Get your rocks off...

Mana Rocks are essentially artifacts that generate mana.

Magic games are dictated by the speed at which you can play lands which then generate mana and allow you to cast spells.

A game of Magic will normally go something like this:

Turn 1 - Play 1 land.  Play a 1 Converted Mana Cost (CMC) spell or creature.
Turn 2 - Play 1 land.  Play a 2 CMC spell or creature or 2 x 1 CMC spells/creatures
Turn 3 - Play 1 land,  Play a 3 CMC spell or creature....

This controls the tempo of the game.  There are ways to break this.  The two main ways of doing this are to use Mana Dorks or Mana Rocks.

Mana Dorks are creatures that tap for mana. Birds of Paradise is still one of the best and oldest of the Mana Dorks.

In the above example our turn would now play like this:

Turn 1 - Play 1 land.  Play a 1 CMC Birds of Paradise.
Turn 2 - Play 1 land.  Play a 3 CMC spell or creature...

So we are able to play 3 CMC spell or creature a turn earlier than if we just relied on lands. This is called mana ramp and allows us to play more expensive CMC spells earlier in the game or more spells with lower CMC costs earlier in the game.

Mana Rocks, which are artifacts which generally tap for mana, also allow us to ramp into our more expensive spells.

Consider this:

Turn 1 - Play 1 land. Play Sol Ring. Tap Sol Ring play Grim Monolth.
Turn 2 - Play 1 land. Tap for 7 mana.

This means, as an example of ending the game turn 2, we could play Tooth and Nail

Tooth and Nail would let us put Triskelion and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed into play from our hand and win the game. But that requires what is called a "God hand", that is a starting hand from which we can win the game.

More likely is that you would wait a couple of turns for the extra 2 mana and play Tooth and Nail for its Entwine cost and search for these two, play them and then win the game.

But that's just an example of how powerful the ramp from using Mana Rocks can be.

This is why the majority of Commander decks will use Mana Rocks and Sol Ring has been in EVERY pre-constructed Commander deck that Wizards have produced.

Sol Ring and Grim Monolith both ramp the moment they are played. Sol Ring will tap for 2 mana and only costs 1 for example.

Wizards long ago realised that this is unbalanced and leads to far too much mana acceleration. So, while they still print Mana Rocks, they tend to be slower.

Here's a game of spot the difference for you:

Spot the differences between Basalt Monolith and Grim Monolith.

The main difference is that Basalt Monolith costs 3 and taps for 3. Grim Monolith costs 2 and taps for 4.

There is a difference in the untap costs but that is less relevant when you consider the early game boost that either give you. However Grim Monolith is strictly better.

So we went from Mox Emerald, and the other moxen from the early sets, to Moss Diamond. The 5 original Moxen I should point out are banned in Commander. However you can see that we have gone from a cycle of cards that you can play for 0 and tap for 1 specific colour of mana to a cycle of cards that cost 2 CMC to play and tape from 1 specific colour of mana. Again the Diamonds are a set of cards and are useful ramp if you're playing a mono-colour deck. However, if you're running more than one colour there are better choices.

Here we have the signets, all 10 of them, one for each colour pair in the game. This signets are one of the best cycles of mana rocks available to commanders.

They are slightly odd in that you have to tap them and pay 1 generic mana in order to produce 1 of each colour of mana from the guild to which they are aligned. However, they only cost 2 to play.

They are similar to Fellwar Stone, which is what I think is THE Mana Rock after all it is a rock that produces mana!

The problem with Fellwar stone is that it may as well say {T}: Add 1 Generic mana to your mana pool as you have no control over what mana your opponents may have on the battlefield at any one time.

Wizards have done a good job of producing a lot of variation in the mana rocks they have produced over the years. You have the indestructible Darksteel Ingot which is solid against board wipes, the scrying Seer's Lantern, a personal favourite all the way to the highly political Spectral Searchlight.

There are plenty of mana rocks to choose from and some may prove more helpful in your deck that others. Seer's Lantern, for example, is a great card in the Grenzo, Dungeon Warden deck I looked at last time out as Scying is integral to that deck.

There are mana rocks to suit every style and budget. The most expensive, like Mana Crypt costs around £125 (at the time I published this article) to the cheapest costing pennies.

Don't forget that Manabase Crafter will tell you the mana rocks you can play in the deck for your chosen commander as well as the lands and mana dorks. It is, I find, quite invaluable.

Until next time may you top deck that card you just wished for.

Phil

Grenzo's Grab Bag

One of the legendary creatures in my collection that I specifically bought to create a commander deck around was Grenzo, Dungeon Warden.

Grenzo has a really unique ability that lets us play with lots of Magic technology  that we wouldn't otherwise ever both with.

So let's start by taking a closer look at him and what he does

First up he is Red and Black when it comes to commander identity. Secondly he has X in his casting cost. The reason for this will become apparent shortly. One thing to remember if he does return to the command zone then is casting cost will be X2BR and then X4BR etc.

Grenzo is a Goblin Rogue. While Rogue isn't really a tribal type Goblin is and many Grenzo builds are Goblin Tribal in nature. But that's not what I am going to do today.

His abilities come in two parts that are linked to each other. Firstly he comes into play with X +1/+1 counters on him. You could in theory use him as a primary attacker and aim to cast him big and hit hard with commander damage. But that's not what I am going to today.

His second ability is more nuanced.

You put the bottom card of your library into your graveyard. Then is that card is a creature AND it has power less than or equal to Grenzo's power, you get to put it onto the battlefield.

Grenzo is a 2/2 creature that if cast for 3CMC will be a 3/3, for 4 CMC 4/4 etc. So if you want to use him to 'cheat' creatures into play you have to do two things:

1. Have a way to fix what is that the bottom of your library.

2. Decide what power level the creatures you are playing should be to make sure you create a Grenzo with enough power for his ability to work.

I decided early on that I wanted creatures with very low to no power that would enable to me to bring Grenzo into play and start using him as early as possible. With that in mind the maximum power of any creature in my deck is 3.  This means I can cast Grenzo for 3 and be sure that he can start brining creatures into play for me.

I'll look at the kinds of creatures I identified later in this article. For now I want to look at fixing the bottom of my library.

The first thing that came to mind was Scry:

"To “scry N” means to look at the top N cards of your library, put any number of them on the bottom of your library in any order and the rest on top of your library in any order."

Temple of Malice is a one shot obviously but still useful if you pull it. Crystal Ball is the stand out here, you get to Scry for 2 cards for 1 mana. Compare that to Seer's Lantern which is 1 card for 2 mana. The Lantern, however, does tap for mana so has a dual use.

Darksteel Pendant, while not specifically stating Scry, does the same thing and its Oracle wording on the Gatherer has been changed to reflect that.

Shadows of the Past is great as it doesn't care whose creature dies just that one does. Putrid Cyclops on the other hand lets you Scry when he comes into play. Don't worry that he might die from the downside. You'll see as I progress that the deck will have plenty of graveyard recursion.

But we don't just have to use Scry to get our cards to the bottom of the library there are plenty of other cards that we can use to do as well.

In every case we get to put cards on the bottom of our library in ANY order. That's important because we can then make sure we stack the bottom of the library with creatures we can bring out with Grenzo.

Not also that Goblin Machinist and Clone Shell both have power less than the target of 3 I set at the beginning of this article.

It's worth reading each of these very carefully to understand which each of them do in the deck.

When you start the game and as the game progresses you are going to end up with cards in your hand that you would prefer to be on the bottom of your library so that you can 'cheat' them into play with Grenzo.

To my knowledge there are no cards that let you move cards from your hand directly to the library bottom.  You don't want the cards to go to the battlefield and then the library bottom as that's defeating the purpose. So we're left with looking at the Graveyard.

Step 1: Hand -> Graveyard

The easiest way to move cards from your Hand to the Graveyard is to discard them.

What better way to discard cards than to replace them by drawing one. Regular readers will know I like to have plenty of 'card draw' options in my decks. So here we have 4 cards that discard a card and replace it.  You can ignore all of the text on Deal Broker except for the bit that reads {T}: Draw a card, then discard a card. You may also note that three of these are creatures that meet my 3 power maximum. Mad Prophet usefully has Haste so he can tap to Discard and Draw on the same turn.

I'm running one other 'Discard' card and that's Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. Possibly my favourite Legend. 1R {T} ability can be very useful for thinning your opponents flocks.

 Step 2: Hand -> Graveyard

Again with Canal Dredger you can ignore everything except the {T}: ability.

Note that both of these creatures have power of 3 or less.

Reito Lantern has the added ability to get at any card in my Graveyard not just the top one.

With Grenzo I specifically set the maximum power of any creature in the 99 to 3. But this doesn't mean I don't get to play with big creatures. It just means I have to be clever about it.

Deathbringer Thoctar doesn't start out so big but has the potential to get huge especially if your opponents are running token sacrifice decks like Ghave.

Ignition Team on the other hand should come into play with at least 10 1/1 counters on it, if not more.

Arcbound Overseer starts off as a 6/6 but will pump itself every turn it will also work to pump other artifact creatures when it dies.

There are nearly 30 artifacts in this deck including mana rocks and creatures so Nim Grotesque will always be much more powerful than it first appears.

Thief of blood works well with creatures like the Arcbound Overseer and it also kills Planeswalkers. It does cause issues for Grenzo but we can always find ways to get him back to the command zone so that he can be recasts.

Mephitic Ooze is like Nim Grotesque with the added Deathtouch-esque ability.

Malignus not sure what to say about him except he gets smaller rather than larger as the game goes on.

In addition to a bunch of big hitters I also chose a decent selection of creatures with Enter The Battlefield (ETB) effects.

This is pretty much a self explanatory list of creature removal, artifact removal, and life loss/damage.

In addition to these creatures I am also playing Solemn Simulacrum.

This is what I think of as being a utility creature and I've got two more in the deck as well.

Both of these are just to help with mana costs. The Workhorse can benefit from a dying Arcbound Ravager too.

Grenzo, Workhorse and Epitaph Golem will go infinite. I'm not running anything that can take advantage of that but it's easy enough to include cards like Blood Artist to do so.

Keep in mind Burnished Hart can be recycled from the Graveyard to the bottom of the library to be 'cheated' back into play.

I'm also running two other creatures in my deck:

Mephidross Vampire because there's nothing like making your own creatures more threatening.
Xathrid Gorgon because it's a great way to shut down enemy commanders.

I've found the deck to be quite mana intensive despite Grenzo putting creatures into play on the cheep. This is because of all the other interactions going on. Because of this I'm running 7 mana rocks including all of the Rakdos rocks, Sol Ring, Thran Dynamo, Grim Monolith and Veinfire Borderpost. It's 8 if you include Seer's Lantern.

Ontop of that I'm also running a couple of extra utility artifacts to make life easier.

Finally I'm running artifact and creature destruction which are amply provided for by Red and Black.

Cards like Black Sun's Zenith and Vandalblast for board sweeping effects and cards like Shattering Pulse and Silence the Believers for more targeted removal.

If you're curious I'm also running 37 lands.

I hope that gives you some ideas on how to play Grenzo yourself.

Until next time may you top deck that card you just wished for.

Phil