In Commander, Simic decks are simply boring for the most part. They're generally seen as too easy and far too simplistic in the kinds of value that they generate. You get lots of mana, lots of card draw, lots of big creatures, and really that's often all you need. As such, most Simic color decks just end up being a soup of the best cards available in the colors and there isn't a whole lot of innovative deck-building going on. Now, I'd say this isn't entirely a universally held ideal, but it's a pretty common and prevalent one. It's a big reason I don't personally care for those kinds of decks - they're too easy to build and play and it gets kind of boring for a format like Commander.

Sometimes, though, even the color combinations that tend to skew toward being the easiest to build can require a slightly different approach. That's what attracted me to Volo, Guide to Monsters when I first saw him. Reading Volo felt less like a, say, Tatyova where you know you're just going nuts with the value. Instead, it felt like a puzzle or a challenge. How could you best approach adding in different creature types with as little overlap as possible and keep it interesting? After all, you need to not only have different types with not just your battlefield but your graveyard as well - a small addition that makes building the deck that much more challenging.

I started pouring over decklists, Magic Online, and a list of creature types I found online. Through each creature, each type, I went through swaths of creatures to see some of the ones I felt might be beneficial copying. Some types were easier, others more difficult, and a handful I kinda made my own choices and went off the beaten path a tiny bit. Here's the results of my research - a list fit for Volo himself!

Volo's Menagerie | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Volo, Guide to Monsters

• Creatures (47)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Alloy Myr
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Bramble Sovereign
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Clever Impersonator
• 1 Colossal Skyturtle
• 1 Conduit of Ruin
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1 Esix, Fractal Bloom
• 1 Fblthp, the Lost
• 1 Feasting Troll King
• 1 God-Eternal Rhonas
• 1 Inspired Sphinx
• 1 Keiga, the Tide Star
• 1 Keruga, the Macrosage
• 1 Kiora's Follower
• 1 Lifeblood Hydra
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Loyal Drake
• 1 Loyal Guardian
• 1 Manaweft Sliver
• 1 Man-o'-War
• 1 Master Biomancer
• 1 Mesmerizing Benthid
• 1 Murkfiend Liege
• 1 Nightpack Ambusher
• 1 Ornithopter of Paradise
• 1 Overgrown Battlement
• 1 Pathbreaker Ibex
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Progenitor Mimic
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Rust Scarab
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Spark Double
• 1 Spawning Kraken
• 1 Sporeweb Weaver
• 1 Sylvan Caryatid
• 1 Temur Sabertooth
• 1 Thorn Mammoth
• 1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Growth
• 1 Utopia Mycon
• 1 Wandering Archaic // Explore the Vastlands
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Oko, Thief of Crowns
• 1 Vivien, Monsters' Advocate

• Instants (6)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Reality Shift
• 1 Voidslime

• Sorceries (4)
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Rite of Replication
• 1 Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn

• Artifacts (5)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Combine Chrysalis
• 1 Crystal Shard
• 1 Panharmonicon
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (36)
• 7 Island
• 11 Forest
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dreamroot Cascade
• 1 Flooded Grove
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Littjara Mirrorlake
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Novijen, Heart of Progress
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Quandrix Campus
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Waterlogged Grove
• 1 Yavimaya Coast
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

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Having finally gone through it all, I feel I can safely say I managed to make this work out with the smallest amount of creature overlap possible. In fact, from what I can tell only one creature type that actually overlaps: shapeshifters. This is because all of them are clones that will be turning into something else, meaning that unless one is in your graveyard, you'll be able to double clone various cards multiple times. Not a bad deal, and one that still can work out excellently even if you're unable to copy!

There are two other small potential overlaps in beast and elk, but they generally won't matter for the most part. This comes up mostly as a result of running the planeswalkers Oko, Thief of Crowns and Vivien, Monsters' Advocate. In the case of Oko, you're more likely to be turning opponents' cards into elks rather than your own, so you should be safe to double up on your Burnished Harts. Even if you can't for some reason, getting one activation out of them is still plenty worthwhile. As for Vivien, she makes beasts and, uh, the only beast in the deck is Craterhoof Behemoth. If you're going in on Craterhoof, you don't need two copies. It's just a nice bonus to basically guarantee your victory rather than prolong it.

The other choices ended up being really interesting with a lot of ways to go. Ooze had plenty of cool choices with Scavenging Ooze and Biogenic Ooze being excellent creatures, but I had to go with the old standby of Acidic Slime. Similarly, spiders had a surprising number of interesting creatures, but I ended up going with Sporeweb Weaver so as to help keep the curve a little lower. One of the ones I actually found a little tricky at first was going with zombies. There were a bunch of Blue zombies thanks to Innistrad, but most weren't that interesting. What's more, many zombies would also be horrors, which I quickly discovered had to be taken by Murkfiend Liege instead. I ended up settling on God-Eternal Rhonas since he had a great ETB ability that could be utilized even with the legendary rule killing the duplicate.

There were a lot of cool one-offs as well. Pathbreaker Ibex was one of the only real goats that could be used, as was Colossal Skyturtle. Elephants basically came down to Thorn Mammoth or Terastodon and I went with one that felt a little less common. Mesmerizing Benthid also seemed like a neat choice given how few octopus were decent enough to be playable, and getting a bunch of little blockers is always a big plus. You can even generate extra value with the help of cards like Temur Sabertooth and Bramble Sovereign - both of which work very nicely as their own singleton creature types.

The one part I actually found most challenging was the mana fixing. Sure, you could do quite a bit of heavy lifting with the lands, but where's the fun in that? We typically see a lot of the same mana fixing cards in Commander and it felt really awesome to play some that felt a little more off the beaten path. Playing Manaweft Sliver and Utopia Mycon on their own in a non-tribal deck might normally feel incredibly weird, but here they play very nicely into Volo's limits while still enabling decent ramp. Similar could be said about Overgrown Battlement - which bizarrely doesn't have the plant type that allows us to play Sylvan Caryatid as well - in a non-defender deck and Alloy Myr in a more general sense. A couple mainstays like Birds of Paradise and Lotus Cobra still remain, but it's all to work within the restrictions of the commander.

What you get at the end of the day is a really cool take on a Simic-colored list. Yes, there's still a ton of powerful value engines like you might expect, but it feels like when building it that you have to work for it just a little harder. It's not as easy to just play every good stuff card you can think of and call it a day. Not just that, but it allows for far more customization in your options and preferences, and I'd bet that few Volo lists end up being fairly unique as a result. Whatever way you enjoy it, give Volo a try at your next Commander night. There's a ton of fun to be had here, and best of all you can do it your own way!

Paige Smith

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