(Akuta, Born of Ash | Art by Ben Thompson)

Can't Keep Me Down

Welcome back to Conditions Allow, where I build around a legendary creature with a drawback and try to turn it into a strength. For my second article this month, I am sticking to a theme and discussing another mono-black commander that comes back from the graveyard.

Akuta, Born of Ash was actually one of the first commanders I considered writing about for this series, but Akuta ended up being much harder to work with than I anticipated. For a long time I wasn't sure how to approach this legendary Spirit from Kamigawa, but I think I've finally figured out an approach that interacts favorably with what Akuta wants to be doing.

What does Akuta want to be doing? I'm not sure, but it is good at coming back from the graveyard... as long as you can do a couple of things first. Most importantly, Akuta, Born of Ash demands that you be holding cards. It doesn't have to be a lot of cards, you just have to have more cards than anyone else. If you do happen to have the largest hand size at the table, you can then sacrifice a Swamp at the beginning of your upkeep to put Akuta from your graveyard into play. Helpfully, Akuta does already have haste, so it can attack right away, which ended up being surprisingly relevant.

A lot of other deckbuilders have also taken advantage of Akuta having haste to try and build a Voltron deck. Checking out EDHREC, a solid number of the Top Cards for Akuta, Born of Ash are Equipment. A land theme seems to be popular here as well, since many of these Equipment, like Lashwrithe and Strata Scythe, boost creatures based on the number of Swamps you control. Every other one of the Top and High Synergy cards is dedicated to drawing cards. Having a full hand is going to be very important for this deck, but it isn't pivotal. No, as evidenced by the Creatures section of the page, what is most important is making sure you simply have more cards in hand than everyone else.

I Don't Care if I Have Cards, As Long as You Don't Either

The rest of Akuta, Born of Ash's EDHREC page is dominated by discard effects. From one-time effects like Arterial Flow and Burglar Rat to repeatable effects on creatures and enchantments, discard is a prominent theme for this commander.

I'm not entirely sold on all of these effects, though. Akuta doesn't care about the number of cards in players' hands, just the ratio between your hand size and everyone else's. Burglar Rat is great for hand disruption, but doesn't actually do what we want; playing a spell from our own hand to discard a card from the opponent means our hand size relative to each opponent is still the same. Arterial Flow is slightly better, but a deck full of discard effects will just leave everyone with zero cards in hand. We need to stay ahead on cards while creating the conditions that make Akuta, Born of Ash a game-winning card.

To that end, I'm picking only the best discard effects I can find. Syphon Mind stands out as a useful discard spell because it also draws cards. Then there are Words of Waste and Painful Quandary, both of which have the potential to empty each opponent's hand. Painful Quandary is immediately scary, but many people underestimate how powerful Words of Waste can be. Pair it with Vilis, Broker of Blood and soon you'll be the only one holding cards.

Finally, I'm throwing in two creatures that have very unique effects, sort of like small Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augurs: Gnat Miser and Locust Miser. These reduce opponents' maximum hand sizes by one and two, respectively. As far as I have found, these are the only three cards with any version of this effect aside from Cursed Rack, but that only hits one player. Both of the Misers are perfect alongside Akuta, Born of Ash; it's easy to keep ahead of each opponent when the game only allows them to keep five or six cards in hand, versus your seven.

Of course, that only helps if we're actually holding seven cards. Luckily, black is pretty good at drawing cards, and it's only gotten better with recent sets. Necropotence is an all-star here, unsurprisingly. Unlike in many decks, however, we almost never want to be putting more than seven or eight cards in hand. The extra cards aren't usually necessary to get Akuta back, and we really don't want to have to exile anything. On the other hand, feel free to go crazy with Vilis, Broker of Blood. He's incredibly explosive, especially in conjunction with all the other card draw available to black that costs life. Razaketh, the Foulblooded helps us find combo or stax pieces, while Yawgmoth, Thran Physician helps to control the board, all while drawing cards through Vilis's ability. Our draw package is also supplemented by a suite of tutors that let us grab the right card exactly when we need it.

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Lands

Alright, that should keep us flush on cards and our opponents in check; now we can try to address the rest of Akuta, Born of Ash's ability. First, sacrificing Swamps.

This actually stumped me for a long time. If we're forced to revive Akuta too often, we could spend much of the game stuck at five or six lands, continually replaying the same Swamp with Crucible of Worlds. At least The Gitrog Monster has access to Exploration effects. I did consider trying to abuse this effect with Witch's Cottage, but that mostly just forces you to draw the same creature and play the same land every turn.

Then I thought, "What if we weren't using those lands anyway?"

Us not having much mana isn't a problem if no one else has much mana. Winter Orb and Static Orb are infamous for their ability to grind a game to a halt, but they really do create the perfect environment for Akuta, Born of Ash. If our commander dies, we can sacrifice a Swamp that couldn't untap anyway to bring it back. Gnat Miser and Locust Miser are already sort of staxy cards, and we can take advantage of a couple others. Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos are great creature removers that we can really take advantage of with Akuta. Our commander is pretty easy to get back if it dies, and it's low power isn't an issue if every other creature has already been sacrificed. Plus, Akuta, Born of Ash has haste, so we can get in for small chunks of damage every turn, instead of having to wait and hope no one removes it.

Ratting Out the Stax Player

Akuta plays well with stax and can live through most removal that gets thrown at it, but it is still costly to revive it often. I want to include a couple of cheap, efficient creatures to apply pressure in the early game. Part of my initial search for inspiration for this deck was on Yargle, Glutton of Urborg's EDHREC page. One of the themes listed for Yargle is Rat Colony, which caught my attention. Rat Colony can be a cheap, efficient attacker in the early turns of the game, helping to draw out early interaction. Then, once we get into the mid- and late-game, Rat Colony can grow into a real threat while still being cheap enough to play under our stax pieces.

My initial draft of the deck contained 30 copies of Rat Colony, so Thrumming Stone would almost always pull every copy out of the deck. This can deal a significant chunk of damage with Bontu's Monument, but they ate up a lot of deck space. I ended up cutting back the number of Rats, so Thrumming Stone won't reliably get all of them at once; that role is instead filled by Secret Salvage. Just make sure you don't have to exile them all during the cleanup step because of Necropotence.

If we can get all of the Rats into the graveyard, we can use Forever Young or Gravepurge to stack the top of our deck and abuse Thrumming Stone to cast them all again. This works with Bontu's Monument, but the real goal here is actually Rhonas's Monument. Stacking each trigger onto Akuta turns our commander into a serious Voltron threat. This even works the turn after a board wipe, since Akuta, Born of Ash has haste, and casting Forever Young and a single Rat Colony is much cheaper than paying for a bunch of Equipment.

Of course, this combo takes a lot of setup, so we're going to want a backup plan. I'm also including both Hero's Blade and Sword of the Chosen as a couple of free sources of extra power for Akuta. Grafted Exoskeleton is cheap to equip and turns Akuta into a two-hit kill. All three together get Akuta up to exactly ten power, while both Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Vilis, Broker of Blood get there with just the Exoskeleton. These provide an extra way to make Akuta, Born of Ash a little more threatening even with the tight mana constraints we're anticipating with Winter Orb in play.

With plenty of artifact ramp to offset losing lands, I think we've come up with something that just might work.

This deck came together slowly and took a lot of forms. I considered a lot of options for gaining the necessary card advantage, from Buyback tribal to focusing on creatures that can return to your hand. It only really started coming together when I found Rat Colony on Yargle's EDHREC page. I think it's a great example of how the deckbuilding process can take us in directions we never expected, if we're open to it. Nothing about Akuta, Born of Ash suggests it should lead a Rat deck, or that Winter Orb would be a potentially synergistic card. In actuality, the deck would probably be stronger without the Rats and with more removal. Rat Colony seems like a fun back-up plan, though, and has enough synergy in the deck to work if Akuta gets stuck in your graveyard or you start to run low on Swamps. They also function as early game threats to draw out removal and bleed your opponents of resources before you deploy the real threats.

But what do you think? Is Winter Orb worth it with Akuta? How would you build this Kamigawa legend, and what cards does it make you want to play?

Ben Doolittle

Ben was introduced to Magic during Seventh Edition and has played on and off ever since. A Simic mage at heart, he loves being given a problem to solve. When not shuffling cards, Ben can be found lost in a book or skiing in the mountains of Vermont.