「̵̺̰͖͍̚A̸̰̪̝̍W̸̭̱͑A̸̮͎̾̊͝K̶̜̣̈́͘͜͜E̸̛̟̔̇̃N̶̨̮̱̟̿͝」̶

Commander / EDH* Aggro Annihilator Artifact Combo Eldrazi Ramp Tap/Untap

Trolldier_of_Fortune

Artifact (47)

• 1x Assault Suit
• 1x Basalt Monolith
• 1x Blinkmoth Urn
• 1x Clock of Omens
• 1x Cloud Key
• 1x Commander's Plate
• 1x Crawlspace
• 1x Darksteel Forge
• 1x Everflowing Chalice
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Forsaken Monument
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Hedron Archive
• 1x Helm of the Host
• 1x Jeweled Lotus
• 1x Karn's Sylex
• 1x Krark-Clan Ironworks
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1x Lithoform Engine
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Moonsilver Key
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Mystic Forge
• 1x Null Brooch
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x Sculpting Steel
• 1x Semblance Anvil
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Stonespeaker Crystal
• 1x Strionic Resonator
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x The Mightstone and Weakstone  ^Meld
• 1x The One Ring
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Torpor Orb
• 1x Unwinding Clock
• 1x Urza's Incubator
• 1x Voltaic Key
• 1x Winter Orb
• 1x Worn Powerstone

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Blast Zone
• 1x Blinkmoth Well
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Crystal Vein
• 1x Darksteel Citadel
• 1x Deserted Temple
• 1x Eldrazi Temple
• 1x Eye of Ugin
• 1x Field of the Dead
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Mage-Ring Network
• 1x Mishra's Workshop
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rishadan Port
• 1x Sanctum of Ugin
• 1x Scorched Ruins
• 1x Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
• 1x Spawning Bed
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x The Mycosynth Gardens
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Treasure Vault
• 1x Urza's Mine
• 1x Urza's Power Plant
• 1x Urza's Saga
• 1x Urza's Tower
• 1x Urza's Workshop
• 1x Vesuva
• 1x War Room
• 1x Wasteland
• 2x Wastes

Commander (1)

Creature (10)

• 1x Conduit of Ruin
• 1x Junk Diver
• 1x Kozilek, the Great Distortion
• 1x Kuldotha Forgemaster
• 1x Metalworker
• 1x Myr Retriever
• 1x Scrap Trawler
• 1x Silent Arbiter
• 1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Karn, Living Legacy
• 1x Ugin, the Ineffable
• 1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Instant (2)

• 1x Spatial Contortion
• 1x Warping Wail

Sorcery (2)

• 1x All is Dust
• 1x Introduction to Annihilation

---

Maybeboard

Artifact (2)

• 1x Inspiring Statuary
• 1x Vedalken Orrery

Creature (1)

• 1x Shimmer Myr

---

The bumpy ride is over now. I'm puttin' spikes and spinning gold rims on this one.

NOTE: This description is a work in progress. If it feels a bit all over the place or repeats, it's because I just started typing relevant shit that came to mind. Everything will be sorted and much neater overall in the future.

When I made this deck originally, a colorless commander deck sounded like a weird snowflake kind of thing that would be cute in concept, but absolutely suck to build and play. Then I began testing, and quickly came to find that the funny colorless deck with a 10 drop commander was fast. Crazy fast. I started tuning it up to make it faster, and with lots of time and suggestions from folks here, I made it into a deck that apparently a lot of people thought was pretty cool, and so did I. The best part was letting my friends pilot it blind, and watching their reactions as they curved their opening hand out in 3-5 turns into Kozilek.

That was 8 years ago though, and I've been out of Magic for years at this point trying to get back in. So, to get me back into the swing of things, I figured the best thing for me to do would be to get my greatest creation back into fighting shape. I don't play a lot of paper Magic these days so the limit of price isn't a factor for me anymore either, hence the spinning rims. (Mishra's Workshop, I'm looking at your $3500 ass.)

This (hopefully) new and improved pain train has been rebuilt from the ground up based on my old Kozilek list and several suggestions. The game plan at the end of the day is the exact same with this deck as it was with the other one: Get Kozilek on board as fast as your hand can make it happen, and break your opponent(s) over your knee. However, this new deck makes use of far more sources of cost reduction to make casting Kozilek and other spells more efficient as opposed to merely ramping like a madman to get there. Gone are cute cards like Dark Depths that were there more because I could use them than because I should use them. I just want to go fast.

Why Butcher?

That's an excellent question, header text. And the Commander community at large, for that matter. Kozilek, the Great Distortion is a far more popular choice (the #1 choice for colorless, in fact) for VERY good reasons. His draw trigger is generally much better, and he counters spells for a simple discard after making sure you have seven cards in hand, which patches up colorless's glaring weakness to artifact hate/removal quite nicely, as well as covering his own giant ass from removal. So why would I go with Butcher of Truth over Great Distortion? The answer is simple:

Because I'm stubborn.

Okay, I'm only half-joking. I chose Butcher over Distortion back in the day because Distortion didn't even exist when I first made this. The reason I stuck with Butcher once Distortion came out is because Distortion doesn't come with anything nearly as debilitating as annihilator 4, which is the strongest annihilator available since Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is banned. Annihilator 4 is only available on Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, and Ulamog costs more, requires a slight power boost to be a two-shot commander damage kill, and doesn't give you nearly the card advantage Kozilek can.

I think Emrakul, the Promised End is another solid commander who comes with protection, evasion, built in cost reduction, and a potentially really gnarly cast trigger, but I think that's a commander better suited for a different style of deck than I'm going for with this one. Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger probably makes for a better commander than Infinite Gyre would, as Hunger costs less, exiles TWO targets on cast, and trades in annihilator 4 for the ability to just eat people's decks. I don't think either are quite as good as either of the Kozileks though.

(Re)Building the Destroyer

The original deck's game plan was to brute force so much mana I could play anything I could ever want, so I shoved every mana rock I could reasonably fit into a commander deck in, and it just worked. As I've stated above though, this plan has gone through a bit of revision in this new form. I don't want or need all the mana to play all the things, I need KOZILEK. I still have mana rocks for days, but I've put in many more ways to reduce Kozilek's cost to try and meet somewhere in the middle instead of getting to 10 as fast as I can. As the main draw is fast Kozilek, I've also included some more short-term gain mana sources such as Jeweled Lotus and Lion's Eye Diamond to get to bulldozing as fast as I can.

Trolldier, this thing is $7000, who in the actual hell is going to want anything to do with this?

Fortunately, Mishra's Workshop accounts for half of that, and you don't really need it. Honestly, there are a LOT of things I've put in here that you could find good budget alternatives to. Colorless land bases are fun because you can really just put whatever utility lands you want in, plus some Wastes to taste/budget as Path to Exile insurance or fetchables for Solemn Simulacrum/Burnished Hart. There are also heaps of mana rocks that didn't make it in here that are much cheaper, that you will be just as happy to draw.

When I built the original Kozilek list I used a good chunk of trade value and about $400 to put that together, and some higher end cards were much cheaper, (I got Mana Vault at $70, and I got Grim Monolith and Metalworker for $25!) but a lot has changed since then. Not that it was much of a budget list to start with, anyway. Once I'm confident with this one I might tackle a budget list people might actually care about for more than just TappedOut window shopping and magical Christmas land theorycraft, or potentially make a section in this here description box with budget alternatives to expensive stuff. Until I get to that, let's get to-

The fun parts:

You have a two-hit kill commander that sustains card advantage while obliterating your opponent's boardstate.

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth draws you four cards on cast instead of entering the battlefield, cast triggers being a feature shared by many Eldrazi cards. This means that if your big 10 mana monstrosity gets hit with a counterspell, you still get to draw your four cards. This is HUGE when you're dealing with a deck like this, as those four cards will almost certainly give you the mana to recast Kozilek in the event that it is countered or removed before you can use it. And it will happen, but I just get to cast again and get more cards. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.

What really makes this deck a terror on the table comes down to one word I've already talked about a little: Annihilator. The goal is to slap down Big Kozzy as fast as I can get him out, and optimally that's fast enough that a single annihilator 4 trigger seriously hobbles somebody's board before it develops into much. Sometimes I'm not that fast though, and I have much more board to try and clear off. That's why I have cards like Strionic Resonator and Lithoform Engine on deck here. Why settle for annihilator 4 when I could have annihilator 8? Combine that with untap effects and if they don't scoop with the triggers on the stack, it'll sure look like they just did.

Weaknesses and how to cover them:

As simple as the game plan is, this is a really intricate deck that requires a lot of things to go right, and is highly susceptible to disruption. Artifact hate is a very real thing, and for a colorless player, it goes from disruption to practically a death sentence. This alone is a major reason why Kozilek, the Great Distortion is the most popular commander for colorless, because he comes equipped with a plan for that. With that said, I too have a plan for it:

Just kill them before they can do it.

Sure sounds like a great plan, doesn't it? If only it were that easy. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it actually is. This deck is very fast. But so are removal spells and counter spells. And if anyone at the table is holding onto one of either, they're probably waiting for Kozilek to use it. So we need contingencies. Just because Kozilek, the Great Distortion isn't in the command zone doesn't mean he can't counter spells for me in the 99, but that alone isn't enough.

I've got sorcery based artifact removal like your Vandalblasts and your Merciless Evictions covered with a cheeky little instant called Warping Wail, so that's another, but that isn't going to help me against things like Stony Silence or Karn, the Great Creator. That's where one of my favorite little silver bullets comes in:

Null Brooch. You'd think ditching your whole hand to counter one spell sounds kind of shitty. Fortunately this deck burns through cards really fast, so unless I've just cast one of the Kozileks, I'm probably not sacrificing much in the way of cards. Even if I am, if I'm stopping something from shutting my board down, it's probably worth it. Null Brooch also works with untap effects to counter multiple spells potentially, as the discard cost doesn't actually care if you have a hand or not when you start, just that you don't when it's done.

This deck also has a bit of an issue against more aggressive decks on slower hands, and even on some faster hands against aggressive decks that like to go wide with creatures. Until I have Kozilek or an equivalent eldritch monstrosity on the board, this is mostly just a defenseless pile of shiny rocks, but I do have ways to limit aggression against me while I build, such as Crawlspace and Silent Arbiter. All is Dust and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon make for incredible one-sided board wipes in any colorless deck as well, and Karn's Sylex can potentially clear up the board enough for Kozilek to swing through if the annihilator won't do enough damage to your opponent's board, though that is potentially a risky play.

Historically, this deck has also had issues in larger games simply due to the attention you bring to yourself by having an Eldrazi titan commander and ramping like a maniac. In 1v1s it was absolutely busted, but that's to be expected from a deck that the Duel Commander banlist would call a war crime. I've taken a couple steps to improve multiplayer viability though, such as Helm of the Host to give me multiple Kozileks to deal with multiple people, and Assault Suit which will allow my opponents to beat each other up with the power of my giant rent-a-monster. The One Ring will be very nice to give me a turn to breathe guaranteed against aggressive players, but that doesn't stop them from doing anything to my stuff so we'll see how that goes over.

Winning the MTG arms race:

I should be clear here, I don't exactly care much for infinite combos where you just instantly (or worse, eventually through slow play) win the game. If you find that kind of play interesting, I'm not going to knock you, but I've tried it and I find that people I play with don't much care for them, and I find them in general a rather boring way to end a game. With that said, there's a lot of cards that I've put together here that either intentionally or incidentally combo with each other, and some of those combos will absolutely just win me the game on the spot. When you build a deck out of mostly staple cards and minor pieces of tech, combos assemble themselves eventually, and I will take advantage of them if I feel like it would be appropriate.

-- Infinite combo list placeholder -- (There's a good list of combos in the comment section page 2, see that until I update this.)

Date added	1 year
Last updated	1 year
Exclude colors	WUBRG
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	21 - 0 Mythic Rares 45 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.51
Tokens	Construct 0/0 C, Copy Clone, Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Emblem Karn, Living Legacy, Powerstone, Spirit 2/2 C, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Colorless Collective