Ulamog, the Ceaseless Commander

Last week was brutal-in addition to the 40+ hours I worked my full-time job, I worked 20 hours at my part-time job, finishing the marathon work schedule
just in time to make it to the midnight Battle for Zendikar Prelease Friday night. Why would anyone do that to themselves? Well, my son wanted to
cut my grass to earn some money, and if it wasn’t raining on Saturday, I wanted to be able to pick him up from his mom’s and bring him over to cut the
grass, so my only real opportunity to play was the midnight Prerelease (Spoiler Alert: it ended up raining on Saturday).

I have to admit to being less enthusiastic for this than any Prerelease in quite some time. Namely because it’s gone back to being purely Sealed Deck, and
Sealed Deck is my least favorite of all Magic formats. You have zero control over your card pool, much less the ones your opponent’s are playing, so it
comes down to eeking out whatever tiny angles and advantages you can out of mediocre cards and hope you don’t get blown out of the water by bombs. I was
actually a fan of seeded packs that helped to give your deck some coherence. I understand people complaining that certain Prerelease packs would end up
being “obviously better” than others, but I think there could have been more elegant solutions to that problem than scrapping the system altogether.

Still, this would be the first opportunity to play with the sweet new cards from Battle for Zendikar, and we get a nifty Zendikar deck
box to carry the cards in.

And then there was this:

Be still my Golgari heart!

Okay, so I was tired and a little grumpy but a winning lottery ticket stuck inside my packs certainly cheered my mood. No matter what the results of the
night, I’d already won.

My Sealed pool was mediocre, with the only saving grace being a Prerelease foil bomb (of sorts) and a sweet laneswalker I could both play in my Grixis
colors. Here’s what I played:

Colorless beats!

Ob Nixilis Reignited was indeed as amazing as you can imagine, providing a steady stream of cards and killing off problems here and there. I ended up
finishing the tournament at 5:30 going 4-0 thanks to our demonic planeswalker and a few key play mistakes by some very sleepy opponents. That was good for
a few more packs and store credit before I made my way home to bed.

How was your Prerelease experience? Do you miss the seeded packs like I do?

Commander

Way back when I first started playing Commander and it was just beginning to grow in popularity, I ran across a guy who had built a “colorless” Commander
deck with Karn, Silver Golem as his commander. He told me he built it as a justification for running Mishra’s Workshop in Commander, but he also said since
he couldn’t use any basic lands it was challenging to try and find 35-40 non-basic lands that didn’t produce colored mana and weren’t awful.

That surprised me. I hadn’t considered the full implications regarding building a manabase with a commander who had no colors in its color identity, and
that meant no lands that produced colors specified on the card, including basic lands.

Under the Deck Construction rules on MtgCommander.net:

A card’s colour identity is its colour plus the colour of any mana symbols in the card’s rules text. A card’s colour identity is established before the
game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects.

Lands whose type includes swamp, island, plains, forest and/or mountain (e.g.: basic lands, shocklands, dual lands, Shadowmoor special-basics, etc)
also have the corresponding colour identity. As such, they may not appear in a deck unless the Commander is also of the appropriate identity.

While hybrid mana symbols may be played with either colour mana, they contribute both colours to the card’s colour identity. Therefore they may only be
played with a Commander whose identity includes ALL of the hybrid symbols’ colours.

Basic land words (swamp, forest, etc) in the text box of a card do NOT represent a coloured mana symbol. They are not restricted to a Commander of the
same colour identity.

Reminder text is not included in the colour identity of a card.

Cards in a deck may not have any colours in their color identity which are not shared with the commander of the deck. (The identity of each card in the
deck must be a subset of the Commander’s)

What’s kinda cool to consider is that you could run an Urborg, Tomb to Yawgmoth (see bullet point #3) in your Karn, Silver Golem deck if you somehow wanted
everyone to have Swamps (hello, Kormus Bell), but you couldn’t produce any black mana, your “Swamp” would produce colorless mana instead.

The gentleman who had this deck included some very high powered, high priced non-basics in his deck like Mishra’s Workshop, City of Traitors, and Ancient
Tomb to fuel some very degenerate – though narrow – artifact shenanigans, but he said he did have to include some rather questionable “bad” lands to round
out his manabase.

Not owning a Mishra’s Workshop or a City of Traitors, and only recently re-acquiring an Ancient Tomb for my collection, I tucked away the idea of a deck
with a colorless commander as a novelty I wasn’t overly interested in… until Battle for Zendikar brought the new and improved Ulamog to town!

This alien monster is a little leaner, a little meaner, but a whole lot more table-friendly than its bloated, annihilating earlier self. Why not build a
Commander deck around Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and a whole gaggle of colorless Eldrazi?

A meal of Infinite Gyres begins with the first step, and that was to see just how deep into “bad” colorless non-basic mana-producing lands I’d have to go
to assemble an Ulamog manabase. I still didn’t have Mishra’s Workshop or City of Traitors, and wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of playing Ancient
Tomb. Sure, your starting life is 40, but if one of the first lands you play in a game is Ancient Tomb, you’re going to end up taking a ton of damage
casting all those big spells.

I combed through the card database and picked out lands I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have in my deck. Turns out there were over 50 of them, so it’s nice to
see that over the past 5-6 years we’ve added some quality colorless non-basics to our Commander card pool. Here’s what I have to choose from:

Mo’ Mana

Cloudpost (with Glimmerpost), Eldrazi Temple, Mage-Ring Network, Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, Temple of the False God, Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power Plant,
Urza’s Tower

When figuring out which lands to play in an Eldrazi deck, the first order of business is ramping our mana. Eldrazi Temple and Shrine of the Forgotten Gods
are slam-dunk inclusions. Mage-Ring Network can charge up and get us ahead on mana pretty quickly. Cards like Cloudpost and Urza’s Tower require other
specific lands to be on the battlefield before they’ll ramp you, but they produce a colorless mana just fine until you draw the other lands. Temple of the
False God can be a little awkward if you draw it too early, but the reliable ramp afterwards is totally worth it.

Spell Lands

Arcane Lighthouse, Blasted Landscape, Buried Ruin, Deserted Temple, Dust Bowl, Foundry of the Consuls, Haven of the Spirit Dragon, Homeward Path;
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea; Miren, the Moaning Well; Mystifying Maze, Petrified Field, Reliquary Tower, Rogue’s Passage, Sanctum of Ugin, Spawning Bed, Strip Mine, Tomb of the Spirit Dragon, Tower of the Magistrate, Winding Canyons

With a very few exceptions, our entire deck operates at sorcery speed, so it’s important that we squeeze as much utility and “spells” from our lands.
Winding Canyons helps us break the speed barrier, which can be very helpful (though tacking on an extra three mana to our Eldrazi is some heavy
mana-lifting). I particularly like Homeward Path here because you know by playing the Eldrazi deck your big monsters are going to be favorite Bribery or
Control Magic targets. Haven of the Spirit Dragon makes the cut here because Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is a perfect fit in our deck, and your opponents will
surely kill that planeswalker as soon as they can.

Living Lands

Dread Statuary, Inkmoth Nexus, Mishra’s Factory

Lands that turn into creatures can help early on while you’re developing your board to play your big expensive spells. Don’t forget the Mishra’s Factory
trick of blocking a creature, then tapping to give itself +1/+1 until the end of the turn.

Making the Cut

Cavern of Souls, Darksteel Citadel, Phyrexian Core, Radiant Fountain, Springjack Pasture, Thespian’s Stage; Urborg, Tomb to Yawgmoth; Urza’s Factory

I still had some land slots to fill, so I picked these quality lands to round things out. Cavern of Souls naming Eldrazi will help ensure all that mana
you’re paying for your monsters won’t be hampered by pesky counterspells. Urza’s Factory can crank out little 2/2s if you don’t have anything large to cast
for the turn. Springjack Pasture can crank out some Goat tokens for chump blocking or mana. Radiant Fountain and Phyrexian Core can net some incremental
life. I decided to include Urborg, Tomb to Yawgmoth because I’m playing some lands in my “spell slots” that don’t normally produce mana and Urborg helps
them with that, making them Swamps that can tap to produce colorless mana. With so many special lands in the deck, Thespian’s Stage does a lot of heavy
lifting, like becoming a second copy of Cloudpost, as well as your typical Dark Depths shenanigans.

I could teach you, but I’d have to charge

More Spell Lands

Dark Depths, Eye of Ugin, Arena, Maze of Ith

Since I want to play Thespian’s Stage, why not play Dark Depths too? Marit Lage has a few things to show the Eldrazi about being large and in charge. Eye
of Ugin helps you dig up Eldrazi and helps cast them too. Maze of Ith keeps a problematic beater off your life totals, and Arena pairs perfectly with your
large monsters to kill off opponent’s creatures.

Eldrazi

Kozilek’s Channeler, Blight Herder, Eldrazi Monument, Conduit of Ruin, Deathless Behemoth, Oblivion Sower, Not of This World, Artisan of Kozilek;
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth; Spawnsire of Ulamog, Desolation Twin, It That Betrays, Endless One

Ah, so here’s what our deck is all about, chock full of our colorless alien friends! I love that Not of This World gives us a surprise counterspell of
sorts to play. I thought about playing the original Ulamog-Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre-but decided that Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger that’s always available
from the Command Zone is sufficient Ulamogs. Since Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is banned in Commander, that just leaves Kozilek, Butcher of Truth to represent
the original three Eldrazi titans and giving us the trademarked “shuffling your graveyard into your library” trigger. I’m not entirely sure I’ve got enough
ways to reliably feed the upkeep cost of Eldrazi Monument in this deck, but not having Eldrazi Monument in an Eldrazi Commander deck just felt wrong.
Spawnsire of Ulamog can churn out tokens to feed to Eldrazi Monuments, though unfortunately it can’t rescue any of your Eldrazi from exile since that’s
considered an in-game zone.

Even More Mana

Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Voltaic Key, Grim Monolith, Mind Stone, Darksteel Ingot, Ice Cauldron, Hedron Archive, Blinkmoth Urn

In addition to 40 lands that produce mana, I wanted to utilize some additional mana acceleration we can cast from all this colorless mana. Ice Cauldron is
a pet card of mine, and I think it works pretty good here to split the mana cost of our biggest spells over the course of two turns. Just remember, even if
someone destroys Ice Cauldron before you get a chance to cast the spell you exiled with it, you can still cast it from exile whenever you’d be able to cast
it from your hand.

Exile & Removal

Pyxis of Pandemonium, Relic of Progenitus, Ratchet Bomb, Oblivion Stone, Titan’s Presence, Gruesome Slaughter, All Is Dust, Scour From Existence, Karn Liberated; Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Since I’m playing Blight Herder and Oblivion Sower, I wanted to run some ways to exile my opponent’s cards. Relic of Progenitus is a slam dunk, but what
I’m really excited about is Pyxis of Pandemonium! Since this deck is nearly mono-permanents, most of the cards you’ll get from sacrificing Pyxis will enter
the battlefield, including more than a few huge monsters! And what’s up with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon playing so nice with Eldrazi? Isn’t Ugin supposed to
be a good guy?

Card Draw/Selection

Scroll Rack, Darksteel Pendant, Temporal Aperture, Ichor Wellspring, Temple Bell

Any ramp deck can sometimes have issue drawing the right mix of ramp and big spells, so we’ll want some cards that can help with raw card drawing and card
selection. Temporal Aperture is a fun old-school card that’s got to be good times with so many big hits. Remember you cast the spell from the top of your
library so you get any of the Eldrazi cast triggers.

Artifact Creatures

Epochrasite, Plague Myr, Walking Atlas, Darksteel Myr, Etched Champion, Palladium Myr, Arcbound Reclaimer, Hangarback Walker

With Eldrazi filling so much at the top of our curve, I wanted to make sure I had colorless creatures we could play in the earlygame. Plague Myr and
Walking Atlas pull double duty as a body that can also help ramp our mana. Darksteel Myr might not do much, but he sticks around and chump blocks all day
long.

Cool Artifacts

Expedition Map, Basilisk Collar, Myr Retriever, Nim Deathmantle, Mimic Vat, Darksteel Plate, Junk Diver, Sculpting Steel, Trading Post, Salvaging Station

I still needed to fill out the lower end of my mana curve with more colorless spells so these artifacts got the nod. They do cool things like fetch lands,
gain life, get back artifacts from my graveyard, and copy dying creatures my opponents are playing. And then there’s Trading Post, which does literally
everything, not least of which is make Goats to add to your Springjack Pasture herd.

So here’s what I’ve got:

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 10-02-2015

Commander

Creatures (22)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (44)

What do you think of this Eldrazi monstrosity? How would you build things differently? In particular I’m curious how you might construct the manabase
differently.

If you haven’t, heard I’ll be down at Grand Prix Atlanta in November for the Commander
Celebration, so if you’re in the area, please come on out and play some Commander with me! I can’t wait to see what we have in store for Commander 2015,
which is releasing that very weekend!

New to Commander?

If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

Commander Primer Part 1
(Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander)
Commander Primer Part 2
(Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage)
Commander Primer Part 3
(Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)
Commander Starter Kits 1
(kick start your allied two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 2
(kick start your enemy two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 3
(kick start your shard three-color decks for $25)