Freezing Point: 1/32 - Colorless

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first installment of Freezing Point! In this series I'm going to brew a 75% EDH deck of each color combination from the ground up. I'll be going in color-wheel order for making the decks and articles. The intended meta for these will be a casual meta, though while not built competitively they will be spiked as hard as possible. You may be confused seeing some pricier cards in here like Imperial Seal and Mishra's Workshop but if those help the particular deck they're in then so be it. Really expensive cards supporting really bad strategies. It's like taking coffee and melatonin simultaneously.

The title of the series is good and all, but what does it mean or stand for? Well, if you look at the number of possible color identities for decks in Magic then you will notice that there are 32 (one colorless, five single-color, ten two-color, ten three-color, five four-color, and one five-color). I wanted a title that could represent that idea. I wanted to go with calling the series 2⁵ but some websites wouldn't display the superscript properly. Instead of that, I chose Freezing Point as the name as water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It seems to fit well.

While I hadn't really ever wanted to be one of those people that had one of each color combination of EDH decks I did get inspired to brew them. I've looked at a lot of lists in my time and I usually enjoy seeing other people's established works and then working off that, either by improving it or making it suit my own style. I've learned a lot about EDH in recent history and decided that I would at least like to make each color combination of deck so that I have one that I can say is my deck and is not just 'the one that I play.'

With that being said, let's get into the first deck. (complete list at end of the article)

Overview 

The general I have currently is Kozilek, the Great Distortion. You can have Kozilek, Butcher of Truth instead which may help with the combo but that's a personal call, the differences of which I'll explain later. There's not a lot that you can do with cards with a truly colorless color identity. The strategy of the deck is to ramp as hard as you can, cast your general to draw more cards, and beat face for a while from there. The end game is to loop Eldrazi titans for their cast triggers and either win off people conceding due to not having cards anymore, beating face after they refuse to concede, or making your opponents lose all their life. It's a combo deck with a handful of required parts but fun to get to the end game of. The overall goal is to play a generic mid-range strategy while casting big threats and preparing to combo out.

We'll go through the deck section by section, breaking down what's in the deck and what it does for the deck.

Combo

Didn't expect me, did ya?

The main part of the combo revolves around keeping Paradox Engine on the field. Typically you'd wait until it's safe to go off before playing it, but you do you. Having a sufficient amount of mana rocks out tends to net you mana when you cast anything, so this card is vital. To loop our Eldrazi, we need Cloudstone Curio out. Then with Engine, Curio, and rocks out, we cast an Eldrazi, get it's trigger, then when it enters the battlefield we return another titan to our hand, and repeat. While we're doing that we're also probably drawing tons of cards if you have old Kozi or at least destroying and/or exiling your opponents permanents with new and old Ulamog, so in case people don't concede from this loop then you can get Psychosis Crawler out and make your opponents lose all their life. Typically if they float mana due to the permanent removal then I'll move to my second main phase to drain it all after untapping everything by casting an Eldrazi and then continue the loop to make them lose life. "But what happens if you run out of cards to draw?" Then you discard an old Eldrazi titan, shuffle your graveyard back into your deck, and make them lose their life on the next player's upkeep. Simple.

One argument to having old Kozilek as your commander as opposed to the new one is because you get to draw your deck with old Kozi and not new Kozi, though if you are in a situation where you feel like you need more counter effects or you don't want to accidentally draw your deck (even though you can replace which Eldrazi you loop) then you have new Kozi.

In case we somehow don't have Curio we're running Staff of Domination to be able to continue to draw cards quickly. It's also good by itself whether we're using rocks and Unwinding Clock or not.

Tutor

Being a combo deck at heart, we need tutors. We don't have the best tutors in all of Magic but there's still some that we can take advantage of. Conduit of Ruin finds a titan upon cast, Eye of Ugin finds any of our guys that we may need as well as mitigating some cost to them and our commander, and Sanctum of Ugin finds another titan upon commander cast. This is another reason to run old Kozi over new Kozi as we can start to loop them if we have rocks, Engine, and Curio. Expedition Map finds any land we may need for a given situation, and Planar Portal was chosen over Planar Bridge because we can cast the things we tutor for and continue to generate mana. It's also good by itself even if we don't have Unwinding Clock. 

Draw

Feed me clues

Draw in mass is something that is tough to come by in colorless so we do what we can. Casting a bunch of rocks on the first few turns and then our commander is good, but other incidental card draw isn't bad. Mind Stone, Hedron Archive, Dreamstone Hedron, and Magnifying Glass act as both mana rocks and card draw. Serum Tank and Temple Bell (and sometimes Tamiyo's Journal) give us cards more regularly and more quickly with Engine. Some incidental draw includes Mind's Eye, Mikokoro, and Geier Reach Sanitarium. The lands give everyone a card, but just tell people you have to run it because it produces colorless. Sandstone Oracle is pretty sweet if cast turn 1 off of the backs of multiple rocks. Alhammarret's Archive doubles all extra draws, incidental or not, which makes clues significantly better!

Protection

Since we're playing almost mono-artifacts, and since up until recently we had to play only non-basics, we're going to need ways to deal with Moon, Valdalblast, and Rod effects. The former is mostly mitigated by playing lots of Wastes, though Darksteel Forge protects from some board wipes. Scour from Existence gets rid of one thing once, though we're banking on those things either not coming up or someone else removing the problem source. Warping Wail simply goes in this deck as narrow removal, and Defense Grid should rarely do anything against us unless we're trying to win at instant speed but we generate so much mana by that point that it shouldn't be an issue.

Removal

Speaking of board wipes, we only have a few pieces of removal. All Is Dust should absolutely be in this deck as it will mostly only miss opposing rocks, Ugin is a board wipe and damage if we need it, and Duplicant is removal we can tutor up with a land if need be. 

Value

Nearly Seedborn Muse you say?

While we would like to end the game in a combo, we can still play some value stuff in the meantime. Crucible of Worlds let's us replay our lands that we sacrifice like Strip Mine and Buried Ruin (or ones we cycle to Archive). Unwinding Clock and Vedalken Orrery work very scarily together and great individually. Wurmcoil Engine is also a good dude to play that we can also tutor for with Eye. Probably for the better we're not running Mycosynth Lattice. While it's amazing with Clock it could stop the game if Null Rod comes out, and people might think we're doing something crazy with it. (joke's on them because we're doing crazy stuff anyway!)

Hate

What would a tribal artifacts deck without some stax pieces? We have the usual (colorless) subjects, adjusted for meta. Cursed Totem, Grafdigger's Cage, Lodestone Golem, Mana Web (we run Urborg because we can, and it makes otherwise non-mana-producing lands carry their weight for once!), Sphere of Resistance, Torpor Orb (Eldrazi are cast triggers), Winter Orb, and Tabernacle are some of the main contenders. Neuter creatures! Slow down storm! Hold off opposing hate! Lose friends!

Ramp

There's not much special here. If it's a cheap mana rock that doesn't have a colored mana symbol in it then we're probably running it. The strangest additions to this list might be the elf eldrazi in the form of Kozilek's Channeler and Warden of Geometries. They both dodge Rod effects, ramp us at least one turn, and can help to loop a single titan. Metalworker is also a clear addition here as nearly half of the cards in this deck are artifacts. Extraplanar Lens is pretty spicy here for the same reason as people run snow-basics in that no one plays Wastes!

Land

Do I intimidate you?

In an effort to avoid Moon effects we're playing a relatively high number of Wastes. Otherwise I've decided to keep only the non-basics that help us the most. Buried Ruin lets us reuse things, Inventors' Fair lets us tutor for mostly anything in the deck, Mishra's Workshop helps us to cast a lot of the cards in the deck, the Urza-tron lands make lots of excess mana, Urborg helps out a handful of otherwise still useful lands, Ancient Tomb is a given, and Haven of the Spirit Dragon probably shouldn't be in there but what the heck.

Construction and playing considerations

One big thing which may change based on your play style and meta is the Kozilek choice. You may even want to play an Ulamog if you are feeling like removing a thing or two that early is more worth it early on. You could also add or remove lands based on meta (and budget). For example, you may want to consider Cavern of Souls if you feel like your dudes will be countered, you could add way more non-basics if you don't fear Moons, you can easily remove Tabernacle and Workshop for more Wastes, change out mana rocks (though with how the deck intends to operate currently it's difficult to justify more mana-intensive rocks on average), change out hate based on meta, etc.

For opening hands, typically I've wanted to keep hands that can ramp hard into casting our commander or something that can start to tutor for our combo pieces; however, keeping the intended meta in mind you can just play a battlecruiser game and play what you draw and only combo as an afterthought. The deck is good at acting like a mid-range typical casual deck because that's basically what it is. Disguising something as itself, how meta!

Wrap-up

And there is the deck! There's a handful of cards and tons of interactions that weren't even mentioned, though I leave those to the reader to discover for themselves. For a complete reference, here is the complete list. Please feel free to playtest it and let me know what you think, for better or for worse. Thank you for taking the time to dive into my thought process! Check back whenever you eventually remember this blog for the next installment of Freezing Point!

All cards owned and all rights reserved by Wizards of the Coast. I'm just some nerd who spent too much time staring at them.