Forgive me if you've heard this before.

I started playing Magic in early 1994. I was a freshman in high school (no old jokes!).

Y'all, it was the Wild West! There was no internet. [Ed. Note: I'm older than Mark, so I can report that the Internet existed but phone modems were pretty inefficient and the communities around games were almost nonexistent.] The manager at the game store we went to near campus told us about a magazine called The Duelist, but none of us could figure out how to subscribe. We saved our pennies and bought packs, which we then proceeded to open with incredible speed. We traded within our little group - two of us - so I got all the cards and he got all the cards.

We brewed. I figured out how to win on turn one with a nine-card deck. (Fastbond and Channel, but I figured it out on my own, darnit!) My dad got curious and we went to an early tournament where a) I traded a Bayou for a Nightmare (what was I THINKING?!) and b) he won the sealed deck tournament.

We brewed. All the time. We didn't have decklists to use. No metagame to follow. No pros to give us advice. Just our wits, a pile of cards, and a hard-to-read folded-up instruction manual.

That's the fun thing about doing something like what we're doing now. Putting such an extreme budget on our building requires us to brew - we're not just downloading a list and clicking "order now" or picking up the latest precon. (Nothing wrong with either of those two things, by the way, but it's different.) We're having to look at every card we can get our hands on, figuring out what works and what doesn't, what fits in our budget and what doesn't. We might not wind up with the next cEDH deck or even the next one that will take over the tables at your LGS, but when you build like this, it's yours. Win or lose, you built it. You know every card. And you can be proud of your creation.

Today's Commander is one of those which gets the blood flowing. I'm sure there's a fancy, expensive deck in this guy which takes all the turns and wins in some convoluted fancy way. But it turns out, when you just kind of let loose and try to have fun... it's pretty darn fun.

It's a 4/4, evasive, self-protecting, and quick. Yeah, seven mana is a lot, but honestly we probably won't even cast him on turn seven. But all those factors are important, because it means you can cast him and attack with him in the same turn, so we can trigger his ability the turn we cast him.

Then all hell breaks loose. We sacrifice what is hopefully a relatively large number of token creatures, Exile that many cards, and start casting them. For free.

Here's how this works:

• You attack with Kylox.
• You sacrifice any number of other Creatures (likely a number of tokens).
• You tally up their total Power, then Exile that many cards off the top of your Library.
• You choose which of the Instants and Sorceries you Exile to cast, and in what order. Timing restrictions are ignored, and you have just this one chance. You cast them for free.
• The spells resolve in the order you put them in, probably making you a bunch more tokens, drawing you more cards, and quite possibly making your opponents nervous.

To maximize Kylox's ability, I've limited the non-land permanents to four, not including Kylox. That makes ramping tougher than normal. Treasures are fine, but I dislike the lack of reliability of Treasure Tokens - I prefer to have them be a bonus rather than trying hard to create them. So, instead of ramping, we're just playing more Land (44, to be exact).

I know, I know, it's a lot. And actually, I'm breaking one of my rules here and allowing double-face cards with Lands on one side to count in the Land total. But, as I added them, I knew I had to make a deal with you guys. I'm trusting you, here:

If you build this deck, keeping it like this, and you're playing it, and you have a choice between playing the card as a Land or not playing a Land at all, you will play the card as a Land and not hold on to the spell hoping it'll be worth it. The mana is more important than any of the three spells in question - Rush of Inspiration // Crackling Falls, Silundi Vision // Silundi Isle, and Song-Mad Treachery // Song-Mad Ruins. You have to promise, okay?

Anyway, no ramp. Just a steady increase of Lands adding mana to our pool every turn. We'll cast Kylox when we're good and ready.

There are a number of draw/discard spells (Izzet Charm and the like) and a few other ways to draw cards. But it's likely not as many as a traditional spellcaster deck, which wants to churn through as many cards as possible. Brainstorm-like effects are wonderful here to control the top of the Library a bit, but we're Limited by budget. So, we have a little draw, just to make sure we have enough gas to get us to the big Kylox turn.

Winning, you kind of have to figure out. In one play-test, I attacked for 604 damage on turn 13. That was over several tokens. In another, I ended up with 114 copies of Beacon of Destruction on the stack on turn nine without tapping any mana. In a third, I hard-cast Grapeshot with a Storm count of 63 on turn 10. (That was enough to kill the table by that point.) So, keep your mind open to the cards you're seeing and the state of the board. You'll figure it out.

There are a decent amount of counters in the deck. Normally I'd think about that, because counters generally whiff off Kylox, but we now have enough counterspells which have alternate modes so we can normally get some value even when casting them for free. Consider Insidious Will. Use it as a counter from your Hand, or a Replicate off Kylox. Mystic Confluence, Sublime Epiphany, You Find the Villians' Lair, and Three Steps Ahead all have modes other than "counter something", so we don't mind hitting them when Kylox attacks. We've also got some removal, like Abrade and Reality Shift, plus some of our bigger spells throw damage around, like Creative Outburst and Magma Opus. Wild Ricochet is kind of its own thing and can be deployed as a counter, a redirect, a replicate, or all three.

The rest of the deck is token makers. All the greatest hits are here: Krenko's Command, Dragon Fodder, Goblin Rally. Rise from the Tides can be absurd, and Seize the Storm can make a huge dude for sacrificing or attacking. Faebloom Trick is fun with its little disruption, and Glimmerburst does two things we like: draw and make a dude.

And we have our four permanents. The three Creatures all make tokens. Murmuring Mystic and Talrand, Sky Summoner are basically the same thing; Talrand is a little better because the Drakes are bigger, but they both create flying tokens and the Mystic is the better blocker. Ovika, Enigma Goliath is pricey, but it's so good. 6/6 Flying is actually relevant, the Ward is quite severe, and it makes a lot of little dudes. In play-testing, one turn with this Creature on the table ended the game.

Finally, we have Thousand-Year Storm, which is a touch greedy but when it comes down, the results are spectacular. We don't need it to win, but if we get it we probably will. That's a big part of how I got so many Beacon of Destructions that one game. Do be warned: it makes your turns absurdly long.

Kylox, Visionary Inventor | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Kylox, Visionary Inventor

• Creatures (3)
• 1 Murmuring Mystic
• 1 Ovika, Enigma Goliath
• 1 Talrand, Sky Summoner

• Instants (32)
• 1 Abrade
• 1 Amazing Acrobatics
• 1 Beacon of Destruction
• 1 Big Score
• 1 Brainsurge
• 1 Complete the Circuit
• 1 Creative Outburst
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Display of Power
• 1 Expansion // Explosion
• 1 Faebloom Trick
• 1 Frantic Search
• 1 Galvanic Iteration
• 1 Glimmerburst
• 1 Goblin Surprise
• 1 Goblin Wizardry
• 1 Insidious Will
• 1 Invoke Calamity
• 1 Izzet Charm
• 1 Magma Opus
• 1 Mystic Confluence
• 1 Prismari Command
• 1 Reality Shift
• 1 Resculpt
• 1 Rush of Inspiration
• 1 Silundi Vision // Silundi Isle
• 1 Sublime Epiphany
• 1 Three Steps Ahead
• 1 Twinferno
• 1 Wild Ricochet
• 1 You Find the Villains' Lair
• 1 You See a Pair of Goblins

• Sorceries (22)
• 1 Aminatou's Augury
• 1 Brass's Bounty
• 1 Dream Cache
• 1 Dragon Fodder
• 1 Dwarven Reinforcements
• 1 Elemental Masterpiece
• 1 Empty the Warrens
• 1 Experimental Overload
• 1 Expressive Iteration
• 1 Forbidden Friendship
• 1 Goblin Rally
• 1 Goblin War Party
• 1 Grapeshot
• 1 Hit the Mother Lode
• 1 Ill-Timed Explosion
• 1 Krenko's Command
• 1 Ral's Reinforcements
• 1 Rally at the Hornburg
• 1 Rise from the Tides
• 1 Seize the Storm
• 1 Song-Mad Treachery // Song-Mad Ruins
• 1 Treasure Cruise

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Thousand-Year Storm

• Lands (41)
• 9 Island
• 9 Mountain
• 1 Baron, Airship Kingdom
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Eroded Canyon
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Ferrous Lake
• 1 Fiery Islet
• 1 Frostboil Snarl
• 1 Izzet Boilerworks
• 1 Izzet Guildgate
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Peculiar Lighthouse
• 1 Prismari Campus
• 1 Restless Spire
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Silverbluff Bridge
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Swiftwater Cliffs
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse

Buy This Deck Export text

A big Brass's Bounty or two will often make enough mana to figure out how to win the next turn. Hit the Mother Lode and Aminatou's Augury are both great fun too, adding to the chaos of Kylox's attacks and subsequent spell storm. Invoke Calamity lets us take another shot with a couple of spells in our 'yard. I also really like Ill-Timed Explosion, which I don't feel is a game-winner but definitely a player-killer if done correctly.

This one came in at $23.36, which feels good, giving us a few dollars more than $25 for the final one next week. But this was also one where a couple of other cards were really desired but couldn't be purchased.

Access Denied is a wonderful counterspell for us, and Searing Wind, when copied a couple of times, can definitely end it for at least one player. Surge to Victory feels like a way to win the game - Exile Magma Opus, everything gets +8/+0, and then you get to cast another Magma Opus every time one of your Creatures connects. Even if you cast it off Kylox, it still gives the bonus to Kylox, who will be in the process of attacking, so it will get the bonus power and the damage trigger, copying the spell in Exile. Elemental Eruption is a slow but powerful Grapeshot, and Hordeling Outburst and Pirate's Pillage are just cards we want but can't have. All told, these six cards cost an additional $6.61.

Total spent: $71.39

Total remaining: $28.61

Thanks for reading.