Commander Corner with Eric Ostby: Kozilek, the Great Distortion WRITTEN BY Eric Ostby

Welcome back to Commander Corner! Today we will be exploring a deck I always had in mind to build, but never got around to until Oath of the Gatewatch made it much, much easier to do. Led by the colorless menace known as Kozilek, here is Wasted Distortion!

Commander: Kozilek, the Great Distortion

Creatures (35)

Armored Transport

Artisan of Kozilek

Bane of Bala Ged

Blight Herder

Brass Gnat

Brass Squire

Breaker of Armies

Chronomaton

Conduit of Ruin

Deceiver of Form

Desolation Twin

Eldrazi Mimic

Emrakul, the Promised End

Endbringer

Endless One

Gargoyle Sentinel

Hovermyr

It That Betrays

Kozilek's Channeler

Kozilek's Pathfinder

Mage-Ring Responder

Manakin

Oblivion Sower

Ornithopter

Palladium Myr

Perilous Myr

Pilgrim's Eye

Reality Smasher

Scuttling Doom Engine

Signal Pest

Soul of New Phyrexia

Training Drone

Ugin's Construct

Volatile Rig

Walker of the Wastes

Artifacts (21)

Argentum Armor

Armillary Sphere

Chariot of Victory

Door of Destinies

Dreamstone Hedron

Hedron Archive

Loxodon Warhammer

Moonsilver Spear

Orbs of Warding

Skullclamp

Sol Ring

Stoneforge Masterwork

Strata Scythe

Swiftfoot Boots

Sword of the Animist

Sword of Vengeance

Trailblazer's Boots

Ugin's Nexus

Warden of the Wall

Wayfarer's Bauble

Whispersilk Cloak

Planeswalker (1)

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Instants (5)

Not of This World

Scour from Existence

Spatial Contortion

Titan's Presence

Warping Wail

Lands (37)

Darksteel Citadel

Eldrazi Temple

Evolving Wilds

Eye of Ugin

Sanctum of Ugin

Sea Gate Wreckage

Shrine of the Forsaken Gods

Spawning Bed

Temple of the False God

Thespian's Stage

Tomb of the Spirit Dragon

26 Wastes (184)

As you can see, this deck is entirely colorless. Until the printing of Wastes (184) in OGW, to play this kind of deck meant having zero basic lands, and building a good land base with those often required spending quite a bit of money. Now that we have colorless basics, not only can we run basic lands in a colorless deck, we can run Evolving Wilds and have it actually find a land. The other factor that limited running a colorless deck before Oath was the number of available legendary creatures. If you wanted to play a true colorless deck, your options at the time were Karn, Silver Golem, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, the recently printed Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. Building Annihilator Commanders is a bit rude to those you're playing against, and I didn't have a Karn or New Ulamog ready to use. Thus, getting the new Kozilek at the prerelease meant it was time to build.

The Elephant in the Room

This is something I needed to address at some point during this deck tech, so let's get it out of the way early. A quick run-through of the creatures in this deck will reveal one very painful truth: there are quite a few artifact creatures in here by necessity, and as such, anyone who plays a lot of artifact destruction is likely to give you a bad time. There are ways to mitigate this weakness (Darksteel Forge immediately springs to mind), but just know that it will be something you'll have to manage if you want to make your own colorless build. If you play against a group that is prone to destroying artifacts when they can because they can, you might want to steer clear, or at least pick your spots of opportunity when playing a deck like this.

The Eldritch Moon Changes

With the release of Eldritch Moon, a couple of cards found their way into this deck, and not all of them are from the new set. The one that is is a big deal: Emrakul, the Promised End. When I opened this from my prize packs, I knew immediately that it would end up in this deck. I haven't gotten to cast it yet, but it just feels like a good move already. Another card that ended up in here as a result of getting some new toys from EMN was Ugin's Nexus, coming over from my Captain Sisay deck to make room for new Thalia. What I didn't realize until I looked at that pair of cards together is that if you can have the Nexus out when you Emrakul an opponent, you've basically built your own Mindslaver. It's not the likeliest combo to assemble, and has a very good chance of costing more mana than the namesake effect, but is something that people may not see coming until it's too late.

Some Outside the Box Choices

There are a couple of cards I'm playing in this deck because I could never make them work anywhere else, and a couple more that almost exclusively work in this deck and almost no other one. Let's talk about some of each, shall we?

Trailblazer's Boots

In theory, this card should probably see a lot more play in Commander than it does. I cannot confirm that I am the only person in my play group that even owns one, but I haven't seen too many other copies of this card across the table from me ever. Obviously, the power level of this particular card will vary heavily on how many non-basic lands your opponents are playing. If no one actually has any on the table, having non-basic landwalk isn't going to do very much for you. On the other hand, most decks that require a lot of non-basic lands are also likely to be doing something very powerful that requires them to be playing those lands, so you can't always expect these boots to just let you walk all over everyone.

Walker of the Wastes

While not the most powerful body on its own, a 5 mana 4/4 with trample is certainly a reasonable choice for most decks to be playing (witness one Game-Trail Changeling). However, this particular version has a major upside, which is also its primary downside: It gets bigger the more Wastes (184) you control. In a colorless deck, this isn't really a problem, as playing a bunch of Wastes makes sense. In other decks, where you might have access to some colorless sources but not necessarily any Wastes? It can actually be a liability, and might be an OK chump blocker if it doesn't just get stranded in your hand.

Door of Destinies

Whenever I get the urge to build a tribal deck, this is often one of the first few cards I think about including. In this deck, you're obviously naming Eldrazi, since that is the primary creature type that you can boost, but even then, unless you get multiple recasts of some of your threats, you're maxing out at about 17 counters. And that is if you cast every single Eldrazi in the deck including Kozilek, which you almost certainly won't be doing very often. (You could actually get to 18 counters if you are fortunate enough to cast Not of This World as well, but again, the chances are fairly remote.) The main advantage of playing it in this deck is that you can get a few counters on it, and doesn't require you to play Coat of Arms and buff everyone's creatures as much or more than your own.

Sea Gate Wreckage

While on the face of it, this card looks like it should be a great advantage in this deck, I've found that it's often quite the opposite. Not because it's a non-basic land, or because it isn't a Wastes (184), but just because you will have serious trouble emptying your hand very early in a given game unless you get the perfect draw. It's not a problem so devastating that you just shouldn't play the Wreckage in this deck, but if you don't already have one when building a deck like this, you don't need to make a major effort in acquiring one just because I play it.

Warden of the Wall

We'll close on one last card that I don't see a whole lot of in other decks. Maybe it's because it enters the battlefield tapped? Maybe because its ceiling is as a very good blocker, since it won't be a creature on your turn naturally? Whatever the reasons are, I can tell you exactly why it made the cut for this deck: it flies. Take a look back through the creatures in this deck, and you'll notice that very few of them can block opposing creatures in the air. Warden does that, and can occasionally help you ramp into your Commander, since casting a 10 mana creature before turn ten is probably something you'd enjoy doing with this deck. It may not win you many games, but it will keep you from losing those games. And sometimes, that's all you need.

Closing Out

Every time I play this deck, I have quite a bit of fun with it. It tends to be very strong in 1 on 1 games when it gets a chance to build up, but is never so oppressive in multiplayer games that you should worry too much about getting ganged up on early. You can certainly ramp up quickly with the right set of cards, but most of the time you should just be able to slowly build a board.

One last point in favor of building this deck is that the two most expensive cards in the list, Ugin and his Eye, make up about one-third of the total cost for the full deck, and you could absolutely play without those two in favor of another Wastes and something like All Is Dust if those aren't in your budget. No other card in the deck is above 500 PucaPoints, and most should be far less than that.

So, if you like what you see here, try it out for yourself. I hope that you have as much fun with it as I have. And until next time, go out and Consume the Meek!

Eric Ostby started playing Magic during Scars of Mirrodin block, and has been unable to put the game down since. His greatest Magic accomplishment to date is winning a standard FNM with UB Mill. Eric currently owns many, many Commander decks, and is attempting to duplicate the Magic Online Holiday Cube in paper.

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