Been following along with this thread for a while and have my own Kozilek deck as well. Just a question, I was fortunate enough to get a full set of Swords (Sword of Fire and Ice and the like) over the weekend. Was thinking they could make an appearance in this deck, but really am unsure if they make sense. Was hoping to get some other thoughts on the idea. Thanks!
The issue with equipments is that Kozilek is already a one card voltron. He doesn't need much, and none of the swords really provide too much (the protection from x&y colors are the most relevant effects, although untapping lands could have shenanigans). Here's what Kozilek needs (and in ranking order):
Don't forget Eldrazi Conscription in the one shot category, for both the size and (in my opinion more relevantly) the trample and extra annihilator benefits. There are other effects that are good to have, such as unblockable from Whispersilk Cloak and Rogue's Passage. Other forms of evasion, such as Flying and Intimdate are also usefull, especially given that only artifact creatures can block an intimidating Kozi. Indestructible, Infect, and Firebreathing(ish) all can also be useful.
We need to have something to do to win on the spot with our deck in the hands!!! I don't see how now, you guyz?
Another option is infinite Spine of Ish Sah to remove their board state. Honestly, because of how creature kill heavy the format I play in is, the infinite Spine or Staff of Nin for infinite combos win me about 50% of my games. And to be honest, I don't even have to be unbounded with Spine to blow up a board state or two every turn, my personal best is winning via casting Sculpting Steel to copy Spine 16 times in one turn, destroying all lands in play other than my own on turn 5 causing everyone else to scoop.
hey gang! I've never looked too many of the colorless commander options - the original eldrazi were too expensive and just seemed to be giants you hope to cast to win. Karn is too artifact specific for me - I really hate the grindyness of artifact combo decks and I hate combos that win out of no where. The new Kozilek, the Great Distortion seems pretty up my ally in terms of creating a control wincon in colorless.
Now I just need to figure out how to build this deck. I want to stay away from combos, and stick with toolboxes and useful synergies I can fit into this deck to prevent it from being a general colorless goodstuff deck. I'm thinking stuff like Salvaging Station and eggs for card draw, and any eldrazi synergy that might fit, something that i guess equates to mid-range control in colorless.
I'd think that running a very stax-centric list would probably be the best way to make a controling deck in colorless. Even with the new stuff there is not exactly a multitude of other ways to control the board, in my opinion. There are people here who run more stax effects than others (I for example run almost none, but that is by the preference of the playgroup) and some of them have alternate decklists that they have posted in the past which would be beneficial.
The shroud affect would likely work against you in a larger game. In my build I like kozilek to be destroyed to save me having to sac him. All the shroud will do is make other players gang up because they can't deal with kozi
While Whispersilk Cloak is likely to make people gang up on you, there is some value in running it for the fact that it makes Kozi a 2 swing kill. It also makes Blightsteel Colosus a garanteed one shot. It's not something you want in every meta, but given the number of board wipes people use in my meta and the fact that you don't have to put it on Kozi, it isn't to hard to make sure he gets killed or is sac-able.
You don't run Maze of Ith? I often use it for mana if no one has any real threats out, or the real threats have Shroud/Hexproof.
I don't have a Maze of Ith, it is the same story as with a lot of the other cards that I have. Except for the triple diget cards, the only cards that I want and don't have are ones that I haven't been able to find.
I'm not sure Command Beacon is good enough really... dodging the commander tax is a cute trick though.
That new 2 drop rock, however, will definitely be going in.
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of 1 mana producing rocks. They aren't bad by any means, but I prefer my rocks to give me more than 1 mana. Having said that, I'll probably still run it, because of the hand size increase, and because I still have some rocks I like even less in the deck. I'd rather have Ur-Golem's Eye or Worn Powerstone in the deck. Ideally I'd only run Mind Stone and maybe Thought Vessel in the deck that only produce 1 mana. Maybe Chromatic Lantern but that honestly doesn't have a very significant effect on my mana base because I don't have many cards that it would improve, just Ancient Tomb, Eye of Ugin and Temple of the False God.
For those of us running creature heavy decks this could be pretty darn useful. Put this on just a Blightsteel Colossus or a big creature with trample, such as a monstrous Colossus of Akros. It doesn't exactly work for my deck, but it could work for some of the other lists I've seen and have considered.
Finally got to play some games IRL, and I must say Null Rod puts a real damper on us, especially when they realize we use mana rocks to ramp into our bigger stuff and always tutor for it first chance they get. :/
Don't forget Stony Silence. Another big problem is things that increase the cost of our rocks, such as Grand Arbiter Augustin IV and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Dropping a mana rock or two and using them to drop another rock is a pretty big part of the game plan and when your rocks go up it just becomes impossible. One of the decks I play against occasionally is a Grand Arbiter deck that runs both the other two cards I mentioned, as well as a number of pain in the ass cards like Hurkyl's Recall and other mass bounce spells. The artifact specific hate cards got added to the deck after the first time he played it. It is also a he also runs Curse of Exhaustion which he always drops on me, although he has been know to copy enchantment to pass it off on other people to spread the hate.
I wasn't really expecting to be impressed by Conduit of Ruin, but it has come in handy a couple of times already. Putting the card on top of the deck is a lot less of a limitation on the deck than I was expecting it to be, which given how much draw we have really shouldn't have been a surprise.
I also took out Dreamstone Hedronbecause 6 mana is a lot at times...
You have to mulligan aggressive it seems or it forces you to scoop...I want to make this deck as consistent as possible...Is Semblance Anvilworking for anyone else? It seems kind of bad because you need to exile a artifact in hand and most of the time your Artifacts are mana so I would rather have the mana then exile something.
Dreamstone Hedron is great in the deck, at least as much for the potential to draw as for the 3 mana and so is Semblance Anvil. Semblace Anvil is a part of the way to get a turn 1 Kozi. Any 2 mana land + Sol Ring or Grim Monolith or any 1 mana producing land with Mana Crypt or Mana Vault, with Semblance Anvil, something to exhile under it, your now free Helm of Awakening and then Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth. You also need to have a Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Voltaic Key, Sculpting Steel, Mana Vault, or Mana Crypt in hand, so it only works if you have the draw because it does require 8 cards. I've only ever drawn that hand in practice hands and it is basically a god hand, and I'd like to do it in a real game, but I don't think that the game will continue after that.
As Rigeld2 said, any locus and copy-land work together, although you really only should be copying Cloudpost. Soul of New Phyrexia is a beast in playgroups that have lots of artifact distruction. With an Unwinding Clock he basically turns into an Avacyn.
Ah okay. Which ramp cards am I missing? And then you would suggest putting them in over the board wipes then?
We play casual, but that being said we still play powerful decks so this being too good shouldn't be a problem.
The big ones in my opinion are Grim Monolith, Gilded Lotus, and Metalworker. Semblance Anvil, Cloud Key, and Helm of Awakening are all usefull though not as many people are all three. You also don't seem to be running Sculpting Steel or Rings of Brighthearth. I also think that it is worth mentioning that from playtesting, both my own and that of others in this thread, the Urza lands are not actually good in this deck, because of how rarely they tap for more then 1 sense getting all 3 out is fairly difficult, although I do run the Locus lands, which are a little easier to bring off. If you are running these and I missed them I'm sorry but I'm wrapping up an 18 hour day on about 3 hours of sleep. I understand that some of these cards (Grim Monolith, Rings of Brighthearth and Metalworker) aren't cheap, but they do really improve the deck. Here's a copy of my decklist if you want to see what I'm running:
So I've been making a deck like this for EDH and looking at some decklists on this thread, how come nobody runs any board wipes like Oblivion Stone, Perilous Vault or Nevinyrral's Disk.
I haven't played the deck yet, I'm still constructing it, but I included all 3 of these. Normally in my EDH decks I run 3-5 board wipes and these are the best board wipes in colorless, aside from All is Dust which is obviously an auto-include.
Here is my decklist so far
[deck]
Still working it. I know Spawnsire of Ulamog is bad, but I figure it'd be fun in EDH. We don't play competitively.
This is a terrible deck for non-competative, the power level of the deck is just too high for most non-competative groups to handle well. I think you may be a little light on mana ramp, seeing as it appears that you are running half the ramp that I'm running, which may make it a less powerful simply by turning down the consistancy. Let us know how the deck plays, and what turn you can get the big guy out on average. And as for the board wipes you mentioned this deck is very dependant on artifacts for ramp, especially given the cost of the commander and how frequently we need, or want, to cast him 5+ times in a game. I believe Juwdah tested them early on and found them to be too harmful for our deck most of the time. I ran Disk for a while, but most of the time it was a dead draw, and when I did play it, without it getting killed before I used it, I ended up farther back than I put my opponents. I think it is basically the same story with the other two wipes you mentioned.
I'm considering cutting Eldrazi Conscription from the deck because of how often it gets naturalized, or any one of those simmilar effects, before I get to declare an attack with the enchanted creature, and it only lasts when I'm in a winning position already. It seems a little win more to me, and I'm thinking that replacing it with Storm Cauldron to add to my stax package. Of course the Cauldron will be useless, at best, when my friend is playing his Borborygmos Enraged deck
My initial thoughts on cards that could be cut include Scroll Rack and Memory Jar which seem to be rather situational since we have so much draw available already. Unwinding Clock since we're not running Vedalken Orrery, Tower of Fortunes, Predator, Flagship and Null Brooch so this only really helps out mana rocks that don't untap themselves (albeit this is still a good reason to run it), and Mindslaver doesn't seem to have much synergy however powerful and fun it is to activate. Of course, I haven't play tested this deck nearly as much as I'd have liked to so take my opinions with a grain of salt.
I also still run It That Betrays although will probably swap it out for some of the new Eldrazi. It's an expensive mana investment, but I managed to get it out after an All Is Dust in my last game, swung in with Kozilek and copied the Annihilator trigger with Strionic Resonator, which stole me 7 lands and a Skullclamp. Not bad value at all in that case but quite situational nonetheless.
Unwinding clock doesn't just synergise with the mana rocks that don't untap themselves. It works wonderfully with things like Mimic Vat and our mana storage cards like Kyren Toy and Coalition Relic. It also means that swinging is doesn't leave us as vulnerable because of the number of creatures in the deck that untap with it. For those of us running Ring of Three Wishes and other simmilar cards it allows us to cast it and tutor multiple times with it, and those of us with Shimmer Myr or Vedalken Orrery get great value from it. This doesn't count the times when I've used Dreamstone Hedron to produce mana when I needed it then followed up by sacrificing it to draw on my opponents turn, or spammed Loreseeker's Stone and keeping all of my permanents indestructable with Soul of New Phyrexia has rendered Vandalblast and many other forms of hate irrrelivant. Unwinding Clock is a game winning card for me.
Mindslaver is also beautiful because you can easily hose whatever plan your opponent was working on even if it doesn't result in the player you use it on dying which is the most common occurrence that I have experienced. Even just tapping down all of the control deck's lands comes in handy, and it is always nice to make sure that the Merciless Eviction's don't go off on artifacts. It's also nice to use someone with a good boardstate's boardwipe to take it away, or kill hexproof creatures with their owner's cards.
Don't forget Eldrazi Conscription in the one shot category, for both the size and (in my opinion more relevantly) the trample and extra annihilator benefits. There are other effects that are good to have, such as unblockable from Whispersilk Cloak and Rogue's Passage. Other forms of evasion, such as Flying and Intimdate are also usefull, especially given that only artifact creatures can block an intimidating Kozi. Indestructible, Infect, and Firebreathing(ish) all can also be useful.
Another option is infinite Spine of Ish Sah to remove their board state. Honestly, because of how creature kill heavy the format I play in is, the infinite Spine or Staff of Nin for infinite combos win me about 50% of my games. And to be honest, I don't even have to be unbounded with Spine to blow up a board state or two every turn, my personal best is winning via casting Sculpting Steel to copy Spine 16 times in one turn, destroying all lands in play other than my own on turn 5 causing everyone else to scoop.
I'd think that running a very stax-centric list would probably be the best way to make a controling deck in colorless. Even with the new stuff there is not exactly a multitude of other ways to control the board, in my opinion. There are people here who run more stax effects than others (I for example run almost none, but that is by the preference of the playgroup) and some of them have alternate decklists that they have posted in the past which would be beneficial.
While Whispersilk Cloak is likely to make people gang up on you, there is some value in running it for the fact that it makes Kozi a 2 swing kill. It also makes Blightsteel Colosus a garanteed one shot. It's not something you want in every meta, but given the number of board wipes people use in my meta and the fact that you don't have to put it on Kozi, it isn't to hard to make sure he gets killed or is sac-able.
I don't have a Maze of Ith, it is the same story as with a lot of the other cards that I have. Except for the triple diget cards, the only cards that I want and don't have are ones that I haven't been able to find.
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of 1 mana producing rocks. They aren't bad by any means, but I prefer my rocks to give me more than 1 mana. Having said that, I'll probably still run it, because of the hand size increase, and because I still have some rocks I like even less in the deck. I'd rather have Ur-Golem's Eye or Worn Powerstone in the deck. Ideally I'd only run Mind Stone and maybe Thought Vessel in the deck that only produce 1 mana. Maybe Chromatic Lantern but that honestly doesn't have a very significant effect on my mana base because I don't have many cards that it would improve, just Ancient Tomb, Eye of Ugin and Temple of the False God.
For those of us running creature heavy decks this could be pretty darn useful. Put this on just a Blightsteel Colossus or a big creature with trample, such as a monstrous Colossus of Akros. It doesn't exactly work for my deck, but it could work for some of the other lists I've seen and have considered.
Don't forget Stony Silence. Another big problem is things that increase the cost of our rocks, such as Grand Arbiter Augustin IV and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Dropping a mana rock or two and using them to drop another rock is a pretty big part of the game plan and when your rocks go up it just becomes impossible. One of the decks I play against occasionally is a Grand Arbiter deck that runs both the other two cards I mentioned, as well as a number of pain in the ass cards like Hurkyl's Recall and other mass bounce spells. The artifact specific hate cards got added to the deck after the first time he played it. It is also a he also runs Curse of Exhaustion which he always drops on me, although he has been know to copy enchantment to pass it off on other people to spread the hate.
Dreamstone Hedron is great in the deck, at least as much for the potential to draw as for the 3 mana and so is Semblance Anvil. Semblace Anvil is a part of the way to get a turn 1 Kozi. Any 2 mana land + Sol Ring or Grim Monolith or any 1 mana producing land with Mana Crypt or Mana Vault, with Semblance Anvil, something to exhile under it, your now free Helm of Awakening and then Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth. You also need to have a Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Voltaic Key, Sculpting Steel, Mana Vault, or Mana Crypt in hand, so it only works if you have the draw because it does require 8 cards. I've only ever drawn that hand in practice hands and it is basically a god hand, and I'd like to do it in a real game, but I don't think that the game will continue after that.
The big ones in my opinion are Grim Monolith, Gilded Lotus, and Metalworker. Semblance Anvil, Cloud Key, and Helm of Awakening are all usefull though not as many people are all three. You also don't seem to be running Sculpting Steel or Rings of Brighthearth. I also think that it is worth mentioning that from playtesting, both my own and that of others in this thread, the Urza lands are not actually good in this deck, because of how rarely they tap for more then 1 sense getting all 3 out is fairly difficult, although I do run the Locus lands, which are a little easier to bring off. If you are running these and I missed them I'm sorry but I'm wrapping up an 18 hour day on about 3 hours of sleep. I understand that some of these cards (Grim Monolith, Rings of Brighthearth and Metalworker) aren't cheap, but they do really improve the deck. Here's a copy of my decklist if you want to see what I'm running:
1x Blightsteel Colossus
1x Conduit of Ruin
1x Duplicant
1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1x Kuldotha Forgemaster
1x Metalworker
1x Myr Retriever
1x Oblivion Sower
1x Shimmer Myr
1x Soul of New Phyrexia
1x Steel Hellkite
1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1x Void Winnower
Sorceries (1)
1x All Is Dust
Planeswalkers (2)
1x Karn Liberated
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Artifacts (49)
1x Akroma's Memorial
1x Ashnod's Altar
1x Astral Cornucopia
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Blinkmoth Urn
1x Chromatic Lantern
1x Claws of Gix
1x Clock of Omens
1x Cloud Key
1x Coalition Relic
1x Darksteel Forge
1x Doubling Cube
1x Dreamstone Hedron
1x Everflowing Chalice
1x Expedition Map
1x Gemstone Array
1x Gilded Lotus
1x Grim Monolith
1x Hedron Archive
1x Helm of Awakening
1x Krark-Clan Ironworks
1x Lightning Greaves
1x Loreseeker's Stone
1x Mana Vault
1x Mimic Vat
1x Mind Stone
1x Mind's Eye
1x Mindslaver
1x Mirrorworks
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Ring of Three Wishes
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Sculpting Steel
1x Semblance Anvil
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sisay's Ring
1x Sol Ring
1x Spine of Ish Sah
1x Staff of Nin
1x Storm Cauldron
1x Strionic Resonator
1x Swiftfoot Boots
1x Thran Dynamo
1x Tormod's Crypt
1x Trading Post
1x Unwinding Clock
1x Voltaic Key
1x Whispersilk Cloak
1x Winter Orb
1x Blinkmoth Nexus
1x Buried Ruin
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Cloudpost
1x Crystal Vein
1x Darksteel Citadel
1x Dread Statuary
1x Dust Bowl
1x Eldrazi Temple
1x Encroaching Wastes
1x Eye of Ugin
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Ghost Town
1x Glimmerpost
1x Haunted Fengraf
1x High Market
1x Homeward Path
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Mutavault
1x Petrified Field
1x Phyrexia's Core
1x Reliquary Tower
1x Rogue's Passage
1x Scorched Ruins
1x Seraph Sanctuary
1x Springjack Pasture
1x Tectonic Edge
1x Temple of the False God
1x Thespian's Stage
1x Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
1x Tower of the Magistrate
1x Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Winding Canyons
My lands need to be updated and improved, there are stll a number of lands I am running just to have a full count of lands.
This is a terrible deck for non-competative, the power level of the deck is just too high for most non-competative groups to handle well. I think you may be a little light on mana ramp, seeing as it appears that you are running half the ramp that I'm running, which may make it a less powerful simply by turning down the consistancy. Let us know how the deck plays, and what turn you can get the big guy out on average. And as for the board wipes you mentioned this deck is very dependant on artifacts for ramp, especially given the cost of the commander and how frequently we need, or want, to cast him 5+ times in a game. I believe Juwdah tested them early on and found them to be too harmful for our deck most of the time. I ran Disk for a while, but most of the time it was a dead draw, and when I did play it, without it getting killed before I used it, I ended up farther back than I put my opponents. I think it is basically the same story with the other two wipes you mentioned.
I'm considering cutting Eldrazi Conscription from the deck because of how often it gets naturalized, or any one of those simmilar effects, before I get to declare an attack with the enchanted creature, and it only lasts when I'm in a winning position already. It seems a little win more to me, and I'm thinking that replacing it with Storm Cauldron to add to my stax package. Of course the Cauldron will be useless, at best, when my friend is playing his Borborygmos Enraged deck
Cutting Unwinding Clock and Mindslaver seems foolish to me.
Unwinding clock doesn't just synergise with the mana rocks that don't untap themselves. It works wonderfully with things like Mimic Vat and our mana storage cards like Kyren Toy and Coalition Relic. It also means that swinging is doesn't leave us as vulnerable because of the number of creatures in the deck that untap with it. For those of us running Ring of Three Wishes and other simmilar cards it allows us to cast it and tutor multiple times with it, and those of us with Shimmer Myr or Vedalken Orrery get great value from it. This doesn't count the times when I've used Dreamstone Hedron to produce mana when I needed it then followed up by sacrificing it to draw on my opponents turn, or spammed Loreseeker's Stone and keeping all of my permanents indestructable with Soul of New Phyrexia has rendered Vandalblast and many other forms of hate irrrelivant. Unwinding Clock is a game winning card for me.
Mindslaver is also beautiful because you can easily hose whatever plan your opponent was working on even if it doesn't result in the player you use it on dying which is the most common occurrence that I have experienced. Even just tapping down all of the control deck's lands comes in handy, and it is always nice to make sure that the Merciless Eviction's don't go off on artifacts. It's also nice to use someone with a good boardstate's boardwipe to take it away, or kill hexproof creatures with their owner's cards.