On Theme: Silly Hats

I have a confession to make to the magic community, I love silly or even stupid themes for decks. It is really the reason I still play this game. And Commander has given me the perfect arena to just throw silly at the wall and see what sticks. My favorite part of Commander as a format is the casual nature and the expansive card pool that makes it so easy to find interesting things to do.




I guess I should take a moment to tell the world a bit about who I am before we get into what this article is about. My name is Jon and I currently live in Kansas. You might also know me as HatterofMad on the forums. I have been playing Magic off and on since 7th edition, but got back into seriously with the Lorwyn. That was where I started doing more of the FNM stuff and less kitchen table, it helped I lived across the street from the card shop. It was during this time that I started to build less the competitive theme decks, mostly tribal at that point, and it hasn’t stopped since.

The point of this article and the ones that follow are to take apart a deck list I have put together with a strange theme and explain the thought process behind it. I don’t claim to be the greatest deck builder, you will notice a lack of stables and in some cases win conditions, but they are fun decks and you never know you might find some cards you haven’t seen before.


So we will start with the most recent deck that I have worked on. It is a rather odd theme all things considered since it doesn’t deal with any game mechanics really. It is based on Art on the card. Every art depicts a silly hat. The idea was spawned by an offhand comment made by Andy on Commander Cast Season 4, Episode 13. They were talking about secret tech, and Voidmage Husher was brought up.The comment mentioned Animar, Soul of Elements and Voidmage had strange hats and that a silly hat theme deck would be fun. Well I took that as a challenge and started to work on the list.


So the first problem with building an art theme deck is that you can’t search Gatherer for the subject of the cards art. So I started searching for word that related to hats; ie Helm, Cap, Crown. I knew that the deck had to have blue in it since the Husher had to be in the deck. So I kept poking around and started putting together lists of cards that I knew would work in the deck.


Jester’s Cap
Mindslaver
Champion’s Helm
Skullclamp


But it became pretty apparent that I wasn’t going to make it on my own, because as much as I would like to be true or how much my wife thinks it is , I do not know every magic card ever printed. So I crowdsourced and threw up a thread on MTGSalvation. As people started to list some cards, I realized something I should have thought about before, Wizards wear silly hats. So this gave me some more direction a tribal theme as well as the art theme. So looking through Wizards I found a ton, but no generals that fit the colors I wanted, Red and Blue. Izzet just has some great crazy hat art, like Goblin Flectomancer. I settled for Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind since he is the right colors and a wizards, no hat but that can be fixed with sharpie.

So now it was time to look at a strategy to maybe win a game or two. So looking at the pool of cards and the general we have fallen on, we see a pretty obvious Izzet Control Card Draw thing. So the focus of drawing cards and manipulating the deck sounded like fun. So win cons become Niv and things like Psychosis Crawler and Laboratory Maniac, but you will notice a lack of the instant wins like Curiosity or things like that, I want this to be fun and they don’t fit the art idea.


Once the theme and strategy was locked in, it came together pretty quickly, so here is the list I came up with.


Silly Hats


Commander: 1


01 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind


Creatures: 24


01 Azami, Lady of Scrolls
01 Descendant of Soramaro
01 Magus of the Jar
01 Goblin Flectomancer
01 Izzet Guildmage
01 Krovikan Sorcerer
01 Lumengrid Augur
01 Puppeteer
01 Reckless Scholar
01 Talas Researcher
01 Thought Courier
01 Venser, Shaper Savant
01 Voidmage Husher
01 Dragon Mage
01 Graceful Adept
01 Sakashima the Impostor
01 Ovinomancer
01 Cytoplast Manipulator
01 Spawnbroker
01 Riptide Chronologist
01 Psychosis Crawler
01 Laboratory Maniac
01 Soramaro, First to Dream
01 Minamo Scrollkeeper


Artifacts: 6


01 Jester's Cap
01 Crown of Empires
01 Mindslaver
01 Library of Leng
01 Spellbook
01 Venser's Journal


Equipment: 10


01 Champion's Helm
01 Executioner's Hood
01 General's Kabuto
01 Helm of Kaldra
01 Mask of Avacyn
01 Mask of Memory
01 Neurok Stealthsuit
01 Peregrine Mask
01 Skullclamp
01 Specter's Shroud


Enchantment:  3


01 Attunement
01 Jace's Erasure
01 Decree of Silence


Auras: 1


01 Crown of Ascension


Sorcery:  9


01 Foresee
01 Invoke the Firemind
01 Brilliant Plan
01 Browbeat
01 Careful Study
01 Forget
01 Prosperity
01 Sleight of Hand
01 Winds of Change


Instant: 7


01 Reroute
01 Brainstorm
01 Careful Consideration
01 Inspiration
01 Visions of Beyond
01 Scent of Brine
01 Commandeer


Land: 39

01 Reliquary Tower
13 Island
05 Mountain
01 Riptide Laboratory
01 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
01 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
01 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
01 Caldera Lake
01 Evolving WIlds
01 Terramorphic Expanse
01 Izzet Boilerworks
01 Forgotten Cave
01 Blasted Landscape
01 Lonely Sandbar
01 Remote Isle
01 Smoldering Crater
01 Soldevi Excavations
01 Temple of the False God
01 Urza's Mine
01 Urza's Power Plant
01 Urza's Tower
01 Cephalid Coliseum
01 Bazaar of Baghdad


The restriction of sticking with a theme and not putting stuff in that would have made sense in another deck, like Curiosity or “Mr. I draw cards” Sphinx, really appeals to me and makes it a much bigger challenge to build. When you can’t just go out and stuff the 100 most powerful cards in a stack you have to get creative. When you look at the list you see stuff you would never see in a more normal list but it fits really well here.


So that rounds out most of what I have to talk about the deck. Thanks for taking a trip into my head and seeing some for the inner workings there. If you got any ideas for the deck or any other strange themes you would like to see built shoot me an email at jmfelber@gmail.com, or hit my twitter @RealFelber. I am hoping to eventually start taking weekly deck building challenges to write about, so any ideas are welcome. I am also on the Salvation boards all the time and if you wanna check out my experiment in MTG Trading check out The One Red Mountain Project.


Next time we will see my Mono-One Drop EDH deck, and talk about why Flying Men is amazing.