Legends Legends - Chromium

Welcome back to Legends Legends! We're over halfway through all of 1995's iconic original legendary creatures, and we're finally moving on to one of my favorite Elder Dragons: Chromium Rhuell! Chromium is a major character in the Elder Dragons comic series and was featured in Core Set 2019 with an updated card in the form of Chromium, the Mutable. 

Chromium is known for his ability to shapeshift into any form he wishes, and indeed spends much of his time on Dominaria in the form of Ham, the Tickery Man. While the new Chromium represents this with his ability to change into an unblockable Human, original Chromium has nothing but flying and rampage 2.

Instead of focusing on another rampage-force-blockers deck, today we'll be diving into a Chromium clones and shapeshifters deck for a thematic experience that'll mimic his actions in the lore. How do we win if we only play our opponents' cards? Let's find out!

General Thoughts

Cloning other creatures is an effect that's been in Magic since the very beginning. Alpha's Clone is the original version of this effect; we'll include several cards that are straight upgrades to the original Clone in this deck, as well as ways to steal our opponents' noncreature spells as well. Without much of a gameplan of our own, we'll need to rely on knowing our opponents' decks and strategies to win.

Although Chromium doesn't actually synergize with our clone cards, he makes a great game-ending attacker if he comes down on a well-controlled board state.

We'll keep pace with our opponents the entire game by just copying their turns, gaining the same advantage they do or otherwise mirroring their board state until we can use Venser, the Sojourner or another spell to swing in with our army of our opponents' creatures.

Clones

We begin with the eponymous Clone, a basic four-mana creature that comes into play as a copy of any other creature on the battlefield. This is the weather vane by which we measure the effectiveness of the rest of our clone cards. Four mana seems to be the sweet spot for clone effects, as is evidenced by Clever Impersonator, Mocking Doppelganger, Stunt Double, Spark Double, and Evil Twin. 

If we want a little extra value for our clone, we'll use Pirated Copy or Sakashima's Protege, both of which should net us at least one extra card after they're cast.

Wall of Stolen Identity is one of my favorite clone-copiers available in Commander. Despite not permanently removing the copied creature, it does lock down that Grave Titan or Darksteel Colossus for at least a turn or two while your opponent scrambles to waste removal on your simple Wall.

Phantasmal Image is the cheapest clone we have available, and its sacrificial drawback is hardly an issue when any spells your opponents would target it with would've destroyed it anyway. 

Cards like Mirrorhall Mimic and Cryptoplasm are important because they act as a source for repeatable copy effects should our opponents bait out our Stunt Double before casting their real threats. 

Abyssal Harvester and Dimir Doppelganger take the place of traditional graveyard hate in this deck, both giving us access to a repeatable removal effect while also creating clones of the cards we exile.

True Polymorph is a simple clone effect most often used to get a copy of whatever threat your opponent just dropped, but I want to point out you can use it offensively as well by forcing that Artisan of Kozilek to become a copy of your Dimir Signet.

Mirrormade is one of our most important control pieces, helping us keep pace with those Smothering Tithes and Phyrexian Arenas our foes drop in the early game.

[e]Gigantoplasm[/el] and Hulking Metamorph are how we turn those copied creatures into actual on-the-board combat threats. Great targets for these two include cards like Etali, Primal Storm, Two-Headed Hellkite, or really any other big, value-generating attacker.

Copies

While this deck doesn't tend to do much actual removal, it can out-value its opponents by copying their spells and then creating copies of those copies and then copies of those copies' copies.

At sorcery speed, we're running both Quasiduplicate for its repeatable consistency and Commander classic staple Rite of Replication, which ends games fairly soon after it's been cast and kicked.

As far as instant-speed copying goes, we're running two modal spells in the form of Sublime Epiphany and Three Steps Ahead, both of which help fill slots that'd otherwise be devoted to more counterspells and control effects.

We've also got Mirrorweave, one of my favorite instant-speed responses to someone's declared attackers. Oh no, you're attacking me with Doomgape? Sike! All my sh*t is 10/10. (If someone can link me to the Nirvana The Band The Show deep cut reference I just made that'd be sweet, I can't find the youtube video anymore).

Creatures aren't all we can copy from our foes, as it turns out. Twincast and Narset's Reversal are both excellent ways to steal our opponents' key instants and sorceries. They work just as well on a Cultivate as they do on a Ruinous Ultimatum, so have fun with them! Playing against one of those various Niv-Mizzet spellslinger decks? Hit that player with Curse of Echoes and watch them languish over which spells they can cast that won't backfire. It's so fun to see Izzet decks squirm for a way to remove an enchantment, too.

Finally, Sen Triplets lets us just play our opponents' cards straight from their hands, skipping the whole clones and copies play pattern to just straight-up steal their turns.

Peer Into the Looking Glass

So, we've spent six or seven turns copying the other players like we're in that episode of Metalocalypse where Toki won't stops copies me. How do we actually finish this game out?
Two spells really kick our game into high-gear. The first is Infinite Reflection. Once we've copied an appropriately powerful creature from our opponents, we can use this Aura to make each of our clones into copies of that Blightsteel Colossus or Ancient Copper Dragon or whatever and swing in for huge damage until our original can be removed.

The next is with Clone Legion. If we find ourselves facing down a "go-wide" deck, like any number of Goblins- or Humans-themed decks running around the meta, Clone Legion can completely flip the board in our favor, especially if we can cast it on their turn while our Leyline of Anticipation is on the field.

Venser, the Sojourner and his -1 ability are also not to be underrated. Any full battlefield of unblockable creatures is a threat, no matter what kinds of creatures they are (OK, I guess five copies of Blood Artist won't be a threat in combat, but you and I know better than to copy that card over and over again in this deck).

If we find ourselves staring down a combo deck we recognize, we can use Acquire, Bribery, or Blue Sun's Twilight to steal their combo pieces before they can assemble them and maybe even combo off by ourselves!

These spells are all great targets for our Demonic Tutor and Enlightened Tutor and will typically be our go-to searches when we cast them.

Mana Base

Chromium, like the rest of the Legends Elder Dragons, has a massive eight-mana casting cost and a three-mana upkeep cost each turn. If we want to play Chromium and use him as our intended endgame threat, we'll need to generate a lot of mana in colors that don't typically ramp well. 

To that end, we're running a critical mass of 37 lands in this deck, plus six mana rocks and both Burnished Hart and Solemn Simulacrum (two more fair choices for copying if we really need to). 

Chromium Deck List

Budget

This Chromium Commander deck costs around $200 to assemble for the cheapest printings. Luckily, Chromium is one of the Legends Legends that made it into Chronicles as a reprint, so you can acquire a copy of him for dirt cheap.

Much of this deck is fairly cheap to assemble, with the only outliers being Pirated Copy, at around $18, and our two tutors, Enlightened Tutor and Demonic Tutor, at $15 and $33, respectively. The two tutors can easily be swapped out for Diabolic Tutor and Profane Tutor and that shouldn't hurt our deck's consistency too much. Pirated Copy is harder to replace, being one of the better Clones out there with only one printing, but there's no shortage of cheaper clones to replace it with, including Vizier of Many Faces and Undercover Operative.

Wrap Up

Why build a deck with a gameplan when you could just use your opponents'? Playing this Chromium clones-and-copies deck is easy, so long as you know your opponents' libraries well enough. Come on, you only have to learn three other decks when you sit down to a new pod, how hard can that be?

In all seriousness, this deck is a goofy theme that won't make a huge splash all on its own, but it's a cute way to play with all those expensive cards your opponents run that you can't afford/refuse to drop the hundreds of dollars on. Why bother buying your own Emrakul when your homie has one ready to go?

What are your favorite ways to clone your opponents' cards? Have you ever stolen their game-winning cards or assembled an opponent's infinite combo? Let me know in the comments!
As always, thanks for reading!