This week I'm brewing up my third Elder Dragon from Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS). They are all strong cards, and some are probably "Kill on Sight" Commanders if you know the deck's pilot isn't the type to pull their punches. Today I'll be covering the Simic () entry in the cycle, and I'm again finding myself trying to fit a very powerful legend into a deck that can play in Bracket 2 or Bracket 3 games.

In recent years I've been playing a lot more lower-powered EDH, and have been eschewing combos and leaving out Game Changers in most of my builds. I even leave out Sol Ring more often than not. I've found the wins are harder to achieve, but much more satisfying, so you should look at this list as a starting point. You'll probably want to move it up in power, and with this Commander you can definitely push it up into high power territory.

Before I dive into what direction I took Quandrix, the Proof, let's take a look at what this Elder Dragon brings to the game.

With Flying, Trample, and a 6/6 body, Quandrix, the Proof is a capable blocker and could represent a decent combat threat to try to win games with Commander damage. Quandrix has the perfect party trick for a Simic deck, because it's all about value.

The card itself has Cascade, which means that when I cast Quandrix I'll exile cards from the top of my library until I reveal a nonland card with a lower mana value. I'll cast that spell for free and I will put the rest of the cards on the bottom of my library in a random order.

Where things get really interesting is in the last two lines of her text box. Instant and Sorcery spells I cast from my hand have Cascade. That means that this deck will want to have a focus on Instants and Sorceries, it will want lots of spells with low mana values, and it will probably not want any spells with in the casting cost. Cascading into an spell will have equal zero, so it's nearly always a bummer.

Simic Spellslinger isn't an archetype I've built yet. Izzet () Spellslinger is so powerful and so much fun that I don't think I've ever really tried to do it in Blue and Green. Not being in Red, I won't be focusing on damage spells, but I will be able to play a lot of Ramp.

I like that Quandrix doesn't lead us into any one type of build. Simic is already known for squeezing a lot of extra value out of the cards they bring to a game of Magic, and Quandrix is likely to turn that dial up to eleven. Taking the train to Valuetown isn't really a game plan, but I ended up settling on something that makes sense for me and for the lower powered tables I play at.

A Token Gameplan

I do like decks that have a plan, so the lane I ended up picking was token generation. There are a lot of Instant and Sorcery spells in Green and Blue that generate Creature tokens. There are also token doublers and permanents that create tokens when I cast an Instant or Sorcery spell, so this feels like a very good fit for Quandrix, the Proof.

Some of those spells are overcosted, and some are just not that powerful, but if I'm getting a Cascade trigger every time I cast an Instant or Sorcery, I'm optimistic that it's going to work pretty well.

A token generator like Fungal Sprouting is fantastic in any deck where you are likely to have truly enormous Creatures. In this list it's still a serviceable way to get a half dozen blockers into play and Cascade into a spell with a mana value of less than four. Six 1/1 Saproling Tokens might not seem like much, but when combined with a Beastmaster Ascension or Overwhelming Stampede, they can push out a lot of damage.

This deck has a handful of zero-mana spells so I can cast a one-mana spell like Pongify or Rapid Hybridization and still hope to hit something when I Cascade. Cards like Spellbook, Mox Amber, and Sol Talisman will all feel good, but a spell like Crashing Footfalls will feel especially good.

Crashing Footfalls has Suspend 4, letting me pay to exile it with four time counters. I'll remove a time counter on my upkeep and when it has none left I'll cast it to create two 4/4 Green Rhino Creature tokens. Both this spell and Sol Talisman are suspend cards with no mana value, so you can't normally cast either from your hand, but you can still cast them by cascading into them.

Faerie Slumber Party might seem like a "nonbo" with Quandrix, the Proof until you remember that I'll get a Cascade trigger when I recast Quandrix. This Sorcery will return all Creatures to their owners' hands, and I'll create two 1/1 Blue Faerie Creature tokens with Flying for each opponent who controlled a Creature returned this way.

Those tokens can only block Flyers, and bouncing my own token Creatures will just make them poof out of existence, but I still want to try this Wilds of Eldraine rare. It's an answer if someone else has a wildly out of control board state, and it's also a decent turn six play if I won't be losing too many token Creatures.

I'm running sixteen Instants and 19 Sorceries, so it made sense to lean into permanents that trigger when I cast those spells, or just noncreature spells in general. Token generation is my main gameplan so I'm running Talrand, Sky Summoner, Deekah, Fractal Theorist, Murmuring Mystic, and even Whispering Wizard.

They will all generate Creature tokens, with the first three triggering off of Instant and Sorcery spells. Whispering Wizard will trigger only once each turn but cares about noncreature spells. These all play well with Cascade, as that ability should reliably give me extra cast triggers.

Card draw is incredibly important in Commander and I'm running a handful of staples in Shamanic Revelation, Rishkar's Expertise, and Return of the Wildspeaker. I'm most excited about getting Archmage of Runes or Archmage Emeritus into play. These will both draw me cards when I cast Instants and Sorcery spells, and the former will also make those spells cost one less mana to cast.

Aetherflux Reservoir is a classic wincon in Izzet storm decks, so I figured I'd give it a try in today's list. This four-mana Artifact will have me gain life whenever I cast a spell equal to the number of spells I've cast this turn. For the low, low cost of 50 life, I can also use it to hit any target for 50 damage. This little trick is best used when I've got just one opponent left alive, but it can also kill someone with the win on the stack.

Prove It All Night

I don't know for sure that Quandrix, the Proof will prove its worth at all, much less prove it all night, but I'm optimistic this will be a fun deck and will be playable in lower powered games. It is hard to argue that Quandrix isn't an incredible source of value, but Cascade is the kind of mechanic that can bring a lot of variance into your game.

You might think your nine-mana Entwined One Dozen Eyes is going to hit a big, splashy card when it Cascades, but you might easily hit that zero mana Spellbook that is in the list to give your Pongify something to Cascade into.

Variance aside, getting two spells for every one Instant or Sorcery you cast is still very strong, and your results will largely be affected by what you load your deck up with. If you run a dozen extra removal spells, you'll find yourself playing hard control, but if you run a dozen extra card draw spells, you'll be looking at lots of options and hoping you hit your Reliquary Tower.

You might want to avoid too many cards that are bad hits when cascading, such as counterspells and combat tricks. Cascading into an Aetherspouts or Aetherize in your second main phase will never feel good.

Quandrix, the Proof | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Quandrix, the Proof

• Creatures (13)
• 1 Adrix and Nev, Twincasters
• 1 Archmage Emeritus
• 1 Archmage of Runes
• 1 Deekah, Fractal Theorist
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Faerie Mastermind
• 1 Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios
• 1 Murmuring Mystic
• 1 Quandrix Cultivator
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
• 1 Timeless Witness
• 1 Whispering Wizard

• Instants (17)
• 1 Access Denied
• 1 Aetherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Arachnogenesis
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Curious Herd
• 1 Embrace the Paradox
• 1 Fresh Meat
• 1 Growth Spiral
• 1 Harrow
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Return of the Wildspeaker
• 1 Swan Song

• Sorceries (19)
• 1 Aether Mutation
• 1 Ancestral Vision
• 1 Audience with Trostani
• 1 Crashing Footfalls
• 1 Ezuri's Predation
• 1 Faerie Slumber Party
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Fungal Sprouting
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 One Dozen Eyes
• 1 Overwhelming Stampede
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Shared Roots
• 1 Talrand's Invocation
• 1 Three Visits
• 1 Traverse the Outlands
• 1 Urban Evolution

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Parallel Lives

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Combine Chrysalis
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mox Amber
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Sol Talisman
• 1 Spellbook
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Thought Vessel

• Lands (37)
• 13 Forest
• 13 Island
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dreamroot Cascade
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Flooded Grove
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Llanowar Reborn
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Vineglimmer Snarl

Buy This Deck Export text

If you want to power this list down, you'd probably drop out Doubling Season, Aetherflux Reservoir, and then maybe run a more budget friendly mana base. This build is already running a very fair game plan, though some might argue that Cascade itself is a broken mechanic.

More likely than not you're going to be surprised with how much extra ramp you get when casting your token generators, but you probably won't be blowing many tables away with this list. To me, that's a good thing as I try to avoid pubstomping.

If you need to power this list up, you might want to shift your game plan away from token generators. Creature tokens are fine, but I'd probably look at landfall and as much ramp as I could possibly squeeze into an EDH deck. Rampaging Baloths isn't a broken card but if you're ramping and then cascading into more ramp, it isn't hard to see how that could get out of hand.

Early Results

I was able to get this list into a game in my Thursday night Tabletop Simulator playgroup. We've been struggling to get games in lately, but I was able to get this list into a game to see how it played.

The pod had me on Quandrix, the Proof, a player on Ragost, Deft Gastronaut, a player on what turned out to be a Slime Against Humanity build, and a player on a play-test card - The Colossal Dreadmaw. The player on that last deck did check before imposing an "illegal" Commander on the table, and while I had my reservations, none of us asked him to switch to a normal deck. I think it's good to let folks play weird stuff sometimes, though I don't really want it to be a regular thing.

The game was relatively long (over 10 turns) and everyone had their moment where they were doing something concerning. The tablemate on the Slime deck landed a Thrumming Stone, the Dreadmaw player overreacted, but it turned out that they only ran a couple of dozen copies of Slime Against Humanity. That was well below the number you need to reliably dump all of them on the table with Thrumming Stone.

We knocked the Slimes player down pretty low. I don't recall their Commander, but the key thing about the deck was the Thrumming Stone and the Slime Against Humanity gameplan. Once it became clear they only had two dozen Slimes, I tried to make a deal to let them live hoping someone else would deal with them, but they didn't want to do politics.

On my turn I ended up playing Ezuri's Predation and cascading into Return of the Wildspeaker. I could have drawn a bunch of cards but I saw a chance to knock one player out and another down into single digits so I went for the +3/+3 buff to all non-human Creatures I control. I already had a handful of 3/3 Beast tokens from an earlier casting of Curious Herd, so I killed the Slime Against Humanity player and knocked Ragost down to a single digit life total.

From there things got messy, as the Ragost player got their lifegain online and started dinging their two remaining opponents for six and gaining 12. The Dreadmaw player and I seemed to have an unsaid agreement that we'd need to deal with Ragost first and after a few attacks I was able to get them low enough for my Mono-Green tablemate to finish them off.

When I stated that I had reservations about The Colossal Dreadmaw earlier, I wasn't kidding. I've been playing a lot of Mono-Green and I've been consistently impressed with how easy it is to push out a ton of combat damage at low powered tables without resorting to combo or anything more than the occasional Overwhelming Stampede.

My tablemate is the friend who has the enviable, but annoying habit of building Bracket 2 decks that draw twice as many cards as anyone else in the pod. Toward the end of the game Ragost, who had been trying to find a Bracket 2 list to play that wasn't too overpowering, was down to a single card. So was I, and it was probably the worst card in my library.

In the mid-game I had been relatively sure the Dreadmaw player had us, though I didn't know how yet. After Ragost was gone, I had a turn where I had one chance to win. My tokens had Flying and I had lethal on the Dreadmaw player, but on my upkeep he cast the only Fog spell in his deck, Winds of Qal Sisma. I drew a Forest, played it, and conceded.

The end was very frustrating for me, but mostly because I felt like I saw how things would end for maybe a half an hour. The Dreadmaw player kept insisting that he had the longest shot at winning the game - all the while drawing two or three cards every time he cast a Creature.

I really hate gaslighting, but in his defense I simply had a gut feeling things would take a bad turn for me at the worst possible moment. In the end I was right, but I can see why he might not have thought he had the win.

While I find playing low-powered decks very frustrating at times, the deck gave me much of what I expected. I hit ramp spells with my cascade triggers when I didn't really need more Ramp. I probably chose poorly when I failed to draw cards with Return of the Wildspeaker, but at the time it felt wise to eliminate a threat and knock another player down to a much lower life total.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I think that not hitting any card draw was probably the biggest problem for me in that game. My buddy on the Dreadmaw deck did admit that his deck was "running hot" and mine was clearly "running cold".

A one game sample size is not enough to have a firm opinion of a deck, but I think this is a decent starting point for a low powered Quandrix build. You'd want to load in cards to match your playstyle and the power level of your playgroup. If you're willing to put up with the variance that comes from playing a Cascade deck, there is fun to be had with Quandrix, the Proof.

Paths Not Traveled

I don't usually devote much time to looking at cards I didn't end up running, but this list has a few cards I left out that deserve a mention. You might want to run them, but there are reasons I left them out.

Sphinx-Bone Wand is the card I had in my test game from the start of the game all the way to the end. When I drew it in my starting hand I did a double-take because I thought I had already swapped it out. This was a fine card in Storm and Cascade themed decks back in the early 2010s, but I'm not sure it's playable in 2026.

It's a seven-mana paperweight that can push out a ton of damage if you have the time to cast it and then cast lots of spells, but the format has sped up a lot over the past decade or so. If you can reliably cheat it into play early, I think it might be worth running in Quandrix, but this list isn't set up to do that.

I had it in my opening hand in my test game and never cast it. I never had a single moment where it seemed like the right play, and it took me a while to even get to the point where I was making seven mana.

My Quandrix deck is built around token generators, and I was asked after that first game if I was running Avenger of Zendikar. Lots and lots of token decks run it, but my answer was no for the simple fact that I was leaning heavily into Instant and Sorcery spells. Avenger of Zendikar isn't an Instant or Sorcery so it wasn't even under consideration.

Leaning into a theme doesn't always make a deck stronger, and when you're building for lower powered tables it might make sense to leave a format staple out of your list - especially if leaving that card out aligns with the theme you're building around.

The Elephant in the room this week is the last card shown above - Food Chain. Quandrix, the Proof is a fantastic Food Chain Commander. If you can play Misthollow Griffin or Eternal Scourge and make a zillion mana (only usable to cast Creatures) you can cast and re-cast Quandrix, the Proof until you've cast every single spell in your library.

That can be a lot of fun, and any Food Chain deck should be able to win the game once it hits its combo, but it's not great for Bracket 2 tables. It's probably even a bit much for Bracket 3, though you should check with your playgroup before you make a final decision on attempting to build B3 Food Chain Quandrix.

Final Thoughts

My biggest reservations about this brew were the reservations I often have with Simic decks. They can be all about the value engine without a clearly identifiable wincon. In my test game I was able to get a Doubling Season and Aetherflux Reservoir into play, and I used them to get within a single fog of winning the game. In the end it wasn't enough but if they had gotten out a bit earlier maybe my luck would have changed.

I've started picking up booster packs of Secrets of Strixhaven, and I have always loved to let fortune determine what I'll be building next. With this column and two upcoming columns from fellow CoolStuffInc writers, we will have covered all five Elder Dragons in this set. I love Dragons so I wanted to cover a few of them, but I'm excited to see what I pull and get to build next.

On a personal note, I recently took apart over a half dozen Commander decks to make space for SOS builds. A few of those decks were easy choices, but a bunch were "Muppet" decks. For years I altered Magic cards with Muppets, and those decks turned into some of my favorite decks ever.

Muldrotha, the Gravetide was painted as Pepe, the King Prawn, and rocked a powerful suite of Sultai () combos including a Hermit Druid, painted as Kermit the Frog.

I had all of the members of the Electric Mayhem band as alters. Wulfgar of Icewind Dale was painted as Animal, Grumgully, the Generous was painted as Dr. Teeth, Vadrik, Astral Archmage was Floyd Pepper, Chulane, Teller of Tales was Zoot, and Raggadragga, Goreguts Boss was Lips.

I also had Janice painted on Najeela, the Blade Blossom, but those decks were no longer a great match for the lower powered tables I've been playing at. If you don't recognize any of those names, go back and watch some Muppet movies - they are well worth it.

My Muppet decks weren't cEDH, but they could win games at a decent clip. I loved them all, but change is good and it just felt like time to move those cards into my alters binder. I still have a few decks with alters as the Commanders, and hopefully with this big churn in my deck library I'll be inspired to paint more cards in the coming months. If nothing else, it freed up a bunch of staples and powerful cards that I can now run in upcoming brews.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!