Typal—it’s one of the easiest, most popular ways of designing a deck for Commander. Formerly ‘Tribal’, this structure to a deck involves cramming it full of synergistic creatures such as Elves, Dragons, or Goblins, and players will often gravitate towards this theme for their first deck. Cards that all mention a specific phrase amidst their rules text, have thematic overlap, and are purpose-built to function make for a great entry to the format, although I’ve actually never built one myself. It’s the Johnny in me, the ‘Magic hipster,’ that scoffs at such a silly suggestion as to include cards that don’t require a dive into the comprehensive rules in order to perform some arbitrary loop. Joking aside, I tend to focus so much on unique mechanics in my exploration of Commander choices that this solid bedrock of the format has gone untouched.
That was until recently, when a friend of mine mentioned offhand that they wanted to get into Magic. I’ve helped to onboard a great many people, and designed decks from repeated Deathtouch railguns to Boros Clues. Then, they asked for ‘a Chimera deck.’ Oh no. You may realize that, as far as I was aware, Chimeras don’t have a robust suite of creatures, or really any mechanical identity…until we trace back to February 1997’s Visions. Strap in for +2/+2 counters, Perplexing Chimera clones, and enough Scry to make you fall right over. It’s about time someone takes a look at Gnostro, Voice of the Crags!
“Legendary Creature — Chimera”
As of August 2025, there is exactly 1 Legendary Chimera, excluding the Changelings in the audience, and we’re lucky Gnostro is a fairly competent card. Being in Jeskai colors and releasing in Commander Legends, this card was swept up in the set’s hype and forgotten almost instantly, with a scant ~500 decks on EDHREC despite its color identity and profoundly popular plane of origin in Theros. Still, if we’re talking about storm payoffs, Gnostro’s tap ability is a solid outlet for a turn with plenty of spells, even if it has no direct means of leading to a victory on its own, lacking the ability to target players with its damage. We can use this ability as our guide for the rest of the included Chimeras, and I feel you can make a case for ~9 other Chimeras in a Gnostro list, before your options start drying up.
While we’ll cover four of those peculiar critters in the next section, I wanted to cover how I filtered through the selection and ended up with what you see in the list. Of the 18 legal Chimeras in our colors, of the 23 total, you can break them down into a few categories: Limited Flyers, Izzet Signposts, Spell Payoffs, and the Visions Chimeras. I’m not kidding when I mention Izzet Signposts, either—four of these Creatures are the archetype-defining uncommons from their respective set, a weird quirk that actually sets us up quite well for what Gnostro already wants to do. Shaving down, we cut the overpriced flyers, the pair of Enchantment-bouncing Chimeras that are made for a different deck, and arrive at most of the Signposts, the Visions Chimeras, and a few oddballs. As an example, Perplexing Chimera is the epitome of a card I want to see in a Bracket 2 game, switching control of Spells, and it just so happens to be a Chimera. Spellheart Chimera and Prescient Chimera are both spellslinger payoffs, and both Mischievous Chimera and Serum-Core Chimera likewise benefit from casting cheap Instants & Sorceries throughout the turn cycle. Critically as well, we can see a tertiary subtheme of scry-matters emerging between our Commander and a few of the playables, and one of the last cuts was Stormchaser Chimera, who lost out due to the overall low mana value of the deck.
Build-A-Commander Workshop
One of the categories of Chimera I’ve not yet covered, though, is a series of 4 Artifact Creatures printed in 1997’s Visions, which operate in a wholly unique design space amongst the Chimera type. These were, in fact, the first Chimeras in Magic, and in reading their text that truly does show. Brass-Talon Chimera, Iron-Heart Chimera, Lead-Belly Chimera, and Tin-Wing Chimera can each freely sacrifice themselves to put a +2/+2 counter on another Chimera, bestowing it their keyword indefinitely. Those keywords, being First Strike, Vigilance, Trample, & Flying respectively all assist in making Gnostro surprisingly beefy as a Voltron Commander, but a few of these can help our other Chimeras also get in on their own in a pinch. The weirdness inherent to adding not 2 +1/+1 counters, but a single +2/+2 counter, and the abilities just continuously existing following their activation is a doozy here, although the agedness of these cards works to their advantage here.
If we look at the Gatherer text for these cards, there’s a curious bit of reminder text that I haven’t seen anywhere else: (This effect lasts indefinitely.) While I covered copiable values extensively in my article on Firion, Wild Rose Warrior, an effect like this wasn’t something I had any experience with! Copiable values are defined in Layer 1 and keyword abilities in Layer 6, per 613.1f of the comprehensive rules, meaning unfortunately this isn’t something that gets passed on if you clone Gnostro. This might be a bit of a disappointment, especially for a strategy so keen on copying our Creatures, but ultimately it’s been okay only having the one suited-up Gnostro, and other clones as utility pieces. Adding effects like Vigilance or Flying is especially helpful, and once Gnostro gets big enough Trample can absolutely come into play, with First Strike mostly being helpful versus other First Strikers, or Deathtouch.
Regardless of the keyword they bestow, having 4 of this style of effect in Commander, a singleton format, allows us to actually build around the concept. We’ve taken that to its logical extreme by including a great many ways to clone, repeat, or otherwise abuse the mechanism by which these DaVinci-esque contraptions operate. Gift of Immortality gives us the opportunity to give +8/+8 to a Chimera(s) every turn cycle, which turns Gnostro into a 2-shot Commander very quickly, and Faces of the Past allows us to untap Gnostro when we sacrifice a Visions Chimera. That latter interaction is actually the core of a few different winning lines, as a sort-of reverse Intruder Alarm that is uniquely positioned here to give us unprecedented freedom in how we use Gnostro’s ability. Of course, we still need to be casting spells, but our wealth of Instants & Sorceries make that a breeze.
Not Quite Twiddlestorm
Speaking of, our storm package is largely targeted untap effects, which serves to supplement another subtheme of the deck: Benefiting from targeted spells. Whether we’re making additional Gnostros or Vision Chimeras with Vesuvan Duplimancy, doubling up these spells with Leyline of Resonance or Frontline Heroism, or even just popping off with a three-card Splinter Twin line, Jeskai has a great many tools to enable this ‘Heroic’ gameplan, to borrow the term from Theros. Gnostro might not be able to directly translate this pop-off into a win, but in Bracket 2 that’s arguably a good thing, with enough scry to ensure the next big play is just a topdeck away.
One aspect I feel is undervalued when building for ‘optimized Bracket 2’ gameplay is ensuring you have consistency without tutors available at all times. To use my other Bracket 2 decks as examples (which you can read about here), Firion utilizes a Polymorph package to soft-tutor for one of four options; while this is not technically a tutor, because of the way the deck is built, it acts similarly to a Gamble effect! Gorex, meanwhile, sees an absolute ton of cards via self-mill, and then can use the Commander to access those milled cards—Gnostro is similar, and in games where things are going well, and you’ve got access to Cerulean Wisps, Twitch, etc you might scry 20+ cards in a single turn. Seeing up to a fifth of my library in testing is not insignificant, and if you aggressively bottom cards that aren’t exactly what you need, Gnostro sure feels like it breaks the expected consistency rate of the format.
For Scrying Out Loud
There’s a number of cards which specifically call out for Commanders that scry an absolute ton, largely derived from the Elves of Middle Earth, who had a Commander precon with that subtheme. While the actual advantage generated by Gnostro through scrying is not literally card advantage, the degree of selection ensures that you can turn card draw into ‘soft tutors’, getting far more of what you need versus an errant land. For our aggro plan, Elvish Mariner is most often going to tap down the entire board, and go figure, Prescient Chimera synergizes with all of these scry payoffs on top of having the relevant Creature type. Council’s Deliberation looks like a 2 mana draw 2, which would be fine on its own, but here it actually does quite a bit more; due to the fact the draws are disjointed, we can scry a ton, draw 1, then scry even more before the second draw. To that end, it turns our scrying storms into real tutors if you squint!
Matoya, Archon Elder is similarly a means to turn scries into draws, but she’s even repeatable! This basically ensures Gnostro draws at least an extra card per turn, and very often it will be substantially more than that. Matoya only checks for instances of scry, meaning it doesn’t matter how many cards we’re seeing with a Gnostro activation, but what if we wanted…more? The Temporal Anchor is phrased far closer to Elvish Mariner, caring about the number of cards placed on the bottom after you finish scrying, meaning a Gnostro scrying 5 will functionally draw 5 cards that can only be used during your turn, while you control the Anchor. That is a meaningful restriction, but still one that results in a huge second hand of cards! Then, there’s Elminster, who is basically a storm payoff, and leads to some of the list’s longest turns. Elminster ‘banks’ a discount on your next Instant or Sorcery equal to the amount scried, and this in turn will likely untap Gnostro (using a card like Refocus), which leads to more discounts, ad nauseam. Elminster also does some heinous things with Mystic Speculation, giving you storm count equal to available Blue mana, and filtering through your deck with ease. Couple that with Storm-Kiln, and you have the first of a few funky 3ish card combos available to the deck, as a Bracket 2 option. The final big scry payoff is Lost Isle Calling, which does nothing on its own, but will very often end the game if its ability resolves, drawing a new hand of cards and granting an extra turn; this is the only means to do extra turns in the list, but can close out games if left unchecked.
Rube Goldberg Machine Gun
We’ve covered the many whirring gears that this great behemoth of small synergies has, but what actually causes the game to end? There is of course the option of killing with Gnostro via combat, which does happen if you manage to stick enough keywords and +2/+2 counters on the Chimera, but given we’re doing so much with storm and untapping, it seems obvious to slot in a few combos. To get into that, we need to talk about our three allowed tutors, Imperial Recruiter, Drift of Phantasms, and Academy Rector. Rector is the piece here that we’re most often looking to chain towards, getting us cards like Faces of the Past or Vesuvan Duplimancy for value, or relevant combo pieces once we’re set up. Drift also finds Faces, but also Imperial Recruiter, Matoya, or Jeskai Ascendency, the latter of which will elicit audible groans from those familiar. Recruiter then finds Drift (hey, it’s redundancy!), Rector, or any of our Visions Chimeras, and is an excellent target to copy with our Heat Shimmer effects in order to nab what we need from the library. Don’t forget that because we’re on three of the MDFC Creatures, Recruiter can also find functional lands, removal, recursion, or protection! The only sad part about this tutor package is that token copies of Rector cannot correctly resolve, but that’s a small price to pay for such a potent tutor we can crack using Gnostro’s ping.
The deck’s majority is made up of Instants & Sorceries, but Enchantment is the supertype that boosts Gnostro into the stratosphere. Artist’s Talent reduces costs, rummages, and even makes our pings stronger, which matters immensely on opponents’ turns when we may have only cast a single spell. Sorcerer Class is another class that the deck makes great use of, and coupled with all of our untap effects, we’re able to storm off similar to a turn enabled by Elminster, on top of the card itself being an actual wincon. Speaking of which, let’s talk about Dual Casting—this is an astounding card for a deck rife with untap effects, and coupled with things like Sorcerer Class and/or Storm-Kiln Artist, you can copy an untap effect infinitely, from which you’ll probably be able to win the game. This is also true of Splinter Twin and a Vision Chimera + Faces of the Past, getting you infinite untaps and stats for your Chimeras, for whom the way can be cleared via Gnostro’s damage effect to empty opposing boards. This overall feeling of non-linear combos is part of why I love storm-style strategies in the lower brackets, as we’re not just pushing towards a single path of 2 cards, but an amalgam of highly synergistic, disruptable tools.
Example Decklist: Gnostro-damus
This list forgoes many of the tools you’d expect to see in a deck of clones and untappers—no Pestermite for Twin, no Dualcaster Mage for our copy spells. That is where the question I always ask in these articles rears its head: Why is this built to be Bracket 2? We’re using that framework to avoid these commonly-known and fast-paced two-card wins, precisely because they’re disallowed by the Bracket system. In playing Gnostro as a B2, we get to avoid the obvious inclusion of those cards, opening up more room for things like the silly Visions Chimeras and their ilk. This is a great lesson when it comes to building decks, and one I’ll always reinforce! If you ever want to use cards that would normally come under fire for their combo potential, just shift them down to a bracket to where the temptation of those combos is quashed.
Decklists are kept updated, and may change with set releases.
I also try to avoid the inclusion of Fetches in my Bracket 2 lists, as to speed up games; given we’re already aiming to take some fairly long turns when Gnostro is enabled, it’s a small courtesy that also keeps the manabase in check. Speaking of which, we’re on a fairly standard budget Jeskai manabase, with some added benefit in playing the Temples. Having scry attached means they’re actually awesome in the late game, with something like a Matoya online! I think it’s fairly easy to cut this deck down to barer essentials than I have it, if budget is your concern, and swapping around some of the Enchantment payoffs for Planeswalker ones (such as the adorably ottersome Ral), in order to sub Academy Rector for Arena Rector is doable. From there, Twin could sit as the most expensive card in the list at around ~$200 total. I want to stress, the core of ‘untap, scry, and silly Chimeras’ is a fairly budget-friendly identity, and I’ve only pushed it to the price it’s at now because it’s far easier to sub for budget than to further optimize on ones’ own.
Of cards not yet covered, Swans of Bryn Argoll has been on my mind for years from the old SaffronOlive video/EDM track of ‘hit our swans, draw some cards’, and Gnostro is no different. We can directly translate Gnostro’s damage into card draw by way of Swans, but unfortunately it’s a fairly hard card to tutor in Jeskai colors. Marvin, Murderous Mimic can either be just a 2 mana Visions Chimera, or another Gnostro, and little is more fun than copying a Perplexing Chimera, trading it for a spell, and then killing the copy with Gnostro (thus avoiding its downsides). There’s a shocking degree of synergy between Gnostro and the playable Chimeras, and just enough typal payoffs to make it feel real. It’s capital T Typal, but not too typal, not obviously typal.
Prog-Gnostro-cation
I want to take a brief moment to talk about Gnostro’s loaded name, as in spite of being purely fictional, it calls forth everything you’d expect in a monster stemming from the Greek-inspired plane of Theros. Gnostro’s name is derives from the root ‘gno’, which leads right to Gnosis, the idea of knowledge. Hearing this, and not even knowing the exact root, it calls forth ideas of Nostradamus, Prognostication, Gnosticism, etc—a good card name tells you about what the card does using your own preconceptions. Knowing then that Gnostro is a tremendous source of scry and highly cerebral play is even better, it makes you feel smart to figure out what this dubious little Creature can do, a strange fusion of so many mini archetypes, a mechanical Chimera.
I had absolutely no idea how much I’d enjoy piloting Gnostro until I actually got down to it, as for me there’s so many aspects which go against my player profile present. Three colors, typal, and no direct route to victory? I should despise this premise, but instead I’ve managed to loop around to it being the exact mess of Johnny combo lines that makes every game of Commander a puzzle I’m eager to solve. Even if not every Chimera is a card I’d play on its own, or there are some poor Layer interactions which make the deck’s conceit just that little bit less fun, I’m confronted with so much to enjoy in this underrated Commander option. Gnostro’s EDHREC rank is perhaps its greatest enigma, given when and how it arrived to the game, and I sincerely hope you give this very good boy the time of day! Who knows, you might just have fun outside of your comfort zone, too.
Until next time, no Chimera, no scry.
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