In this experiment, we glimpse through the Cellar Door through the eyes of Fiora’s dungeon warden.

For the forthcoming Magic: The Gathering—Conspiracy, Wizards of the Coast really took advantage of the cards’ Eternal format legality (and lack thereof for Standard) by pushing the envelope on card power levels. One such pushed card is Grenzo, Dungeon Warden:

For starters, this is a 2/2 for . That’s not exactly gold standard anymore, running parallel to cards like Rix Maadi Guildmage or even Ghostflame Sliver. That said, it’s still respectable. However, Grenzo gives us the option to pay an additional X, and he scales 1-for-1, with that mana translating into his power and toughness. That’s a ratio contested only by an Apocalypse Hydra for 7, a Chimeric Mass (though it essentially has a 1-mana upkeep), or a Primordial Hydra (after it’s sat around for a turn).

On top of that, Grenzo has a pretty crazy activated ability. For only 2 mana, he can put a creature card from your library onto the battlefield. The only catch is that the creature card in question has to be the bottom card of your library.

The Cellar Door

Okay, so today’s deck doesn’t have Cellar Door, but that card was Innistrad’s precursor to the concept that the bottom of the library is a cellar, dungeon, or some other dark and mysterious place. Today’s deck will be a Grenzo, Dungeon Warden Commander deck, which means we won’t be toying with the synergy of Grenzo with, for example, Wheel of Sun and Moon, any sacrifice outlet, and Burning-Tree Emissary.

However, we don’t need Wheel of Sun and Moon to put specific creature cards we want on the bottom of our library.

And those aren’t even all the options. Teferi's Puzzle Box can let us mess with our opponents while we set up turn after turn of dumping a bunch of creatures into play with Grenzo.

Tel-Jilad Stylus serves as a way for us to essentially Flicker a creature: Activate the Stylus to put one of our creatures on the bottom and then just activate Grenzo. In fact, we could even activate Grenzo first and respond to our own activation by using the Stylus on Grenzo—this will allow the combo to virtually Flicker our commander in a pinch.

Reito Lantern and Soldevi Digger, however, are the most exciting options for combo potential. They’re repeatable, allowing us to set up loops of sacrificing a creature, moving it to the bottom of the library, and then returning it with Grenzo. All we need is either 4 mana (with the Digger) or 5 mana (with the Lantern) for each iteration.

For Sacrifice and for Mana

There are a lot of sacrifice outlets in Magic, but for our iterative purposes, we’re looking for ones that don’t cost mana. Viscera Seer is a cheap option, and it even comes with scry. That means it synergizes with the rest of the deck, and in the event that we’re comboing out with Viscera Seer as the sacrifice outlet, depending on the other cards involved, we can even essentially search our library for the creature or creatures we want to put onto the battlefield.

Altar of Dementia and Ashnod's Altar—and Phyrexian Altar, as a third option—make for great looping. Again, depending on the other cards we’re using in our loop at any given time, Ashnod's Altar may be required for generating sufficient mana to loop or it may actually be netting us mana, putting us in a position to make infinite. Altar of Dementia doesn’t help us at all in the mana department, but it does allow us to mill out opponents as a win condition or to mill ourselves—and then use the milled cards with a Lantern or a Digger to gain access to those milled cards.

These three cards are some of the most important for generating mana in our loop. Since Grenzo only costs colorless mana to activate, mana generated from Mana Echoes meets all of the requirements for looping as long as we have enough creatures of matching types. Beetleback Chief and Siege-Gang Commander both come with extra Goblins. With Mana Echoes and Grenzo on the battlefield, a Chief’s entrance will give us 12 mana while a Siege-Gang Commander’s entrance will give us 16. If, for example, we’re sacrificing Goblin tokens to scry with Viscera Seer, we can afford to spend some of that extra mana to make additional creatures in between looping either of the token-bringing Goblins.

If we have Ashnod's Altar but not Mana Echoes, we should still have sufficient mana to work. Every Goblin token we sacrifice for mana gives us a free Grenzo activation, and then sacrificing the token-bringer can pay for that creature’s return, resupplying us with tokens.

Oh, and Altar of Dementia is relatively expensive for an oddball combo piece. However, while it isn’t essential to the deck, it is being reprinted in Conspiracy, so just pick up both it and Grenzo in a couple weeks.

2-Power Troops

Grenzo, Dungeon Warden scales into infinity. If we happened to have made infinite mana, we can even make him that big, which is a nice upside when it comes to commander versatility. However, cheaper commanders are easier to cast, and as the game progresses and Grenzo inevitably dies a few times, it will be nice to be able to cast him for less mana rather than the power-and-toughness-incentivized more.

I’ll highlight a few of the 2-or-less-power creatures here.

Ali from Cairo – Fortune Thief works, too, but this could be a pretty sweet way to stay alive for a turn—or for many turns, considering the recursion powers of Grenzo. It would also be pretty awesome to throw out a Grenzo activation as a last-ditch effort and be surprised by the Ali of salvation.

Clockwork Dragon – Some creatures I looked for while building the deck were those that would have 2 or less power in library but more once they hit the battlefield. Creatures like Nightmare don’t work because characteristic-defining abilities work in all zones, but creatures that bring +1/+1 counters with them work just fine. Clockwork Dragon isn’t super-exciting, but it can serve as a 6/6 with flying for 2. It also benefits greatly from infinite mana.

Cryptborn Horror – I imagine this as a sweet, sweet surprise after one player hits another for a ton of damage and then we sneak this into play at the end of the turn. It also works just fine after we bash someone with an army of Wildblood Pack–powered creatures.

Hoarding Dragon – This is one of the exceptions to the 2-power-or-less rule. This guy serves as a way for us to find one of our preferred artifacts, such as Soldevi Digger.

Magmasaur – This dinosaur is a 0-power creature card that enters as a 5/5. It’s also—in this deck—a repeatable Swirling Sandstorm.

Rukh Egg – When we’re sacrificing and recasting creatures in loops, we want to be able to benefit from that in some way. Sometimes, it will be with mana, and other times, we’ll want to take advantage of enters-the-battlefield and dies triggers. Looping Rukh Egg can leave us with a bunch of 4/4s. Dragon Egg works, too, but its Dragon remnants are only 2/2s—though they do have Firebreathing.

Su-Chi – This is our other more-than-2-power rule-breaker. Su-Chi earns its spot for its great synergy with the primary focus of the deck. With a sacrifice outlet, this strange Thran construct generates enough mana on its own to pay for both Grenzo and Soldevi Digger.

Workhorse – This Horse also generates enough mana on its own to loop through with the Digger and Grenzo, though we won’t be able to use a sacrifice outlet in that case, as removing the fourth counter for the fourth mana will cause the Workhorse to die.

Dungeon Echoes ? Commander | Andrew Wilson

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (49)
• 1 Aladdin
• 1 Ali from Cairo
• 1 Anathemancer
• 1 Archetype of Finality
• 1 Beetleback Chief
• 1 Big Game Hunter
• 1 Bone Shredder
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Cryptborn Horror
• 1 Entomber Exarch
• 1 Falkenrath Marauders
• 1 Fledgling Dragon
• 1 Flesh-Eater Imp
• 1 Goblin Assassin
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Herald of Leshrac
• 1 Hoarding Dragon
• 1 Ichor Rats
• 1 Instigator Gang
• 1 Magmasaur
• 1 Master of Cruelties
• 1 Mindclaw Shaman
• 1 Moggcatcher
• 1 Mogis's Marauder
• 1 Ophiomancer
• 1 Pontiff of Blight
• 1 Prophetic Flamespeaker
• 1 Pyreheart Wolf
• 1 Rukh Egg
• 1 Siege-Gang Commander
• 1 Vampire Hexmage
• 1 Vampire Nighthawk
• 1 Viashino Heretic
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 1 Bottle Gnomes
• 1 Burnished Hart
• 1 Clockwork Dragon
• 1 Duplicant
• 1 Junk Diver
• 1 Junktroller
• 1 Moriok Replica
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Su-Chi
• 1 Workhorse
• 1 Balthor the Defiled
• 1 Braids, Cabal Minion
• 1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
• 1 Purphoros, God of the Forge

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Liliana Vess

• Spells (9)
• 1 Doomsday
• 1 Mana Echoes
• 1 Altar of Dementia
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Crystal Ball
• 1 Reito Lantern
• 1 Soldevi Digger
• 1 Teferi's Puzzle Box
• 1 Tel-Jilad Stylus

• Lands (40)
• 12 Mountain
• 12 Swamp
• 1 Akoum Refuge
• 1 Auntie's Hovel
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Lavaclaw Reaches
• 1 Molten Slagheap
• 1 Rakdos Carnarium
• 1 Rakdos Guildgate
• 1 Rocky Tar Pit
• 1 Shadowblood Ridge
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Tainted Peak
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Urborg Volcano
• 1 Tresserhorn Sinks

Buy This Deck

If you’ve always wanted to put creatures onto the battlefield from the bottom of your library (a.k.a. “dungeon”)—as opposed to your hand, graveyard, exile zone, command zone, stack, or other parts of your library—give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com