Deck building is hard. Building "good" decks with "bad" cards is somewhat harder. Sometimes that "bad" card is the commander.

My History with Kaust, Eyes of the Glade:

I'll admit, I was a little bit excited when Kaust was revealed during preview season. I've loved the face-down/face-up morph/manifest/cloak/disguise concept for years and it looked substantially different from earlier attempts at the theme like Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer or Animar, Soul of Elements. Still, I probably wouldn't have bought it with my own money. Instead, I won the pre-con in an end-of-month giveaway at my LGS (shout out Dame Games).

Since then I've been tinkering with it. At first attempting to make a value toolbox in the style of Kadena, a colorless beatdown deck, and a D&T-style stax and tax monstrosity. None of these really worked. The themes all fought with the commander and the face-down card pool to choose from.

Instead, there's one thing that's extremely important to understand about Kaust: he isn't a morph/disguise commander. Not in the traditional sense anyway. He doesn't provide you with immediate card and board advantage that can take over a game just by playing face-down creatures. Nor does he reduce the cost of face-down creatures. Instead, Kaust is a manifest/cloak commander. He let's us abuse those mechanics to cheat out some interesting threats for very, very cheap.

Gameplan gives us the two core cards of the deck; Mastery of the Unseen and Ugin's Mastery.

Manifest Masteries

How do we make the most of these two cards? Their overall effect is fairly similar, but operate in distinct ways.

We have two distinct lines then, both resulting in different flavors of infinite mana. There are plenty of ways to do this in Naya.

To get the most out of Mastery of the Unseen we simply need the ability to make infinite (white) mana. Some of our options include:

  • Emiel the Blessed + Dockside Extortionist + four artifacts/enchantments on opponent boards
  • Emiel the Blessed + Selvala, Heart of the Wild + Misc. Haste Enabler
  • Selvala, Heart of the Wilds + Staff of Domination + Misc. six power creature And so on, we can adjust to taste and budget.

In the case of Ugin's Mastery we need don't necessarily need infinite mana, we just need to loop casting a colorless spell. For this we can

Of Manifests and Cloaks

Once we have those enablers, what are we trying to manifest? We have some criteria to look out for:

  • Expensive beaters for a reduced price
    • Our primary win condition is reducing life totals to 0 and we can save some mana doing it by flipping some big beef.
  • Negative ETB effects
    • Since we're manifesting, positive ETB triggers are wasted. Negative ETB triggers are effectively dodged though. We can skim some value on some value from big stat lines with awful ETBs.
  • Triggers on combat damage to players
    • If we attack with 2/2 face-down creatures we miss out on "when this creature attacks" triggers. We do however still get combat damage and "while this creature is attacking" effects.
  • Immediate status effects
    • Flip over a creature that grants some status, like indestructable

With that in mind we can immediately consider some stand-alone win condition all-stars like Blightsteel Colossus. In fact, we immediately end the game if we flip our Colossus while we have a Pyrotechnic Performer on board.

We can bring in a package of 10-12 creatures that include some fun cards, here's a non-exhaustive list at three different pricepoints (as of 6/4/2024):

Big time John Hammond players, spare no expense:

  • Blightsteel Colossus
  • Ancient Copper Dragon
  • Old Gnawbone
  • Avacyn, Angel of Hope
  • Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
  • Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
  • Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Some hitters at mid-tier prices:

  • Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
  • Bloodthirster
  • Cavern-Hoard Dragon
  • Balefire Dragon
  • Blinding Angel
  • Angel of Destiny
  • Ancient Bronze Dragon
  • Ancient Gold Dragon

Some choice budget options:

  • Steel Hellkite
  • Giant Adephage
  • Port Razer
  • Siege Behemoth
  • Akki Underminer
  • Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar
  • Dragon Mage

Is it Good?

Well, no. Still bad.

Sorry.