#theme decks

I really like talking about my decks. All my commanders are special and I worked really hard on them. But I don't have the time to type out every deck list to show you.

I've decided to write out all my themes and tribals for my decks.

Ask me anything about them.

Tribals

1: Legendary

2: Rat

3: Merfolk

4: Goblin

5: Elf

6: Zombie

7: Barbarian, Warrior, Berserker

8: Thopter

9: Drake

10: Indestructible

11: Human

12: Dragon (1st one before these new commanders)

13: Beast

14: Sliver

15: Treefolk

16: Cats (redone from 2017 set)

17: Vampires (reVAMPED from 2017 set)

18: Wizards (edited from 2017 set)

19: Dragons (enhanced from 2017 set) Theme decks are;

A: Planeswalkers

B: Strange counters

C: Take my stuff

D: Artifact flicker

E: Exalted tokens

F: Morph (beasts),

G: Choose your own adventure

H: Everyone hurts equally

I: Cascade to win

J: Group hug

K: Metal craft voltron

L: Storm

M: Spells and abilities only

N: anti life

O: 1 counters experience

P: life gain/loss extortion

Q: Cards in hand

R: No basic land

S: Creatures only; flicker

T: Graveyard experience

U: Global destruction(indestructible)

V:One card a turn

W: Dethrone and capture

X: No permanent cards other than commander(drake)

Y: Mill

Z: Curses the experience.

Sometimes I build decks to win in Standard. Sometimes I build decks to have fun in Commander. Sometimes I build decks to fit a neat Vorthos theme.

Today I build a super casual deck that aims to run like a well-oiled machine.

I’m not sure if this is a combo deck or just a deck that takes advantage of a bunch of synergies. That’s a line that I’m not interested in defining. What I am interest in is building super lasers and star destroyers (9/9 Golems). This deck is not one of the small moons of Mirrodin:

Creatures (8):

4 Coretapper

4 Vedalken Infuser

Instants (8):

4 Turn Aside

4 Fuel for the Cause

Sorceries (4):

4 Spread the Sickness

Artifacts (16):

4 Energy Chamber

4 Power Conduit

4 Titan Forge

4 Lux Cannon

Lands (24):

1 Academy Ruins

1 Dark Depths

2 Vivid Creek

2 Vivid Marsh

4 Mirrodin’s Core

4 Mage-Ring Network

4 Dreadship Reef

4 Island

2 Swamp

SHOOP DA WHOOP

Lux Cannon by Martina Pilcerova

Every deck is a solution to a problem: “My opponent(s) has 20 life. How do I fix this?” A plan is set in motion, and each card in your deck should forward that plan. This deck’s plan is built around Lux Cannon and Titan Forge, two incredibly powerful artifacts from Scars of Mirrodin and Mirrodin Besieged, respectively.

“There are few problems that can't be solved by putting a hole in the world.”

Indeed.

Lux Cannon’s power is blunt. It destroys things. Any of the things. Namely, your opponent’s things. If you can get Lux Cannon firing on all cylinders (and at all opposing cylinders), then it won’t be difficult to overtake your enemy’s crippled battlefield.

The other power play is Titan Forge, a three-mana artifact that taps to put a 9/9 Golem token onto the battlefield. Sure, you need a bunch of charge counters, but the ability is so powerful that the cost is worth it. A 9/9 makes a great blocker and a better attacker, so it’s the prime victory condition of this deck.

Now imagine getting to use these mighty machines every turn. Make holes in the world like Swiss cheese. Construct a legion of titans. But how? That’s where the rest of the deck comes in.

Power Ups

Power Conduit by Todd Lockwood

On Mirrodin, energy comes in the form of charge counters. The bulk of this deck is looking to get more charge counters onto Lux Cannon and Titan Forge so we can overpower our opponents with our Death Star. Did I not mention that yet? We’re totes building a Death Star.

The only creatures in this deck both help fuel our superweapons. Coretapper essentially adds a charge counter a turn, but in a pinch can add three in a single go. For those math geeks, that means a single Coretapper can potentially give a one-shot full-charge to Lux Cannon or Titan Forge. Nice! Vedalken Infuser, on the other hand, is a passive charge counter donator. It’s 1/4 body makes it a better blocker, however, so it’s fine that it’s not as explosive.

Energy Chamber is another passive form of charge counter congregation, but it also serves another purpose. It’s the last plan to win a game by piling +1/+1 counters onto a Coretapper and turning it into a monster. It’s barely a plan, but it’s nice bonus utility to have around.

Power Conduit is a curious card that’s best use is in a deck like this. It converts one type of counter into a charge counter, which means we’re gonna need some raw material to process. The secret here lies in the lands. Thirteen of them bring counters to the party, offering a free way to syphon power to the weapons. Here are brief summaries of each:

Mage-Ring Network/Dreadship Reef: Storage lands are sweet. This deck does a lot of nothing, so using mana to charge up the lands can create mana and a plethora of counters to eventually Power Conduit over to other cards.

Vivid Lands: They come with a few counters of their own and make colored mana.

Mirrodin’s Core: Makes its own counters and makes colored mana. Also a flavor win with all the other Mirrodin cards.

Dark Depths: It starts with ten counters of its own, and a deck capable of storing up mana and removing counters from things can get to Marit Lage quite fast in a pinch. It’s just a one-off since it doesn’t tap for mana, but it’s too cute not to include it.

Like Energy Chamber, Power Conduit can plant +1/+1 counters on our creatures if necessary. Niche use, but still useful.

Support Structures

Fuel for the Cause by Steven Belledin

The rest of the cards are here to support this deck’s plan of action.

Academy Ruins is a singleton that’s useful if our battle station sustains too much damage to keep functioning. We can recycle parts and built it again! It can also recycle sacrificed Coretappers if we really want to get an engine humming.

Then there’s proliferate. Once we get counters on our powerful artifacts, proliferate will help tick them all up at once. Spread the Sickness is a little extra removal for when we want to supplement the Lux Cannons, but the proliferate is the real selling point. I also chose Fuel for the Cause, as this deck doesn’t spend mana very often. That means we can leave mana up to protect our machinery and counter a destructive spell if we need to. Don’t need to? That’s where all those storage lands come in handy!

Turn Aside is another counterspell that specifically protects our board state. Once we’re firin our lazer every turn, our biggest threat to victory is the destruction of the Death Star. We need to protect our exhaust ports at all costs, and a one-mana spell is perfect at doing that.

You May Fire When Ready

Fragile? Probably. Janky? Certainly. Amazing when it works? The best combo decks are.

Magic’s ability to mix and match cards into an unfathomable number of unique decks is one of its most appealing traits, and I hope today’s article helps exhibit that in a fun intertextual way. By building our own Death Star, we can turn the nerd up to eleven and shoot super lasers as we do so. There’s a visceral thrill I get from cards like Lux Cannon and Titan Forge, and I wish for all Magic players to find that same thrill too.

A: When it’s the top card of your library.

Inspiration comes from all sorts of places. Childhood memories, trending topics, or seemingly eons of contemplation. Today, inspiration came from an innocent little question that popped into my ask box.

Future ritual sacrifice @arithallan asked me about the potential of Words of Wilding. I noticed it got cute with Gaea’s Anthem and Elemental Bond, which combine into a combo that gives you a 3/3 Bear token for every {1} you can pay.

Such janky combos are the seeds of many decks, so you bet your bare bear bottom that today’s casual deck is built around this silly little interaction. All three cards are enchantments, which gave me a clear card type to build around. As such, I made a rule that this deck would have to contain zero creature cards. Here’s what I came up with:

Enchantments (22):

4 Seal of Fire

4 Elemental Bond

4 Words of Wilding

4 Gaea’s Anthem

1 Bearscape

3 Mana Echoes

2 Leyline of Vitality

Sorceries (12):

3 Faithless Looting

2 Commune with the Gods

4 Anger of the Gods

3 Kruphix’s Insight

Lands (26):

4 Cinder Glade

4 Rootbound Crag

2 Forgotten Cave

2 Tranquil Thicket

7 Mountain

7 Forest

Combo Fuel

Gaea’s Anthem by Greg Staples

So here’s a step-by-step guide to how the combo works.

Control Words of Wilding, Gaea’s Anthem, and Elemental Bond

At the beginning of your draw step, pay {1} to activate Words of Wilding.

Instead of drawing a card, you get a Bear token.

Gaea’s Anthem makes the Bear token a 3/3, triggering Elemental Bond.

Pay {1} to activate Words of Wilding, replacing the draw from Elemental Bond.

Repeat steps 3-5 until you run out of mana.

Shaved down, the combo turns every {1} you can produce into a 3/3 Bear token. That’s great value on your mana. It’s also totally optional, so you can back out of the combo and just draw a card whenever you want. There’s no obligation to keep paying, which lets you manage your hand and battlefield as the game goes along.

The best part about the combo is that extra copies of Gaea's Anthem and Elemental Bond are not redundant. More Anthems means bigger Bears (yay!) and extra Bonds mean you can draw cards and make Bear tokens.

The main problem with this combo is that all three cards are three-mana enchantments. Running a full set of each piece is good, but you need a good way to find those pieces as quickly as possible.

Engine Maintenance

Kruphix’s Insight by Igor Kieryluk

Since this deck focuses on Green enchantments, I immediately thought of Kruphix’s Insight. For only three mana, you can essentially draw three cards. You don’t actually draw any cards, however, so no making Bears from Words of Wilding! Kruphix’s Insight also digs six cards down into your library, which allows it to find the exact cards you’re looking for.

Commune with the Gods is a similar spell, though it only grabs one enchantment. It’s largely in this deck for curve consideration, which is something I will come back to later.

Finally, there’s Faithless Looting (an ironic title given the Theros-themed nature of the deck). Looting has a similar role to the above cards; you dig through your library and dump the chaff into your graveyard. The great thing about Faithless Looting is that it has flashback. Dump it into the yard with one of those other spells and you’ll still be able to cast it later. Faithless Looting also does draw cards, so feel free to use it to make two Bears.

The Bells and Whistles

Seal of Fire by Christopher Moeller

This deck isn’t looking to blitz out a victory on turn four or anything. It’s actually quite grindy for a Red/Green deck. So the rest of the cards need to be focused on survival. How can it prevent other decks from smashing it to smithereens before it can establish the combo engine?

Anger of the Gods represent! Possibly my favorite sweeper spell ever printed, Anger of the Gods is exactly what this deck wants. Three mana to blast most things on the battlefield away is a great price. This card stops aggro decks cold.

Seal of Fire is more pinpoint removal, stopping early-drop creatures from ruining your plan. It’s also an enchantment, which means you can grab it with Kruphix’s Insight or Commune with the Gods if needed. That 2 damage is also reach, meaning it can shock a weak opponent to zero late in the game.

Leyline of Vitality is interesting in that it allows your Bears to survive Anger of the Gods and combat easier. Gaining 1 life for every Bear adds up turn after turn, making it difficult to defeat this deck once the combo is set up. It’s not essential, so I’m fine only running two copies.

The interesting card here is Mana Echoes. While not an essential part of the combo, it does do a crazy thing: allows you to turn your entire library into Bears in a single turn. That’s a lot of Bears. You’ll probably win the game with that mana Bears, which is the point.

Bearscape is a fun singleton that I couldn’t bring myself to cut. The filtering spells will be filling up your graveyard, so you might as well turn those cards into Bears too.

Forgotten Cave and Tranquil Thicket are neat because you can cycle them on an opponent's turn and make Bears at instant speed. I always like shoving a little extra utility into my mana base like that.

Some of these cards are modular: the deck doesn’t need them, so they could be swapped out for other things. For example, I considered running Purphoros, God of the Forge (He's also an enchantment!) He turns all your Bears into 2 damage to each opponent. If you’re playing this deck in a multiplayer game, I would definitely swap the God in.

Haste is also very good with all these Bears, but I didn’t want Fires of Yavimaya being yet another card in the three slot. Fervor has the same problem. Mass Hysteria also seems bad, as giving your opponents’ creatures haste means they can beat you down faster. It would be worth testing it though.

There are a lot of three-mana cards in this deck, leaving it without much to do on turn two. I’d like to find a solution to that. If you have any card suggestions, let me know!

Born to Be Wilding

And that’s the story of how one question turned into a silly combo deck. If you’re the kind of person who likes creatureless decks, this is a solution for you that still aims to win by turning creatures sideways. The deck is also uncharacteristically resilient for its colors, able to grind out long games with virtual card advantage. If anyone chooses to build it and play with it, let me know how it goes!

There’s no denying that this is Kozilek’s world, and we’re just living in it. With Oath of the Gatewatch, Kozilek’s brood of colorless critters have shaken up almost every format they’re legal in. Cards like Thought-Knot Seer and Matter Reshaper are twisting Standard, Modern, and Legacy into bismuthy patterns. Is there any escape from these otherworldly assailants?

To the kitchen table!

The more ingrained you get into Magic, the more difficult it is to remember that the majority of players are just throwing together decks and playing with their friends at home. Today’s article is going to examine a Vorthosy casual deck I threw together around Kozilek and his reality-warping brood. Other than basic lands, every single card in this deck represents Kozilek, his minions, and the locations they have ravaged. Take a look:

Creatures (28):

4 Blinding Drone

4 Kozilek’s Sentinel

4 Cultivator Drone

4 Herald of Kozilek

3 Void Grafter

3 Kozilek’s Channeler

3 World Breaker

3 Kozilek, the Great Distortion

Instants (3):

3 Kozilek’s Return

Sorceries (3):

3 Ruin in Their Wake

Lands (26):

4 Unknown Shores

4 Wastes

1 Sea Gate Wreckage

6 Island

6 Mountain

5 Forest

Making a New World

Ruin in Their Wake by Jason Felix

What we have here is a Temur ramp deck that aims to accelerate into Kozilek or World Breaker.

There are three creatures key to this strategy. Cultivator Drone provides colorless mana to ramp your colorless spells. Kozilek’s Channeler is just a bigger version of this; it’s 4/4 body should not be underestimated. Woo mana dorks! Herald of Kozilek is not only thematic, but is sort of a mana dork too. While it won’t generate mana, it reduces the host of every single card in this deck by {1}. Stick a Herald and you’ll find yourself easily casting two spells a turn.

Ruin in Their Wake is a supplement to these ramping creatures. If you have a Wastes already, Ruin in Their Wake is just Rampant Growth. You can go grab whatever basic land you need and slap it right onto the battlefield. If you don’t have a Wastes yet, this is the perfect card to go get one. There are a few cards in this deck that will require colorless mana, so being able to make some if all your other creatures die is important.

Time Warp

Blinding Drone by Lake Hurwitz

Ramp decks aren’t just about accelerating your mana. They also want to slow the game down to give you time to cast your huge spells. This deck employs a few strategies to achieve this.

First, the most basic creature that helps is Kozilek’s Sentinel. While this Eldrazi can be an early threat in more aggressive decks, this deck focuses on its 4 toughness. Kozilek’s Sentinel blocks well, bolstering this deck’s defenses while it ramps its mana.

If larger creatures or fliers threaten your life total, Blinding Drone has your back. Tappers are great at delaying whatever the most dangerous threat is, and multiple Blinding Drones can hold off most assaults and protect your life total. Being 1/3 is nice too, as it makes Blinding Drone a decent early blocker.

The muscle of this section, however, is Kozilek’s Return. Board states can get out of hand, and sometimes you have to mow down the opposition before things get out of control. The initial blast of 2 damage won’t kill any of your own creatures, leaving your defenses intact. When you finally get to cast your payoff creature, the whole board gets blasted away. This leaves you with your big fat fatty and your opponents with zilch.

Out of the Void

World Breaker by Jaime Jones

Naturally, the point of this deck is to smash faces in with ha-yoog Eldrazi. The “small” one is World Breaker, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite cards from Oath of the Gatewatch. As a 5/7, there are not a lot of creatures that will survive combat with World Breaker. But the real magic is in its cast trigger. Before you even get your big fat fatty, you get to annihilate an opponent’s artifact, enchantment, or land. Blast away a permanent that Kozilek’s Return didn’t hit. Prevent an enemy from having the resources to catch up with you.

The best part? World Breaker can return to your hand if it dies. Later in the game, when even you have enough mana to cast all your spells, extra lands help your dead World Breakers come back for round two. They give this deck a resilient threat that is almost impossible for most decks to totally stop.

The other main ramp target is (obviously) Kozilek, the Great Distortion. I don’t feel like I need to hype the titan up any more than what his card reads. He’s a 12/12. He has menace. He fills your hand. He counters any efforts of retaliation. When you cast Kozilek, games end.

His counterspell protection is key, helping deflect removal spells that would undermine all the hard ramping work you just did. Void Grafter, however, is a bonus creature that fills the same role. Being able to grant hexproof at instant speed helps protect your big fat fatties. A 2/4 flash can also be used defensively to block an attacker. Void Grafter is a neat little niche creature that performs a few key tasks in this deck.

On Foreign Soil

Unknown Shores by Jung Park

Adhering to a Kozilek theme makes this mana base less than ideal, but we still have the lands to make it work.

In a three-color deck that also needs access to colorless mana, Unknown Shores is the perfect card. It fixes what are essentially four colors without taking up a spell slot.

Since colorless mana is essential to the deck, there are also four Wastes. These help maximize the use of Ruin in Their Wake, making it a much more powerful ramp spell. Find a Wastes first and the subsequent Ruin in Their Wakes will be that much better. It should go without saying that this deck should have Kozilek's art on those Wastes.

There’s a single Sea Gate Wreckage, as being able to draw a card when you’re out of gas is a great ability to have. This is a deck that doesn’t want to ramp and then be without threats, so a single copy will help dig for World Breaker or Kozilek late in a game.

Finally, the basic lands are simply the colors needed to cast your spells.

The Reign of Kozilek

When it comes to casting Eldrazi titans, ramping your mana is the most flavorful strategy. Kozilek’s brood contains a number of mana dorks that lead the way for their master. A few choice defensive spells can hold off the assault until Kozilek himself is ready to dominate your opponents. New sets are always an exciting time for casual Magic, and I hope you folks enjoyed this flavorful deck that could grace the kitchen tables in your town.

What’s scarier than a Sliver deck focused on a hyper-aggressive strategy? A Sliver deck focused on a hyper-aggressive strategy that can slam Slivers onto the battlefield out of nowhere. Collected Company is the culprit here, a card that has earned its place in Standard and is breaking into Modern too. Today I’m going to show off a Sliver deck that has the tech to utterly overwhelm your opponents while also having the resilience to bounce back in an explosive fashion.

Creatures (31):

4 Sidewinder Sliver

4 Muscle Sliver

4 Sinew Sliver

4 Predatory Sliver

4 Manaweft Sliver

2 Bonescythe Sliver

2 Sentinel Sliver

2 Talon Sliver

2 Venom Sliver

2 Horned Sliver

1 Harmonic Sliver

Instants (3):

3 Collected Company

Artifacts (4):

4 Æther Vial

Lands (22):

4 Sliver Hive

4 Cavern of Souls

4 Windswept Heath

4 Temple Garden

3 Forest

3 Plains

An Aggressive Core

Sinew Sliver

This deck is basically split into two parts. The first part is the standard aggressive core of Slivers. Attacking is the game plan, and these are the heavyweights of the group. Muscle Sliver, Sinew Sliver, and Predatory Sliver pump our entire team, and this deck wants a full set of all of them. They are the driving force of this deck’s power, so we want to draw as many of them as possible.

Sidewinder Sliver is a key card in these low-mana-cost decks, allowing our Slivers to outsize our opponents’ creatures from another angle. Flanking makes it impossible for 1-toughness creatures to block and kill our Slivers. It’s also important to note that multiple instances of flanking stack, so two Sidewinder Slivers means every blocking creature (without flanking) will get -2/-2. Ouch.

Manaweft Sliver is a key card in basically every Sliver deck ever. It helps us ramp mana here, since we probably won’t have any problem getting the colors we need. With all our +1/+1 Slivers slithering around, Manaweft Sliver is also a perfectly capable attacking creature.

This core tops off with a pair of Bonescythe Slivers, a card that lets this deck simply end games. Letting a single 3/3 Sliver with double strike through is painful enough, and this deck is capable of totally overwhelming an opponent with the number of creatures it can muster. Just casting the Bonescythe Sliver should be enough to end most games (if they last that long).

Toolbox of Meathooks

Collected Company

Collected Company lets this deck do something that most Sliver decks can’t: run a toolbox of impactful Slivers that we normally wouldn’t want more than one of on the battlefield. These Slivers grant abilities that don’t stack, but we still want to find them. Usually, we would run three or four copies of such cards. Now, however, we can dial them all back and rely on Collected Company digging them up as needed.

The abilities we’re looking at here are vigilance, first strike, trample, and deathtouch. Any combination of these abilities is deadly, particularly when deathtouch is in play. The idea is that these abilities can swing combat our way out of nowhere. This is particularly helpful against other aggressive decks, giving us the edge with superior cunning. One Harmonic Sliver is there just in case we need to blow some stuff up.

Collected Company and its partner in crime, Æther Vial, are the tools we use here. Vial is a common sight in low-curve creature decks like this one, plopping cards down from our hand at instant speed. Collected Company is essentially a four-drop creature for us, topping our curve while also grabbing two Slivers (ideally) every time we cast it. The card is also a pro at helping creature decks rebound after mass destruction. If we lose our board, we can cast Collected Company to bring two reinforcements right onto the battlefield.

Invest in Property

Sliver Hive

Something Gavin Verhey always promotes in his budget deck articles is to always invest in your lands. Mana fixing is one of the most important parts of a multicolored deck, and skimping out on dual lands can result in your deck losing too much consistency and tempo. Not that this is really a budget deck, but it’s worth mentioning here because this mana base isn’t exactly cheap.

Almost every deck should be running a playset of Sliver Hive. It’s just too good at fixing your mana, and the ability to pump out a Sliver token later in the game is extremely valuable in some situations. Cavern of Souls is a land I love for tribal decks for mana fixing and as tech against counterspells. When you’re best tool against control is only eating up land spots, your deck has that much more room to bolster its own game plan.

Fetch lands and shock lands is a time-tested strategy of mana fixing, and this deck just latches onto that. And, for what it’s worth, fetch lands get some cards out of the way for Collected Company. It’s not really that big of an effect, but every little advantage can swing a game your way.

In the Company of Monsters

It’s fitting that the best options for this deck fall into the two colors of community. While every color has powerful Slivers, Green and White have the most that synergize with Collected Company. The idea is that we can slam Slivers down mid-combat, so many of the Blue, Black, and Red options don’t fit. If you’re looking to add some colors to this deck, then I’d look at Crystalline Sliver, Syphon Sliver, and Blade Sliver to start. Otherwise, simply have fun with your chittering family of meathook-wielding monstrosities.

It’s been a while since I exposed you folks to a quirkytheme deck. May the theme deck doldrums end today with a tribal deck inspired by Battle for Zendikar. This deck is also a reminder that cards made for the Commander product can be used in regular 60-card casual decks too. It’s a good lesson that doesn’t get talked about a lot.

Oh, but I guess I should tell you what the deck is. While the Kor were first introduced in Tempest as captives on the plane of Rath, it was later revealed that their home plane was Zendikar. In Commander 2014 the identity of the mysterious Lithomancer was finally revealed, a Kor woman named Nahiri. Smashing these two slow reveals together into one coherent deck is pretty neat. I built a tribal Kor deck using only Nahiri and cards from the Zendikar block to keep the flavor tight. In that block the Kor have an Equipment subtheme, which just so happens to be what Nahiri is good at.

Nahiri, the Lithomancer

So let’s take a peek at the list I came up with:

Creatures:

4 Kitesail Apprentice

4 Kor Duelist

4 Stoneforge Mystic

4 Armament Master

3 Kor Cartographer

Sorceries:

1 Conqueror’s Pledge

Artifacts:

4 Adventuring Gear

2 Trusty Machete

2 Pennon Blade

2 Basilisk Collar

1 Grappling Hook

1 Trailblazer’s Boots

Planeswalkers:

3 Nahiri, the Lithomancer

Lands:

4 Sejiri Steppe

3 Emeria, the Sky Ruin

18 Plains

Equipped to the Kor

Armament Master

The important thing about Equipment decks is that they need creatures to be equipped to. Thankfully, the Kor’s subtheme gave us a ton of creatures that benefit from holding Equipment. The key members here are Kitesail Apprentice and Kor Duelist, who gain powerful abilities (flying and double strike, respectively) when equipped. They are the bread-and-butter beaters of the deck.

Stoneforge Mystic lets us tutor up the specific Equipment we want to utilize (More on this later.) It can also hold Equipment perfectly fine, being a two-drop with tribal synergy.

Speaking of tribal synergy, Armament Master lets this deck attack from another angle. Instead of loading our Equipment onto one beater, we can plop some on Armament Master to boost our whole team. This works better when we have lots of creatures on the battlefield, which is where the next two cards come into play.

We almost never want to play Conqueror’s Pledge, but if the game goes long it’s a backbreaking card. Combined with Armament Master, a surprise army of big fat fatties can turn almost any game back to our favor. Nahiri is also important here, churning out Kor tokens every turn. While her other abilities will have situational uses, she’s mostly just here to recruit Equipment dorks.

Finally, Kor Cartographer can give a little extra oomph to creatures equipped with Adventuring Gear. It also guarantees we can hit our fifth land to drop Nahiri, Conqueror’s Pledge, or fuel lots of equip costs.

Aforementioned Equipment

Adventuring Gear

So this is kind of a strange list. Being limited to Zendikar block Equipment was an interesting challenge, as the best Equipment cards in the game are mostly found on Mirrodin New Phyrexia. But let’s look at what we have. Adventuring Gear is our basic Equipment, ideally boosting a creature +2/+2 every turn (More on this later.) Trusty Machete is another basic Equipment, but its inefficiency made me only run a few copies.

Things get interesting beyond that. Usually a bunch of 1-2 of cards are a sign of disorganization, but these are here for a reason. Stoneforge Mystic lets us run our deck like a toolbox, cherry-picking the exact Equipment we want when we want it. That means we only need a few copies of Pennon Blade, Basilisk Collar, Grappling Hook, and Trailblazer’s Boosts; we’re unlikely to draw them but can tutor them up when we want.

Each card fills a different role. Pennon Blade can make a creature hugeee on the right board. Basilisk Collar grants two amazing abilities and ca help punch through big fat fatties. Grappling Hook functions like a piece of removal. Trailblazer’s Boots gets damage in against opponents running nonbasic lands.

Zendikar was a Land Block

Emeria, the Sky Ruin

It would be criminal to not take advantage of some of the nonbasic lands the block gave us. Sejiri Steppe lets one of our buffed creatures smash through for damage. Emeria, the Sky Ruin helps us out if the game goes long. Constantly feeding the battlefield from our graveyard ensures we’ll always have creatures to equip for war. This requires lots of Plains, so I made to include no other nonbasic lands.

While twenty-five lands might seem a little high for what is basically an aggressive deck, we want to be playing a land every single turn to take advantage of Adventuring Gear. We also want to reliably hit five lands so that we can play our most powerful spells and equip plenty of creatures.

If the Glove Don’t Equip, You Must Acquit

My favorite kinds of theme decks are the ones that can weave more than one theme together. One flavor thread is neat, but a bunch of them form a cohesive tapestry of flavor. Focusing a Kor tribal deck to play with one plane’s cards invites another mechanical subtheme that fleshes out a deck’s identity greater than just “pump this tribe and turn them sideways.” I hope you folks enjoyed reading about this deck as much as I enjoyed building it.