Going Brokkos - Aboshan, Cephalid Sex God/Emperor

Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor

by Christopher Moeller

Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor

is a wonderful idiot and surprisingly formidable control engine if you want to stop your opponents from playing Magic after asking them to play Magic with you.

Lore

Normally I don't care about Magic lore since the rare time they stumble across compelling storytelling, they do something dumb like changing formats into terrible books, setting up crappy TV show "oooh this guy's not really dead just wait for the sequel!" plot lines, or casually erasing LGBT characters. Here's the four pieces of non-Cephalid Magic story that I really enjoy if you're interested.

That being said, Aboshan's lore is really funny to me for some reason. I think just because he's a huge idiot who kills everyone with his incompetence.  They're Michael Scott if he was a slightly more racist tentacle Jace.

Cephalids are obscure tentacle people from Dominaria, and Aboshan was their ruler because his daddy was rich. The main man himself made a deal with this shady merfolk named Laquatus and married a genius noble-Cephalid named Llawan to solidify his rule of the Mer. You know, standard political maneuvering.

Then he went nuts and started exiling people left and right like an Isochron Scepter

Then he put Ambassador Laquatus

This was going on at the same time everyone and their grandmother in Dominara were going nuts over the Mirari

Eventually Aboshan went on land to check out the Mirari on his own. He, being the ~2 wisdom D&D character he was, thought that it could save his empire. Naturally he decided to pour all of the blue mana into it to flood half of the continent which killed him and just soooo many random land dwellers.

So ends the tragic tale of Aboshan, the brain dead squidward who killed thousands of people and never did anything right. On the bright side, his side piece Llawan used her absurd intelligence to out maneuver Laquatus through espionage and social engineering in a saga way more interesting than that one idiot's. Then she got a bunch of scientists together to work on the Riptide Project whiiiiich rebirthed a ton of Slivers that went crazy and murdered everyone.

So yeah, Cephalids are weird brain squids that are really good at accidentally killing everything. Let's do that in EDH.

TWO WORLDS, ONE FAMILY

I have built, torn apart, and rebuilt my Aboshan deck a dozen times or so over the years. I've found the most consistent build to be standard mono-blue control, but the far and away most fun one is Cephalid/Eldrazi Tentacle Tribal, so let's try that!

Willbreaker

One neat trick with Aboshan is that he doesn't just let your Cephalids tap down creatures, but any kind of permanents. The obvious perk is shutting down a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Floodgate

Midnight Clock

Faces of the Past

Theft of Dreams

Wincons

Plan A: Summon an army of tentacle monsters, use the blue guys to tap the world da ba dee da ba di, and stomp face with Eldrazi like that one month of Modern back in 2016.

Plan B: Power Artifac

Conclusion

Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor