Dueling Deck Techs: Equipment

Colossus Hammer

by Dmitry Burmak

Dueling Deck Techs: Equipment

Welcome to the newly rechristened Dueling Deck Techs! So many themes in Magic technically have cards in every color, but going fully five-color is going to end up pushing out those weird cards in the end. I want to find a different way: complementary decks! Two decks with no overlap but all five colors between them.

In each article, I'll discuss the theme, what value each color adds to it, the core colors of the theme, and then suggest a pair of commanders which each use at least one of the core colors but bring other spices to the table.

Core colors, for the record, will be determined by total number of decks in a given color with that theme under EDHrec. There will be some consideration given to the mono-color, two-color, and three-color categories.

This entry? Equipment.

Why Play Equipment?

Who hasn't been playing outside and found The Cool Stick? The one that lets you become the ultimate knight or grand witch, capable of anything? There's just something cool about a big sword, and if the popularity of Roronoa Zoro is anything to go by, someone holding an improbable number of weapons is even cooler. 

Equipment decks also offer fun little dreams, like assembling Kaldra or putting all ten Swords of X & Y on a single creature to swing in. (I think if you do this with a double-striking Felix Five-Boots

So between the cool triggers your Equipment can grant, the artifact synergies, and the innate beefiness provided, there's something for everyone.

A note surrounding Equipment is that they have been given special attention thanks specifically to Universes Beyond and Dungeons & Dragons. Several properties released have had special weapons and proficient weapon-users. 

What colors like to play Equipment?

Core Colors of Equipment?

It's Boros. You and I both know it, but let's break it down, okay? 

White and red are pretty equal in terms of numbers, but looking through, I think white offers a little more in terms of differing synergies with Equipment. Both have "friendly to artifacts," but white is primary in that, and it shows. White can use Equipment to generate card advantage (virtual or real) and has ways to tutor, resurrect, or cheat in Equipment.

You wouldn't think of red-white Equipment as a peanut butter and jelly situation, but that's kind of what we have here. Red has just a little over half as many cards as white which directly reference Equipment. What it does have are efficient beaters and more Equipment granting haste and double strike, two of the most important keywords available in an Equipment deck.

That's not to say red's affinities are limited to beatdown. It helps with the rest of the gameplan as well, with creatures like Godo, Bandit Warlord

Red-White

1. Sunforger
2. Bladehold War-Whip
3. Fighter Class

White

1. Steelshaper's Gift
2. Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist
3. Sram, Senior Edificer
4. Codsworth, Handy Helper
5. Glimmer Lens

Red

1. Embercleave
2. Lizard Blades
3. Rabbit Battery
4. Reckless Crew
5. Bladegraft Aspirant

What Does Each Color Offer?

The other three colors are not going to be as simple as typing (o:Equipment or o:equipped) into Scryfall and calling it a day. Friendly to Equipment is only really present in red and white, although blue, black, and green do have some direct call-outs we may be able to make use of. Equipment has some other hooks we can find synergy in.

For blue, we're going to rely on its "friendly to artifacts" status. When you reduce an activated ability of an artifact, you reduce the equip cost. Blue also has ways to tap artifacts for effects: Equipment don't need to be untapped to work, so we can get some fun value out of that. Blue's got the highest density of straight-up unblockable creatures, which are great for carrying swords. There are plenty of fun Equipment in blue, which are usually capable of card advantage or unique evasion.

Black has some difficulty leveraging Equipment, with some exceptions, notably the Nightmare Lash

Finally, green. Green has very little interaction with artifacts or Equipment specifically. It's gotten to dabble a little thanks to "enchanted or equipped" being batched from time to time and the "modified" batch. A stronger point in green's favor in Equipment decks is its ability to scale effects with power. These spells have seen a spike in popularity thanks to cards like Yargle and Multani

Alright, so we want to split red and white. That leaves us with the following options.

Azorius and Jund: Ayesha Tanaka, Armorer

Rakdos and Bant: Shagrat, Loot Bearer

Gruul and Esper: Meria, Scholar of Antiquity

Selesnya and Grixis: Danitha, New Benalia's Light

Orzhov and Temur: Ria Ivor, Bane of Bladehold

Izzet and Abzan: Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders

Not all pairs are created equal. Some color combinations lack a commander with a spicy punch to it for our theme, and that's fine. A few things I kept in mind for this were possible sources of mana and which color had more direct affinity for artifacts or Equipment. It was a close call, but ultimately I chose...

Overview of Danitha, New Benalia's Light

Danitha, New Benalia's Light

The ability to cast Auras may tempt you to pick up all the best ones, and that's fine. I relied on using some Auras for ramp, as well as some that specifically help boost our Equipment plan. There's also a clever interaction with creatures with bestow, meaning we can get some extra resilience.

Those are the "supporting" rails here, but we have our main course to attend to. The lion's share of direct Equipment support is in white, from tutoring to cheating equip costs to bolstering equipped creatures.

Green's Equipment support is extremely limited, as the color has very few synergies with artifacts of any kind. It also specializes in big creatures, which do not innately require Equipment. However, that affinity for big creatures usually means caring about power, which is a fun string to pluck here. That's right, my favorite card of all time is back again: Rishkar's Expertise

Green offers some solid ways to encourage aggression and make our creatures grow even faster. This is where we get to show off some of the juicier Equipment, and a green-white creature that serves as both mana acceleration and finisher.

Between the Equipment with living weapon, reconfigure, or for mirrodin! and the creatures with bestow that act as Auras, we have a decent amount of resilience to board wipes and spot removal. A good back-up plan for times like this is a way to make a big board quickly or recover a solid creature. Some of these are good to cast early on as a way to take over quickly, but I definitely like them as a way to get back on the board after the third or fourth wrath has made casting our commander trickier than usual.

Overall, the nature of this build will be about building up low-to-the-ground creatures and relying on incremental value across a wide force. You'll definitely have games where it's all about suiting up Danitha, but every now and then that Glyph Elemental

Overview of Tetsuo, Imperial Champion

Tetsuo, Imperial Champion

This is specifically the way that I'm choosing to build Tetsuo, focusing on the bigger dreams. I think there are at least two other build variations: one focusing on Equipment in the two to four mana range with a lot of efficient instants and sorceries to cast cheaply, and one focusing on maximizing the damage dealing mode. For me, it's about big spells, especially as a way to differentiate from the lower-to-the-ground Danitha deck.

To make these big spells happen, we need big Equipment. To justify that sort of mana cost, there need to be one of two things: a cost-reduction or a solid effect stapled to it. This ensures that we don't have a turn where we just cast a big Equipment that we can't even equip that turn and pass, it'll do something. Excalibur, Sword of Eden

To get those big spells out, we need help with mana. There are the usual Signets at our disposal, but we also have some unique options thanks to the Equipment being artifacts. We have permanents that reduce the cost of our artifacts as well as ways to cheat them into play. As for the nonartifact spells, we have a couple of ways to give our spells improvise and thereby tap all of our Equipment to cast something.

This is all well and good, but let's talk Equipment support for our Equipment deck. It's going to be much more Voltron-oriented, but we want to make that happen quickly. To that end, we have ways to accelerate the equipping process. In the late game, we also have ways to generate some tokens to pick up Equipment if Tetsuo has been cleared out too often. 

We've talked about mana-smoothing, but there's also some card draw elements I want to talk about here. Some of these are your standard for artifact decks, like Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain

The only final note I'll leave is that I did consider a strong throughline of extra attack step cards, but there's a sequencing issue (they don't work if you cast them off of Tetsuo). I still think there's valid room for them, just a quick note for the record.

There's a lot in this deck I could talk about, honestly, but I'll let the list speak for itself.

Conclusion

Well, that about does it for showcasing cool ways to crash in with everything but the kitchen sink. Which of these decks appeals to you? Are you into the idea of a GW Graveyard Deck or a Grixis Voltron? 

By the way, if you want to go more in-depth on building Equipment in Commander, look here.

Which themes are you interested in for the future? Let me know, but in the meantime, have fun crashing in with a mouse wielding an improbable number of weapons!