Magic: The Gathering - Mendicant Core, Guidelight Commander Deck Guide

Mendicant Core, Guidelight features as one of the many legendary creatures in Magic: The Gathering's Aetherdrift set. This Azorius (white/blue) commander is all about artifacts, and nothing but artifacts. In fact, the deck wants to almost exclusively play artifacts, with non-artifacts acting as support cards for that card type.

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Mendicant Core, Guidelight encourages you to have as many artifacts as you can fit in your deck, copying them to make even more artifacts. This specific artifact commander wants you to flood the battlefield with artifacts to snowball into an uncontrollable battlefield for your opponents. Luckily, Azorius lets you play all the best artifact cards.

Decklist

Commander: Mendicant Core, Guidelight

Bronze Guardian

Cyberdrive Awakener

Cyberman Patrol

Cybermen Squadron

Digsite Engineer

Etherium Sculptor

Ethersworn Sphinx

Foundry Inspector

Gold Myr

Guidelight Synergist

Illustrious Wanderglyph

Jhoira's Familiar

Kappa Cannoneer

Karn, Legacy Reforged

Losheel, Clockwork Scholar

Master of Etherium

Master Transmuter

Mycosynth Golem

Nesting Bot

Oltec Matterweaver

Ornithopter of Paradise

Padeem, Consul of Innovation

Phyrexian Metamorph

Research Thief

Sai, Master Thopterist

Silver Myr

Solemn Simulacrum

Steel Overseer

Thought Monitor

Urza, Lord High Artificer

Urza, Prince of Kroog

Vedalken Archmage

Voyager Quickwelder

Brilliant Restoration

Fabricate

Gift of Estates

March of Progress

Organic Extinction

Supreme Verdict

Thoughtcast

Vanquish the Horde

Voyage Home

Desynchronization

Dispatch

Generous Gift

Path to Exile

Swords to Plowshares

Whir of Invention

Arcane Signet

Azorius Signet

Commander's Sphere

Fellwar Stone

Mind Stone

Salvation Engine

Sculpting Steel

Simulacrum Synthesizer

Sol Ring

Talisman of Progress

Twinning Staff

Unwinding Clock

Worldwalker Helm

Artificer Class

Mechanized Production

Tempered Steel

Thopter Spy Network

Academy Ruins

Adarkar Wastes

Amonkhet Raceway

Ancient Den

Archway of Innovation

Avishkar Raceway

Buried Ruin

Command Tower

Darksteel Citadel

Deserted Beach

Glacial Fortress

Inventors' Fair

x7 IslandMonumental Henge

Muraganda Raceway

Mystic Gate

Nimbus Maze

x5 Plains

Power Depot

Prairie Stream

Razortide Bridge

Seat of the Synod

Spire of Industry

The Mycosynth Gardens

The decklist contains 33 creatures, nine sorceries, six instants, 13 artifacts, four enchantments, and 34 lands. The vast majority of the creatures are artifact creatures, with the non-permanent package all removal or artifact support cards.

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Key Cards

Mendicant Core, Guidelight

The commander of the deck, Mendicant Core, Guidelight wants you to reach max speed as quickly as possible​​​​​. Once you reach max speed, you can start copying all the artifact spells you cast for just one mana. This lets you double up on the majority of the permanents in your deck since most are artifacts.

The power of Mendicant Core is dictated by how many artifacts you control. Luckily, you can easily flood the battlefield with artifacts to make Mendicant's power massive. The one downside is Mendicant Core's toughness is always going to be three at its base level. However, there are other cards that can raise its toughness with counters.

Cybermen Squadron

Nearly all of your artifact creatures on nonlegendary, making Cybermen Squadron one of your best artifact creatures available. It gives all your nonlegendary artifacts myriad, which lets you attack at every opponent as opposed to needing to focus on just one.

All of the tokens created through myriad are still artifact creatures, letting you boost up various stats on various creatures such as Mendicant itself. Although the tokens are sacrificed at the end of combat, they help you get the job done of closing out games that much quicker.

If you have ways to copy a token created through myriad, the token copy will not be sacrificed at the end step. This is a great way to double up on your best artifact creatures so you have multiple variations of its effect on the battlefield.

Karn, Legacy Reforged

Karn, Legacy Reforged makes it even easier to cast all of your artifact spells. You'll be putting a ton of artifacts onto the battlefield, so the colorless mana Karn adds to your mana pool becomes massive. The colorless mana can only be spent on artifact spells, so you can't cast non-creature spells with it.

The mana generated from Karn can be used to activate abilities. The mana's only restriction is that it can't cast nonartifact spells, but anything else is fair game.

Karn can become massive thanks to its stats being determined by the number of artifacts you control. Unlike Mendicant, this applies to Karn's toughness as well which leads to Karn becoming a threatening attacker and blocker.

Worldwalker Helm

You want to get as many artifacts on the battlefield as possible, and Worldwalker Helm is perfect for that. Any artifact tokens being made come with a Map token to boot (which is also an artifact). You can trigger this with Worldwalker Helm's own effect, and once you have one artifact token you can constantly gain more each turn.

Generally, you want to be copying tokens of artifact creatures. The best choices to copy are the tokens created from myriad from Cybermen Squadron. All of the copies of spells made by Mendicant will come in as artifact tokens, giving you another choice to copy with Worldwalker Helm.

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How Best To Play The Deck

A Mendicant Core, Guidelight Commander deck is all about flooding the battlefield with artifacts as quickly as possible after reaching max speed. While you don't have to hold back on casting spells, you want to wait to cast your best artifacts until you have max speed to ensure you'll be able to copy them.

Azorius can struggle pretty hard with ramping, but luckily, there are a ton of ways to discount artifact spells. Etherium Sculptor, Foundry Inspector, and Voyager Quickwelder all help to do that, and Artificer Class does as well and allows for artifacts to be copied once it's fully leveled up.

The majority of creatures are artifact creatures, so you want to boost their stats up to make them combat threats. Tempered Steel gives them all +1/+1, Steel Overseer taps itself to put a +1/+1 counter on all artifact creatures, and Illustrious Wanderglyph gives them +2/+2 once you have the city's blessing.

You will gain the city's blessing once you control ten or more permanents with a permanent with ascend on the battlefield.

The primary win condition of the deck is winning through combat​​​​​​. You can very quickly generate a massive battlefield thanks to all of your copy effects. Afterward, all the stat-boosting to artifact creatures turn your battlefield into massive threats since you can go so wide to get around blockers. If you have Unwinding Clock on the battlefield, you can even untap them during everyone's untap step so you'll still have blockers for your opponents' turns even if you attacked with everything.

The biggest flaw of the deck is its susceptibility to board wipes. You can build up a giant battlefield, which it makes it a ripe target for an opponent's board wipe which makes you start from scratch. Your max speed will stay four, so if you re-cast Mendicant Core, you'll be able to copy artifacts right away. This makes it easier to rebuild after a board wipe, but you might wind up losing your best artifact creatures in the process.

You also have artifacts and enchantments that help to generate creature tokens that are more often safe from most commonly played board wipes like Thopter Spy Network and Simulacrum Synthesizer​​​​​​. It's more ideal to not have your battlefield broken, but rebuilding it's the hardest, but can leave your defenses open.

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