Craft this Chaos - A Jan Jansen Deck Tech

Hello friends! Welcome back for another Commander article here on Cardsphere. It’s hard to believe, but since my last article another set has already been fully previewed. That’s right, Commander Legends 2: Battle for Baldur’s Gate is nearly here, and we can start digging into it for that tasty D&D flavor. We’re going to begin our time with the new set by doing a deck tech of a very powerful new legend. It’s Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter, and he’s here to make us some artifacts. Let’s see what kind of chaos we can craft.

Warning: Contents Easily Broken

Our goal with Jan is to get him to untap as much as possible so we can activate him many times per turn. Or infinitely, if possible. For unlimited untaps, we can deploy a couple of different combos. First up is Clock of Omens, an artifact strategy all-star. With Clock, we can tap two of the tokens Jan makes to untap another artifact. So to finish this combo, we just need to turn Jan into an artifact. Several cards are up to the job, including: Mycosynth Lattice, Ashnod’s Transmogrant, Liquimetal Torque, and Liquimetal Coating. Another way to do it is to deploy Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Village Bell-Ringer. When the bell-ringer enters, it untaps all of our creatures. So we activate Kiki-Jiki to copy the bell-ringer, the copy enters and untaps Jan and Kiki-Jiki. Activate Jan again, then repeat ad infinitum.

For those times when our opponents are party-poopers and stop our infinite combos, we’ll use one-time or once-per-turn untap effects, like: Magewright’s Stone, Thousand-Year Elixir, Sword of the Paruns, Staff of Domination, and To Arms! Or we’ll copy the ability with Battlemage’s Bracers, Illusionist’s Bracers, and Lithoform Engine. Or just copy Jan with Helm of the Host! I’ve also added Zirda, the Dawnwaker to make the expensive activated abilities in cards like Lithoform Engine and Staff of Domination cheaper.

Caution: Highly Flammable

So we’ve figured out how to make our commander do the thing over and over. Now what? How do we win with this contraption? Since we’ll have massive amounts of artifacts entering and leaving the battlefield, our best bet is to use that to find our lines to victory. We’ll start with Reckless Fireweaver. This artificer deals one damage to each opponent whenever an artifact hits our board. Easy peasy. And the new set even gave us another creature with the same ability, Ingenious Artillerist. Always good to have redundancy.

We’ll also have artifacts getting sacrificed, so we’ll throw in Disciple of the Vault, which hits one opponent whenever an artifact goes to the grave. A slow win, unless we’re going infinite untaps, but it also triggers off other players’ artifacts. Along the same lines, we’re also playing Marionette Master, which can speed up the damage if we make it bigger.

We can also seek to win by having the biggest stash. Hellkite Tyrant gives us the win if we have 20 or more artifacts when we hit our upkeep. Always hard to keep on the board until our next turn, but if we’re lucky our opponents won’t have the removal. Otherwise, we can win with just 10 treasures with Revel in Riches.

Danger: Keep Away From Small Children

To keep this deck functioning, we’ll really need to focus on two things: card advantage and graveyard recursion. We need to keep filling our hand if we want to get to our combos, but we’ll also need to get good stuff back from the yard, especially since we may need to sacrifice some non-token artifacts for the good of the cause. Daretti, Scrap Savant is perfect here, as it can serve both needs with the card draw and bringing artifacts back. And the same goes for Trading Post. Idol of Oblivion is an easy-add for the card draw. Magda, Brazen Outlaw does a lot of work with the treasures we’ll be making, as she can fetch out any artifact, or either of the deck’s two dragons, Hellkite Tyrant and Goldspan Dragon. Wake the Past and Open the Vaults will bring back all of our artifacts, Goblin Engineer can fetch one from our library into our graveyard, and Teshar, Ancestor’s Apostle can bring back our important cheap creatures, like Reckless Fireweaver and Magda, Brazen Outlaw. If we’re looking for a hail-mary, Reprocess can sacrifice a bunch of tokens, or non-tokens if we’re desperate, to draw us some fresh cards.

Here’s the full decklist, plus a link to the deck in Archidekt so you can try it before you buy it.

1 Anointed Procession
1 Arcane Signet
1 Arid Mesa
1 Ashnod's Transmogrant
1 Battlefield Forge
1 Battlemage's Bracers
1 Big Score
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Boros Signet
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Clock of Omens
1 Command Tower
1 Daretti, Scrap Savant
1 Deadly Dispute
1 Despark
1 Disciple of the Vault
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Faithless Looting
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Fetid Heath
1 Fracture
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid
1 Goblin Engineer
1 Godless Shrine
1 Goldspan Dragon
1 Graven Cairns
1 Haunted Ridge
1 Hellkite Tyrant
1 Helm of the Host
1 Idol of Oblivion
1 Illusionist's Bracers
1 Ingenious Artillerist
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Kuldotha Forgemaster
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Liquimetal Torque
1 Lithoform Engine
1 Lotus Petal
1 Luxury Suite
1 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
1 Magewright's Stone
1 Marionette Master
7 Mountain
1 Mox Opal
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Nomad Outpost
1 Open the Vaults
1 Orzhov Signet
1 Painful Truths
1 Path to Exile
1 Patriar's Seal
4 Plains
1 Prosper, Tome-Bound
1 Quicksmith Genius
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Reckless Fireweaver
1 Reprocess
1 Revel in Riches
1 Rugged Prairie
1 SacRed Foundry
1 Savai Triome
1 Scrap Trawler
1 ShatteRed Sanctum
1 Smoldering Marsh
1 Sol Ring
1 Spectator Seating
1 Staff of Domination
1 Sundown Pass
1 Swamp
1 Sword of the Paruns
1 Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Tibalt's Trickery
1 To Arms!
1 Trading Post
1 Vanquish the Horde
1 Vault of Champions
1 Village Bell-Ringer
1 Wake the Past
1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker

Final Parting

I love artifacts. One of my favorite decks is Traxos, Scourge of Kroog. So I’m always happy to see new artifact commanders doing silly things. Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter is a really strong commander that makes for a super fun deck. And I don’t think you’d have any trouble boosting up the power level to make it just shy of competitive. This build does include infinite combos, so make sure, as always, to have your pre-game talks with your pod.

That’s it for today, my friends! Tune in next time, when we’ll be digging even further into Commander Legends 2: Battle for Balder’s Gate. Until then, take care. And play lots of games!