. Cards like Court of Ambition and Court of Ire are fine in normal games, but under Obeka, they are terrifying. If you are the Monarch during your post-combat upkeeps, Court of Ambition will force your opponents to lose 6 life or discard two cards, multiplied by four or five times in a single turn. It’s a clean 24-30 life gone before you even reach your second main phase.

Similarly, running through the Undercity dungeon with Caves of Chaos Adventurer or Tomb of Horrors Adventurer multiple times in one turn yields an absurd mountain of card advantage, counters, and free spells.

As Foretold is a masterpiece in this deck. Normally, it ticks up by one time counter at the start of your turn, slowly allowing you to cast bigger spells for free.

With Obeka, if you get four extra upkeeps, As Foretold gets four time counters immediately. By the time you enter your second main phase, it’s often sitting at six or seven counters, allowing you to cheat a massive spell directly onto the stack for zero mana.

Then, there are the alternate win conditions that normally require a massive, fragile setup. Under Obeka’s broken clock, they become sudden-death buttons.

Darksteel Reactor: This artifact wins you the game when it reaches 20 charge counters. In a normal deck, that takes 20 turn cycles. In this deck, a couple of good combat steps will fully charge the reactor and end the game on the spot.
Mechanized Production: Attach this to a Sol Ring or a thopter token. Instead of waiting eight turn rotations to accumulate eight identical artifacts, Obeka lets you clone your artifacts and check the win condition repeatedly all in the same turn.

Look, I absolutely love this deck, but I have to be honest: when this engine pops off, the turns can get long. Really long.

When you swing with Obeka, connect for six damage, and suddenly have six distinct upkeep steps to resolve, the math and trigger tracking can become a headache for both you and the table. You aren’t just resolving one effect six times; you are often resolving five different effects, six times each, all stacked on top of one another. Plargg and Nassari is, for example, a potential finisher in this deck, but it’s an absolute headache to resolve multiple times in a row.

To keep the table from rolling their eyes while you play solitaire, you have to be organised. Here is how I try to keep the game moving when the timeline fractures:

Group Your Triggers: I physically line up my upkeep cards on my playmat. When an extra upkeep happens, I go down the line left to right. Phyrexian Arena drains me, Twilight Prophet drains them, Replicating Ring gets a counter. Rinse and repeat.
Track the Steps: It is incredibly easy to lose count of how many upkeeps you have left. The moment Obeka connects, I put a die down with the total number of extra upkeeps and tick it down after every full rotation of triggers.
Know Your Dungeon: If you are triggering the Initiative five times in a turn, you cannot be reading the Undercity room options for the first time. Know the path you are taking before you swing.

The deck is a chaotic puzzle, and it requires a player who is willing to manage the mess quickly. If you can keep the triggers organised, it is a uniquely rewarding deck to pilot.

Ultimately, that is the magic of Obeka, Splitter of Seconds. It takes one of the slowest, most deliberate phases in the entire game of Magic and turns it into a high-octane drag race. It breathes dynamic, chaotic life into old favourites like the Courts, the Initiative, and slow-burn artifacts that usually gather dust in the back of your trade binder.

Yes, your turns will require a bit of brainpower and bookkeeping to manage. Yes, your friends might sigh when you pick up your dice to track your fifth upkeep of the turn. But when the engine clicks together, there is simply nothing else like it.

You can click here, or use the QR code below, to view the decklist over at Moxfield: