Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Karn, Legacy Reforged!

Karn is a five mana */* whose power and toughness are each equal to the greatest mana value among artifacts you control and at the beginning of your upkeep you add a colorless mana for each artifact you control, the mana can’t be spent to cast nonartifact spells and until the end of turn, you don’t lose this mana as steps and phases end.

Karn is a Commander that obviously wants a lot of cheap artifacts in order to cast big artifacts, so the question is how do we get there the fastest while still getting a decent amount of value from it?

There is a deck archetype that is old school and involves some very cheap artifacts that we can use in order to help us get a ton of mana from Karn to cast some really big spells.

Cheerios is an old archetype that is better served in decks that want a high Storm count, but we can leverage 0 mana artifacts in order to gain more mana from Karn.

Darksteel Relic is a zero mana artifact that is indestructible but has no other effects, which in many other decks is not ideal, but for Karn this becomes a pseudo mana rock. Plus, we can also leverage the use of cards like Arcbound Ravager to sacrifice any artifacts for some form of value if necessary.

There are plenty of other zero mana artifacts that have a utility to them. Tormod’s Crypt can exile a graveyard, Mishra’s Bauble can peek at the top of any library and draw you a card, Welding Jar can regenerate an artifact, Fountain of Youth to gain some life with the excess Karn mana, Shield Sphere for a solid blocker, and Lotus Bloom for some more mana.

Of course we also have access to some of the Moxen, Mox Opal being the most ideal one to have with all the artifacts we are going to have, but those tend to be pricey and while they are useful, you can live without them.

The next thing we need to consider is how to use these cheap artifacts for the most value.

Radiant Lotus can be easy enough to get out with Karn in play, and if we have a bunch of zero mana artifacts that we don’t need to use anymore then we can sacrifice them in order to gain a ton of mana for each artifact we sacrificed.

Krark-Clan Ironworks is also a card we can consider to generate a ton of mana by sacrificing artifacts, Transmutation Font and Kuldotha Forgemaster to sacrifice artifacts to tutor up even more artifacts, or even Extruder in order to make any creature we control bigger, using Karn mana to make sure it stays in play.

Of course we also have access to cards with affinity, like Myr Enforcer, Frogmite, and Sojourner’s Companion to get decent sized bodies into play at a much cheaper rate. The best creature with affinity we can play in this case is Mycosynth Golem, because it can give artifact creatures we control affinity for artifacts, which means we can cast more artifact creatures and bigger artifact creatures for an extreme discount.

Now we come to the payoffs of all the excess mana generation and discounting of artifacts with the massive artifact payoffs.

Darksteel Colossus is a threat that can only really be answered via exile based removal, and while Blightsteel Colossus is a better option in terms of winning the game, Darksteel is cheaper to cast and to purchase with its release in Foundations.

If you do have access however, there is also Darksteel Forge as a way to make sure that your artifacts are indestructible, Portal to Phyrexia to clear some creatures off the board and steal a creature from a graveyard at the beginning of your upkeep, Akroma’s Memorial to make your creatures even more threatening, or Cybermen Squadron to make your nonlegendary artifact creature gain myriad.

If budget is a factor, then we can still do well by using Platinum Angel to make sure we don’t lose and our opponents don’t win, Barricade Breaker to use the zero mana artifacts to Improvise a massive body in, Stonecoil Serpent for a massive body that can’t be interacted with multicolored cards and has reach and trample, or even Metalwork Colossus for a recursive threat that can get onto the battlefield for very cheap.

If we want access to even more protection, then Soul of New Phyrexia can give permanents we control indestructible, which with excess Karn mana we can use on every one of our turns while still keeping mana up to do it on our opponents turns.

As a way to get a ton of bodies into play is Phyrexian Triniform, which when it dies makes three 3/3 Phyrexian Golem artifact tokens and has an Encore of 12 mana to make three more copies of itself that can attack our opponents that are sacrificed at the end of turn to give is nine more tokens.

And if we want to do that again, then we can always use Karn, the Great Creator to bring it back again and again while also shutting down artifacts our opponent controls, especially if we have access to Mycosynth Lattice to lock our opponents out of the game.

Karn is a value Commander that plays well with a lot of artifacts in order to get access to even better artifacts. The problem comes in the fact that since it is a colorless deck, our options of interaction are limited, especially since the mana that Karn makes cannot be used to cast nonartifact spells, which means the little interaction that colorless does gain access to requires us to keep mana up to use.

Karn can also be subject to what a player has access to, but it can be built in a variety of budgets, and can be easily upgraded as time and new artifacts come into existence.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual