Sneaky Rogues (14)
- 1x Deathcult Rogue
- 1x Faerie Vandal
- 1x Inkfathom Infiltrator
- 1x Invisible Stalker
- 1x Keeper of Keys
- 1x Marang River Prowler
- 1x Merfolk Windrobber
- 1x Nighthawk Scavenger
- 1x Notorious Throng
- 1x Slither Blade
- 1x Soaring Thought-Thief
- 1x Triton Shorestalker
- 1x Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire
-
1x
Zareth San, the Trickster
Repeatable Card Draw (7)
- 1x Bident of Thassa
- 1x Coastal Piracy
- 1x Court of Cunning
- 1x Keeper of Keys
- 1x Notion Thief
- 1x Reconnaissance Mission
- 1x Sygg, River Cutthroat
Protection (5)
- 1x Cloak and Dagger
- 1x Lightning Greaves
- 1x Neurok Stealthsuit
- 1x Swiftfoot Boots
- 1x Whispersilk Cloak
Just In Case (3)
Reanimation (3)
Other (12)
- 1x Baleful Mastery
- 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
- 1x Krydle of Baldur's Gate
- 1x Looter il-Kor
- 1x Negate
- 1x Pongify
- 1x Rapid Hybridization
- 1x Rogue Class
- 1x Sword of Hearth and Home
- 1x Vedalken Infiltrator
- 1x Winged Boots
- 1x Yuan-Ti Malison
Buffs (7)
- 1x Adaptive Automaton
- 1x Coat of Arms
- 1x Keeper of Keys
- 1x Oona's Blackguard
- 1x Soaring Thought-Thief
- 1x Stinkdrinker Bandit
- 1x Whispersilk Cloak
Ramp (6)
- 1x Arcane Signet
- 1x Commander's Sphere
- 1x Dimir Signet
- 1x Frogtosser Banneret
- 1x Mind Stone
- 1x Sol Ring
One Off Card Draw (4)
Utility Lands (3)
Commander (1)
Removal (8)
- 1x Cast Down
- 1x Dismember
- 1x Drown in the Loch
- 1x Eat to Extinction
- 1x Go for the Throat
- 1x Heartless Act
- 1x Mystic Reflection
- 1x Reality Shift
Lands (31)
- 1x Clearwater Pathway Flip
- 1x Command Tower
- 1x Drowned Catacomb
- 17x Island
- 1x Path of Ancestry
- 10x Swamp
Random Synergies (5)
- 1x Glasspool Mimic Flip
- 1x Mystic Reflection
- 1x Notorious Throng
- 1x Strionic Resonator
- 1x Thought Vessel
Milling (3)
Tutors (2)
Maybeboard
The Original Anowon, the Ruin Thief Primer!
Guide to upgrading the Sneak Attack Zendikar Rising Preconstructed Commander Deck.
deck when it was new, precons have come a long way even in just two years.
His second ability is what the precon is based around. He can fill up your opponent's graveyards fast, and the deck takes advantage of that in two ways. First, big graveyards can lead to big creatures like Consuming Aberration, Nighthowler, and Bonehoard. Secondly, and more focused upon in the original deck, is the ability to steal some of these milled creatures for your own use, through cards like Fated Return, Endless Obedience, Sepulchral Primordial, Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, Rise from the Grave, and Extract from Darkness. This side of the deck can both deprive opponents of big threats, and help beef up your boardstate.
The rest of the deck rounds out this two-pronged focus with a mix of tribal elements (Obelisk of Urd, Oona's Blackguard), ramp (Frogtosser Banneret, Sol Ring), control (Silumgar's Command, AEtherize), boardwipes (In Garruk's Wake, Scourge of Fleets), and card draw (Military Intelligence, Distant Melody.
Over all, the deck straight out of the box, in my opinion, is around a 3.5 power level; it is focused and streamlined, but there is a lot missing, and, at the end of the day, no one yet knows how Anowon, the Ruin Thief will handle himself in the vast arena of Commander. That said, this is a very fun deck, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in learning Magic or even to veterans who want a new deck.
-
Gonti, Lord of Luxury, while most commonly seen as a commander, is a force to be reckoned with in the 99. Opponent tutors something to the top? Deprive them of their combo piece, and even use it yourself if you want to.
-
Notion Thief is a pet card of mine, and will help refill your hand while depriving your opponents of gas.
-
Oona, Queen of the Fae, while not a rogue herself, makes 1/1 Fairy Rogues while exiling your opponent's deck. She however is rather slow, and we want access to our opponent's cards.
-
Sygg, River Cutthroat is another nice payoff for dealing some sneaky damage.
-
Syr Konrad, the Grim can deal massive amounts of damage to your opponents when you mill them, kill their creatures, when they kill your creatures...
The other artifacts in the deck are concerned with ramping. As this deck is , we don't have access to the kind of ramp that or does. But that doesn't mean we have to follow the mana curve. Included in the deck are Dimir Keyrune, Dimir Locket, Dimir Signet, Mind Stone, Arcane Signet, Commander's Sphere, and a classic Sol Ring. There is not much other ramp to be found in these colors, but there are some other powerful artifacts.
- Keening Stone can help us finish off long grindy matches.
- Mindcrank doubles our milling through combat damage.
- Tormod's Crypt can prevent that pesky Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck from benefiting from our milling.
Some powerful sorceries to add if focusing on the milling aspect of the deck include Traumatize and Maddening Cacophony, both of which can be game-enders. Knowledge Exploitation can be a boardwipe, a kill spell, a reanimator, or whatever else your opponent's are running.
Out:
-
Scourge of Fleets. While a pretty effective boardwipe, against big creature decks or big mana decks this just wastes both of your turns. Kindred Dominance works better as a boardwipe in tribal decks, and is more permanent.
-
Gonti, Lord of Luxury. Yes, he's a rogue, and yes, he is a hugely popular commander, but his ability just has no synergy with our deck.
-
Nighthowler. 95% of the time this would be cast as an aura, and it doesn't give enough of a boost, just counting creatures.
-
Ogre Slumlord. We don't want our creatures dying, and without that he is just an overpriced vanilla rogue.
-
Sepulchral Primordial. I am still undecided about the effectiveness of this big bad boy. We are generally going to be focusing on one player, so not everyone's yards will fill up as fast, and he's not a rogue. More playtesting needed before a final decision is made.
-
Consuming Aberration. Another tough decision. Without trample this can be stopped by chump blockers every turn, and can make us enemies at the table.
-
Oona, Queen of the Fae. Similar to Gonti, she doesn't have as much synergy with the rest of the deck, and a mana sink is the last thing we need.
-
Latchkey Faerie. There are better cheap rogues to fill this slot.
-
Master Thief. Stealing a mana rock? Maybe some Lightning Greaves? Not really worth it except against artifact combo decks.
-
Nightveil Sprite. Again, there are better cheap rogues.
-
Whirler Rogue. More playtesting is necessary to make a decision, but I'm leaning towards no. There is equipment that can do this cheaper.
-
Marsh Flitter. Way overpriced for anything except sacrifice decks.
-
Syr Konrad, the Grim. Again, good against creature decks, but otherwise a dead draw, and a 5cmc dead draw is something I don't need.
-
Zulaport Cutthroat. We still don't want our creatures dying.
-
Blackblade Reforged. As we're not ramping with lands, and run a lower land count in the deck, this is a little overpriced for inconsistent buffing.
-
Bonehoard. Similar to Syr Konrad, the Grim and Nighthowler, this just doesn't give enough of a buff, except against very heavy-creature decks.
-
Scytheclaw. We're focusing more on the milling side of the deck, but this, along with Quietus Spike could make a future decklist less focused on mill.
-
Dimir Keyrune. This is just a worse Commander's Sphere.
-
Dimir Locket. Another worse Commander's Sphere.
-
Heirloom Blade. A strong tribal card, but can force us to skip over non-creature cards we wanted to see. More playtesting is necessary to make a final decision.
-
Necromantic Selection. It's an overpriced Damnation, and saving one creature is not worth it.
-
Open Into Wonder. Ideally, most of our creatures are evasive already, and this takes a lot of mana to be worth it.The card draw is nice, however. More playtesting needed.
-
Endless Obedience. In the precon, the idea with this is to steal milled creatures from your opponent's graveyards, but there is much better reanimation out there (Animate Dead, Reanimate).
-
Extract from Darkness. See above.
-
Rise from the Grave. See above.
-
Fated Return. Again, in the precon the idea with this is to steal milled creatures from your opponent's graveyards, but 9 FREAKING MANA! Just get an Animate Dead.
-
Silumgar's Command. There are better versions of all the effects. Hero's Downfall is better removal, Drown in the Loch can counter things, and bouncing is not necessary.
-
Spinal Embrace. Why is this card here? Yes, it's good, but there's no synergy.
-
AEtherize. There's better boardwipes, and more permanent ones.
-
Fact or Fiction. I found some better card draw, and more consistent options.
-
Murder. Why not Eat to Extinction? Hero's Downfall? Drown in the Loch? There's a lot of more efficient options.
-
Price of Fame. See above.
-
Soul Manipulation. Ideally, we have enough redundancy that one of our creatures dying does not affect our game plan drastically.
- Military Intelligence. We should be doing damage with our attacks, so Coastal Piracy or Reconnaissance Mission have greater impact.
All the tapped lands (Submerged Boneyard, Dimir Aqueduct, Dimir Guildgate, Dismal Backwater, Jwar Isle Refuge, Myriad Landscape).
-
Adaptive Automaton. A 3cmc buff for all our creatures? Yes, please!
-
Brazen Borrower. It's been taking Standard by storm, and no wonder. A flashy rogue duct-taped to a removal spell?
-
Deathcult Rogue. Unless there's another Anowon, the Ruin Thief deck at the table, this is fantastic value.
-
Faerie Vandal. It's evasive, can come down off of mana held up for a counterspell, and grows off our commander trigger. Nothing flashy, just value.
-
Glasspool Mimic . Lords are nice, so why not have two? Copying our key rogues is very useful, it can be a land if we need one, and it's even a rogue!
-
Inkfathom Infiltrator. Fantastic value with our commander.
-
Keeper of Keys. Not sure what he looks like under that hood, but it doesn't matter. He's willing to help our rogues be even sneakier, and he's even a rogue himself!
-
Merfolk Windrobber. Evasive damage, milling, card draw... can we just play 50 of these?
-
Nighthawk Scavenger. A new rogue from Zendikar Rising, this has fantastic synergy with our commander.
-
Sakashima the Impostor. One of my favorite cards in the deck, Sakashima's synergies have no end. Not only can she copy our commander, which doubles out milling, buffing, and card draw, she's a rogue herself. Keeping her name allows her to circumvent the legend rule, which in this case is extremely powerful.
-
Thieves' Guild Enforcer. I believe that WotC may have been intending to make this a 2-drop and somewhere along the way that extra pip fell off, because this is a tremendously powerful 1-drop. Her first ability enables her second ability, and her synergies are perfectly on theme.
-
Zareth San, the Trickster. The card I was most disappointed not to see in the precon, Zareth could very well be Anowon's brother with the way they synergize.
-
Bident of Thassa. Slapping a Curiosity on all our sneaky rogues enables us to easily refill our hand, over and over again.
-
Cloak and Dagger. Another card I was disappointed not to see in the precon. Come on, Wizards! It's a rogue tribal sneaky equipment!
-
Keening Stone. It's turn 15 or 16, your board has been wiped a few times, you're out of gas, but you've already milled half their deck? This card is the answer. It can help you decisively close out long games, or by itself mill someone out over a few turns.
-
Lightning Greaves. Anowon being removed is annoying, and really affects our chances. Help protect him with this and similar protection equipment.
-
Mindcrank. Doubling our damage milling enables us to mill someone twice as fast, which, as an aggro deck, is very helpful.
-
Neurok Stealthsuit. A pet card of mine, but also (I think) a very underrated one. The instant-speed attach means that here is the ultimate answer to removal.
-
Swiftfoot Boots. Again, protecting Anowon protects our chances, but this can also be used to give our creatures haste. Fleet Swallower with haste? Not pretty.
-
Whispersilk Cloak. Protection AND evasion, all on the same card. This is as good as it gets.
-
Hex. Boardwipes do us more harm than good, so this localized boardwipe is very helpful against other creature-heavy or combo decks.
-
Knowledge Exploitation. "Hey, can I borrow an extra turn spell?" This is a very impactful card, and depending on how much you know about your opponents' decks can be huge. Nothing like a 4-mana Time Stretch to make your day.
-
Mnemonic Betrayal. You did all this work to put your opponents' libraries into their graveyards, so might as well use them! This can turn games around, especially later in the game, however it hurts to hard-cast a Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur when Animate Dead is 2 mana. Maybe-board for now.
-
Reanimate. The ultimate reanimation spell, which all future reanimation spells are compared to. Taking 12 damage to grab a Blightsteel Colossus is only a bad thing when you're at less than 12 life.
-
Yawgmoth's Vile Offering It's removal and reanimation on the same card, and for a great price.
Cast Down. Almost all of the added instants are removal, and this is a good example.
Cyclonic Rift. One of the most played blue cards in commander, this can effectively restart the game for your opponents, leaving you a dozen turns ahead.
Drown in the Loch. Taking advantage of your opponents' full graveyards, this is a competitively costed removal spell that can counter something if needed. It's the only counterspell in the deck, and that's intentional. I did not want this to be a control-y type of deck, and that's inevitably where counterspell-heavy decks go.
Eat to Extinction. Can hit planeswalkers, and leaves no room for recursion/reanimation. Kind of hurts our own reanimation though, so may be taken out.
Go for the Throat. There aren't a ton of artifact creatures running around commander, so this has great value.
Heartless Act. Very few decks can put counters on their creatures, so this is generally just a 2-mana Murder.
Hero's Downfall. Strictly better Murder.
Into the Story. Pay 4, draw 4? Yes, please!
-
Animate Dead. Don't be intimidated by the wall of out-dated text - this is one of the best reanimation pieces around.
-
Bitterblossom. Pumping out evasive rogues for massive value, 24/7. A fantastic card, if a little out of budget. Alas, maybe-board for now.
-
Bloodchief Ascension. Part of the only infinite combo in the deck (with Mindcrank), this also makes it easier for us to win through damage rather than mill. Again, quite pricey: maybe-board.
-
Coastal Piracy. Similar to Bident of Thassa and Reconnaissance Mission, this helps refill our hand.
-
Cover of Darkness. Giving all our rogues Fear for 2 mana? Hell yeah!
-
Court of Cunning. Extra mill, extra card-draw, and even more payoffs for turning our rogues sideways (if other players steal the monarch)? Yes please!
-
Fraying Sanity. Double the mill makes an easier kill. Hey, that rhymed.
-
Reconnaissance Mission. For refueling our hand.
-
Rhystic Study. A classic blue card draw piece that should honestly find a slot in every blue Commander deck.
Bojuka Bog. filling the graveyard of the Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck isn't something we want to be doing, so this is here just in case.
Clearwater Pathway . Manafixing for the win!
Drowned Catacomb. Fix that mana up.
Guildmages' Forum. Both manafixing and occasional buffing.
Morphic Pool. More manafixing.
Path of Ancestry. Why not more manafixing? And some topdeck manipulation into the bargain.
Rogue's Passage. This both fills out our flavor palette and can help Anowon sneak in for the win.
Ramp This deck only runs 7 pieces of ramp, and one can only be used to cast our commander (I'm still considering the value of Jeweled Lotus. Turn 1 Anowon is nice, but kind of unnecessary) but our strategy gives us access to another version of ramp: prowl. The prowl mechanic enables us to cast cards for an alternate cost, usually cheaper, if we have dealt damage to an opponent with a rogue this turn. This is quite a likely scenario, given the third part of the early game strategy.
Control The Board This deck plays 9 pieces of targeted removal, so you are likely to get one by turn 3 or 4. Don't let it sit in your hand! Removal spells are meant to take out the biggest threat at that point in the game. Turn 2 Lotus Cobra counts. Turn 8 Kozilek, the Great Distortion counts. Removal does nothing in your hand, so use it! Aggressive use of removal helps with the third part of your early game strategy:
Deal Some Damage! We have four 1-drop creatures, seven 2-drop creatures, and six 3-drop creatures, so you should have a creature down at least by turn 3. Then, it's time to start hitting some faces. Focus on the deck that will have the most impact on the mid-game, as that's when we want to be unopposed.
Swing, Swing, Swing Our rogues are tiny, so we aren't going to be blocking out any Ghalta, Primal Hungers anytime soon. And since we're not leaving them up as blockers, any and all rogues that won't die to blockers should be turned sideways every turn! We don't win with fancy combos or lock-outs, we win with damage and milling, and both of these are accomplished by turning your rogues sideways. To insure that our rogues are having the maximum impact is when the next section of the mid-game comes into play.
Getting Swole We're running 8 lord effects (counting Necropolis Regent), not including our commander, and 6 evasion/buffing equipment. These should be turning our insignificant rogues into large (-ish) evasive threats, and allowing us to dish out more damage than we take. Protecting our lords is important; a Swiftfoot Boots does more on an Adaptive Automaton than on a Triton Shorestalker. Pumping our rogues as large as they can go enables the third section of the mid-game.
Milling At this point in the game, our commander should be down and protected in some way, and we should be transferring large amounts of cards from libraries to graveyards. Anowon is the linchpin of our strategy, so keeping him alive is the main concern. Most of our evasive rogues are replaceable, as are our lords, but Anowon is one of a kind.
Suggestions
Updates Add
Comments View Archive
Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!
Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax
Please login to comment
93% Casual
Competitive
| Top Ranked |
|
| Date added | 10 months |
| Last updated | 3 days |
| Legality | This deck is Commander / EDH legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 2 - 0 Mythic Rares 25 - 0 Rares 32 - 0 Uncommons |
| Cards | 100 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.43 |
| Tokens | C Emblem Monarch, Copy Clone, 1/1 B Token Creature Faerie Rogue, Ape 3/3 G, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, 2/2 C Creature Manifest, Skeleton 1/1 B, The Atropal, 1/1 Goblin |
| Folders | Uncategorized, Mill, Commander, cool decks, Zendikar, best deck i like, Cool Decks, Potential Deck Builds, back to wall, Reference Lists, See all 23 |
| Votes | |
| Ignored suggestions | |
| Shared with | |
| Views |
