EDH Decks: The Locust God (Patreon)

One of the most popular questions I get asked is, what decks do you play? In the past I've shared some of my Legacy decks on Patreon, which you can view here, but I've never really shared my Commander decks. So I thought this would be a fun Patreon exclusive that I can unveil over the next few weeks.

The first thing to note is that I'm not really a brewer. So you're not going to see any amazing combos that no one has ever thought of before. When I make Commander decks, the most important thing for me is that I choose cards that bring me joy. This means choosing cards often for nostalgic reasons or because I love the art or there's some aesthetic quality I'm going for, and this extends to everything including the basic land choices and even the sleeves. Let's be honest, some Commander games can get pretty long and boring at times, so I might as well choose cards I enjoy tapping!

The first deck I'll share is my oldest, but it's gone through a number of changes over the years. It's a blue/red deck because this is my favorite color combination. If you don't believe me, my current Modern decks are blue/red Murktide, blue/red Prowess, and blue/red Storm. Anyway, the initial Commander was Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, one of the OG blue/red legendary creatures. Later I updated this to a Mizzix deck because I liked playing storm in competitive formats. The problem was that I always felt guilty because I was basically playing solitaire during Commander games. Eventually I updated it to The Locust God, which has remained the Commander to this day.

Here's a look at the entire current deck:

As mentioned above, I like to make various aesthetic rules to my decks. This serves the dual function of (1) making sure I'm playing cards that make me happy, and (2) helping keep me from making decks that are too competitive. I generally come from a spike-y background, so anything to keep me from just trying to build the optimal deck is good (although this deck is still probably too spike-y).

So what rules did I make for myself for this deck? As you can probably see, I try to play with the oldest versions of cards if possible. I try to play with mostly old frame cards (although laying the deck out made me realize I still need to get an old border Scalding Tarn). I only include black border cards. And I don't let myself play with any silver frame artifacts. As I present my other decks, you'll see that these rules can change. Two other weird rules I generally have is (1) I won't play cards that mention the word "Commander" specifically (like Command Tower or Arcane Signet) because I really dislike when WotC makes auto-includes for Commander and (2) I won't play double sided cards because I hate flipping them (although note that I have a Jace in this deck--my one exception).

Here are some close ups of the cards if you want to check them out a little better:

So what's the general strategy of this deck? It's nothing complicated--draw cards and attack with locusts! The exception is if I can get a Purphoros or Impact Tremors out. Then I can just kill everyone without even swinging.

Hope you enjoyed this look at one of my Commander decks. I have five main decks right now, so I'll continue posting these over the next few weeks. Please let me know if you have any questions or if there's other information you'd like to see in these overviews. Have a nice weekend!