Kamiz, Obscura Oculus

Version 1.0 The Base Precon

Hello and welcome to the second deck review on Precon Playground!

Intro

This precon comes to us from the set of 5 from Streets of New Capenna (SNC) commander product. I have a soft spot for these five decks as I love the art deco theming and the Bedecked Brokers deck from this set was my first precon (and still is my pet deck.) I highly recommend listening to the three SNC episodes of Drive to Work podcast with Mark Rosewater that cover SNC as a set, the theming, and the five Precon products (Episodes #928, #929, & #931 respectively.) I’ll be referring to a lot of the cool stuff mentioned in that podcast but I can’t do it justice like those episodes do as it’s coming straight from the mouth of the designer.

Deck Outline

The main/face commander that helms the deck commander is Kamiz, Obsucura Oculus. Kamiz primarily wants us to get in for combat with at least two creatures as it can make the first one unblockable with a connive trigger and makes the second attacking target get double strike as long as its power is smaller than the first. The nice thing is that while Kamiz helms the deck, you don’t necessarily need to run Kamiz into battle as it targets two other creatures. While Kamiz’s ability isn’t the most exciting by itself, the exciting part of it is the combat damage triggers that you can sneak in with. Guaranteeing one creature being unblocked is great for cards such as [[Aerial Extortionist]] so you can consistently exile opponents biggest and baddest threats. Another creature that does well with being the first target is [[Graveblade Marauder]]. Its damage trigger being guaranteed is fantastic. Every great first target with a combat damage trigger, becomes an even better second target. Double strike gives you two combat damage instances which doubles up all of our amazing combat damage triggers. That one two punch of an unblockable creature and a double striking creature all with their abilities triggering left, right , and center are really what this deck is all about. As with the Willowdusk precon, we’ll go over the signature parts of the deck and not the generic usual deck utility that every deck should have. You’ll find the whole decklist at the end of the article and if you want to check out the whole deck breakdown, head over to Moxfield to check out the full deck list with tags enabled.

1. Signature to this Deck

   1. Combat Damage Triggers [19]

   2. Looters [8]

   3. Unblockables [5]

   4. Recursion [7]

2. Usual Deck Utility

   1. Removal [11]

   2. Ramp [12]

   3. Card Draw [6]

   4. Protection [2]

   5. Lands [38]

Combat Damage Triggers & Looters

This is the pile of cards that will take advantage of Kamiz’s attack triggers, getting in unblocked to guarantee the effect goes off, or getting in with double strike to get two of those triggers. On an optimal swing, you can get 3 combat damage triggers relatively safely. Some of the best triggers are obviously any that come with card draw/selection/looting. The connive trigger on Kamiz ensures that every attack loots at least once but cards like [[Shadowmage Infiltrator]] and [[Dragonlord Ojutai]] guarantee a card on each connection of damage.

It helps ensure land drops and makes it a bit easier to dig and find your haymakers! Kamiz needs the first creature to have a larger power than the second attacking creature selected so it’s important to get to a worthwhile first target to give another threat doublestrike.

While looting isn’t as good as actual card draw, you are getting quality not quantity. It helps ensure land drops and makes it a bit easier to dig and find your haymakers! Using the connive ability we can pitch away the stuff we don’t need and dig for answers and haymakers! This deck also has an OK set of cards that thrive in the graveyard. [[Champion of Wits]] has eternalize which lets you make a token copy from the grave. [[Skyway Robber]] has escape which lets you repeatedly cast it from the graveyard as long as you exile some cards when you do. Lastly, [[Commit // Memory]] and [[Dusk // Dawn]] both have aftermath halves which are castable from the graveyard as well. Running into these cards with the connive trigger makes the usually tough task of discarding much easier.

Unblockables

Having unblockable creatures is great for Kamiz’s second ability. You won’t have to worry about sending a small double striker to the graveyard if it too is unblockable. These are the kind of cards we should be digging for to ensure two really good combat damage triggers. If you have the mana open, [[Daxos of Meletis]] is a great option as when he makes contact, he can give you access to the top of your opponents libraries. If you’re looking for raw damage output, keeping up 4 mana for [[Inkfathom Witch]]’s ability can make all your other tiny unbreakable creatures a real threat in combat.

Recursion

This section is short and sweet because there is one all-star card that I want to dedicate this whole section to. [[Writ of Return]] is a POWERHOUSE in this deck. You can make creatures unblockable with Kamiz’s ability which guarantees that the ciphered creature can get in safely. Kamiz’s connive trigger will happen and you’ll be able to pitch an expensive or useful creature to the trigger. Writ of Return gets cast on the combat damage being dealt and you get that creature back on your battlefield for free! As long as they don’t kill the creature that has Writ of Return ciphered onto it, this can be done on each combat saving tons of mana on the big creatures you can cheat in.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly

The Pretty Good

There are some haymakers in here that make you feel good when you imagine hitting someone with them. Cards like [[Silent-Blade Oni]], [[Wrexial, the Hidden Deep]], and [[Fallen Shinobi]] let you cast your opponent's things when they make contact. [[Shadowmage Infiltrator]] and [[Looter Il-Kor]] let you draw cards and loot cards on combat damage respectively. All-in-all there’s a lot of cool cards that each individually work with the commander but this unfortunately segues us into the ugly…

The Pretty Bad

The deck is a little hard to pilot as you need a very good grasp of the game to assess what you need at any given time. You never want to loot away an answer to a threat on the board and on the other hand, you don’t want to loot away a big creature when the board is empty. You have to be able to make the tough decisions in what to discard to not only keep the game moving but also to keep your chances of winning up.

The Pretty Ugly

There are too many creatures each clinging onto a different word on Kamiz’s text box. Unblockable creatures, creatures with combat triggers, ones that care about being connive fodder, etc… The deck is a little too sprawled out in making the most out of Kamiz’s abilities. In goldfishing the deck you often get some of the pieces but not all or enough of them. I’d much rather have some less useful but more consistently useful cards getting damage in.

Upgrade Game Plan

So I am honestly torn when deciding which path to use to upgrade this precon. There is the option of putting in as many unblockable creatures and anthems as possible to ensure our board is huge and getting in for a meaningful amount. Just for the theming, we could go rogue tribal where we pack in as many rogues, rogue lords, and fun effects to take advantage of in combat. The direction that we are going to take the deck in is just to upgrade the and streamline the current strategy. There are some heavy hitters that are a little too clunky that can stand to come out. There are also some more efficient threats and combat damage triggers. We are looking for cool AND useful triggers, not just cool ones. From getting the deck working a little bit better we can pivot to another strategy like infect. I was originally going to pitch infect, but this deck has no support for it from the base. It would almost be like getting a whole new 99 cards. We can slowly pivot to infect over a few months of upgrades but it’d be way too much to get a functioning infect shell right off the bat.

Conclusion & Decklist

This deck goldfishes really well and provides some very interesting play tests. It’s important to note that this deck is trying to win by combat damage so you can’t be scared to go in swinging. If you aren’t a fan of getting in for damage early and consistently, I recommend trying a different deck that is more of a value pile. If you love dishing damage out and getting in with cool triggers, this is the exact deck you want to play and brew around.

If you want to see this deck in person, I play commander every Monday night at Everyone Comics in Long Island City, NY. We play Commander every Monday from 6:00 - 8:00pm. It’s free to enter and play and the crew there every week is super fun! We bring decks of all different complexity, gimmicks, and powers. If you want to play against me and see the latest version of this deck deck in action, just come through to Everyone Comics on Mondays and ask!!

Thanks for reading PreconPlayground and remember…

Play Nice & No Shoving.