[EDH] Cromat

[Amon Amarth]

Cromat

Lands: 38
Bloodstained Mire
Windswept Heath
Wooded Foothills
Flooded Strand
Polluted Delta
Scalding Tarn
Marsh Flats
Arid Mesa
Verdant Catacombs
Misty Rainforest
Tropical Island
Bayou
Underground Sea
Plateau
Tundra
Taiga
Scrubland
Savannah
Badlands
Volcanic Island
Island
Plains
Swamp
Forest
Command Tower
Exotic Orchard
Reflecting Pool
Path of Ancestry
City of Brass
Mana Confluence
Barren Moor
Secluded Steppe
Lonely Sandbar
Tolaria West
Strip Mine
Academy Ruins
Maze of Ith
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Ramp: 6
Exploration
Sol Ring
Darksteel Ingot
Chromatic Lantern
Coalition Relic
Gilded Lotus

Card Draw/Quality: 9
Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm
Mystic Remora
Sylvan Library
Search for Azcanta
Rhystic Study
Phyrexian Arena
Fact or Fiction
Future Sight

Tutors: 9 (10)
Vampiric Tutor
Imperial Seal
Mystical Tutor
Personal Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Grim Tutor
Idyllic Tutor
Intuition
(Tolaria West)

Countermagic: 7 (8)
Counterspell
Mana Drain
Disallow
Forbid
Voidslime
Cryptic Command
Force of Will
(Bant Charm)

Spot Removal: 6 (7)
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Unexpectedly Absent
Abrupt Decay
Bant Charm
Vindicate
(Maze of Ith)

Mass Removal: 7 (8)
Oblivion Stone
Pernicious Deed
Supreme Verdict
Wrath of God
Austere Command
Merciless Eviction
Terminus
(The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale)

Bombs: 6
Moat
The Abyss
Humility
Stranglehold
Global Ruin
Collective Restraint

Recursion: 5 (6)
Regrowth
Life from the Loam
Crucible of Worlds
Yawgmoth's Will
Replenish
(Academy Ruins)

Planeswalkers: 3
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Karn Liberated
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

Utility: 2
Tormod's Crypt
Phyrexian Metamorph

Kill: 1
Approach of the Second Sun


Deck History: I really wanted to play Keeper. When I was first interested in Vintage way back in 2000, Keeper was the default best deck and had been for quite some time. I'd never seen anything like it. Why were there so many 1-ofs? Where are the win conditions? The incomprehensible decklist and difficulty in piloting the deck turned me off but it never lost that magic (sorry) from when I first read an Oscar Tan article. Flash forward to mid 2012. I was considering what five color deck I wanted to play and I came upon a slower Cromat control deck. This interested me and then I remembered Keeper... and that was that.

Strategy: As previously mentioned, the genesis of this deck were the control decks that existed in the first five or six years of Magic's existence. This deck was created with this strategy in mind: Don't worry about winning, just don't lose. To that effect nearly every card in the deck is either a control based card or a way to find and manipulate cards. This ensures that you will be able to take whatever is thrown at you, never cold against any particular strategy. You will want to judge what kind of hand you'll want to keep and what cards to play and tutor for based off what commanders or archetypes you're playing against. Politics are extremely important too. If you can leverage other peoples spells to answer threats without having to commit on your turn, all the better. Still, there are some things that I've learned that hopefully you can apply to your games, regardless of the your commander, that you can make use of.

1. Ramp or set up card draw engines early. However, when the fourth turn rolls around you want to have your counterwall up if at all possible. An exception would be if you're dropping one of your lock pieces. The fourth turn is when most decks can start to get crazy and some decks can combo out this early, earlier with a great hand. You want to make sure your hand has three lands or two and a Sol Ring. Don't feel bad about throwing away a good hand with not enough land. Being able to play your spells through out the game is more important. Aggressively tutoring for Crucible or Loam isn't a bad idea either.

2. Leverage your life total as much as possible. Be sure that when you wrath it's at the last possible moment. Forty life is quite a bit even against three or four other players.

3. You want to hit your land drops every turn. Fortunately, our card advantage engines all do a pretty good job of enabling this, incidentally.

4. Setup Future Sight in the late game and roll over everyone with card advantage. This card gets really nutty when combined with Exploration.

5. Cast Approach of the Second Sun at the end or... the beginning or whenever. Then do it again.

Strengths: Immunity to creature removal, robust card advantage engine, diverse answers, able to interact with all zones of play.

Weaknesses: Glacially slow, non-Basic land hate, few win conditions.


Commander:

Cromat: I have chosen Cromat over the other various five-color Commanders because it is the most versatile and resilient. Given enough mana, Cromat can dodge all mass and spot removal, fly over blockers, pump, kill things when blocked or when it's blocked and regenerate from damage or destroy effects. No other commander can boast that and sport a three turn clock as well. Even with all these impressive abilities it is usually relegated to Plan F. F for "when all else has fails jam this guy onto the battlefield". As a control deck, it's very useful to always have an out, at the very least a roadblock, in any situation.

Lands:

Staples: Ten Duals, ten Fetchlands, all good five-color lands, Barren Moor, Secluded Steppe, Lonely Sandbar, Strip Mine, Academy Ruins, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Duals and fetches aren't optional. Neither are the rainbow lands. The rest of the multicolor lands can be whatever lands you prefer, there are a ton of options. Ditto for utility lands as well.

Other options: Wasteland, additional cycling lands, Basics, shocks, filters, trilands, etc.

Ramp:

Staples: Exploration, Sol Ring, Chromatic Lantern, Coalition Relic, Gilded Lotus

You want some ramp, perhaps even more than what I'm playing, and these spells also fix your colors too. The traditional green ramp spells also work, specifically the ones that care about land types. With the new win condition stuff like Thran Dynamo looks better too.

Other options: Carpet of Flowers, Skyshroud Claim et al, more artifact ramp a la Darksteel Ingot, etc.

Card Draw/Quality:

Staples: Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, Mystic Remora, Sylvan Library, Rhystic Study, Phyrexian Arena, Fact or Fiction, Future Sight

You want a lot of card draw and it's even better if it's permanent.

Other options: X-Draw spells, additional cycling lands, etc.

Tutors:

Staples: Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Personal Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor, Grim Tutor, Intuition

Tutors give us some sort of consistency so we want all the best ones. Tutors that cost more than three mana are much worse because we might not have enough mana to cast the card we just searched for, a significant downside.

Other options: Idyllic Tutor, Fabricate, Expedition Map, Sterling Grove, Realms Uncharted, etc.

Countermagic:

Staples: Counterspell, Mana Drain, Forbid, Cryptic Command, Force of Will

So many good counterspells! Really, outside of a few that are mandatory there are a ton of cheap efficient ones or more expensive counters that can draw cards or are uncounterable themselves.

Other options: Spell Crumple, Voidslime, Dissipate, Spell Pierce, Negate, Red Elemental Blast, Flusterstorm etc.

Spot Removal:

Staples: Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Vindicate

There are a shitload of very good options for spot removal, so many I haven't even tested all of them.

Other options: Unexpectedly Absent, Abrupt Decay, Bant Charm, Utter End, Maelstrom Pulse, etc.

Mass Removal:

Staples: Oblivion Stone, Pernicious Deed, Wrath of God, Austere Command

The tension here is between expensive, versatile sweepers vs the cheaper, bare-bones wraths. You'll want some of both. Fortunately, there are quite a few good ones.

Other options: Supreme Verdict, Merciless Eviction, Terminus, Damnation, Rout, etc.

Bombs:

Staples: Moat, Humility, Stranglehold, Global Ruin, Collective Restraint

These cards more or less don't affect us but can cripple the rest of the table.

Other options: The Abyss, Armageddon, Meekstone, Torpor Orb, Mind Twist, etc.

Recursion:

Staples: Regrowth, Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds

Pretty much all of these recursion spells have different uses: doubling up on disruption, card drawing engines or building up your mana base. But they all let you abuse your graveyard; we like that.

Other options: Yawgmoth's Will, Replenish, Eternal Witness, Volrath's Stronghold, etc.

Planeswalkers:

Staples: Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Karn Liberated, Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

These guys have all sorts of different uses so they get their own category. If you can protect them for a couple turns you can really get ahead very quickly.

Utility:

No staples here, these are flex slots devoted to whatever is floating around in your metagame though I do highly suggest playing at least one piece of graveyard hate.

Other options: Tormod's Crypt, Phyrexian Metamorph, Pithing Needle, Bribery, Acquire, etc.

Kill:

Staples: Approach of the Second Sun

This is the best, most compact, most resilient wincon.

[Offler]

When one girl on our playgroup decided to stop play Child of alara as her general Cromat was the next choice.

The decklist is almost identical. Just there is also Isochron scepter with Orim's chant or similar effects, and overall its more budget oriented...

[Amon Amarth]

Isochron Scepter is awesome but it opens you up to card disadvantage or it's just a dead draw. Too high variance.

[Amon Amarth]

Gatecrash Update:

-Memory Plunder

+Stranglehold

I really like Memory Plunder. It's fun and powerful and did cool things at instant speed that people aren't expecting. It's also difficult to cast and occasionally sits in my hand doing nothing. Stranglehold, on the other hand, is easy to cast, especially brutal against competitive decks and helps secure my board position. Good luck trying to find an out to Humility now. Hehe.

I'd really like to try out Alchemist's Refuge. It turns your sweepers into Routs, makes Humility even more of a headache and lets you keep mana up for countermagic at all times. Even better, it lets you play any number of cards at instant speed, provided that you have the mana, of course. It might make it in over Volrath's Stronghold.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

-Blue Sun's Zenith

+Wargate

BSZ was slow, redundant and made it more difficult to combo out with than Stroke, the deck also has a large number of Regrowth effects making a second, third actually, X-spell unnecessary. Wargate is good throughout each stage of the game, ramping, Tinkering out a lock piece or a card drawing engine. It can even fetch removal in Maze of Ith or Pernicious Deed. Wargate's modest mana cost and flexibility do enough to earn it a spot in the deck.

[Amon Amarth]

Update:

-Hallowed Burial

+Merciless Eviction

I'm not sure if Eviction is an out-and-out upgrade. Burial's main advantage is it's one mana cheaper as well as tucking generals. Eviction is a better stopgap for creature spam decks, like any sliver deck. It's also a Shatterstorm, Tranquility or a buncha Dreadbores targeting Planeswalkers. It's a much more flexible card and I don't think it being one more mana to cast is going to affect it's playability.