Despite Commander’s massive popularity, there are plenty of underused legends that can create extremely powerful strategies. Whether you want to take infinite turns or create infinite tokens on the cheap, tons of very powerful Commanders have been lost to Magic’s endless churn. Even among those, however, Unctus, Grand Metatecht stands out as an extremely powerful option on a budget.
MTG Unctus, Grand Metatecht
While Unctus, Grand Metatecht offers a unique blend between looting and artifact synergies, you don’t really play Unctus for its artifact shenanigans. Instead, looting through your entire deck to set up Laboratory Maniac is a much more powerful game plan. All you need is something that creates tons of tokens when you draw, like Chasm Skulker or Homunculous Horde, and you’re off to the races.
Once you have a massive board of blue creatures, you’ll need to use cards like Springleaf Drum and Opposition to tap them safely. To solve the summoning sickness predicament, Thousand-Year Elixir can both allow your creatures to tap immediately and untap one to double up on looting.
With the ridiculous amount of looting available, card draw replacement effects like Teferi’s Ageless Insight and Alhammarret’s Archive can create tons of value. With all the cards you’re drawing, alternate win conditions like Psychosis Crawler can easily be enabled by Krang, the All-Powerful and Roaming Throne.
Once you have a board of Looters at the ready, untap spells like Hidden Strings and Dramatic Reversal can let you draw through your deck at insane speeds. Untapper creatures like Vizier of Tumbling Sands can essentially do double duty here, enabling two loots per turn.
Discard synergies are far and few between in mono-blue, but Unctus’s looting easily maxes out Monument to Endurance‘s triggers. Containment Construct also makes for a great addition, turning all of your loots into strict card advantage.
Infinite Draw
While winning with storm-like sequences is possible, Unctus will often end the game with infinite combos. Lining up two untappers, like Vizier of Tumbling Sands and North Pole Patrol, for example, can loot through your whole deck easily. Tidewater Minion and Aphetto Alchemist can even untap themselves, setting up a two-card infinite.
This is far from the only infinite combo Unctus can pull off, however, as The Watcher in the Water also goes infinite with Unctus and a tap outlet, like Opposition. Just use Opposition to tap a creature you control on your opponent’s turn, looting and creating a token with The Watcher in the Water. Rinse and repeat by tapping the Tentacles that Watcher makes, drawing as many cards as you like.
With a blue mana dork, Unctus, Grand Metatecht can also go infinite with Tolarian Kraken. Just tap your creature for mana, triggering Unctus, and use Tolarian Kraken to untap it. If you have a mana dork that generates two mana, like Palladium Myr turned blue with Unctus, this will also generate infinite mana.
Building on a Budget
Thanks to going infinite with so many cheap cards, building an extremely powerful Unctus deck for cheap is surprisingly easy. Considering how budget-friendly this powerful deck can be, Unctus could easily stand to see more play in Commander. With just 1,046 decks to its name according to EDHREC, it’s clear that Unctus is extremely underrated at present.
On the plus side, this does make Unctus extremely easy to pick up, available for just $0.42 on TCGplayer. With all of this in mind, Unctus is easily one of the best budget Commander decks available to build.
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