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Commander / EDH Affinity Bracket 2 Surveil UB (Dimir)

ChaseyK

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Creature (33)

Artifact (26)

Enchantment (4)

Sorcery (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: Golbez, Crystal Collector

Land (34)

I may not be a fan of what Universes Beyond is doing to Magic, but it still has the capacity to put out some really cool designs sometimes.

Take Golbez, Crystal Collector for instance. Here we have a somewhat unassuming two-mana 1/4 with some artifact synergies. Seemingly normal card, one that's easy to get lost in the shuffle of much more straightforwardly powerful cards.

But the more I looked at Golbez, the more I liked what I saw -- top deck manipulation, graveyard strategies, card advantage engine and a way to do solid damage outside of the combat phase. There's really a lot here in this little two-mana 1/4.

Our game plan with this deck is to run out as many artifact ramping sources as possible -- rocks, dorks and cost reducers -- each fueling the next until we have a board flooded with baubles and trinkets, all while filling our graveyard with surveil triggers.

From there, we're looking to retrieve a few key hits to do some devastating damage to our opponents. Namely, any creature whose power is dictated by the number of artifacts we control. Broodstar and Master of Etherium can be strong cards on the battlefield, but their true power lies in the trigger of Golbez, Crystal Collector's last ability, stripping off at least 8 life from each opponent for every activation.

Getting them in the yard is a pretty trivial matter. Oftentimes, Golbez will just surveil them right in before picking them right back out. From there we can either play them out and let them make for solid attackers or blockers (knowing we can snag them right back in the event they die), or we can utilize discard outlets like Argentum Masticore, Riddlesmith or Trading Post to loop them in and out of the yard every turn.

Speaking of discarding, we can also take advantage of a few decently-sized creatures with abilities that put them directly into the yard. Troll of Khazad-dum can cycle for lands (especially useful since we're running a very low land count afforded to us by a cheap commander and our bevy of mana rocks), while Mirrorshell Crab can act as a repeatable counterspell.

While Golbez is our primary win condition, he's not our only one. Sai, Master Thopterist and Thopter Spy Network can create a huge fleet of fliers, of which any one can be instant-speed equipped with a Cranial Plating. Mechanized Production is mostly in as a value piece, but does present an alternative win condition if the battlefield stalls out. And Pactdoll Terror can keep us alive while continuing to drain out opponents' life totals.

This is a sneaky-fun build to play with a lot of potential for big turns where you're chaining artifact spell after artifact spell and churning through your library. Just steer clear of the Collector Ouphe!

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95% Casual

Competitive