Hey, welcome to the forum!East Side wrote: ↑4 years agoI'm building my first commander deck which happens to be Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and was curious if there has been any recent additions to the deck list. Have people been running the new Labyrinth of Skophos? I have mostly everything on the list besides a Lion's Eye Diamond and Mishra's Workshop. I have also made a list of some cards below and was curious if someone could explain why they don't run them, they all seem to work well in this deck but I haven't seen a lot of competitive deck lists with them. Also if there are any other great cards that I didn't list below please let me know.
Creatures:
Stonecoil Serpent
Walking Ballista
Junk Diver
Wurmcoil Engine
Planeswalkers:
Karn, the Great Creator
Karn, Scion of Urza
Artifacts:
Urza's Incubator
Quicksilver Amulet
Vedalken Orrery - given most decks run unwinding clock this seems like an auto include?
Sword of Feast and Famine
Mirrorworks
First EDH deck and your going colourless. Awesome!
I don't love Labyrinth of Skophos.
To me it's no different to mystifying maze and inn most instances slightly worse as it's good to reset a creature.
I'd rather chump block on a manland than have for hold 4 and a land open in case of an attack.
Just smash that player back with Kozilek and it's less of a bother.
A lot of the cards you listed I don't run for pretty much one reason.
This deck doesn't play very many creatures.
Quicksilver Amulet won't do very much at all other than sneak in a creature during an end phase.
Both Karen's are difficult to argue a place for as their value is only any good if they stay on the field.
Given that we want to turn all our creatures sideways leaves them wide open to a counter attack and I found them not worth the mana for a single activation.
The two walkers I do run are ones that are played and activated for removal. If they hang around for a full rotation that's great but I tend not to bank on it.
I used to run the deck with Karn, the great creator and mycosynth lattice but the combo never held because the blockers weren't here to keep Karn alive
Urza's incubator does a good job at cheapening Kozilek, any ulamog you may be running but there's not enough value there.
It's kind of like the reverse of mishra's workshop. Great land but doesn't count toward Kozilek.
You can't really pay 3 and chain the incubator into anything else other than Kozilek which makes it less versatile
There's a definite argument for Walking ballista being nice and large if you pay into it with the added removal for key creatures but... I got nothing. I'll test him out! Good idea.
Edit- just remembered ballista's casting cost. For some reason had in my head it was . It's a lot of mana to remove a few smaller creatures.
Yes when you're infinite mana it wins the game but there's already so many things in the deck that win the game while doing other things.
Stonecoil serpent i would say is a different story.
If you're going to play him, let's be honest, you'll play him big.
I'd rather run a blightsteel colossus for the mana you'd probably pay but I just don't have room for another massive creature because you sacrifice speed if you get an unfortunate draw.
Junk Diver seems great for recursion but I'm not sure if I would want it in my hand over any other card in the 99. Because of the rate you turn cards over by repeatedly casting Kozilek you find the redundancy in the cards.
If you've lost an untapped you'll likely draw into one quite quickly.
If you've lost a sac outlet there's usually another one at hand.
This deck is looking to go infinite as quickly as possible to close the game out and once you've hit it you can cycle your library into your graveyard and shuffle it all back in to redraw what you lost anyway.
Myr welder is one I've been meaning to test that is both better and worse than junk diver depending on the situation. Need to get round to that!
If your going to run the bird, consider myr retriever as well as or instead of.
Wurmcoil engine was in a very early iteration of the deck but got cut for something that could synergise a bit better and keep the speed up.
There's definitely argument to running more creatures and if you think that will work for you then big in. My meta is very combo heavy so to win I need to be faster. Gaining 6 life in an attack phase became less and less useful as time went on and it got cut.
Mirrorworks was in another that was in the deck for a long time. I used to print an infinite number of hasty blightsteels as a wincon but the 5 mana casting cost was another one that would slow down the game plan
Sword of feast and famine is great in most decks because they hinge on the land untapping for use in the second main. This deck generates about 70% of its fuel from the rocks rather than the lands.
The protection's great but the major upside of this card isn't as impressive as it would be in a deck designed to use mostly land as a resource.
Vedalken orrery is a very good card. Even more so in this deck due the the almost complete lack of instants. I don't run it because it never lasted a rotation and it was always 4 mana wasted. The card sticks out like a sore thumb to opponents in a deck that can be looking at tapping for 10-15 mana by turn four or five. It is always the number one card to remove and I cut it for that reason. (There's your argument for junk diver right there)
A lot of cards got axed if they were something that hung around in my hand, always being put back for soemething I drew that was better at that moment. That doesn't make them bad cards, it just got more noticeable that they were dead draws and got cut.
The list is up to date albeit untouched for quite a while.
Since kaladesh there's been very little released that impressed me enough to take a permanent spot
