The Commander
Guide
Gameplan
Cromat is a five-color blank check: its activated abilities are mostly filler, so it mainly exists to unlock WUBRG and a beefy 5/5 body. Build it as a goodstuff/value pile that ramps into the best cards every color offers, protect your engine, and grind opponents out with raw card quality. Cromat itself can carry voltron damage in a pinch thanks to evasion, removal, and pumps, but it's the access to all five colors that does the work.
Strengths
- Full five-color identity unlocks every staple, removal suite, and tutor in the game
- Cromat can self-protect with regeneration and clear blockers, making it resilient and hard to chump
- Built-in evasion (flying) plus the ability to bounce itself to library dodges exile-based removal
- Extremely flexible deckbuilding—can pivot toward almost any archetype
Weaknesses
- Activated abilities are mana-hungry and individually weak, so it's a 'commander tax with upside' rather than a true engine
- Mana base is expensive and demanding to support five colors consistently
- No inherent card advantage or value engine—you must supply the strategy yourself
- Five mana for a vanilla-ish 5/5 makes it slow to deploy and easy to remove before abilities matter
Key Cards
- The World Tree — Fixes any color and can dump your whole deck of Gods, but mainly guarantees you cast Cromat and your five-color spells on time.
- Chromatic Lantern — Turns every land into a five-color source, smoothing out Cromat's notoriously greedy mana requirements.
- Sylvan Library — Best-in-color card advantage that keeps a five-color goodstuff pile flooded with answers and threats.
- Cultivate — Ramp that also fixes—exactly what a WUBRG manabase craves to keep activating Cromat's abilities.
- Kodama's Reach — Another fetch-two-lands spell that stabilizes the mana so you can leverage all five colors.
- Smothering Tithe — Snowballs treasure for both ramp and fixing, fueling Cromat's expensive multi-pip abilities.
Upgrade Path
Prioritize the mana base above all else: add fast mana (Mana Crypt, signets, Arcane Signet) and premium fixing (fetchlands, duals, triomes) so Cromat and your five-color bombs land on curve. Then swap durdly cards for efficient interaction, fast tutors (Demonic/Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor), and a tight wincon package so the deck has a plan beyond 'cast good cards.' Consider a compact two-card combo line you can tutor for, since Cromat gives you the entire card pool to find one.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Grinding out the table with superior card quality and removal, then closing with a few large threats
- ▸Commander damage via an evasive, pumped, regenerating Cromat loaded with equipment
- ▸Resolving a powerful five-color finisher or planeswalker ultimate
- ▸Assembling a tutorable combo (e.g. infinite mana or extra turns) enabled by full color access
Archetypes
- Five-Color Goodstuff — Cromat's only real payoff is WUBRG access, so loading up on the best cards from every color is the default and strongest build.
- Control — All five colors give access to premier counterspells, board wipes, and removal to grind the table down.
- Superfriends — Five-color identity supports a planeswalker shell backed by Cromat's removal and protection of the board.
- Voltron — Cromat's pumps, evasion, and blocker removal let it function as a budget commander-damage threat with equipment and auras.
Combos
- Cromat + Minn, Wily Illusionist + Fool's Demise + Altar of Dementia
→ Infinite death triggers, Infinite ETB, Infinite LTB
- Cromat + Minn, Wily Illusionist + Fool's Demise + Phyrexian Altar
→ Infinite colored mana, Infinite death triggers, Infinite ETB
- Cromat + Minn, Wily Illusionist + Fool's Demise + Ashnod's Altar
→ Infinite colorless mana, Infinite death triggers, Infinite ETB
Combos via Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BGRUW), by popularity.
