Kinan, Bonder Prodigy cEDH Deck Guide For MTG

cEDH is the competitive version of Magic: The Gathering’s generally more casual Commander format. It’s about winning games with optimized decks and shutting down anything your opponents might do. Due to the very high power of the format, most commanders need to have powerful effects. One of these cEDH commanders is Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy.

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Kinnan is a ramp deck that can very easily create infinite amounts of mana to go through your entire deck. Thanks to having a simic (green/blue) color identity, these decks get access to all the best ramp spells and counterspells to ensure your game plan succeeds.

Sample Decklist

Key Cards

These important cards form the foundation of the deck.

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Kinnan, Bonder’s Prodigy

Kinnan, Bonder’s Prodigy is what makes the deck function. Both of its effects are vital. You have plenty of mana-producing nonland permanents, and Kinnan makes it so those gain an extra mana when tapped. This is important as this creates many infinite combos with multiple mana rocks.

You can use that infinite mana to feed into Kinnan’s other ability to get non-Humans on the battlefield. When you have infinite mana (which is Kinnan decks’ main game plan), you can continuously use this ability to play through your entire deck and eventually get Thrasios, Triton Hero on the battlefield to draw out the rest.

Thanks to Kinnan’s low-mana cost, it is very easy to get Kinnan out as early as turn one to start taking advantage of its ability. Since so much of your deck is mana rocks with low to no casting cost, Kinnan can let them create even more mana than they already do.

Mana Rocks And Mana Dorks

To best take advantage of Kinnan’s abilities, the deck plays a plethora of mana rocks and mana dorks (creatures that tap to add mana). Bloom Tender is one of the best as it can tap for both colors your deck plays. Most mana dorks don’t cost much mana with Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, and Llanowar Elves all being one-mana inclusions that can tap for green (or two green mana if Kinnan is on the battlefield).

The artifacts that are played in the deck are almost exclusively ones that tap for mana. The most important of these is Basalt Monolith as when Kinnan is on the battlefield you can constantly tap and untap it with Basalt’s effect to create infinite mana with just these two cards. In addition, you can combine this with Mirage Mirror to turn this infinite colorless mana into infinite mana of any color.

Tutors

In cEDH, combos are the backbone of every deck – and Kinnan is no exception. Kinnan wants specific creatures on the battlefield, so these most often come in the form of cards that get creatures out of your library.

The best creature tutors include Invasion Of Ikoria, Green Sun’s Zenith, and Finale Of Devastation. These all get a creature card of a specific mana cost, which can be either a combo piece like Nyxbloom Ancient or Thrasios, Triton Hero, or a different tutor such as Trophy Mage to get your artifacts directly from your deck.

The most important cards in cEDH Kinnan decks are the mana rocks that go infinite, so you want as many ways to get them on the battlefield or in your hand as possible. Tezzeret The Seeker, Transmute Artifact, and Fabricate all make this quite easy. Since all the mana rocks you want don’t cost a lot of mana, you can hit the «X» needed to tutor them quite easily.

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Card Draw

Simic has plenty of access to fantastic card draw, so Kinnan takes advantage of that. Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, and Consecrated Sphinx all help to get cards in your hand so that you can see your combo pieces and interaction quicker. Sylvan Library is also helpful for an extra boost. Since Kinnan tends to win games in one turn, life does not matter at all until they hit zero, so the burn it does is unimportant.

Since the decklist has plenty of fetchlands that cause you to shuffle your deck, Brainstorm is especially strong to get rid of dead cards in your hand for something that can be more beneficial in the game state. With how much mana Kinnan can create, Pull From Tomorrow is especially strong as you can draw a large number of cards before your turn starts to begin combing off.

Winning With Kinnan

Kinnan is a combo deck built around getting to its combos quickly through ramp and card advantage. There are plenty of ways to create an infinite amount of mana to essentially do whatever you want.

Thanks to having access to blue – you have counterspells to ensure your combos stay safe. You don’t even need mana to counter, since there is a plethora of free counterspells such as Fierce Guardianship and Force Of Will.

How To Pilot Kinnan

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy cEDH decks are card advantage machines. The deck is explosive and can turn things around from nothing in one turn. Thanks to how much card draw and filtering it has access to, gaining access to combo pieces is trivial. With how fast cEDH runs, Kinnan decks have the bonus of plenty of counterspells to ensure none of your opponents’ infinite combos go off, and you keep your own safe.

For starting hands, you generally want ways to get ahead of your mana curve both through mana dorks and mana rocks. Since Kinnan is so easy to cast, having ways to get it out early can lead to combo wins before the opponents have a realistic chance to set up. Mulligans should be taken if none of these are present as they are the core to the Kinnan deck.

Kinnan decks do not need to rely on just one combo line as there are multiple cards in the deck that act functionally the same such as Nyxbloom Ancient essentially being a second copy of Kinnan.

Since you can create infinite mana in multiple ways without Kinnan on the battlefield, you never actually have to worry much about commander tax if Kinnan ever does get removed. As such, it is fine to get aggressive with your castings of Kinnan as it often isn’t going to stay off the battlefield for long. Much of the combos included all occur at instant speed, so it is fairly resistant to the most popular forms of interaction.

Your main win condition is almost always going to be Thassa’s Oracle. Thanks to how easy it is to create infinite mana, you can always get rid of your deck thanks to Kinnan’s ability. An alternate way to win is creating a battlefield full of tokens or going full board lockdown with Hullbreaker Horror backed up by Isochron Scepter with Dramatic Reversal imprinted on it to cast it an infinite amount of times to bounce every spell and nonland permanent on the battlefield.

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