[[Magus Lucea Kane]] is a Timmy’s dream commander. Big mana, big creatures, big spells? Heck yeah. And any deck that begs me to put [[Dopplegang]] in it is one I need to try out.

I stumbled on Lucea via a random youtube video recently, and was intrigued not the least because I hadn’t found a Temur commander I really gelled with. Somehow I overlooked her when looking at the Warhmmer decks when they came out.

I have built a [[Zaxara, the Exemplary]] deck in the past and had a fair amount of fun with X spells…. but Black definitely felt like the odd color out in Zaxara… and while she makes big hydras, I had to devote a fair amount of deck space to making the hydras useful… and they don’t help the X spells in the deck be any more effective.

Now to swap out black for the king of X spells, red? And make the commander’s ability directly affect the X spells you cast rather than producing some unrelated effect? That sounds really cool.

I built the deck with a bunch of untapping effects for Lucea and the other big mana dorks in the deck. I threw in a few Hydra/Tyranid creatures with evasion… a 10/10 with no evasion is barely better than a 2/2. Most notably I put in zero effects to enhance the big creatures. They’re gonna be big and they already have evasion, I don’t need to waste deck space on making already-good creatures better.

And oh boy, is the deck fun to play. You get the puzzle of figuring out the optimal way to tap/untap stuff… you get to cast big spells and make copies of them…. and you regularly get to cast a Dopplegang for X=3-4 and copy it twice for 27-48 copies of permanents on the board. Bwahaha.

And finally, you get to throw burn spells at people’s face in commander and actually have them be a threat. [[Jaya’s Immolating Inferno]] for 10, copied 3 times? kaboom.

If you want to add spice, it’s also pretty easy to produce infinite mana. I actually tried to avoid that in my deck, but you don’t have to.

Don’t forget Lucea can copy abilities, too (but not mana abilities!). This can be sneaky good at getting you more mana when you don’t necessarily have an X spell to copy and/or as a way to multiply her effect if you can untap her.

[[Magus of the Candelabra]] - x, untap x lands. When you copy this, you can tap the lands in between untappings to effectively double the mana you get from your lands. Also if you have $800 or don’t mind proxying one, the original Candelabra of Tawnos works just as well.

[[Ventifact Bottle]] - this is along the same lines, except reusable. The only problem is that you don’t get the mana until next turn. This will effectively triple your mana next turn…. but you gotta wait for the bottle to make it around the table with like 20 counters on it.

[[Marvin Murderous Mimic]] can copy your commander’s ability or a mana dork or untapper as needed. It goes accidentally infinite with [[Ioreth of the Healing House]] and your commander.

[[Mockingbird]] and [[Altered Ego]] are exactly what we want in this deck - copying spells that are also X spells. Copy your best mana dorks, or copy someone else’s stuff. Note that you don’t even have to put mana into Altered Ego’s X… that just gives the creature extra counters. It still counts as an X spell even if X is zero.

[[Illusionist’s Bracers]] on Seeker of Skybreak or Aphetto Alchemist with your commander. Notably, the bracers do not work on your commander’s ability, because that is a mana ability, and the bracers specifically say it doesn’t work… but it’s almost as good to just be able to untap your commander twice. You can tap her in between and still get multiple activations… it’s just not double.

[[Sting, the Glinting Dagger]] is a sneaky-good equipment that untaps the equipped creature during each player’s combat step. This is great because not only does it give you one more activation of Lucea on your turn, but you can move it to a hydra that attacked to untap it as a blocker on other people’s turns.

In my experience playtesting, getting haste makes a big different in this deck. It can really help your mana dorks help pay for themselves as well as letting your giant hydras swing immediately. I run [[Thousand-Year Elixir]] (ok, that one’s not haste for attacking), [[Rising of the Day]], [[Fires of Yavimaya]], and [[Temur Ascendancy]].

I like [[Canopy Tactician]] and [[Rosheen Meanderer]] as multi-mana dorks that make your untap effects that much better even if Lucea isn’t on the board.

The deck just gets bonkers fast. I’m a Timmy, I admit it.