Readers,

Listen. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Ilharg, the Raze-Boar. Playing creatures from your hand for free feels incredibly good, and I couldn't be happier with how it feels to get that sweet, sweet value. And yet, there is a lot of value DENIED to you by virtue of the CHEATING you did putting a creature into play with Ilharg. Sure, you don't pay the mana, but you don't get those sweet, sweet ETB triggers. I decided to remedy that by building a deck where you're not going to get the creature's ETB triggers unless you cast the creature, something we MIGHT have to resort to. I want to build a deck that catches different triggers when creatures enter tapped and attacking and also you don't NEED Ilharg to make the deck work. There is a good chance I may want to cut Ilharg from the deck entirely, and if I don't, I want everyone to know that there's a good chance I didn't because I didn't want to have to rewrite this entire paragraph. Why are we even TALKING about Ilharg at all? When I play with my decks that contain Ilharg (all of the Red ones. All of them), I am sometimes disappointed not to get much value when the creature comes into play already tapped and attacking. I found a way to turn that frown upside down by giving you different ETB triggers you WON'T miss. I want to take one minor drawback of an insanely powerful card and play a deck that eliminates it, to an extent. It's this or start writing about Lorcana, your choice.

If you're still reading, you don't want me to write about Lorcana (or the secondary market, which is just people trying to get $500 for that convention exclusive Mickey on eBay) and you want to see about whomst I'm writing. Good, I'm into it.

Ardoz is here to make shoes/pastry for the team and I'm very much here for that happening. As much as Ardoz says "Goblin" on the card twice, this needn't be a Goblin deck. It really needn't be an Ilharg deck, either, although there are real benefits to building that way and I will get into them or delete this paragraph. If you're going wide, you'll get more of those ETB triggers and Goblins excel at going wide. But, and I'm not being snide about this, you don't need me to help you build an Ardoz Goblin deck. It's like the other Goblin decks. I'm not knocking it - longer-term and even shorter-term readers will know I have tried to jam a Welder/Slaver package into a ton of decks over the years and that it finally landed in a Goblin token deck built around Extus, Oriq Overlord // Awaken the Blood Avatar. That said, I don't need to be THAT clever here but I also don't need to build a generic Mono-Red Gobbos build. You know about EDHREC. I don't want to do anything generic, though - I want to get WEIRD. I'm about to build around the Dash mechanic.

Not just Dash, either; Blitz is heavily in the mix. I'll explain. One of the most fun decks I've built this year was this one, built around Olivia, Crimson Bride. It always feels super powerful when I swing with anything huge way earlier than I should, and if we are looking at minimizing the feelbads we get when we Ilharg something, I want to look at that deck for inspiration. Since it was a Sneak Attack deck, the creatures in it didn't have to have haste already to live, attack, then die. Being in Black made reanimation possible and we had lots of good sac outlets as well because sometimes it's nice to get value out of creatures that are dying anyway, and sometimes it's important to sac your creatures before they get exiled due to something happening to Olivia. It was a fun deck to play, but I don't bring it up because it was fun to play, I bring it up because playing it taught me what I liked and didn't like in case I built a similar deck someday. Someday came a lot sooner than I'd anticipated, and suddenly I looked at a creature that made creatures way better, but only once, and realized I could make that "only once" as often as I wanted. We were going to bounce, blink, Blitz and... Bdash. All the good B stuff you want. All the B. B for beatings.

Going wide helps us go tall, but the more we can re-buy and re-cast good creatures, or token producers, the more we can swing with the team. Haste on creatures is very good, but instead of playing with mediocre and overcosted Haste creatures, what if we just maxed out on ways to give our creatures Haste so that we could play efficient creatures more effectively? This experience let me really flex my creative muscles and play a variety of really impactful creatures. In fact, we've been prepared for Ardoz for years because there is another creature with the exact same energy that doesn't start in the command zone but that we can learn a lot from.

If we can look at how people were maximizing Battledriver we can easily maximize our use of Ardoz, a card that is almost the name of Sean Connery's best movies, bar none. If we can build around both of these cards, we can find a deck where every cast creature is a celebration and recasting a deck full of Viashino-style creatures brings us immense joy as we got as wide as possible. You don't ALWAYS want to bounce or blink, we do want to build a board, but being resistant to Wraths in a way other players are not and being the most explosive deck at the table means we are always able to handle anything they throw at us. So, what would a deck-build around Ardoz with all of these things in mind look like?

Ardoz, Cobbler of War | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Ardoz, Cobbler of War

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Akki Lavarunner
• 1 Anger
• 1 Battle Cry Goblin
• 1 Captivating Crew
• 1 Delina, Wild Mage
• 1 Devilish Valet
• 1 Feldon of the Third Path
• 1 Flamerush Rider
• 1 Goblin Chieftain
• 1 Goblin King
• 1 Goblin Rabblemaster
• 1 Gut, True Soul Zealot
• 1 Hanweir Garrison
• 1 Hellrider
• 1 Ilharg, the Raze-Boar
• 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1 Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1 Legion Warboss
• 1 Mardu Scout
• 1 Ogre Battledriver
• 1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
• 1 Relic Robber
• 1 Rundvelt Hordemaster
• 1 Skirk Prospector
• 1 Squee, Dubious Monarch
• 1 Tilonalli's Summoner
• 1 Torbran, Thane of Red Fell
• 1 Urabrask the Hidden

• Instants (7)
• 1 Abrade
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Deflecting Swat
• 1 Force of Rage
• 1 Seething Song
• 1 Valakut Awakening
• 1 Wild Ricochet

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Hate Mirage
• 1 Jeska's Will
• 1 Mana Geyser
• 1 Tormenting Voice
• 1 Vandalblast

• Enchantments (12)
• 1 Elemental Mastery
• 1 Fervor
• 1 Flameshadow Conjuring
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Impact Tremors
• 1 In the Web of War
• 1 Mechanized Warfare
• 1 Mirror March
• 1 Need for Speed
• 1 Rite of the Raging Storm
• 1 Sneak Attack
• 1 Warstorm Surge

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Cloudstone Curio
• 1 Conjurer's Closet
• 1 Erratic Portal
• 1 Fire Diamond
• 1 Hazoret's Monument
• 1 Helm of Possession
• 1 Lightning Coils
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (35)
• 29 Mountain
• 1 Castle Embereth
• 1 Den of the Bugbear
• 1 Flamekin Village
• 1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
• 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 1 War Room

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This turned into a Goblin deck. I really didn't mean for it to, but even when I started looking for Dash cards I found Goblins like Mardu Scout. Looking for Blitz creatures in New Capenna reminded me that Devilish Valet ends games on the spot if you cane make a ton of tokens... then I thought about Krenko... suddenly it made no sense NOT to build Goblins.

If you want to double down more on tokens, there are a few ways to do it more incrementally, but not as reliably as with Goblins. Still, supplementing with Goblin Assault in a deck that already has a Rabblemaster or adding cards like Siege-Gang Commander could make it feel like you're going even wider. The deck wants to go wide, certainly, but with multiple +2 and +3 effects when creatures ETB means you can wreak a lot of havoc with a smaller number of creatures and adding more token effects detracts from that redundancy. We simply must pick our poisons, and I'm electing to build the way I built, focusing on multiple buffing effects.

What do we think? Too tall? Too wide? A third thing? Let me know in the comments section. Thank you in advance for reading and sharing on social media. Until next time!