It was a dark and stormy night when they walked into my office. The aether clouds swirled in the sky outside my window as the thunder boomed and rain splattered against the panes of glass. I could see a small brood of gremlins taking shelter under an abandoned Cultivator’s Caravan, their blue-tipped snouts just barely sticking out from underneath to sniff out any stray aether from the storm. I heard a firm knock on my door just before it opened. I didn’t even get a chance to say, “Come in.” They wore a hooded cloak and their face was obscured by a intricate lattice of metal in the shape of a mask. That wasn’t unusual for my line of work, but there was something that struck me about this person. Two glowing blue eyes pierced through the darkness of their hooded face. Those two slits of brilliant blue were haunting, boring deep into me as they swept into the room and regarded me with what seemed like contempt. But, there was an air of desperation in those eyes, like this was the last place they expected to end up. I’d seen those eyes in the faces of the countless Kaladeshi who’d walked through my door, but these eyes belonged to someone I never expected to see. Gonti, Lord of Luxury.

I’d had run ins with Gonti before, seen them from across the crowd in their Prakhata night club. I knew their type, and I used to want nothing to do with folks like them. I wasn’t much for the self-indulgence, flagrant disregard for consequences, or the single-mindedness with which they pursued their goals. But that was in the past, and Gonti had something new to show me, something that would turn my world upside down.

Gonti approached my desk and reached into a pocket deep within their cloak.

I went to stop them, to save them some time and heartache. “You know I can’t help you, Gonti. I’ve meddled with Mono-Black before and nothing good ever came of it.”

Gonti stopped for a moment, then let out a deep, raspy chuckle. “You’ve never met anyone like me, then.” They found what they were looking for in their cloak pocket and placed an object in each of their ashy, gray hands before stretching them out before me. In each hand sat a single Magic card: Blade of Selves in the left, and Panharmonicon in the right. “What if I told you I can play your opponents’ spells?”

I stared at the cards in Gonti’s hands, deeply regarding the mysteries of the multiverse and seeing the possibilities unraveling before me. I saw glimpses of a world with strange hedron-shaped rocks floating through the sky, another with picturesque streams and forests teeming with all sorts of fairytale creatures, and yet another with two beautiful men in armor, sculpted as if from marble, standing on a vista and gazing upon the construction of two statues in their likeness that looked as if they were made of actual marble. The room rematerialized and I saw Gonti standing before me once more.

I reached out and grabbed the cards from both of Gonti’s hands. “So what do you want me to do?”

I’ve played around with building a Mono-Black deck in Commander before, but I’ve never really found a commander that resonated with me. That is, until I learned a neat little rules interaction with Gonti, Lord of Luxury. Gonti’s enter the battlefield trigger chooses an opponent and lets you exile a card from the among the top four cards of their library. You may then cast that card for as long as it remains exiled and use mana as though it were mana of any type to cast it. That’s right, Gonti the crime lord steals a card and lets you cast it a la Praetor's Grasp. Let me tell you, nothing feels better than taking your opponents spells and using them to further your own game-plan. The kicker, however, is the ability is worded in such a way that Gonti doesn’t have to be in play for you to be able to cast the exiled card. Once the card is exiled, you can cast it.

Learning this changed everything for me.

I immediately started thinking of the ways I could take advantage of this amazing interaction and ended up with the following list:

The Wolf of Prakharta ? Commander | Robert Burrows

• Commander (1)
• 1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury

• Creatures (27)
• 1 Abhorrent Overlord
• 1 Bloodgift Demon
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Demon of Dark Schemes
• 1 Disciple of Bolas
• 1 Duplicant
• 1 Entomber Exarch
• 1 Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1 Fleshbag Marauder
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Grim Haruspex
• 1 Magus of the Coffers
• 1 Massacre Wurm
• 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1 Nekrataal
• 1 Nirkana Revenant
• 1 Noxious Gearhulk
• 1 Oblivion Sower
• 1 Phyrexian Rager
• 1 Puppeteer Clique
• 1 Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Skull Collector
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
• 1 Liliana Vess
• 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited

• Spells (33)
• 1 Hero's Downfall
• 1 Malicious Affliction
• 1 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Life's Finale
• 1 Mutilate
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Scour from Existence
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Attrition
• 1 Greed
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Blade of Selves
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Charcoal Diamond
• 1 Cloudstone Curio
• 1 Conjurer's Closet
• 1 Erratic Portal
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Extraplanar Lens
• 1 Jet Medallion
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Nim Deathmantle
• 1 Panharmonicon
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Strionic Resonator
• 1 Vedalken Orrery
• 1 Worn Powerstone
• 1 Whip of Erebos

• Lands (36)
• 24 Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Command Beacon
• 1 Crypt of Agadeem
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 High Market
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Volrath's Stronghold

Buy This Deck

So where do we begin? How about Blade of Selves? This wonderful piece of equipment promises to do amazing things with Gonti and any of the other ETB effects we’ve packed into the deck. Making new copies of Gonti for each opponent just increases the pile of exiled cards we get to cast for the rest of the game, even if we have to sacrifice the copies of our general when they enter play. People often refer to the graveyard as a second hand of cards, so that means Gonti is giving us access to a third hand of cards. And they aren’t even our cards!

The whole list started with Gonti and Blade of Selves, and I just extrapolated from there. Panharmonicon and Strionic Resonator give us extra ETB effects for all of our creatures for that little bit of added value. Conjurer's Closet lets us flicker Gonti or another creature every turn to add to our exiled hand. Finally, Cloudstone Curio, Skull Collector, and Erratic Portal let us pick up and recast our creatures with ETB triggers and keep the value rolling. And this is just the beginning. There’s more than one way to re-buy and enters the battlefield trigger.

Toss in some wrath effects (I have a good handful, but feel free to adjust as you see fit), some removal (I like having stuff like Hero's Downfall to interact with the must-kill creatures), and some lands to call this a deck. Command Beacon is great for if Gonti gets taken out of the picture one too many times. They can only kill Gonti so much before running out of ammo. Bojuka Bog is almost a necessity given how many graveyard strategies are out there in the wilds of Commander. Sac outlets as lands are a nice bit of utility for when people try and steal or exile your creatures, so I included High Market and Phyrexian Tower. Maze of Ith is a great utility land and Thespian's Stage pulls double duty as a copy of any good land on the battlefield.

So there we have it. A Gonti, Lord of Luxury deck that seeks to take full advantage of what your opponents bring to the table while having a solid plan of its own as a back-up. If you have any suggestions or want to talk Commander or Magic in general, you can find me on Twitter @Ironmanphoenix or leave a comment below. I hope you enjoy!

— Robert Burrows