It's not your job to know how I plan my articles, but if you're curious, here's the basic idea: I pick a theme around which I can write four different but connected articles. The obvious one is colors or color combinations, like the ones I've done on Mono-White recently or Golgari () last year. However, in order to keep things interesting, I try to alternate color combinations with non-color-related themes, like 8-mana Commanders or Voltron, back when I started all of this.

As I was thinking about my next set, a friend showed up at Commander night with a new deck. Or rather, four new decks. Well, kind of. See, it's modular. It has a White base of 66 cards, then it has three additional sets of 33 cards plus a Commander to move it into a different color. So, one game he's playing Azorius () and the next he's playing Orzhov (), but all with one box of cards. It got me thinking.

Recently, we got a slew of Creatures and Enchantments which go together as Backgrounds. What if I picked one Background and built four decks around it? The idea was intriguing, so I pulled up good ol' Scryfall and read through all the Backgrounds... again (we all, here at Cool Stuff Inc. read them a lot back when they were first revealed). Some of them were clearly not great for this treatment - the one about Dungeons springs to mind - but others were. And with my recent interest in insuring tons of card draw, the choice narrowed itself down to four choices: Scion of Halaster, Folk Hero, Clan Crafter, and Candlekeep Sage.

Scion of Halaster is a killer card. Digging for two each time you draw one is powerful stuff - see twice as many cards! - and surely in Black there's a good way to make use of all that stuff going into the Graveyard. The problem is we're going to be doing a Graveyard deck every time, and I wanted more flexibility than that.

So, you see the problem with Folk Hero and Clan Crafter, too. Folk Hero effectively insists on Tribal to be useful, and Clan Crafter wants artifacts to sacrifice (probably a ton of Treasures, these days). But Candlekeep Sage just wants a Commander. It doesn't care what else we do. We can lean into it or just have it there for color and value, but it's not insisting on any direction other than "have a Commander you play sometimes and might die." I think we can work with that.

We're going to go with the four color pairs we can make with Blue in them; no Mono-Blue deck this time around (though if that's something you want, speak up and I'll talk to my editor about doing five decks in this series). And because of my affinity for the color wheel, we're going to go in order, so let's start with Azorius. There was only one real choice.

Here's a dude who wants to go off and on the Battlefield. We bring him in, we draw a card, we Exile a bunch of our stuff and make a bunch of tokens. Then we send him away, we draw another card, and we get all our stuff back, plus we keep the tokens. This seems like a good deal.

Before we get into the card choices, a quick note: this deck is substantially stronger than I expected it to be. It works quite well and, with a bit of early mana, can get quite out of hand quite quickly. It has a number of excellent synergies and a few infinite combos. I'm not a cEDH guy, but my guess is with a few tweaks like fast mana and a couple more combos (with a few more ways to dig for them), this could be an actual competitor at a cEDH table. With that in mind, I'm going to do something a little unusual and actually mention potential upgrades as I go, so you can see if you agree with me.

Our mana is mostly there to insure our colors. We don't mind playing a tapped land on turn one, but after that we want to be rolling, so we don't have many. We have a Reliquary Tower to help keep our cards around, and a Homeward Path to get our stuff back if someone steals it. Otherwise, we're making our colors. Upgrades would certainly include better mana - fetches and the shock would be good, and there are probably a few more good ones out there.

Candlekeep will keep cards moving throughout the game for us, which is great, but as long as we're bouncing things in and out of Exile, we may as well get something for it. Therefore, we have a number of Creatures which, when they enter, draw a card or two. Play them down, draw a card. Flicker them, draw an extra card. You should have no problem at all getting cards into your hand. Circuit Mender is kind of my favorite here, since it gains us life and draws us an extra card every time we flicker it in and out.

Ultimately, we'll win this game a single way: attacking with a battalion of Soldier tokens. The way I see it, there are three ways this can go down. Let's talk through them.

1. We don't go infinite but we manage to make enough tokens we can push for the win. This is why we're running Dictate of Heliod, one of Abe Sargent's recently noted "most underplayed Enchantments in Commander". With 15 or 20 tokens, flashing this in and attacking might be all we need. We also have Archetype of Imagination, which puts all our tokens into the air and grounds everyone else, so that can help too. And Venser, the Sojourner's -1 ability can make all our stuff unblockable.
2. We go infinite, probably at the end of someone's turn so we untap and can attack with 8,000,000 Soldiers. That'll probably win the game. If it doesn't, please write me and tell me about that game, because that has to be awesome.
3. We show how we go infinite and everyone scoops.

There are always corner cases. I can see a game where somehow a Soulherder gets out of hand and manages to beat face until everyone simply dies. But most often, one of those three is what's going to happen. What's really fun, though, is how we manage everyone else's boards, because we do it all while we're amassing our army of Soldiers. By the way, if you're looking to upgrade, I'd plan on focusing on number 2 and gunning for that every time.

One of the ways 15 3/3 Soldiers wins a game of Commander is by making sure they can punch through. We can help make that happen by making sure most of the big stuff on the board is gone. We do that by flickering, for example, Flickerwisp, clearing the way until at least the next end step. Or Man-o'-War, returning their Creatures to their hand. Reflector Mage does that too, except better, because then they can't cast it on their next turn. Meteor Golem will just blow up anything, and Agent of Treachery will steal all their stuff. (Agent of Treachery can steal Lands, too. Stealing the entire board is a pretty good way to get people to scoop.) Even if we can't win, if we can get just a couple of flickers in we can use Stonehorn Dignitary to prevent anyone else from attacking. Reality Acid sort of works like Meteor Golem, except it's an Enchantment so it's harder to kill. And just in case things get really out of hand, we've always got Time Wipe and Supreme Verdict to simply clear the board.

In order to make this work, we need Abdel jumping off and on the board all the time. There are four ways of doing this.

A1: A single use effect which flickers Abdel immediately.

A2: A repeatable effect which flickers Abdel immediately.

B1: A single use effect which returns Abdel at End of Turn.

B2: A repeatable effect which flickers Abdel at End of Turn.

Cloudshift is an example of an A1. We pay , Abdel flicks out then flicks back in, drawing us two cards and making some Soldiers along the way. Flickerform is a B2, allowing us to do it multiple times (for a bit of a cost) but returning Abdel at the beginning of the next end step no matter what else we do.

The 1s are here because we want to get the ball rolling. Don't be afraid to use these more or less as soon as you draw them, though I think the Instants are worth keeping up to use as a combat trick or end of turn. I mean, why not wait until someone tries to kill Abdel or you want to block with him or something? Just make sure to take note of when he flickers back in, because it might matter. And remember a B protects him from a Wrath of God, but an A doesn't, because the whole thing will resolve before the Wrath does. (Also note you can flicker Abdel with an A1, Exiling everything but Selfless Savior, then sac it to make Abdel Indestructible. That works too.)

On the other hand, Teleportation Circle is an A2 (it's basically Conjurer's Closet, which we also have), and is super solid here. Playing that in between Candlekeep and Abdel is excellent, because it makes certain we'll start making tokens and drawing cards right away. Venser is also mostly here for his +1, since it's a free activation each turn.

Then there are some A1s which aren't Instants, but rather Creatures. These are key, because they go infinite with Abdel. (Charming prince is a B1, which is also great, but doesn't go infinite.) Restoration Angel and Felidar Sovereign both will flicker Abdel when they enter. Abdel can then flicker them, which allows them to flicker Abdel again, flickering them again, and on and on. It has to do with stacking your triggers: remember, first in, last out, so you simply stack them so Abdel flickers the Creature after the Creature has put its trigger on the stack, so it can flicker Abdel out again. This also works with Archaeomancer and any of the Flicker instants (Cloudshift works great for this), except you also have to have a mana rock capable of paying for the spell. Archaeomancer flickers out then back in, returning the spell which you cast with the mana you just made, then flicker Archaeomancer again, returning the spell and getting the rock again. Add Reality Acid and blow up the world. Add Man-o'-War and just bounce it all. Or just make infinite tokens and don't worry about it.

An interesting side note. If you exile a tapped token it is lost forever, but a new untapped token will enter to take its place. With Cathars' Crusade, that could be a thing.

The two things missing here are Strionic Resonator and Lithoform Engine. Those plus two-mana's worth of rocks will also go infinite. I personally feel the deck has enough combos and synergy, but these would be definite add-ins if you're looking to be faster and more consistent.

Candlekeep Abdel | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward

• Background (1)
• 1 Candlekeep Sage

• Creatures (29)
• 1 Aerial Extortionist
• 1 Agent of Treachery
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Archetype of Imagination
• 1 Charming Prince
• 1 Circuit Mender
• 1 Cloudblazer
• 1 Cloudkin Seer
• 1 Dauntless Bodyguard
• 1 Elite Guardmage
• 1 Felidar Guardian
• 1 Flickerwisp
• 1 Inspiring Overseer
• 1 Man-o'-War
• 1 Meteor Golem
• 1 Mistmeadow Witch
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Oji, the Exquisite Blade
• 1 Peregrine Drake
• 1 Priest of Ancient Lore
• 1 Reflector Mage
• 1 Restoration Angel
• 1 Selfless Savior
• 1 Soulherder
• 1 Spirited Companion
• 1 Stonehorn Dignitary
• 1 Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
• 1 Tome Raider
• 1 Wall of Omens

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Venser, the Sojourner

• Instants (9)
• 1 Cloudshift
• 1 Ephemerate
• 1 Essence Flux
• 1 Flicker of Fate
• 1 Justiciar's Portal
• 1 Long Road Home
• 1 Momentary Blink
• 1 Otherworldly Journey
• 1 Planar Incision

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Flicker
• 1 Supreme Verdict
• 1 Time Wipe

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Dictate of Heliod
• 1 Flickerform
• 1 Omen of the Sea
• 1 Reality Acid
• 1 Teleportation Circle

• Artifacts (11)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Bonder's Ornament
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Conjurer's Closet
• 1 Decanter of Endless Water
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Mana Geode
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Vessel of Endless Rest

• Lands (40)
• 12 Island
• 14 Plains
• 1 Celestial Colonnade
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deserted Beach
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Homeward Path
• 1 Irrigated Farmland
• 1 Nimbus Maze
• 1 Port Town
• 1 Prairie Stream
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Skybridge Towers
• 1 Temple of Enlightenment
• 1 Tranquil Cove

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A couple more cards to consider if you want to pump this up: Glen Elendra Archmage, which can be reset with Abdel, and Duplicant, which can be used to Exile opposing creatures.

What do we think? Fun? Potential cEDH? What other thoughts do you have? I'm curious! Let me know in the comments.

Next up: Dimir!

Thanks for reading.