I've been itching to build more decks now that NZ is open for business, so I scrolled down the IKO and C20 commanders. Wasn't really expecting to like Cazur and Ukkima, but the more I thought about it, the more an edric-esque deck with black and more damage focus sounded like a fun antidote to the sometimes grindy games I've been playing recently. And my collection overflows with crappy 1-drop evasive creatures.
So I go on EDHrec and look them up, and the #1 synergy card? Food Chain. 42% of the C+U decks on EDHrec are food chain combo, which essentially don't give a crap about Cazur, and only care about Ukkima insofar as he has "ltb: do something that wins the game when done infinitely", and they have a good color identity. What's more, I remember overhearing people at my LGS talking about Ukkima and joking about how he was only good for sacking to food chain - a conversation that now made a lot more sense, given that nearly half of people building this deck are building the same tedious cEDH deck.
So now when I go to play this deck at my LGS, I look forward to needing to tell everyone I play against "don't worry, I'm not playing the combo" just because I'm playing the commanders the way they were intended, instead of caring about the asinine things cEDH cares about, namely: "does this commander give me an out for an established infinite combo that was already boring in 2014?" Fine, cEDH, go ruin Zur, go ruin Arcum, go ruin Ghave...those cards are broken all on their own. When someone sits down with Arcum, he deserves the scrutiny. But Ukkima? Ukkima did nothing wrong.
Alright, enough salt. Here's the deck. I need to figure out lands still, but it took a long time to whittle down the list to this point, so here's what I've got so far:
Cazur + Ukkima
Approximate Total Cost: