For the most part in Magic: The Gathering, you want to maximize your time in the driver’s seat as much as possible. Cards that let you take extra turns, or even just extra phases, have historically been incredibly powerful as a result.
That said, every rule in MTG has an exception, and in this case it’s Obeka, Brute Chronologist. By cutting your turns short, this forgotten legend unlocks synergies and combo lines you won’t find elsewhere.
Obeka, Brute Chronologist MTG
Though it looks simple at first glance, Obeka’s turn-ending ability is actually anything but. First of all, ending the turn on the spot exiles all spells and abilities from the stack, which essentially lets it serve as an unusual repeatable Counterspell. If your opponents try to remove your creatures, or deploy a threat with Flash.
Obeka can be used on opponents’ turns, too, so there are political options here as well. If an opponent faces an instant-speed play that hurts the whole pod, you can let them end their turn, helping everyone. The turn player always has the final say with Obeka, mind you, so negotiate a deal thoroughly before activating that ability.
Stack shenanigans aside, Obeka also unlocks a ton of fun interactions with a wide range of MTG cards. Plenty of token generators, for example, like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Feldon of the Third Path, create tokens that sacrifice themselves on the end step. Because Obeka’s ability skips this step, you can keep these tokens permanently. This applies to cards like Sneak Attack
Sneak Attack{R}: You may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. That creature gains haste. Sacrifice the creature at the beginning of the next end step. and Dawn of the Dead, which temporarily cheat creatures into play, as well as cards that grant Myriad.
Obeka’s ability to circumvent end step downsides goes much further than creatures, too, turning many unplayable cards into powerhouse engines. Psychic Vortex becomes a better The One Ring if you can dodge its second ability, for example, while Greed’s Gambit becomes a huge value burst with no downside. You can even dodge the end of turn trigger on Underworld Breach
Underworld BreachEach nonland card in your graveyard has escape. The escape cost is equal to the card's mana cost plus exile three other cards from your graveyard. (You may cast cards from your graveyard for their escape cost.)
At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice this enchantment., making one of the best value and combo engines in the format even better.
In a similar vein, Obeka’s ability lets you turn alternate casting costs on creatures, such as Evoke and Warp, into actual casting costs by cutting off the end step. This lets you keep your two-mana Quantum Riddler in play, or ‘counter’ a spell with Subtlety for free and keep the body.
Obeka is particularly funky with temporary theft effects, like Come Back Wrong and Momo’s Heist, letting you keep what you stole beyond the usual limit. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t work with cards like Act of Treason, which specifically last until “end of turn,” but rather those that have a trigger that returns the creature at the end step that you can skip.
Time After Time
Taking Obeka’s ability to its natural extreme, you can even use it to dodge “you lose the game” effects that come at the end of turn on certain powerful spells. This largely applies to extra turn spells like Final Fortune, which are cheap because they’re intended as wild Hail Mary plays. With Obeka, however, cards like this, Last Chance and Warrior’s Oath essentially become Time Walk, giving you all the benefit with none of the downside.
With spells like these, Obeka even unlocks a few tasty infinite-turn combos. Put one under an Isochron Scepter, for example, and you can keep taking extra turns and ending them early to stay in the game. This also works with Exalted Flamer of Tzeentch provided you have no other instants or sorceries in your graveyard. Flamer is a particularly nice option here since it also doubles as a win condition itself.
Time For a Comeback?
With so many funky, powerful lines available, Obeka, Brute Chronologist is one of MTG’s more interesting Commanders overall. Notably, thanks to its recent uncommon printing in The Zeta Set, it’s also eligible for use as a Pauper EDH Commander as well. While most of its truly busted synergies aren’t available in the format, Obeka is still a unique political option there, and one that has many players talking.
Despite its many virtues, Obeka actually isn’t as popular in Commander as you might expect. According to EDHREC data, only around 8,840 decks run the card at the helm, which feels low for something so unique. It sees a little more use in the 99, appearing in around 9,730 decks like Sedris, the Traitor King, but the numbers here still feel pretty underwhelming.
On the bright side, Obeka’s low popularity means it’s easy to pick up a copy on the cheap. On TCGplayer right now, for example, you can nab a near-mint base copy for just $0.33, or the fancy foil etched version for only $0.83. At these prices, Obeka is a great foundation for a funky budget deck and a potential project for all you Pauper EDH players out there.
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