What Can Brown Do To You?

Hello again, I'm back again with another example of Commander deck building. This time I'm showing you my main Commander deck I use every week. “What Can Brown Do To You?” (Note to newer players: Artifact cards used to have brown frames similar to lands rather than the grey frame they have now.) This deck is less dependent on it's commander and less control oriented than my Endrek Sahr deck I've written about before and takes a turn toward the more combo centric route.


I created this deck because I wanted the challenge of limiting myself to colorless cards and seeing how well I could do. I decided to use an Eldrazi Monstrosity for the commander rather than the traditional Karn, Silver Golem. Because... I wanted to cast an Eldrazi repeatedly I guess. Aside from getting out an undercosted lovecraftian horror early and often I wanted to make a deck that could stand on it's own. I decided to fill the deck from top to bottom with combo cards. But first, I decided on the general.

As usual copy and paste the list here

Commander: Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
I originally wanted Emrakul, The Aeons Torn as the general for this deck, but unfortunately she was banned. In some practice runs I was running out Emrakul on turn four. It's probably best that we don't get to have access to that card. I decided Kozilek over Ulamog because while Ulamog is strong and is pretty hard to deal with I wanted to make a combo deck and card draw works very well toward that goal. (Also, There's a combo in the deck that needs a destroyable creature.)

Artifacts: 36
Everflowing Chalice
Chimeric Mass
Lotus Bloom
Mana Vault
Conjurer's Bauble
Voltaic Key
Sol Ring
Infiltration lens
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Energy Chamber
Fellwar Stone
Mind Stone
Guardian Idol
Throne of Geth
Lightning Greaves
Howling Mine
Culling Dais
Mask of Memory
Basalt Monolith
Serum Tank
Semblance Anvil
Darksteel Ingot
Coalition Relic
Temple Bell
Icy Manipulator
Rusted Relic
Krark-Clan Ironworks
Tower of Calamities
Prototype Portal
Mirrorworks
Dreamstone Hedron
Planar Portal
Contagion Engine
Summoning Station
Darksteel Forge

You may notice there are a few unusual choices in there, I'll go ahead and explain those. There isn't a grim monolith mainly because I don't have one. Though I probably wouldn't want to use one if I did because I only have access to one voltaic key in the entire deck. Dreamstone Hedron is in there because despite it's rather high mana cost, it's a workhorse in this deck. It usually gets me a turn seven Kozilek if I didn't have any other mana acceleration. Probably the most confusing card on that list is Summoning Station. That card is part of the combo I was talking about. If I have out summoning station and Krark-Clan Ironworks I have infinite colorless mana, and can easily play any card in my deck. Let's say I cast Kozilek off of the combo. I luckily draw a Masticore. I play masticore and use his one damage ability twelve times to kill Kozilek. I then use the infinite mana engine to cast him again. (Extra two mana cost be damned!) I draw four more cards and use the Masticore to kill him again... I'm sure you've figured out that happens as many times as I like. So I keep on doing that until I draw what I want and pretty play my entire deck and make the game unwinnable for my opponents or flat out win that turn by pumping my creatures up and giving them trample, haste, and flying with Golem Artisan. The next combo is Prototype portal plus just about anything. (Though my favorite card to imprint on it is Lotus Bloom. There's nothing quite like tapping a card to make a black lotus token. ) Powerful options for the portal include Contagion engine, Steel Overseer, Lodestone Golem, and Energy Chamber. (Which works with Everflowing Chalice nicely.)

Creatures: 22
Ornithopter
Arcbound Worker
Steel Overseer
Manakin
Perilous Myr
Arcbound Stinger
Myr Retriever
Millikin
Myr Welder
Shimmer Myr
Palladium Myr
Arcbound Hybrid
Masticore
Lodestone Golem
Razormane Masticore
Golem Artisan
Karn, Silver Golem
Darksteel Juggernaut
Triskelion
Triskelavus
Myr Enforcer
Pentavus

There are also a couple of odd choices in this section as well. The Golem Artisan is in the deck for the combo I talked about above. Pentavus is there for infinite blocks. (Block enemy creature with pentavite, before damage sacrifice pentavite to put a +1/+1 counter on pentavus, then whenever it's convenient remove a counter and make another pentavite. ) The modular creatures are there to pump up other creatures in the early game and make good sacrifices to Throne of Geth. (Tap the Throne, Sacrifice a modular creature. The modular ability moves the counters to another creature. Then the Throne's ability resolves and proliferates the counters I just moved plus any other counters I want.) Lodestone Golem is there to make my opponent's day hard. (pay five for Bloodbraid Elf, cascade into Rift bolt, Oh I'm sorry. You don't have the one mana to pay for that.) You may have also noticed that I don't have a Wurmcoil Engine in the deck. I did use to have one in the list but I play in a metagame with lot's of opponents running Bribery. I got fed up with my wurm selling out to the enemy so, After being bribery'ed so many times and having my Wurmcoil taken away every time I decided to only run creatures that work just for me. (Probably the best choice for an opponent to take would be Pentavus at this point, and that just isn't exciting. ) Bribery is also the reason I'm not running Blightsteel Colossus. (I've seen that happen before, It's hilarious but I don't want it to happen to me.)

Spells: 2
All is Dust
Not of This World

(I'm glad the wonderful game of Magic feels comfortable giving us colorless spells. It's a very dangerous thing to make playable colorless spells as they can be played in almost every deck.) All is dust is in the deck to control enemy planeswalkers and overall screw my opponent's game up. I don't run any cards that say “Destroy target creature” so I feel that All is Dust is a fair card to play despite how one-sided it is. Not of This World is in the deck to surprisingly stop my opponent from out of nowhere. I've tapped out to play Kozilek and used it to stop an opponent's Terminate from killing it. (It was pretty crazy. )

Lands: 39
Temple of the False God
Darksteel Citadel
Urza's Mine
Urza's Tower
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Factory
Bant Panorama
Esper Panorama
Grixis Panorama
Jund Panorama
Naya Panorama
Eldrazi Temple
Eye of Ugin
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Maze of Shadows
Terrain Generator
Reliquary Tower
Sheltered Valley
Gargoyle Castle
Gemstone Caverns
Quicksand
Winding Canyons
Dread Statuary
Springjack Pasture
Tectonic Edge
Exotic Orchard
Mishra's Factory
Desert
Glimmerpost
Mystifying Maze
Blasted Landscape
Zoetic Cavern
Stalking Stones
Blinkmoth Well
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Inmoth Nexus
Blinkmoth Nexus
Tower of the Magistrate
Ghost Quarter

The dilemma of building a colorless deck is that you can't use basic lands. So I did some major searching and came up with these. My only rule for lands in this deck was that they had to be able to tap for mana the turn they came out. (So no cloudpost unfortunately.) or they had to have a huge effect. (Eye of Ugin is a great example.) If I was restricting myself to colorless, I wasn't going to limit my deck further by using lands that come into play tapped. Every land in this deck generates mana the turn it enters the battlefield, aside from Eye of Ugin, though Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth fixes that. Every land in this deck has an effect that helps me in some way gain an advantage. Zoetic Cavern counts as another creature or is a cost of five mana ramp spell. Mikokoro is a howling mine at the end of my opponent's turn. Mystifying Maze slows down my opponent's alpha strikes and flat out kills problem creature tokens such as Marit Lage. The Urza lands are also great mana ramp and obviously work well with his factory which in turn works with Mishra's. You may have also noticed my only card that deals poison counters is Inkmoth Nexus. While it seems hard to believe that I could possibly ever win with Poison with that as my only infect creature, I must point out that Proliferate is a hell of a mechanic. Throne of Geth and Contagion Engine work hard and fast to not only increase the power of my cards, but to kill my opponent. Also with Mirrorworks or Prototype portal I'll be making more and more Engines and Thrones.

Generally, the point of this deck is to assemble one or more of the many combos available to win. (You probably noticed that there are many combos possible in the deck that I didn't mention. (Or maybe haven't even noticed myself!) Feel free to comment below with any I didn't talk about.) Of course there is the alternate win condition of cast Kozilek as fast as possible and win. (I've gotten him out on turn two before.) That's a solid plan too. I think I get eighty percent of my wins with combos, about ten percent with straight up regular battle and at least ten percent with Kozilek related scoops. Overall this is a fun and powerful deck that isn't another one of those Azami or Uril deck that you see running around everywhere. Making your deck colorless will surely catch the attention of other players and once you combo out the win or annihilate your opponent's field on turn three they will surely be impressed. (Or you'll be the big target in the next game, whatever, you can deal with it right?)



Well, that's all I've got for today. As always you can follow me here or on Twitter. @KuromanKuro And if you like what you read then go ahead and Digg/follow me.