Chaos: Commander’s Wildest Archetype

Chaos is a very unique archetype in Commander that can’t really exist in any other format. It is only playable in a multiplayer and social format. While games in other formats can be chaotic, true Chaos decks are only available in EDH.

What is Chaos?

Chaos decks refer to decks that make the game as confusing as possible. This is done by making everyone constantly trade permanents or spells. They constantly spread around permanents, both helpful and harmful, to make things stay interesting. Chaos decks usually are less about winning, and more about fun.

What Colors Are Chaos Decks In?

Chaos decks’ primary color is Red. On top of that, they usually also include Blue and Black. While sometimes other colors are included, these are the main three you will see with most commanders.

Chaos Staples

With Chaos decks, there are various staples to help you with your strategy. These range from cards to give your opponents permanents to cards that make it much more confusing for your opponents to play their decks properly.

Spell Interruptions

Something Chaos decks do is make it so your opponent can’t actually cast their spells. Instead, they’re forced to lose the spell and have it replaced with something else. An example is Perplexing Chimera, which lets its controller steal an opponent’s spell by giving them control of it. Knowledge Pool forces a spell being cast to be exiled, and exchanges it for a different spell that was previously exiled by it. One of Chaos’ staple cards is Possibility Storm which makes it so whenever a player casts a spell, it gets exiled and traded for another spell that shares a type from the library.

Permanent Redistribution

Another gimmick of Chaos decks is the ability to make all players constantly trade permanents. This helps keep the game chaotic, since you never know where any permanent being cast will end up. Confusion in the Ranks stops a player from controlling a permanent they cast, and instead have to trade it with another card another player controls of the same type. Risky Move jumps around players, forcing them to flip a coin and if they lose, they lose a creature they control. Puca's Mischief lets you give a nonland permanent you control to an opponent so long as it has equal or lesser mana value.

Forced Coin Flipping

Chaos decks excel at forcing coin flips onto your opponents to make their spell resolves. It adds a layer of randomness to go with the uncertainty that these decks constantly provide. Planar Chaos forces every spell to have to get through a coin flip to not get countered. The trade-off is you have to win a coin flip to make sure it sticks around. Impulsive Maneuvers turns all attacks into a game of “double or nothing,” as each creature has to get through a coin flip to deal damage. If they do, they’re rewarded with double damage. If not, then that’s zero damage they’re dealing. In a similar vein, Tide of War turns any creature getting blocked into a 50/50 on which creature gets destroyed. Instead of combat, it becomes a literal coin flip on whether either all blocking creatures or blocked creatures are destroyed.

Massive Readjustments

In Chaos decks, one theme is the “massive readjustment button.” These cards reset the battlefield, and either completely refresh them with new permanents, or cause control of various permanents to be spread around to different players. Scrambleverse goes one by one with each nonland permanent and gives them to a player at random. One may stay under the same player’s control, or it may go to someone else. Thieves' Auction offers a bit more control, with all cards going into a pile that players pick from one by one. Warp World shuffles every permanent back into the library, and reveals that many cards. Any card type not listed on the card goes back to the deck. This is a unique pseudo-board wipe, but may lead to stronger battlefields.

Complimentary Chaos Cards

As chaotic as Chaos decks can be, some complimentary cards can offer some form of consistency to the deck. With how common coin flips are, those that support coin flips are beneficial in Chaos decks.

Tavern Scoundrel is a simple card that gives you Treasure tokens whenever you win a flip. Most Chaos cards have high mana values, so the extra ramp is appreciated. Krark's Thumb gives you an extra chance to win a coin flip by letting you flip and extra coin. Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom offers card draw whenever a player wins a flip. It’s important to note that it’s any player, not just you.

Cards that grant cascade are also valuable. This lets you take advantage of high casting cost to guarantee you cascade into a useful spell. Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty often cascades into one of your weaker cards while making your Chaos cards more impactful since they’ll cascade too. Apex Devastator is a great mana sink to get four triggers of cascade. Maelstrom Wanderer is a useful way to both cascade and give your creatures haste. The haste is especially useful since you will often wind up summoning sick creatures with how common control of creatures shifts around.

General Game Play

Chaos decks are ones that make the game as confusing as possible. It can even become confusing for you, so it’s important to keep track of where permanents are flying off to. This archetype is built around making sure your opponents deck don’t function the way they’re supposed to.

Cards such as Hive Mind and Eye of the Storm both cause weirdness when instant and sorcery spells are being cast. These are cards that make your opponents not want to cast these kinds of spells, knowing what kind of effects they’ll bring. As such, you want them on the battlefield as soon as you can get them there.

With Chaos decks, you’re often purposefully messing with everyone, so you’ll often be the target of attacks. As such, cards that offer protection are vital to discourage aggression coming your way. The usual suite of Propaganda, Ghostly Prison, and Sphere of Safety. The latter of which relies on having multiple enchantments, but in Chaos decks, you generally have a good amount.

With Chaos decks, you have some degree of control of what’s going where. There is a bit of politics to it, convincing players to make deals with you in exchange for not messing with their battlefield. You can use a card like Wrong Turn as a threat (or a gift), giving an opponent a powerful creature. Other, similar cards such as Role Reversal and Sudden Substitution can be used in the same way.

How Chaos Decks Win

Chaos decks are unique in that they often don’t care about winning. They’re more about the fun of what you can do with all the weird cards that have been released over the years. That’s not to say the deck doesn’t have win conditions, they’re just not as important compared to other archetypes.

The easiest way to win is with the alternate win condition found on Chance Encounter. There will be a lot of times you’re flipping coins, so as long as it doesn’t get removed, you’ll likely win with this card sooner than later. Approach of the Second Sun can also steal some games if you can get it cast twice in the midst of all the chaos.

The other win condition revolves around luck. There are many ways to make it so everyone is casting the same spells, or moving around permanents on the battlefield. You can luck your way into having a strong battlefield of creatures you don’t even own. It’s not a consistent way to win, but it is the main way Chaos decks achieve victory outside of alternate win conditions. Just like the randomness a Chaos deck brings to any game, your odds of winning are just as random most of the time.

Chaos Commanders

When it comes to the Chaos archetype, there isn’t a wide range of commanders that benefit the archetype. While you can technically use any commander with a generically good effect, the ones we’ll go over here directly support what Chaos decks want to do.

Blim, Comedic Genius

Blim, Comedic Genius is a commander deck that wants to push permanents onto your opponents’ battlefields with its effect. It punishes your opponents with forced discards and life loss just for controlling permanents they control and don’t own. It takes advantage of Chaos being able to spread permanents around. With Blim, Comedic Genius‘ effect, you’re giving opponents permanents such as Grid Monitor and Steel Golem.

Since a lot of permanents have downsides, you want other ways to give to your opponent consistently. Harmless Offering can give any permanent to an opponent, while Bazaar Trader can send over any artifact, creature, or land. Fateful Handoff not only gives an opponent one of your artifacts or creatures, but gives you some card draw out of the exchange too.

The main kinds of permanents you’re playing in Blim, Comedic Genius are ones that have powerful enter the battlefield triggers, but punish you if they stick around. You can get the positives out of Greed's Gambit, Demonic Lore, and Demonic Pact and then send them to an opponent before the downsides ever affect you.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck wins through burn damage with Blim, Comedic Genius‘ effect, while keeping the battlefield chaotic and slowing opponents down with stall cards.

Ian Malcolm

Ian Malcolm, Chaotician is a more traditional chaos deck that creates a big pile of spells everyone can cast. It can be supplemented with Knowledge Pool as another way to put a big pool of cards that everyone has access to. While not one spell, Eye of the Storm constantly exiles spells that other players will constantly be able to cast a ton of copies of. The chaos comes from players being able to play cards out of everyone’s decks, sometimes locking them out of being able to cast them themselves.

In order to trigger Ian Malcolm, Chaotician, you want to force an extra card draw onto your opponents so they’ll always draw their second card. Dictate of Kruphix, Howling Mine, and Kami of the Crescent Moon all give a player an extra draw on their upkeep to ensure the trigger. Otherworld Atlas with just two charge counters on it gives you the ability to tap it to force all your opponents to draw two cards, making it trigger for every player.

With how many cards are being drawn, there are a handful of creatures that benefit from extra card draws. The Locust God creates a 1/1 flying token with haste on each draw. Alandra, Sky Dreamer grants a 2/2 with flying on your second card draw. Perhaps the best is Homunculus Horde, which creates a copy of itself every time you draw your second card. All this trigger during any turn, so you can trigger them multiple times in one turn cycle.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. Ian Malcolm, Chaotician lives up to its name and is one of the most chaotic Chaos decks you can run.

Zedruu the Greathearted

If you want a Chaos deck with a clearer win condition, then Zedruu the Greathearted is the commander choice for you. With how much you draw since your opponents will control a lot of your permanents, you can take advantage of alternate win conditions. It’s easy to win with Twenty-Toed Toad, Triskaidekaphile, and Approach of the Second Sun.

On top of Zedruu the Greathearted, you have other payoffs for opponents gaining control of your permanents. Zidane, Tantalus Thief rewards you with a Treasure token when opponents gain control of your permanents to help you with ramp. Iroh, Tea Master gives a 1/1 token that gets more counters on it the more permanents of yours that opponents have. Stiltzkin, Moogle Merchant is another way to send permanents to your opponents and rewards you with a card draw.

You can take advantage of some unique forms of protection. Nine Lives protects you from nine attacks, but you can send it to an opponent before the last counter is put on, so you’re not threatened with losing the game from it. Island Sanctuary lets you forgo your draw for turn to shut down the ability of creatures without flying or islandwalk from attacking you. It also has the classic pairing of Propaganda and Ghostly Prison for unconditional stalling.

A sample decklist can be viewed below. Zedruu the Greathearted takes advantage of its effect to stay in the game amidst the chaos your spreading around.

In Conclusion

The Chaos archetype is one that is more about fun than it is about winning. No game will ever be quite the same, since you’ll never know what permanents are going to be going where. Ultimately, that’s why you play Chaos, just to see what happens and spin the wheel of randomness.

You can force some form of stability, but ultimately, Chaos is what it is because you can’t predict what’s going to happen. Chaos brings the spice of variety to every game, making everyone stay on their toes, including you.