Kefnet the Mindful is surprisingly effective in the command zone for a mono blue equipment/”Voltron” Commander deck. Likewise, mono blue is a surprisingly effective color for an equipment Voltron strategy with Kefnet the Mindful as the Commander.
Voltron, one of the more popular casual Commander archetypes, draws its namesake from the animated television series by the same name. In the show, five space explorers each pilot their own ship, but the five ships can “assemble Voltron” as a unit. A Voltron deck will seek to play its Commander and/or a creature with some form of evasion, then assemble Voltron with a collection of equipment or auras in order to increase the creature’s size, give it an added level of evasion, and swing for big damage. The goal of these decks is to win through Commander damage, dealing 21 points of damage in combat.
Because Voltron is a combat-based strategy, it is important to get off to a quick start. Kefnet the Mindful weighs in at just 3 mana (2 generic and 1 blue) and comes with a whopping 5/5 stat line. Kefnet also has flying and indestructible, making him hard to fly and even harder to remove from the battlefield. The drawback with Kefnet is that, in order to attack or block with the beefy flying god, we need 7 or more cards in hand.
Thankfully, blue just happens to be the best color at drawing cards, which makes this drawback more of a benefit—just another reason to play some of the most powerful draw spells in the game.
This deck focuses on doing 2 things: putting equipment onto Kefnet and having 7 cards in your hand at all times. There are creative ways of keeping our hand stocked, but make no mistake, although we’re not in Mardu, we have some efficient ways of tutoring, playing, and equipping our various equipment.
One thing to keep in mind when playing a Voltron strategy is to be smart about how you distribute your attacks. A common mistake is to simply chop down one tree at a time by focusing attacks on one player until they’ve been eliminated, then another, then one more until you’ve won. It is usually preferable to think of the combat math. For example, you might attack player A with a 7/5 Kefnet on turn 4, but if you can get Kefnet’s power to 9 on turn 5 and 12 on turn 6, you should focus those attacks on player B so that you eliminate them with a clean 21 commander damage. Then, if you’re able to get Kefnet’s power to 14 on turn 7, you can turn your attention back to player A, who already have 7 commander damage and would also be taken out with 21 commander damage even.
Before I get into the deck tech, this will be a little different than other budget deck techs. Previously, I have shared my path—that is to say, the path I took when upgrading my own deck from budget to upgraded to optimized. However, curiously, I never built a budget version of Kefnet Voltron. The journey for this deck began with Urza, Lord High Artificer at the helm. I had just pulled a foil Urza from a pack of Modern Horizons, and I was desperate to build a deck around him. I quickly learned that Urza will get hated off any table, even if it’s a casual (no stax, no combo) build. I also learned that, with just one power and no combat-relevant keywords, Urza is just not any good at combat. I moved Kefnet from the 99 to the command zone and made a few other small tweaks (mainly to help accommodate Kefnet’s combat restriction). The result is a deck that can be tweaked for almost any budget.
With that explanation out of the way, let’s get to the deck techs for the deck I affectionately call “Big Bird.”
$50 Budget Deck Tech
Here, we see the core theme of the deck: cheap equipment and card draw. This version of the deck is running some creative ways to keep our hand full; Thwart lets us put 3 islands back into our hand rather than pay the converted mana cost; Deprive lets us put 1 land back into our hand in addition to the cost; Dream Fracture and Arcane Denial both draw us (and our opponent) a card; Mana Breach is widely regarded as a “stax piece” because it slows down the game, but it also serves the benefit of putting a card into our hand whenever we cast a spell.
In the “pure draw” department, we have Minds Aglow, which lets everyone pay into its cost for a big draw spell; Prosperity achieves the same result, but we pay the full cost; Game Plan behaves similar to Timetwister (shuffle your hand and graveyard into your library, then draw 7 cards), but it hits the entire table and we can enlist someone else to help us pay its 6 converted mana cost; the Memory half of Commit // Memory is also a Timetwister effect for the entire table; and when the clock strikes midnight on Midnight Clock, we get our own personal Timetwister. These Timetwister effects are some of the best cards in the whole deck because we immediately meet Kefnet’s combat restriction.
Tome of Legends is repeatable and lets you draw a card every turn for 2 mana as long as you keep swinging with Kefnet. Artificer’s Epiphany and Thirst for Knowledge are not repeatable, but they are on theme with the artifact-heavy slant of the deck.
And of course, there’s the equipment. At 5 power, we ideally want to equip Kefnet with at least a buff of 2 power. Once we hit 7 power, we can take out one player with 3 swings. To this end, many of the equipment in the deck are based on granting a buff of at least 2 to Kefnet’s power. Adventuring Gear, Bonesplitter, O-Naginata, Blackblade Reforged, Empyrial Plate, Hero’s Blade, Assault Suit, Argentum Armor, Strata Scythe, Colossus Hammer, and Loxodon Warhammer will each give Kefnet at least 2 more power to hit with.
Masterwork of Ingenuity is one of the best cards in the deck—literally. Whatever is the best equipment you have on the battlefield at any given time, Masterwork of Ingenuity will give you a second copy of that equipment.
Upgraded Deck Tech
Voltron decks can be expensive. One of the main reasons is the Swords of X and Y. We’ve only added 3 to this deck, but at more than $10 a pop, those cards alone account for an extra $40 of our budget. The deck is playable without them, but there is a reason that these equipment are considered among the best in the game. Even with a flying, indestructible big bird, it is extremely helpful to have protection from 2 or more colors at a time.
Future Sight is an effective way of keeping the hand full, but so is Trade Routes, which lets you turn extra lands into new cards and even also return lands to your hand from play. Dictate of Kruphix helps your opponents a bit more than necessary—and with so many ways to keep your hand stocked, it may be wholly unnecessary. Thus, we’ll use that slot to shore up one weakness: go-wide strategies. This deck is light on creatures, and Propaganda can help keep creature-heavy decks at bay.
There are some unique ways to ramp, including Sword of the Animist, which fetches a land from your library whenever the equipped creature attacks. Explorer’s Scope sees very little play, at around 1% of decks on EDHrec, but by letting you look at the top card of your library and put it into play if it’s a land, it can do some serious work for ramping. With just one swing, it’s a Rampant Growth. Sword of the Animist and Explorer’s Scope both pair well with Strata Scythe and Blackblade Reforged, which will make the equipped creature larger depending on the number of lands (or islands) you have in play.
Also, with a larger budget, we can spring for a Sol Ring and a Sky Diamond. Sapphire Medallion could be helpful, as well, by reducing the cost of your blue spells by 1 generic mana, but at 34 blue spells, Sapphire Medallion would reduce the cost of barely more than half of the non-land cards in the deck.
Most importantly, with a bigger budget, you get access to some of the best equipment the game has to offer. Even one of the newest equipment, Shadowspear, is a bit on the pricier side; but by giving Kefnet trample and lifelink, he becomes a 6/6 threat that is loaded with keywords and already nearly impossible to stop. Lightning Greaves is one of the more ubiquitous equipment in Commander, appearing in a stunning 27% of decks on EDHrec, and it’s an auto-include for giving Kefnet both haste and shroud for free to equip.
Optimized Deck Tech
This time, I am skipping the optimized deck tech. I have built this deck from its original budget build to its upgraded state, but I have not taken the time to optimize. That is mainly because Voltron strategies are casual due to the win condition being difficult to meet. When we measure Voltron against other strategies, the potential is limited. You can add expensive, hyper-efficient cards to the deck, but Voltron’s ceiling is lower than other strategies.
That being said, there are almost certainly some ways to improve on the deck so that it performs better at its designated power level. Is this deck too heavy on equipment? Too light on interaction? Do I need a few more ways to tutor for important, key equipment?
There are more than a few obvious absences if your budget is limitless.
You could add the last 3 Swords of X and Y; Sword of Light and Shadow, Sword of Feast and Famine, and Sword of Fire and Ice are all extremely powerful equipment that make Kefnet difficult to block and add value on the back end of the combat damage. If you’re loosening the purse strings, you could add Rhystic Study, which will benefit you by either slowing your opponents down and making their spells cost more to cast or by drawing cards if your opponents are unwilling to pay 1 generic mana for each of their spells.
One area this deck certainly lacks is ramp. In a way, the absence of artifact ramp is by design. If we play too many cards out of our hand too quickly, we have to wait a turn cycle or two before we can swing with Kefnet. On the flip side, we suffer from a lack of mana at times if we have to wait until the second main phase to play a land in order to keep our hand at 7 cards. A little extra ramp can help you play equipment and pay the equip cost on the same turn, but there is a balance to strike between dumping your hand in early turns and keeping your hand stocked to swing with Kefnet.
Kefnet covers up any number of weaknesses in the deck by being a big, flying, indestructible beater, all qualities that make him a powerful and underrated option in the command zone for an Voltron-style deck.
MTG Frenzy 