Deckbuilding Contest Finalists - September 2025

Joint Exploration | Art by Zezhou Chen

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 combines two archetypes you don't normally see together.

We collected submissions from the Archidekt newspost and evaluated them based on their creativity and originality.

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, September 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.

Finally, 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!

2/2s For Flinching by ratorasniki

The Beamtown Bullies are normally a Reanimator type deck that combines elements of goad and donate themes to put debilitating creatures like Leveler into play under your opponents' control. Ratorasniki has combined that with the manifest dread mechanic, allowing them to sneak their own big creatures into play without suffering the consequences.

This deck includes all the classic creatures with horrendous downsides you commonly find in a Beamtown Bullies deck. As you'd expect, the goal of this deck isn't to play those cards yourself, but to reanimate them under your opponents' control, goaded so they have to attack. This can be as simple as an Oliphaunt to chunk down life totals, or as devastating as a Leveler that exiles their whole library.

What you might not expect to see, however, are a number of manifest and manifest dread cards. Not only does Manifest Dread help you fill your graveyard, it lets you safely get your most dangerous creatures into play under your own control.

A creature turning face up won't trigger its enters play effects, so Leveler is just a four-mana 10/10. Or you can leave your creatures face down and let your opponents decide if they really want to attack you, when that could put an Inverter of Truth or Eater of Days into your graveyard for you to gift them in their second main phase.

In addition to winning through underhanded means, this deck can win by attacking with its under-costed threats. Experiment Twelve is included to make these even more dangerous, doubling the power of each creature you turn face up.

Pyrotechnic Performer is another excellent win condition. Yargle and Multani might lack the flair of a Soulgorger Orgg, but 18 damage to each opponent when they flip is nothing to sneeze at.

Pirlems by helloM

Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer and Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator work with very different kinds of creatures, but helloM thinks their effects can work together.

The plan starts with cheap, evasive Pirates. Thanks to Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator these creatures make a Treasure whenever one or more of them hits a player. This ensures you have plenty of mana to cast Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer, Sandstorm Salvager, and even Phyrexian Triniform quickly. These all create Golems, or are Golems themselves, that will grow as you continue to sacrifice Treasure tokens to play your spells.

While the deck works with each creature type playing its role, it also includes Maskwood Nexus and Arcane Adaptation to let your Pirates become Golems as well, so Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer can grow them as well. Not only does this make your Pirates more threatening, it helps you win with Simic Ascendancy much faster.

Roaming Throne also helps with this, doubling the number of +1/+1 counters Ich-Tekik hands out.

Another aspect of this deck I like is how quickly it can recover from a board wipe. Creature-based tempo decks often struggle to recover after they're set back, but this deck's whole plan sits in the command zone. And thanks to the many Treasures it creates, it should never be difficult to replay your commanders, immediately starting to re-build a board state and make even more Treasure.

Titan of Mycosynth by zephes

Iron Man, Titan of Innovation can lead an artifact deck with any number of possible strategies. No matter how prepared you are though, you probably wouldn't expect him to lead a team of planeswalkers.

This deck's strategy revolves around ramping to Iron quickly, and using his ability to search for Encroaching Mycosynth. This four-mana artifact turns all your other cards, in every zone, into artifacts. Thanks to that, Iron Man can now trade artifacts in for planeswalkers, gradually assembling his very own team of super-powered friends.

You can also get into the usual artifact deck tricks, but with planeswalkers now. Activate the ability of Tezzeret the Seeker, then use Goblin Welder to turn him into Chandra, Spark Hunter. Replay your fallen planeswalkers with Emry, Lurker of the Loch, and give their abilities to Myr Welder.

All these artifacts hitting play also helps you proliferate quickly with Surge Conductor to reach the powerful ultimate abilities of Chandra, Spark Hunter and Daretti, Scrap Savant.

Of course, Iron Man, Titan of Innovation can continue to search for whatever artifact you need most. The Chain Veil is a staple of planeswalker decks, but finding Territory Forge is another way to activate a planeswalker twice, and ensure they can't be removed in combat.

The Aetherspark is another powerful engine that can quickly turn your commander into a real threat. Add an emblem from Zariel, Archduke of Avernus or the ultimate of Vronos, Masked Inquisitor and your opponents won't last long.

And there you have it, the three finalists for the September 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, September 24th, 2025.