Commander Deck Tech: Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles the Echidna, one of the most charismatic characters in the Sonic franchise, was recently released in a Secret Lair set, more specifically the Secret Lair x Sonic: Friends & Foes set, alongside other beloved characters, such as:

In this article, we'll show you two perfect Commander lists for Knuckles fans. The first one focuses on tokens and putting as many creatures on your board as fast as possible. The second one is a classic Mono Red list centered around artifacts.

In Sonic the Hedgehog lore, Knuckles is the guardian of the Master Emerald, a powerful ancient stone. He is known for being incredibly strong, stubborn, and temperamental and for always helping his friends.

In Magic: The Gathering, Knuckles is a legendary red creature with haste, double strike, and trample. If Knuckles is on your board when one or more creatures under your control deal combat damage to a player, he creates a Treasure token.

Please note that if you manage to deal damage to three opponents in a casual pod, you'll create three Treasure tokens. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control 30 artifacts or more, you win the game.

Since Knuckles himself is a win condition, your opponents will most likely target him pretty heavily, so this list also uses burn. Instead of being the main win condition, Knuckles is just a support card.

Burn

First, let's talk about these burn cards. We decided to add cards that deal damage to the opponents directly when creatures enter your board.

You can use Massive Raid to deal damage or remove a problematic enemy creature.

Purphoros, God of the Forge and Impact Tremors are popular in token lists because their effects deal damage to each opponent. Besides burn, Purphoros' activated ability also buffs your creatures until the end of the turn.

In your end step, Throne of the God-Pharaoh will make each opponent lose life equal to the number of tapped creatures you control.

With these cards, you'll drain your opponents' lives as you fill the board so you can create lots of Treasures with Knuckles!

Creating Tokens and Other Interactions

Goblins are one of the most popular and iconic creatures for Mono Red lists. So, our token list plays several of them, and they'll be our greatest allies in combat.

Academy Manufactor, Xorn, and Stridehangar Automaton create more Treasures for us and give us an advantage after each combat.

Loyal Apprentice and Legion Warboss are valuable because they create creature tokens with haste at the beginning of each of your combat phases. As for Bonehoard Dracosaur, it creates both a 3/1 Dinosaur token and a Treasure token. It also lets you exile two cards in your upkeep and play them that turn.

General Kreat, the Boltbringer creates Goblins and deals damage to each opponent when creatures enter your board. Finally, we couldn't leave out the Goblin trinity: Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Krenko, Mob Boss, and Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin.

The two Krenkos are very efficient at creating Goblin tokens, whereas Kiki-Jiki can create copies of creatures like Loyal Apprentice, Legion Warboss, and Goldspan Dragon.

Another great Goblin is Grenzo, Havoc Raiser, which might not create creature tokens or Treasures, but whenever your creatures deal damage to an opponent, it lets you choose between two effects. You can either exile the top cards in that opponent's deck or goad a creature they control.

As Knuckles works when one or more of your creatures deal combat damage, we also added cards that give us double strike.

Besides them, we also play Aggravated Assault and Great Train Heist, two extra combat spells that will let us deal more damage more often in our turn and thus trigger Knuckles' ability. After all, it triggers whenever one of our creatures or multiple of them deal damage to a player.

Card Draw

Card draw is a must in any list. We added multiple red card draw tools, such as:

Professional Face-Breaker is our alternative commander because, just like Knuckles, it creates Treasures when one or more creatures we control deal damage to a player. Furthermore, it makes these Treasures even more useful, as it lets us sacrifice them to exile the top card in our deck and play that exiled card that same turn.

With Solemn Simulacrum's ETB ability, we'll put another land in play, and, once it dies, we'll add another card to our hand. Unexpected Windfall and Professional Face-Breaker draw cards and also create Treasures, whereas Demand Answers lets us sacrifice them or discard our cards to draw two more.

As usual, we also added Jeska's Will, which lets us exile the three top cards in our deck, play them, and also create red mana so we can cast these spells.

In the Sonic franchise, Knuckles guards a crucial and powerful stone. In MTG, we'll surround him with powerful artifacts so we can win.

Mono red is an excellent choice if you enjoy artifacts!

This list plays a few incredible cards that create Treasures, such as Goldlust Triad, Ancient Copper Dragon, and Cavern-Hoard Dragon.

With Mycosynth Lattice, Hellkite Tyrant can steal the opponent's entire board. But it represents victory in your next upkeep even by itself.

To aid Knuckles, we added Commander's Plate, Excalibur, Sword of Eden, Shadowspear, Mithril Coat, and Nettlecyst. They're crucial as well.

This deck plays some very cool cards, and as such it is more fun than the one above, which is more competitive. It also relies a bit more on having Knuckles in play and wins with his ability a lot more.

Knuckles fans rejoice! His deck is actually a lot of fun!

Knuckles benefits from all the support Red has in terms of burn and all of its aggression as well. You'll create Treasure after Treasure as soon as combat is over.

He is incredibly efficient at creating treasures consistently, which will speed up your mana curve. Furthermore, Knuckles also has a built-in alternative win condition that wins the game on the spot if you control 30 artifacts or more. He's a true headache for opponents!

In fact, his strategy is so versatile you can build it in several ways and never get bored. In our case, we used burn and tokens to put pressure on our opponents and win the game unexpectedly with extra combats, double strike, and lots of buffs on the board.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!