In cEDH, if you want to play Simic, it’s hard to choose any deck that isn’t Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. The deck is a combo machine and can interact constantly with everyone else to both stop combos and protect your own. There is a lot of consistency, interaction, and more in cEDH Kinnan. The deck is popular for a reason. This guide will go through card choices, combos, and everything you need to know to work your way to victory.
Ramp, Rocks, and Dorks
With Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, its effect creates an extra mana that your nonland permanents make when they generate them. This makes mana rocks and dorks much more powerful to accelerate mana much faster. And in a format as fast as cEDH, this is vital if you want to achieve victory.
For mana dorks, you’re playing a lot of the common ones in Birds of Paradise, Delighted Halfling, Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, and Fyndhorn Elves. Normally, these are quite basic but useful, but with Kinnan on the battlefield, the mana generation they can provide becomes significantly better.
While the mana dork lineup is good, they pale in the usefulness of mana rocks. Cards like Mox Opal, Mox Amber, and Mox Diamond create much more mana without having to actually spend mana. The most important mana rocks are Basalt Monolith, Grim Monolith, and Mana Vault. With Kinnan on the battlefield, they all make infinite colorless mana, since they make enough mana to pay for their effect to untap while having leftovers. This interaction is the cornerstone of the deck, and why it’s such a strong contender in the cEDH metagame.
Utility Cards
A strength of cEDH Kinnan is how many utility cards it can run. This allows you to shine in all stages of the game, from the very start to grind games. Cards like Consecrated Sphinx and Wan Shi Tong, Librarian are both creatures that offer card draw. Both Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study are there as well to tax your opponents when they play spells if they don’t want you to draw cards. With your infinite mana, Sea Gate Restoration can draw you a bunch of cards and get rid of your hand limit. In a pinch, if you need to stall or draw some cards, The One Ring has your back. Void Winnower is a useful Stax tool that locks your opponents out of spells with even mana costs, which a lot of staples are that mana cost. Nine mana might seem like a lot, but with how easily the deck generates infinite mana, you’ll hardly struggle to ever cast it.
To help learn the ins and outs of Stax, you can check out our Stax overview here. Kinnan decks in particular need to know about Stax, as it is one of the weaknesses of the deck, so you want to be sure of what to look out for.
Tutor Suite
As with all cEDH decks, the most important kind of cards are tutors. They provided some much-needed consistency. Otherwise, you’ll be relying on just drawing the cards you need. They essentially make your deck a card smaller and help you find your combo pieces (or any interaction you might need). The weakest tutor is Drift of Phantasms, as transmute is a bit slow, but it gets you to a ton of your combo pieces. Worldly Tutor can stick any creature on the top of your library, with Mystical Tutor doing the same for instants and sorceries. There are multiple ways to put a creature onto the battlefield directly, such as Nature's Rhythm and Chord of Calling. Finale of Devastation does this too, but is more often done as a game-ender after an infinite combo.
Artifacts are the most important card type in the deck, as the various mana rocks are what enable you to easily make infinite mana whenever you want. So you want as many ways to tutor for them reliably as possible. You have to spend mana for it, but Whir of Invention can put it onto the battlefield directly. If you have an artifact to sacrifice, you can utilize Transmute Artifact, though you do have to pay mana if there is a difference in the mana cost (only if it’s greater). Fabricate can put any artifact from your library into your hand.
Clone Effects
In Blue, you have access to plenty of cloning effects. This helps you steal your opponents’ win conditions, or copy a permanent that can create one of your win condition enablers. Alternatively, you can use them to copy a utility card to help push your advantage a bit more if you have to enter a more grindy game. Copy Artifact and Copy Enchantment do exactly what they say in the tin, and Mirrormade can copy either of those two types. Flesh Duplicate can enter as any creature, Phyrexian Metamorph can enter as a creature or artifact, and Clever Impersonator can copy any nonland permanent on the battlefield. All of these effects are great, and can help you gain access to permanents that are off-color to reach your win condition quicker or to control the board state more.
Interaction
In Simic, you have the full suite of all the best counterspells. You have plenty of powerful free spells in Pact of Negation, Fierce Guardianship, Force of Negation, and Force of Will. You also have more traditional counterspells in Mental Misstep, Swan Song, Dispel, and An Offer You Can't Refuse. Misdirection can redirect spells, and Commandeer can steal a noncreature spell. Mindbreak Trap and Flusterstorm can negate a bunch of spells if there are multiples on a stack. In the late-game, if there are a lot of permanents, you can overload a Cyclonic Rift to bounce everything your opponents control to the hand, or just one permanent in a pinch.
cEDH Kinnan Combos
The Bread & Butter: Kinnan + Mana Rock
This is the Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy combo. It’s a very simple combo, all you need is any of Basalt Monolith, Grim Monolith, and Mana Vault. Simply activate their ability to add mana, and Kinnan will add an extra mana. This lets you untap them with their activated ability while keeping some mana in your mana pool to make infinite mana. This can be done at instant speed, and since you have three different versions of this effect (more if you clone the artifacts), even if one gets removed the combo is far from dead. And since Kinnan is your commander, you can always just recast it. This makes it so cEDH Kinnan almost never has to actually worry about mana.
Infinite Mana to Colorless Mana
So, you’ve created infinite colorless mana. However, you still need ways to make colored mana in order to cast all your spells. This is where Mirage Mirror comes in. You also need Basalt Monolith (or any similar card in play).
| 1: Activate Mirage Mirror, targeting either a land or or mana rock that can create Blue or Green mana. |
| 2: Hold priority, activating Mirage Mirror to copy Basalt Monolith |
| 3: Loop steps 1 and 2 an infinite number of times, stacking it so the effects alternate. |
| 4: Let Mirage Mirror become the Blue/Green producing permanent, then tap it for that mana. |
| 5: Then, Mirage Mirror turns into Basalt Monolith. Using your infinite colorless mana, use the effect to untap it before the next trigger starts. Loop these to make an infinite number of Blue and Green mana. |
Hullbreaker Horror + Mana Positive Mana Rock
This is another way to assemble infinite mana. All you need Hullbreaker Horror and any mana rock that can make more mana than it costs to cast. For the example here, we’ll use Sol Ring and Mana Vault. With
Win Conditions
This section will go over what to do once you actually have infinite mana. cEDH Kinnan can assemble infinite mana so easily, letting you sneak in win conditions out of nowhere. And it can back itself up with a large suite of interaction and all the counterspells in the world you can win counter wars with thanks to said infinite mana.
To get to these combos, with your infinite mana, you can use
Finale of Devastation
The easiest and simplest win condition is with Finale of Devastation. You don’t even need to generate infinite colored mana, only infinite colorless mana and only two Green mana. With your infinite mana, make the X cost infinite, giving all your creatures haste and +X/+X to win through combat damage. It does require you to be able to get through all blockers, so if you can’t, you’ll have to try your hand at one of the other ones.
Faerie Mastermind
This is another simple one, and wins through The One Ring protections and gets around having to win through combat. With infinite Blue and Green mana, activate Faerie Mastermind‘s effect to make everyone draw a card. Do this an infinite number of times. You do need Endurance in your hand and Nezahal, Primal Tide on the battlefield if you have fewer cards in your deck than your opponents. Between the card draw, use Nezahal, Primal Tide to discard Endurance and two other cards. Then, Endurance triggers, putting the cards in your graveyard back into your library. This ensures you can’t mill yourself out.
Cephalid Coliseum
This is the most complicated win condition, and requires Cephalid Coliseum, Endurance, Mirage Mirror, Chain of Vapor, and Thrasios, Triton Hero. You also need infinite Blue, Green, and Colorless mana. You do also need threshold active by having seven or more cards in your graveyard
| 1: Activate Mirage Mirror to become a copy of Cephalid Coliseum. |
| 1.5: If you do not have threshold, simply cast spells from your hand until you do. |
| 2: Using the Mirage Mirror copy, activate Cephalid Coliseum‘s effect to sacrifice itself to make an opponent draw three cards, hold priority with that effect on the stack. |
| 3: Cast Endurance, targetting yourself and hold priority. |
| 4: Cast Chain of Vapor, targeting Endurance to bounce it back to your hand. |
| 5: Endurance resolves, shuffling Mirage Mirror and Chain of Vapor back into your deck. |
| 6: Use Thrasios, Triton Hero‘s effect to draw cards until you have Mirage Mirror and Chain of Vapor back in your hand. |
| 7: Recast Mirage Mirror and then repeat steps 1-7. Then, when your opponent is forced to draw from the now-empty library, they’ll lose the gam.e |
| Note: To prevent your opponents from drawing into an answer to your combo, you can do all this at instant speed with Borne Upon a Wind, Valley Floodcaller, or High Fae Trickster. If you do this, put all the effects on the stack first, targeting all your opponents before letting any Cephalid Coliseum triggers resolve. Otherwise, you’ll have to do this one trigger at a time. |
In Conclusion
cEDH Kinnan is an absolute beast of a deck. If you want a deck that cane play both Aggro, Midrange, and Control, it is the deck for you. The deck comes with so many toys and tools to handle just about anything that gets thrown your way. It does have to rely a bit heavily on your commander in order to make combos work, so cards like Drannith Magistrate can be a thorn in your side. You may also have to fight against answers to permanents that limit the amount of mana you can create against more Stax-heavy decks. And since you’re in Simic, you don’t have too many answers for these.
In spite of this, cEDH Kinnan is one of the best decks in the format, and certainly is the best Simic deck. The deck has so much consistency, speed, and power that you can win the game as early as turn 1 with the right openings.
Looking for a slower cEDH deck? Shorikai is a great commander for those who love Azorius Control, and we have a guide for that deck over here.
