Table of Contents
In Commander, Bracket 5 is where the best of the best decks play. As such, multi-colored decks reign supreme since they can play all the best cards. Naturally, Mono-colored cEDH decks are weaker by nature of having a much smaller card pool. However, this doesn’t mean they are bad by any means. These can still hold their own against other decks in the format. Some colors can struggle a bit more (like White), while others still shine (such as Black). This Mono-Colored cEDH Showcase will show off five different Bracket 5 decks, one for each main color.
Mono-White: Oswald Fiddlebender
Admittedly, Mono-White is the weakest color for Bracket 5 by a pretty significant margin. Its place in the metagame varies, but it usually lands in the more niche/rogue deck area. The best commander choice for Mono-White is Oswald Fiddlebender. This deck is a toolbox deck, taking advantage of how easy it is to tutor for artifacts and get one for any given scenario. It can tutor out for combo pieces, ramp, and Stax pieces, letting you access most of your deck at all times. In fact, artifacts take up half the deck, with only a small suite of other card types (and most creatures are artifact creatures). Marvin, Murderous Mimic gives you a second way to access the effect easily, along with the activated abilities of your other creatures. This is important for various combo plays the deck can do and is the cornerstone of a few different win conditions.
Perhaps the most important card of the deck is Pili-Pala. Though unamusing, when you give that ability to a creature that can make at least two mana when it taps, you instantly have infinite mana. Since it’s an artifact creature, you can tutor for it as well as any card that enables it. Every piece of all combos is just an activation of your commander away. Cards like Myr Welder and Agatha's Soul Cauldron are ways to make sure you have access to the effect even if it gets removed.
The most important mana value in the entire deck is two and three, so even though cards like Glasses of Urza or Glass Casket aren’t exactly cEDH-tier cards, they can be used to tutor for ones that are. They can turn into a win condition such as Marvin, Murderous Mimic and Clock of Omens.
Win Conditions and Decklist
Firstly, there are a few routes to generate infinite mana in the deck (as all cEDH games have). One such route is with Metalworker. You can make the combo work with Voltaic Key and Rings of Brighthearth so long as you have two artifacts in your hand. (combo details). This combo also works with Staff of Domination and
The other way to infinite mana utilizes Marvin, Murderous Mimic, Pili-Pala, and Palladium Myr. Since Marvin gets all activated abilities, you can easily generate infinite mana by tapping Marvin, Murderous Mimic using Palladium Myr to make two mana, and Pili-Pala‘s effect to untap and add a White mana for infinite mana.
You can mill everyone with Codex Shredder so long as you have infinite mana, Clock of Omens, and two artifacts that can untap themselves. Or, you can use Clock of Omens to tap Immovable Rod and any mana rock that can be untapped once you have infinite mana like Basalt Monolith, then use Omens to untap Immovable Rod and the mana rock ability to untap itself. This ventures through the dungeon infinitely, and venture through any dungeon that burns your opponents out of the game.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck has a big toolbox of combo pieces and Stax permanents. You stall the game out until you can assemble your win condition, and can easily react to whatever cards your opponents are playing. It’s a slower win, but one that benefits in slower metas/matchups.
Commander
Planeswalkers (1)
Creatures (14)
Instants (6)
Sorceries (1)
Artifacts (54)
Enchantments (2)
Lands (22)
100 Cards
$10680.74
Mono-Blue: Urza, Lord High Artificer
Mono-Blue has one clear best commander for Bracket 5: Urza, Lord High Artificer. Unlike some commanders in the cEDH meta, Urza decks have more reliance on your commander. Although you’re locked into Mono-Blue, you still have access to plenty of great, free spells like Mental Misstep, Fierce Guardianship, and Force of Will. With how important your commander tends to be, you need cards like these to keep it around (along with countering your opponents’ responses and win conditions).
This version of Urza is one that plays a more Midrange gameplan, utilizing the strong interaction that Blue has while you work toward building up to your combo pieces. All your artifacts become mana rocks, so cheap artifacts like Mishra's Bauble and Tormod's Crypt essentially turn into Moxes with Urza, Lord High Artificer. The effects are solid too, so if you have to sacrifice them in a pinch, you can use them. Unwinding Clock becomes incredible (even moreso than it already is), giving you a ton of mana every turn.
As you may expect with an effect like Urza’s, the deck is a combo factory. Once you have infinite mana, you can activate Urza, Lord High Artificer‘s effect to essentially have access to your entire deck. Basalt Monolith is the key to most infinite mana routes, although Grim Monolith can be used in its place with a few extra hoops to jump through.
Win Conditions and Decklist
Generally, you want to get infinite mana, which leads to your win conditions. One such way is the classic way of utilizing the Hullbreaker Horror loop with mana-positive rocks (combo details). Or, you can loop Basalt Monolith with Forensic Gadgeteer since it’ll discount Basalt Monolith‘s untap effect for easy infinite colorless mana. Sewer-veillance Cam is a way to make infinite colored mana using Retraction Helix so long as your commander is on the battlefield (combo details).
You can mill everyone with Codex Shredder inside any loop. Once you have infinite mana, you just have to keep bouncing it back to your hand so you can use its effect constantly. You can also constantly bounce Urza, Lord High Artificer to create an infinite amount of Construct tokens. With Hullbreaker Horror, you can bounce everything on your opponents’ fields. If you have Valley Floodcaller, then you can do this at instant speed to really keep opponents off of anything.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. It’s not as hyper-aggressive as some other Urza builds, trading off quickness for more protection and responses.
Commander
Creatures (16)
Instants (22)
Sorceries (4)
Artifacts (27)
Enchantments (6)
Lands (23)
100 Cards
$5844.62
Mono-Black: K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
If you like the idea of casting a ton of spells without actually spending mana, look no further than K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. Phyrexian mana is one of the strongest effects put into the game, and making it so you can pay Phyrexian mana instead of Black mana is incredible. Normally, colored pips are a downside, but K’rrik simply doesn’t care about them. It lets you pay spells that normally cost a higher amount of mana, like Dark Petition and Beseech the Mirror, since the Black mana is just two life for each one.
The deck does melt through your life total rather quickly. In many cases, you aren’t ever actually paying for your Black mana, and are always using K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth‘s effect to pay with Phyrexian mana instead. This makes the pair of Vilis, Broker of Blood and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse great, since every card draw equates to gaining 1 life, letting you draw through your entire deck. At worst, it’s life-neutral if you’re using Vilis, Broker of Blood‘s effect to force card draw. Gray Merchant of Asphodel is useful for lifegain in a pinch and is a part of one of the combo routes to burn everyone out of the game.
Perhaps the most important creature in the deck is Necrotic Ooze. This is one of the main combo enablers and helps you to dig through your deck with tutors. This is because transmute is an activated ability. So, Dimir House Guard and Fleshwrither let you use the transmute effect more than once so long as they stay in the graveyard and Necrotic Ooze is on the battlefield. You don’t even need colored mana to use it, thanks to K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth.
Win Conditions and Decklist
The deck has multiple ways to get infinite draw triggers, which can then be used to win the game once you have your whole library in your hand. One is by using Necrotic Ooze with Asmodeus the Archfiend and
Looping Gray Merchant of Asphodel is the main way you’re closing out games. All loops involve Chainer, Dementia Master to reanimate Gray Merchant of Asphodel for nine life, gaining a ton of life to do it again while burning your opponents. You do need a sacrifice outlet, something that Dimir House Guard covers (combo details).
Another way to close out games is with Pestilence. It will burn you, but both Gray Merchant of Asphodel can help gain life, or The One Ring can protect you entirely. You can also use Praetor's Grasp to steal a Thassa's Oracle out of someone’s deck once you’ve drawn your entire deck.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. The deck largely combos from the graveyard and runs a ton of recursion to get multiple windows to go for a win. With the right openings, there is potential to win on the very first turn.
Commander
Creatures (18)
Instants (13)
Sorceries (15)
Artifacts (16)
Enchantments (7)
Lands (31)
100 Cards
$6335.88
Mono-Red: Magda, Brazen Outlaw
Magda, Brazen Outlaw is another combo-centric deck built around tapping Dwarf creatures to generate treasures. Normally, a card like Dwarven Armorer or Dwarven Grunt would never be played, especially in a cEDH deck, but Magda, Brazen Outlaw makes them that good. Infinite mana can be generated with artifact Dwarf creatures thanks to Clock of Omens, one of the keystones of the deck.
The deck does have a Stax theme to it, something Mono-Red has to do in order to compete with some of the other decks in the format. Cards like Damping Sphere, God-Pharaoh's Statue, and Grafdigger's Cage can really slow down your opponents while hardly affecting you. These help to stall the game until you’re ready to pounce with your win conditions.
Tapping down creatures is something you actively want to be doing to yourself. You want Maskwood Nexus out as quickly as possible to turn all your non-Dwarf creatures into Dwarves. Then, you have various cards such as Springleaf Drum and Vehicles like Smuggler's Copter and Flywheel Racer as ways to tap your Dwarves for Treasure tokens.
Win Conditions and Decklist
As previously mentioned, Clock of Omens is the bread and butter of the deck. You do need Magda, Brazen Outlaw on the battlefield to make infinite Treasures. You can use either Universal Automaton (combo details) or Magda herself after turning it into an artifact with Liquimetal Torque (combo details).
Once you’ve established infinite Treasure, you can win the game through looping a burn spell as simple as Lightning Bolt. All you have to do is have Barkform Harvester on the battlefield, and the ability to loop The One Ring and Sculpting Steel so you can always draw the card being put into the library with Barkform Harvester. This does require your library to be empty.
Once you establish infinite Treasures, Professional Face-Breaker is how you’re actually drawing through your deck. It impulse draws, so you’ll have to make sure you’re winning the turn you exile your whole library. Otherwise, you might just ge stuck in your tracks.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. While Magda can be explosive once it gets going, it is very susceptible to Stax decks and may struggle against certain decks in the meta.
Commander
Planeswalkers (1)
Creatures (27)
Instants (14)
Sorceries (4)
Artifacts (31)
Lands (22)
100 Cards
$3152.55
Mono-Green: Lumra, Bellow of the Woods
The newest card in this Mono-Colored cEDH Showcase, Lumra, Bellow of the Woods, shows off just how powerful Mono-Green can be. So long as you avoid cards that force exile, you can do some very powerful things and very quickly. Green is a color that is great at recursion, and in cEDH, that’s very good to ensure you can try to in the game multiple times even if a combo gets stopped. The enter-the-battlefield trigger of your commander is the star of the zone, letting you constantly re-use powerful lands like Command Beacon to get around the command tax and Wasteland to keep destroying your opponents’ best lands.
You are going to have a lot of lands constantly entering, so landfall triggers are going to be lining up constantly. Tireless Provisioner is great utility to make Treasure tokens so you can cast extra spells every turn to ensure your combos are game-ending. Other cards, such as Springheart Nantuko and Lotus Cobra, are also vital and a part of some of the combos themselves.
Green has a ton of ways to tutor for creatures, so you can get the key cards needed for your combos easily. Summoner's Pact is a free tutor for a Green creature, but you need to pay mana the next turn (though if you win that turn, you won’t even have to worry). Both Chord of Calling and Nature's Rhythm can get creatures onto the battlefield directly so you can easily get your combo engines going.
Win Conditions and Decklist
Many of the combos in the deck revolve around Lumra, Bellow of the Woods. Being able to have a combo piece in the command zone makes it much easier to turn your combos on. You can get all lands onto the battlefield, infinite landfall triggers, and mill your whole deck when you combine Lumra with Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and Vesuva (combo details). There is a commanderless way for infinite landfall with Shifting Woodland, Aftermath Analyst, Lotus Cobra, and Sylvan Safekeeper (combo details).
A bit more involved, you can create an infinite number of 1/1 tokens as well with Lumra, Bellow of the Woods enchanted by Springheart Nantuko, Zuran Orb, and Lotus Cobra (combo details). This is a way to win through combat, but it can be done at instant speed with a fetchland; however, it does require your battlefield to make it through a turn cycle, which can be tough.
To actually win the game, you’re generally making use of two lands: Sunscorched Desert and Geier Reach Sanitarium. With how much you loop your entire land pool, Sunscorched Desert burns everyone out of the game while Geier Reach Sanitarium forces everyone to draw and discard a card to make everyone draw through their decks. Endurance helps you ensure you don’t mill yourself to death in the process.
A sample decklist can be viewed below. It’s a very resilient deck that, even if one attempt at victory is stopped, you can have another one ready to go not long after.
Commander
Planeswalkers (1)
Creatures (23)
Instants (6)
Sorceries (6)
Artifacts (10)
Enchantments (7)
Lands (46)
100 Cards
$12469.1
In Conclusion
Mono-Colored cEDH decks offer a different flavor of cEDH. They aren’t exactly budget decks, but they get rid of the headache of playing multiple colors! It’s a bit of a novelty, as they aren’t common and are generally weaker than others in some cases. But, despite being locked into one color and not being able to play with a wider pool, they can still hold their own.
Ultimately, cEDH is about playing what decks are going to win, and what decks you can have fun winning with. These decks shown in this Mono-Colored cEDH Showcase lean more on Combo and Stax, which Mono-Colored decks tend to have to lean hard into in order to succeed.
