Krang, Master Mind Affinity

Commander Overview

Affinity is one of my favorite keywords in magic, it’s the main reason I love decks like Sami, Wildcat Captain so much! So when Krang I got spoiled, I immediately got to work brewing up a list, I went through many iterations of the deck including a Voltron and a combo version but since Krang had affinity I landed on an affinity focused build allowing us to flood the board with artifacts use Krang as an awesome attacker and have a whole deck of things that get progressively cheaper. Krang is not only a strong attacker for the deck, but can be a nice source of card draw if we need it, which feels especially good since they often only cost two mana. We have a ton of ways to play out huge creatures cheaply and fill our board to the brim with awesome artifact creatures. Krang is a huge part of our deck and a great support card for the overall gameplan.

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is quite straightforward, as long as you are mindful of your artifact count and some of the complex triggers, they aren’t necessarily complex by themselves, but there are sometimes a ton of them at once. As long as you are good at keeping track of your triggers, you should be perfectly fine piloting this deck. I wouldn’t recommend this deck for brand new players since it can get a little complex but someone with a few games under their belt should be able to pilot this deck with ease, keep track of your artifact count, your triggers and swing hard!

Synergy’s in the deck

Artifacts are by far the biggest synergy in our deck, I’m sure that comes as no surprise. One of the best cards in our deck is Mycosynth Golem, which is almost always free and makes our other artifact creatures nearly free, allowing us to speed out our gameplan easier and make us a true force to be reckoned with. Cards like Efficient Construction and Thopter Spy Network allow us to easily produce a ton of extra flying attackers consistently. These allow us to have a huge board of attackers or chump blockers. Our whole deck is one humongous artifact synergy.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: The early-game is pretty action packed for our deck, while we certainly won’t be attacking we will be committing as many artifacts to the board as we can to reduce the cost of Krang, whether its Seat of the Synod or Darksteel Citadel or free artifacts like Memnite, Ornithopter and Welding Jar can be quick and easy ways to get our other artifact creatures like Frogmite out, once we have enough artifacts out we can easily cast Krang. While it is certainly uncommon, we can absolutely cast Krang in the early game. The whole point of the early game is to fill our board with cheap or free artifacts.

Mid-Game: The mid-game is pretty much more of the same, cast Krang if we haven’t, and then attack with Krang and our other artifact creatures. Since we have so many affinity sources in the deck, it can be easy to amass a big board before our opponents do. One of the main things we do in the mid-game is establish our best stuff, playing out cards like Dawnsire, Sunstar Dreadnought, not only increasing our artifact count but getting it stationed as much as we can.

Late-Game: Nothing changes for us in the late-game; we still attack with Krang and our creatures hard and try to trigger as many of our synergies as we can. Our bigger creatures can do a lot of work in the late-game. In my testing games, I didn’t make it to the late-game a ton, but our overall gameplan doesn’t change.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

Ramp is interesting in this deck, we don’t ramp really at all unless you count Uthros, Titanic Godcore, which is essentially a copy of Tolarian Academy once it’s turned on, but that rarely happens until the mid-game. While we don’t ramp in the traditional sense, we have so many affinity sources in the deck that it can feel like we are ramping. So we do technically ramp, just not in the traditional way.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Krang is a great source of card draw but it does require us to have fewer than four cards in hand and we do have some good sources of card draw within the deck so Krang’s ability doesn’t always trigger but it is great when it can. Traverse Entity is a very strong source of card draw for the deck and it can often be quite high, especially if we control something like Excalibur, Sword of Eden. Thoughtcast and Thought Monitor are also cheap and easy sources of card draw both of them often only cost one mana which is truly insane. We round out our card draw package

Removal

This is by far the weakest portion of our deck, we only have two sources of true removal in the deck in Pongify and Rapid Hybridization which are cheap and strong ways to remove an opponents best creature but these are certainly limited options for us, we are not able to kill everything and we certainly have to pick our targets wisely.

Protection

We are a little better at protection but it certainly is a weaker point for our deck, even though we are a blue deck we most certainly are not a control deck, we focus heavily on ourself and are a very selfish deck in that way, because of that our best sources of protection are Counterspell, Assert Authority and Defabricate which are ok ways to counter spells and in the case of defabricate counter some artifacts/enchantments. We are limited in this section, and we can use some of these spells offensively to counter our opponents’ stuff, but I most often use them to protect Krang and our creatures.

Utility / Support

Let’s go over some of the coolest cards in the deck! We have a lot of cards that care about how many artifacts we have, like Filigree Attendant, Darksteel Juggernaut, and Broodstar, which can get really huge in our deck and are great attackers in addition to Krang. Uthros Research Craft is another really cool card that is basically a second copy of Krang, and since we have so many artifacts in the deck, we can output a ton of damage with this card. We also have some equipment that interacts really well with Krang, like Doc Ock's Tentacles, which auto attaches to Krang and makes them even bigger! Colorless mana is pretty easy to come by in this deck, especially with cards like Energy Tap. I’m also a huge fan of Excalibur, Sword of Eden, which can easily enable a Krang commander damage and kill, and is just a great way to deal a ton of damage.

Mana Base

We have a very cool mana base, as cool as it can be for a mono-colored deck. All jokes aside, we have some awesome non-basics, the best of which is Uthros, Titanic Godcore, which very quickly turns itself into a copy of Tolarian Academy in this deck. We also have Buried Ruin and Academy Ruins, which are both cheap and easy ways to recur our artifacts because inevitably our opponents will blow up our artifacts. Lastly, I want to highlight Inventors' Fair, which is a great tutor for the deck, and it feels great being able to grab Mycosynth Golem or Kappa Cannoneer with this land.

Win Conditions

Our only win condition in this deck is combat. I decided to opt out of the combo gameplan since I wanted to keep this deck in bracket 2. Krang helps a ton with this, and with token production from cards like Efficient Construction and Thopter Spy Network, we can have a lot of attackers.

Strengths of the Deck

We are great at dumping our hand and commander onto the board; we can amass a very scary board quickly.

Krang is truly a best of both worlds commander, giving us supplemental card draw and an amazing attacker.

Weaknesses of the Deck

Very weak to mass artifact hate, we truly hate to see a Vandalblast coming.

Even though we are in mono-blue, we are much more focused on ourselves and thus don’t have a lot of counters in the deck.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers. Matchup Record: 2-2

A ramp vs affinity matchup, a tale as old as time. This matchup is all about who’s faster. I tend to be quite aggressive since it can be hard to attack the huge board of Raph & Mikey once they get going. Be aggressive, counter or kill their commander if you can, and swing.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Pongify, Thoughtcast and Welding Jar.

Game 2: Vs Toby, Beastie Befriender. Matchup Record: 3-0

I had no trouble with this matchup; they just can’t keep up with us and struggle a lot against us. Follow the gameplan, hit hard, and you should be just fine with this one.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Filigree Attendant, Metalwork Colossus and Doc Ock's Tentacles.

Game 3: Vs Daretti, Scrap Savant. Matchup Record: 1-3

I struggled quite a bit with this matchup. Daretti has access to the dreaded Vandalblast, and I was blasted in quite a few games. The only saving grace against them is hitting them hard early, killing Daretti, and keeping them off the field as much as we can.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Thought Monitor, Valkyrie Aerial Unit and Nettlecyst.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! Mono-Blue isn’t something that I typically play, and Krang provided a breath of fresh air. They are such a fun commander, and if you are a player who loves dumping things on the board quickly, I’m sure you will love this deck. It allows for some insane turns and combat steps, which is not something you would typically expect out of a mono-blue deck, but it’s a blast to pilot.