Multiplayer Monday: Karn, Silver Golem

Welcome to the first Multiplayer Monday. This used to be titled Commander Mondays, but I'm changing the name so there will be a place for the planned Archenemy and Planechase articles. I also have managed to make most of the other articles have alliterative names and wanted to do the same with this article. Enough about article names and more about this week's Commander deck!


A colorless EDH deck is something I've been wanting to do for some time. Now actually buying the cards would be a huge expense which is something I cannot do right now, but the theory and principles of this deck are sound. Everything colorless with a focus on artifacts and Eldrazi.

Colorless EDH

Before we get to the actual deck, I want to go over exactly what a colorless EDH deck looks like. To date, there have only been six colorless legendary creatures ever printed, and here are the only five legal in EDH (Emrakul is banned in the format):

    

  

Now, only three of these can be used in a truly colorless deck. Bosh and Memnarch have to be used in red or blue decks respectively. Well, you don't have to, but the point of even having a commander/general is to use their abilities with the deck. Without mana abilities, Bosh is a 6/7 Golem with trample for eight mana which isn't bad, but Bosh can deal Commander damage to an opponent by sacrificing artifacts using red mana. Memnarch is a terrible vanilla 4/5 for seven mana if you ignore blue, and stealing things from opponents is totally awesome! I don't see why you'd use either in a purely colorless deck since they have potential in other decks especially with their color identity.

Now, as simply as possible, a commander's color identity is every colored mana symbol that appears on the card, both in the mana cost and abilities. If it shows up in reminder text of an ability word of keyword, then it is not counted. Like with Extort from Gatecrash, the reminder text specifies paying white or black mana, but if the card was just printed without the reminder text, only the word Extort would appear so it could fit in a white or black deck without a problem.

Choosing between Karn, Kozilek, and Ulamog is easy for me. I have both Ulamog and Karn (thank you From the Vault series), but I also have the oversized Karn from Commander's Arsenal. Now, people can remove commanders easily from the game through exile, damage, or tucking (which is when you put the commander into the deck either via a card that specifies where to put it, or through putting it on top of the owner's library in response to the player searching a library for a card either by use of a fetchland or some other search ability). For exile and damage/destruction, the commander goes back to the command zone where it will cost 2X + CMC where X is the amount of times it has been cast this game. Kozilek and Ulamog are already kind of costly, but what draws me to Karn is the connection with artifacts. He temporarily changes artifacts into creatures and is relatively cheap. With artifacts being the main colorless category, it seems a simple choice as to which creature to choose. I will, however, utilize Kozilek and Ulamog as supporting players, but Karn will lead the deck.

Basic Lands

When building an EDH deck, you have to use lands that produce the colors in your commander's color identity. For instance, if you build a deck using Nahiri, the Lithomancer as your commander, you can't use Glacial Fortress or a Mountain as lands because they produce colors other than your commander's color identity.

    

Now, in a colorless deck, we don't have colorless basic lands to use. Sure, there were plans a few times over the years, with a couple examples during development of Conflux:

  

We don't have one at the moment, but during a recent panel, it was announced that Wizards has figured out how to make a colorless basic land work well. In the mean time, here is my build for a Karn, Silver Golem EDH deck prior to the release of a colorless basic land.

Commander x1 Karn, Silver Golem Legendary Creatures (2) x1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth x1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre Creatures (18) x1 Arcbound Crusher x1 Arcbound Ravager x1 Artisan of Kozilek x1 Colossus of Akros x1 Darksteel Colossus x1 Darksteel Gargoyle x1 Darksteel Juggernaut x1 It That Betrays x1 Memnite x1 Myr Battlesphere x1 Ornithopter x1 Pentavus x1 Phyrexian Revoker x1 Scuttling Doom Engine x1 Signal Pest x1 Solemn Simulacrum x1 Soul of New Phyrexia x1 Wurmcoil Engine Eldrazi Spells (4) x1 All is Dust x1 Eldrazi Conscription x1 Not of This World x1 Skittering Invasion

Artifacts (40) x1 Adventuring Gear x1 Akroma's Memorial x1 Argentum Armor x1 Basilisk Collar x1 Chimeric Egg x1 Cloud Key x1 Crawl Space x1 Conjurer's Closet x1 Crucible of Worlds x1 Darksteel Forge x1 Darksteel Garrison x1 Dreamstone Hedron x1 Elixir of Immortality x1 Energy Chamber x1 Eternity Vessel x1 Everflowing Chalice x1 Expedition Map x1 Fireshrieker x1 Ghostfire Blade x1 Grimoire of the Damned x1 Hedron Matrix x1 Helm of Awakening x1 Helm of Kaldra x1 Lightning Greaves x1 Loxodon Warhammer x1 Mindslaver x1 Oblivion Stone x1 Pithing Needle x1 Ring of Three Wishes x1 Scroll Rack x1 Scythe of the Wretched x1 Seer's Sundial x1 Sensei's Divining Top x1 Shield of Kaldra x1 Skullclamp x1 Sol Ring x1 Sword of Kaldra x1 Swiftfoot Boots x1 Trailblazer's Boots x1 Umezawa's Jitte

Lands (35) x1 Ancient Tomb x1 Arcane Lighthouse x1 Blasted Landscape x1 Blinkmoth Nexus x1 Blinkmoth Well x1 Buried Ruin x1 City of Traitors x1 Crystal Vein x1 Darksteel Citadel x1 Desert x1 Encroaching Wastes x1 Eye of Ugin x1 Ghost Quarter x1 Ghosttown x1 Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai x1 Haunted Fengraf x1 Homeward Path x1 Inkmoth Nexus x1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea x1 Mishra's Workshop x1 Mutavault x1 Mystifying Maze x1 Reliquary Tower x1 Rogue's Passage x1 Scorched Ruins x1 Strip Mine x1 Tectonic Edge x1 Temple of the False God x1 Tespian's Stage x1 Tomb of the Spirit Dragon x1 Urza's Mine x1 Urza's Power Plant x1 Urza's Tower x1 Winding Canyon x1 Zoetic Cavern

Colorless decks are pretty hard to design, but there are a couple important cards in this deck:

    

All Eldrazi are good for this deck. A bit too strong for politics, but still pretty powerful. Crucible of Worlds is here for returning powerful lands from the graveyard to the battlefield. There is a ton of land destruction, so returning lands is useful. Ghostfire Blade is a great addition to colorless decks as it makes the creatures much more powerful.

    

Buried Ruin is important for getting those important artifacts back. Crucible of Worlds can put it right back onto the battlefield, so it's reusable, Mikokoro is here strictly for politics. You give everyone free cards, so they won't want to attack you. Scorched Ruins gives you four colorless mana. Aside from the Urza lands, this is the best one available.

There are many powerful artifacts and creatures in this deck, but it's pretty straight forward and relies on Karn's ability to make other creatures while equipments are used to boost his power and toughness or boost those of other creatures.