“Give me one more chance to set you free.”
Art:Apocalypse Runner
by Aaron J. Riley
Please note: Rule Break Month Two is not officially sanctioned until July 2025. We are currently building and testing these decks, so by July, you will already have lists and ideas ready. These are not officially legal until July 2025. For a full breakdown of Rule Break Month Two, check this link: (https://www.reddit.com/r/PauperEDH/comments/1kcnxnv/breaktherulesmonth_two_electric_boogaloo/)
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
A sequel to our first rule break, the month 2 article is here! And I had an absolute blast playing with and testing this one. Some of the most important elements of magic are both combat decisions and blocking decisions; for the most part, they shape a large majority of the game. Luckily, our deck takes those decisions away from our opponents. In a perfect game, our opponents can never block our stuff! I love utilizing our commander to give a small creature unblockable and buff them to the moon and hit them like a truck! Apocalypse Runner is a really cool commander that works super well with Rakdos. We have a ton of awesome support cards. Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Apocalypse Runner Firebreathing!
Why Apocalypse Runner?
Apocalypse Runner is an extremely key piece for our deck, luckily they are in the command zone and we always have them at our disposal, they allow us to give our creatures unblockable regularly and allow us to buff them up after and hit our opponents really hard, it also helps a ton that our commander is a very big and aggressive creature being a 6/5, while crewing it can be a pain sometimes we do have cards like Deathless Pilot
which can crew our commander all by itself! Whether we use our commander as an attacker or as a machine to give our creatures unblockable is pretty much situation dependent, but it’s great for us either way! Apocalypse Runner is a huge part of our deck and should be cast as soon as we possibly can.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is Pauper EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, Pauper EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Hamza, Guardian of Arashin
Record against Hamza, Guardian of Arashin 3-1
I think this is a pretty good matchup for our deck. While we do need to be wary about trample creatures, we pretty much never engage in blocking against them. Our commander is a true heavyweight in this matchup, allowing us to dish out damage while they really can’t do much. The lack of removal in selesnya is really helpful for us. This is a great matchup for our deck. Keep your removal at the ready; they are a lot slower without their commander.
Jasmine Boreal of the Seven
Record against Jasmine Boreal of the Seven 3-2
Even though this matchup is pretty much even, I do think it is favorable overall. This matchup is purely a race, which feels really weird to say against a selesnya deck, but it is the truth. Jasmine’s stuff is pretty much unblockable against us, and we are pretty much unblockable against them. We do have an advantage because we have considerably more pumps, and while we can’t block a lot of the time, having the abilities on our creature makes us stronger overall. Loseable but overall still a favorable matchup in my opinion.
Leafkin Avenger
Record against Leafkin Avenger 3-0
While they can get really big in the late-game we are much faster than them and by the time they are finished setting up we are killing them with our unblocked firebreathing damage, we are just better than them in combat and they really cant stop us, I found this to be a great matchup for our deck and had no trouble with this one.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 1-3
Even though I knew this was going to be a really tough matchup for us, I still wanted to test, and shockingly, I was able to steal a game! Stealing a game against Arabella pretty much comes down to one thing, keeping a removal-heavy hand that allows us to kill their commander as soon as they come out, if they are allowed to move freely with their commander out it is nearly an impossible matchup, I think it is worth it to aggressively mulligan against them for a more removal heavy hand.
Fynn, the Fangbearer
Record against Fynn, the Fangbearer 0-3
They are just simply too fast for us, by the time we get around to casting our commander we are pretty much dead, the only saving grace is here is that if we have cheap removal we can keep their commander off of the board but they are in green and they ramp quite nicely and can recover shockingly quickly, this is a very rough one that i had no success against.
Body Double
Record against Body Double 0-4
Another really rough matchup for the deck, not only can they copy a huge creature from their graveyard and put a lot of pressure on us, they also have all of the counters and removal that come with being in blue, in my experience it was really hard to keep our commander on the field which is especially tough since they play such a critical role within our deck. This is a terrible matchup for our deck.
Strategy Overview:
Keep your commander on the field as long as possible:
Our commander is a huge part of our gameplan and arguably the most important card in our deck, because of this we want to keep them on the field, having the ability to crew them at any time so we can utilize cards like Feign Death
and Supernatural Stamina
is very strong.
Save your mana:
We have quite a few fire-breathing creatures and enchantments in the deck. It’s perfectly ok to save up for a big unblockable fire-breathing attack; it’s one of the best ways we deal damage in the mid game.
Don’t show your hand too early:
We are a deck filled with buffs, but it is also perfectly ok to buff up our creatures and not go crazy by showing all of our buffs and whole hands, its ok to spend the first few turns with our commander hitting for two or three damage before we go for a huge attack, i typically like to use those as finishers, if you play that way opponents will never know whats coming.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
We have some great creatures that work with our commander and then can further buff themselves up like Genasi Enforcers
, Igneous Cur
and Dragon Hatchling
which are all really strong ways for us to deal some early-game damage, I also am a huge fan of Two-Headed Cerberus
and Twinscroll Shaman
which both have double-strike and work with our commander, these can allow us to output a crazy amount of damage and make us a huge threat early, these are amazing earely-game creatures. They also work really well with Vicious Clown
, which can be a great target for our commander at the start of a turn and allow us to hit like a truck. Some of my favorite creatures to deal a ton of damage with include Ogre Menial
, which can easily give us an infect kill depending on how much mana we have, and can be a true danger to our opponents. While we typically surprise our opponents with damage through our instant package, we do have some nice cheap creatures that we can bloodrush as well, like Rubblebelt Maaka
and Scorchwalker
, which can cheaply provide some big extra damage that will certainly take our opponents by surprise. While we have a ton of awesome power its not all fun as we do have some really strong support creatures like Deathless Pilot which can crew our commander by itself which can be really nice if we need them, we typically don’t use them to attack a lot but using them to block is very good.
Instants:
Big Score
, Unexpected Windfall
are great cheap mana production for the deck and provide card draw, while I play this duo in most red decks that I play, these cards are especially good in this deck since we can use that extra mana for an extra buff spell or too activate our firebreathing enchantments or creatures, extra damage and extra cards is a true win-win in this deck and being able to do all that is absolutely worth the card we have to discard and the mana. Once we have our creatures buffed up with huge buffs like Antagonize
, Sugar Rush
, and Whirling Strike
, we can easily finish opponents off with cards like Uncaged Fury
, Raking Claws
, and Temur Battle Rage
, allowing us to bring the pain, and we typically end opponents’ games with this. We round out our instant package with a bunch of removal like Go for the Throat
, Breathe Your Last
, Grasp of Darkness
, and Doom Blade
with this much removal plus a few pieces more, there really isn’t much that we can’t kill. Being in Rakdos allows us ot be happily heavy on removal.
Sorceries:
While our commander makes at least one creature unblockable if we need to finish off an opponent, being able to utilize Coronation of Chaos
to take our opponents’ three best creatures out of combat is very good. Assault Strobe
is another card that helps a ton with pushing damage and really putting pressure on our opponents. Since we have so many pumps and firebreathing effects, we can get a ton of advantage out of Mana Geyser
, especially if the game goes long, we can use this to output an absolute crazy amount of damage, just a great card for the deck. We have a really small sorcery package, but we round it out with Read the Bones
, Night's Whisper
, and Sign in Blood
, just some good, cheap, and efficient draw spells, which is very good for our deck since we have a pretty low overall mana cost in the deck, making it so it’s at least a little bit harder to run out of cards in hand.
Artifacts:
Would it even be a TNT-brewed deck if we didn’t include Wedding Invitation
? I think not, this card is great in this deck since if our commander gets killed or we can’t activate them, this is a nice option for us to still do some unblockable damage. Beyond that, our artifact package is purely all mana rocks, not very exciting, but having the extra mana to ramp out our commander/creatures and have additional mana to pump our creatures with firebreathing effects is absolutely worth it for our deck. I also like cashing in cards like Rakdos Locket
once they have outlived their usefulness.
Enchantments:
The most important cards in our enchantment package are the fire-breathing enchantments. Being able to use our excess mana to buff up our creatures after they have been made unblockable by our commander is so good for our deck and allows us to kill quickly and just output a crazy amount of damage. Dragon Mantle
, Firebreathing
, and Ghitu Firebreathing
are such strong cards for our deck and can come down early and start making an impact quickly. If our commander makes one of our creatures unblockable and we have a big board, we can get a crazy amount of value out of Betrothed of Fire
. I have used this card to end the game a ton of times; it can happen really quickly, and most opponents will never see it coming. If, for some reason, we are unable to keep our commander out, we can get a worse form of their ability, but it can still disrupt our opponents in combat. Malicious Intent
is still a very good card for our deck.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Since we have so many pumps in our deck and our creatures are unblockable we do have the element of surprise against our opponents, they often are not aware of how much damage is going to hurt them.
- We are pretty strong against creature decks since almost all of our damage is unblockable.
- We have quite a bit of creature removal in our deck allowing us to destroy our opponents best stuff.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We don’t have a lot of protection against creature removal.
- We have a relatively low overall cost, which allows us to dump our hand. Although we have some card draw, we can operate with a low number of cards for the majority of the game.
- Very weak to artifact removal.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! Apocalypse Runner is such a fun commander that I had a ton of fun with, being able to make my small creatures unblockable and then firebreathing them up allows us to do a lot of damage from a pretty simple board state, opponents often don’t even know what hit them! Having the element of surprise while being in Rakdos is really amazing for the deck and is one of our biggest surprises. Having a 6/5 in the command zone that we can crew pretty easily goes a long way in this deck as well. I had so much fun with this one, and this is one I am going to play pretty much all of Rule Break Month two! Stay tuned and tap in!