Duckslayer's back, and Building Chaos!

Let's talk about my latest obsession

Hello all and welcome back¹ to the Duckslayer Post!

I’m sorry for how long I’ve been away; I found myself frequently too busy to commit to anything, and then became preoccupied with other things, and D&D started to fall back from my hyperfoci for a while.

But, I am now in a better place with D&D and looking forward to getting back into it!

But D&D isn’t what I’m here to talk to you about today - today, I’m talking Magic the Gathering!

For the past year-and-a-bit, I have been deeply ensconced² in building commander decks and then playing games with them. Apparently, I show some promise at this undertaking, as I was quickly dubbed “Deck Savant” in the gaming chat, and then went on to produce some decks which have capacity to get out of hand rapidly, and which use unusual methods to get results! My best and most fun is named “Thoppity Coppity”, and it makes use of weird and wonderful artifacts to wear down my foes! Plus, naturally, thopters!

Chaos, please!

I am currently brainstorming a deck with a view to create the most chaotic board state that I can possibly achieve. I’m not interested in winning, I’m interested in being the assault course which challenges my opponents every move. I’m going Izzet (blue/red) for this, because they have some of the most chaotic cards for the battlefield that I can find, and I find green, black, and white spells tend to be more blunt & to the point - which I don’t want!

Fair warning - I haven’t worked out how to put images beside each other on here yet, so this could be loooooooooong!

Let’s pick out a commander!

Potential Commanders:

I’m scrolling through these in alphabetical order, looking for things which will add to the chaos of my deck:

Alania, Divergent Storm:

Her ability is actually pretty powerful, but I’m more interested in doubling up on chaotic spells, not on doubling up on effective ones! Depending on the spells I find, this may be an option. I even have this card!

Arjun, the shifting flame:

What could be more chaotic than having no idea what I will cast next? This is a strong contender!

Ian Malcolm, Chaotician

Well, this definitely fits the bill! And it has Chaos in the name! I love the idea of making everyone cast each others spells, so this is a very firm option, unless I find something even better!

…Which I did not! I even checked the options for partners, and whilst the commanders from the Heads I win, Tails you lose secret lair were quite chaotic, they lean heavily into the coin flip mechanics, which haven’t featured heavily in my inspirations for this deck!

So, I’ll move forward with Ian Malcolm as the commander, and let’s look at filling up the rest of the deck. I’ll open with some global card draw cards to make sure everyone’s filling up their exiled card piles:

Global Card Draw:

These ought to get a good stack of potential bonus cards going!

Now, let’s get into the bit I’ve all been waiting for - let’s find some chaotic cards to fuel the game!

Chaotic Effects:

Slap Custody Battle on a powerful commander (or something of your own that’s chaotic) and let’s see what happens!

I can’t wait to drop this one on a full board… the chaos will come from just how big the stack will get - “Oh, in response I tap my beast…” “Ok, I tap my elk to kill your beast”, “Then I tap my commander to kill your elk”… and so on! Perfect chaos!

Let’s be real; you can’t have a chaos deck without this baby in it! But do you know what’s better than dropping Warp World on a full board?

Dropping Over the Top first! Yes, that’s a lot of mana, but the reward… oh, the reward!

Here’s another to really crank up the chaos:

what are we casting? Who knows! Sweet Sweet chaos. But, of you don’t want to have to do this, you can instead cast everyone elses cards instead!

Imagine Knowledge Pool along with Possibility Storm! Cast a spell, then put a random spell into the pool, then cast a different spell! Lovely chaos! and, speaking of chaos…

Random spells, at random targets? Sounds like a plan to me! But we can go more chaotic yet…

Who doesn’t like swapping their creatures around? Hey, with all the other chaos going on, you might even get your own stuff back! But then, we can always drop this…

More shuffling! This one takes a while to sort out, by all accounts, so it’s worth not dropping it after Over the Top if you want to keep your friends!

“Ah”, says the savvy opponent; “I’ll not cast anything from my hand! That’ll stop half of these effects!”

Well, let’s stop that right away:

People worried the game is slowing down? How about we third the problem, eh?

If people want their own cards back, then there’s always the auction…

We’re going to need some ways of dealing damage in this game, if we want to win. Chaotically, of course - Goblin Game ought to sort it out!

Can’t have people forming any long term plans (not very chaotic, now, is it?) so let’s get this in there:

Also works for card draw, which will do nicely!

Let’s get some more chaotic damage in here:

Whilst we’re dealing damage and generating card draw:

Now, it should be fairly apparent by now that this deck is intended to be more of a global problem for the other players than a contender for the win, so let’s have everyone else do the work…

I can feel the chaos already from this one - no more turn orders, just random turns!

The astute among you³ will have noticed a lack of blue cards thus far - let’s find some!

Ooh, look at that - the chaos will keep building and building, every turn! Lovely!

guaranteed Ian Malcolm triggers - just what we need!

this ought to get the game going all over the place!

Figured it’d be good to benefit somewhat from the chaos, so stealing some spells will go a long way to keeping some semblence of direction from the chaos!

a little more control here - barely!

Probably wise to get some more creatures into the game! Though who will be using it, I can’t say!

Look at this beauty! Swapping and redirecting, it’s all going to be so much chaos!⁴ Let’s add to that:

Now, I want to enable as many spell-stealing shenanigans⁵ as possible, so we need the mana to work for everyone:

We don’t want people to mill out in this game, so let’s add a little freebee for someone to use:

Let’s add some more blue tricks:

A bit more guaranteed triggers for Mr Goldblum:

Maybe some more… chaos? I’m thinking Chaos. Chances are someone else will have lifegain spells, so let’s gamble!

And a bit more card draw, which hopefully someone else will control, to get more Ian Malcolm triggers…

Right, let’s take stock of where we’re to!

According to my maths, that’s 42 cards so far! I tend to aim for around 36 lands, and we’re liable to be playing other people’s as well, so we need another 22 nonland cards to make this a nice round number!

Let’s add a finishing move…

And something to counter the chaotic board state a little:

…And then bring it back…

I feel I’ve swung back too far towards Blue, so let’s see what we can find in the Red section…

Ah, more stealing! Good-oh!

something fairly safe for us here!

Another one to juggle!

I run this guy in my mono-red deck, and it’s kinda hilarious to hand an opponent the assassin you just used on them!

Another one which is a little safe, as it comes back to us when it dies!

This fits, I think!

More thievery!

By my count that’s 6 more to go, so let’s break out the mana rocks…

• Arcane Signet

• Sol Ring

• Izzet Signet

• Commander’s Sphere

• Fellwar Stone

• Thought Vessel

And then it’s on to a mixture of 36 lands!

• Command Tower

• Exotic Orchard

• Archway Commons

• City of Brass

• Forbidden Orchard⁶

• Mana Confluence

• Swiftwater Cliffs

• Stormcarved Coast

• Reliquary Tower

• 13 Mountains

• 14 Islands

Let’s get all this into Archidekt (my preferred deck builder) and see what it looks like…

And we have success! A legal 100-card commander deck!⁷

Apparently this deck would cost over £350 to build, because of a few older and rarer cards I picked out (gilded drake, of all things, costs a small fortune!) but as this was only ever intended to be a silly and ridiculous deck, I intend to build it all as proxy cards to use with my friends, so it doesn’t matter to me whether the official cards are expensive!

If you do want to use this deck with real cards, replace the City of Brass, Consecrated Sphinx, Cyclonic Rift, and the Gilded Drake, and it’ll look a lot cheaper!

The Decklist, in plain text:

Commander

1 Ian Malcolm, Chaotician

Artifact

1 Apple of Eden, Isu Relic

1 Arcane Signet

1 Commander’s Sphere

1 Elixir of Immortality

1 Fellwar Stone

1 Horn of Greed

1 Izzet Signet

1 Knowledge Pool

1 Mycosynth Lattice

1 Otherworld Atlas

1 Pendant of Prosperity

1 Sol Ring

1 Teferi’s Puzzle Box

1 Temple Bell

1 Thought Vessel

1 Timesifter

Creature

1 Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos

1 Cephalid Looter

1 Consecrated Sphinx

1 Djinn of Infinite Deceits

1 Etali, Primal Storm

1 Gilded Drake

1 Kami of the Crescent Moon

1 Karplusan Minotaur

1 Keiga, the Tide Star

1 Khârn the Betrayer

1 Lore Broker

1 Meneldor, Swift Savior

1 Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might // Temple of Power

1 Perplexing Chimera

1 Plargg and Nassari

1 Scourge of Fleets

1 Sphinx of the Second Sun

1 Starke of Rath

1 Zenith Chronicler

Enchantment

1 Confusion in the Ranks

1 Custody Battle

1 Dictate of Kruphix

1 Eye of the Storm

1 Fevered Visions

1 Grip of Chaos

1 Hive Mind

1 Mind’s Dilation

1 Possibility Storm

1 Puca’s Mischief

1 Struggle for Project Purity

1 Wild Evocation

Instant

1 Brawl

1 Cyclonic Rift

1 Guff Rewrites History

1 Sudden Substitution

Land

1 Archway Commons

1 City of Brass

1 Command Tower

1 Exotic Orchard

1 Forbidden Orchard

14 Island

1 Mana Confluence

13 Mountain

1 Reliquary Tower

1 Stormcarved Coast

1 Swiftwater Cliffs

Sorcery

1 Goblin Game

1 Legerdemain

1 Modify Memory

1 Order of Succession

1 Over the Top

1 Scrambleverse

1 Skyscribing

1 Switcheroo

1 Thieves’ Auction

1 Warp World

1 Wheel of Misfortune

1 Whims of the Fates

Thankyou all for reading this far, and I look forward to letting you all know how this deck goes!

If you like geeky things like D&D and MTG, then please follow along!

Until next time, folks!

1. or, for those of you who’ve not been here before, either a) Welcome! or b) step back and then forwards again to achieve relevance!

2. this word either means what I think it means, or involves the transformation into a crumbly yet delicious cake-like object.

3. such as those with one or more eyes, or a suitable dictating device

4. I almost wrote “So Much Fun!” here, but I will reserve such claims for after any game in which I try this deck!

5. The word “Shenanigans” is such a good word that it needs a footnote containing at least two instances of the word “Shenanigans”.

6. This one makes other people get spirits, for even more - you guessed it - chaos!

7. You have no way of knowing, at the time of reading, whether I did this in one go. I can say that I did, and I would not be lying to do so, but you don’t have to believe me!