All Good Things...

And so we come to the last of these. Over the last few weeks, we've looked at building a Commander deck with severe restrictions: a deck of nothing but one-drops with a single color. A deck of two-drops with two colors. Three-drops with three colors. And now, finally, four-drops, four colors. But before we jump into the Commander and the deck, another brief note.

This is the end of this column. I'll still be writing for CoolStuffInc (and I'm really quite excited about some of the projects we have coming up - stay tuned!), but I'm done, for now, writing a weekly column with a theme. It's been over 12 years of this, and I wanted to acknowledge the change. Keep your eyes here, though. CSI is about to get - dare I say it? - cooler.

Okay. There aren't a lot of options for four-color Commanders. We could do Partners, but they both need to be four-drops and none of the possible combinations are particularly exciting. There was one guy who stood out, though. Aragorn, the Uniter.

Bring Everything Together

When you're limited to nothing but four-drops, it means one very specific thing: we will do nothing but play Lands until turn four. It's literally impossible for us to do anything before that. That means we need to do some catching up once we start casting our spells, and Aragorn, the Uniter is just the guy for the job.

For four mana (all the colors but Black), we get a 5/5 Creature. That's fine. Most of the time on turn four we'll deploy him, which at least puts a decent blocker on the 'field. In addition, we get four triggered abilities which are fantastic.

• When we cast a White spell, we make a 1/1 soldier Token
• When we cast a Blue spell, we Scry two
• When we cast a Red spell, we shoot an Opponent for three
• When we cast a Green spell, a Creature we control gets +4/+4 until end of turn

That means, unless the spell we're casting is colorless, we get an extra spell with each spell we cast. (Hint: nothing is colorless.)

Aragorn Four-Drops | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Aragorn, the Uniter

• Creatures (20)
• 1 Alms Collector
• 1 Aragorn, Hornburg Hero
• 1 Aragorn, King of Gondor
• 1 Beregond of the Guard
• 1 Boromir, Gondor's Hope
• 1 Elrond, Master of Healing
• 1 Eomer, Marshal of Rohan
• 1 Eowyn, Fearless Knight
• 1 Faramir, Prince of Ithilien
• 1 Gimli, Counter of Kills
• 1 Inga and Esika
• 1 Jetmir, Nexus of Revels
• 1 Knight of New Alara
• 1 Legolas, Counter of Kills
• 1 Lossarnach Captain
• 1 Omnath, Locus of Creation
• 1 Ondu Giant
• 1 Primeval Herald
• 1 Sigarda, Font of Blessings
• 1 Wild Wanderer

• Instants (16)
• 1 Akroma's Will
• 1 Behold the Multiverse
• 1 Case the Joint
• 1 Chemister's Insight
• 1 Comparative Analysis
• 1 Contact Other Plane
• 1 Eureka Moment
• 1 Glimmerburst
• 1 Glimmer of Genius
• 1 Hieroglyphic Illumination
• 1 Inspiration
• 1 Soul Read
• 1 Olorin's Searing Light
• 1 Resounding Silence
• 1 Triumphant Surge
• 1 Silverstrike

• Sorceries (17)
• 1 Arwen's Gift
• 1 Circuitous Route
• 1 Coastal Discovery
• 1 Day of Judgment
• 1 Decimate
• 1 Exploding Borders
• 1 Explosive Vegetation
• 1 Ill-Timed Explosion
• 1 Inscription of Insight
• 1 Lessons from Life
• 1 Map the Frontier
• 1 Migration Path
• 1 Reach the Horizon
• 1 Supreme Verdict
• 1 Vastwood Surge
• 1 The Ring Goes South
• 1 Wrath of God

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Annie Joins Up
• 1 Elven Chorus
• 1 Flight of Fancy
• 1 Future Flight
• 1 War of the Last Alliance
• 1 Whirlwind of Thought

• Lands (40)
• 4 Forest
• 4 Island
• 3 Mountain
• 3 Plains
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Frontier Bivouac
• 1 Great Hall of the Citadel
• 1 Jetmir's Garden
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Ketria Triome
• 1 Minas Tirith
• 1 Mines of Moria
• 1 Mystic Monastery
• 1 Path of Ancestry
• 1 Plaza of Heroes
• 1 Raugrin Triome
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rivendell
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Seaside Citadel
• 1 Spara's Headquarters
• 1 The Grey Havens
• 1 The Shire
• 1 Temple of Abandon
• 1 Temple of Enlightenment
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Temple of Plenty
• 1 Temple of Triumph

Buy This Deck Export text

Mana

Hypergeometic math strikes again! With 40 Lands (what we have here), we have just under a 60% chance of hitting our drops to five; it's just over 70% we get to four by turn four. Because we can't ramp to an early Aragorn, we have to get to four the old-fashioned way. Mulligan aggressively to at least three Lands in your opening Hand for sure.

Once we get to four lands, we cast Aragorn and start humming. However, getting to eight is when our sweet spot hits, and 12 is even better. That's why we're still running ramp; an opening Hand with four Lands and a ramp spell is an absolute snap-keep.

The nice thing is, at four mana the ramp spells do a lot more. Exploding Borders will almost always do four damage to someone in addition to the extra Land. Primeval Herald gets a land every time she Attacks in addition to Entering. Play her then play Circuitous Route the next turn and attack with her as a 7/5, thanks to Aragorn.

Keep in mind that because all these ramp spells are Green, they'll all at least make Aragorn a 9/9 until end of turn. That's a solid Attacker regardless of what turn it is.

Card Draw

We do want to keep cards flowing. Alms Collector punishes our Opponents for drawing too much, and Whirlwind of Thought draws us an extra every time we cast a noncreature spell. Flight of Fancy and Future Flight both make Aragorn (or something else) evasive while drawing two.

Arwen's Gift is quite likely to only cost three thanks to the sheer number of Legendaries in our deck. Behold the Multiverse, with its Foretell cost of , is one of the few things we can do before turn four.

Threats

If this deck isn't wildly underpowered at the table, Aragorn is probably your win condition. There are a lot of Green spells in the deck, and each one can give him +4/+4. Give him Flying with Flight of Fancy or Trample with Jetmir, Nexus of Revels (who gives Trample as long as you control six or more Creatures) and swing for the fences. He'll do a lot of damage.

That said, a decent Attack with the Soldiers isn't unreasonable either if the deck doesn't get reset by a board wipe. In one play-test, I got an Opponent below 20 with just the Red spell triggers off Aragorn. There are also a good number of decently-sized Creatures in the deck, and simply pushing through with a good board is a solid plan.

War of the Last Alliance will give Double Strike to everything we control when it hits Chapter III. Timed properly, that's a game-winner. Akroma's Will will also win games with the right setup. With our Commander out we can do both modes, meaning all our Creatures will have Flying, Vigilance, Double Strike, Lifelink, Indestructible, and Protection from each color until end of turn. With just a few Creatures out we should be able to do some damage with that.

Answers

One nice thing about being at four mana is we get Wrath of God. Finally! We also get Day of Judgment, which is a functional copy. Supreme Verdict is the grand-master of Wrath-style effects, since it can't be Countered. Resounding Silence is a Limited card from Shards of Alara block way back in the day, and Silverstrike will be important to someone at some point.

My favorite interaction is probably Olorin's Searing Light, which forces a Sacrifice on each of our Opponents, and most of the time will do some damage as well.

Synergy

We have three other things going on in this deck.

First, we have a large number of Legendary Creatures with substantial abilities. Consider Elrond, Master of Healing. Whenever we Scry, we put a +1/+1 Counter on each of up to X target Creatures, where X is the number of cards we looked at. Then, whenever a Creature with a +1/+1 Counter on it gets targeted by something our Opponents control, we get to draw a card. Here's a funny thing - Aragorn, the Uniter lets us Scry every time we cast a Blue spell.

Aragorn, Hornburg Hero gives all our Attacking Creatures Renown 1, which means when they deal Combat Damage they'll get a +1/+1 Counter. See? There are a lot of these funky interactions, and you'll have to watch for them depending on what you draw.

The second thing is we're playing a lot of multicolored spells. Knight of New Alara gives +1/+1 to each Multicolored Creature for each of its colors. More importantly, the more colors a creature has, the more triggered abilities we get out of Aragorn. A creature that's White, Red, and Green will make a Soldier, shoot someone for three, and give a +4/+4 bonus somewhere while also getting +3/+3 from the Knight.

Finally, we have Annie Joins Up, which we don't need but is very nice to have. Yes, it does five damage to a Creature or Planeswalker when it Enters, but more importantly, if a Triggered Ability of a Legendary Creature we control Triggers, it Triggers again. That means each White spell makes two Tokens. Each Green spell gives +8/+8, and so on. It's an important card for us.

Final Thoughts

Limiting the number of colors and mana costs during deckbuilding has been a fun restriction. It's forced me to get quite creative to create a deck which can actually hang at a table of some kind. As you grow in the game, I encourage you to try building a deck with some sort of restriction like this. Even better, challenge your playgroup to just such an exercise. What happens if you settle on a Mana Value and each build a deck with nothing but that Mana Value? It makes for fun, interactive, and cool games with great stories.

Oh! One card I didn't mention. It's not in the deck, but would be both good and thematic, even if it won't trigger Aragorn.

It's absurdly expensive, it's a Game Changer (which sort of forces this deck into Bracket 3, though I doubt this one card would make it compete at that level), and it would be very, very good here. If you happen to have a bunch of them kicking around, go ahead and run it, but expect there to be some salt when it lands.

Thanks for reading.