Before I get into the article, I’ll describe my plans moving forward.
I don’t want to push myself too far at the beginning and turn it into burnout at the end, so I’m going for two posts a week for now. Weeks will alternate between an exploration of color combinations, and a travel through the history of Magic sets and their viability as commanders. There’s obviously more sets than there are color combinations, so eventually I’m just going to be talking about sets. But for now, that’s the plan. Posts will be in the following order:
- A bit about the general plan for the chosen color combo, and looking over my deck.
- Decklisting a new deck in that color combo, with a significant departure from my deck’s game plan.
- Analyzing the legendary creatures from a set, in chronological order.
- Choosing one of those legendary creatures and making a deck for them.
Yes, I like deckbuilding. Guess that’s why I’m doing this. Anyways! Let’s actually get to what I’m doing here today.
Also, I looked into a plugin for having card link embeds in my posts, but I’d need to pay WordPress $40 a month for that. I might do it later.
Color Combo 1: Colorless
Colorless is a strange beast in Magic. At the same time, it doesn’t have an identity like the five colors do, but it sort of does. The identity of colorless, for a long portion of Magic’s history, has been general support. Colorless cards have been printed that specifically help certain colors (like tapping for mana), but a lot of them are simply generally useful. They do less powerful versions of colored effects, but because there’s no color requirement, every color has access to them. Colorless is the “color” of artifacts, with blue, white, and red generally being the best colors to support artifacts.
With the advent of the Eldrazi cards, colorless achieved a new identity: giant monsters. Moreso than green ever achieved by itself, colorless has somewhat turned into the “color” of singularly game-breaking creatures. Play one creature, take an extra turn, also it’s extremely hard to kill, hard to block, deals 15 damage, and your opponent has to sacrifice their stuff so it’s even harder to kill or block. Granted, the first Emrakul is a little overkill, but it’s a good example of what colorless has started to become.
When building a colorless deck, your choices of focus are somewhat limited. It’s either artifacts, Eldrazi, or trying to combine the two.
Karn’s Pawn Shop
For my deck, I’ve chosen to focus on artifacts. Yes, there’s a few Eldrazi in there, but it’s mostly because they’re really good. Those who know what’s available will be surprised at the lack of Eldrazi Titans, but that’s due to a phobia of the card Bribery. I have a lot of success with this deck. It’s very resilient, with multiple redundancy pieces, lots of ways to get cards back from the graveyard, and several options for completely dominating a game, to the point that you might as well be the only person there.
Let’s take a look at the major categories of card. I’m going to try and use the same categories across posts, for consistency. One of the categories will have to change a bit from post to post; you’ll see why.
Commander
This deck is helmed by Karn, Silver Golem. His ability to turn non-creature artifacts into creatures means that, in general, I’m running very few creatures compared to most decks, since every mana rock, utility card draw artifact, and giant bomb are all creatures waiting to be hatched.
Mana
For most decks, there are two main important support categories: mana, and card draw. Luckily, colorless is absolutely stacked with good mana options, even limiting yourself to just colorless mana. I categorize 15 cards in the deck as mana-related, whether because they discount my spells, let me save mana, or just give me access to more mana. If you’re looking to make this deck, there’s absolutely no need to run Grim Monolith or Mana Vault (yes, I don’t own a Mana Crypt yet). That being said, here’s the top three that you should definitely get, whether going artifacts or Eldrazi:
- Forsaken Monument. All your lands and mana rocks make extra mana, on top of life gain and a power boost. It’s an even better Mirari’s Wake, and that card is already good.
- Ugin the Ineffable. He makes blockers that draw cards, he blows stuff up, but most of all, discounting spells by 2 is bonkers.
- Krark-Clan Ironworks. Yes, this one is more than a few dollars. But there’s really not a better card for emergency turning permanents into answers. There’s also plenty of spare artifacts, tokens, etc that make Ironworks mana positive.
Card Draw
This is generally where colorless decks struggle. Obviously, the colors of Magic have their own ways to draw cards, but giving even an underpowered card draw effect to all colors is not something WotC does a lot. It’s not impossible, but your card choices are more limited. I list 7 cards as dedicated card draw, in that it’s their primary function in the deck, though there’s more than 10 total cards that provide some sort of “get more cards in hand” advantage. Mystic Forge and Karn, Scion of Urza are both pretty obvious good choices here, and if you have a copy of The One Ring, this is about as good a deck as any to include it.
Removal
Getting rid of problems is always important. And luckily, colorless has some absolute bangers. All is Dust, despite not being an artifact, is back-breaking, and gets around indestructible. Nevinyrral’s Disk (shoutout to Larry Niven) solves a lot of problems, and becomes an actual lock if your permanents are indestructible. I’ve got over a dozen removal-y cards, but my favorite, by far, is Null Brooch. Colorless counterspells are, by and large, crap. But this one is amazing. Discarding your hand is a bit of a tall ask, but again, colorless is bad at card draw. How many cards were in that hand in the first place? And because it’s a permanent, you can untap it through various means and counter another spell later too.
Winning the Game: Big Idiots
This is the category that’ll shift across posts. Sometimes, you want big power plays that make you win. Sometimes, you want a big pile of synergy that eventually creates a win. Here, I’m going with several big cards that turn the game in my favor. Obvious choices like Darksteel Forge and Platinum Emperion are present, but there’s a few that are secret all stars. Akroma’s Memorial not only powers up all your temporary creatures, but gives itself haste and vigilance when you turn it into a creature, making it a better Akroma than actual Akroma. And Dragon Throne of Tarkir might be a bad Craterhoof, but even a bad Craterhoof wins games.
Misc Top 3
Some cards don’t fit neatly into these categories, but are very good in the deck regardless. I’ll save space at the end of each decklist post to put my favorite “extra” cards.
- Mishra’s Self-Replicator. The tokens you create also trigger to make even more tokens, quickly making a large army of 2/2s. If you get the Replicator out along with Krark-Clan Ironworks, you can put the triggers on the stack, sacrifice half of them to pay for all of the triggers, and get a net-gain of 50% more Replicators each time you cast a spell for no additional cost.
- Chimil, the Inner Sun. Free spells are great, and the biggest blowout you’ll get to your Darksteel Forge is getting it countered.
- Mirage Mirror. Mirror is a good card in lots of decks, and the fact that it’s an artifact gives it even more utility here. Playing a Nevinyrral’s Disk out tapped, implying your opponents have an extra turn, and then making Mirror a copy of Disk and using it right away, is a big brain play that makes you feel real smart.
Lands
For the most part, when I’m making decks, I don’t worry too much about lands. I’ll either say “you should invest in fetches, shock lands, triomes, etc for fixing” or “you’re fine with Gates, refuges, basics, etc”. Land bases vary wildly in cost, and honestly, most decks can work casually with a pretty basic mana base. That being said, colorless is a bit of an exception, since you have access to a truckload of utility lands with spell-like effects. It’s not necessary; you can just run a bunch of Wastes. But if you can get your hands on good utility lands, there’s basically no down-side to running them, except for the wild Wave of Vitriol, so if your playgroup is lousy with Vitriol, maybe stick to Wastes.
This post doesn’t cover every single card. We’d be here all day. But hopefully, you get an idea of the deck’s game plan, some ideas for good cards to prioritize if you want to make a deck like this, things like that. Tune in later this week, when I pick an Eldrazi commander and make a deck around the other thing that colorless does.
That's Pretty NEET 