Sift Through Sands - Cecily/Othelm and Cromat

Genesis Ultimatum

| Art by Jason Rainville

Five-Color Fantasy

Hello, all! Welcome back to Sift Through Sands, where we look at two different Commander decks that share a core card package in order to see how interesting cards can be useful in various strategies.

With all the spoilers these days, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle (ha ha). Many EDH players are excited for the Warhammer 40,000 decks, and more are scouring through Unfinity (or giving it the Minotaur review). In the meantime, I've been caught up admiring the Jared Carthalion

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Building rainbow decks is quite the challenge. Not only do you have to grapple with every legal card in Commander, but you have to construct a mana base that lets your deck function. An easy way to work around this is narrowing down themes.

Cecily, Haunted Mage

Our other general, Cromat

Archidekt link

Playing Cecily/Othelm

Listen, we all know that Sakura-Tribe Elder

As we work our ramp and assemble our proverbial domain, many of our spells become much more useful. Territorial Kavu

By late game, we should be able to pop Cecily off or simply cast our flashy spells. We're running quite a few ultimatums (Brilliant Ultimatum

Where Cecily/Othelm care more about hand size and lands to set up big plays, while incrementally improving our Domain cards, our Cromat deck is more focused on assembling mana to cast threatening multicolor creatures, and using their colorful nature to our advantage. Let's look at the list.

Archidekt link

Playing Cromat

Early game fixing and ramp are essential to getting our low-curve creatures in play. Giltspire Avenger

As we gain mana and multicolor creatures, utilizing those colors to our advantage helps us win. Our Auras like Steel of the Godhead

As we try and beat our opponents down, Wilderness Reclamation

In both of our decks, cards that ensure our access to mana and use card colors to our advantage work as a core to make the decks effective. While each deck embellishes this concept in different directions, the following cards are in both decks:

Having access to any color is a factor that should strengthen our deck against other decks, rather than weaken it. Running the best utility pieces (like charms), effective boardwipes, and efficient beaters all makes this work. Two-Headed Hellkite

Playing five-color is one of the most entertaining ways to build a Magic deck. When you narrow down your focus, you can do some incredibly cool things even outside of goodstuff. I want to hear about your five-color decks! What makes them appealing to you, and what weird strategies have you been able to make work? Let me know in the comments and I'll be back next time with more jank. Thanks for reading!