MTG Commander Deck Of The Week: Magus Lucea Kane

For a while I’d been kicking around the idea of building a Zaxara, the Exemplary deck, in large part because it would be the perfect home for Villainous Wealth.

If you’ve followed my Magic exploits for a while, you might remember my run with Villainous Wealth decks in Standard. Below is one such article, when I was in contention for Top 8 at a 2014 SCG Open.

A Wealth Of Villainy At SCG Richmond

Outside of Villainous Wealth, though, I just couldn’t get excited enough about a Hydra deck to pull the deck together and sleeve it up. I already had two Sultai decks, so I didn’t need to check that color-combination box either.

Then came Warhammer 40,000 Commander and the sweet, sweet Tyranid Swarm deck. There were a ton of Tyranid cards with X in their mana costs, and those cards also had the awesome ravenous ability, where if X is five or more, you get to draw a card when it enters, giving a nice source of card draw for later in the game. The deck also brought a fantastic card to lead the deck in Magus Lucea Kane, and at the time, I didn’t have a Temur deck pulled together.

Goodbye Wealth, Hello Doubling

Even though I couldn’t run my beloved Villainous Wealth in the Temur colors, the deck is super-fun anyway. And it was the perfect home for one of my very few copies of Doubling Season, which both doubles +1/+1 counters and copies the token copies that Kane makes along the way.

Kane is definitely squishy as a 1/1 for four mana, though if you cast her before your combat step, you could give her a +1/+1 counter, which I typically do because of the +1/+1 counter synergies in the deck. Even if she dies early, there are plenty of ways to ramp my mana to pay for commander tax. If I do get to untap with her and start using her ability, let the fun begin!

If you’ve got some questions about the finer details of how Magus Lucea Kane plays, I’ve got the write-up from the Warhammer 40,000 Commander Release Notes in a spoiler box you can click or tap to reveal.

Release Notes for Magus Lucea Kane

Spells with additional costs that include {X} won’t be affected by Magus Lucea Kane. {X} must be in the spell’s mana cost.

A spell or ability with a cost that includes X, but not the mana symbol {X}, won’t be copied.

Activated abilities contain a colon. They’re generally written “[Cost]: [Effect].” Some keyword abilities are activated abilities and will have a colon in their reminder text. Triggered abilities (starting with “when,” “whenever,” or “at”) that ask a player to pay {X} aren’t copied.

Magus Lucea Kane’s ability will copy any spell or activated ability whose mana cost or activation cost contains {X}, not just one with targets.

The {C}{C} created by the mana ability doesn’t need to be spent on the next spell or ability with {X} in its cost in order to copy it. That spell or ability will be copied even if that mana is spent on something else or not spent on anything at all.

A copy is created even if the spell or ability that caused the delayed triggered ability to trigger has been countered by the time that delayed triggered ability resolves. The copy resolves before the original spell.

The copy will have the same targets as the spell or ability it’s copying unless you choose new ones. You may change any number of the targets, including all of them or none of them. If the spell is a permanent spell with targets, such as an Aura, you may also choose a new target for that spell. The new targets must be legal. If, for any target, you can’t choose a new legal target, then it remains unchanged (even if the current target is illegal).

The copy is created on the stack, so it’s not “cast” or “activated.” Creating the copy won’t cause abilities that trigger when a player casts a spell or activates an ability to trigger.

The copy will resolve before the original spell or ability does.

If the spell or ability that’s copied is modal (that is, it says “Choose one —” or the like), the copy will have the same mode or modes. You can’t choose different ones.

The copy has the same value of X.

You can’t choose to pay any additional costs for a copied spell. However, effects based on any additional costs that were paid for the original spell are copied as though those same costs were paid for the copy too.

If the spell or ability has damage divided as it was put onto the stack, the division can’t be changed, although the targets receiving that damage still can. The same is true of spells and abilities that distribute counters.

Any choices made when the spell or ability resolves won’t have been made yet when it’s copied. Any such choices will be made separately when the copy resolves.

If a permanent spell is copied, it’s put onto the battlefield as a token as the spell resolves rather than putting the copy of the spell onto the battlefield. The rules that apply to a permanent spell becoming a permanent apply to a copy of a spell becoming a token.

The token that a resolving copy of a spell becomes isn’t said to have been “created.”

Let’s dig into the decklist!

X-Spells

Unless I get extremely unlucky, Animist’s Awakening provides some nice mana ramp, and it can hit nonbasic lands too. March of Swirling Mist provides flexible defense or offense by removing blockers for a big alpha strike. Lost in the Maze is a fun new card from Murders at Karlov Manor that offers excellent flexible options for tapping down threats or protecting your own from targeted removal, and since it’s an enchantment, it sticks around, making your tapped creatures hexproof. Exponential Growth and Doppelgang are there for big, splashy plays that, if not game-ending are at the least game-impacting!

X-Creatures

Here we go. Look at all those beautiful Tyranids with ravenous! I love that Tyrant Guard, Termagant Swarm, and Hormagaunt Horde provide some insulation against many battlefield sweepers. Mawloc, Zoanthrope, and Exocrine provide removal options attached to your creature, and Ravener provides an instant-speed way to pseudo-goad a problematic creature.

Hydras still get a little representation for card draw in Hydroid Krasis and Lifeblood Hydra. I’m super excited to run the new Fallout card Rampaging Yao Guai which has vigilance and trample and can pick off a problematic artifact or enchantment (or two) on its way in.

+1/+1 Counters Matter

With all the creatures that enter with +1/+1 counters, along with Kane herself handing out +1/+1 counters, I’ve included a bunch of cards that support and enhance that theme. Getting to attack with Kalonian Hydra will deal some serious damage to life totals. Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider is obviously great in this deck, and it just keeps getting better and better as Wizards of the Coast (WotC) makes more counters stuff like the Rad counters from Fallout. Our newest Universes Beyond set brings Mutational Advantage to the deck, an excellent buffer to most removal spells and potentially pushing your advantage by making most of your creatures even better.

I’m not entirely sure Hierophant Bio-Titan belongs in the deck, but the one time I had it on the battlefield, I loved its incredible beatdown potential. Vigilance is awesome, and since flying can be a problem in this deck reach is very helpful. Removing three or four or even five +1/+1 counters is pretty easy to make this an incredibly cheap threat.

X-Abilities

Kane doesn’t just do cool things with X-spells. She can also copy activated abilities on cards like Kessig Wolf Run and Magus of the Candelabra – Magi unite! Unbound Flourishing gives you a nice backup of Kane that also helps in this regard.

Untap

What’s fun with Kane’s psychic stimulus ability is doubly fun if you can activate her twice for two copies, so I’ve got a Seeker of Skybreak to help with that. Sting, the Glinting Dagger can do it too, though there’s a pesky attack step before activations. But you could just tap Kane to get two mana, use it to equip with Sting, untap Kane and don’t attack, and then during your second main phase tap Kane again to get those two extra copies.

Removal

While a lot of the X-spells above are also removal spells, I’ve got some other removal options here too, especially efficient ways to kill artifacts and enchantments like Nature’s Claim and Hull Breach. Screamer-Killer loves all the X-spells in the deck, and whenever you cast a creature spell with mana value five or greater it deals five damage to any target. That’s any target – creatures, planeswalkers, players. Boom, take five!

Interaction

I mentioned above just how squishy Kane is, so I have some ways to help ensure her survival. Access to blue gives me counterspells like Negate and Arcane Denial, and I’ve also got Tamiyo’s Safekeeping, Spellskite, and even a surprise Bolt Bend. Malanthrope is a nice way to munch someone’s graveyard, and it obviously plays with the +1/+1 counters themes. Trygon Prime is a great way to make another attacker unblockable.

Card Draw

All the ravenous cards have a bunch of card advantage built in. Still, I wanted a few more ways to keep the cards flowing. Temur Ascendancy draws a fair number of cards in this deck, but that haste ability is also quite valuable. Plus, I have a cool old-school frame version from Time Spiral Remastered that definitely needed a home!

Wort, the Raidmother might look a little odd in the deck, but I wanted another way to go over the top with this deck. Originally I was thinking about conspiring to copy Exponential Growth, but now I really want to conspire targeting Doppelgang. I mean, I’ll take conspiring to copy Harmonize too, you know?

Mana Ramp

I’ve got some mana ramping options in the cards I’ve already mentioned above – here’s looking at you, Sporocyst – but in a deck chock full of X-spells, you can’t have too much mana ramp. The Tyranid Swarm deck provides a few other awesome choices, like Biophagus (playing into the +1/+1 counter theme) and the awesome Nexos, which lets your basic lands tap for two colorless mana you can only use to cast X-spells, which my deck has in abundance.

The Deck

Okay, here’s the full decklist!

Magus Lucea Kane

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 03-22-2024

Commander

Creatures (29)

Lands (39)

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

So, what other must-have cards might I have missed including here? What is your favorite X-spell in Magic?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and start conversations 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.

Visit my Decklist Database to see my decklists and the articles where they appeared!

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