Going Brokkos - Ben-Ben Kenobi-Kenobi

(Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit

| Art by Greg Staples | Alterations by Naomi Krause)

Hey there sentient card-game playing beings, today we're going to be continuing on our Going Brokkos journey of burning money on dumb secret commanders.

I've been trying to get a mono-red deck on here for a while now. Originally I wanted to do a writeup for each base color before branching into multicolored commanders. That of course turned whiter than ______ at a ________ (write some 90's stand up bit about white people here).

Now to solve racism, let's play a creepy ass, good lil' goblin boy.

Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit

Step One: Visit Build-a-Bear Workshop

Much like our last deck, this list is all about digging up a few specific creatures. Stuffy Doll

The obvious synergy here is to attack with one of our damage sponges, consensually slap it on the ass with Ben-Ben, and Conduit 2 bullet freezing gun the pain away at an opponent's face. The problem is that, even with a ton of open mana, Ben-Ben's only going to be hitting for 5~10 damage each time. Also keep in mind that you need to attack with the punching bags, so you're not going to have any reliable blockers. This method of playing fair Magic is far too slow for even the durdliest of Commander games, so we gotta juice this hobo (in a steroids way, not a blender-kill-the-poor-one way please don't do that).

Step Two: I like big mana and I am a compulsive liar.

Playing mono-red in EDH means that we need to play to our strengths, which is why we're going to be jamming everything that doubles Mountain mana into our card holes.

The most obvious payoff to this is channeling our energy pools into big ol' Fireball

Step C: Double or Nothing

This is where our tongue gets spicy and our eyes get sweaty, mom's spaghetti. Every effect that doubles damage is twice as effective if we're throwing that damage at Annabelle first. Now, even if Ben's only tapping for 5 damage, it's going to double to 10 when it hits the doll and 20 when it bounces into your enemy's nose. This is how we defeat that cocky ozone layer once and for all.

"Fiery Emancipation

Step C.5: I enjoy partaking in similarly large integers and have been known to dabble in deceit myself.

Where this gets truly ridiculous is with our big ass number tribal package. Believe it or not, quadrupling & sextupling cards that deal 13~20 damage a piece will end games pretty quickly.

I love these cards and built a similar deck centered around them when I was just getting started with Magic. It relied on having Mogg Maniac

Step IV: Breathe

The nice thing about our deck is that, unlike a lot of my silly lists that don't realize Renounce

So long as we have one of our four damage sponges, we're in good shape. If we also have a damage doubler, we're in great shape. From that point it's really just about finding some way to ping the crap out of our wimps, with or without Ben-Ben's approval.

Risks

Ben-Ben giveth, and Ben-Ben taketh. This build is definitely the riskiest one I've made, with ample opportunities to get curbstomped on the crack back. Believe it or not, doubling everyone's damage and having no real way to defend yourself can have negative consequences for your long term health. When you drop a combo piece, be ready to get swung at hard. Or just play Final Fortune

Shoutouts

Here are a handful of cards I love that don't really fit into any of the above categories.

Nahiri's Wrath

Speaking of ridiculously high-damaging three-mana spells nobody plays, Barrel Down Sokenzan

Volcano Hellion

Rounding out our weirdos is Flat Earther, a bear that loots when it attacks and, more interestingly, actually contributes to society by letting us play one card we discard per turn. This seems narrow, but in mono-red approximately 90% of our draw spells discard in some capacity, so being able to recoup on our losses over the course of a game really adds up.

Conclusion

Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit