Deck building experiment: one drops only

[CleanBelwas]

Hi all,

This is going to be a long one. Buckle up. We're going for a ride.

For several years, on and off, I have been thinking about what a deck that only plays one drops would look like and questioning how viable it could be. Obviously it will have a fairly defined ceiling, but I'm wondering just how high it is possible for that ceiling to go.

The release of Skrelv, Defector Mite has reignited my interest in the idea, but I thought I'd open it up to you fine folks too.

Choosing a commander
Our options for a commander are limited. There are only 16 1 cmc legendary creatures. Only 3 have more than one colour in their identity.

5 White
 - Isamaru, Hound of Konda
 - Kytheon, Hero of Akros
 - Mikaeus, the Lunarch
 - Skrelv, Defector Mite
 - Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful
1 Blue
 - Errant, Street Artist
1 Black
 - Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist
4 Red
 - Norin the Wary
 - Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
 - Rosnakht, Heir of Rohgahh
 - Zurgo Bellstriker
1 Green
 - Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter
1 Colourless
 - Hope of Ghirapur
1 Golgari
 - Valentin, Dean of the Vein // Lisette, Dean of the Root
1 Boros
 - Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp
1 Selesnya
 - Rhys the Redeemed

We can comfortably right off a bunch of these straight away.
- Isamaru and Yoshimaru are good boys, but offer no inherent advantage by being in the command zone.
- Kytheon should be easy enough to flip on turn 3, but the Gideon on the other side isn't really worth the effort when every other creature in your deck is a one drop, and equipment is going to fall off every time so Voltron isn't a great option either.
- Mikaeus is OK, but you're putting all your eggs in one basket here and if you don't untap with him, you're basically done for.
- Errant is cool, but completely unsupported in just one drops.
- Norin is only good with certain very specific cards, none of which cost 1.
- Rosnakht is close, but there are only 6 cantrips that target a creature at 1cmc in red that won't also kill Rosnakht, so you're going to run out of steam.
- Zurgo is absolute dog shit.
- Oviya is just worse than Rhys. You're cutting off a whole colour to create tokens that are less synergistic with your colour (green has very little in the way of artifact payoff) and with less tribal support (elves are good, servos and constructs, not so much).
- HoG is like Rosnakht. Kinda close, but ultimately not quite enough support in the 1cmc slot for the colour (or lack thereof).
- Zabaz is cool but there are so few modular creatures at 1 that it's not worth it. Love it as a commander though.

That leaves us with 5 that are worth exploring further. Skrelv, Ashnod, Ragavan, Valentin/Lisette and Rhys.

The cons for all of these decks are obvious and plentiful, so I won't bother talking about them here. I will cover off reasons why I like them though.

Skrelv, Defector Mite
Skrelv is interesting. I have actually built a Skrelv deck already, and while it does run very low to the ground, it's not exclusively 1 drops. Skrelv offers two potentially very powerful things in the command zone. Mother of Runes-ish and a wincon in Toxic.

Pros:
- Wincon in command zone. Having a toxic nigh unblockable creature is potentially powerful. There are even a couple of one drop creatures that have the potential for double strike.
- White has one of the best utility packages available at 1cmc. Mother of Runes, Steelshaper's Gift (to find skullclamp or commanders plate or one of the many good 1cmc equipments), Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Dispatch, Esper Sentinel, Enlightened tutor, Weathered Wayfarer, blink spells, protection spells, mana tithe. It's actually pretty decent.

Utimately though, I feel that Skrelv isn't quite good enough to thrive at 1cmc only. I've found it tough to get consistent quick toxic kills, and that's with 2 and 3 drops too. Real fucking cool, though.

Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist
I'll be the first to admit that I have a soft spot for Ashnod and her altar. I actually don't think she is terrible though, specifically in the context of "what's the best 1 drop deck I can make". Black has a lot of recurrable one drops. I know this. I play them all. Bloodsoaked Champion, Dread Wanderer, Gutterbones, Gravecrawler, this list goes on. Another thing black has going for it is tedious as balls 1 drops. There are a tremendous amount of 1 drop creatures in black that have deathtouch (and often another key word or ability) or have a death trigger that is a bit of a pain in the ass. Mono black aggro is a staple in draft, cube and constructed formats alike, and we can employ these strats here in the early game, while Ashnod provides us with a late game mana sink creating tokens with surprisingly high P/T (for zombie tokens at least) and surprisingly relevant types (artifacts AND zombies).

Pros:
- Mana sink wincon in command zone.
- Black one drops are often powerful and also mostly synergistic with the strategy we'd look to employ for this deck.
- Solid utility with options for removal, recursion, hand attack etc.
- I like Ashnod.



I'm probably evaluating Skrelv and Ashnod a little higher than I should because I like them personally. The final three however, are actually quite good and where I think we reach our ceiling.

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Ragavan is one of the most broken one drops of all time. I'm not the first and I won't be the last to say that we've come a long way since Savannah Lions.

Red, in my opinion, offers the weakest utility suite at 1cmc, but Ragavan has the potential to overcome that shortcoming all on his own. He offers both card advantage and mana acceleration. Pretty good for a little monkey with sick goggles. What's more, he lets you play your opponent's cards, which is great because your cards all suck because they're all 1 mana red cards. Your job with Ragavan is to get him to connect as much as possible. No small feat, but possible with reds propensity for mucking with blockers and if you can pull it off, you have the potential to do wonderful things. Still don't think it's quite as good as our final two options though.

Rhys the Redeemed
Much as it pains me to admit it, green probably has the best utility package available at 1 mana. It has dorks to ramp you, most of which are elves that have great tribal synergy, even at 1cmc (looking at you Allosaurus Shepherd). It has fantastic array of protection spells. It offers the most bang for your buck for 1 mana pump spells. It has some tutor options at 1cmc. It offers up the potential for a lands package with Elvish Reclaimer, Crop Rotation and Expedition Map. All good stuff.

Rhys allows you to make use of all this green goodness, and offers all the white goodness mentioned earlier. He is himself a wincon in the command zone. He creates bodies that are incredibly synergistic within their own tribe and offers a late game mana sink to double down on those bodies and tribal payoffs.

Ultimately, I can see that Rhys is very good, but as mentioned in a different thread, I've never built a Selesnya deck before. Tokens and lifegain are just not my style. He just does not spark joy to me. That's why my number one pick has gone to...

Valentin, Dean of the Vein // Lisette, Dean of the Root
If I'd have had the presence of mind to write this a few days ago, I could have made an awesome joke about Valentin being my Valentine. Alas, here we are instead.

Here is why I think Valentin offers the highest ceiling.

- Valentin doesn't point you in one direction specifically. You're most likely going to end up playing golgari good stuff, and golgari has a LOT of good stuff.
- Valentin has menace and green is good at pumping, so Commander damage kills aren't off the table.
- Valentin is a fucker for hosing aristocratic strats (trust me, I know). Any card that exiles things when they die is very powerful and shuts down a whole bunch of game plans. This also doubles up as a late game mana sink if you have the mana for it, creating a bunch of aptly named pests.
- Valentin has a friend on the back who is actually pretty good too, but kinda cheating the 1cmc rule.

The ultimate reasoning though, is Golgari. I think, until they make an Abzan or Azorius 1 drop commander, Golgari is comfortably the best option available to us at 1 mana.

To expand on the point made earlier about how we are not forced into one specific direction here, we have access to the following in this colour pair:

- All the good dorks
- Some real good tutors
- Good recursive creatures
- Good recursion spells
- Tainted Strike. Get ourselves a Blade of the Bloodchief on Valentin, kill a few things with our deathtouchers or kill spells, swing in with menace and bang. Infect baby!
- Tricks. Blossoming defense, Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Malakir Rebirth, Supernatural Stamina, etc. etc. etc.
- Lands package. As mentioned before, 1cmc green makes lands packages a thing. Sure, we can go and get  Thespian's Stage and Dark Depths, but we can also get Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, which should play nicely into our...
- Vorpal Sword. This card is no joke. I've killed with it dozens of times. Sometimes, you just can't do anything about it.
- card draw (especially synergistic with our pests) with village rites, skull clamp etc.
- decent enough removal with defile, tragic slip, fatal push.
- some counter options with Hardened Scales, The Ozilith, Blade of the Bloodchief, Hexdrinker.
- cat cauldron.

Golgari has been pretty much the same for years so has a lot of decent graveyard, counter and sacrifice synergies, some of which is just 1 cmc.

This is our ceiling. I'm brewing it. I'll share a list when I'm done.



So there you have it. I'm not sure why I wrote this or if any of you will get much out of reading it or find it interesting at all, but it's been playing on my mind a lot lately and I found writing it down helped get through the analysis I've been attempting.

Let me know your takes one 1 drops only. Any commanders / strategies you think I've overlooked? I think I'm set on building Valentin, but if any of you have any other ideas, I'm all ears.

If you made it this far through my tedious ramblings, I applaud and thank you.

[Morganator 2.0]

You've certainly convinced me that Valentin // Lisette is the way to go. It gives you the most options and the best options. While Ashnod could be a bit like how Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker works, I think the payoff of the powerstones and 3/3 zombies is pretty limited. Would still be cool to see.