Commander Deck Of The Week: Valduk, Keeper Of The Flame

In the winter of 2019, I built a spur-of-the-moment deck to take to SCG CON with Valduk, Keeper of the Flame as the commander. 

No Guts, No Glory! Epic Storytelling in Commander

You can see all the details in the link above, but the short version goes like this—I was looking for more cards to fill out the lower part of my mana curve and ran across a quirky little artifact called Sundial of the Infinite, which taps to end your turn. Sundial works with Valduk by letting you keep his Elementals by putting the exile trigger on the stack and then ending the turn.  Having Sundial work with my commander led me to try running Final Fortune and, eventually, Glorious End in the deck to ratchet up the excitement level of playing and playing against the deck.

The deck is a hoot to play and I’ve kept it together with tweaks here and there over the years.  Being mono-red and having to focus so many slots on Equipment cards and cards that support the theme mean that some strategies are difficult to answer, especially ones built around enchantments that make combat hard. But it can smash hard and do some wild things!  Recently I added some cards I’ve picked up from Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and thought it would be a great time to share the current decklist for those of you who are interested.

Let’s dig in!

Phyrexia: All Will Be One Additions

I was super-excited about the new affinity for Equipment cards, especially Goldwardens’ Gambit, which is a fantastic card to cast after a battlefield sweeper has killed off all of my creatures and left a bunch of Equipment sitting around ready to be picked up by 2/2 Rebel creatures with haste. Assuming just four Equipment cards, this would cost just 2RR, which is an incredible rate to put ten power worth of hasty creatures on the battlefield, plus whatever Equipment boosts.

Rebel Salvo is another very welcome tool, often a one-mana instant for five damage and most importantly taking away indestructible. Oxidda Finisher isn’t bad either; assuming three Equipment on my battlefield, a 7/5 with trample for four mana is also a wonderful rate!

Hexplate Wallbreaker is another exciting new card for Equipment decks, providing additional attack steps in a way that’s more resilient to creature removal.  Additional attack steps are especially good with Valduk, since more attack steps mean more Elemental tokens from Valduk!

Rhuk, Hexgold Nabber offers some nice counterplay to an opponent’s interaction.  Cast Rhuk and then move to your attack step, and if an opponent kills Valduk before you get the Elemental tokens, you can move all those Equipment cards over to Rhuk and hopefully smash face. You could even go to your attack step, get the Elemental tokens from Valduk, attack with Valduk, and pass off all of Valduk’s Equipment to Rhuk if that makes sense (and given Rhuk’s trample, sometimes it might).

I’ve tossed in a Zenith Chronicler since this is a monocolor deck with artifact synergies, and it can always pick up an Equipment card and smash face. The Filigree Sylex is here as basically a Ratchet Bomb, and it can be useful to destroy nonland permanents that red might otherwise struggle with (such as enchantments or large creatures). And who knows, maybe the oil counters might accumulate enough to deal ten damage to finish someone off? 

Equipment

The Equipment creatures from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty last year were boons to Equipment strategies, offering up Equipment that can also pick up Equipment and attack, so I was happy to add Lizard Blades and Rabbit Battery. Sword of Hearth and Home from Modern Horizons 2 is another exciting card. I really like its ability to mana ramp, similar to Sword of the Animist, and while I don’t think I have many creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers to blink, it’s nice that you can get back a creature you own that might have been stolen by an opponent.  I do have some ways to cheat on equip costs, so Resurrection Orb offers some real nice utility despite its hefty equip cost of four.

Equipment Matters

Speaking of cheating on equip costs, all of these beautiful cards do just that to some degree! I love that Armory Automaton can attach anyone’s Equipment cards when it enters the battlefield or attacks, and they’ll have to waste mana to re-equip those later, assuming our Construct isn’t destroyed.

Artifacts Matter

If you’ve never tapped your Equipment cards to pay for nonartifact spells, you should slot Inspiring Statuary into your deck and start living your best life!  I’m excited to have recently added Blast-Furnace Hellkite from The Brothers’ War Commander; I’d hate to sacrifice a key Equipment to pay the artifact offering ability, but sometimes the math makes it exactly the right thing to do. I love that this is a combat trick you can pull off on someone else’s turn if they happen to be attacking another opponent.

No Guts, No Glory!

I mentioned three of these cards in the opening paragraphs, and I simply love the big play energy Final Fortune and Glorious End bring to the deck. Even if I don’t have a Sundial on the battlefield, the spells often lead to epic stories, but I was thrilled when Warhammer 40,000 Commander brought The Golden Throne, which works perfectly in my deck. Not only can you sacrifice a Valduk Elemental token for three red mana during your postcombat main phase, if it’s on the battlefield when a “you lose the game” trigger resolves, it will save your bacon!

Tokens Matter

Ashnod’s Altar has done a lot of work in this deck from the beginning, letting me sacrifice Elemental tokens (which don’t have to attack if there are not any good attacks) for two colorless mana, which is perfect for casting a lot of the artifacts or paying equip costs. Terror of the Peaks is usually seen alongside other large creatures dishing a huge chunk of damage each turn, but in this deck you can effectively get a free Lightning Bolt for each Elemental Valduk creates, which can be much more useful than one big blast.

Removal and Interaction

Wild Magic Surge, Chaos Warp, Steel Hellkite, and Introduction to Annihilation provide some nice removal options for red to hit permanents that might otherwise be difficult to answer. Deflecting Swat is always an all-star, but it’s particularly nice in this deck since I’m often tapping out to move Equipment around. Having interaction available for free feels awesome!

Card Draw

A lot of these, I’ve had in the deck a while. They do solid work providing extra cards.  I just recently added The Mightstone and Weakstone mainly as a draw-two card that can provide extra mana for artifacts and equip costs, but in a pinch it can take down some medium-size monster that might be giving me problems. We’ll see if it’s better than something like Wheel of Misfortune, which I had in the deck previously.

Mana Ramp

These have all been in the deck a while, and are proven veterans of the mana ramp game. Neheb, the Eternal is particularly amazing once Valduk’s Elemental parade starts marching in earnest. I also like Liquimetal Torque, which can turn artifact removal into enchantment, planeswalker, or creature removal.

The List

Okay, here is the full decklist:

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

What must-have cards might I have missed including in this deck?  Are there any other cool new cards from Phyrexia: All Will Be One that I should consider?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews. 

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.