Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos | art by Bartek Fedyczak

Seeing Red

Hello once again, and welcome back to EDHighlights! This is a mini-series where I'll be building decks for the year's most popular commander for each color combination. As 2024's set releases come to a close, I'm building a deck centered around the most popular commanders for each color combination.

I'll be starting off with the mono-colored commanders, and each deck in this series will have its own special twist to make it stand out just a little bit from the crowd. This series will go in order, and today we're onto Red. This deck will be helmed by… Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos!

Alexios was a lot more popular than I expected! Currently helming 2641 decks on EDHREC, it beat out Ashling, Flame Dancer to become the most popular Red commander of the year.

And, again, just like two of the other Commanders we've looked at in this series, Alexios came from a set that was not received super well by the Magic community. It's an interesting pattern, for sure.

Gearing up for battle

But, that aside, let's look at what Alexios does. He's a 4/4 with trample for 4 mana, that's pseudo-goaded for the whole game. And, at the start of each players' turn, that player gets control of Alexios and puts a +1/+1 counter on him.

To make a long story short, every player at the table gets a turn to hit each other with our commander, and it gets bigger as it gets passed around.

So, of course, we want to make sure that Alexios is as strong as possible, and as hard to block as possible, so that opponents hit each other even harder.

We also want to make sure that we're getting value each time our commander attacks, too. It’ll be attacking four times as often as usual, so even small, incremental value pieces will be supercharged.

Looking at Alexios's EDHREC page, it seems that a lot of decks seek to reduce our opponents' life totals to 0 by any means necessary. This takes the form of big burn spells (Sunspine Lynx), additional forced combat (Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer) and some ways to buff Alexios's power (Unleash Fury).

Some Alexios decks have this as a subtheme already, but I want to focus fully on an equipment-based voltron strategy. Red provides plenty of artifact synergies and even has some unique equipment that'll help push through extra damage. With that in mind, let's build a deck!

Investing in quality footwear

This is an Equipment deck, so I'd like to start by talking about what Equipment I've included. It's important to note that while we don't control Alexios on our opponents' turns, we DO control the Equipment attached to him.

So, we're looking for pieces of Equipment that already have triggered abilities, rather than equipment that give Alexios triggered abilities (which our opponents would control). As an example, The Reaver Cleaver won't work well here, as it'll give our opponents treasures from Alexios' combat damage.

But, Pip-Boy 3000 would allow us to pick one of its three modes every time our commander attacks (regardless of who controls him as he attacks).

This limits our choices somewhat, but we still have a very solid pool of options. This includes all 10 of the original Sword of Blank and Blank cycle!

By my judgment, the three best ones in this deck are the Sword of Fire and Ice (letting us take out a bothersome creature/hit our opponents' faces AND draw a card every turn), the Sword of Truth and Justice (making Alexios huge), and the Sword of Sinew and Steel (keeping the board clear of our opponents' biggest threats).

Some of the swords aren't the best here, but getting their effects four times as often as normal makes them worth the mana.

For example, the Sword of Body and Mind isn't amazing, but it can mill a total of 40 cards and give us four 2/2s over the course of just one table rotation.

Other than the swords, I tried to include equipment that provides permanent or semi-permanent mana advantage every turn. This took the form of Beamtown Beatstick (and related variants), Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus, and the classic Sword of the Animist. 

All of these cards shine when paired with the card-advantage provided by Rogue's Gloves, Mask of Memory and Infiltration Lens. Infiltration Lens does the opposite of the other two Equipment I just listed, but that's a good thing.

While Alexios does have to attack, we can't control how our other opponents block. It’s a good idea to make sure we get our card draw no matter what!

Too big to fail

In addition to making sure Alexios is advancing our board state as he attacks, we want to make sure he can end the game with just a few hits. One of the best ways to do this is with Colossus Hammer.

Before Alexios gets even a single +1/+1 counter, this makes him a 14/14 trampler. Hero's Blade can be cast before Alexios and auto-equips when he enters, making him a 7/6 that grows every turn.

Embercleave is great too, equipping itself for free and providing double strike too. It also fits nicely into our mana curve, being discounted to just five mana if we attack with Alexios the turn after we cast him.

To round out this group, there's some utility equipment like Hexplate Wallbreaker to let Alexios attack twice each turn, Hammer of Nazahn to protect Alexios and cheat equip costs, and Andúril, Flame of the West to make a whopping 8 tokens from just one table rotation.

A well-equipped army

That's a good overview of the equipment in this deck. But, we need a supporting cast too. There's a lot of ways to take advantage of Equipment being noncreature spells, including DRC for card selection, Firebrand Archer for some pings, and Bothersome Quasit.

Together, these creatures will provide a good amount of extra value to reward us from doing the things we were already doing.

It's also nice to take advantage of the fact that Equipment can be tapped and still function. To that end, Sunshot Militia can ping down the table, Bottle-Cap Blast can be cast for just one mana, and Saheeli's Directive can be cast for a big number early in the game.

Finishing up the deck are a few more artifact synergies and some ways to end the game more quickly. Karn, Legacy Reforged makes a ton of mana every turn, while also providing a decent blocker.

Chiss-Goria, Forge Tyrant will usually be a 3-mana 5/4 flying creature that provides a free spell every turn. And, last but not least Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar can let our commander end the game much, much faster.

All that said, here’s our final decklist…

 

There’s only one way to be sure it’s really dead.

That’s it for this time, folks! I’ll be honest, I mulled around with two different concepts for this deck before deciding upon an Equipment-based Voltron list. I also had a Spellslinger list cooked up, with a focus on combat tricks.

While that version of the deck was certainly fun, without the consistent card-draw provided by equipment, it ran out of gas quite quickly. If you’re interested in seeing that deck, it can be found at this link. 

This version of the deck, the Equipment-focused one, does have a few card that likely wouldn’t be found in most other mono-red Equipment lists. Brand can get Alexios out of a bad combat if two of our opponents decide to collude and kill him.

Same goes for Maze of Ith, which can save Alexios from death OR save us from death if a particularly scary creature is attacking. Similar logic holds for Homeward Path, which has the added benefit of being a land that taps for mana.

Now for an important question: what’s your favorite sword in the Sword of Blank and Blank cycle? Mine’s probably the Sword of Fire and Ice. It has utility no matter the state of the rest of the game, which is pretty valuable. Let me know your favorite in the comments!

Quick note: This article was mistakenly published after the mono-green edition of EDHighlights (it was supposed to be published before that article, to maintain WUBRG order). But, starting next week, I'll be looking at the two-color commanders (like it says in the conclusion of the mono-green version)! Thanks for understanding and I'll see you next time.