I Built Commander Decks for All 32 Color Identities

As my spreadsheets and Moxfield deck lists continued to deepen over recent years I wanted to open my mind to decks I’ve never attempted to build. In years past, this meant building decks I’ve always bristled at: Storm, Fast Combo, cEDH, Stax, Infect, Fast Aggro, etc. This year I embarked on a mission to not only build a deck for every color identity I haven’t before, but also to have them all built at the same time.

If you want to hear all the logistics of this — economic policies, acquiring the cards, sleeves, deck boxes, carrying cases, collection storage, and more — let me know in the comments! I’m focusing on the decks I built and what I learned here.

Notes	All linked decks are living lists that have and will continue to change as I maintain them.
✅	Keeper: This deck will stay in my rotation for a while.
👎	Reject: Didn’t enjoy, won’t keep, don’t recommend
🛠️	Unique Design: Built using non-standard design methods

---

📎(Colorless) Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter 👎

I chose Liberator because I didn’t want to build an Eldrazi deck. I find their oppressive mechanics (Annihilator, stax effects) unfun. The insane zero-color ramp available would make them feel even more oppressive. So I went with a brown deck.

The deck is good, even without an optimized list. Turns out Flash and evasion on a commander that gets bigger from doing stuff we want to do anyway is pretty good.

But I didn’t enjoy it. Colorless decks use cards that can go in any deck, so there aren’t many unique to this deck. It just didn’t feel like it had an interesting identity of its own. I’m sure there’ll eventually be an interesting colorless commander, but so far not so much.

“No, Not THAT Liberator” on Moxfield

---

🌟 (Mono-White) Michiko Konda

I used to have a joke deck based on the silver-bordered Frankie Peanuts. It was a silly deck I used to ask my friends uncomfortable true/false questions. Many of the white spells in there protected Frankie and allowed him to keep asking questions each turn. When the gimmick eventually grew old, I adapted it into a deck that didn’t require the Rule Zero Silver Border talk.

Michiko Konda is a badass who brooks no bullsh*t. She punishes anyone stepping to her with unequal force, but not before she makes them pay for the pleasure. The deck is a pillow fort deck that makes opponents prefer attacking someone else until she can drop powerful angels to clean up in the late game.

The deck is fun, but it feels like a mono-white “good stuff” deck most of the time. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m keeping my eyes out for another mono-white commander that feels more unique.

“Don’t F@&# w/ Michiko Konda” on Moxfield

---

💧 (Mono-Blue) Minn, Wily Illusionist ✅

This was my first mono-colored deck, and I’ve continued to love it for years. It’s easy to pilot decently, but challenging to maximize. The power level is totally reasonable against all but the weakest opponents. It’s a unique blue semi-tribal deck that has barely any counterspells or controlling elements in it. I highly recommend trying it out.

Tips:

• Illusions dying allow us to put lands into play, meaning the deck has a very high hit-rate
• Save instant speed draw spells for opponents’ turns and we can make up to 4 illusions per rotation
• Non-legendary clone effects like Sakashima help Minn get out of hand fast
• Hold finishers until we can KO at least two people that turn

“Minnty Fresh Illusions” on Moxfield

---

💀 (Mono-Black) Braids, Arisen Nightmare

Mono-Black decks are interesting. There’s a good number of options available, but I wanted to try a new commander and lean into sacrifice because I haven’t made many decks like that before. I was originally going to build Syr Konrad or Tergrid, but I found out everyone hates those decks. 😂

This one was okay. Some games felt oppressive because my opponents weren’t going wide enough on board presence to keep up and it wasn’t much fun for them. But when I played against tokens decks or more powerful decks, it was fine.

I think I want to take most of this shell and build around Devotion a bit more. The cards in the 99 are fun, but the commander is a little “meh” for me. On the whole, not bad. I’ll keep it until a cooler mono-black commander inspires me. Black is definitely one of the more powerful colors as a single-color deck.

“Braids’ Scorched Earth” on Moxfield

---

🦐 (Mono-Red) Ilharg, the Raze-Boar ✅

I have a friend who loved to play control decks that won too frequently and slowly for my tastes. Being one who doesn’t want others to change their decks by some autocratic decree or campaigning for house bans, I set upon a quest to build a control-killer.

First I built a hatebears deck with Atraxa. It was extremely effective but it immediately made me the bully control deck instead. So I went back to the drawing board. When I considered what I normally do against a control meta in other formats, I realized the reliable old standby: Red Deck Wins.

So I set my sights on a fast, resilient, aggressive deck that could put immediate pressure on the archenemy at the table. I either kill them before they stabilize or absorb so many of their resources that someone else could finish them off after I run out of gas.

Ilharg is a joy to play.

When I first built it, it was a monster, so I only brought it out when the table was strong. Nowadays we have ridiculous aggro decks like Slicer, Hired Muscle and Ragavan that make my piggy friend seem quaint. But I still enjoy him, so he remains in the arsenal.

It’s the only deck I’ve ever put Jeweled Lotus in (I hate that card) briefly because it’s whole point is to attack fast and often. I took that one out, but it still has most of the most ridiculous ramp and haste enablers I can cram in there.

Tips:

• Mulligan if we don’t draw 3+ lands and at least one ramp spell.
• Don’t forget we can tuck Ilharg if he dies. It’s a good way to skip paying commander tax.
  • But don’t tuck him against opponents who can likely force us to shuffle. 😬
• Playing aggro means we have to kill someone fast. Don’t be shy about knocking the biggest threat out of the game early as possible. Giving them time to recover likely means they win.
  • If we’re worried about salty feelings, just be sure to kill another player ASAP after. This works much better than trying to distribute damage and face down all three opponents as the archenemy.
• In addition to the aggression, there’s a good amount of nonbasic land hate. I’m not a fan of mass land destruction in general, but I think hitting greedy manabases is fair game.
• Most of the removal is ETB-based that can repeat as often as Ilharg gets to swing or if we can get a flicker effect like Conjurer’s Closet out.

“Ilharg Brings Friends” on Moxfield

---

🌳 (Mono-Green) Titania, Voice of Gaea

I like big dumb green decks, and nothing was more exciting than trying to meld Titania into Gaea Incarnate.

This deck isn’t very powerful or resilient to removal, but it’s good for lower powered games and can execute its plan fairly consistently. I could likely amp up the consistency pretty easily with some optimization, but I like it where it’s at. Just a meld deck with some land recursion synergies and green good stuff.

“Titania Landsmash” on Moxfield

---

🌟💧 (Azorius) Taigam, Ojutai Master 🛠️

Many years ago, we did a challenge in my local playgroup to each design a deck based on a movie we love, so obviously, I chose The Matrix. After thinking about it for weeks, I finally settled on Taigam, Ojutai Master as my commander who’s emulating Neo. I chose him because:

• He breaks some of the rules of the game (stops counterspells)
• When combined with Dovescape, breaks the game as if stopping bullets
• Rebound feels kind of like the ripple effect Neo generates when he bends reality
• He knows kung fu

When I first built this, it was way too strong. It had more 1-2 mana ramp, more resilience, and included more oppressive spells to rebound like Time Warp and Expropriate. I’ve since toned it down to the level I can play it with average power decks, but it still needs some tuning to make it feel more Matrix-y. Perhaps the power level does need to be higher for it to feel like I’m The One?

I’m building up a bunch of altered art versions of these cards for The Matrix movies, so I’ll work more on getting the list more refined.

“Taigam Knows Kung Fu” on Moxfield

---

🌟💀 (Orzhov) Breena, the Demagogue ✅

Breena is one of my favorite decks. Her design is so elegant and the play patterns she inspires evoke the methods of a demagogue beautifully.

This deck is themed on the nature of power and how willing people are to attack our neighbors for small crumbs of advantage while those with the most power gain exponentially more from that action over time and eventually sell us out.

Breena uses the power she builds to continuously strengthen herself, bolster her own defenses, and tax her opponents in layered ways to keep them from being able to scale up the way she can. She will manipulate the table’s ideas of fairness by referencing life totals. She will distort threat assessment by building most of her power defensively (“If you attack me, I can block with this giant creature with +1/+1 counters on it”, “If you attack me, I can chump block with Dictate of Erebos out”) until she reaches a point where her large evasive “diplomats” can crash in to finish off her opponents who are already weakened by the in-fighting and taxation.

My Breena deck primer on Moxfield (see that for more tips!)

Tips:

• For improved clarity of the game state (life totals and commander damage especially) use Lifetap or a similar life counter app on a smartphone when playing Breena. Way easier than asking for life totals every turn or trying to look at dice across the table.
• Players can draw from up to two* players per attack if every opponent has a different life total.
  *(# of total players -2)
• Mental Shorthand: Look for the lowest life total among our opponents. That player is the only attack target (other than us) where no card draw is available.
• On each opponent’s turn before combat, casually point out who that player could draw a card from if they attacked. We’re not trying to sell it: Drawing cards sells itself. 😈
• The trigger is an optional may trigger, so they can decide not to draw and then we don’t get +1/+1 counters. Barely anyone opts out though. 😈
• Generally, don’t cast Breena unless we already have a viable attacker or haste enabler out already. (This is why we love 1-2 mana value creatures with evasion.)
• When all opponents have the same life total our deck does almost nothing, so offset them ASAP.

“Breena Making Commander Great Again” on Moxfield

---

🌟🦐 (Boros) Archangel Avacyn ✅

When I set out to build a Boros deck, I wasn’t excited about making an equipment, tokens, or Feather deck because other players in my playgroup already had versions of those. Instead I decided to go the opposite way and play reactively.

The idea is to set up during the first few turns and once we hit 5 mana, sit back and wait. From that point forward, we mostly play draw-go and leave mana up to react to our opponents. We have ways to punish people who mess with us or gain value at instant speed, and it’s backed up by our ability to cast our Commander if nothing better comes up.

Avacyn has the added benefit of protecting our board or sweeping away smaller creatures whenever we need her to. She has vigilance so we can pressure life totals with evasive commander damage without leaving ourselves defenseless.

Tips:

• Drawing cards is our weakness, as is often the case for Boros decks, so prioritize effects that draw cards.
• Our Sunforger kit is ridiculous. I don’t bring it out every game, but if an uphill battle’s ahead I tutor that baby up.
• As with any deck playing at instant speed, we want to hold our spells and abilities until the last or most impactful possible moment to use them.

This may be my favorite deck to come from this exercise. It may not look like much when reading the list, but it plays so smoothly and winning with Deflecting Palm never gets old for me.

“Avacyn Flash Tempo” on Moxfield

---

🌟🌳 (Selesnya) Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist ✅

I had Mirri built already before I started this challenge, and I still like her. It’s one of the most unique Green-White decks I’ve built and there’s nothing really wrong with it, so she remains a keeper in this slot.

This is an odd Voltron deck that can also win by going wide because of Mirri’s built-in evasion. We spend most of our time building up Mirri so she can attack safely and effectively every turn, piling the best equipment and other buffs on to make her a scary kitty. It’s straightforward for us, but a nightmare for our opponents who can only crack us back one hit at a time as long as we protect our commander.

Tips:

• Be extra careful about ever-extending into a sweeper. Keep at least one creature in hand to recover from one if we can.
• Haste is high priority and it’s not easy to get in these colors, so protect our boots and such.
• Deathtouch is usually enough to make no one want to block Mirri, unless we face tokens or an indestructible blocker. In that case, we have other evasion tools to dig for: protection, flying, trample, menace, etc.

Mirri: “1v1 Me Bro” on Moxfield

---

💧💀 (Dimir) Toxrill, the Corrosive

Some of my friends like to play mean decks. I tend not to enjoy those, but with Dimir it was hard to find fun and flavorful themes that weren’t at least a little mean. So I leaned into being an Archenemy with a full-blown board control deck that knocks players out with 3 hits from my Slurm Queen, group slug (😜) damage effects, or proliferate shenanigans.

And this mean deck feels even more fun with my custom Futurama alters. The minion tokens come from Infernal Genesis. I even had Slurm cans for slime counters for a bit, but green dice are more manageable.

I barely ever play it, but it is fun when it’s warranted. I can hold my own against my friends’ most unfair decks or get revenge after being beaten into a pulp one too many games. It’s not my favorite, but I like having it in my arsenal.

“Toxrill Archenemy Control” on Moxfield

---

💧🦐 (Izzet) The Locust God ✅

I’m not a fan of Storm decks and I hate when players take long turns durdling, and I find combo wins get old pretty quick. So if I was going to play a flavorful Izzet spellslinger deck, I wanted a fast, but inconsistent win condition. The Locust God and its many flying hasty babies provides that.

There are lots of ways to make this Commander strong and oppressive, so I balance mine to avoid those pitfalls. Luckily in the blue & red card pool, there are thousands of great options for every spell slot. This deck is a nice standby I plan to keep until something new and interesting comes up in these colors.

Note: I’m planning to build a River Song deck when the Doctor Who precons come out. ❤️

“Locust God’s Thousand Cuts” on Moxfield

---

💧🌳 (Simic) Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief

Simic has been my guild of choice since the original Ravnica, but it’s position as the most powerful and annoying casual commander color identity has made me hesitate to play it much. Ivy was my attempt at keeping the Simic value engine fairly sane. I built mine around Auras because it felt more unique than using creatures.

This quirky deck is a ton of fun, but keeping track of dozens of aura tokens eventually got old. Even using InfiniTokens to clearly label the aura copies, it still became tedious to track. While I enjoyed it, I ended up taking it apart after a few months.

“Ivy’s Aura Mischief” on Moxfield

Recommendation: I love my InfiniTokens, and no deck uses them better than a clone deck like Ivy.

I later built a Cirdan the Shipright deck to take Ivy’s place and it feels more fun so far. But I learned a lot from Ivy and still think it’s a fun deck.

---

💀🦐 (Rakdos) Xantcha, Sleeper Agent ✅

I’ve had a Xantcha deck for many years and she’s always been a fun and interesting Commander to build around. Her play patterns are so different from any other deck I’ve built. She’s gone through a few reinventions, but my current iteration focuses on themes of spying, sabotage, and subtly setting ourselves up for victory.

Tips:

• Give Xantcha to people who:
  • don’t have obvious sacrifice outlets
  • have good attack targets that won’t block her effectively
  • will take their turn soonest after us, to reduce opponents’ opportunities to react
• Deflect attention as best as possible. The entire vibe of this deck is subterfuge and subtlety.
• Focus on building up an explosive and resilient manabase, since activating Xantcha as many times as possible is a solid win condition.
• When everyone’s life totals are low enough, try to win all at once. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard to win a 1-on-1 fight without a ton of mana.
• I’ve removed several strong finisher cards (like Torment of Hailfire) because it got boring to win that way. If we’re struggling to finish games, we can always add them back.

“Xantcha Sabotage” on Moxfield

---

💀🌳 (Golgari) Zask, Skittering Swarmlord

For Golgari I wanted to do a tribal graveyard deck that wasn’t something I’d seen others do before. It plays similarly to the Titania deck by messing with lands in the graveyard, but it’s different enough that it still made some interesting play patterns.

I don’t think I’ll keep this one much longer, but it’s a good low power deck I can bring out when the table suits it.

“Zask the Dung Beetle” on Moxfield

---

🦐🌳 (Gruul) Jolene, the Plunder Queen ✅

After watching Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean series, I became obsessed with Jolyne Kujo. When this buff, badass Jolene card with fun voltron-friendly mechanics was released later that year, I just had to get her altered.

Treasures are busted and keep getting more busted as they print more cards for them, but this deck’s strategy is so linear that it feels like a reasonably stoppable way to play them. It’s probably above average on the power scale, but not one of the top decks in my meta. Overall, I enjoy playing it quite a bit and will be keeping her around a while.

“Jolyne Kujo” on Moxfield

---

🌟💧💀 (Esper) Soundwave, Sonic Spy 👎

I love Transformers, and Soundwave is one of my favorite characters, so I had to build this one. While the deck design and first few games were really fun, the More Than Meets The Eye mechanic the entire Transformers cycle uses never felt intuitive for me. Combined with managing creature tokens and awkward combat decisions, it just didn’t hit for me. It felt like a more complicated version of my Ukkima & Cazur deck that I enjoyed more.

“Soundwave” on Moxfield

I consider my “Ardenn & Silas Relentless Relics” deck to be my favorite Esper deck I’ve built. And my creatureless Aminatou deck was more interesting too. Basically, Esper has so many better options than this.

---

🌟💧🦐 (Jeskai) Kasla, the Broken Halo ✅

I keep a precon intact most of the time so I can play with beginners and weaker decks. As I play them more and learn how they work, I tend to steadily upgrade them. Usually I upgrade their manabases right away because I don’t think ETB tapped lands ever make games more fun. Then I swap in/out cards as I’m inspired.

Now that this one’s been around a while and I’ve continued to enjoy it, I don’t think I can count it as a precon much longer. I’ll be keeping an eye on the new releases and picking a new one soon!

“Kasla Convoke” on Moxfield

---

🌟💧🌳 (Bant) Rafiq of the Many ✅🛠️

Rafiq was one of my first EDH decks, and I even played him in Standard for much of the Alara block, so I chose him when I decided I wanted to build a PrEDH (only cards that existed before WotC started printing Commander cards) deck. I love the nostalgia, and it still feels pretty strong even if it’s missing the newer power-creeped cards. It can still hang in many casual pods.

“PrEDH Rafiq Voltron” on Moxfield

---

🌟💀🦐 (Mardu) Kroxa and Kunoros ✅

Mardu decks are so strong in Commander. They have all the best-in-class removal and many of the strongest creatures in the format. I’ve built several strong ones over the years, so I was aiming to try something different with the new card Kroxa and Kunoros.

The deck is a blast when it gets rolling, but it needs a few mulligans to get a hand that has everything we need:

• 3+ lands in all our colors
• At least one self-mill spell
• At least one ramp spell

When we get a hand like that and aren’t disrupted too much, the deck plays really smoothly. We get to recklessly rifle through our deck and ride the line between reanimating awesome creatures and milling ourselves out. But when we don’t draw well it can feel like a basic midrange deck, reanimating creatures on turns we could’ve just hard-cast them.

I could power the deck up, but I think I’d rather just work on making it more consistent instead. It’s a lot of fun when it works, so I think it’ll be worth the effort.

“Kroxa and Kunoros Reanimator” on Moxfield

---

🌟💀🌳 (Abzan) Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa

I have a hard time with Abzan decks. They tend to use tokens and +1/+1 counters like crazy and I get quickly bored of keeping track of those. The other archetype I see frequently is creature combos using flicker effects and ETB triggers, which is fine but not exciting anymore. I was looking to do something different.

Many players hate infect decks, but I wanted to build one using the new Corrupted mechanic without making poison counters our primary win condition. We can certainly win that way as a backup plan, slowly proliferating our opponents into the danger zone, of course. Our primary win condition is the value engine and casting our opponents’ win conditions.

“Ixhel Toxic Theft” on Moxfield

---

🌟🦐🌳 (Naya) Mirrorwood Treefolk 🛠️

If you’ve never played Pauper EDH before, I recommend getting 3 friends together to try it. We can build a deck using any Uncommon creature (even non-legendary ones) and the 99 must be all commons (with a small but obvious ban list). The games feel fresh and interesting and kind of play out like limited games sometimes.

Mirrorwood Treefolk is just a really weird card that I took as a challenge to build around. It’s all about bouncing damage around the field in weird ways and big booty treefolk.

“Mirrorwood pEDH” on Moxfield

Note: For regular Commander, my most recent favorite Naya list was Kitt Kanto, Mayhem Diva.

---

💧💀🦐 (Grixis) Be’lakor, the Dark Master ✅

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed another tribal deck as much as I’ve been loving this one. Like Dimir, Grixis is one of those color identities that can’t help itself but feel mean most of the time. But a deck that’s openly all about Demons doesn’t lull anyone into a false sense of safety. People tend to know exactly what I’m planning and dropping big flying meanies with powerful ETB effects is the battlecruiser Magic that I love.

Tips:

• Herald of Slaanesh is the absolute best card to draw early. Every game where she stays in play for a few turns feels insanely powerful.
• Be’lakor is usually great to drop early, but if our hand is full of other good demons, we can also hold him back to draw more cards if there are good lines of play to do so.
• Warstorm Surge effects are usually how we win, either by directly damaging opponents or clearing away their blockers for a big attack.
• Some demons in the list aren’t there because they’re great. Some are just low mana cost + high power demons intended to trigger ETB effects. They’re expendable after that.

I bought the Warhammer 40K precon specifically to build this deck and I love it. Definitely a keeper.

“Be’lakor” on Moxfield

---

💧💀🌳 (Sultai): Indominus Rex, Alpha

(This card isn’t officially released yet, but it was included in the Jurassic Park universes beyond spoilers. That’s why my photo here includes a black and white printed proxy. 😬)

Sultai is my favorite color combination in Magic, but for some reason I have a hard time building Sultai decks for Commander that don’t take forever to win games. I’m attempting to fix that with this unique Sultai commander who lets me fight on the Voltron angle or fall back on using all the creatures in my yard for a backup plan.

Rex helps us cycle through our deck and discard any creatures we choose, which is a huge benefit as a pre-ETB trigger. Countering him is the only way to stop it. Then, we get to draw those cards to refill our hand, which is the real big benefit as a regular ETB trigger that can be responded to with instant speed effects that can add more counters to him. Then we get a 6/6 (or bigger) creature that must be dealt with quickly before it likely deals lethal commander damage to someone. It’s a triple threat that demands high value removal to deal with and we usually still get to fill our graveyard and draw cards if they do. He’s not even that high in cost to recast!

This deck will probably be absolutely busted, so tuning it for our playgroup’s power level will be a challenge. It still seems fun to try, and I like that it makes cards I’ve never used in Commander before viable.

“Indominus Rex Reanimator” on Moxfield

---

💧🦐🌳 (Temur) Averna, the Chaos Bloom

I love cascade. I returned to Magic after graduating college right as the Alara block released and it’s still probably my favorite block ever. Big splashy spells, tons of multicolored cards, and the shards are all so fun and flavorful.

Averna is a deck that gives in to the chaos of cascade. We just want to get her out and trigger cascade however possible and the deck just plays itself from there. Once the deck is designed with the proper mana curve and enablers, it’s really just about following the value train until we overwhelm our opponents with our board presence.

Tips:

• This cascade deck doesn’t want to hit it’s second spell too fast. We want to roll through a few lands before a viable one is reached so Averna can drop one into play each time. Because of this, we don’t load up on low-mana-value spells as much as other cascade decks might.
• We also don’t want to whiff or run out of them, so balance (or shuffling them back in later) is key.
• This deck doesn’t use fetch lands because we’re not trying to thin our deck of lands like usual.

It’s powerful, but imprecise. And anyone with fundamental commander knowledge can likely pilot it just fine.

“Averna, the Chaotic Cascade” on Moxfield

I also have a cEDH Temur deck based around Kalamax, but I don’t enjoy cEDH so I haven’t played it very much.

---

💀🦐🌳 (Jund) Thantis, the Warweaver

Thantis may seem similar to a goad deck, but playing it that way is actually less unique. These days, we have lots of great goad commanders to choose from. What Thantis does is create a board state of brute force. It messes with utility creatures and forces opponents to tap their mana dorks and other activated abilities before their combat step if they don’t want to toss them into the fray.

I built this deck similarly to my Mirri deck, where I set up combat a certain way and play creatures who’ll thrive in that artificial environment. We have nasties that will attack and block profitably in most situations or be expendable while taking an enemy down with them. It’s a fun deck to use when we want to have a fast game or fight against creature combo or value decks that like time to set up.

“Thantis Thunderdome” on Moxfield

---

💧💀🦐🌳 (Not-White) Vial Smasher & Thrasios ✅

This is my signature deck. I built it immediately as Commander 2016 came out and I fell in love with the escalating random chaotic damage she throws around. At the time I was playing a lot of political, strategic, or linear decks, so she was a breath of fresh air. It’s almost impossible to politic with this deck beyond point removal targeting.

Vial Smasher wants us to cast one high mana value spell at the beginning of each turn. That doesn’t mean we have to pay full price for them. It also means those spells don’t even need to do anything great! We can cast big dumb creatures or over-costed removal spells. The spells can get countered and we still get value from her trigger. This allows this deck to be extremely powerful, but it also lets us fill it with jank.

And that’s the way I like to run it. I love playing it, so I want to be able to bring it to as many pods as I can. Because of this, my list has:

• No extra turn spells
• Minimal countermagic
• No high-salt cards (like Palinchron)
• Retirement of finishers I’ve won with enough times

Thrasios is here to give us the best possible colors to pair with Vial Smasher, provide consistency, and give us a mana dump for turns when we don’t have a better play. Since release, his power has become obvious and he makes frequent appearances at cEDH tables.

Tips:

• There are many ways to build this deck, but mine is focused on trying to activate Vial Smasher’s trigger every turn. Hence, the deck name: “Smash Vials Everyday” as sung like Nate Dog. This is why cards like Seedborn Muse and Instant-speed spells are huge for us. Same for spells that untap our lands after they resolve.
• Learn to read the flow of the game. If we go full steam ahead from the start of the game, we can quickly become a target. Especially if one particular opponent gets unlucky with multiple VS triggers. Don’t be too scary until multiple opponents have low enough life totals.
• Use the non-Legendary clone spells on Vial Smasher. 😈
• Because of Thrasios’s activation cost, we want to keep an eye on our mana thresholds divisible by 4. If we don’t have to cast a spell by the end of our opponent on our right’s end step, activating Thrasios is almost never disappointing.
• I cast Thrasios on turn two almost every game. I ensure I have lands I need to do that with higher priority than having red and black sources in my opening hand.
• That said, I rarely recast Thrasios if he’s killed. He’s only important if my hand is empty or I’m using him to draw enough ammunition to finish everyone off. There are also plenty of games where I don’t activate him even once.
• This deck is a great way to learn lots of interesting niche rules about cast triggers, the stack, mana value, and alternative costs. Have a smartphone ready to look those up!

“Smash Vials Everyday” on Moxfield

---

🌟💀🦐🌳 (Not-Blue) Saskia the Unyielding

Saskia is an aggro house of a commander, and having access to four colors worth of spells allows her to be really powerful.

This deck really only has one mode: aggro. Similar to Ilharg, I leaned into the idea of playing this into high powered games where others are playing control or combo. I want to accelerate the pace of the game and spread big chunks of damage around, hopefully building up enough of an early advantage and surviving removal long enough to blow the game out.

“Saskia Resilient Aggro” on Moxfield

---

🌟💧🦐🌳 (Not-Black) Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis

Group hug decks aren’t as surprising or innovative as back when I built my first Phelddagrif deck. Some players actively dislike them the same way some dislike chaos decks. Heavy-handed group hug decks can dominate games even without winning, meaning that they warp the story of the game so much that the other players feel like they did less of the driving than they might prefer.

That drove my design of this one. I carefully balance this list so it isn’t dropping too many huge impactful effects on the board. It also tries not to over-accelerate or over-extend games too much. Finally, I also want it to be able to win. Some games may still result in kingmaking, but we want to aim for a win as our primary goal.

This list is highly meta dependent, and I tweak it after almost every time I play it. So I like this list as an interesting design and play challenge, but the list may not be what works best for your play group.

Tips:

• The hugs this deck gives are mostly card draw and land ramp, so our win conditions work around that. We want to do damage to opponents based on their lands or hand size or perhaps mill them (or ourselves) out. Ideally as a surprise.
• Anyone who’s won with a group hug deck before knows that they’re really just control decks. Wanting our opponents to do their thing and accelerating them along that path while we quietly assemble our win condition is just a unique way to extend the game and win late.
• A big factor in whether a group hug deck can do this without being targeted is politics. We still need removal, sweepers, and counterspells, which can make our opponents salty, but card selection is relevant. In my deck list every interaction piece leaves the targeted opponent with something to make it up to them. We try to emphasize all the cards we let them draw even if we also sometimes blow up their giant creature or counter their combo piece.
• If our opponents are successful at knocking each other out and we’re left in a 1-on-1, we can often win with a surprise fog effect when they alpha strike us and then cracking them back. It helps if they get softened up a bit in their battles with the others first.

“Daddy Hugs!” on Moxfield

---

🌟💧💀🌳 (Not-Red) Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper & Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker

Building a Doran or Arcades “toughness matters” deck was on my backlog for a long time, but I never could choose which one to do it with. But when it came time to build this 4-color combination, I thought to myself porque no los dos?

Ikra makes our glorious booties even more life-affirming. She’s the heart of the deck’s theme, providing survivability and a little evasion for her to do some work on her own.

Ishai just gives us the other colors we need and provides an evasive scaling booty we can deal commander damage with.

This was just a fun deck to build and I roll it out at low power tables fairly regularly.

“Ikra & Ishai Big Bootie Bops” on Moxfield

---

🌟💧💀🦐 (Not-Green) Cecily & Wernog 👎

These were originally released as Eleven, the Mage and Will the Wise in the Stranger Things Secret Lair.

Much as I love battlecruiser Magic, Cecily is a commander that I found to be only one of two options:

• Goes off and blasts the entire table in ways that are difficult to stop or compete with, resulting in frequent opponent scoops.
• Does a bunch of clunky and durdly card draw things, but gets stuck with “the wrong half of the deck” (huge costly spells) in hand.

Neither of these patterns are fun for me, especially when I have so many other decks like it that are much more fun.

Wernog is fine. He helps us activate Cecily, sort-of. He distracts people with his board presence a bit. Uninspiring.

“Cecily & Wernog” on Moxfield

---

🌟💧💀🦐🌳 (5-Color) Jodah, the Uniter ✅🛠️

I knew from the moment I saw this card spoiled that he was gonna be busted. But I also absolutely love the cascade mechanic and didn’t feel like building a dragons or slivers deck like so many people already do. That meant I wanted to impose a design restriction!

For this build I didn’t allow myself to include any non-Legendary spells. I considered restricting non-basic lands too, but that meant my five color deck would simply not even work a substantial number of games. This means I had to dig to find a lot of staple effects — ramp, removal, and card draw — on Legendary cards, most of which are permanents because there are barely any Instants or Sorceries.

I also had to design a cascade deck, which means:

• My mana curve has to be really carefully tuned so I don’t run out of gas on either the front or back end of the cascade value train.
• My spells, especially on the lower half of the curve, need to be useful in a wide variety of board states. (Counterspell effects are practically useless unless they’re modal)

But designing within these restrictions was super fun, and the deck is still pretty strong. Having every color at our disposal is still OP. If I get two or three cascades off, I get a huge board presence. I’m highly vulnerable to sweepers and repeated commander removal though, so it still feels fair most of the time. I don’t bring it out against precons, of course. 😇

“Legendaries Unite! Jodah, the Unifier” on Moxfield

---

Conclusions!

This was an expensive and time-consuming adventure, but I had a great time.

And now I have the added benefit of optimized proxy manabases for every color combination, so that will make it easy for me to swap into a new deck without having to re-sleeve all my fetches, duals, shocks, Arcane Signets, etc.

Plus I learned some stuff!

Most 4 Color Decks Aren’t Worth Building

With a few exceptions (like my beloved Vial Smasher), the four color decks aren’t very unique and there aren’t many options for commanders. They tend to feel like versions of three-color decks plus a bunch of good stuff from an additional color, which feels unnecessary. I’ll probably take most of these apart until more interesting options come out.

Mono-Color Decks Are More Fun That I Expected

While the themes seem narrower at first with mono-colored decks, they tend to encourage more unique themes when we want to build something unique. Limiting ourselves to one color also means we get to use interesting card selections to solve problems that color often has trouble with. These ended up being some of my favorites to build.

Bending The Color Pie is Fun!

One of my favorite new decks I built in this experience was my Archangel Avacyn Flash Control/Tempo deck. It plays really well and feels more unique than similar lists that include blue. I plan on trying to bring genres that are typically in specific color combinations into other ones more often in the future!

Most Common Tokens & Counters

Before I got InfiniTokens, I used to carry around every type of token my decks could potentially make. As I went from carrying 3-4 decks to 6, and now 8 that became untenable. That said, there are some tokens that I do still carry with me now because it gets tedious to draw Treasures every single game. Here’s that list, in order of how often I used them over the last year:

The ones with ✅ are what I carry all the time now. These are great picks for getting custom artist’s tokens.