“Keys to your chest in a box in the rain.”
Art:Bone-Cairn Butcher
by David Palumbo
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
The commander of the hour is here! There is no doubt that Bone-Cairn Butcher is one of the most hyped commanders coming out of Tarkir: Dragonstorm. In my opinion, this is for good reason; this card is insane! A mardu shell is just perfect for a token based strategy and the butchers ability of giving all of our tokens deathtouch makes us an absolute nightmare to deal with in combat, wrapping all of that up with a deck that allows us to play insane bombs like Witty Roastmaster
and Impact Tremors
as well as the support in both removal and card draw that comes with being in Mardu and we have a true banger of a deck that can dominate at tables with a lot of combat decks. Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Angrath, Captain of Chaos Army Aggro!
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Why Bone-Cairn Butcher?
Bone-Cairn Butcher is an amazing card for the deck, while the deck can absolutely function without them, they provide so much utility that keeping them on the field is integral for us to win games and put a ton of additional pressure on our opponents. Once the butcher hits the field there isn’t really that much our opponetns can do to stop us and we are easily able to start dominating combat and truly taking over the game, the deathtouch on all of the tokens we create is an absolute nightmare for our opponents to deal with and can cause a ton of problems for them. Bone-Cairn Butcher definitely draws a lot of heat from opponents, so we have to be careful when we play them, and I typically like to have protection spells like Feign Death
ready to go in case an opponent tries to kill them as soon as they come out.
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:
Svella, Ice Shaper
Record against Svella, Ice Shaper 4-0
While Svella decks can generate a lot of mana and put a lot of big creatures out on the board it is much easier to deal with since we have our commander and deathtouch, we are just better than them in combat with our deathtouch, holding back tokens to block with is key in this matchup, i had no trouble with this matchup.
Young Deathclaws
Record against Young Deathclaws 3-0
Being really aggressive and consistently killing their commander makes this matchup quite easy for us. They tend to kill our commander quite a bit, but with protection, it’s not too hard for us to fight through it. In my experience, we mostly just ignore their game plan and solely focus on ours. This is a very good matchup for the deck.
Hardened Tactician
Record against Hardened Tactician 4-0
A true token vs token matchup, and let’s be real, we are considerably better. The addition of red gives us cards like Impact Tremors and Raid Bombardment
, as well as Molten Gatekeeper
. All of this non-combat damage gives us a huge advantage over the Hardened Tactician player. This is a great matchup for our deck.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Kheru Goldkeeper
Record against Kheru Goldkeeper 2-3
This is a tough matchup for the deck, but it is winnable. The biggest issue with this matchup is that Kheru just doesn’t care if we kill their creatures, in fact, they would prefer it! They want to fill up their graveyard. Because of this, I typically just go full aggro against this deck and try to kill them before they get to their late-game state. This is a tough matchup, but it is absolutely winnable. Just be much more aggressive than normal.
Fynn, the Fangbearer
Record against Fynn, the Fangbearer 1-3
This is a very tough matchup for our deck, it can be extremely hard to stop them and infect is extremely tough to deal with, having our health gated at 10 is just so hard to deal with, while we can decently be aggressive they are considerably more aggressive, on the flipside if we are able to kill their commander early they really cant do much against us. In the game I won, I kept a heavy removal hand, and it worked out quite well.
Dreadwing Scavenger
Record against Dreadwing Scavenger 0-3
Dreadwing Scavenger is a pretty rough matchup, while we do have some controlling elements in our deck, they have many more that are a lot better, they are just a better control deck than us and can devastate our best creatures and permanents. I had a lot of trouble with this matchup.
Strategy Overview:
Cast your commander as soon as possible:
The deathtouch on all of our tokens is key to dominating combat and winning the game; we absolutely need our commander in this deck.
Non-combat damage is equally important:
With cards like Witty Roastmaster and Molten Gatekeeper in the deck, they can be great ways to whittle down opponents and close out games quickly.
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:
Lets start off with two of my favorite cards in the deck in Molten Gatekeeper and Witty Roastmaster which in most cases are two additional copies of Impact Tremors for the deck which is just insane, following that up with all of the token production we have and we are going to go crazy with the non-combat damage, while its unrealsitic to have all three on the board at once it did happen one time during testing, so i can confirm that it is possible, whether we have one or all three it is an insane piece of support for the deck and the overall strategy. Another amazing piece of support for the deck that helps a ton against aggressive strategies is Anointer Priest
dropping this on turn two can make the lifegain go crazy and in testing i was able to get up over 50 life in a game with this card, just an insane piece of support for the deck that can really hurt decks that are going for a quick kill. Since we produce so many small tokens, we also need some big finishers for the deck like [scrylin]Crusader of Odric [/scrylink] and Celebrity Fencer
, which, just like Anointer Priest, if they are dropped early, can allow us to go absolutely crazy and just devastate our opponents. Falkenrath Noble
is a card i always love to have on the field when we are in combat, our tokens are going to die and being able to drain and gain when that happens just helps so much with whittling down our opponents and keeping our life total high, just an amazing card for the deck. Being in Mardu just feels so good here since we also get access to both Mirkwood Bats
and Nadier's Nightblade
, which are even more instances of non-combat damage. With all of the non-combat damage we have in this deck, there are testing games I played where I only had to go to combat a few times and was able to use my token production to deal a majority of my damage, just amazing.
Instants:
Being in Mardu also feels really good at instant speed, as we get access to a ton of great utility and support spells that allow us to be a lot stronger than some of the one or two-color decks we may be going against. Foul-Tongue Shriek
is one of my favorite spells in the deck, it can absolutely flip the momentum of the game and is extremely good especially against aggressive or creature heavy strategies, it can be a great finisher for our deck as well, just an insane effect for only one mana, while it can be bad sometimes, in such a creature heavy deck like this one it is really strong, huge fan of this one. We also have access to very strong removal in all three of our colors like Breathe Your Last
, Coordinated Maneuver
, and Abrade
. We do have a decent amount of removal in the deck, but we certainly are not a control deck by any means. However, we are able to stop the best of the best that our opponents bring out. Feign Death and Supernatural Stamina
are both great ways to bring our commander back, and in my testing, that is pretty much what I always held them for, being able to bring back our commander after an opponent tries to kill it is very strong.
Sorceries:
We have so much token production at sorcery speed and its one of the main ways that we fill up our board with awesome and cheap cars like Battle Screech
which is so easy to flashback as well as Call to the Feast
which is really nice especially with those lifelink tokens which can be a great asset to have especially against more aggressive strategies. One of my favorite things about being in Mardu is having access to token production attached to other strong effects like Emergency Weld
, which gives us cheap recursion and a token that is perfect for our deck, especially for only two mana. Molten Birth
is token production that i am also a very big fan of, while it is entirely luck dependent i have been able to cast it three or four times throughout a game, even if we fail the flip it is still efficient and decently cheap token production which is pretty much what we are always looking for throughout the deck. While we do have a lot of token production, we also have some very nice utility cards like Read the Bones
and Sign in Blood
. These are both very strong cards within the deck, and who can say no to cheap and efficient card draw?
Artifacts:
We are a three-color deck, so we are running Arcane Signet
, which is a nice way to get ahead in the early game and can provide some nice mana-fixing. Luckily for us, we are pretty balanced in the mana we can produce, so we don’t really need Signet all of the time, but it’s always nice to have. Since we are a token deck our other equipments also produce tokens which is very nice, i am a big fan of Barbed Batterfist
as it produces a very aggressive creature for us and when combined with our commander can be very nice, extra token production works very nicely within the deck. We round out our artifact package with Headsplitter
, which is a small buff, but since it produces a token, it is very nice.
Enchantments:
Non-combat damage is a huge part of our deck, and Impact Tremors and Raid Bombardment are both amazing ways for us to get some additional non-combat damage in. Being able to deal non-combat damage not only gets us closer to winning the game, but being able to hit our opponents with a full board is really nice as well. Both are great cards, and if I see them in a decent hand, I pretty much always keep them. [scrylin]Goblin War Drums[/scrylink] rounds out our enchantment package and is an amazing way for us to make us even more of a nightmare in combat, we are really strong in combat because we almost always have deathtouch with our tokens and when we add menace to the mix, it spells disaster for our opponents, especially against combat heavy decks.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We are absolute menaces in combat, mostly because almost all of our creatures get deathtouch; we can be a real nightmare to deal with in combat.
- Being in Mardu allows us to have the best of both worlds with both removal and card draw.
- We have quite a few ways to deal non-combat damage like Molten Gatekeeper
,Witty Roastmaster, and Impact Tremors, allowing us to dish out a considerable amount of damage without even swinging.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Without our commander, our deck loses a lot of its threat level and its “punch.” We can still win without our commander, but we are much weaker in combat.
- Control decks or any decks that can remove or counter our key permanents are very good against us.
- Stompy decks, when they transition to the late-game, can be a tough matchup if we don’t have our commander.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this deck tech featuring Bone-Cairn Butcher, I don’t think there is much debate that Butcher is one of the best commanders to come out of Tarkir Dragonstorm, Mardu didn’t have a ton of amazing options previously but Bone-Cairn is not only an extremely pushed card but an extremely strong card, i had an absolute blast with this one and all of its token goodness, while my opponents were not huge fans of all of the deathtouch it was also a lot of fun to pilot! Stay tuned and tap in!