For this week I'm going to be taking another Legendary card from the 99 of one of the Fallout precon decks and turning it into its own deck. Last week's subject, Hancock, Ghoulish Mayor, might have been better as a support card in a multicolored deck, but today's general should be more than capable of leading its own deck.

Curie, Emergent Intelligence is a Robot with some interesting party tricks. When it deals combat damage to a player I'll draw cards equal to its base power. That base power is 1, but for one and a Blue I can exile another nontoken artifact creature I control and have Curie become a copy of the exiled creature, all while retaining her card draw ability.

Card draw is incredibly important in Commander, so this deck is going to focus on ways to increase Curie's base power. A creature's base power is its power before it is increased (or decreased) by any counters, equipment, auras or other effects in play. That means I'll want to run cards that change a creature's power, either until end of turn or permanently, and I'll also want to run artifact creatures that can be used with her ability to exile an artifact creature and become a copy of it.

The biggest question is whether or not I want to get cute and run ways to turn a creature into an artifact creature. There are a few ways to do that, but in general I find that if my ideas get too convoluted, they are far less likely to happen in a game. It's a fine plan to use a Mind Control aura to steal someone's The Ur-Dragon, use Liquimetal Torque to turn it into an artifact, use Curie to exile it and then to attack for 10 damage and draw 10 cards. It's more than just a fine plan - it's an amazing, outlandish, and extraordinary plan and it's one that requires a lot of things to come together to actually work.

What will work is a more modest plan to make Curie unblockable and to deal maybe four or five damage and draw what is still a pretty significant number of cards.

Emergent Card Draw

While my basic plan is to see how many cards I can draw with Curie, Emergent Intelligence, I'm not going to only rely on my commander to draw cards. I'm aiming for a high powered build so I'm running Rhystic Study, Consecrated Sphinx, Ledger Shredder, Faerie Mastermind, Vedalken Archmage, and One With the Machine to supplement my card draw. Those are necessary, but boring. The fun part of playing this deck will be to see how much I can draw from swinging with Curie.

Am I running auras in an artifacts deck? When those auras are cheap and can make my commander unblockable, why not? Aqueous Form and Invisibility both provide reliable evasion and the former will let me scry when enchanted creature attacks. The latter makes the enchanted creature unblockable except by Walls, but aside from the occasional Mnemonic Wall or Arcades, the Strategist deck, that shouldn't be much of a drawback.

I'm running a handful of equipment that can make Curie unblockable, starting with a shiny new Silver Shroud Costume. Prowler's Helm and Whispersilk Cloak are also in the deck to help get through and deal damage. If I'm unable to pull into any auras or equipment, I could always exile an evasive artifact creature to make Curie into a copy of it. Steel Hellkite will usually be able to get through and deal damage to someone, and drawing five cards will always feel good.

If I'm not able to make Curie into a copy of a bigger creature, I'm going to want to find ways to increase its base power without whittling down my board. Losing a creature every time I want to get some card draw is going to make games against aggro decks a real challenge. Fortunately there are a few ways to increase Curie's power without losing a creature.

Ensoul Artifact a two-mana aura that will make Curie a 5/5 creature. It won't help with evasion, but I still love this card for its goofy magic scissors artwork and its low mana cost. I'm also running Mightstone's Animation, which can draw me a card and enchant an artifact to make it a 4/4.

Majestic Metamorphosis is an instant that will turn target artifact or creature into a 4/4 Angel artifact creature with flying. It also draws me a card, as does Suit Up, another instant that can make target creature or vehicle into an artifact creature with a base power of 4 and a base toughness of 5.

How We Win

Drawing lots of cards, whether from Curie dealing combat damage, a Rhystic Study that gets ignored for too long, or even an Overwhelming Intellect countering a high mana creature, is all well and good, but it's worth asking how this deck is going to actually win games.

I thought about throwing in Laboratory Maniac type wincons, but I don't expect to really be able to draw myself out with Curie, Emergent Intelligence. If I find that I'm drawing way more cards than I expected, it might be worth adding wincons that trigger from drawing out of an empty library. I'll cross that bridge when and if I come to it.

It might not seem like a realistic scenario, but I might be able to two-shot an opponent with commander damage. I'll just need to play and exile the right creature with my commander so its base power and toughness are no longer based upon a static number.

Master of Etherium and Shambling Suit are both great examples of creatures without a static base power. The former gives my other artifact creatures +1/+1 and has a base power and toughness equal to the number of artifacts I control. The latter is a construct that has power equal to the number of artifacts and enchantments I control. Neither have built-in evasion or protection.

If I want a commander that is hard to destroy, I could exile Darksteel Juggernaut. It's indestructible and has a power and toughness equal to the number of artifacts I control. It also attacks each turn if able, which probably won't be a problem as I'll want to be attacking anyways. Filigree Attendant is a flying Homunculus with a power equal to the number of artifacts I control.

My artifact count may never get up past a dozen, but it will probably be high enough to make a difference. I expect these creatures to be among my better options for making Curie a real threat. I'll be surprised if commander damage becomes a regular way this deck wins games, but it's good to know it might be an option every once in a while.

I'm running Dramatic Reversal and Isochron Scepter, which with the right mana rocks can generate infinite mana. If I'm able to get Memnarch onto the battlefield I can turn everything on the battlefield into an artifact and then gain control of every artifact on the field. That usually leads to the table conceding the win, as there's not much they can do when they're all back to turn zero and you've got everything they had.

I'm also running Displacer Kitten and Hullbreaker Horror in the list. They can work nicely with zero mana artifacts like Mana Crypt and Mox Opal, or even Sol Ring if Etherium Sculptor is on the field to make it cost one less mana. This deck does not have an infinite mana outlet in the command zone, but with the amount of card draw I'm running it should help to be able to cast anything I want without worrying about how much it costs.

A Curie for What Ails You

This deck isn't too far from an experiment in just running anything and everything that could help me draw more cards. That isn't a bad thing. Drawing cards helps you hit your land drops, draw into answers, and with any luck even pull into a wincon. My biggest concern with trying to make Curie a high-powered deck is what feels like the lack of a compact and efficient wincon, but that's why we play new decks. I don't know if this list will keep up with other high-powered decks or if it will get overwhelmed or outpaced. I'm optimistic, but I'm often optimistic.

Curie, Emergent EDH | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Curie, Emergent Intelligence

• Creatures (22)
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Consecrated Sphinx
• 1 Darksteel Juggernaut
• 1 Displacer Kitten
• 1 Etherium Sculptor
• 1 Faerie Mastermind
• 1 Filigree Attendant
• 1 Hullbreaker Horror
• 1 Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
• 1 Ledger Shredder
• 1 Master of Etherium
• 1 Memnarch
• 1 Octavia, Living Thesis
• 1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1 Sai, Master Thopterist
• 1 Shambling Suit
• 1 Skilled Animator
• 1 Snapcaster Mage
• 1 Steel Hellkite
• 1 Thieving Skydiver
• 1 Torrential Gearhulk
• 1 Vedalken Archmage

• Instants (15)
• 1 AEtherize
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dramatic Reversal
• 1 Force of Will
• 1 Majestic Metamorphosis
• 1 Overwhelming Intellect
• 1 Pact of Negation
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Stoic Rebuttal
• 1 Suit Up
• 1 Swan Song

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Fabricate
• 1 One with the Machine
• 1 Sea Gate Restoration

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Aqueous Form
• 1 Ensoul Artifact
• 1 Invisibility
• 1 Mightstone's Animation
• 1 Rhystic Study

• Artifacts (17)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Braided Net
• 1 Extraplanar Lens
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Isochron Scepter
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Mox Opal
• 1 Prowler's Helm
• 1 Sapphire Medallion
• 1 Silver Shroud Costume
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 The Blackstaff of Waterdeep
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Whispersilk Cloak

• Lands (37)
• 33 Snow-Covered Island
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rogue's Passage

Buy This Deck Export text

Tuning this list up would probably involve adding in a Thassa's Oracle / Laboratory Maniac wincon, along with the support you would need to help make that happen. It's not hard to turn infinite mana into infinite draw in Blue, but I didn't load today's list up with X draw spells that would enable those wincons.

A budget version of this deck would drop out the fast mana rocks, but that's not an issue if you're expecting to play longer, lower powered games. Mind Stone might not be as good as Mana Crypt, but it sure won't break your budget and it would fit into this deck quite nicely. You could probably drop out some of the free counterspells and you might throw in Metalwork Colossus, Wurmcoil Engine, or your favorite artifact creature with a decent sized body.

Early Results

I was able to play this list, or something very close to it, in an online game on Tabletop Simulator. I hit the Dramatic Scepter combo at 1 life and was able to pull into Memnarch to close out the game, but the biggest takeaway was that I only ever got to attack and draw cards with Curie once.

Decks that have a game plan that centers on their commander can suffer when faced with too much interaction, or just bad luck. In my case it was a tablemate who thought he clearly telegraphed that he had removal, and me failing to pick up on his cues that I should swing elsewhere. There was karmic justice in me losing my commander immediately, as I had just removed his commander on turn 1 after he used Jeweled Lotus to get it out early.

I was able to get out a Rhystic Study and pull into enough cards to get me there. My winning turn started with me defying death by winning a Mana Crypt flip that could have killed me, and involved stuff like me casting Octavia, Living Thesis and then countering it with my own Intellectual Offering to draw 10 cards.

We were going into the game intending to play high-power EDH, so my game-ending combo wasn't out of place from a power level perspective. For most of the game I hadn't been able to do much at all and hadn't been able to keep much of a boardstate, in no small part because I kept casting Curie again and again. Even though I was at death's door when I won I still felt a little bad for taking the wind out of my tablemates' sails.

Final Thoughts

I still think Curie, Emergent Intelligence can be a decent mid power deck when built on a budget, or a legitimate high-power deck with a different approach to card draw in Blue. It's always bad to look at a one game sample size when trying to draw conclusions about a new commander. In the deck's first time out I never saw any of the cards in my evasion package, but it wouldn't have taken much for the game to go very differently.

I often like to build decks out of commanders that I happen to open in booster packs, and just after I committed to writing about Curie, I cracked a Fallout collector booster and pulled a copy of Curie, Emergent Intelligence. I've already got a mono-Blue EDH deck in Talrant, Sky Summoner, and I like it a lot, but I may end up taking it apart to build this list in paper. Whenever I do that, I usually make changes to the list based upon the cards I have available to me, so it will probably be a lower powered, more budget friendly list.

I'm currently working on building Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ in paper, and may take a crack at a rebuild of Preston Garvey, Minuteman. Chances are good I'll write about him for next Monday unless something else catches my eye.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!