Deck Goals
On a meta level, this deck is meant to be played pretty much anywhere except cEDH. Specifically, because it leans so heavily on other people hitting each other, it can adapt to many power levels, and naturally take down higher power players while leaving lower power ones to build. For similar reasons, it's technically under $100 on TCGPlayer, which is helpful to convince precon players it's an okay fit, but doesn't stop it from competing with your typical high power non-competitive decks with ten times the budget.
In terms of gameplay, this deck is extremely focused from turns 1-4, and then flexible after that. With less than 30 lands, you want to aggressively mulligan for enough mana to get to turn 4 Baeloth (or turn 3 if you're lucky). This usually looks like:
- Two lands, or one depletion/sac land
- Two ways to ramp 1 more, or one way to ramp 2 more
- Optional/drawn later: One additional land or ramp option, if you've got free mulls or no <2 mana ramp options (e.g. 2 lands and two 3-cost mana rocks won't cut it)
While 32 is quite few, there are 17ish ramp options, giving us approximately a 63% chance of getting a total of 5 mana sources by turn 4 with no mulligan. And, if we keep a 4 mana source hand, we have over a 90% chance of getting another within four draws. You're almost always going to be able to go either t2 Clan Crafter -> t3 ramp -> t4 Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer, or switch the ramp and Clan Crafter.
Once you get out the two commanders, they'll hopefully start generating you enormous amounts of treasure tokens, translating directly to power on Baeloth, power in general, and card advantage. Depending on how vicious the group is, you may need to play a forced blocking card to get things started - thus, consider keeping hands with forced blocks more often. However, often, people will naturally take their free kills and trade-ups. From there, this is pretty much a Birthing Pod deck, only the tutors come from everywhere (including Pyre of Heroes, your only actual Pod effect).
You should use your first line of tutors to: 1, deal with an immediate threat, 2, set up for future tutors, or 3, to pop off. This typically means exactly one of the following:
1: Berserker's Frenzy, Mogg Infestation, Nevinyrral's Disk, Arcbond, or Krark-Clan Shaman (do these last three during combat so you get more treasures, setting up for the next tutor)
2: Pyre of Heroes, or Goblin Engineer -> Pyre of Heroes to start podding it up.
3: Crime Novelist, Basalt Monolith, Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer or some other doubler/finisher if you think you can win right away
These are generally in highest to lowest priority. Obviously, preventing someone else from immediately winning is necessary, but you might be surprised to see "just win" is below "set up" - this is because if you play this deck as a psuedo combo deck, it's gonna be pretty boring. I recommend doing this only if you haven't won in awhile, or if play is getting gummed up and taking forever and it'll be more fun to just win and go next. Otherwise, keep your own engine going, get people to hit each other, and see if some of the weaker players can generate an overwhelming force to beat you in the resulting 1v1; that's generally more fun.
From there, you should be generating tons of value, allowing you to chain tutors into whatever you want/need, finishing the game within 2-3 turns of uninterrupted buildup.
Tutor Lines
There are so many interwoven tutor lines that I'm not going to cover them all; however, I'm gonna cover the main archetypes, and their best cards.
Creature Tutors:
Best: Goblin Matron, Pyre of Heroes, Magda, Brazen Outlaw.
- Goblin Matron sets you up with two of the best options in the deck: Crime Novelist, and Goblin Engineer -> Pyre of Heroes.
- Pyre of Heroes lets you grab Universal Automaton from any token, which gets you to either Goblin Engineer, Oracle of Tragedy, or Harmonic Prodigy, which gets you to 90% of the remaining creatures. It also lets you convert artifact tutors into creatures.
- Lastly, Magda going to be a rarer pick, but is notable because it lets you immediately grab multiple things onto the battlefield if you have enough treasures.
Artifact Tutors:
Best: Goblin Engineer, Whir of Invention, Magda, Brazen Outlaw.
- Goblin Engineer will get most of the deck out, as well as being cheap recursion. It also converts creature tutors to artifact tutors.
- Whir of Invention will get the other big cards out, and is often necessary as a result. It converts spell tutors to artifact tutors, usually via Micromancer -> Mystical Tutor.
- Magda has the same upsides as above.
Instant/Sorcery Tutors:
Best (and only): Micromancer, Mystical Tutor. You're pretty much always using the former to tutor the latter.
Other Major Card Categories
There are some other categories that should be addressed, since they're crucial and appear multiple times.
Equipment and Similar
Champion's Helm, Grafted Wargear, and Hero's Blade are cheap to equip, and Champion's Helm doubles as protection. Dowsing Dagger
and The Irencrag are basically either equips or ramp, with opposite initial forms. Tyrite Sanctum does something similar.
Forced Blocks:
This got mentioned already, but there's only really a few: Berserker's Frenzy, Invasion Plans, Grand Melee, and Courtly Provocateur. These each are either untutorable or require moderately limited tutors: Mystical Tutor or sacrificing a Harmonic Prodigy or Oracle of Tragedy to Pyre respectively, so I don't necessarily recommend tutoring for these. However, they do function as removal, treasure generation, and value generation simultaneously, so they're highly valued.
Instant Board Wipes:
These let you cash in on huge boards of Goaded creatures even when they're being intentionally set up to survive. Jiwari, the Earth Aflame, Krark-Clan Shaman, Nevinyrral's Disk and Arcbond are your options, and Krark-Clan Shaman in particular is easy to tutor for. However, these are all difficult to recur. This is at least somewhat intentional, since repeated board wipes are a good way to never play with that playgroup again. That said, four should be plenty to either set up a win, or realize you can't.
Treasure Translation:
These let you turn your single-use artifacts into permanent engines. Urza, Lord High Artificer and Inspiring Statuary are the main ones, as they are easy to tutor and directly convert to permanent mana rocks. However, if you somehow get locked out of winning directly, Shimmer Dragon lets you tap for cards, while Unwinding Clock enables all kinds of combos.
Finishers:
The most consistent one is probably Rise and Shine, but Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer is excellent with a surprising number of options (most commonly the construct from Urza, Lord High Artificer, but also the 4/1 skeleton with menace from the Undercity, the 3/4 gargoyle from Gargoyle Castle.) Additionally, if you can animate Basalt Monolith, with Heartstone on, you have infinite mana, which usually gets you there.
Misc:
This is just for important small packages:
Closing Thoughts
This brief description can't cover every decision and nuance in the deck; every card in here has been carefully considered, and I keep coming back and refining it. But, getting to know it well is key, since it's so tutor heavy, so I've tried to make it a little easier to get into. I hope some people try it out! Even if you don't want to burn $100 (or realistically, more like $130-150), proxy it up - I'm sure nobody will complain about you trying a budget deck out before buying. I welcome suggestions; I want to make this deck my one go-to, and it can always use improvement.
