Iname as OneIname as One | Art by Stephen Tappin

Hello, and welcome to July's Archidekt Deckbuilding Contest.

This is a monthly contest (if you ignore May) with a different theme each month. The goal is to build a Commander-legal deck that fulfills the prompt in a creative or unique fashion, and at the end of each month, three finalists will be selected for you to vote on. Whoever gets the most votes will be crowned the winner, although all three finalists will receive a prize.

July's challenge is to brew a creative and interesting Commander-legal deck featuring a weird mana curve that's relevant to the deck's game plan.

What does "weird mana curve" mean? Well that's kind of up to you to define, but at the very least it should be one that doesn't resemble the standard, best practices curve. This should be an innovative, novel, and attention-getting take on a deck where that odd curve is part of what the deck is trying to do.

What’s the Contest All About?

Working within the parameters of the provided prompt, construct a deck list with your own creative and compelling spin. Three chosen finalists will be awarded store credit to use on Cardsphere.

For July's deckbuilding contest: build a deck featuring a weird mana curve that's relevant to deck's game plan. Decks will be judged on the creativity and originality of their brew. For example, Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerShirei, Shizo's Caretaker decks oftentimes have less of a curve than they do a flat plane, as the deck tends to run as many one-drops as possible, but since that's the dominant build path for the card, it probably isn't going to cut it.

As we noted in last month's finalist article, we have so far been very forgiving regarding picking finalists with meager deck descriptions, but moving forward we're going to be a lot more discerning. Every month this contest gets larger, and that makes sorting through entries more and more of a time sink. If you don't have a decent description, we're going to find ourselves a lot less willing to try to connect those dots ourselves because we simply cannot.

A mana curve is a theory in deck construction based around maximizing use of available resources each turn. For example, since you'll often have one mana available to spend on Turn 1, you should have some amount of spells costing one mana in your deck to ensure you can utilize that resource. You'll then have two mana on Turn 2, so therefore you should have an array of spells that cost two mana to use, and so on.

Sample mana curve

The curve bends back downward at the high end because you need fewer high-cost spells in most decks. You can always cast two three-mana spells when you're at six mana, but you can't cast a six-mana spell when you're at three. Games don't always last long enough to cast the high-cost spells as well.

How To Participate

• Brew a Commander-legal deck on Archidekt that satisfies the prompt.
• Any unreleased cards spoiled during the contest’s duration are allowed.
• Silver-bordered and acorn cards, while fun, are not allowed.
• Digital-only cards (such as those designed for the Alchemy format on Arena) are also not allowed.
• Strictly one deck submitted per user.

As of a couple months ago, we've also revamped the submission process. Decks must now be submitted on Archidekt via a button on the newspost. This will make it easier to view all submissions in a single place. Additionally, it will simplify the process of writing a description by sharing the same text on the submission page and the deck page itself.

There's also a new easy-to-remember landing page for anything contest related that can be found at archidekt.com/contest

You can also comment on individual decks directly from the submission, making those discussions easier to find and track later.

To submit a deck, select the orange button labeled "Submit a deck to this contest" and follow the form prompt. Submissions are accepted until 9:00 pm EDT (UTC -4) on Wednesday, July 8, 2026.

Only one submission per user! If you change your mind and want to submit a different deck before submissions close, you may do so by first deleting your submission. To edit your description, you can do so from the deck page itself.

From the eligible submissions, we'll select three finalists with lists that we believe best embody the spirit of the prompt. Deck descriptions are now required and the more detailed the description the better; we just have too many submissions to try to put together what your deck is doing without some commentary and context.

On Wednesday, July 15, 2026, we’ll announce three finalists via the Archidekt Discord and an article on EDHREC highlighting each deck.

Please note, you must have a Cardsphere account in order to receive your winnings. It's quick and free — register here if you don't have an account already!

Here are the official contest rules. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here, or join the Archidekt public Discord server. We look forward to seeing what you all come up with!