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I am The Collector // Lord Xander

Commander / EDH Mill Theft UBR (Grixis) Voltron

Oakiegg


Maybeboard


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v2.1

As soon as I saw the premiere Grixis commander being teased in the Streets of New Capenna, I knew I had to have it. Unfortunately, early on, the thought was shared by just about everyone else excited for the set, and the wall of text on the fancy new vampire had enough people disregarding his , and jettisoning the gilded card's cost upward of $120. About a year later and the same card is worth a tenth of that value or so, and I realized it was time to build.

I have enough commanders now that I'm looking past "what makes a deck good" with more of a focus on "what makes a deck unique or thematic?" I think Lord Xander is easier than a few other Grixis commanders in finding that particular niche, and the focus of this deck is right in his name: Collecting.

There'll be plenty of cards with a specific focus on just taking things away from our opponents, and even more to make copies of creatures on the battlefield. This comes as a two-pronged assault: We can use cards like Helm of the Host and the Sakashima the Impostor cards to clone not just our opponent's big swingers, but also Lord Xander, the Collector himself to make some very silly swings to hitting our poor friends for half their libraries. The theme with Xander and milling, in my mind, is simple: "If I can't have it, nobody can." With that in mind, we are packing a few cards -- Maddening Cacaphony, Cut Your Losses, and others -- to really start hammering down our opponents' libraries. Bog em' or Rise of the Dark Realms for a big splashy game-ender!

Another theme that I think both fit the deck and helps its weakest spot is a helpful amount of mana ramping. It will come in the form of primary artifacts, because it's Lord Xander, and he probably has a wide variety of artifacts in his collection! The deck as constructed will have some pretty hefty mana values on a lot of the cards (Looking at you, commander) that are a particularly rough pain point to get past in Grixis. I've got a Myrkul deck where ramping out the grave-enchanter is as easy as 3 or 4 turns with consistency, but in this Xander deck, we need more options. Right now we are running the full UBR sets of Signets and Talismans, along with a few other budget commander favorites that I plan to pimp out as the ability comes. (because Lord Xander needs the good stuff, you know?)

A more potent and fun addition I've made recently is shifting the artifact focus from Ramp to Swords+, wherein I'm running as many full-art swords as I can currently afford. In playtesting, it seems the swords can get overwhelmingly strong very quickly, and turn something as simple as a Trophy Mage attack into a monstrous tutor engine when combo'd up with Sword of Hearth and Home. In fact, Hearth and Home has been one of the most consistently good swords I've used since so many creatures in the deck give us nice ETB effects such as Agent of Treachery giving us a good amount of our enemies permanents. Maybe just toss it on a Solemn Simulacrum and swing at someone in White and Green, and you'll be bringing in 2 extra lands per combat. A Swing with Xander attached with Sword of Body and Mind could be an instant kill with Bruvac the Grandiloquent on the field. There are many other silly "knicknack" artifacts that Xander has curated over the years. Weird pieces like Liar's Pendulum give us the janky ability to draw some cards through minigame shenanigans, and Lantern of Insight is a mini-counter and personal wink to a friend who loves to look at the top card of his library-I wanna see too!

I'm hoping at the end of the day to use this deck not as a big bad winner, but one that's a sinister "mister steals your girl" deck that's more focused on causing a modicum of chaos -- my favorite part of my favorite color pie -- while providing a spooky nemesis on the table that's a counterpart to a friend's New Cappenna Falco Spara, Pactweaver deck. We've got dreams of having "street wars" as a game night possibility, and this is my submission to the table.

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Comments

95% Casual

Competitive

Revision 25 See all

(10 months ago)

+1 Blood Cryptfoil main
+1 Drowned Catacomb main
+1 Graven Cairns main
-4 Island main
-2 Mountain main
+1 River of Tears main
+1 Shivan Reef main
+1 Steam Ventsfoil main
+1 Sulfur Falls main
+1 Sulfurous Springs main
-4 Swamp main
+1 Underground River main
+1 Watery Gravefoil main
Date added 1 year
Last updated 8 months
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

15 - 0 Mythic Rares

45 - 0 Rares

14 - 0 Uncommons

12 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.28
Tokens Copy Clone, Emblem Dack Fayden, Human 2/2 G, Treasure, Wolf 2/2 G
Folders Mill Concept, Decks thats not mine
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