Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy Commander Deck Guide

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy | Illustrated by Jason Rainville

One of the easiest ways to win a game of Magic is by having more resources than your opponent. This could be creatures on board, cards in hand, or other resources. As many EDH players can attest, having a significant mana advantage is one of the easiest ways to dominate a Commander game.

The strength of a mana advantage is why green is such a powerful color in casual to mid-powered lists: You get an unparalleled mana advantage, allowing you to jam powerful spells well ahead of schedule, burying your opponents. One commander capable of generating a devastating mana advantage is Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.

How much mana can we create, and what are the best monsters to spend it on? Let’s find out!

The Deck

Kogla, the Titan Ape | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy offers such an overwhelming advantage it's hard to build it casually. Kinnan frequents cEDH tables, but this deck is merely mid-powered. We don’t have any of the infinite combos associated with a high-powered or cEDH Kinnan deck, instead focusing on casting large creatures illegally early.

These creatures are supported by blue’s countermagic and card draw. Decks producing lots of mana leverage Rhystic Study and The One Ring beautifully: They have the resources to cast most of the drawn spells, while decks without significant acceleration might find themselves regularly discarding to hand size.

We have a handful of disruptive creatures that annoy our opponents and help close the game. Our top-end includes creatures capable of dominating games solo, like Koma, Cosmos Serpent and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger.

The Commander: Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy holds the entire deck together. Other commanders encourage mana ramp strategies, but few hold a candle to Kinnan’s efficient mana production. A 2-cost mana doubler is insane. It enables incredibly explosive starts since 2-cost mana rocks like Talisman of Creativity and Thought Vessel become mana-neutral instead of mana-negative.

As if that wasn’t enough, its activated ability gives us a mana sink! It ensures we never lack ways to spend the oodles of mana the deck makes. The ability works best against other blue decks since it puts the creatures directly into play, preventing your opponents from countering it.

Our top-end creatures must be non-human to maximize Kinnan's second ability. That’s hardly a problem in the color of elementals, beasts, and other monsters. It’s non-restrictive since our colors naturally gravitate towards non-human creatures. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is ultimately one of the most mana-efficient ramp commanders with virtually no downsides or deck-building restrictions.

Kinnan’s Monsters

What makes a good monstrous top-end? For this deck, I wanted to look beyond the stat line and consider creatures’ impact on the game. Expensive creatures tend to get powerful effects, especially with the current Magic design. I wanted all my top-end to draw cards or disrupt my opponents, counting on their powerful effects and hefty stats to close the game. There are two notably absent Kinnan staples: Hullbreaker Horror and Tidespout Tyrant. These cards are infinite combo machines that this specific build isn't interested in.

Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth provides value similar to Kinnan by putting our best creatures directly into play alongside some lands for a combination of ramp and card advantage. It dies into Temple of Cultivation for even further ramp.

Wandering Archaic makes counterwars hell for your opponents since they need to pay an additional per spell. It provides additional value beyond disrupting countermagic, letting you cash in on cards like Night's Whisper or removal spells. You can mostly ignore Explore the Vastlands on this creature.

I dearly love Kogla, the Titan Ape, maybe more than the card deserves. It’s perfect for this deck: a fatty that kills a creature on ETB and continues destroying things each time it attacks. The activated ability even protects Kinnan or rebuys Eternal Witness for extra card draw.

Consecrated Sphinx is our best card draw creature. You go up six cards in a turn cycle from your opponents’ draw steps. Having this in play can discourage drawing from effects like Rhystic Study and The One Ring until your opponents find an answer—though your six cards give you a decent chance at answering their answer!

Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait lacks the raw card advantage of the sphinx, but access to ramp and card draw pulls enough weight since this deck can drop Aesi on turn 3 or 4.

Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant is not an okay card. The disruptive element is huge; removing this or any of your other threats requires coordination between two players with a piece of removal each or one player with two. Either way, Jin-Gitaxias tends to eat two pieces of removal while doubling some of your spells.

Few Simic cards dominate games like Koma, Cosmos Serpent. The steady token production overwhelms your opponents. They have a tiny window of opportunity to remove Koma before it becomes indestructible, and the tapping ability swings games quickly.

Nezahal, Primal Tide plays like a Rhystic Study with teeth. Lots of them. It draws plenty of cards and leaves you ahead in many exchanges, especially counterwars between your opponents. The flicker ability keeps Nezahal safe from most interaction for a particularly sticky threat.

Titan of Industry does a bit of everything: It provides plenty of board presence and destroys a troublesome permanent or protects one of your creatures (you’ll rarely want to gain life).

Craterhoof Behemoth can be awkward with Kinnan; it’s hardly ideal to put it in play at an opponent’s end step. But we have Natural Order and creatures, so we want green’s best finisher.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger might be our best disruptive creature. Halving your opponents’ mana while doubling your own shuts down games. I often find this with an early Natural Order.

Like them or not, I find many Eldrazi have creative, interesting designs. Void Winnower is a perfect example of this. A disruptive piece that specifically punishes even-costed cards is just weird. But in a good way! We’re happy to play this odd creature with its powerful stats.

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth rounds out our monsters with a big, splashy threat. Putting it into play with Kinnan’s ability misses out on the card advantage but how bad is that with such a destructive creature?

Card Draw + Tutors

These effects keep the cards flowing and ensure that we have plenty of threats to back up our mana. We’re focused on generating a steady stream of cards into our hand rather than big bursts of card draw; the tutors help us find the best threats and interactive pieces at the perfect time, with a bias towards finding creatures.

Green Sun's Zenith is a classic. This and Natural Order are the primary reasons so much of our top-end is green. We have the obligatory Dryad Arbor to make this into a turn-1 mana dork, plenty of mid-game creatures like Reclamation Sage and Eternal Witness, and no shortage of big threats for the late game.

Natural Order breaks the game. It’s best friends with Craterhoof Behemoth to sweep away stray opponents at the end of the game.

Worldly Tutor’s efficiency makes up for its card disadvantage. It works well with Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy to ensure we hit a creature with its activated ability.

Archdruid's Charm makes up for its mana inefficiency relative to other tutors with flexibility. 3 mana’s a lot for Eladamri's Call, but the Charm can remove permanents or ramp you when necessary. Archmage's Charm might prove too clunky at , but it looks to be one of the better EDH cards from Murders at Karlov Manor.

Summoner's Pact gives us another reason to want lots of green monsters. It’s just a “free” tutor we don’t mind paying for the next turn.

Chord of Calling is the most expensive tutor in the list, but getting to put a creature directly into play makes it worth the cost.

2023 was a year filled with powerful Magic cards. One of its most prominent offerings was The One Ring. It’s an incredibly powerful source of card advantage, especially in EDH with such high life totals. And it protects you from damage for a turn! It’s a staple in many formats for a terrifying reason.

Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora are two of the best card draw spells in the format. The steady stream of cards feels like cheating. Having one of these in play feels oppressive, especially once you have 10 mana to spend every turn.

Sylvan Library isn’t on the level of Study or Remora, but it’s still a respectable staple. It sets up Kinnan’s activated ability well.

Interaction

I value interaction in EDH highly, especially as the power level creeps higher. In addition to our top-end, this deck offers a tantalizing selection of countermagic and disruptive creatures that protect our threats and impede our opponents.

Reclamation Sage deserves its slot as an EDH staple. It’s just a clean 2-for-1 that’s especially strong with our tutors. Manglehorn also interacts with artifacts but it’s a more convincing stax piece. Treasure decks hate this card, and it shuts off any combos exploiting Dockside Extortionist.

Colossal Skyturtle does more than interact with the opposition, but that’s my primary use for it. The two channel abilities are nifty because they count as abilities on the stack and are much trickier to interact with. We can even cast the turtle itself for a reasonable beater.

In a deck with creatures that attack your opponents’ mana or dominate the game, our only planeswalker might be the most obnoxious card: Oko, Thief of Crowns. It shuts down any and every threatening creature and artifact. Exchanging Food for small threats ices the cake with free Orcish Bowmasters and similar treats.

Pongify and Rapid Hybridization provide spot removal to handle individual threats. Cards like Collector Ouphe and Containment Priest that disrupt our game plan are important targets. Giving our opponents 3/3s rarely matters since our creatures are far larger.

Chain of Vapor provides a general bounce spell that deals with any number of stax pieces or disrupts combos for a turn.

Legolas's Quick Reflexes is one of the strongest protective spells printed recently. It saves Kinnan and other valuable threats from interaction with plenty of 2-for-1 potential.

Finally, we have a robust suite of countermagic. Mana Drain is one of the best blue cards, Counterspell has an excellent rate, and Swan Song and Veil of Summer serve as cheap protective pieces to ensure our spells resolve. Force of Will, Force of Negation, and Pact of Negation round out our interactive spells with a handful of free counterspells that let us jam big threats without worrying about the consequences of tapping out.

The Mana Base

This is the spicy part! Our deck is chock full of powerful accelerants made stronger by Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.

Seedborn Muse is in contention for one of the best individual cards in the deck. Quadrupling mana is one of the least fair things you could do in Magic. The sink for all this mana is, of course, Kinnan’s ability. With Training Grounds or Biomancer's Familiar alongside the Muse, activating Kinnan’s ability six times a turn cycle is well within the realm of possibility.

Our deck doesn’t have land-based ramp like Three Visits or Cultivate because it doesn’t work with Kinnan. Our ramp in this EDH deck is really tied to our mana accelerants which are all dorks or mana rocks.

Our dorks are primarily 1 mana, but we have Bloom Tender as a notable 2-mana inclusion. Our artifact mana includes a bundle of fast mana like Mana Crypt and Grim Monolith alongside the usual 2-mana suspects like our on-color Talisman & Signet.

Our lands are basic. We have Dryad Arbor for Green Sun's Zenith, some more fast mana with Ancient Tomb and Gemstone Caverns, plus some interaction in our on-color channel lands. Beyond this handful of value lands, it’s just fixing with a healthy number of basics.

The Strategy

To pilot this deck, consider how you’ll sequence your opening turns. Those first few plays are always important, but sequencing correctly is the difference between playing Koma, Cosmos Serpent on turn 3 instead of turn 5. This deck functions best when it explodes onto the board faster than its opponents and maintains that advantage.

Having accelerants in your opening hand is a must. Do not keep an opener without ramp. Don't worry about payoffs; we can always sink mana in Kinnan's ability. Here's a model of the ideal hand and opening sequencing:

• Turn 1: Land, Llanowar Elves.
• Turn 2: Land, Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy (using your lands!), tap Llanowar Elves to cast Talisman of Creativity or any other 2-mana accelerant.
• Turn 3: Play a land. You have 7 mana at your disposal, enough to activate Kinnan or play many of our best threats.

You can’t get the nuts every game, but having an idea of what you’re looking for always helps. There are even more explosive starts leaning on Mana Crypt and such, but those are rarer and rely on single cards rather than built-in redundancy.

Much of your interaction is reactive. The free countermagic protects our board after tapping out to activate Kinnan or cast our creatures. Focus on protecting your pieces and stopping your opponents from comboing off faster than we can beat them down.

When is it best to activate Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy’s ability? Conventional wisdom tells us to activate abilities like this at the end step before your turn to bluff countermagic and other instant-speed effects until the last possible moment.

That still works here. Some of our creatures, like Koma, Cosmos Serpent, and Craterhoof Behemoth, are lackluster in the end step, but we see so few cards that trying to min-max for those hits isn’t as valuable as leaving our opponents in fear of Counterspell.

The biggest exception comes when you can set up the top of your library with effects like Brainstorm and Worldly Tutor. In these instances, activating Kinnan on your opponent’s upkeep has a lot of value if you stack the deck to put Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger or Consecrated Sphinx into play.

This deck can play Natural Order quite early. The best hits in the early game are Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger or Koma, Cosmos Serpent. They’re both incredibly dominant. Vorinclex destroys your opponents’ ability to play the game unless they have an immediate answer, while Koma provides unparalleled pressure thanks to Koma's Coil tokens. The later the game goes, the more appealing Craterhoof Behemoth becomes. Kogla, the Titan Ape is a reasonable choice if you need to interact with your opponent.

Combos and Interactions

This deck has no infinite combos as an initial move to keep it closer to a mid-powered EDH deck than a high-powered one. It’s also straightforward as an A+B ramp deck. Its most intricate lines involve early sequencing and picking the best tutor targets.

The deck has one interesting interaction that provides value in extended, grindy games.

Kogla, the Titan Ape + Eternal Witness

For this interaction, you need both creatures in play. Bounce Eternal Witness with Kogla’s ability, then recast it, returning a card from your graveyard to your hand. You can keep doing this for as long as you like! It lets you cast the same spell over and over. For example, you can continuously cast an overloaded Cyclonic Rift to softlock your opponents out of the game or keep playing Lórien Revealed.

It’s a very mana-intensive interaction, but it’s useful in board stalls, especially if Kinnan’s ability doesn’t work as a mana sink because of a Pithing Needle or Grafdigger's Cage.

Rule 0 Violations Check

This deck violates some Rule 0 conversations. It’s unfair-ish, especially considering some of the broken things you can do with this commander. Some pods won’t like the fast mana. Some creatures—especially Koma and Vorinclex—might also raise eyebrows. This list is a solidly mid-powered deck that competes with stronger decks, but you should steer clear of casual tables that aren’t equipped to deal with players spending 7 mana on turn 3.

Budget Options

This is a pricier deck with some Reserved List cards and multi-format staples. Luckily, those aren’t necessary for this deck to function. Let’s look at some budget cuts.

Grim Monolith and Mana Crypt can be any mana dork or mana rock you want; this also makes the deck friendlier at casual tables.

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Void Winnower can become any number of big threats like Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and Terastodon. The same can be said for any of our top-end creatures. End-Raze Forerunners makes a fine budget substitute for Craterhoof Behemoth specifically.

Bloom Tender is our most expensive mana dork; any other 2-mana options like Paradise Druid is perfectly acceptable.

All of our free interaction (Force of Will, Force of Negation, Force of Vigor, Pact of Negation) can become interactive spells that just cost mana (An Offer You Can't Refuse, Arcane Denial, Nature's Claim, Delay).

Tamiyo's Safekeeping is an excellent substitute for Legolas's Quick Reflexes.

Scourge of Fleets is a solid Cyclonic Rift substitute that works with Kinnan and our tutors!

The One Ring and Rhystic Study are potent card advantage engines, but bursts of card draw can replace them. Shared Summons and Rishkar's Expertise are two great examples.

You can make tons of cuts when it comes to lands. Trimming the fast mana lands and some of the duals reduces the costs of your deck. They can get replaced by basics or tapped lands—though the latter hamper your more explosive starts.

Other Builds

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is relatively one-note as a commander. It’s incredibly efficient at what it does, but it doesn’t do anything but produce oodles of mana. One thing you can do is lower the power of the deck. Cut the fast mana, the more aggressive creatures (looking at you, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger) and some of the other cEDH staples in favor of classic EDH monsters like Avenger of Zendikar and Rampaging Baloths to make the deck friendlier to casual tables with a nostalgic flavor.

Of course, you could always power the deck up! Toss in a Hullbreaker Horror and Tidespout Tyrant plus a Basalt Monolith, and you have plenty of outlets for infinite mana. Add Thrasios, Triton Hero as a mana outlet and Thassa's Oracle for a win condition, and you’re looking at a high-powered deck verging on cEDH (though a true cEDH Kinnan deck would take more than a handful of changes).

Commanding Conclusion

Koma, Cosmos Serpent | Illustration by Jesper Ejsing

Generating a mana advantage is one of the easiest ways to pull ahead in an EDH game and few commanders boost your mana as efficiently as Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. This deck focuses its power on disruptive creatures in a mid-powered deck with lots of explosive potential.

But there’s tons of flexibility within Kinnan builds. You can play nostalgic creatures that get a boost from its mana production or soar higher, all the way to cEDH levels! What’s your favorite Kinnan build? Do you think it’s fair? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord.

Stay safe and keep producing mana!