ColorlessLegendary Artifact Creature — GolemKarn, Legacy Reforged
Mana value5Rank#2,579
The Commander
Karn's power and toughness are each equal to the greatest mana value among artifacts you control.
At the beginning of your upkeep, add for each artifact you control. This mana can't be spent to cast nonartifact spells. Until end of turn, you don't lose this mana as steps and phases end.
Guide
Gameplan
Karn turns every artifact you control into ramp, generating a huge pool of colorless mana each upkeep that snowballs into casting massive artifacts and activating powerful abilities. You flood the board with mana rocks, cost reducers, and big artifacts, then either go wide, drop game-ending Eldrazi/colorless bombs, or assemble an artifact combo. Karn himself grows as a beater since his stats match your largest-MV artifact.
Strengths
- Explosive colorless ramp—often doubling your mana on each upkeep with a wide artifact board
- Color-independent, so it slots any artifact payoff and never gets color-screwed
- Can cast enormous threats like Eldrazi titans and expensive artifacts very early
- Karn doubles as a sizable, free-to-recast threat that scales with your big artifacts
Weaknesses
- Mana only flows on upkeep and can't pay for nonartifact spells, limiting flexibility and instant-speed interaction
- Heavily reliant on artifacts—vulnerable to mass artifact removal like Vandalblast or Bane of Progress
- Colorless identity means no access to efficient tutors, counters, or card draw outside artifacts
- Slow to come online if early artifacts are cheap; needs high-MV pieces to make Karn a real threat
Key Cards
- Metalworker — Reveals artifacts in hand to generate explosive colorless mana, supercharging Karn's gameplan.
- Voltaic Key — Untaps mana rocks and key artifacts, multiplying Karn's already-large mana pool.
- Kozilek, Butcher of Truth — A massive colorless payoff that refills your hand and gives Karn enormous power and toughness.
- Mystic Forge — Turns your floods of colorless mana into raw card advantage by casting artifacts off the top.
- Unwinding Clock — Untaps all artifacts each turn for absurd repeated mana and ability activations.
- Staff of Domination — A mana sink and combo piece that, with enough rocks, generates infinite mana and draws your deck.
Upgrade Path
Add the strongest colorless mana rocks (Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith) and untappers (Voltaic Key, Unwinding Clock) to maximize per-upkeep output, then include reliable mana sinks and combos like Staff of Domination plus Metalworker for closing speed. Prioritize high-mana-value bombs—Eldrazi titans, Portal to Phyrexia, Blightsteel Colossus—to make Karn a real threat and give your mana somewhere to go. Round out with protection and recursion (Lightning Greaves, Buried Ruin, Inventors' Fair) since artifact wraths are your biggest fear.
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
- ▸Cast and recur massive Eldrazi titans like Kozilek and Ulamog to dominate the board
- ▸Infinite colorless mana combos (Staff of Domination / Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth) into a finisher like Walking Ballista
- ▸Beat down with a giant Karn whose stats match your biggest artifact
- ▸Drop a colorless overrun or mass damage payoff to close after building an artifact army
Archetypes
- Big Mana / Ramp — Karn converts every artifact into colorless mana, enabling explosive ramp into game-ending spells.
- Artifacts/Affinity — He rewards a dense artifact board with mana scaling directly to artifact count and MV.
- Combo — His huge mana pool fuels infinite-mana engines like Staff of Domination, Basalt Monolith, and Rings of Brighthearth.
- Colorless Stax — Use the asymmetric mana advantage alongside Winter Orb-style locks that you can power through.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.