(Stiltzkin, Moogle MerchantStiltzkin, Moogle Merchant | art by Yumeko)

Hello, and welcome back to The Monolith, the series in which I, your intrepid host, try to get the world of Commander players to build more mono-colored decks.

With the dust of Tarkir: Dragonstorm beginning to settle, we can start to look ahead at upcoming sets and theory craft around all the previews we've been shown way, way, way too early. Of all the commanders revealed so far from Final Fantasy, there are only two cards that are actual, factual mono. Zell DinchtZell Dincht seems like an interesting Landfall-based, mono-red commander, which we might tackle in a later article. Seems like there's some combo potential there for sure.

But for this edition of The Monolith we're going to build around something a bit more... mean. It's Stiltzkin, Moogle MerchantStiltzkin, Moogle Merchant.

Gifts Unwanted

For the stunningly cheap cost of a single , we get a 1/2 Moogle with lifelink, and it's Stiltzkin's activated ability that we'll be building around in this deck. For , we can have one of our opponents assume control of another target permanent we control. Once they get it, we get to draw a card. Kind of like us receiving payment; we are a merchant, after all.

But for this little market stall we'll be running, we're not exactly aiming to come off as a reputable seller. In fact, we'll be sending our opponents some defective wares on purpose.

Damaged Goods

That's right! Today we're building a Donate deck all about giving our opponents cards that you wouldn't want under your control. This is traditionally a deck you'd see with some in it to get access to all the nasty "deal with the devil" type effects of that color that we could force into the hands of other players.

There's definitely other color combos that can make it work, and Jeskai() commander Zedruu the GreatheartedZedruu the Greathearted is one of the more popular in this archetype, but in mono-white, we're going to need to rifle through the basement of Magic: The Gathering to find some decent targets for our ability, and that, of course, is half the fun of these articles!

The Archetypal Gift

There's already quite a few cards that exist in Magic's long history that play by "gifting" things to your opponent's control. Akroan HorseAkroan Horse, for example, is a classic card from the original Theros block that might seem terrible to the untrained eye.

"A creature I have to give to my opponent? What's the point of that?" The point of course is that the card is a trap that slowly fills your own board with 1/1 tokens as your enemy only gets a measly 0/4 defender.

But there's plenty more where that came from. There's some really fun cursed object style cards that we can very much put into today's deck that fit the theme perfectly.

The jinxed cards will be thrown around the table like a hot potato whenever one of our opponents wants to avoid the effect. Normally we'd be a very valid target to take the things back. But with our commander we can just have them leave our control before the trigger goes off, making us a waste of an activation for our competitors.

A handful of artifacts like this in the deck will allow us to sit back and watch the chaos unfold as our opponents argue among themselves over who should take control of the nasty thing next.

Like a Hole in the Head

But the true horrors of cards we can force onto our opponents' boards come in the form of things they can't just give away whenever they like. These things will be a constant headache for them. And hopefully, they'll be enough of a drawback that we can potentially win the game whilst our opponents suffer.

The reason we normally want to be running black in a deck like this is we get access to cards that are intended to give you a statistical advantage in the short term with under-costed stats and abilities, like Archfiend of the DrossArchfiend of the Dross. But after a while, they become more of a problem than a boon.

We don't have a huge amount of obvious cards to draw from that fill this archetype in mono-white. And even in general, you need to look at some cards that literally no one plays to find a good selection of cards that fill this niche. Because the cost they come with usually makes them pretty unplayable in standard decks.

A Great Example of a Bad Card

An absolute must-include in this deck will be something we can steal from the aforementioned Zedruu lists. Nine LivesNine Lives is an enchantment that can prevent up to nine instances of damage for its controller. When the ninth source of damage is stopped, and Nine Lives receives its ninth counter, you exile it.

When Nine Lives leaves the battlefield, its controller loses the game. This honestly isn't a great card on its own, maybe made a little better by a deck that can easily remove counters from its permanents. But now we can gain almost its full benefit and then just as we're about to take a ninth chunk of damage, send it over to an opponent of our choice to lose the game instead!

Not to mention that the card itself has hexproof, so removing it will be very difficult for our opponents, and if they attempt to board wipe all enchantments, you can hoist it onto someone else in response and have them suffer the consequences. If you're feeling petty, probably the board wiper.

What the Hell Am I Supposed to Do With This?

Don't worry, the cards we can gift will get far weirder and far more niche. Most white cards don't give you downsides apart from on themselves, so we'll need to be creative.

For example, Enduring RenewalEnduring Renewal is what I would call "a pretty bad way to recur your creatures." For we get the stunning ability of putting any creatures we control that die back into our hand, which ain't bad at all.

The cost, however, is that we not only have to play with our entire hand revealed, we also get a very wacky draw effect. Now, whenever we would draw a card, we instead have to reveal the top card of our library. If it's a creature card, we have to put it into the bin instead.

Wow, that's bad. Unless someone has built a very specific deck to utilize this strange effect, this is going to be a huge pain for our opponents. Although it would go pretty hard in our Anafenza, Unyielding LineageAnafenza, Unyielding Lineage deck we built in a previous article.

How About Some Fetching Headwear?

Our opponents' heads are looking a little cold; perhaps we could help them out with a lovely new hat. Mindstorm CrownMindstorm Crown will do some annoying chip damage over the course of the game - best placed on a player that's taken a lot of damage early on. Crown of DoomCrown of Doom however will act like an Innistrad style curse that our opponents will be throwing around like our aforementioned jinxed collection.

The absolute worst of the bunch has to be Grafted SkullcapGrafted Skullcap, though. You can hear the finger of the monkey's paw curling as a player said, "I need some more card draw." Here you go, now you draw two every turn! And you also discard your entire hand on your end step...

Who Needs Creatures Anyway?

It was bad enough that we made one of our opponents never draw creature cards again. At least they get to replay the ones they lose. This next target is going to be even more screwed over, though.

Courtesy of some very ugly artifact creatures, these lovely items will stop your players from being able to cast creature spells indefinitely! What the hell! I'm sure there's plenty of decks out there that wouldn't be too bothered by this, but you'd be hard pressed to find a deck that doesn't want to play a single creature in a turn - including their commander, by the way.

Artifacts Are Overrated

Is someone playing a lot of artifact cards? What if they had to sacrifice one every single turn? Rust ElementalRust Elemental will see to that.

Even better though is when we pop one of these guys onto the board of a player who isn't playing any artifacts. Enjoy losing a tenth of your life every turn, and now you don't even get to attack with the creature we gave you...

If your opponent is upset about having to take that much damage, you could always offer them an alternative with Lich's TombLich's Tomb. What a wonderful gift! Now you won't lose the game if you have zero or less life - except you'll be sacrificing a permanent for every single point of damage you would take from now on. And that's permanent by the way, not nonland permanent.

Be sure to gift this just as an opponent is about to eat a big chunk of damage. We don't want them to sacrifice the Tomb right away after a measly one or two damage.

A Secret Burn Deck?

White isn't exactly know for being able to play direct damage against players. I'm sure there's strange old cards out there that I'm not aware of that'll do it, but this special gift allows us to do something similar.

Who designed this card? This is so bizarre. They're making these in Ravnica? Man, old Magic is weird.

Speaking of old Magic, if we want our opponents to take some damage, why not gift them this terrible old contraption?

Does This Business Have Legs?

This was truly one of the strangest decks I've theory-crafted here on The Monolith. Usually when you build these odd contraptions, out of color identity and pushing the boundaries, you at least find a few cards that seem like slam dunks. And whilst there's certainly a couple of options for Stiltzkin, Moogle MerchantStiltzkin, Moogle Merchant, he does seem like he's going to stay a pretty niche commander.

If you were building this cursed collection of curiosities, what strange old cards would you be running? I'd love to know down in the comments below! But whilst you're working on those, I'll see you on the next edition of The Monolith, your home for strange and wonderful mono-colored decks!