I really enjoy trying out different EDH deck building challenges, there are several i've showcased on this site like - the one letter or alphabet challenge, the NGMC (no generic mana costs) challenge, pauper EDH, and budget bin EDH. One challenge that i've tried a few times is the only one CMC challenge. The basic rules of which are as follows -
Choose a CMC, all cards in the deck (including the commander) must share that CMC or have a CMC of 0.
If that's not enough of a challenge you can also add extra restrictions like - no X spells allowed and/or only the chosen CMC + lands allowed (no CMC 0 non-lands).
I've tried this challenge several times now, but CMC 2, 3 and even 1 are surprisingly quite easy to build CMC 1 using Rhys, the Redeemed has plenty of power options including a couple of Overrun effects (Allosaurus Shepherd & Scale Up), a planeswalker (Kytheon) and a mini Progenitus (Hexdrinker). CMC 4 and higher are challenging because they lack any early game outside land based ramp like Ancient Tomb or alternative casting costs like CMC 5 with evoke cards like Shriekmaw and Mulldrifter (which is something I might have to try later down the line). Luckily however a new CMC to challenge recently became viable thanks to Commander Legends introducing -
Which allows a full 0 CMC EDH deck to be built. But while it is possible it's far from easy, if you put the search terms - legal in EDH, not a land, cmc = 0 and color identity = red into Scryfall (here) you'll see that there are only 57 options in total. And of those 57 there are a number of options that are almost entirely useless like -
Darksteel Relic is almost completely useless since the deck has no useful artifact synergies or ways to animate it.
Spellbook is similarly bad thanks to the fact that the deck has only a small amount of card draw, regrowth effects and the like meaning that it would only be useful if any opponent gave you draw (and even then as a 0 cmc deck the deck can dump it's hand like no other).
Chrome Mox is hampered by the fact that there are only 5 red cards playable in the deck (6 if you include the commander but he's not Imprint-able).
Then there's the one use fast mana effects like -
Jeweled Lotus is a bad fit for the deck since Rograkh is already 0 cmc.
Lion's Eye Diamond suffers because the deck has no spells to take advantage of it's activation timing (which means it would only help with activated abilities).
Lotus Bloom could be argued to be playable (well as "playable" as anything in this meme of a deck) but the 3 turn suspend delay for a one shot effect is too slow for an already struggling deck.
Lotus Petal could also be argued to be playable but a 1 time extra 1 mana just isn't that valuable in a deck like this.
Once we remove those 7 from the equation we're left with exactly 50 options (which I liked the idea of) but unfortunately I was unable to track down 2 of them -
Both Dark Sphere (a solid piece of anti damage tech) and Mox Diamond (a fantastic ramp card with a drawback that's practically non-existent in a 50 land deck) would be in the deck if I had them but Sphere is old and hard to track down and Diamond is way too expensive for me to justify obtaining for a meme deck like this. I did try a version with them proxied (along with Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Bagdad and Island of Wak-Wak, 3 powerful lands I also would run but couldn't obtain/afford) in a few casual games and it was fun but given the meme identity of the deck it doesn't change the overall power level in any appreciably way.
Pie chart of the deck's mana costs.
The full deck can be found digitally here (on TappedOut a deck building site).
Some questions people might have -
Why not run more man-lands? Because the deck has very few ways to protect them and the majority of man-lands available in mono-red aren't big enough to be impactful on the game. Crawling Barrens is an exception since it can infinitely grow and you can opt out of animating it and just add counters if you want to. Token producing lands (like Urza's Factory) were prioritized since they can at least provide a reliable stream of chump blockers if necessary.
Why not run <insert name here> utiliity land? Earlier in the article I mentioned 3 lands that I would have run if I could have afforded/found them. Apart from them I managed to fit most of the lands I wanted into the deck, the emphasis was on (if possible) repeatable reliable advantage. I had a big pile of lands I was considering including Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle (needed too many mountains would have required cutting a lot of great utility lands), Eye of Ugin (very expensive and narrow with only 3 targets (Hangarback, Ballista and Stonecoil) worth tutoring for) and Throne of the High City (Getting a draw off the Monarch once is nice but it encourages people to hit me and the deck can't compete well to get the token back once it's lost) but I decided against them for various reasons. A land that I had forgotten about and probably would play if I had a copy is Petrified Field an odyssey rare land that can be sacrificed to get back a land from the graveyard (because in this deck lands are very important).
Where is the card advantage? Mostly it's in the lands, the deck runs a bunch of cantrip effects like cycle lands and the baubles to hopefully dig deeper and then it relies on cards like Arch of Orazca, Bonder's Enclave and War Room (alongside the group hug versions - Geier Reach Sanitarium and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea).
Where is the removal? Walking Ballista can do a little and so can Engineered Explosives (which can be set at different cmc levels even in a mono colour deck like this, since they changed the rules on generating non commander identity colours a few years back) and Blast Zone. But it's the soft removal like Maze of Ith and it's modern variants (Mystifying Maze and Labyrinth of Skopthos) plus Briber's Purse that do most of the heavy lifting.
What do you do if an opponent play Chalice set for 0? Cry? But in all seriousness hopefully there will always be bigger threats and targets at a table than the 0 cmc deck. If there's a card like Chalice that locks out most of the deck then all you can do is your best, there's still X cost spells (which don't count as 0 cmc on the stack) and lands. The same goes for artifact hate, it might be most of the deck, but the lands and non artifact cards (like the Kobolds, Cryptic Trilobyte, Endless One and Ugin's Conjurant) can still hopefully do work.
What is the "win" condition for the deck? Despite being low powered the deck does have a number of solid end game cards - Dark Depths (producing a Marit Lage token), Orochi Hatchery (producing a swarm of snake tokens), Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker (both infinitely grow and give extra advantage from pinging or tokens on death), Stonecoil Serpent (a solid stand alone threat with some built in protection and trample) and Sigil of Distinction (a way to turn 0 cost creatures like Rograkh into actual threats).
BONUS Tournament Report:
I took the deck in all of its "glory" to my LGS's regular EDH tournament (big shoutout as always to Kev and the Cardhouse crew) and it went surprisingly well.
The first round consisted of a Lathril elf tribal deck, a Mimeoplasm ooze tribal deck, a Toggo + Thrasios landfall deck and myself. The Lathril player curved out really well in typical elf ball style, the Mimeoplasm player seemed to be mana flooded and didn't do much before being knocked out by the elves, the T&T player sat back quietly biding his time before getting a full new hand from Cosima, resetting the board with Cyclonic Rift and winning with Avenger of Zendikar + Mystic Reflection meanwhile Rograkh did nothing of note apart from throwing down most of my hand on turn 1, ambushing an attacking elf with Pact of the Titan and casting a 9/9 Endless One (as a blocker). I was joint 2nd place but it felt undeserved.
The second round consisted of a Morophon 5 colour mixed tribal deck, an Obeka turn manipulation deck and a Skullbriar counters +beatdown deck and myself. The Morophon player unfortunately had colour issues and was knocked out early (by Skullbriar), the Obeka player initially had mana issues but they eventually sorted themselves out and he got something going with Sundial of the Infinite and Kiki-Jiki but the Skullbriar deck got out of control super quickly thanks to an early unanswered Hydra's Growth which brought it up to insta-kill levels very quickly after which it felt inevitable that the rest of us were doomed whenever he inevitably a way to give it trample. Rograkh in the meantime did it's usual throw down the whole hand on turn 1 thing and was actually holding it's own quite well with chump blockers, managed to get all of the XX cost growing creatures (Hangarback, Ballista and Trilobyte) out and was even lucky enough to be able to tutor using Inventors' Fair for Stonecoil Serpent (which was cast as a 4/4 and which thanks to the inbuilt protection from multicolor could block Skullbriar all day and even get in for a little chip damage thanks to the vigilance from Accorder's Shield). Don't get me wrong I still felt like I was doomed to a skeletal beatdown but the deck was working pretty much as well as I could have hoped for. BUT i'd counted without the Obeka player who kept casting Aeon Frolicker giving me 4 extra turns total (3 in a row even) which I was able to use to beatdown the Skullbriar player to within lethal range. I then passed the turn to the Obeka player thinking that they would surely take the win but despite popping off an overloaded Vandalblast he was unable to finish me off thanks to Trilobyte not being an artifact and the small swarm of thopter tokens I got when Hangarback died. He passed to the Skullbriar player (who was super overdue for a method of giving trample) but he still whiffed meaning that I was able to somehow fly in with enough thopter token damage to kill them both on my turn. And that's how thanks to a bunch of gifted extra turns and a player never finding trample (or a way to deal with Stonecoil Serpent) my Ocmc Rograkh meme deck managed to get an actual game win.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the article and as always any comments here or on the TabletopLG social media are appreciated - what fun deck building challenges do you enjoy?