Kozilek Commander: Getting Ready for Battle

Zendikar block had so many cool cards, it's unreal.

And we're going back.

Battle for Zendikar is one of my most anticipated sets. Why?

Eldrazi.

Lots of creatures and themes in Magic are "borrowed" from other sources, but the Eldrazi are connected to the underlying themes of Magic in a way that is internal to the game. They exist between the planes and consume mana. Eldrazi are the colorless creatures I was waiting for ever since I fell in love with artifacts a million years ago.

We are headed back to Zendikar and I'm hyper-pumped about it. Thanks to the annihilator mechanic, the Eldrazi can be oppressive and unfun to play against, but since we are headed back to Zendikar, I thought it might be time to get ready.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.



My blue Commander deck started out as a wacky Braids deck that played things for free. It evolved from there, but I always fought to keep the creature count high. The deck basically pushes out creatures and swings with them. I wanted a shell that let me play the biggest creatures in the game consistently and this is it.

But it's a blue deck for all the wrong reasons.

In most games, I would drop a few Islands and maybe a mana rock before someone would try to combo off. Then, everyone else at the table would look at me and this would happen:

Them: "Hey blue mage, you can stop this right?"

Me: "No I don't have a way to stop this, because this isn't really a blue deck."

Them: "But, but... Islands?!"

Me: "Don't think of them as Islands. Think of them as watery robot factories."

Them: "You suck."

Me: (heavy sigh)

And then we would lose.

I always wanted to build a colorless deck. And hey, the Eldrazi are hella cool. The Commander format has come a long way in the past few years, so I'm not as concerned about annihilator being too oppressive. It's still no fun to be on the receiving end of a huge annihilator attack, but the decks I see these days have effective tools for dealing with creatures and aren't as soft to losing a few permanents.

That said, almost no deck has a consistently effective way to deal with a turn 2 Kozilek with haste.

And that's the problem.

I want a colorless deck full of Eldrazi, but I don't want a boring colorless Eldrazi deck. It's relatively easy to put Kozilek in the commander's seat and build an engine that puts him out on turn 5 or earlier. Simply casting him will trigger the "draw four cards" thing, so it's relatively easy to recover from disruption, too.

As deckbuilders, we are in an awkward spot right now if we want to build a colorless Eldrazi deck. There are only two Eldrazi options for your commander. Since Emrakul is banned, you can pick from Ulamog or Kozilek. Kozilek is slightly less mana to cast and draws cards, so I use him. But it could go either way.

That's not the awkward part.



Both of the legendary Eldrazi we can choose from are colorless. That means, to follow the color identity rule, we aren't allowed to use any cards with a color in our deck. This includes basic lands. There are only so many Eldrazi-themed cards printed right now, and they tend to be mana hungry (get it!?), so this severely limits the cards we can put in the deck to end up with a playable pile.

If we want to add a color to build a more varied deck with a larger card pool, we end up with a commander that is not an Eldrazi.

Awkward.

But, I want to get ready for Battle for Zendikar, so it's time to build the deck with what I already have and look forward to sweet replacements and upgrades in the new set.

Like this guy:



For those of you playing along at home, here is a link to my colorless Kozilek deck. I'm still figuring out the non-basic lands, so it is technically illegal right now (07AUG15) because of the swamps. It borrows heavily from the deck linked here, but to be fair a colorless deck like this mostly builds itself. Use the playtest button on tappedout to give it a try. Even with my terrible version, Kozilek on turn 5 or 6 is common. There isn't much to it. Just mulligan aggressively for ramp.

And that's no fun.

Well, it is fun once or twice. But then it's boring to play and boring to play against.

So, let's try this again. Here's a 5 color Eldrazi deck. It's a lot slower. Instead of ramping out a quick Kozilek, you spend a dozen turns screwing around until you plop out a monster and try to run away with the game. It's not a great plan and I don't think it's all that interesting either.

It gets worse. Here's a mono-black Eldrazi deck. And here's a mono-blue Eldrazi deck.

My hands are tied at this point. The colorless version of the deck feels the most like a "real" Eldrazi deck in that I can actually run a legendary Eldrazi in the command zone. A colorless deck is also a novelty. What we need are more colorless Eldrazi that slow the deck down, but keep the theme consistent. It's not just ramp, ramp, ramp, Kozilek! Oblivion Sower is a step in that direction and I have high hopes for more in Battle for Zendikar.