Commander Top 10: Klothys, God Of Destiny

The Commander hits keep coming from Theros Beyond Death!  Check out the legendary creatures I’ve built Commander decks around right here on StarCityGames.com, and I feel like I’m just getting started!

I even built a five-color Saga deck last week!  This week I want to build a deck around one of the brand-new Theros Gods: Klothys, God of Destiny!

At three mana, Klothys is going to come out early and often in a game of Commander, even if your opponent has ways of dealing with an indestructible enchantment that’s only sometimes going to be a creature.  But if you can find five more pips of devotion on your battlefield, it’s not like Klothys is going to be smashing into the red zone and terrorizing your opponents’ life totals.  No, what’s nice about Klothys is the ability that triggers at the beginning of your precombat main phase: 

Exile target card from a graveyard.  If it was a land card, add R or G.  Otherwise, you gain 2 life and Klothys deals 2 damage to each opponent.

While that might seem like small potatoes, in a typical game of Commander that ability is a big deal.  The graveyard is a huge source of advantages for most Commander decks between recursive creatures like Feasting Troll King, spells that return cards from the graveyard to your hand like Seasons Past, creatures that bring things back from the graveyard like Sun Titan, and commanders that relentlessly leverage card advantage from the graveyard like Muldrotha, the Gravetide or Meren of Clan Nel Toth.  Many of these cards require some amount of time and resources to get the graveyard sufficiently stocked, so having a graveyard “hoser” attached to your commander that you can cast for just three mana early in the game is huge against these strategies. 

As an added bonus, Klothys can provide mana acceleration too!  It’s a fact that Commander players put way too many fetchlands into their decks, something I wrote about in an article “Let’s Talk About Lands.”  Punish them for it by letting your commander function as early mana ramp, giving you mana for each of their early fetchland activations. 

Like the idea?  Let’s get cooking!

1. Wild Growth

What’s even better than a Turn 2 Klothys?  How about a Turn 2 Klothys!  I really like Wild Growth for this purpose since you will often get to cast it on Turn 1 and it provides a pip of devotion that’s a bit more resilient than an early mana creature.

I’ve got a few other cards that can help us power out a Turn 2 Klothys in addition to other mana ramp:

Arboreal Grazer and Birds of Paradise can get us there.  I’m also including some other mana ramp options for when you’ve chewed through any lands in your opponent’s graveyards—the usual suspects like Sol Ring and Cultivate, but I’m also leaning in on cards that grant multiple devotion pips like Radha, Heir to Keld.

Neheb, the Eternal’s triggered ability is perfectly timed, since it will give you red mana for each one life your opponents have lost this turn after combat, while Klothys’s triggered ability dealing two damage to each opponent triggers before combat.  How’d you like an extra six red mana in your second main phase?  Sounds good to me too!

Oblivion Sower is going to be particularly nice, especially if you’re able to exile some early fetchlands from one particular opponent with Klothys and then able to cast Oblivion Sower a turn early.  It could pull you quite ahead on lands if you can use those fetchlands to find lands from your own deck.

2. Rhythm of the Wild

Klothys is a creature while it’s on the stack, so even if there isn’t enough devotion on the battlefield, Rhythm of the Wild pushes your commander right through any counterspells your graveyard-loving opponents might be holding in reserve.  Plus, it provides two pips of devotion, which might be just what you need to get over the seven-devotion threshold so that Klothys can rumble in the red zone.

I’ve got some other useful noncreature permanents that can help with devotion:

3. Boartusk Liege

Of course, some of the best devotion enablers are creatures and I’m including a fair number of them. I especially like Boartusk Liege.  Not only does it provide three pips of devotion, it will boost your red and green creatures too.  A 6/7 Klothys sounds much more impressive than a 4/5.

I’m including some other good creatures that provide at least two pips of devotion and often more:

Not only do Dragon Broodmother and Dragonlair Spider provide a whopping four pips of devotion, they also help shore up defenses against flyers.

4. Xenagos, God of Revels

Having an indestructible commander gives a certain resilience to a lot of common forms of removal, but smart players also pack effects that can exile, so I’m going to flood the battlefield with a lot of targets for exile effects by playing a bunch of Gods, and first on the list is Xenagos, God of Revels.  The same amount of devotion will wake Xenagos and Klothys, and together they provide over half their devotion requirements.  All you need is a Boartusk Liege and you’re off to the races!  Xenagos’s triggered ability is a proven Commander haymaker and one way you can make Klothys into a massive battlefield threat.

Let’s not stop there!  I’m including quite a few of the other Gods as well:

I’m particularly grateful for Nylea, God of the Hunt’s ability to give my attacking creatures trample since getting stymied by chump blockers is a huge bummer.

5. Ravager Wurm

Besides the typical removal spells, I like to have other forms of interaction, and for a deck that’s looking for devotion, Ravager Wurm fits the bill.  Sometimes you’ll want to fight and kill an annoying medium-sized creature.  Sometimes you’ll need to destroy an annoying Maze of Ith.  Ravager Wurm has you covered along with three pips of devotion. 

I made room for some other interaction too:

Bow of Nylea is the Swiss Army knife of useful abilities, gives your attacking creatures deathtouch, and provides two pips of devotion too!

6. Wooded Foothills

Since we can’t always rely on our opponents to have fetchlands they can use early to fuel Klothys’s mana ramp ability in the early-game, I’m including quite a few ways to get my own lands into the graveyard, and the best of the bunch is, of course, a fetchland—Wooded Foothills!  Hey, I almost never put fetchlands in my decks, but they serve an outsized purpose in a deck with Klothys. 

We’ve got a bunch of other options too:

7. Escape to the Wilds

I’ve been looking for a place to put Escape to the Wilds and I think it’s a good fit for this deck.  It provides a good rush of extra cards and then goes to the graveyard where Klothys can exile it to deal two points of damage to your opponents. 

Green and red aren’t exactly hurting for card draw and card selection, and I’m including many of the usual suspects here:

Greater Good is a fantastic card in any green deck with large creatures, but I particularly like it here since it’s a way you can pitch the right kind of cards into your graveyard to exile with Klothys if there are slim pickings in your opponents’ graveyards.

8. Sundial of the Infinite / Final Fortune

I’ve been on a Final Fortune kick in my red decks lately, particularly if they are capable of dishing out a fair amount of damage but can sometimes fall short, and Sundial of the Infinite is a fantastic way to negate the pesky “you lose” trigger that happens at the end of your extra turn.  The weird little artifact can even do stuff like shutting down your turn if you’re getting ready to be blown out by a combat trick or some instant spell or effect that you don’t want to resolve (at the expense of the rest of your turn).  Sundial also makes it tricky for opponents trying to do things during your end step, since it’s still technically your turn and you can end it for two mana. 

In addition to Final Fortune, I’m putting in Glorious End—”end the turn” is an incredibly powerful effect and sometimes the only way you can stop someone from combo-killing the table. 

Platinum Angel is another way you can get around the “you lose” trigger.

9. Savage Ventmaw / Aggravated Assault

One way to finish off the game is to take as many combat steps as you want!  Neheb, the Eternal is another way you can get enough mana to activate Aggravated Assault over and over, but with Savage Ventmaw you know you’re getting enough mana to bring home the bacon.

Torbran won’t necessarily win right off the bat, but it does make much of the deck far scarier—dealing four points of damage to each opponent each turn from Klothys is a decent clock.

10. Sunder Shaman

Four pips of devotion and destroys an artifact or enchantment each time it deals combat damage?  Sign me up! 

Green and red have a bunch of ways to destroy various permanents and I made sure to find room for many of them here:

I particularly love Star of Extinction and Blasphemous Act in a deck with a fair number of indestructible Gods!

Okay, so here’s how the deck ended up:

Here are the type mix and the mana curve, as calculated by Archidekt:

What do you think?  Are there any cards I’ve overlooked?  If you see any new cards from Theros Beyond Death that should find a home here, let me know!

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!