Vela the Night-CladVela the Night-Clad | Art by Allen Williams

It's time to announce the finalists for September'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.

For September's deckbuilding contest the prompt was as follows: brew a creative and interesting Commander-legal Typal/Kindred deck where the commander supports the creature type in an interesting and creative way despite not being of that type, nor using that creature type in its text box. This should be an innovative, novel, and attention-getting take on a deck using one of these new commanders as part of its strategy or theme.

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

Now, it's your turn to decide who will be crowned this month's winner.

Read about each deck list below, then visit your favorite and upvote them on Archidekt. Whoever has the most upvotes by Wednesday, September 23, 2026 will be the winner, and will receive $250 credit to cardsphere.com.

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

After much deliberation, we chose three finalists from among the nearly thousand decks entered, so here they are presented in random order. Follow the link in each deck list to vote on your favorite!

One final note before we begin: with July's contest we had announced we were going to be more discerning regarding decks having more detailed descriptions, and the vast majority of you continued to absolutely nailed it with your descriptions. It made looking through these lists so much easier for our team, and we appreciate you all for that.

Hero of the sky by tantei

First up is this Arna Kennerüd, SkycaptainArna Kennerüd, Skycaptain brew from tantei built around utilizing the creature type Hero in a very interesting way. From the deck description: "This deck uses Arna Kennerüd, Skycaptain to support a hero typal strategy. This is possible because of the job select equipment from Final Fantasy which base token has the hero typing which means that a couple of swings with job select equipment while the commander is out creates a hero army. "

It breaks down as follows:

1. The creature tokens created by Living Weapon-esque Job Select mechanic from Final Fantasy have the type Hero. Basically, when an equipment with Job Select enters, it enters attached to a 1/1 colorless Hero creature token.
2. Arna interacts with modified creatures by copying nontoken permanents attached to those creatures when they attack. In this case it's going to be copying these Job Select equipment, which will then come into play attached to another newly-created Hero token.
3. Finally, the deck is filled with Hero creature types that in various ways buff other Heroes.

The pilot of this deck will for example cast Blue Mage's CaneBlue Mage's Cane that will create a 1/1 colorless Hero and attach itself to it. That equipped Hero will attack when Arna is in play at which point it will make a copy of Blue Mage's CaneBlue Mage's Cane that will enter attached to another 1/1 colorless Hero. Lastly, all those Heroes tokens, as well as any other Heroes in play, would get a +1/+1 counter put on them when Agent Phil CoulsonAgent Phil Coulson is tapped.

There's plenty of teamwide buffs here. Avengers Assemble!Avengers Assemble! gives each Hero +2/+2 and lets you draw at the end of a turn if a Hero attacked or entered this turn. Cards like Patchwork BannerPatchwork Banner serve a similar purpose. Most of the nontoken Heroes here also synergize with one another to self buff each other. Zarda, the Power PrincessZarda, the Power Princess gives all your Heroes exalted and Mister Fantastic, Reed RichardsMister Fantastic, Reed Richards draws you a ton of cards off all these tokens entering,

Wiccan, Rising MagicianWiccan, Rising Magician and things like Silver Surfer, Cosmic VoyagerSilver Surfer, Cosmic Voyager allow you to blink equipment if the tokens have been killed to generate another token, or to just make more tokens unequipped to anything, while also being Heroes themselves, and there's a lot of utility pieces that also interact with Heroes in the form of cards like Wondrous RevivalWondrous Revival and Ember Island ProductionEmber Island Production.

Irenicus's Recreant Rogues by ifnjeff

Next we have ifnjeff's 'Irenicus's Recreant Rogues' deck constructed around Jon Irenicus, Shattered OneJon Irenicus, Shattered One.

From ifnfeff's description: "The focus for Jon Irenicus, Shattered One decks has always been the control-changing and sacrifice-prevention of his first ability. Rather than using creatures like Greater HarvesterGreater Harvester and becoming the villain, we lay low by offering mutually beneficial creatures that maximize the +1/+1 counters and Jon Irenicus's draw ability instead. Rogues are known for being small, low-cost, evasive creatures which makes them the perfect candidate. Even a simple Slither BladeSlither Blade becomes a 1-mana Phyrexian ArenaPhyrexian Arena on an unblockable 3/4 body."

Basically, instead of giving you problematic pieces that negatively impact your board like you traditionally see, this deck is giving you evasive Rogues that can't be sacrificed and that are forced to attack your enemies while generating advantage for the Irenicus pilot.

There are ways in the list for ifnjeff to take back their Rogues if it's useful to do so, with cards like Homeward PathHomeward Path and Peer PressurePeer Pressure. This can be to use them as blockers, to give them away again, or to double up attacks by letting them swing for another player, then taking them back to swing again on your turn. This also helps deal with the problem baked in to goad, where it ceases to work when you're down to just one person you can attack. If that happens, you can just take them all back.

Since these Rogues can't attack the deck pilot, proliferating the counters on these creatures is all upside, and there are multiple cards like Vivisurgeon's InsightVivisurgeon's Insight that have a wanted effect with proliferate stapled on to buff all the Rogues on the field. Plus, there's forced sacrifice effects in the deck, including Blasphemous EdictBlasphemous Edict that the can't-be-sacrificed Rogues will dodge, so they can continue hitting opponents while non-goaded creatures get removed.

Lastly, there are synergistic pieces like Double DownDouble Down that copy all the Rogues you cast. Whether it's an opponent attacking with a goaded creature or you attacking, either way these Rogues are dealing damage to someone.

Werewolf Stax by Merlin

Winota, Joiner of ForcesWinota, Joiner of Forces is broken. Everyone knows it. It's a cEDH commander for Odin's sake. Merlin knows it too, which is one of the reasons this deck is set to Bracket 4 right out of the box.

Do you know what isn't broken? Werewolves. As far as kindred decks go, they're less popular than Clerics, Myr and Frogs. Part of that is a general dearth of werewolves; there are only 80 in the entire game, and most of them are pretty bad. Beyond that part of the problem is the finicky nature of the Day/Night mechanic.

This deck aims to fix that.

"Flipped Werewolves trigger Winota revealing unflipped Werewolves. Stax pieces keep Werewolves from becoming Human."

That sentence basically covers it all. The Werewolves are all Human in your library, and once in play and flipped they become non-Humans for purposes of attacking and triggering Winota on future attacks.

When a permanent with Daybound enters, the game begins tracking Day and Night. Technically there are ways for it to begins as Night but we'll ignore those for explanation purposes. From that point on:

• If it's day as a turn begins, and the previous turn's active player didn't cast a spell last turn, it becomes night.
• If it's night as a turn begins, and the previous turn's active player cast two or more spells last turn, it becomes day.

This is where the stax effects like Deafening SilenceDeafening Silence come into play. Because these effects limit players to one spell per turn, as long as it is night it can't become day as that player can't cast two or more spells. The Humans will then stay Werewolves, and thus stay cards that trigger Winota.

Blade HistorianBlade Historian helps speed things to the end by granting double strike, the deck is filled with ways to protect Winota, and there is ramp to speed the whole thing up.

So there you have it — our finalists for the September 2026 Archidekt Deckbuilding Contest.

Which is your favorite? Follow the links in the headers of each section to visit the deck pages and vote for the one you think should win!

The final rankings based on your votes will be announced on Wednesday, September 23, 2026.