Conditions Allow - Tetzin, Gnome Champion + The Golden-Gear Colossus EDH

Ben Doolittle • December 11, 2023

Deckbuilding
(The Golden-Gear Colossus
 | Art by Kekai Kotaki)

Big Robot

Hello, and welcome back to Conditions Allow. In this article series I take a legendary creature with a drawback and turn it into a strength. I wasn't expecting to get the best Gnome commander from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, but Tetzin, Gnome Champion

is a strong new artifact matters commander with a lot of potential. Even limited to double-faced artifacts, Tetzin
 is a powerful engine to fuel your graveyard and keep your hand full of artifacts. I'm more interested in his other half, however, The Golden-Gear Colossus
.

The Golden-Gear Colossus

has the unique ability to transform any transforming double-faced artifacts you control. Notably, that doesn't include modal double-faced cards, like Halvar, God of Battle
, which can't transform. Luckily, there are still plenty of artifacts that The Golden-Gear Colossus
 makes much, much better. From old classic Azor's Gateway
 to the new Master's Guide-Mural
, there are plenty of costs The Golden-Gear Colossus
 lets you circumvent to access powerful abilities faster than you're meant to. All you've got to do is flip Tetzin, Gnome Champion
.

A Little DIY

Craft is a new keyword ability that allows certain artifacts to transform by using certain cards from your field or graveyard as materials. Tetzin, Gnome Champion

requires six artifacts to transform. At first I thought this would require a lot of extra help to accomplish. Faithless Looting
 is an easy choice for graveyard focused decks, and Urza's Bauble
 sends itself to the graveyard. I also grabbed a bunch of cards to make artifact tokens as free permanents you don't mind exiling to craft. Like I mentioned above, however, Tetzin, Gnome Champion
 is a powerful mill engine in the command zone. 

Having plenty of cheap double-faced artifacts makes it easy to filter through your library with Tetzin, Gnome Champion

in the early turns of the game. Not only does this fill your graveyard with artifacts to craft with, it also helps you dig for the more impactful artifacts you want to transform later, and while Neglected Heirloom
 and Thraben Gargoyle
 don't provide any value on their own, that isn't always the case. Clay-Fired Bricks
 helps you hit land drops, and Oteclan Landmark
 smooths out your next draw. This also means they're not really dead draws after Tetzin, Gnome Champion
 transforms, either. Even Thraben Gargoyle
 becomes a one-mana 4/2 with flying.

Some flip sides are better than others, though. Brass's Tunnel-Grinder

not only wheels when it enters play, but it flips into a pseudo-cascade once a turn. Inverted Iceberg
 flips into a slightly worse Frost Titan
. Meanwhile, Dire Flail
 offers a slightly more permanent solution for enemy blockers, especially with the tokens The Golden-Gear Colossus
 makes when it attacks. Finally, Mysterious Tome
 is a slow draw engine, but gets slightly more interesting if your commander has already transformed.

Gearing Up

Once you do get The Golden-Gear Colossus

in play, the plan is to quickly overwhelm the battlefield with artifacts. The Golden-Gear Colossus
 puts two 1/1 Gnome tokens into play whenever it enters play or attacks, which is already powerful. Add on the potential to quickly transform Golden Guardian
 and Master's Guide-Mural
, and you can quickly overwhelm the battlefield. Just keep in mind that permanents don't leave play when they transform, so you can't activate Master's Manufactory
 and then transform it to get both effects in one turn. Similarly, The Enigma Jewel
 won't gain any abilities when transformed by The Golden-Gear Colossus
, but it will still double your non-mana activated abilities.

Which is great because this deck has plenty of powerful activated abilities. Alongside the previously mentioned Gold-Forged Garrison

and Master's Manufactory
, Dowsing Device
 turns all your little Gnomes into a serious Voltron threat. Doubling each effect of Conqueror's Foothold
 makes the mana costs much more reasonable as well. The real star of the show here, however, is Dragonspark Reactor
. You'll easily be creating two or three artifacts every turn, quickly making this little artifact a must answer problem for your opponents. While I'm here, I'll had Reckless Fireweaver
 and Ingenious Artillerist
 as well. If the game is going really slow, then Toralf's Hammer
 is a great effect to copy to pull ahead.

Finally, to give all those Gnome tokens a little extra oomph, I'm adding a few lords. Master of Etherium

has the added bonus of being very large itself, while Illustrious Wanderglyph
 gives a more sizeable boost and makes tokens of its own. Anyone familiar with Tendershoot Dryad
 will know how powerful this effect is. Bronze Guardian
 won't make your creatures hit harder, but ward 2 makes them a little harder to deal with.

Getting Tricky

With a total of 25 artifacts to transform The Golden-Gear Colossus

shouldn't ever run out of ready targets, but just in case you want to get a little more creative, I'm including Archangel Avacyn
 and Liquimetal Torque
 in the list as well. By using Liquimetal Torque
 to make Archangel Avacyn
 an artifact, you can transform her when The Golden-Gear Colossus
 attacks. This does destroy all your little Gnomes (and you won't get the indestructible buff when you transform her back), but it is a steady way to deal with opposing token swarms, and chip away at life totals. 

Finally, to go along with all this transforming, I'm slotting in Corruption of Towashi

. The Golden-Gear Colossus
 from Tetzin, Gnome Champion
 can transform Incubator tokens, but the real focus here is drawing a card every time you transform a permanent. Corruption of Towashi
 draws a card both with The Golden-Gear Colossus
's trigger and when you resolve a craft ability. It even works with the few Transformers cards in the deck, since convert is just transform with a fancy name.

Add in some removal and a few lands, and here's the final list.

Ancient Gear Golem

View on Archidekt

Artifacts (32)

Enchantments (1)

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Tetzin, Gnome Champion

is a powerful card, and a worthy commander on its own, but don't overlook The Golden-Gear Colossus
. Cheating on transform costs opens up a lot of possibilities, and this deck can put a lot of artifacts into play very quickly, which is powerful on its own. If you're looking for a fresh take on artifacts in Commander, then Tetzin, Gnome Champion
 just might be for you.

But how would you build around The Golden-Gear Colossus

? Would you focus on Tetzin, Gnome Champion
 instead? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading!

Ben Doolittle

Ben Doolittle

Ben was introduced to Magic during Seventh Edition and has played on and off ever since. A Simic mage at heart, he loves being given a problem to solve. When not shuffling cards, Ben can be found lost in a book or skiing in the mountains of Vermont.