Commander Top 10: Cosima, God of the Voyage

The Commander feast that is otherwise known as Kaldheim keeps giving us goodies!  I’ve already written about seven new legends to build Commander decks around, and I feel like there are still plenty more cool ideas to dig into.  This week, I wanted to explore the monoblue God that will take us on a unique journey outside the usual monoblue waters: Cosima, God of the Voyage!

The front side of the card is very cool and can generate solid value just by exiling it during your upkeep and letting it gather voyage counters over time.  Blue has lots of card draw and ways to keep new cards flowing into your hand, so without much work you’ll just be hitting your land drops each time and eventually bring Cosima back to give you a rush of new cards. It would be incredibly easy to just make this the commander of an otherwise conventional monoblue Commander deck chock full of your favorite monoblue cards, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I personally think that you’d missing out a different sort of journey, one that takes full advantage of both sides of the card.  I mean, just take a look at The Omenkeel.

A 3/3 Vehicle with a rock bottom low crew cost of one is already in playable territory for two mana, but that text box kicks it up a notch.  Whenever a Vehicle deals combat damage to a player, that player exiles that many cards from their library and you get to play lands from among those exiled cards for the rest of the game?  Wow!  Basically, one or two big hits or a bunch of smaller hits and you’ll have access to enough extra lands to make all the land drops for most of the game. Which would be great for the Cosima side of the card, but without copying shenanigans we can’t have both cards on the battlefield at the same time in a game of Commander. This suggests to me that we’ll want to have ways to reset our commander, most likely by bouncing it to our hand and casting the side that we want, though having either side die and get replayed from the command zone is another route we can take. I’ll also want to play enough Vehicles that can really pay off The Omenkeel’s ability, and this push and pull between both sides of our commander card gives this deck the potential for some really interesting and different play experiences.

So, let’s get brewing!

1. Skysovereign, Consul Flagship

There have been a fair number of Vehicles printed in the years since Kaladesh, but it’s hard to beat the original dominating battlefield presence of Skysovereign, Consul Flagship.  When it enters the battlefield or attacks, you get to send three damage to any creature or planeswalker your opponents control, and as a 6/5 flier odds are pretty good you’ll be able to crash into one of your opponent’s life totals and exile a bunch of cards when Omenkeel is on the battlefield.

I also found room for a bunch of other Vehicles that have nice utility of various sorts:

Conqueror’s Galleon is an old favorite of mine mainly because it transforms into Conqueror’s Foothold, a land that can take advantage of all the extra mana we’ll have lying around to generate additional value. If we happen to have Cosima voyaging in exile, it’s transformation into a land will trigger Cosima. With all the Vehicles and other artifacts that we’ll be stocking our deck with, Weatherlight should also generate some nice value from its combat damage trigger. 

Raiders’ Karve is a nice new common from Kaldheim that can potentially ramp us into an extra land drop which would give us an extra Cosima voyage trigger.

2. Ovalchase Dragster

Outside of vehicles that do interesting and cool things in addition to combat, I also just wanted lots of Vehicles that are built to beat down and provide lots of spoils for The Omenkeel, and one of the best of the bunch for our purposes is Ovalchase Dragster.  For four mana you get six power with trample and haste for the low, low crew cost of one, which means a likely big hit for The Omenkeel.  The downside of course is the one toughness, which means just about any chump blocker will kill it after combat.  But even then, I think this card can fill an important role as a “crew boost” since it crews for just one but it has a six power which means it can then crew any other Vehicle in the deck.

Here are other beatdown Vehicles I’ve found room for:

Speaking of “crew boost” Ovalchase Dragster can crew sweet Vehicles like Aradara Express and Demolition Stomper which can punch through blockers that will otherwise be lethal to the one toughness Dragster. It can even crew the one drop 7/11 Consulate Dreadnought.  

3. Master of Etherium

Being Vehicle heavy, I definitely wanted to keep an eye out for cards that did nice things with artifacts, and Master of Etherium brings some nice spice to the deck.  It’s very easy for Master of Etherium to get large enough to crew just about any Vehicle, and then the other ability makes your Vehicles even larger. 

I’ve also included some other cards that care about artifacts:

I haven’t tried Forsaken Monument yet, but it seems like a slam-dunk card in this deck, boosting the size of the Vehicles, gaining life, and occasionally generating some extra colorless mana.

4. The Immortal Sun

I also went hunting for cards that could discount the cost of artifacts, but the best of the bunch discounts any spell you cast: The Immortal Sun!  It hoses planeswalkers, it discounts all your spells, it draws you extra cards and oh yeah—it boosts your creatures so they can crew better, and then boosts the Vehicle too!

I also pulled in creatures that just discount artifacts, but they’re all creatures so they can be used to crew Vehicles too!

5. Thopter Spy Network

In addition to regular creatures that can crew the Vehicles, I wanted to look for ways to generate token creatures that can crew Vehicles, and my favorite of the bunch is Thopter Spy Network.  The turn you play it, you’ll likely be able to attack with a Vehicle which will let you draw a card.  Then during your upkeep if you have a Vehicle, you’ll get a 1/1 Thopter that you can immediately use that turn to crew a Vehicle.

Here are two more ways to create token creatures I’ve added to the deck:

6. Oblivion Sower

Oblivion Sower is an interesting player in this deck: if you’ve hit one player with Vehicles and have a fair number of lands in exile that you haven’t played from them, Oblivion Sower can scoop all of those onto the battlefield in addition to any that show up in the top four of their library. This could lead to quite a few voyage counters on Cosima!

When it comes to other mana ramp options, outside of Sol Ring I’ve leaned almost exclusively on cards that put lands onto the battlefield, which obviously synergizes with Cosima, including DFC spells from Zendikar Rising that can be played as lands on the back side.

I particularly love that a lot of these can put a land onto the battlefield at instant speed, which can mean that Cosima returns from the voyage during combat as a blocker or during someone’s end step so you can potentially attack with a huge commander on your turn.  You can even bring Cosima back to the battlefield with a battlefield sweeper on the stack so you can get the benefit of drawn cards, put Cosima into the command zone when it dies, and then during your turn play The Omenkeel if that’s the line you want to take.

7. Smuggler’s Copter

Even though Cosima draws cards, I still wanted to have some other ways to draw cards too because, well, we’re a blue deck!  Once of the best of the bunch happens to be Smuggler’s Copter since it plays nice with all the Vehicle synergies and has evasion.

The rest of the card draw crew are either lands, Vehicles, or creatures that can crew Vehicles:

8. Flooded Shoreline

I was looking for some ways to return my commander to my hand so I can play the other side, and while Sanctum of Eternity is an obvious choice, I found a very cool option from Visions: Flooded Shoreline!  Returning two islands to owner’s hand is a steep price to pay, but if we’ve got ways to put extra lands onto the battlefield this could mean several extra voyage triggers from Cosima. As an emergency measure you can use it defensively to bounce some huge creature that’s attacking you, or offensively to clear away a blocker so you can crash in with a bunch of Vehicles.

Engulf the Shore and Evacuation are generally global “sweepers” that we can more easily work around.  After you cast one of the spells you can play a land and bring Cosima to the battlefield, or you can cast a creature and then crew the Vehicles that weren’t creatures when you cast the spell.

9. Trench Behemoth

The more I play with Trench Behemoth the more I love it.  In this deck if you’re otherwise missing a land drop, you can tap Trench Behemoth to crew any Vehicle, return a land to activate it’s ability that will untap it so you can attack with it along with your Vehicle, and then get your land drop too.  And it also has a triggered ability that provokes a creature that your opponent may want to keep back to keep you from attacking with your Vehicles.

I’m including some other ways to interact with your opponents:

With all the artifacts in the deck, I like Vedalken Humiliator which can shut off all the abilities of all your opponents’ creatures and turn them into 1/1 creatures until end of turn if you have metalcraft, but unfortunately you’ll need to attack with it and can’t just use it to crew a Vehicle.

10. Mass Diminish

I’ve included some of the usual suspects you’d expect from blue decks for removal, but I also wanted to include Mass Diminish as a way to cheaply turn a player’s creatures into 1/1s that might not be interested in chump blocking your attacking Vehicle onslaught.  That it has flashback makes it even more awesome.

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

Here’s how the deck looks graphically, thanks to our friends at Archidekt:

What do you think?  Are there any cards I’ve overlooked?  If you see any new cards from Kaldheim 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!  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.

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