Deckbuilding Contest Finalists - December 2025

Experimental Frenzy | Art by Simon Dominic

It's time to announce the finalists for this month's Archidekt Deckbuilding Contest!

In case you missed the announcement post, this is 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.

As a reminder, this month's prompt was to brew a Commander-legal deck that aimed to execute a combo requiring five or more cards.

We collected submissions from the Archidekt newspost and evaluated them based on their creativity and originality, with extra consideration give to decks that included no tutors.

Now, it's your turn to decide who'll be crowned the winner.

Read about each deck list below, then visit your favorite and upvote them on Archidekt. Whoever has the most upvotes by Wednesday, December 24, 2025 will be the winner, and receive $250 credit to cardsphere.com.

Second and third place will receive $150 and $100 cardsphere.com credits, respectively.

Here are the three finalists chosen for this month's contest, presented in no particular order. Follow the link in each deck list to vote on your favorite!

Vadrok Tutorless Multicombo by jfalex

First up, we have this spellslinging Vadrok, Apex of Thunder deck from jfalex.

This deck revolves around Vadrok, Apex of Thunder's ability to cast spells from your graveyard whenever it mutates. In this case, it has to mutate underneath Palinchron, Peregrine Drake, or Great Whale, in order to untap enough lands to keep the combo going. Cloud of Faeries could also work, but requires you to have a bounce land or Lotus Field in play to make enough mana.

When Vadrok mutates onto one of these creatures, you use its ability to cast Quasiduplicate, creating a token copy of your mutate stack and untapping your lands. Then, cast Unsummon to put the non-token pile back in your hand. Now mutate Vadrok, Apex of Thunder under the token, getting two cast-from-graveyard triggers to recast [/el]Quasiduplicate[/el] first, then Unsummon to keep the combo going.

Every time you iterate through the loop, the mutated Palinchron gains another instance of Vadrok, Apex of Thunder's mutate ability. This lets you cast additional spells from your graveyard, such as Frantic Search or Anticipate to eventually find the last piece of the combo, Impact Tremors. With it in play, each loop of the combo will ping your opponents down to zero life.

Rather than include any tutors, this deck relies on redundancy and plenty of card draw to assemble all the pieces it needs. The hardest part to find, with only four options, is the untap effect necessary to making the mana to re-mutate Vadrok, Apex of Thunder. But with seven bounce effects it's relatively safe to mutate Vadrok onto another creature early in the game to recast a draw spell.

And while there is a backup combo in the deck that only requires three cards, the heavy redundancy for the more convoluted combo should make it much easier and more consistent to assemble.

Wretched Throng Gone Wrong by Market_Gnome

Commander decks are limited to a single copy of any given card, so cards like Squadron Hawk and Wretched Throng don't do anything in this format. Unless, of course, you do what Market_Gnome has done with this Combo Aristocrats deck.

In a singleton format Wretched Throng's ability to replace itself normally does nothing. But, if you put Wretched Throng back into your library before its trigger resolves, you can put your single copy back into your hand. Mortuary and The Cauldron of Eternity put any creature that dies back into your deck, so they're perfect for this deck.

Lastly, you need the mana to replay Wretched Throng, and keep the loop going. You can do this with Phyrexian Altar and Pitiless Plunderer, or either of them and The Sibsig Ceremony. The fifth card of the combo is your Blood Artist effect of choice, of which this deck includes several.

To help assemble the combo, this deck includes a selection of transmute cards, which all have other utility for the deck. Clutch of the Undercity can find Mortuary or bounce a key creature. Muddle the Mixture is a counterspell or finds Wretched Throng if you're ready to go off. Otherwise, the deck features a solid mill package to synergize with Raul, Trouble Shooter's ability to cast cards from the graveyard on the turn they're milled.

It's always fun to see someone take a card that doesn't normally work in Commander and try to make it shine, especially when it uses a niche commander to do so. Raul, Trouble Shooter isn't a common commander, but it's perfect for this kind of strategy. Milling is an efficient way to dig for combo pieces, and Raul ensures you can grab creatures and non-creatures alike.

It also limits the utility of the transmute tutors, so you can't rely on them too much to find the cards you need.

Colorless... Doomsday? by YoseiMorningStar

Last up in this unordered list is YoseiMorningStar with this deck built around Mirror of Fate.

Mirror of Fate is a little bit like a colorless Doomsday, as long as enough of your library is in exile. And as it turns out, a great way to get most of your library into exile is by using Mirror of Fate.

The goal of this deck is to use Relic of Progenitus to exile Mirror of Fate from your graveyard before its effect resolves, allowing you to select itself as part of the seven cards you stack on top of your library.

You also need Ugin's Nexus, Krark-Clan Ironworks, and Mystic Forge. Sacrifice Ugin's Nexus to Krark-Clan Ironworks to take an extra turn, then sacrifice and exile Mirror of Fate, putting the Nexus and Mirror on top of your library. On your turn, draw Mirror, and cast Nexus from the top of your library with Mystic Forge to continue passing the turn to yourself.

At each end step your commander, Gau, Feral Youth will have seen a card leave your graveyard and deal damage to each of your opponents.

There are a few tutors in the deck to help find the necessary pieces, primarily Goblin Engineer to find Mirror of Fate, and Tezzeret, Cruel Captain to find Relic of Progenitus. With those two cards, Mirror of Fate is capable of assembling the rest of the combo over the course of a few turns. There's also a decent amount of draw to help get the cards you need.

Even if you can't find the combo pieces, Gau, Feral Youth can dish out plenty of damage with the many Scrabbling Claws variants in the deck. But because Mirror of Fate exiles most of your library, there isn't a backup plan if the combo is interrupted. Sometimes, though, that's the more satisfying way to combo in Commander.

And there you have it, the three finalists for the December 2025 Archidekt Deckbuilding Contest.

Which is your favorite? Be sure to follow the links in the headers of each section to visit the deck pages and upvote the one you think should win!

The final rankings based on your votes will be announced on Wednesday, December 24th, 2025.