Riku of Many Paths - Commander Deck Tech

Riku of Many Paths

by Denys Tsiperko

Travelling Omenpaths With Riku

Overwhelm your opponents with complex decision trees, carefully selecting the right modes of flexible modal spells with Riku of Many Paths

The paths of this deck may diverge as we ponder our decisions, but the beauty is that there will always be a path less traveled, and that will make all the difference from game to game. Get ready to indulge in a deck with endless possibilities, able to adjust to any gamestate and find a path to victory!

Core Engine

With a commander like Riku, there are going to be lots of decisions to make, which can cause games to go long. As such, we need to approach this build with a mind toward the primary modes we want to use, with the other modes being more secondary or situational. The key to building a deck full of modal spells is to find modes that do similar things and use those similarities to create synergy.

While Riku leads us down many paths, the most certain route to victory is to use the flying token-generation mode to create a board, making this a veritable Temur tokens deck. As such, we want to use cards that put out multiple bodies that will be joined by Riku's Birds in a diverse army. We don't need a lot of these cards, as we have one in the command zone that makes at least one Bird per spell we cast.

Win Conditions

While grinding towards victory with card advantage, flexibility, and evasive token-creation is an excellent core, it's a slow way to win the game. It's also at risk of getting locked on board by decks capable of going bigger or wider. As a result, our win conditions are cards with modes that enable us to push through damage on locked boards.

Perplexing Test

Creating openings is a way to win with tokens, but so is bashing down walls. Savage Beating

Mana Spells

As a three-color deck, we need our mana to be as tight as possible. The amount of colored pips in the deck is a real limiting factor to its success; we need all three colors to cast our commander and as much as three blue to cast Cryptic Command

Quite a lot of our mana spells search for lands and put them into our hand. This makes sure we hit our lands drops and find our colors, which is necessary for us to cast spells. It does not, however, put us ahead on mana. This is risky, as opponents will often ramp to skip into bigger, more impactful spells while we're relying on synergy and flexibility to make up for a lack of power. Jeska's Will

The beauty of having modal spells in the manabase is that our mana spells are never dead. Unlike a regular deck drawing Sol Ring

Some of the mana-fixing spells are really cute with our strategy. Open the Omenpaths

As Explore

Removal

In the Magic Twitter community, "play more removal" is a rallying cry for well-meaning critics and dismissive trolls alike. On the one hand, removal is needed to have the ability to answer threats and make sure opponents don't run away with the game. We are at risk of getting run over by individually powerful plays like Craterhoof Behemoth

On the other hand, decks that have too much removal can slow games down to a crawl. Playing too much removal slows games down, has negative political ramifications, and doesn't advance the board/game state. A deck built around modal spells can get away with playing about twice the number of removal spells I'd recommend because they aren't dead cards and they are forward-moving pieces with the commander out.

The major need for a deck like this is for the removal to serve multiple purposes; that way, we don't have to feel the need to remove everything. Because the removal provides advantage and feeds our game-ending engine, we have an incentive to cast these spells to end the game. Rather than burn the removal unnecessarily, our removal has modes other than removal, which functions as card draw. As a result, seemingly potent spells, like Abrade

One of the beautiful aspects of a modal spells matter deck is the ability to use Commands. Commands are a subset of instants and sorceries, mostly location-dependent, that have four modes and allow us to pick two. That amount of flexibility is incredibly potent, as is the fact that we get multiple triggers of Riku off of them. Incendiary Command

Escalate, like entwine and spree, is a potent ability on modal spells that allows us to choose multiple modes. Collective Defiance

This is a deck where everything leads back to the concept of choice. Really, it's the illusion of choice, because most spells in the deck are there for a reason and have a primary mode. Still, there's no way we're memorizing all of the play patterns and classifications. While a primer could help with that, the beauty of a deck like this is to see each card as a set of several divergent paths. Try sleeving it up, letting go of the impulse to control, and just... enjoy the paths fate sets out in front of you.