Last updated on March 14, 2024

Kalamax, the Stormsire - Illustration by Nicholas Gregory

Kalamax, the Stormsire | Illustration by Nicholas Gregory

Spellslinger decks are a ubiquitous archetype in Commander. Often associated with Izzet or blue-red commanders, the archetype focuses on playing lots of cheap instants and sorceries to accrue a bunch of value alongside cards that benefit from you casting a flurry of spells.

This deck especially zeroes in on playing instants to get the most value out of its commander: Kalamax, the Stormsire. The only thing more fun than playing a dinosaur as your commander is a dinosaur that’s also a hurricane that doubles your spells!

The Deck

Niv-Mizzet, Parun - Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

Niv-Mizzet, Parun | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

Commander (1)

Kalamax, the Stormsire

Planeswalkers (2)

Narset, Parter of Veils
Ral, Storm Conduit

Creatures (13)

Archmage Emeritus
Quandrix Apprentice
Dualcaster Mage
Llanowar Elves
Elvish Mystic
Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
Fyndhorn Elves
Niv-Mizzet, Parun
Deekah, Fractal Theorist
Baral, Chief of Compliance
Storm-Kiln Artist
Birds of Paradise
Veyran, Voice of Duality

Instants (35)

Frantic Search
Opt
Fact or Fiction
Decisive Denial
Roiling Regrowth
Silundi Vision
Dig Through Time
Growth Spiral
Unleash Fury
Harrow
Lightning Bolt
Comet Storm
Counterspell
Consider
Crop Rotation
Chaos Warp
Nature's Claim
Wild Magic Surge
Beast Within
Expansion // Explosion
Tamiyo's Safekeeping
Miscast
March of Swirling Mist
Delay
Galvanic Iteration
Slip Out the Back
Electrodominance
An Offer You Can't Refuse
Rapid Hybridization
Prismari Command
Manamorphose
Pongify
Mystical Tutor
Veil of Summer
Nexus of Fate

Sorceries (5)

Baral's Expertise
Nature's Lore
Expressive Iteration
Gamble
Heat Shimmer

Enchantments (4)

Double Vision
Sorcerer Class
Arcane Bombardment
Shark Typhoon

Artifacts (3)

Sol Ring
Arcane Signet
Twinning Staff

Lands (37)

Ash Barrens
Command Tower
Temple of Abandon
Exotic Orchard
Temple of Epiphany
Temple of Mystery
Frontier Bivouac
Yavimaya Coast
Rockfall Vale
Shivan Reef
Copperline Gorge
Karplusan Forest
Sulfur Falls
Hinterland Harbor
Sheltered Thicket
Rootbound Crag
Barkchannel Pathway
Cragcrown Pathway
Dreamroot Cascade
Spire Garden
Forest x2
Mountain x3
Riverglide Pathway
Training Center
Rejuvenating Springs
Botanical Sanctum
Stormcarved Coast
Ketria Triome
Island x5
Spirebluff Canal

It’s a quintessential spellslinger deck. You want to cast a bunch of non-creature spells, primarily instants, and double those with your commander in tandem with other cards that care about casting instants to get ahead and win the game.

This is a controlling deck with large amounts of card draw and interaction, especially countermagic. You’ve also got a pretty strong ramp package. You want to use these elements to play a drawn-out game and finish your opponents with a massive spell that deals a ton of damage and double it to deal with multiple players or threats.

Your finishers are mostly X spells in the vein of Fireball, though you can also close things out with a few cards that generate swarms of tokens to go along with your spells or by pumping your commander until it’s the biggest creature on the battlefield.

The Commander

Kalamax, the Stormsire

Kalamax, the Stormsire is a great fit for this deck because it doubles up all the cards you play. This generates a ton of free value. Killing one creature with a Lightning Bolt is great, but getting to kill two things (or just getting two Bolts to kill a planeswalker or larger creature) is an even better return on your mana.

Kalamax also functions as a win condition. It’ll grow into a threat quite rapidly thanks to its second ability, and winning with commander damage is a distinct possibility in this deck. You’ve got a lot of other ways to copy your spells, and its second ability triggers any time you copy an instant, it doesn’t have to be Kalamax’s trigger. Its color identity is also quite powerful. Adding green to the mix gives this deck access to higher-quality ramp spells than a Grixis or Jeskai deck would.

This is also a great commander to facilitate a controlling strategy since it doubles your interaction. You can almost always win the first counterwar you get into each turn since your first counterspell becomes two. Even if you lose out, your opponent needs to use two of their spells to get their first one through, which is a fine trade in your favor to run them out of cards.

Magecraft

One of the more solid spellslinger keywords came from Strixhaven. Magecraft works great with Kalamax because it triggers when you copy spells, not just when you cast them, so you get double the value for your spell and for your magecraft card.

Quandrix Apprentice

Quandrix Apprentice isn’t the flashiest card, but it’s a solid role-player. You want to be casting big spells, so you want to hit all your land drops. This basically guarantees that you always hit lands and it draws you extra cards every time you cast an instant.

Veyran, Voice of Duality

Next to Kalamax, Veyran, Voice of Duality is one of the strongest cards in the deck. It’ll trigger Kalamax’s first ability an additional time, giving you three copies of the first instant you’re playing. It also doubles its own magecraft trigger and all the other magecraft triggers for cascading value.

Archmage Emeritus

Archmage Emeritus draws so many cards in this deck. Most of your list is instants and sorceries, so you’ll see tons of cards. One copy trigger from Kalamax results in two cards plus whatever else you draw from the spell you cast.

Storm-Kiln Artist

This friendly dwarf isn’t here to draw you cards but make you mana. Storm-Kiln Artist generates a huge amount of Treasures that let you cast more spells. This is especially important to get high values on the X spells you need to double to win the game.

Deekah, Fractal Theorist

Deekah, Fractal Theorist is the last magecraft card and one that offers an alternate wincon to the X spell strategy. It’ll turn your spells into an army of Fractal tokens that can overwhelm your opponents with damage or provide a solid line of defense to buy you time for your other cards to do their thing.

Casting Spells

The magecraft cards aren’t the only ones that benefit when you cast instants and sorceries, but they’re distinct because they care about copying them. These cards provide plenty of value even without caring about doubling.

Rashmi, Eternities Crafter

Rashmi, Eternities Crafter doesn’t just care about instants and sorceries but provides similar value to every spell you play. It’s a fantastic stream of card advantage to help you stay ahead. You won’t always get to cast the spells you reveal, but just making your countermagic replace itself is well worth the slot. Note that if you reveal an X spell, you can choose not to cast it and put it into your hand.

Sorcerer Class

Sorcerer Class is a surprisingly strong roleplayer in this deck. It’ll fix your hand and help your creatures ramp your spells, which is useful with this deck’s token generators and provides a lot of reach in the late game. It’s not flashy, but it’ll win you games.

Double Vision

How many times can you copy a spell? Double Vision bumps the count up by one. This is a bit of an expensive enchantment that may not do much the turn it comes down, but if it’s not answered, it’ll snowball out of control.

Arcane Bombardment

Speaking of doubling value, Arcane Bombardment snowballs even harder than Double Vision. After a few turns, you’ll get an insane amount of value and start playing a bunch of free spells and stacking tons of counters on Kalamax. The counterspells in the deck are whiffs, but it’s worth including.

Shark Typhoon

Another big token producer, Shark Typhoon gives you flying sharks for every instant or sorcery you cast. This card won’t make them as often as Deekah, but the flying gives invaluable evasion and the cycling ability gives the Typhoon flexibility.

Twinning Staff

Twinning Staff gives another way to make more copies of your spells. It can also serve as a mana sink if you find yourself in the late game with tons of mana and minimal ways to spend it.

Niv-Mizzet, Parun

Niv-Mizzet, Parun is right up there with Veyran and Kalamax as one of the best spells in the deck. Niv-Mizzet gives almost endless value. It draws cards with every instant or sorcery any player plays and turns all that card draw into damage. If it sits on the board for a turn cycle, it can often wipe away all your opponents’ smaller-value creatures. It’s both great at board control and as a finisher, the true definition of a game-warping bomb.

Protective Spells

Kalamax is a key piece of this deck, as are several other creatures like Niv-Mizzet and Veyran. Since your opponents will be gunning for them, you have a suite of protective spells to keep your important pieces safe.

Tamiyo's Safekeeping

Tamiyo's Safekeeping is one of the best protective spells in the game. A single mana protects any of your permanents from most kinds of interaction your opponents can throw at it. It doesn’t just save your creatures but your value enchantments too.

Slip Out the Back

Another great option, Slip Out the Back offers a lot of versatility. It protects a creature while making it larger and evades spot removal and wraths that don’t destroy creatures like Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge. You can also use it on an opponent’s creature in a pinch to shut them down until their next turn.

Veil of Summer

Veil of Summer functions more like a counterspell than a protective one, but it has a play pattern similar to these other cards. It’s usually a reactive spell to protect your card on the stack or in play. You can also cast it as your first spell of the turn if you want to do something flashy, either baiting out a counterspell on the Veil or providing yourself with protection for the rest of the turn.

March of Swirling Mist

March of Swirling Mist is rather like the inverse of Slip Out the Back. While you’ll primarily want to use Slip to protect your spells and occasionally to disrupt your opponents’, March wants to be used first and foremost to stop your opponents from doing things with their creatures. It can protect your creatures and is useful in the face of a wrath, but it's best used to remove blockers to take out a planeswalker/player or to protect yourself from a large attack.

Removal

These removal spells are super important to make sure you can prevent your opponents from getting too far ahead of you in the game.

Pongify and Rapid Hybridization are great at shutting down creatures. Temur doesn’t have tons of removal that’s as simple as destroying a creature, so this is an invaluable addition. The 3/3 doesn’t really matter; you can easily produce tokens to block it, and they won’t block Kalamax well as it grows out of control.

Chaos Warp

Speaking of removal that turns one card into another, Chaos Warp gets rid of most threats, never to be seen again. There’s always the chance that your opponent flips something scary into play, but it’s often worth the risk to remove a massive threat your opponent won’t see again without a tutor.

Nature's Claim

Nature's Claim is simply the best instant that removes artifacts and enchantments. The four life often won’t matter because you’ll win by a wide enough margin. Unconditionally destroying anything from a turn 1 Sol Ring to an early Portal to Phyrexia makes this incredibly strong, if unassuming.

Wild Magic Surge

Temur removal is very chaotic, and Wild Magic Surge is another spell that turns a threat on board into something from the deck. This is slightly more likely to hit a real threat than Chaos Warp since it can’t blank on a non-permanent, but this is a great catch-all. It also hits lands, which is useful if somebody plays something like Cabal Coffers.

Beast Within

You’re not scared of vanilla 3/3s, which you can prove with another spell that makes one. Beast Within is a little more expensive than the blue options but makes up for it by hitting any permanent, including lands and planeswalkers.

Prismari Command

Prismari Command is a flexible card that fits here but could also go with ramp or card draw. It gives the most utility in removal, however. A common play pattern is to destroy an opponent’s early mana acceleration, be it a mana dork or a Signet, and make a Treasure to give yourself a mana advantage. Keep in mind that Kalamax’s ability copies the chosen modes of modal spells, so if you choose to destroy an artifact and make a Treasure, the copy only does those two modes.

Countermagic

You’ve also got a suite of countermagic that lets you stop your opponents’ threats before you ever need to turn them into 3/3s. These are great with Kalamax since it gives you two counters to interfere with your opponents.

An Offer You Can't Refuse

An Offer You Can't Refuse is one of the better 1-mana counterspells printed recently. It’s a great catch-all that stops most threats and interactive spells. Giving your opponents Treasures can be an issue, so you’ll want to reserve this for the biggest threats. Even if you copy this, your opponent only gets two Treasures if you target the same spell because the copy will counter your opponent’s spell and the original will fizzle without a legal target.

Miscast

Miscast is another efficient counterspell that does a lot to shut down early plays. It falls off a little later in the game when players have spare mana floating around, but Kalamax’s copy ability helps cover this by making the opponent effectively pay 6 instead of 3.

Counterspell

A classic card, Counterspell is one of the best counterspells on the market. It does what you want as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Delay

Delay is a neat little counterspell that delays the threat. It’s not a permanent solution to some scary cards but buys you time to find a more effective answer. It’s really good against counterspells and spells with X in their cost that don’t do anything when cast from exile.

Decisive Denial

Decisive Denial can be a removal spell or a counterspell, depending on what you prefer. It’ll usually be a counter since you don’t have tons of creatures to fight with. That said, Kalamax will often be big enough to punch problematic creatures.

Card Draw

We’ve looked at a few cards that draw you cards when you cast or double spells, but you’ve also got spells that are card advantage in and of themselves that let you see so much of your deck when they get doubled.

Opt and Consider are great little cantrips that Kalamax doubles. Neither is particularly flashy, but they’ll help you find what you need to deal with the current situation. If these get doubled, you can see up to four fresh cards for a single mana, which is fantastic value.

Growth Spiral

A card that was too powerful to be in Standard, Growth Spiral gives this deck a cheap cantrip that also ramps. This is just a super solid card that replaces itself and can put you up a land or two.

Frantic Search

Frantic Search is a card that gets better with every copy you make of it. It provides card filtering rather than card advantage, but also provides a ton of ramp. If you cast this for three mana, the copy untaps the three lands used to cast it, which you can use to float mana and then untap with the original to get six mana out of three lands. And that’s only with one copy.

Manamorphose

Manamorphose is like Frantic Search as an option that helps you draw cards while producing mana if it’s copied, except copies of Manamorphose put you up in cards. It can also work as mana fixing in a pinch.

Fact or Fiction

There are few cards that are more fun to resolve in a game of Commander than Fact or Fiction. And the fun only multiplies with the number of copies you have! One copy of FoF usually draws you two or three cards. Imagine the value with two or three copies!

Dig Through Time

Dig Through Time is one of the best card draw spells ever printed. Part of the power comes from being card selection rather than raw card draw. You’ll pitch plenty of cards into your graveyard to cast this for two mana, and a single copy effect gives you the best four of the top fourteen cards in your library. If you can copy this a few times, it’s basically a tutor.

Mystical Tutor

Copying Mystical Tutor with Kalamax is a little redundant since you can’t use this tutor twice because of how it shuffles, but this is still well worth the inclusion. You’ve got lots of good hits that answer your opponents’ plays or let you end the game, making this a valuable piece of consistency.

Gamble

Gamble is just fun. Enough of your cards replace themselves, so you won’t have to worry about casting Gamble with a small hand, bettering your odds of keeping the card you want. It provides valuable consistency while adding a bit of fun and chaos to the mix.

Ponder

Officially too good to be legal in Legacy, Expressive Iteration is one of the best cantrips printed since Ponder and Preordain. This provides invaluable setup, sculpting your hand to perfection while ensuring you hit land drops and cleaning away any bad draws.

Narset, Parter of Veils

Narset, Parter of Veils is a powerful stax piece on top of the card advantage. Everybody in Commander is trying to draw cards, and Narset prevents that. It also digs pretty deep into your deck to find answers and value.

Big Spells

These are your big game-finishing spells. They’re mostly instants that deal X damage, so you can pump a bunch of mana into them and then make copies with Kalamax or your other copy spells, copying the value of X to burn people out.

Comet Storm

Comet Storm is a clear example of this card type. It deals X to anything, and for a little mana investment, deals X to several things. You just want to pump a bunch of mana into X so that you double your damage. While this card is a wincon, don’t be afraid to use this early to deal with planeswalkers or creatures that might prevent you from getting to the late game.

Electrodominance

Electrodominance deals a bunch of damage while letting you cast free spells. You can also cast multiple spells if you make multiple copies of this. It can’t hit multiple targets like Comet Storm but offers a useful combination of damage upfront with an additional threat.

Expansion // Explosion

Expansion // Explosion is a wincon, card draw, and a counterspell. Expansion provides tons of value by copying counterspells to win a counter war or copying cheap, valuable spells you want more value from. It can also copy our opponents’ spells. Meanwhile, Explosion finishes people off while refilling your hand. You can even make your opponents draw the cards if they’re trying to do something saucy that mills their library.

Nexus of Fate

The only big instant that’s not an X spell, Nexus of Fate is the only instant turn spell in the deck since it’s also the only instant that lets you take extra turns. You don’t have any ways to exploit Nexus shuffling back into your library to take infinite turns. It’s just incredible value. With Kalamax in play, you stack at two extra turns, and it’s easy for this deck to get three or four in a row.

The Mana Base

To kick off the mana base, you’ve got a bundle of ramp. There’s not a ton of instant speed ramp, but you’ve got some choice options that Kalamax doubles for a huge mana advantage.

Crop Rotation

Crop Rotation isn’t ramping without copying it, but if you can copy it, this spell provides the best ramp and mana fixing in the deck. You can turn a basic land into Ketria Triome, and just copying this once or twice ensures you have perfect mana for the rest of the game.

These two spells are similar in their ability to put a bunch of basic lands into play. Notably, if Harrow gets countered, you lose a land since it’s an additional cost. Roiling Regrowth sacrifices the land as part of its resolution, so you don’t lose resources if it gets countered. Both are fantastic when copied, putting you three mana ahead of where you started.

Mana Dorks

You’ve got a pretty standard assortment of mana dorks to go along with your spells. Birds of Paradise is the best 1-mana dork for fixing and ramp, while Llanowar Elves and both of its functional copies help you burst out of the gate strong, even if they don’t fix your mana.

Baral, Chief of Compliance

You’ve also got Baral, Chief of Compliance here as an honorary mana dork that ramps you by making your spells cheaper. This often provides lots of mana advantage over the course of a long game. It’s also pretty good at filtering your hand with your countermagic.

Beyond these dorks, the mana base is pretty standard. You’ve got a suite of lands to fix your mana and ensure you can just cast your spells at a reasonable time. You have ten basics, which is a pretty high basic land count for a 3-color deck. This is mostly out of respect for copying some of your ramp spells that can take a bunch of basics from the deck at once.

The Strategy

You’re looking to play a longer game with this deck. The goal is to outvalue your opponents by doubling your spells until you’ve amassed enough mana to start throwing around game-ending Comet Storms and other similar cards.

One of the most important things to look for in an opening hand is ramp. Ramp is what makes this deck run. You’ve got a decently high land count to hit your land drops, but hitting land drops isn’t enough to cast those big spells you need to win the game.

Interaction, especially countermagic, is also important. Countermagic is just really good with Kalamax. It doesn’t just grow your commander but also pulls double duty in protecting it from opposing removal while stopping opponents from advancing their own threats. Looking for a good interactive spell is also good in an opening hand.

One thing to be aware of is that you basically always want to be attacking with Kalamax. If you spend a bunch of turns with it on defense, you’re not getting the value you want. Using your interaction to help keep it attacking is a solid strategy.

When doubling your spells, you need to consider two things: which phase during which you’re doubling spells, and what you can play on your opponents’ turns.

You can always cast an instant in combat to grow Kalamax and deal more damage. That’s a solid option but might not be the best play. If you’re planning to play something like Frantic Search that will produce mana because it’s getting copied, it’s often worth skipping out on the damage to get that mana in your mana phase.

You often want to cast doubled removal spells after Kalamax has been declared as an attacker but before blockers are declared to help it survive the combat.

Kalamax can also trigger on your opponents’ turns. It’s important to keep this in mind so you can extract the most value. Even if you can play out your entire hand on your turn, you’ll often want to spread your spells around to make as many copies as possible. You don’t need to worry too much about playing around countermagic since it’s not super effective against copied spells.

Combos and Interactions

You’ve got a few infinite combos to help close out games just in case you can’t get there with your X spells. Before we look at those, there’s fun little interaction with Kalamax, the Stormsire and Unleash Fury.

This is a great way to one-tap a player and take them out of the game. If Kalamax has one counter on it and Unleash Fury is the first spell you cast, Kalamax gets a counter and copies it. Its power doubles from 6 to 12 to 24, dealing plenty of commander damage to eliminate a player from the game. It’s a great way to take out somebody disrespecting your commander as a wincon.

You’ve also got two infinites that use Dualcaster Mage. The first uses the Mage and Heat Shimmer, needing six mana and both cards in hand.

Cast Heat Shimmer targeting anything. Then hold priority and cast Dualcaster Mage. When it enters the battlefield, make a copy of Heat Shimmer targeting the Mage. The copy goes on the stack and resolves before the original, making a copy of Dualcaster Mage, which then makes a copy of the original Heat Shimmer. This loop makes infinite hasty Dualcaster Mages to win the game with.

The other combo pairs Dualcaster Mage with Baral's Expertise. Again, you need both in hand it requires eight mana.

Cast Baral's Expertise targeting anything you like. Hold priority and cast Dualcaster Mage. Make a copy of Expertise with one target being Dualcaster Mage and the other two targets being whatever you like. Let the copy resolve.

The copy’s effects resolve in order. The targeted permanents, including Dualcaster, return to their owners’ hands. You can then cast a spell with mana value of four or less from your hand, so recast the Mage. Since this happened in response to the original Expertise, make another copy and keep going through the loop.

At worst, this is a build-your-own Cyclonic Rift that bounces all your opponents’ artifacts and creatures. Since you’re making copies of Expertise, this triggers your magecraft cards an infinite number of times for the following effects:

Ral, Storm Conduit

Ral, Storm Conduit turns this into a win by dealing damage to your opponents each time you make a copy.

Deekah, Fractal Theorist

Deekah, Fractal Theorist produces infinite 5/5s, forcing your opponents to answer your board in the next turn cycle or lose.

Storm-Kiln Artist generates infinite Treasure tokens and gets infinitely high power. Infinite mana is an instant kill with Comet Storm. You can also use the infinite mana to cast Expansion // Explosion, where X equals the number of cards in your library to draw Comet Storm.

Archmage Emeritus

Archmage Emeritus lets you draw your entire deck to find one of the above wincons. Keep in mind that the Archmage’s draw trigger is not a may ability. You need to use one of your removal spells on it as you’re nearing the end of your library so you don’t just deck yourself.

Rule 0 Violations Check

This deck is pretty straight and narrow. The main thing that some tables might not care for is the infinite combos listed above. The only piece of those combos that’s not great in isolation is Heat Shimmer, and even then, it’s still a fine value card. If you’re playing with people who don’t like infinite combos, it’s easy not to play them as infinite combos, just individually strong cards in a spellslinger deck.

Budget Options

While this deck doesn’t have many exhortingly pricy cards, there are a few options you can trim to save some cash.

Nexus of Fate provides so much value but is just about the most expensive card in the deck. You could replace it with a cheaper extra turn option like Time Warp that Kalamex can’t copy, but your other effects can. You could also look for another big instant like Storm King's Thunder if extra turns aren’t your thing.

Shark Typhoon offers lots of pressure but is a ten-dollar card. It can be replaced by the far cheaper Metallurgic Summonings that still makes tokens that scale with the size of your spells–they just don’t fly.

Veil of Summer is a bit expensive for a protective spell that you could replace with a few options. If you think you’ll most often play it as a counterspell in your playgroup, you could replace it with a counterspell like Negate. If you’re looking at it for the hexproof, something like Tyvar's Stand can offer similar protection.

Mystical Tutor is another card that could be cut for budget reasons, though it’d hurt the deck’s consistency. Something else that lets you see a lot of cards like Ponder would be the best replacement.

Other Builds

This is one direction to take Kalamax, though there’s another option you could explore. This build seeks to use its copying ability to accrue value over the course of a long game and finish things with big spells, but you could go for a more aggressive route.

Kalamax makes an interesting Voltron commander. You’ve already got some of that with Unleash Fury, but you could go way harder. Kalamax grows huge with pump spells like Giant Growth and Temur Battle Rage to beat down your opponents and end the game quickly rather than explosively.

Commanding Conclusion

Storm-Kiln Artist - Illustration by Manuel Castañon

Storm-Kiln Artist | Illustration by Manuel Castañon

Kalamax, the Stormsire makes a great spellslinger commander. It provides tons of value by doubling your instants, which is an effect this style of deck loves in the command zone. It lets you play a controlling game that ends with massive X spells dealing an absolutely silly amount of damage.

Having green as a part of its color identity also makes Kalamax an interesting option because it gives this strategy access to some top-tier ramping.

What did you think of the list? How would you build Kalamax? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe!


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