Commander Overview
MacCready is another Fallout commander that just slipped through the cracks for me, and I didn’t find him again until I was looking through the entire set. MacCready is a commander who works extremely well with Orzhov, as there are so many awesome creatures with power two or less and awesome cards that support the overall gameplan. While Maccready’s abilities may seem underwhelming at first, Skulk can be an absolute nightmare for our opponents to deal with and can allow us to whittle them down and hit little by little over a lot of turns. MacCready’s second ability is helpful for us as well, and the drain and gain can be impactful on the overall game. MacCready has been a blast to pilot, and a deck was a lot more fun than I was expecting.
Creature 30
Instant 15
Sorcery 7
Artifact 4
Enchantment 8
Land 35
Tokens Used 14
EDH BRACKET
The average current preconstructed deck.
- No Mass Land Denial
- No Chaining Extra Turns
- No 2-Card Infinite Combos
- No Game Changers
- Few Tutors
How to Play the Deck
Playing the deck is easy to do. We start the games off by getting MacCready out as soon as we can, and then we start swinging. This is especially effective in the early game, since our opponents typically don’t want to block with their mana dorks or other early-game creatures, allowing us to deal some free and easy damage. This deck is good for a player of any skill level. I wouldn’t hand this deck to a brand-new player, but if a player has a few games under their belt, they should be just fine.
Synergy’s in the deck
Our whole deck is synergized around MacCready’s ability to give our creatures with power two or less Skulk, we hurt our opponents two damage at a time in this deck, and punish them if they attack us with creatures with power four or greater. We don’t have a ton of different synergy packages throughout the deck, as we are entirely synergized around MacCready.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: The early-game is very easy for us; we try to be quite aggressive in the early-game since most opponents don’t want to block with their early-game creatures, which allows us to get some free damage. Since MacCready only costs two mana, we can get the Skulk going easily.
Mid-Game: The mid-game is pretty much the same for us, but if an opponent does a board wipe, we can recover with cards like Raise the Past. But overall, we keep spamming out our power two or fewer creatures and attack our opponents as much as we can. The mid-game gives us access to better creatures like Bloodletter of Aclazotz, which can speed up our overall game plan a lot.
Late-Game: This is a deck where we don’t always want to be in the late-game just because our opponents can out scale us quite a bit, so we stick to the core gameplan here, one big benefit of MacCready at this stage of the game is that we can punish our opponents for attacking with big creatures with MacCready’s second ability and if we have them low enough it can disincentivize our opponents from attacking us.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
We don’t ramp at all in this deck, but we have an extremely low overall cost present within the deck, so we are easily able to amass a big board quite quickly, and with MacCready’s ability, attacking can be very easy for us with minimal consequences. A large majority of our deck is in the two to four mana range, with only a few outliers, so not ramping doesn’t really change anything for us. We do have Arcane Signet and Sol Ring in the deck, which can be nice to help us get ahead, but we don’t have nearly enough ramp to hit it consistently.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
We have a lot more card draw sources than you may expect in this deck. Cards like Enduring Innocence, Mentor of the Meek, and Chivalric Alliance are all cheap and easy sources of card draw for the deck and trigger consistently as we play out our normal game plan. While more of a source of card draw than card advantage, I am a huge fan of Assemble the Players, which allows us to cast from the top of our deck. We also have Tocasia's Welcome, which sadly can only trigger once a turn, but overall is a very consistent source of card draw.
Removal
This is a big benefit of us being in Orzhov; we have a bunch of strong options like Utter End, Anguished Unmaking, and Fracture. We are great at dealing with opponents’ biggest threats quickly and cheaply. We also have a suite of board wipes that can be great for us and terrible for our opponents, like Dusk//Dawn and Fell the Mighty, which are both great, easy ways to keep our board and devastate our opponents. We have a big removal package and we are quite good at taking care of opponents problematic creatures/permanents.
Protection
Protection is another benefit of being in Orzhov, being able to run cards like Everyone Lives! and Clever Concealment which are great ways to protect our board and in the event of a board wipe we can be the only one left with a board after its all said and done. Since MacCready only costs two mana I also love Flawless Maneuver since we almost always control our commander and casting it for free is easy. We also have Not Dead After All and Kaya's Ghostform which are great options to put on MacCready or any of our important creatures.
Utility / Support
Let’s go over some of my favorite cards in the deck! Within Range is a great card for us to deal a ton of damage before we even deal combat damage, combining that with the mass Skulk that we get from MacCready allows us to be very strong at dealing damage. I also got a ton of great use out of Throne of the God-Pharaoh, which is another source of non-combat damage that can hurt our opponents a lot. Even though a lot of our creatures have Skulk token decks that do like to chump block against us, using Blind Obedience to make all of our opponents’ creatures enter tapped can give us a one-turn advantage over our opponents. Even though we are pretty aggressive ourselves, we can get a lot of value out of Soul Warden and Suture Priest as an easy way to keep our life total high, which is great because we really don’t block a lot in this deck.
Mana Base
We only have a few interesting non-basics in the deck. I am a huge fan of Windbrisk Heights, which is extremely easy for us to trigger in this deck, as attacking with three creatures is truly nothing for this deck to do. I also like Bojuka Bog as a great way to remove graveyard resources from a ton of decks. Even if we aren’t playing against a strictly graveyard-based strategy, being able to deny cards with flashback or other impactful effects is powerful. Beyond that, we are a basic land and dual land-filled deck. I like this mana base and had no trouble with it while testing this deck.
Win Conditions
Our only win condition is combat; it is made a lot easier by MacCready, but combat is the only way we can close out games.
Strengths of the Deck
Because of MacCready, we have a deck full of nearly unblockable creatures because they almost all get Skulk.
We are very removal and board-wipe-resistant since we have access to cards like Ascend from Avernus or Raise the Past, which are great ways to recover quickly.
Weaknesses of the Deck
We are a pretty slow deck overall. While we can consistently do combat damage, we don’t do a lot.
Our deck can be quite underwhelming if we don’t have MacCready on the field.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Samut, the Driving Force. Matchup Record: 2-2
This was a split matchup in the win column, and overall, Samut can be nasty if they get to max speed. While MacCready’s second ability triggers a lot, they have a lot of ways to give their creatures trample and make them bigger, and overall, Samut can be a lot faster than us. We need to focus them quickly and be as aggressive as we can.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Assemble the Players, Blind Obedience and Call the Coppercoats.
Game 2: Vs Eladamri, Lord of Leaves. Matchup Record: 1-3
I struggled a lot with this matchup, while we don’t care about the forestwalk at all, they always can drop a Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and hurt us heavily. On top of that, a lot of our single-target removal is just useless against them. Skulk is pretty good in this matchup, but they are so much quicker than we are. Focusing them down as quickly as we can is the best option here.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Inkshield, Meekstone and Suture Priest.
Game 3: Vs Delney, Streetwise Lookout. Matchup Record: 4-0
This was a great matchup for our deck. We also run Delney in our deck, and more importantly, their commander’s main ability doesn’t work against us, and they really don’t want to block all of our creatures. This was a great matchup for our deck, and I had no trouble with it.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Saradoc, Master of Buckland, Teysa, Opulent Oligarch and Throne of the God-Pharaoh.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this one. MacCready is a very fun commander, and I love the uniqueness present in this deck. It doesn’t play like a lot of decks in the format, and it especially doesn’t play as an Orzhov deck. In a format where there are so many new commanders every year, and it can be hard to keep track of them all, MacCready provides a breath of fresh air.