Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER Equipment

Commander Overview

I love me a good old precon! Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER is a very interesting commander and one of my favorite Final Fantasy precons. Built-in card draw with our commander is very strong for an archetype that doesn’t have a ton of card draw. Combine that with being in Naya and our amazing supporting cast for a Voltron game plan that Naya supports, and you have a bracket 2 deck that can truly bring the pain. Cloud is a great commander who offers a lot of utility for our deck.

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is pretty simple, we are a little different than a traditional Voltron deck because of clouds ability to draw cards and because of that we typically equip a lot of our creatures as opposed to just one, while we certainly can go for a commander damage kill we are much more likely to just go for a go-wide typical combat strategy. Drawing cards is great, especially in Naya, and we lean into that as much as we can. This deck is around a mid-level as far as difficulty to play. It does have a lot of triggers and more complex interactions, so I would not hand this to someone who is brand new.

Synergy’s in the deck

The whole deck is based around equipment and equipping our creatures, and making them not only a pain to deal with but also deal a lot of damage. Luckily for us, Naya is the perfect color for us to equip things cheaply and for free. With cards like Forge Anew and Sigarda’s Aid allowing us to free equip, we can get very scary, very quickly. Cards like Professor Hojo, which allow us to get a discounted equip cost, can be crazy for high equip costs like Hammer of Nazahn. This deck is extremely synergistic and works very well with itself.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: This is our setup phase, we don’t typically do much here besides play out some of our equipment and ramp a bit, not a lot going on here.

Mid-Game: By this point, we typically have a lot more going on, we typically have Cloud out and can start equipping/swinging. We have quite a few sources that make our creatures unblockable, like Whispersilk Cloak and Silver Shroud Costume, and because of that, we can chip in early. We are not a deck that waits; we try to be pretty aggressive when the opportunity presents itself. We won’t be making wild attacks; we certainly aren’t that aggressive, but attacking when an opportunity arises is important.

Late-Game: The game is hopefully over by this point, but we are very strong if we are allowed to get to the late-game. We can use cards like Inventory Management to move all of our equipment onto Cloud or another strong Voltron creature and hit like a truck. The late-game isn’t that different from the mid-game, but we are a lot bigger / more established on the board if we get to this stage.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

We aren’t a huge ramp deck; we do have Kodama’s Reach and Cultivate, which are both amazing sources of ramp and can help us get our color fixing easily. We have a lot of early-game plays because many of our equipment pieces are quite cheap, but we don’t ramp a ton overall.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Cloud is the best source of card draw in our deck, they are also the main reason we opt more for a go-wide attack plan as opposed to buffing up a single creature, Cloud is the primary source of card draw in our deck, we don’t have ton of others, in my testing games i didn’t encounter any issues with this, Cloud is on the field for a large portion of the game and can draw us a ton of cards throughout the game. Sram, Senior Edificer is another great, cheap source of card draw and passively draws us a ton of cards for something we are doing already. While we aren’t amazing at drawing cards overall, Cloud is a huge source of card draw for our deck.

Removal

We are firmly alright at removal, we are a pretty “selfish” deck in a lot of ways, we care far more about what we are doing than what our opponents are doing. Still, if an opponent gets too out of hand, we do have a few sources like Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile, which are great for removing opponents’ creatures. I also love both Generous Gift and Beast Within, having the option to destroy any permanent can allow us to disrupt combos, kill huge creatures, or even target a problematic land like Cabal Coffers. Just great utility pieces for the deck. We are not great at removal, but we have enough that we can get by.

Protection

We are quite good at protection; we tend to draw a lot of eyes from our opponents because we can be pretty scary, especially when we are dropping cards like Buster Sword or Colossus Hammer. Cloud is also a big target; our opponents do not want us drawing that many cards! Being targeted by our opponents is an expected part of the deck, so we had to respond to it with protection! One of my favorites is Loran’s Escape, since it can target an artifact or a creature, we can even protect our equipment, perfect for cards like Silver Shroud Costume! Snakeskin Veil, Restoration Magic and Shelter are also great cheap sources as well. While not directly a piece of protection, one of the best ways for us to rebuild is Mantle of the Ancients. Getting all of our stuff back onto one creature can be insane, and throwing it on Cloud, who has haste, can set us up for a one-shot even if our board gets wrecked.

Utility / Support

We have so much awesome equipment in this deck, and I wanted to focus on some of the most important! The big three in this deck are Silver Shroud Costume, Whispersilk Cloak, and Brotherhood Regalia. All of these make our creature unblockable and allow us to freely do damage, whether we go wide or buff up Cloud. All of these are great ways for us to deal damage easily with no roadblocks. Excalibur, Sword of Eden is another card that can be great for the deck. We typically have a ton of artifacts and equipment on the board, so this is almost always free to play and can be simply amazing on Cloud or pretty much any creature, a huge buff, and the vigilance is great as well.

We also have a great supporting cast of creatures. I really like Codsworth, Handy Helper. Giving Cloud Ward two is great on its own, but giving us mana ramp on our equipment/aura spells and a free equip can be very strong, especially if we drop an early Colossus Hammer. If we can’t stick Cloud on the board and it becomes very tough to recast them, Helitrooper is a very good option, it’s naturally evasive, and being able to equip for cheaper can be very strong, especially in the mid-late game when we have extra mana. I also love Tifa, Martial Artist in this deck; it’s very easy for us to get seven power, and the extra combat can be devastating for our opponents, especially if we are going for the commander-damage kill.

Mana Base

Nothing too exciting here, as always, I do like to include the triomes, bond lands, and fetches/shocks so we have easy access to our colors as well as Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth as mana fixing. I had no trouble with this mana base during my testing games.

Win Conditions

We have two paths we can go on: we can go for a go-wide strategy, which works well against other Voltron decks, or just a Cloud Commander damage strategy. The commanders you are playing against will dictate what is best, but we do have two paths to reach the same goal.

Strengths of the Deck

We are very good at one-shotting opponents.

While commander damage kills are great, we can go wide as needed and draw a ton of cards and keep our hand full.

Weaknesses of the Deck

Weak to mass artifact hate like Vandalblast.

Can have tough matchups against control-heavy decks, can be very hard to keep Cloud on the board, or even get them to resolve at any stage of the game.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Rafiq of the Many. Matchup Record: 4-2

This was a good matchup for our deck. Going wide with our creatures in this matchup gives us a pretty decent advantage over Rafiq. Just stick to our game plan and go wide to succeed here.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Buster Sword, Strong Back and Codsworth, Handy Helper.

Game 2: Vs The Master, Multiplied. Matchup Record: 4-0

This was a very good matchup for our deck. Our unblockable equipment, like Silver Shroud Costume, came in handy here. I didn’t have much trouble, just stuck to the core game plan and was able to get four consecutive commander damage kills.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Loran’s Escape, Excalibur, Sword of Eden and Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar.

Game 3: Vs Lo and Li, Royal Advisors. Matchup Record: 0-3

Struggled a lot in this one, not only do they have controlling elements, but outside of Mantle of the Ancients, we have almost no recourse against mill, just a deck that’s set up well to beat us.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Generous Gift, Beast Within and Loran’s Escape.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this one. Cloud is a very fun commander, and having a Voltron commander that can also be a card draw machine is very strong and makes the game go a lot smoother. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and it’s a deck I have been testing and playing for quite a bit.