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The OG Kozilek says No - PRIMER

Commander / EDH Primer Ramp Stax

Greenpeas

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Commander: Kozilek, the Great Distortion

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THE OG

Added over two years ago. Got a few views - you guys got it to #28 overall. Pretty cool for a colorless deck. Some other decks added with the same name more recently...

Fun, face smashing, resilient and plays differently every time

Dropping your whole hand out fast is fun. It feels like EDH when your commander is an ominous threat that is hard to remove. It is fun when you play a deck that feels alien and different than other decks. It is satisfying to do all this while you spot the rest of your pod a headstart because you are going colourless.

The deck feels Eldrazi - doing strange things to the board, knocking the whole table off balance and wading the biggest guy onto the battlefield that the whole table will have to try and take down because of Kozilek’s draw and counterspell abilities.

Finally, it is fun to play the Archenemy role if you can still win. This deck does that through stax - playing cards that slow down the table for a few turns while you pull ahead. At the same time, this is the funnest staxy deck you can play for you and your table in a non-competitive environment. Why? Because this deck wins fast once it has a lock. People are ok with stax when you don’t take forever to win, and if you keep building momentum and suspense in a game. Cool people are ok with stax if it is a means to a fun end. Reasonable people are not happy if locking up the board with stax pieces is the end in itself. People also generally react better to Winter Orb when they know one disenchant returns the game to normal, compared to how they feel about an Armageddon. This deck uses stax as a waypoint to a big finish.

Note this deck isn’t built for a full cedh-type meta, for those of you who don’t want to buy Ga-Jillion dollar cards like Mishra’s Workshop and Candelabra, plus the full fast mana suite like Lion’s Eye Diamond, BUT this deck will absolutely motor compared to most commander decks out there.

Finally, if all of this sounds good to you, but you want to know what you can do on a budget, check out my budget version here: Colorless Ramp on a budget with Kozilek

Having 6 cards on the board while others still only have 2 is fun. This deck has 33+ sources of fast mana. Often you will just dump your whole hand on the table.

Prototype Portal with a Lotus Bloom or Jeweled Lotus on it is crazy. So is mana crypt, sol ring, mana vault, Darksteel Citadel, lotus petal, even a 2-drop mana rock or a jeweled amulet. Salvaging Station on Lotus Bloom or Lotus Petal etc is fun.

Metalworker and Blinkmoth Urn generate insane mana.

Clock of Omens and Unwinding Clock let you do crazy things. Not just tons of mana via mana vault or basalt monolith, but using your utility artifacts soooooo many times. Lux Cannon is nuts with either of these. Even using icy manipulator on everyone’s turn is nice, and if you include card;Mishra’s Helix, it has insane synergy.

Metalwork Colossus is usually very fast and free, or maybe costs 1. He draws out hate, and can keep coming back, particularly if you have a token generator.

Void Winnower When he comes out fast it sends a shudder around the table. Conduit of Ruin nicely transitions to Void Winnower.

Kozilek, the Great Distortion is cool once he hits the table. With Silent Arbiter he is unblockable. Menace makes it tough to chump block him. When you cast your commander, it is fun for him to be a dominating boss threat to the table. What sucks is when your commander gets quickly removed, and Kozilek is hard to remove once he is out. He refills your hand full of counterspells. This deck includes cards like Wanderer's Twig that may seem unnecessary, but once Kozilek is out, you can pitch those cards to stop swords to plowshares, etc (or of course, use them with prototype portal or salvaging station). It also sucks if you cast a big commander and then someone combos out. Kozilek’s ability to counter also stops that, which lets you smash some face. Stax helps here - it makes it harder for the table to cast big removal spells, which makes them focus on the 1 and 2 cost spells and you can plan to have an answer for these.

Usually it sucks to try to pay commander tax on a big commander. This deck is just mana, plus big mana, plus insane mana. Getting 14, 16, 20 mana isn’t all that hard. You could even sacrifice Kozilek just to get 7 new cards if you need to dig for an answer.

The stax decks people hate win soooo slowly. The stax players people hate cackle at the joy of a stalled board and want to keep this going as long as possible. This deck isn’t about causing rage-quits.

My friend who hates stax doesn’t mind this deck at all. That is because Kozilek wins fast. This deck is about giving the table a quick punch in the mouth and then winning. It isn’t about locking down the table for three hours. At the same time, because our commander costs a lot of mana we do want to slow down other decks. When you have zero color to work with, you don’t need to feel bad at all about this. Tolerate no complaints, you are spotting your opponents an enormous card pool advantage by playing colorless.

At the same time, don’t be a dick. That is the first rule of playing stax. Rejoice in the Archenemy role if it happens. Give congrats when the table breaks your stax lock. When a table wins through stax locks they remember it triumphantly.

Finally, this is not a combo deck. We don’t have enough tutors to count on combos coming up. That is why this deck is built to be consistent, and to have cards that always have value when we draw them. The deck feels both consistent, but plays out differently every game, which is why I keep coming back to this deck.

Final word of advice on this point - if your playgroup starts packing in a lot of artifact destruction, do what I do: have at least one other excellent deck with no artifacts.

This Kozilek, (always the Great Distotion if not otherwise noted) can pitch extra acceleration or stax pieces to use as counters. This gives us the first of several deckbuilding advantages - we can load up absolutely excessively on acceleration and stax pieces. Normally, if you go too heavy on acceleration, you get the benefit of dead mana rocks in your hand. After a few stax pieces are on the board, the ones in your hand are just backup. In this deck, those mana rocks and stax pieces are uncounterable counters stopping counterspells, removal spells and tutors.

Kozilek adds another control element to help lock down the win once he hits the board. He wins so much faster than stax hate bears do, so we don’t need to keep a stax lock for very long. His counterspells can stop other players from dropping a big combo while we are winning.

Kozilek the Butcher can really only focus on one player at a time, quite a bit of impact sure, but he leaves the other players to do whatever they want. The Butcher is a (very good) fattie. With his counterspells the Distortion can fight the whole table.

Also the Butcher only draws 4 cards. That is poor in this deck. We are sad if we aren’t drawing 6 or 7 cards when we cast Kozilek. And once your commander is out, what does the Butcher want the cards for? The Butcher can’t pitch those rocks and stax pieces as counters. Each card is just less useful for the Butcher, and once a Kozilek hits the board, the plan should be stop others from winning while you mop up.

Extraplanar lens (it is slow, but stax pieces slow the game down so that this is very relevant, and nobody else gets the benefit), consistency,

Fast lands - we don’t have any colour requirements, so we can load up on lands like ancient tomb, crystal vein, (city of traitors if you can get one), eldrazi temple, eye of ugin. That is a lot of lands that tap for >1 mana. That kind of acceleration is powerful.

Mystic Forge - Wow. This is crazy good in a deck with tons of mana and all artifacts.

Endbringer - very good D, removal and draw, shines in heavy colorless. The untap effect is nice with some stax effects.

We can just pour on the colourless acceleration. Stax means that acceleration that comes on turn 4 like lotus bloom is very relevant (with salvaging station and prototype portal lotus bloom is insane)

Who knows, we might also like thought knot seer or warping wail.

There are only two kinds of hands to keep and resulting ways to play. Be aggressive in mulliganing. You can explode or control the game from 5 cards if necessary. Kozilek’s huge draw means an empty hand on cast is ideal - you recover any disadvantage quickly.

Keep Acceleration hands These have very heavy acceleration. In games like this you get kozilek out turn 4, even 3, and ride him. He is hard to block, hard to remove and he disrupts combos by countering them.

Keep Stax hands These hands let you knock the table off guard with a a killer stax piece (e.g. winter orb, static orb, smokestack + recursion, tangle wire, lodestone golem if quick, ward of bones, storage matrix, sphere of resistance etc). Big acceleration and void winnower is nuts, and also very achievable turn 4.

Your deck is resilient to your own hate Play your situational hoser artifacts (even if they could cut across the cards in your hand). You have lands that tap for multiple mana, lots of ways to untap your artifacts, and generally ways to “survive in the mess we’ve created” to quote a great stax primer on the internet. When your own cards are going to be shut down, this deck has other uses for them - they can be pitched to kozilek, fuel metalworker, shuffled away with scroll rack, avoided with sensi’s top, imprinted on prototype portal, or discarded and put into play with salvaging station.

Once you are about to cast Kozilek, start to think of which casting costs you might like to keep in your hand to use as counters, depending on what your group plays. 4cc stops wrath of god, 1cc stops swords to plowshares, 2cc stops counterspell (and a ton of amazing cards).

Tappers matter: winter orb, blinkmoth nexus, storage matrix, howling mine, trinisphere - lots of stax and other cards get turned off if they are tapped. Blinkmoth well, Icy, relic barrier, pacification array etc, do this

Tokens can be sacced to smokestacks but also used with clock, urn, forgemaster, ironworks

Untappers are some of the best cards. Keep hands that have those if you can get them out in good time.

Spine of ish sah is recursive, so it can feed smokestacks

Nullstone gargoyle locks if you have recursion. Crucible works with lands that recur. Haunted fengraf is one. Metalwork colossus and tokens. Scrap trawler + retriever/ junk diver, etc. trading post

Salvaging station options- codex, explosive apparatus, voyager staff, triangle, land search baubles, baubles, lotus petal and blossum, universal solvent, and synod sanctum (can also get rid of or reset stax pieces u r done with), . Good with pithing needle and a sac outlet.

Scrying sheets, Mouth of Ronom and Coldsteel Heart - gives you three sources of snow mana to power the land effects and little to no downside. Thin upside, but worth noting.

Sliversmith turns extra lands into tokens (of course, the lands themselves could be sacced as well... The tokens are better with clock, urn, ironworks,or under storm cauldron)

Ways to shuffle and Sensei top. Ash barrens works.

Blasted landscape is good for mana flood.

Kill mana dorks with eg walking ballista, serrated arrows, purging scythe, staff of nin, torture chamber, contagion engine, rod of ruin, blasting station

Skyship weatherlight - tutor in emergency, but main use would be to have a reliable source of cards at a common casting cost - (1-2). With koz would always have a 4cc counter at that cost. Credit voucher and Memory Jar also play this role.

Sword of light and shadow = recursion

Ballista and hangerback are ways to use big mana

Walking atlas crucible and any LD land is a mean combo

Option: Kill switch v other artifacts if you can reliably get untappers (add dross and both voltaic creatures still has only 6, 8 if you consider slow tutor via inventor’s fair).

You’ll want to change the deck a bit (and add more and more of the super expensive mana).

The stax choices here in this deck are tuned for a more general, 75% meta. This is why you have a lot of cards that defend against creature attacks like crawlspace, silent arbiter, etc. Cards like Icy manipulator do double duty, as described below. This is also why you might consider cards like mishra’s helix or storm cauldron, which are great against mainstream commander decks but wouldn’t work in the highest power competitive metas. Likewise Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void wreck the most competitive metas but aren’t as good if your group is less competitive. You decide where your group sits and adjust accordingly.

You’ll want more cards like sphere of resistance and trinisphere and fewer cards that defend against creature attacks. Also add Thorn of Amethyst if your group isn’t creature heavy.

Remove cards focused on stopping creature attacks or removing creatures like crawlspace or transmogrifying wand.

Flail isnt clearly working. Cycplopean tomb I love but is slow, as is quicksilver fountain.
Familiar and inspector don’t see as good as I’d expected (familiar helping commander does matter, and it is better than a mana artifact under static orb/storage matrix, which does matter). KC ironworks is hit and miss unless you really push the fast mana - (more tokens the better and when it hits it does really hit). Mirrorworks always seems to come a bit late. Mishra’s helix can be great some games not others. Ballista hasn’t consistently been useful.

I hope you like the deck and I’m always happy to hear your thoughts, your suggestions and I’d love to hear your experiences in your play test group.

Embrace being the Archenemy. Make your table feel like they are facing the Eldrazi void. Smash hopes, dreams and faces. Say No emphatically.

And be cool to your group while you do it.

Look out for my high-power version for more competitive metas soon.

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Top Ranked
  • Achieved #28 position overall 5 years ago
Date added 5 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

7 - 0 Mythic Rares

41 - 8 Rares

28 - 1 Uncommons

9 - 2 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.39
Tokens Construct 4/4 C, Copy Clone, Goat 0/1 W, Ox 2/4 W, Servo 1/1 C, Spirit 2/2 C, Thopter 1/1 C
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Kozilek - first thoughts

Greenpeas EDH
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