Little bragging here - I got to preview a card for Marvel's Spider-Man. So now I'm building decks around cards from that set, I really wanted to build a deck where Biorganic Carapace made a ton of sense.

Enter this guy:

Sun-Spider is... focused. A kind-of evasive Commander who costs more than his power (four mana for a 3/2 isn't the best deal), but he pulls a Godo, Bandit Warlord when he enters (I built a Godo deck as my fourth deck ever for this website, way back in 2014. I put an Infect combo in it which made my playgroup really sad). That means we kind of get Sun-Spider and Biorganic Carapace at the same time!

Since we have enough mana for the Carapace if we have enough mana for our Commander (both cost four), we can kind of play these as a pair - we'll assume the Equipment we get is the Carapace, so we can build around it a bit as well. That means we want Modified Creatures in order to draw more cards. (It also means we'll often be attacking with a 5/4 Flying Commander which draws us a card on turn four or five, which isn't bad at all.)

Let's see what we can do.

Sun-Spider EDH | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Sun-Spider, Nimble Webber

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Acquisition Octopus
• 1 Armguard Familiar
• 1 Cloudsteel Kirin
• 1 Halvar, God of Battle
• 1 Lion Sash
• 1 The Reality Chip
• 1 Sram, Senior Edificer
• 1 Puresteel Paladin
• 1 Thought Monitor
• 1 Danitha Capashen, Paragon
• 1 Etherium Sculptor
• 1 SP//dr, Piloted by Peni

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 All That Glitters
• 1 Steel of the Godhead
• 1 Mantle of the Ancients
• 1 Forge Anew
• 1 Staggering Insight

• Spells (11)
• 1 Scour for Scrap
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 An Offer You Can't Refuse
• 1 Dispatch
• 1 Dovin's Veto
• 1 Open the Armory
• 1 Winds of Rath
• 1 Slash the Ranks
• 1 Single Combat
• 1 Tragic Arrogance

• Artifacts (31)
• 1 Biorganic Carapace
• 1 Crystal Fragments
• 1 Fireshrieker
• 1 Adaptive Omnitool
• 1 Leyline Axe
• 1 Conqueror's Flail
• 1 Wrecking Ball Arm
• 1 Argentum Armor
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Goggles of Night
• 1 Strength-Testing Hammer
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 The Irencrag
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Cargo Ship
• 1 Sky Diamond
• 1 Marble Diamond
• 1 Illvoi Light Jammer
• 1 Colossus Hammer
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Robe of the Archmagi
• 1 Nettlecyst
• 1 Bloodforged Battle-Axe
• 1 Thran Power Suit
• 1 Loxodon Warhammer
• 1 Sword of Vengeance
• 1 The Key to the Vault

• Land (40)
• 1 Uthros, Titanic Godcore
• 1 Secluded Starforge
• 1 Seat of the Synod
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Ancient Den
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Archway of Innovation
• 1 Academy Ruins
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Skycloud Expanse
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Port Town
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 1 Razortide Bridge
• 1 Temple of Enlightenment
• 1 The Mycosynth Gardens
• 1 Irrigated Farmland
• 12 Plains
• 8 Island

Buy This Deck Export text

A Commander like Sun-Spider doesn't give us a ton of directions. We really have to lean into what he's doing or we'll struggle pretty hard. It's important we lean on the basic tenets of deckbuilding: Run plenty of mana, draw as many cards as you can, and focus on a thing. Let's break it down.

If you look back at that Godo article, you'll see I ran 39 Lands even back then, which was wild at the time - people often ran 28 or so in their casual, big-mana decks! I continue to think 40 Lands is the default, so that's what we've got. It almost guarantees we'll cast Sun-Spider on turn four, which is not a thing we want to miss. We are running the Artifact Lands because we have stuff that counts Artifacts, and we care a lot about Reliquary Tower and Rogue's Passage.

However, it would be nice to go a little faster, so we're running several mana rocks which will power out Sun-Spider a turn early: Sol Ring of course, but also Thought Vessel, Arcane Signet, Sky Diamond... you get the idea. A bunch of two-mana rocks. Cargo Ship is a bit limited, but it's too cool to ignore. The hope is we hit one of these early, play Sun-Spider on turn three (grabbing the Carapace), then play out and auto-Equip the Carapace and attack on turn four.

With the Carapace out, we're drawing cards, that's for sure. The nice thing is, we're not limited to the Carapace. We've got Adaptive Omnitool to dig for a card. Goggles of Night, Robe of the Archmagi, Puresteel Paladin and Sram, Senior Artificer all draw us extra cards for doing things we want to be doing. Strength-Testing Hammer isn't a guarantee but it will often draw us an extra, and The Key to the Vault doesn't just draw, it casts it for us. SP//dr, Piloted by Peni and Acquisition Octopus both draw some more, and The Reality Chip effectively extends our hand rather than draws, but it's great. In playtesting, I was glad I won the turn I drew 46 cards in a single attack step.

We're a Voltron deck for the most part; the idea here is to suit up Sun-Spider and send him in, swinging (ha!) for the fences, suited up with whatever we can throw on him. But because Biorganic Carapace wants multiple modified Creatures, we're getting sneaky with all of this... which means we might not actually be a Voltron deck but more of an "Equip-Stuff" deck. It's going to be fairly common we're swinging with Sun-Spider but have multiple other Creatures Equipped with something just to draw more cards. But since we're not Exalted, we can swing with the other things too! So while Sun-Spider wearing stuff will be our most common win condition, it could also be SP//dr, or Halvar, God of Battle, or just a random collection of Creatures wearing some cool Equipment.

We're running a suite of removal, including Dispatch, which works great in any deck this Artifact-heavy. We've also got a couple of counterspell-type cards, mostly to prevent unwanted removal. Here's the thing about counters: your opponents will always think you have it once you have it once. Play out that perfect Dovin's Veto and they're going to assume you're always sitting on a counter, ready to be deployed, and they'll play accordingly. Make a show of it - look at their play, ask the game to wait, look at their card, check your hand, look at the board, hand the card back, nod, and say "I'll allow it". They'll be convinced you've got the counter ready and aren't worried about what they just did. We've got a few Wrath effects; most of them leave everyone with one Creature (we may as well keep Sun-Spider), and Winds of Rath will normally allow at least a few of our guys to survive, including our Commander.

If, for some reason, you don't want to get Biorganic Carapace with Sun-Spider, I'd recommend Steel of the Godhead, which, in my estimation, is among the most over-powered of the Lorwyn/Eventide color-pair Auras. For three mana, Sun-Spider gets +2/+2, Lifelink, and Unblockable. If you're sitting on Winds of Rath and think you'll need to use it, grabbing this Aura may be the way to go to make sure we keep Sun-Spider through the Rath. All that Glitters and Staggering Insight are both super strong here, and Forge Anew and Mantle of the Ancients are both later-game plays which should nicely recover from an untimely board wipe.

We've only got four Auras - we're really an Equipment deck, and boy, do we have some doozies. I'm always a fan of Argentum Armor; Equipping for free with Puresteel Paladin is always the dream, but it's worth it even if it's not free to Equip. Colossus Hammer, Thran Power Suit, Wrecking Ball Arm - we've got a bunch of fun ones which can get quite out of hand. A number of our Equipments are cheap, in the two-mana range, which is great if we don't get a mana rock; at least we're doing something with our time.

In order to provide more Creatures for Biorganic Carapace, we've also got a few Equipment Creatures; they can be Equipped to help out Sun-Spider or we can Equip them to draw more cards and have a broader threat base. We've already mentioned Acquisition Octopus, but Cloudsteel Kirin is kind of my favorite here, since it makes it so our opponents can't win. We've also got Nettlecyst and Batterskull, which have Living Weapon. We don't see that very much, but they actually create a free Creature when they come into play and auto-Equip to that Creature... giving us another Modified Creature. Both Equipments are strong, too, Equipped to Sun-Spider or not.

Halvar gets his own mention, because he can be Equipment or just give all our stuff Double-Strike; when possible, we probably want to play him as a Creature so we hit harder, but you never know.

Honestly, this deck is a solid Bracket three, even without any Game Changers. I'm killing my first player on turn seven or eight and knocking them out in order after that. I'm doing so with a full grip and plenty of support, and I could rebuild quickly in the event of a Wrath effect. Even a Shatterstorm wouldn't end the day, because Sun-Spider is so strong you don't have to play out everything you've got every turn. It's also not a budget deck, but it's not expensive. If you keep Biorganic Carapace but drop Halvar and Uthros, Titanic Godcore (neither of which is necessary), you'll be below $100 for the whole stack; replace Biorganic Carapace with Mask of Memory and you're absolutely in budget land. It won't be as strong, but it'll still play at most casual tables.

Thanks for reading.