Kairi clone deck!

Kairi loves clone spells, as well as instant and sorcery cards.

Why Kairi?

• He is exotic. Very few people have made a Kairi deck despite the fact that he is incredibly fun and versatile.

• His loop is really quite elegant. Clone Kairi, activate his second ability, bring back a clone spell and a spell of your choice. Our winner here is cackling counterpart for instant speed and great rate, though certain other ones can get much more out of hand with the right board.

• Onboard removal and protection as well as a nice body. Kairi has ward 3 which makes him borderline unremovable with targeted removal. He is a flying 6/6 so he is hard to attack into (useful as he can sometimes be the only creature on-board). He also has the ability which bounces permanents up to cmc 6. Any amount. Bounce all the non-clone tokens you don't like (clone tokens have their original cmc), and then permanents up to cmc 6. Hits everything, sets people back. No it isn't permanent, but it's often long enough.

• Blue keeps players honest.

The Gameplan:

Your opponents tend to play creatures in their decks. They can't help it. This is seen as a problem by some blue players, but the Kairi player sees an opportunity. A Muldrotha, the Gravetide is good. An Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is good. An Etali, Primal Storm is good. These are all certainly scary cards, and can act as great value engines or finishers in a lot of decks. But, there is the simple reality that hard-casting these big spells is uncomfortable (not to mention they aren't exactly in the mono-blue color pie). Our beautiful clones, however, can quite literally do everything they can and often at a fraction of the mana cost, especially since this deck centers around reducing the cost of our instant and sorcery cards. And what's more, while your opponent's one Elesh Norn has great board presence, it is hardly effective against four.

In essence our goal is to do our opponents' best things better. Our opponents should play value pieces, so we can too. We want our opponents to drop haymakers (if only for a moment) so we can quickly appropriate them for ourselves. Our ideal board-state is a "best of" compilation of the game.

Gameplay-wise, the deck is a little durdley, especially early. We want to keep a lot of cards in hand while we inspect the board. When the time is right, copy the best thing for hopefully a great rate. Play out Kairi as a 6/6 flying combat deterrent. Recur your clone spells. Remove problematic pieces. Like a blue deck should, our cards are a resource to resolve problems efficiently, a bounce spell might delay or prevent an explosive turn. Hold up mana for instant speed spells to take out threats that might still be in players' hands. Take advantage of mono blue's ability to terrify the heck out of people by playing Baral, Chief of Compliance and saying "it's just for ramp".

Kairi's clone loop is an incredibly valuable part of this deck. It serves as most of the deck's card draw. For each dead Kairi, you get to look at six cards from the top of your library and then choose two instant and sorcery spells. These are usually the best spells you can play, and especially the ability to re-play them is incredibly powerful. Assuming Kairi remains out (he is hard to remove without a boardwipe), you will rarely have less than two spells in hand. Sometimes it can be worth switching out which spells you bring back just for variety's sake, though I really don't blame you if you just keep bringing back High Tide and ignore this advice.

Interaction and a constant board presence is an essential part of playing Kairi. This doesn't always have to be malevolent. Spells like Split Decision and Fact or Fiction are cards that engage our opponents when we play them. Wandering Archaic can be a politics piece as much as a value piece, a copied removal spell doesn't have to be directed at the caster, unless of course they're using it on you.

Our Best Duplication Targets:

• Wandering Archaic: Borrow everyone else's spells, even their boardwipes and protections, and many times over.

• Multiple cost reducers are very good. Bonus for Haughty Djinn also being a great flying wincon with a graveyard full of spells!!

• Extravagant Replication: Two of these can copy themselves, this can get very out of hand. Easy ways to do so is by targeting Mirage Mirror on Upkeep and then transforming it in response.

• Docent of Perfection // Final Iteration: Wizards, evasiveness, and anthems are a classic way to kill your opponents in commander.

• Tomb of Horrors Adventurer: Way better than it may seem. Now you get additional "copy second spell" triggers, which then naturally spiral out of control. Each one will also venture further into the dungeon, which means powerful effects and eventually getting even more copies of that second spell (I also heard Throne of the Dead Three is decent). This will get ridiculous if left un-managed.

• Caged Sun? Sphinx of the Second Sun?? The suns in this deck are good.

• Astral Dragon: Very powerful ETB. You get bonus points if you can combo off with something.

• Hullbreaker Horror is really strong when you can chain spells with it. I encourage you to keep up instant speed interaction after playing so as to not lose it.

Cards With Extra Synergy and Why:

• Mirage Mirror behaves pretty bizarrely. This can be cloned as either itself or as it is copying another permanent. If it is copying another permanent, the copy will be that permanent instead of mirage mirror. This can be used to do some strange things such as copying a permanent in response to an Orvar the All-Form trigger to instead make a copy of the chosen permanent (even if the target for the original spell is made illegal). Breaks Extravagant Duplication. Breaks a lot of things, frankly, it can easily become a cool creature to copy, and is very evasive (it can hide from most removal by becoming a basic island).

• Mystic Reflection is maybe one of the strongest cards here, secretly. Make anything into something basically worthless, for removal. This isn't temporary, this is until it leaves. Make your opponent's strong commander into a llanowar elves. Or abuse it yourself! You can make any creature into a strictly better one. (still better for removal imho)

• Psychic Spiral are means of resetting our graveyards when we mill ourselves. This deck is not opposed to playing against mill, but it can be good to keep a means of casting this before we could draw a card and lose the game from an empty library. Psychic Spiral is unique in it's ability to "shuffle" our graveyard by targeting ourselves with the mill effect. This means certain useful creatures can go back into the library without us losing graveyard size and we can find potential silver bullet spells that we didn't have access to before. The mill effect can also use this as a win condition by decking our opps.

• Modify Memory can exchange our creatures for our opponents'. Can also draw cards at a really solid rate while denying decks synergistic pieces (or play politics). Good commander removal if you're feeling particularly vicious.

• Argivian Restoration: There are a fair few artifacts in this deck! Now we can essentially recur graveyard artifacts from our self mill. It can mean ramping really hard or recurring artifact clones like Phyrexian Metamorph, Imposter Mech, and Machine God's Effigy. Good for getting back certain useful pieces or cheating out Caged Sun. Encroaching Mycosynth makes this a reality with every permanent in the deck.

• Battlefield Thaumaturge is an incredibly powerful creature for their ability to cut down mana costs on cards that target multiple creatures. It will reduce every single "targeting" clone spell a little, but it also does so much more. Baral's Expertise can cheat out a 4cmc spell for UU, Curse of the Swine mass exiles opponents' boards for UU. It works with a lot, so don't underrate them!

• Wizards of Thay and Clone Legion combo quite well with each other when you copy your board while myriad is in effect. Can grow really quickly and finish games.

• Imposter Mech is very novel. It is an artifact most of the game, and so is best served as a clone of a creature that doesn't need to stay a creature (i.e. value piece). Can have some interesting synergies with Astral Dragon's "Noncreature Permanent" clause. If you want more, you can crew it for 3 to temporarily give it creature status for a Cackling Counterpart -type spell. The copy will enter as a noncreature vehicle artifact again.

• The recurring, instant speed wheel effect of Jace's Archivist can be used just as much for disruption as it does giving us a fresh hand. Since a larger graveyard is almost always better for us, effects like these definitely work a little more asymmetrically. Time it when the player with the most cards draws for turn. Or don't! Obviously, wheeling is not always advantageous. Don't give a fresh hand to someone who just dumped theirs out the previous turn.

• This isn't synergy but I figured it's cool to know that there are two foretell cards: Behold the Multiverse, and Mystic Reflection (so it's actually never clear which card is foretold). Feel free to foretell them early so you can forget you had the ability to play them later.

• Astral Dragon behaves strangely. Because of this, it's good to know its interactions. Any aura that is also a creature is destroyed by state-based actions. This might be obvious, but since it only targets non-creature permanents, you cannot copy astral dragon tokens. Unlike clones, Astral Dragon does target and so does care about hexproof and associated things. Extravagant Replication, Caged Sun, Imposter Mech, etc. are all good in-deck targets, but you may find better targets on the battlefield.

• Liquimetal Torque has really become one of my favorite mana rocks. The secondary ability to turn anything into an artifact temporarily can greatly expand options. Removal spells targeting artifacts now target any nonland permanent, and in the same way clone spells like Saheeli's artistry will be able to have a greatly expanded range of targets. Now you can get someone's cool enchantment, planeswalker, or creature with just a copy artifact effect. Potential political advantage by using it to support other people's removal spells, also!

• Encroaching Mycosynth expands the concept of the graveyard-artifact gameplan by making all of our permanents artifacts. Notably this lets us recur certain particularly useful cards with Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Argivian Restoration. This means we can get out combo pieces or play reanimator, which is fun. Works with other effects which care about artifacts.

• Orvar the All-Form is nuts. If you've never played against him as a commander his ability is actually so insane (cough Irenicus's Vile Duplication cough). Well, they made another one, but it is significantly worse. Still worth playing. Vesuvan Duplimancy may read very similarly to Orvar but it is actually much more restrictive: the spell must target an artifact or creature (this is easy) but more importantly the spell must target only one permanent. This means Saheeli's Artistry abuse is a lot harder, same with a bunch of other spells which otherwise could target a bunch of things. Legend rule abuse is more than worth the extra hoops, though.

• Invasion of Segovia // Caetus, Sea Tyrant is great. It actually accelerates you towards a game-winning state by ramping and giving pseudo-vigilance to your creatures. Let an opponent who likely will not block Kairi guard it, and when you have the opportunity to: flip it! Now we can really take advantage of our clones, who can even help pay for the next spell with convoke. Moves the deck closer to aggressive wins and combo wins, what fun!

• March of Swirling Mist has been a card I've been considering for a while. It is really nice protection (it saves from boardwipes and targeted removal) while also phasing out creatures when you need to have something removed (though it is temporary). Useful for preserving a lategame boardstate.

A Little Extra Advice / Rules Interactions to Know

Clones such as Phyrexian Metamorph, Imposter Mech, Mirrorhall Mimic "enter the battlefield as a creature". This means they avoid hexproof / shroud / protection, and are not ETB triggers (because triggers on the stack are too slow for 0 toughness creatures, and they would die instantly due to state based actions, same as modular creatures). This means they are also not suppressed by ETB hate, and can actually utilize the ETBs of creatures they copy. There also is no way on the stack to prevent a clone from entering as the chosen creature as the clone resolves.

The backside of a dual face card (such as Docent of Perfection // Final Iteration) is the same mana value as the front of the card. They do not necessarily have a color, and they do not retain any color pips.

Token copies of dual faced cards now actually have both sides! That means you can safely transform even token copies of cards such as Curious Homunculus // Voracious Reader. (Thanks MoM!)

Always have a clone spell in hand. Without a means of recurring instant and sorcery cards this deck can really run out of gas. A clone spell can even mean Argivian Restoration to bring a Phyrexian Metamorph from graveyard into play. Clone spells have incredibly high card advantage potential with Kairi on the battlefield: they get six looks at new cards before you then decide to return two of the best instant / sorcery cards to hand.

Some of you might see this right away, but I want you to know See Double just copies, like, any spell. To me that is just wild. There is no reason not to wait until other people's turns to get extra value from copying the nuttiest spell while at the same time cloning a creature. In terms of clone value this one is so much more ridiculous than you might think, especially for it's stupid-low CMC and instant speed. Lowest opportunity cost of any spell I have seen in a long time.

Blue mana matters a lot. When you recur a bunch of spells, espeically with generic mana cost reduced, you might find that the vast majority of the mana you need must be blue. Keep it in mind and always use colorless mana as early as possible on a turn.

Hullbreaker Horror can bounce itself if you cast an instant-speed spell. This lets you preserve it from a boardwipe or otherwise.

How Do We Win?

A question you may find yourself asking, especially once you get the Kairi engine going. There are functionally infinite ways to, varying by the cards your opponents play, but we have onboard wincons also:

• Mill your opponents out with psychic spiral.

• Astral Dragon + Machine God's Effigy

• Swing with a lot of Docent of Perfection tokens (ideally with a lot of Final Iterations).

• Hullbreaker Horror (s)

• Grind out your opponents by recurring every counterspell in the multiverse.

• Play another deck better. One blood artist is good, five will end the game very quickly.

• Invent an infinite combo. Sometimes people can play enough value pieces where we can get to an infinite combo faster than they can. Otherwise a sufficient amount of onboard mana and/or cost reducers will do the trick.

A lot of loops rely on paying attention to the entire board. A lot of "generic value" pieces are kinda just good anywhere. Ask yourself, "Does Doubling Season work well with Astral Dragon?" (the answer is yes, yes it does). Enough Elesh Norns are functionally unstoppable without a boardwipe, and Avacyn Angel of Hope is a good card.

Addendum // Closing Thoughts

This deck can be "improved" by giving more focus, but in my opinion a good clone deck should prioritize versatility and interactivity with the board over rapid combo/aggro lines! Our biggest enemies are graveyard hate and death trigger removal (and leyline of singularity, I guess?). I put potentially good cards in sideboard as easy upgrades / focus changes on a bigger budget / different priorities. The deck can easily pivot into mill, control, combo, aggro, probably other archetypes.

Right now, especially in commander, clone decks are being given arguably way too many cute effects. WoTC seems to be really pushing this approach, and not a set goes by where at least one new blue spell would slot really well into this deck. Trying to keep the focus while also avoiding boring play patterns is a key part of my building and as such I often make tweaks to keep things fresh. (see the number of revisions to get a hint)

I have personally opted to remove a lot of interaction in this deck. I dislike being able to constantly recur boardwipes / potent removal. It's an ethos of mine to avoid unfun play patterns. If my opponents aren't having fun, it's not worth it. You may disagree, and so I encourage you to run more. There is not nearly the need for as many clone spells as I have, among other things, so it would be easy to replace a few if you want to.