Commander Deck Of The Week: Colorless Commander With Traxos, Scourge Of Kroog

Last year, I decided that I wanted to have a Commander deck in paper for each color combination available, and early this year I checked off the final box on the list—colorless—when I finally built Traxos, Scourge of Kroog!

Since pretty much all historic cards available in a colorless deck are artifacts, Traxos leans pretty heavily on artifact themes. Lucky for me, several recent sets have been heavily artifact focused, and since I’ve made a lot of adjustments lately I thought it was a great time to share my deck.

Let’s dig in!

Untap Traxos

Untapping Traxos usually won’t be a problem, since I can’t imagine that I won’t be casting at least one artifact each turn, but it doesn’t hurt to have a few other ways to do it too.  Manifold Key does double duty as an untap ability and a way to make any creature – including ones belonging to an opponent – unblockable for the turn. There are plenty of other artifacts that can be untapped for more value too.  Voltaic Servant can give Traxos pseudo-vigilance, and Unwinding Clock untapping a bunch of my artifacts that tap for value is quite potent.

Artifacts Matter

The backbone of the deck, these cards are all top-level threats – or, in the case of Inventors’ Fair, a way to get the threat. Etched Champion and Darksteel Juggernaut can be quite problematic for some opponents, and if equipped with Nettlecyst, either one can apply a ton of pressure. Kuldotha Forgemaster is a way to quickly cheat out some of the several high-mana, high-impact artifacts in the deck.  Warhammer 40,000 makes an appearance here, with Cryptothrall giving my artifact creatures hexproof.

Colorless Matters

Forsaken Monument is just bonkers in any colorless deck.  The Brothers’ War gives us a strict upgrade to Shimmer Myr with Liberator, Urza’s Battlethopter; this lets us cast any colorless and artifact spells as though they have flash.  Flying and the potential to grow are quite nice here too. 

Colorless Spells

Speaking of colorless spells, casting All Is Dust at instant speed with Liberator on the battlefield sounds almost like Cyclonic Rift with overload, doesn’t it?  I really like the colorless Lessons from Strixhaven: School of Mages giving some much-needed nonartifact spells for our colorless decks.

Kozilek, the Great Distortion is here as a large legendary creature that will untap Traxos and also provide some potential ability to interact with my opponents on the stack, something that’s sorely lacking in a colorless deck.

I’m not a fan of the original Eldrazi titans in Commander because the annihilation trigger is just too obnoxious. I decided to go with Kozilek mostly to draw cards, to give me protection from being milled out, and the fact that it’s a huge legendary creature that will also untap Traxos. If I attack with it, I’ll probably go after the person who’s been accumulating too many Treasure tokens. The fact that it can be destroyed makes me feel a little better about playing with it.

Artifact Recursion

Being a heavy artifact deck opens up vulnerability to particular sweepers like Vandalblast with overload and the newly printed Fade from History, so having some ways to recover lost artifacts seems prudent. Plus, I’m always excited for a reason to play Trading Post and Scarecrone!

Removal

There aren’t many removal options for a colorless Commander deck, but I’ve put in what I could, like Steel Hellkite and Spine of Ish Sah.  I’m particularly thrilled for The Brothers’ War bringing us Cityscape Leveler and Portal to Phyrexia, two expensive but high-impact artifacts.

Card Draw

Card draw is a big deal for any Commander deck, and I’m excited to fill out some of the land slots for that purpose, such as Mikokoro, Center of the Sea. War Room is awesome in a colorless deck because there’s no life loss attached to the activation, and since Traxos is so big, Bonders’ Enclave should be online most of the time. Warhammer 40,000 brings the awesome Canoptek Spyder, which acts a bit like a Beast Whisperer for artifact creatures and Vehicles, though the Spyder will trigger off any artifact creatures that enter the battlefield rather than being a cast trigger.

Lifegain

Due to how narrow a colorless Commander deck is going to be, I’ve included a fair amount of lifegain in the deck to try to help mitigate taking a lot of damage in some way that I’m not able to stop or interact with. Witch’s Clinic in particular is awesome with a commander as huge as Traxos, and if I can equip Batterskull to Traxos, that vigilance is going to be quite nice.  Resurrection Orb is a bit expensive to equip, but being able to return an equipped creature from the graveyard when it dies is quite handy.

From The Brothers’ War Commander comes Scavenged Brawler, an artifact creature with a pile of relevant abilities on a 4/4 body: flying, vigilance, trample, and lifelink. I love that when it dies or ends up in the graveyard, you can exile it to basically add all those abilities and four +1/+1 counters on a target creature. An 11/11 Traxos adding flying, vigilance, and lifelink to its already native trample?  Yes please!

Mana Ramp

This deck is mana-hungry, so mana ramp is incredibly important. In particular, two-mana rocks are key to powering Traxos onto the battlefield on Turn 3, and any ones you cast after that will untap Traxos along the way. Slagstone Refinery doesn’t provide mana immediately, but I can’t imagine it won’t spit out some number of Powerstone tokens along the way, so I’m looking forward to trying it out.

Play Opponents’ Stuff

One way to work around a colorless deck’s limitations is to play with your opponents’ spells!  Chaos Wand can hopefully fetch up removal spells, ramp spells, or card draw spells out of your opponents’ decks, and maybe even extra-turn spells if your opponent is cheesy. In a pinch, you can target a mono-blue deck to counter a spell if the randomness goes right.

Helm of Possession lets you steal a threatening creature you might not otherwise be able to deal with.  Mirage Mirror can just copy it, and I like that it can copy a land to dodge artifact removal.  Wandering Archaic can copy spells if your opponent is tight on mana, or you can play politics to have them let you get the copy.

I love Nautiloid Ship for awesome graveyard control, and being able to deploy one of those creatures from exile when you deal combat damage with it is incredible.

All of these cards are nice ways to scale your deck’s power level to whatever your opponents are doing.

Interaction

Other forms of interaction are tough to come by, but I’ve got some in the form of utility lands.  Gerrard’s Hourglass Pendant is a great way to counter someone who’s going to try to take an extra turn, but mainly it’s there as an instant-speed way to bring back your artifacts destroyed by a battlefield sweeper.

Mimic and Dire Mimic are in the deck as creatures that can dodge sorcery-speed creature sweepers, and in a pinch they can be sacrificed as Treasures for mana.  Armory Automaton is here to borrow various Equipment that many decks play, and inconvenience them as they pay to re-equip over and over. Canoptek Scarab Swarm is more graveyard control, potentially generating a nice swarm of flying artifact creatures that could draw a bunch of cards from Canoptek Spyder!

Other Artifact Creatures

Canoptek Wraith is here mostly as an unblockable threat that can potentially get larger and more threatening. In a pinch, I can use the Transdimensional Scout ability to sacrifice and ramp out some Wastes. Myr Battlesphere and Blightsteel Colossus are big late-game boom-booms that I can potentially cheat out earlier with Kuldotha Forgemaster.

Other Artifacts

A few more artifacts to round out the deck, including one of my all-time favorites, Blackblade Reforged, which smashes face with my trampling commander. I want to try out Necron Monolith since it’s a pretty big flying threat, is indestructible, and its milling trigger can net a few more artifact creatures along the way.

Creature-Lands

The beauty of a colorless commander is that you can stuff your deck full of colorless utility lands, and the first ones I looked for were ones that could animate into artifact creatures. Inkmoth Nexus can stealthily steal a victory with poison if you can pump it.

Other Utility Lands

These are the other utility lands I’ve put in the deck, including one of my all-time favorite cards Mirrorpool!  It always does good work when it shows up in Commander games.  Field of the Dead should also be a rock star, given how many different named lands there are in the deck with just seven copies of Wastes.

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 my colorless Traxos, Scourge of Kroog deck?  Any nice tech cards that can round out the list?

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.