Rocco, Cabaretti CatererRocco, Cabaretti Caterer | art by Chris Seaman

Welcome back to Bottom of the Barrel! This is a series where we pick a theme from EDHREC and look at the “bottom of the barrel.” This means that we look at the least played color-combinations and pick a commander in those colors to brew a spicy new deck around!

Now I know you see the title and are probably thinking: "Rocco? The infamous combo commander? Yuck!" I understand where you're coming from, but trust me on this one. This is probably one of the most unique Rocco decks you'll see today!

Today's deck is focused around a very splashy theme: energy. The "energy" theme is something that has been explored very recently, with 3 precons being released focusing on the archetype.

With this in mind, the most popular color combination for energy is Jeskai (white, red, and blue) with 11,000 decks in the database. Outside of Jeskai and Temur (green, red, and blue), energy isn't really played very often in commander. This is where our man Rocco comes in.

Comparing Naya (red, green and white) energy decks to Jeskai or Temur is staggering, as Naya only has 21 decks listed on EDHREC.

This is exactly the kind of thing I like to see when writing this series: the bigger the gap between most played colors and least played colors, the better!

Sure, you could choose any other Naya commander to helm this deck, but Rocco allows us the ability to get whatever we need whenever we need it. Speaking of which, let's talk about some of the best energy producing creatures in our deck.

Category #1: Energy Producers

Keen-eyed observers might notice that most energy strategies rely heavily on having blue in the deck, but if you think that'll limit our options for this deck, you're sorely mistaken. Let's get creative!

We have a suite of cards with precon origins for this section, starting with my personal favorite: Nissa, Worldsoul Speaker.

If you told me that Nissa was going to have a new legendary creature card, and that creature was going to have something to do with energy, I would have told you simply: "I don't believe you." It's very strange to see Nissa messing around in this design space, but the landfall ability makes sense. Getting to 8 energy might be tough, but if we ever get there, watch out!

The remaining energy producing creatures that I would like to highlight are as follows: Aetherstorm Roc - turns all creatures entering into energy; Synth Eradicator - grants energy or impulse draw on attack, and for some reason has a lightning bolt attached to it; Sentry Bot - feels like a fog, but definitely isn't (don't let it's interesting text box fool you); Guide of Souls - a strictly better Aetherstorm Roc (power creep is real, folks); Eddytrail Hawk - giving something flying eventually seems pretty cool, albeit a little underwhelming; Amped Rapter - the scourge of modern; Electrostatic Pummeler - welcome back Aether Revolt standard; Lightning Runner - "oops, I just took 4 combats in a row"; and Aetherwind Basker - big board? Take a million energy.

Category #2: Proliferate

If any of you read my article on boros infect, you'll know that red and white excels at finding sneaky ways to proliferate. Now we're adding green, which is a known master at multiplying different kinds of counters. This is about to get wild.

Evolution Sage turns our land drops each turn into more and more energy; Metastatic Evangel turns each creature that enters into more energy; Staff of Compleation is what I like to call "The Phyrexian Swiss Army Knife"; Sword of Truth and Justice, while insanely expensive these days, is just ridiculous; Contagion Clasp is a great way to turn our mana into extra energy; and Park Heights Maverick is a practically unblockable way to proliferate every turn.

Category #3: Benefitting from Energy

Getting energy is all well and good, but what do we do with it? Luckily, there are many ways for us to leverage having energy, as well as even gaining energy, into a potential win.

Aetherflux Conduit is one of those cards that you really want to pull off, but it might be too crazy to happen; Aether Revolt can translate our energy into direct damage; Deadlock Trap can shut down problematic creatures on the board; Consulate Surveillance can grant us terrific protection against any unwanted aggression; and The Motherlode, Excavator can turn our energy into one huge unblockable attack.

Category #4: The "Secret Spice"

Today's "secret spice" comes in the form of a very convoluted combo involving every "module" card from the original Kaladesh set.

These "modules" interact in a very interesting way. If a creature enters, Decoction Module with give us 1 energy. When we get that energy, Fabrication Module will put a +1/+1 counter on a creature we control. When we place that +1/+1 counter on a creature we control, we can pay 1 generic mana to create a 1/1 servo creature token with Animation Module. These cards combined with Ashnod's Altar create an infinite loop where we create infinite servo tokens, infinite colorless mana, and an infinitely large (power wise) board.

If you aren't a fan of combos, you can leave Ashnod's Altar out and still do a cool "module thing" without going infinite.

Category #5: Spice so secret it needs to be talked about last...

Primal Prayers.

This card might seem innocuous, but we have several creatures that create an amount of energy that is greater than or equal to their mana cost. What does this mean? Well, if we have Cloudstone Curio on the board, we can create a near infinite amount of energy, and with something like Aether Revolt on the field, that means game over.

Closing Thoughts

This brings us to the end of our ninth edition of Bottom of the Barrel!! I hope you enjoyed exploring a lesser-played color-combination in the world of energy! It feels amazing to have had nine editions of this series, and I thank you all so much for checking out my wacky ideas over the past few months!

If you have any thoughts or ideas about this decklist, let me know in the comments below!

Check out my decklist below!