Deckbuilding Contest Finalists - November 2025

Spectral Shift | Art by John Avon

It's time to announce the finalists for this month's Archidekt Deckbuilding Contest!

In case you missed the announcement post, this is a monthly contest with a different theme each month. Your goal is to build a Commander-legal deck that fulfills the prompt in a creative or unique fashion. At the end of each month, three finalists will be selected for you to vote on. Whoever gets the most votes will be crowned the winner, although all three finalists receive a prize.

As a reminder, this month's prompt was to brew a Commander-legal kindred/typal deck in unexpected colors for that creature type.

We collected submissions from the Archidekt newspost and evaluated them based on their creativity, originality, and how unexpected their color identity was.

Now, it's your turn to decide who'll be crowned the winner.

Read about each deck list below, then visit your favorite and upvote them on Archidekt. Whoever has the most upvotes by Wednesday, November 26, 2025 will be the winner, and receive $250 credit to cardsphere.com.

Second and third place will receive $150 and $100 cardsphere.com credits, respectively.

Here are the three finalists chosen for this month's contest, presented in no particular order. Follow the link in each deck list to vote on your favorite!

Out of the Comfort Zone by Mallllco

You normally see Spirit decks in Azorius () or Orzhov (), but Mallllco took their spellslinging Spirit brew into Grixis colors () under Zevlor, Elturel Exile.

The goal of this deck is to cast and copy Devouring Greed, sacrificing enough Spirits to drain each opponent out at once. To get to that critical number of Spirits, many spells that make tokens are included. Occult Epiphany and Haunting Imitation can make several at once, while Andúril, Flame of the West builds up quickly.

Malllco also included Yuki-Onna, Kemuri-Onna, and Kiri-Onna as easily recastable Spirits to trigger Baboon Spirit. Kiri-Onna also keeps your hand full of cards, and makes plenty of Spirits with Ethereal Investigator. Urza's Incubator and Helm of Awakening help ensure you can cast these creatures repeatedly.

Complementing the Spirits, the deck also includes a healthy number of Arcane spells, as well as some spells to splice onto arcane. These open up some tricks with Zevlor, Elturel Exile, such as copying Rend Flesh with an Evermind spliced on to draw three cards. You can also splice on a targeting effect, such as Horobi's Whisper to make a spell without targets, such as Ribbons of the Reikai, copy-able with Zevlor.

With that much draw potential, finding the pieces you need to win should be easy.

Birds Up! by Destroyander

When you think Birds in Magic, you probably think of blue, or maybe Azorius. Destroyander, however, thinks mono-red makes much more sense.

At first glance, Birds seem like an odd choice for a deck helmed by Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest; most of them are too small to trigger your commander's effect. But typal decks often want as many anthem effects as possible, to compound the power of your creatures and quickly gain a dominant board state. This deck uses those anthems to pump as many Birds as possible up to at least four power, where Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest will also convert that power into card advantage and direct damage to your opponents.

With a full 13 anthem effects, Dragonhawk will quickly find the cards to buff your avian army to four power. And thanks to Birds being cheaper to cast than the Dragons, Devils, or Giants of most Dragonhawk decks, you'll be able to grow your battlefield quickly, exiling more and more cards with your commander every turn.

This is exactly the snowballing loop a typal deck wants to establish.

This deck isn't flashy, but sometimes a solid, straightforward plan to reduce life totals to zero is all you need. And that's not to say the deck doesn't have any tricks. A few copy and redirection spells help to keep your most important creatures safe.

Collision of Realms is an interesting board wipe that this deck doesn't mind, because most of its creatures aren't very good anyway. And putting them back into the deck means you'll find them again, or gives you an extra few cards to exile to Dragonhawk.

Lastly, Devastating Onslaught and Kindred Charge are both great options for when you really need to push a lot of damage.

The Walls Are Closing In... by AlterLuin

AlterLuin knew they wanted to do something with Walls, and eventually settled on the perfect commander for an unsettling Wall deck: Valgavoth, Terror Eater.

The goal of this deck is to take advantage of Walls having higher toughness than power. The last few years have given black more support for this archetype in Catapult Fodder, Blight Pile, and Jaws of Defeat. These cards can deal a lot of damage with Wall of Junk and Tree of Perdition, and easily end a game with The Walls of Ba Sing Se.

Of course, Walls are also just good defenders. And with a commander that uses your life total like Valgavoth, Terror Eater, defending your life total is top priority. In addition to blocking well, your Walls are also great ways to gain life with Disciple of Griselbrand. Then you can safely pay that life away to cast your opponents' best spells.

And, of course, a little Enduring Tenacity helps keep the pressure on your opponents as well.

Supporting all the sacrifice effects are a healthy supply of reanimation effects. Raise the Draugr gets back two creatures at once, but there's a few more on-theme options as well. Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker works extremely well with all the creatures that have zero power, and Foul Renewal doubles as a removal spell. Get all these pieces into play and your opponents will have nowhere to run as the Walls slowly close in around them under Valgavoth's constant watch.

And there you have it, the three finalists for the November 2025 Archidekt Deckbuilding Contest.

Which is your favorite? Be sure to follow the links in the headers of each section to visit the deck pages and upvote the one you think should win!

The final rankings based on your votes will be announced on Wednesday, November 26th, 2025.