Uktabi Orangutan | Art by Una Fricker

Smash the Rock!

Welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible. This week we're talking about Uktabi Orangutan, a card that has quietly made a mark on almost every format of the game.

Since its original printing in Mirage, this little ape and its descendants have seen play in sideboards of Standard, Block Constructed, Extended, and even Vintage!

And when Mirrodin block destroyed Standard, Viridian Shaman was a main deck staple of any deck that wasn't trying to curve Arcbound Ravager into Thoughtcast.

Ah, the days where a three mana 2/2 with one line of text could make it in the big leagues! The ape has now been outclassed time and time again, but the heir to its throne, Reclamation Sage, is still a Commander staple.

Creatures that destroy artifacts are still being printed almost yearly, but now this effect has moved primarily to red. Cards like Gearbane Orangutan and Irreverent Revelers are middling draft commons, even with added flexibility, but they have their place in formats littered with trinkets.

There are tons of creatures that destroy artifacts when they enter, so I restricted my search to those that could be cast for less than three mana. This narrowed my list down to twenty-nine cards, and here they are:

The most played of these cards by a country mile is Reclamation Sage seeing play in 249,541 decks. This card is a certified staple of green, as a flexible utility creature that is cheap to cast and easy to tutor for. The next most played card is Loran of the Third Path, in 143,426 decks.

Notice a pattern? This one can also destroy enchantments, just like Reclamation Sage, and it even has a fun little add-on ability if you're out of gas or want to make friends. Next up is Manglehorn, in 58,738 decks.

This creature is incredibly powerful in CEDH or high-powered games, stopping other decks' ability to ramp immediately using treasures or free mana rocks.

The least played of these cards, in only 148 decks, is Thornscape Battlemage. This card actually isn't bad! Much better than the next least played card, Keldon Vandals, which sees play in only four more decks despite being mono colored and thus able to go into many more commanders.

Finally, I want to shout out Tin Street Hooligan. This little guy only sees play in 233 decks, but it can easily be a two mana version of this effect in red-green decks, making it much better than Manic Vandal.

What to Smash

Obviously, our apes need a little help. Everyone plays artifacts in their Commander decks, but these often aren't the cards we really want or need to deal with to win the game. Killing a Sol Ring early in the game can be very helpful, but on turn eight it isn't so impressive.

Luckily, there are a handful of cards in the history of the game that can turn other permanents into artifacts on command. Liquimetal Coating and Liquimetal Torque are the gold standard here, costing only two mana to cast and none to activate.

Also in colorless is Thran Forge, which can be activated multiple times per turn but is a little bit more expensive to use. Myr Landshaper also fits the bill, though we certainly will have to use it wisely to avoid having a huge target on our back.

And on the top of the curve, Mycosynth Lattice makes the world our oyster, turning every permanent into an artifact, forever.

And we get a few more of these effects once we move into blue. Neurok Transmuter is exactly what we want, a reasonably cheap repeatable activated ability that turns our Uktabi Orangutans into Ravenous Chupacabras.

Higher on the curve, Memnarch offers both enabler and payoff, combining very well with both our cards that turn things into artifacts and our cards that destroy them.

Finally, we get a few one-time cantrips that make artifacts in Argent Mutation and Suit Up that can work in a pinch. No one will see it coming when you Suit Up their commander!

We can also include a small package of artifacts of our own that we can destroy for value. Ichor Wellspring and Mycosynth Wellspring give us a nice two-for-one when we play and then get rid of them. Prized Statue is a nice short-term ramp piece. And Experimental Synthesizer is a card that does it all for a single mana. I've been including this card in almost every red deck I build these days, and it always impresses.

Get Paid for Breaking Stuff

There is a strong handful of cards that rewards us for destroying artifacts. Viridian Revel is a Kibo, Uktabi Prince staple that either does absolutely nothing or forms the backbone of a gameplan. Fangren Marauder gives us massive chunks of life, and Summoning Station pumps out extra 2/2s.

Krenko, Baron of Tin Street is surprisingly powerful, pumping out Goblins whenever we destroy artifacts and then giving us a chance to buff them all.

Finally, Pain Distributor and Sardian Avenger dole out pings for each artifact we kill. The nice thing about all of these cards is that they also give us value whenever someone sacrifices a Treasure or a Clue token, or even when someone cracks a Wayfarer's Bauble or Burnished Hart.

Finding our Pieces

This deck really needs to find a way to turn permanents into artifacts, or we're stuck with a bunch of cards that don't do all that much. The best way to find cards in our singleton format is to search our library, but tutors that can find absolutely anything can make decks feel too much like they're doing the same thing every game.

Luckily, most of the cards we want to find are artifacts, and there are a bunch of very specific tutors that each have only a handful of targets. Tribute Mage finds Liquimetal Coating and Liquimetal Torque, Trophy Mage finds Thran Forge and Myr Landshaper, and Treasure Mage finds Mycosynth Lattice and Memnarch.

These creatures add to the deck's overall vibe of small two-for-one creatures, letting us lean into cards that work well with little creatures. Muddle the Mixture and Drift of Phantasms can find a wider variety of cards, but still make us work for it in deck construction.

A Choice of Fundamentals

One thing I think about whenever I make a new deck is what kinds of ramp and card draw will complement its plan. Every deck needs some way to cast its spells and rebuild as the game goes longer, but not every deck should just slot in Cultivate and Phyrexian Arena.

Our deck, for example, is absolutely chock full of three-drops, from our many apes to our tutors to our payoffs, so Cultivate only clogs our curve, rather than actually accelerating our plan.

Even two-mana options such as Nature's Lore and Gruul Signet don't actually help us play a three-drop a turn earlier. Luckily, we're in green, the color of one-mana ramp. Llanowar Elves and friends are obvious includes, as are Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth.

Flare of Cultivation gets the nod as well, but only because it can make good use of the 2/2s that are left behind after we play our Uktabi Orangutans.

Similarly, card draw is essential if we want to keep pace with three opponents over the course of the game, but we want ours to work well with the rest of our deck. Our plan revolves around playing small utility creatures, which are not all that formidable in combat. I mean, almost all of them are the same size as a Zombie token, and lots of decks can make those like candy.

Beast Whisperer lets us draw when we cast them, turning them into three-for-ones and making our goal of grinding three other players out into a realistic vision. Guardian Project fills a similar role. Evolutionary Leap lets us cycle our creatures into more creatures to keep our engine running.

And the aforementioned Ichor Wellspring and Experimental Synthesizer work perfectly with all of our cards that blow up artifacts.

We can even apply this logic to a choice of commander for the deck. We definitely want to be in red, blue, and green, because our apes are in red and green and our tutors and artifact pieces are in blue. All of our engine is contained within the deck, and there aren't any commanders that directly contribute to our strategy by turning permanents into artifacts.

So what we really want is a value commander, and we want it to fit nicely into our curve. Thrasios, Triton Hero is a famously powerful two-drop, and one of the only ways to play a two-drop in the command zone of a three-color deck, and Kraum, Ludevic's Opus keeps the cards flowing higher up the curve.

Winning the Game

One fun aspect of Commander is that often your opponents do most of the work of killing each other for you. This deck leans into that angle, playing a bunch of ways to contain threats and dissuade people from making us mad. Having five 2/2s will do just fine to deal the last blow once everyone has spent their resources.

But we don't want to rely on our opponents. Sardian Avenger is a fine card on its own, but if we assemble the combo of it plus Mycosynth Lattice, it can attack as a first strike trampler as large as all of our opponents' permanents. That doesn't need many swings to win the game on its own.

And Summoning Station can pump out an army remarkably fast. Not only can we use it whenever we destroy an artifact, it also untaps whenever an opponent cracks a Treasure. And if anyone is sacrificing artifacts, they're usually sacrificing a lot at once. Finally, Memnarch can really take control of a board. In the early days of EDH, it was a general to be feared, and it can still absolutely dominate.

The Decklist

This deck is a blast. It always catches opponents off guard the first time we activate Thran Forge on their creature, but they catch on real quick and learn not to mess with us. We're a reactive deck that plays small creatures, so we always feel like the underdogs, and we need to play the table politics game in order to have a shot.

But politics is surprisingly easy when we have the leverage of always having three spot removal spells in our hand. Uktabi Orangutan really shines through all of the nonsense, and the play experience is something special. A perfect deck for when you want to surprise your friends and get scrappy.

Until Next Time

This card is so dope, and so unplayable anywhere outside of Commander. It rewards you for not playing the cards in your hand, meaning it's only big if you are effectively spending cards to keep it big.

But in Commander, card advantage happens on a completely different scale, and [/el]Maro[/el] can easily be a 10/10 without trying too hard. But what if we do try? How big can this creature get? Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!

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Jesse Barker Plotkin

Jesse Barker Plotkin started playing Magic with Innistrad. He was disqualified from his first Commander game after he played his second copy of Goblins of the Flarg, and it's all been uphill from there. Outside of Magic, he enjoys writing and running.