Felidar RetreatFelidar Retreat | art by Ralph Horsley
Happy February! My name is Ben, and you may know me from Conditions Allow, my article series on EDHREC and Commander's Herald. It is my great pleasure to bring the Archidekt Deckbuilding Contest to EDHREC.
This will be a monthly contest with a different theme each month.
Your goal is to build a Commander legal deck that fulfills the prompt in a creative or unique fashion. 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 receive a prize.
This is the second contest of the year, so we're focusing on the number two. Specifically, two color decks that do something unexpected.
What’s The Contest All About?
Working within the parameters of the prompt provided below, construct a decklist with your own creative spin. Three chosen finalists will be awarded store credit to cardsphere.com.
For February's deckbuilding contest, brew a two color Commander-legal deck with a theme or strategy not usually seen in those colors. The more unexpected your deck's theme is, the better.
One of Magic: The Gathering's defining features is the color pie, which defines what each of the five colors can do in the game. This ensures each color plays differently, and allows players to express themselves through the cards they choose to include in their decks.
Each of these identities can also be interpreted in different ways, which opens up many different styles of play even among the same colors.
With thirty years of cards to choose from, however, there's no reason to limit your deckbuilding to what the color pie says. Every year we get new cards that push and pull the colors in different directions.
Can you build a landfall deck, or a control deck? What about a lifegain deck? You're not supposed to, but that shouldn't stop us from trying.
This is also a great exercise for building a color pair you're very familiar with. Thinking outside the box is a great way to break old patterns and reignite a passion you might've lost.
Similarly, this could be the perfect time to revisit a color pair you don't like. What used to be strange and unwieldy can become fresh and invigorating when approached from a different angle.
If you love Burn decks, try porting that to Azorius, or take your favorite Orzhov deck and rebuild it as Simic.
How To Participate
- Brew an EDH/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 cool, are not allowed.
- Digital-only cards (such as those designed for the Alchemy format on Arena) are not allowed.
- Strictly one deck submitted per user.
Reply to the Archidekt newspost, or submission post on the Archidekt Discord with a link to your deck before 9:00 pm EST (UTC -5, currently) on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 (do not submit the same deck in multiple places). Only one submission per user! From the eligible submissions, we'll select three finalists with lists that we believe best embody the spirit of the prompt. Deck descriptions are not required but certainly may provide valuable context!
On Wednesday, February 19, 2025, we’ll announce three finalists via the Archidekt Discord and a brief article on EDHREC highlighting each deck. Each finalist will be awarded credit on cardsphere.com. The value of the credit is in US dollars and depends on the finalist's placement in deck upvotes at the end of the week-long polling period:
- 1st Place Prize - $250
- 2nd Place Prize - $150
- 3rd Place Prize - $100
Finalists will be contacted via email or Discord (depending on where they submitted) regarding their winnings within roughly 24 hours following the conclusion of voting on Wednesday, February 26, 2025. 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!
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!
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.
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