Commander Deck Tech: Edward Kenway

In this article, let's explore the open seas with Edward Kenway, our favorite Pirate Assassin, alongside a fleet of Vehicles and Pirates so we can find all the lost treasures at the bottom of the ocean.

Get your hat, sunscreen, and new shields, and let's dive into this deck tech!

Edward James Kenway, the son of humble farmers, was ambitious. He started his career as a privateer, but abandoned this righteous path to become a pirate, and, later on, an assassin.

In Magic: The Gathering, we got to know this character when the Assassin's Creed set came along, as it brought us Edward Kenway, the legendary creature.

If you enjoy Pirates, Edward is great, as he is another Grixis Pirate, which means we can use the best Pirates in the game in a deck with him. However, Pirates are not everything this Commander needs.

Kenway creates Treasures for each tapped Assassin, Pirate, and/or Vehicle you control in your end step.

In the combat phase, when a Vehicle you control deals damage to a player, you'll exile the top card in that player's deck face down. You can play it as long as it is exiled.

We can say Edward creates resources for you and removes resources from your opponent by stealing the top card in their deck - like any great Pirate should do.

In this article, we'll show you two lists: the first one focuses on Vehicles, but the second is more diverse, as it has Pirates, Assassins, and cards to tap them to create even more value.

Draw

Card draw is critical in any deck, and, luckily for us, we're playing colors with a great variety of cards with this effect. The ones we added to this list are:

Please note that, besides drawing cards, some of these cards interact with Edward Kenway's second effect, which creates Treasures when your cards are tapped. That's the case for Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains, Adrestia, Cyclonus, Cybertronian Fighter, Fearless Swashbuckler, Flamewar, Streetwise Operative, Jackdaw, Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, Starscream, Seeker Leader, The Belligerent, The Indomitable, and Weatherlight.

As this is an aggro deck, Bident of Thassa and Coastal Piracy made a lot of sense because they interact with combat damage, after all. If you want to draw cards passively, Black Market Connections is perfect: it is a classic modal enchantment that lets you draw cards, create a Treasure or even a Shapeshifter token, which also counts for Edward's effects.

Possible Game Finishers

Artifact-centered decks are quite common and can use great finishers. In this list, we're playing:

Rise and Shine is a sorcery with Overload. This means you can cast it with its Overload to change its text, and turn, for instance, all your Treasures into artifact creatures with four +1/+1 counters.

As for Cyberdrive Awakener, it has a static ability that grants your other artifacts flying. However, when it enters your board, each noncreature artifact you control also becomes a 4/4 artifact creature.

If you use these cards after a board wipe (in this list, we play Cyclonic Rift, Desynchronization, and Toxic Deluge), your opponents probably won't have enough cards to block the sheer number of artifacts you'll turn into creatures that turn.

Mana Rocks

Grixis is definitely not known for its ramp, so we added some artifacts to get more mana.

Keep in mind that Edward Kenway can create a lot of Treasures, but you'll need a good board and you'll have to wait until your end step. Better be safe than sorry.

We preferred mana rocks that cost up to 2 in this case. Besides them, we also play these cards to create Treasures (besides our commander):

By the way, Revel in Riches can also be a win condition in this deck!

And, to cast our nonartifact lands:

Making Treasures More Useful

On their own, Treasures are already cool, but we also play a few cards to make them even more fun, like Magda, Brazen Outlaw. She lets you sacrifice them to tutor a relevant artifact in your deck and put it in play. Magda, the Hoardmaster lets you sacrifice them to create 4/4 Dragon tokens with flying and haste.

Academy Manufactor turns the Treasures you create into Clues and Food. As for Junk Winder, it lets you tap a nonland enemy permanent and keep it tapped for a turn. So, it is great when you need to make a problematic enemy blocker useless.

As we said before, this alternative list will explore and have a lot of fun with cards that tap Pirates and Assassins.

As you can set the order of effects in your final phase, you can begin by tapping all your creatures in your second phase with cards like Kyren Negotiations, Opposition, or Hair-Strung Koto. Then, wait until the beginning of your final phase for Edward Kenway's effect to kick in, and take advantage of Unstoppable Plan's untapping effect.

We also separated a few cards with Convoke, or cards that interact with this, such as:

This list doesn't exactly focus on Kenway's second ability, which exiles the top card in your opponent's deck. It is more friendly and casual than our other list.

To turn non-Pirate, non-Assassin creatures into Pirates and Assassins, this list plays Maskwood Nexus, which also creates tokens with Changeling that will help you fill the board with the right creature type.

When WotC announced this Assassin's Creed set, the first card that stood out to us as a commander was, obviously, Ezio Auditore da Firenze (which was later on banned as a commander in Duel Commander). Then, we got excited about Eivor, Battle-Ready (whose deck tech you can check out here), but, finally, we saw Edward Kenway.

He was certainly a bit unexpected.

You can definitely build a rather strong deck with him and the right Vehicles. However, if that's not what the type of deck you enjoy playing in Commander, no biggie. You can also just build a weaker, friendlier list that still takes advantage of his effects rather well.

Even if you're not a fan of Assassin's Creed, if this card is lying around in one of your folders or shoeboxes below your bed, you should definitely test him out as your commander. He can be a lot of fun.

What did you think of this list? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!