Alexios, Deimos of KosmosAlexios, Deimos of Kosmos | Illustrated by Bartek Fedyczak

An Unexpected Challenger

If, by some wild coincidence, that opening line makes sense in Assassin's Creed lore, please assume I did it on purpose. But if it doesn't, that means I was referring to my reaction upon seeing the ranking of Alexios, Deimos of KosmosAlexios, Deimos of Kosmos in PDHREC. When the Assassin's Creed set came out, I did take note of Alexios, but I pretty quickly dismissed him as a gimmicky Voltron commander, comparing him to Tahngarth, First MateTahngarth, First Mate. I mean, they both do the same thing, right? Your opponents can use them to attack your opponents, and if you stack them with Equipment, they can dole out a ton of damage. They even have the same mana cost! But if you look a bit closer, it becomes pretty apparent that Alexios is a much stronger version of Tahngarth, and that's why he's trending as a pauper commander.

The first thing that Alexios has going for him is trample. I've played a lot of Voltron commanders, and let me tell you, it makes a huge difference! You really d0n't want to be committing six or seven cards in your deck to just giving your commander trample, but it's absolutely necessary for a Voltron commander, and if your general doesn't already have it, you don't get much of a choice.

Then, there's the clause that Alexios can't be sacrificed. Yes, you could always choose to just not give Tahngarth to an opponent with a sacrifice outlet, but then you're losing out on an attack, and of course, there's always the risk that they have a Deadly DisputeDeadly Dispute in hand. Losing your commander that way is a massive feel-bad, and I'm so glad they fixed the issue for Alexios.

But I think the biggest difference is that Alexios can attack alone. Tahngarth only triggers if your opponents swing, so if they don't have a disposable 1/1 or a creature they feel safe attacking with, Tahngarth isn't attacking either. Alexios doesn't have that problem: each and every player gets a turn with him, starting on their upkeep, and he's more or less guaranteed to be attacking every turn, of course, because your opponents might as well.

So that's Alexios. A four-mana beater that will attack your opponents every single turn instead of every turn cycle. What more could you want? Oh, what's that? He also grows every single time he attacks? Okay, maybe it does get better. The point is, Alexios is a huge upgrade of Tahngarth, and now I feel pretty foolish for not recognizing that, but there's only one way to redeem my misjudgement, and that's to build a sick deck around the guy. Let's see what we can cook up.

Auras and Equipment

So, we're building a Voltron commander. What does that mean? Equipment and enchantments, of course. Alexios does a pretty good job of growing by himself, but there's still a myriad of cool things we can put on him. First, evasion. In pauper, we've got a ton of different wings to choose from, ranging from the hastily made Cobbled WingsCobbled Wings to the far more elegant gilded onesgilded ones. There are wings that give haste, like Cloak of the BatCloak of the Bat, and there are wings that represent iconic Grecian parables in Wings of HubrisWings of Hubris.

But evasion does come in more forms than flying. The menace granted by Beamtown BeatstickBeamtown Beatstick and Sticky FingersSticky Fingers does wonders, and the intimidate from Executioner's HoodExecutioner's Hood does a ton of work as well. Of course, the best of the bunch is Whispersilk CloakWhispersilk Cloak, a card that practically nullifies the rest of our deck. It gives perfect evasion and perfect protection. I mean, as soon as you draw this card, you can just let Alexios go to town without a sliver of worry. It's that good!

Then, there are some Equipment that just benefit us, like Goldvein PickGoldvein Pick and Prying BladePrying Blade, which will create a Treasure token for us every time Alexios connects. With those triggering four times a turn cycle, we'll never have to worry about mana. Same with Shiny ImpetusShiny Impetus, which also has the benefit of forcing Alexios to attack. Plus, Explorer's ScopeExplorer's Scope has the potential to flood our board with lands.

Always use Protection

But unfortunately, Whispersilk Cloak is one of a kind, and we won't find shroud on a single other red common, so we'll have to figure out some way to keep Alexios safe, and we're gonna have to do it without hexproof, counterspells, or indestructiblity, because, well, protection spells in mono-red pauper are kind of scarce. The literal best card I could find beyond Whispersilk Cloak is Goblin ChirurgeonGoblin Chirurgeon, a one-mana Goblin that can sacrifice itself to regenerate Alexios. Once. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I mean, there's also PyroblastPyroblast and Red Elemental BlastRed Elemental Blast, which are strong cards of course, but they're completely dead in the water when it comes to a Doom BladeDoom Blade, so we're gonna have to get pretty creative.

I went through a lot of strategies here. Blink cards? Nonexistent. Bouncing Alexios to hand? Dead // GoneDead // Gone is our only option, and that's a pretty inefficient strategy anyways. I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that our only option is to start talking politics. Basically, if you bring up the current state of the American government during a game of Magic, your opponents won't be able to cast a MurderMurder through the argument that breaks out.

Okay, obviously we're not gonna do that, but I wasn't kidding when I said we're gonna play politics. Think about it: our commander's terrifying, but only for one opponent at a time, the one who's being attacked. If we can negate our own threat in response to the threat of removal, our commander should be totally safe. Here's what's gonna happen. On our turn, we enchant our commander with Fire WhipFire Whip or Veteran's VoiceVeteran's Voice, cards that lets us tap our commander at any time, even when we no longer control it. Then, we have a way to remotely prevent our commander from attacking. If we broadcast this information to the table, then we can trade an attack for our commander's safety.

This strategy does suffer if our opponents know how to bluff well, and often we'll just have to gamble, but if we can keep two thirds of our opponents' goodwill, we should have a lot of success. In addition, we can also use this strategy to prevent the archenemy from using Alexios to win the game.

And that's the whole deck. Not much to it, huh? It's pretty basic, just a Voltron deck with a cool commander, but I think calling it Voltron is a bit misleading, because, at its heart, this a red chaos deck, designed to throw around as much damage as possible. Who knows what will happen when our commander hits the board. Are we gonna become problem #1? Or will our opponents go to town with our massive general? It's a mystery, and I for one am thrilled to find out.