Concept

Sometimes, you love a card so much you want to play with it in every deck; sometimes, you love certain color combinations or card interactions; sometimes, you still want to use all of the cards that you had to cut out of a deck. This deck combines all three. I love playing my Thraximundar Commander deck, but I also love the variety of playing a different deck each game, and many of my opponents have found the deck kind of overwhelming. The solution is to build a completely new Thrax deck!

A while back, I discussed the idea of modifying my existing deck to be more planeswalker-centric, and that’s still my basic plan, but because I’m keeping the original deck intact, I have a whole new challenge: Can I build a deck in the same colors with the same commander and not use any of the same cards? Let’s find out!

Brainstorming

However, the most interesting ’walkers for me are, of course, my beloved Nicol Bolas, Karn, and both versions of Liliana (Jace, the Mind Sculptor does appeal to my inner Griefer Timmy, but winning with the others would trouble my conscience less), so I’m happy to focus on them. Besides, most of the cool proliferate spells are available to us in Grixis colors anyway. The biggest limitation is building a deck that isn't as overwhelmingly powerful as my original Thrax build, which I have been tweaking for years and is loaded with as many powerful (and pricey!) goodies as I can find, including accelerants and tutors. I hope that this new, alternative build will be more accessible to the majority of GM’s casual readership and put the focus on the ’walkers instead of the support cards.

Options

With the initial parameters set, let’s look at what we want to include in a deck that wants to win with planeswalkers. As always, I’m going to look at the functions the cards need to perform along with a few representative card choices—the technology and the deck-building process are more important to me than just dropping a fat decklist that nobody can be bothered reading.

Planeswalkers

This is the kind of insight that I bring to the table: Planeswalker decks need planeswalkers! Rather than being a slave to theme, though, and bearing in mind that most of us will not have access to every single mythic rare, only some of the available Grixis-aligned ’walkers will make the cut.

Sorin Markov – I knew a guy who played even more mono-black decks than I do, and he swore that the best way to use Sorin was to use his +2 ability and make people try to either stop you from Mindslaving them or make themselves look non-threatening enough that you Mindslaver someone else.

However, I’m of the belief that the best use of Sorin is to drop life totals, especially in combination with a commander that can easily deliver 7 or more points of hasty beats. In fact, the last time I played against the aforementioned black mage, it was a three-player game, and I manipulated him into finishing off the third player by dropping him to 10 life with my own Sorin. In a 40-life format in which life-gain is commonplace, there are few effects more powerful than Sorin’s life-loss ability.

In addition to the raw power of this ability, you can play it immediately, without building up to it, and you will often find that a Sorin Markov with a single loyalty counter will not draw any serious attacks; the same cannot be said for a Sorin on 6 or 8 loyalty.

Chandra Nalaar and Chandra, the Firebrand – Arguably the weakest of the original planeswalkers, Chandra can be useful but is probably unlikely to do as much for us as the others. On the other hand, that may reduce her threat profile, as a single point of damage won’t scare too many people (and neither will 6 or 10 damage if we’re being honest).

Chandra, the Firebrand will often be the more powerful of the two, especially if you can double up on a spell such as Cruel Ultimatum with her −2 ability. On top of that, her ultimate is more versatile in a target-rich multiplayer environment than Nalaar’s is.

Chandra Ablaze and Koth of the Hammer – Koth is included with Chandra II because they are both very dependent on a sufficient quantity of red spells and/or lands. That isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but my initial feeling is that neither of these is going to make the cut. Still, Koth’s ultimate gives you the option of repeatable damage from colorless sources, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially since the ability scales as the game goes on. Also, if you’re the kind of person who runs Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon anyway, Koth can be fantastic even in three or more colors.

Jace Beleren, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Jace, Memory Adept – Soon to be returning in the new Ravnica block, the multiverse’s most attention-seeking mind mage brings a lot to the table, although with the exception of JTMS’ ultimate ability, he doesn’t do too much to directly hurt people. Still, as Mr. Scotty Mac from The Eh Team recently reminded me, that +2 ability is a great way to keep the rest of the table off your back, and drawing twenty cards at once is nothing to sneeze at. Big Jace and Little Jace definitely go in, and I’ll get a New Jace to plug in as soon as I can.

Sarkhan the Mad and Tezzeret the Seeker – These are the major build-around-me planeswalkers, and I’m only mentioning them for the sake of completeness. Sarkhan II wants a lot of creatures, and I doubt I’ll be able to make that work, but he deserves consideration because I can proliferate his counters while he turns my utility weenies into fearsome, fang-ed flyers. Tezzeret does good stuff with artifact accelerators, but most of those will stay in my primary Thrax deck.

Rings of Brighthearth – That’s right; I’m declaring the Rings an honorary planeswalker because of how amazingly synergistic it can be with them.

Proliferators

Fuel for the Cause, Grim Affliction, Spread the Sickness, Steady Progress, Tezzeret's Gambit, Volt Charge – Utility cards with proliferate are worth it—especially because I don’t want to copy any of the best-of-breed removal from my original Thrax build.

There isn't much to say here; proliferate is strong and allows you to trap your opponents into underestimating your threats. A card such as Chandra is only going to do a point or two of damage per turn, making it deceptively easy to overlook a Firebrand on 5 loyalty . . . until the two points of damage from Volt Charge proliferates her to 6 and she fires 36 points of damage out of the blue. Kind of makes me wish I could squeeze in a copy of Repercussion to go with her!

Counter Lovers

Magistrate's Scepter, Black Market, Altar of Shadows, Eternity Vessel, Grimoire of the Dead – Might as well make the most of all that proliferation!

Slow-Them-Downs

Echo Chamber is a particularly interesting piece of technology that I’ve never seen anyone else use. Notice that it can even copy legendary creatures (i.e. kill commanders) if that’s all the player has to copy. Consider adding Sundial of the Infinite for extra yucks.

Speed-Me-Ups

Sweepers

Blasphemous Act, Chain Reaction, Inferno, Living Death, Plague Wind, Reversal of Fortune, Spelljack, Tsabo's Decree, Anowon, the Ruin Sage, Bloodfire Colossus, Chancellor of the Spires, Kederekt Leviathan, Pestilence Demon, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Wrexial, the Risen Deep – So many choices, including permanents that will keep the red zone nice and empty, and non-sweepers that will allow you to cast your opponents’ sweepers. It’s true what they say: If you want a spell cast right, you have to cast it yourself!

Nevinyrral's Disks

Recursion

Cruel Ultimatum, Quicken, Nucklavee, Anarchist, Izzet Chronarch, Eldrazi Legends, Lots and Lots of Slavering Zombies – I know the goal of this deck is to use different cards from my original Thrax build, but it just wouldn’t be Grixis without a recurring Cruel Ultimatum. Besides, my buddy Simon recently turned me on to Quicken as a devious addition to my beloved Cruel Ultimatum/Nucklavee combo, and I’m dying to try that out here. Additionally, I want to have a strong graveyard plan to make up for my relatively low number of (highly expendable) critters.

Speed Bumps, Fatties, and Spot Removal

These are fairly generic categories, and I’m sure regular readers will have plenty of ideas of the kinds of goodies we can put in here. Suffice it to say that I want a lot of each.

The Gathering

Similarly, a lot of my weenies were able to serve dual purposes, which let me skimp on spot removal. What is a Manic Vandal but a Shatter that serves as a speed bump? Skinrender even combines spot removal, chump-blocking, and proliferate shenanigans in one convenient package.

Still, there was no getting around it: I was trying to achieve way too much, and I didn’t have the card slots for everything I wanted. Something had to go.

The first category I excised completely was the Slow-Them-Downs. I realized that a lot of those cards would also slow me down, too (such as Vile Consumption taxing my chump-blockers or Phyrexian Tyranny draining my mana), and they would also draw even more fire, thus stretching my chump-blocking resources to the limit even before I played a planeswalker.

The second category that was cut (almost) completely was Counter Lovers. I realized that trying to get even more out of my proliferate cards would become counter-productive if they took slots away from planeswalkers and ways to protect them. I kept a couple of them in just to see if the idea had merit, but I scrapped most of them.

Third, I was forced to make the hardest cut of all: getting rid of my spot removal and recursion. The sweeper, creature, and planeswalker suites all give me some ability to deal with troublesome creatures, and the Disk will help with other permanent types, so I decided to cut out all of my one-for-one spot removal. This means I now have two Thraximundar decks, neither of which is packing a Terminate, which feels like a mistake, but nobody ever said building Commander decks was easy!

The final step building the first draft of the deck was to tweak the numbers. Ten cards in each key function is the best basic framework for deck-building that I’ve ever heard of, but you can’t be a slave to the framework. I dropped the fatties from ten to seven, cutting cards with the same converted mana cost as my commander first, and then I dropped one of my proliferation engines—Throne of Geth—because I didn’t have enough artifacts to support it. I even dropped one of my planeswalkers (giving me eight ’walkers plus Rings of Brighthearth), and cut a chump-blocker for an Erratic Portal. I figured that it would allow me to both reuse and save my utility weenies and slow my opponents down a bit.

"The Planeswalking Dead 1.0"

• Commander (1)
• 1 Thraximundar

• Lands (40)
• 40 Lands

• Planeswalkers (9)
• 1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
• 1 Karn Liberated
• 1 Sorin Markov
• 1 Liliana Vess
• 1 Liliana of the Veil
• 1 Chandra, the Firebrand
• 1 Jace Beleren
• 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Rings of Brighthearth

• Proliferators (9)
• 1 Contagion Clasp
• 1 Contagion Engine
• 1 Inexorable Tide
• 1 Viral Drake
• 1 Fuel for the Cause
• 1 Grim Affliction
• 1 Spread the Sickness
• 1 Tezzeret's Gambit
• 1 Volt Charge

• Counter Lovers (3)
• 1 Eternity Vessel
• 1 Grimoire of the Dead
• 1 Magistrate's Scepter

• Speed-Me-Ups (10)
• 3 Signets
• 2 Wellsprings
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Vedalken Orrery
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph

• Sweepers (4)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Chain Reaction
• 1 Plague Wind
• 1 Spreading Plague

• Disk Suite (5)
• 1 Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 Acquire
• 1 Beacon of Unrest
• 1 Praetor's Grasp

• Weenies (10)
• 1 Sea Gate Oracle
• 1 Mnemonic Wall
• 1 Izzet Chronarch
• 1 Wall of Frost
• 1 Guard Gomazoa
• 1 Bone Shredder
• 1 Evil Twin
• 1 Skinrender
• 1 Treasure Mage
• 1 Erratic Portal

• Fatties (7)
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Steel Hellkite
• 1 Chancellor of the Spires
• 1 Butcher of Malakir
• 1 Phyrexian Ingester
• 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

• Spot Removal (2)
• 1 Cruel Ultimatum
• 1 Spine of Ish Sah

Buy This Deck

• Kozilek is in there for long-game card-draw and planeswalker recursion.
• Chandra, the Firebrand made the cut over Chandra Nalaar despite the fact that the latter is better at dealing with a single midsized threat. With the low number of instants and sorceries, this might be a mistake, but I really prefer Firebrand’s ultimate
• Grimoire of the Dead is there because it’s a self-contained game ender. Flavorwise, it’s better in a different deck, but I just wanted to see if it was worth including Plan C.
• Damnation would probably be a better sweeper than either of the red spells, and I don’t have one in my original deck, but I don’t have any spare either. Chain Reaction is more situational than I would like, but it covers my biggest weakness—creature swarms—and will occasionally allow me to keep a fatty while wiping everyone else’s board. Blasphemous Act hasn’t got enough love I don’t think, but it allows me to sweep the board and drop Nicol Bolas for a mere 9 mana, making it perfect for this deck.
• Praetor's Grasp and Beacon of Unrest serve the three purposes: finding Disks, abusing other people’s toys, and neutering combo decks.

• As always, I doubt a list of lands will interest anyone, but two points need to be made. First, if you have Rings of Brighthearth, you have a major incentive to put in more fetch lands, including the Esper and Jund Panoramas and the two Mirage fetch lands (Bad River and Rocky Tar Pit) at a minimum. Second, I put the Wellsprings in partly because of their synergy with Throne of Geth, which I later cut. As such, they lose some value (although I still intend to blow them up with a Disk, so they are still two-for-ones), so a copy of Phyrexia's Core is an even better idea than normal.
• The total number of repeated cards is ten—much more than I’d hoped. Specifically: Mulldrifter, Phyrexian Metamorph, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Liliana, Mnemonic Wall, Bone Shredder, Nevinyrral's Disk, Praetor's Grasp, Beacon of Unrest, and Sheoldred, Whispering One. It will surprise you not at all to learn that these are some of my favorite spells,¹ but I’m still going to try to cut them before I’m finished. It won’t be easy, though—because these cards are the best there is at what they do.

Testing, Tweaking, Tyrannizing

The irony is that in order to make this deck play differently from my original build, I’ll have to add more tutors. Tutors normally reduce variety by allowing you to play the same cards every game, but if you’re trying to build around a non-conventional path to victory, they can help to keep you honest. As an added bonus, I realized during testing that transmute on cards is actually an activated ability that I can double up on with Rings of Brighthearth, so I hope to find room for a couple of them.

In addition to more ways to search, I’ll add two more planeswalkers to search for: another Chandra and another Jace. I’ll also try to cut a few of the cards I’m already using in my other deck. Finally, I’ll increase the focus on planeswalkers by taking out some of the non-essential plans.

The result is a deck that feels very tight to me. It isn't as strong as my original build, but a good deck is fun to play, not just abusively powerful. The Planeswalking Dead is going to be a blast to play, with a lot of decisions to make, a lot of synergy, and a lot of power.

Now it’s your turn. Do you have a deck idea that’s been on the backburner for a while? If so, no more messing about—start building tonight. If you build it, they will die!

¹ I have play sets of Mana Drain and Force of Will, and two old cards with “Time” in the name (acquired back before they were worth their weight in gold), but my favorite blue spell of all time is still the humble Mulldrifter. You just can't beat that value!