“So grab some rum, sit by the fire.”
Art:Boosted Sloop
by José Parodi
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Boosted Sloop is a deck I have been thinking about since rule break, month two was announced. I thought it would fit really nicely in Izzet since it not only provides card advantage but also works amazingly in a deck with a lot of benefits for discarding and madness effects. While they are primarily in a support role in this deck, they can still deal some nice early damage and allow us to gain a huge mana advantage by discarding our madness cards. Combining all of that with a really nice spellslinger package that has a ton of ways to fill up our hand and keep the spells coming! I had a ton of fun with this deck, and I am really excited to showcase this one here today!
The Deck:
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Boosted Sloop Discard Spellslinging!
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Why Boosted Sloop?
Boosted Sloop is solely in a support role within this deck, but that certainly isn’t a bad thing. Boosted Sloop can come down pretty early, and the loot effect we get can be a really good way to cycle out bad cards or discard our madness cards and use them for our benefit! Boosted Sloop is a great commander, but it isn’t like some of the craziest commanders in the format. The whole table certainly won’t turn on you the second you drop this one, and for good reason. They should be much more afraid of what comes after when we drop the Sloop. I always try to cast them early, as they are often one of the first sources of discard we can get 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:
Herd Baloth
Record against Herd Baloth 3-0
This is a pretty good matchup for our deck. While they do have some combo potential, as long as we watch out for that, we should be pretty good. This is one of those matchups where we pretty much want to stick to our game plan and just do what we do best.
Bloodsky Berserker
Record against Bloodsky Berserker 3-1
This was a matchup that I was a little concerned about but overall went really well, I had almost no trouble in this one, I did have a game where they highrolled and just smoked me really quick but if we keep their commander off of the board and dodge some of their removal this isn’t a bad matchup at all for our deck.
Gorbag of Minas Morgul
Record against Gorbag of Minas Morgul 4-0
I had no trouble with this matchup, while they can be pretty good in the early game, we outpace them quite quickly, they don’t have the same level of punch as a mono-red goblin deck, and are missing a lot of their big damage spells since they are mono-black, which works very well with us. I had next to no trouble with this matchup.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Juri, Master of the Revue
Record against Juri, Master of the Revue 1-3
This is a really tough matchup for our deck, Juri and the huge amount of sacrifice effects can be extremely tough and cause a ton of trouble for us, while we are a decent go-wide deck they have so much removal and sacrifice effects that it can be really tough for us to build up a strong board against them. This is a rough one for sure. If you and your other opponents can focus on Juri, it can go well, but that certainly is not consistent.
Horrid Shadowspinner
Record against Horrid Shadowspinner 0-3
In a lot of ways our decks are doing the same thing, while they certainly are better at discarding than we are they also have a lot more control focused gameplan, their commander is really good and can give them so much card advantage and easy opportunities to fill up their graveyard, they also have so many ways to recur and get back their graveyard which makes the negative of their commander almost negligible. This is a rough one.
Necrotic Sliver
Record against Necrotic Sliver 0-4
The hardest part of this matchup is keeping our stuff on the board. Having a vindicate for a commander can be really tough; there are quite a few great changelings and slivers that make their game plan go really smoothly. Keeping a lot of our key permanents against this deck is extremely tough. This is a terrible matchup for our deck.
Strategy Overview:
Cycle that deck:
Discard or cycling it doesn’t matter do it if it benefits us, we have quite a few cards that get bigger if we draw two cards like Erudite Wizard
and Hekma Sentinels
which can get pretty big and allow us to be great in combat, cycling and discarding also works really well with keeping our card advantage up.
Be aggressive when it’s open:
We have quite a few cards that allow us to be quite aggressive in combat, once we transition to the mid-late game we can have a pretty nice board, if an opponent leaves themselves open or is in a combat situation where we can take advantage we absolutely need to be aggressive, don’t let the slower nature of our deck make you not attack in good situations.
Protect yourself:
While we do have controlling elements in this deck, we are not a control deck for the most part. We tend to be quite selfish and use a lot of our stuff to protect ourselves and our board. While we counter opponents’ stuff, if what they are casting will let them win the game, overall, being selfish and protecting our board is a key part of our strategy.
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:
Since we love discarding cards, we actually have a minor blood token package in this deck headlined by cards like Belligerent Guest
and Falkenrath Celebrants
, which can produce quite a few blood tokens throughout the game, and that additional source of draw/discard can be very helpful for the deck. Let’s get into our cycling and discard enablers. For discard, we have cards like Cunning Survivor
, Magmakin Artillerist
. Both of these are extremely strong for the deck and allow us to deal some non-combat damage and be better and bigger in combat. Discarding is also great for our creature package since we are able to get discounts on cards like Revolutionist
, which is one of the few ways that we can actually recur instants and sorceries in this deck. We also have Bloodmad Vampire
, which feels great to cast for cheap and can get really big over time. Since we have quite a bit of instants and sorceries, we can take advantage of that with our non-combat damage dealers in Guttersnipe
, Kessig Flamebreather
, and Firebrand Archer
. If even just one of these is on the field, we can deal out a ton of damage and really put a lot of additional pressure on our opponents. We round out our creature package with some of our big late-game creatures that allow us to be really strong in combat, like Striped Riverwinder
, Tolarian Terror
, which can really hurt our opponents and make us quite tough to deal with in combat.
Instants:
Since we have a pretty decent creature base, I really like both Temur Battle Rage
and Uncaged Fury
in this deck, while we certainly aren’t going for a one-shot, having some extra big damage can be really good. We have a lot of the classics you would expect here, like Arcane Denial
and Counterspell
as well some other great control spells like Unsummon
and Just the Wind
, Just the Wind is really good in this deck because we are easily able to use it for its madness cost, Fiery Temper
is another awesome card that we can cast for super cheap. Our instant package also has quite a bit of draw and cycling like Hieroglyphic Illumination
and Choking Tethers
. Our instant package provides a ton of utility for the deck.
Sorceries:
Since we have a high focus on discarding, we have quite a few cards that work really well with that, like Cathartic Reunion
, Compulsive Research
, and Grab the Prize
. All of these provide nice card advantage and trigger our discard enablers, which is really awesome. We also have quite a few effects in this deck that give us benefits from drawing extra cards, which is why we are running Ponder
and Preordain
, which can cheaply enable those creatures and give us some early card advantage. Another tech card for rule break month two that I’m a huge fan of is Stall Out
against any deck that really cares about their commander and attacking is locked down for multiple turns, which can really devastate them. Since we have quite a large number of instants and sorceries in the deck we can get a lot of advantage out of Seize the Storm
which can produce a huge creature for us and works perfectly with some of our unblockable effects like Aqueous Form
I’ve ended quite a few games this way.
Artifacts:
We start off our artifact package with a flavor win and a great card for the deck in Starting Column
while it starts as a kind of expensive mana rock when it hits max speed and we can exhaust it it helps the deck and all of our discard strategy, a great tempo card for the deck. We also have Clamorous Ironclad
and Skybox Ferry
, which we pretty much always use for cycling. These can be played if we need them, but more often than not, they are nothing more than cycling enablers for our deck. We round out our artifacts with Arcane Signet
and Izzet Signet
, having mana fixing, even if it’s just a little bit, is always a great thing for us to have, and in the early turns, having extra mana can help us get ahead just a little bit, which matters quite a bit in the early game.
Enchantments:
We have quite a few big finisher creatures in this deck, and what’s a better way to allow them to hit hard than by using Aqueous Form, which can guarantee us a hit, which is really good when everyone has their late-game boards up. The rest of our enchantment package is extremely defensive with awesome effects like Deep Freeze
and Fall from Favor
, which are great ways to invalidate commanders or problematic creatures our opponents have. I’m also a huge fan of Flood the Engine
, which is a true tech card for rule break month two, which can do a ton of work against other vehicle decks. We are full on the control train in our enchantment package, and it allows us to disrupt our opponents a ton.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We have an absolute ton of card draw in our deck, and it is really tough for us to run out of cards.
- We are pretty efficient with our mana because we are able to use the madness cost with a lot of cards in the deck, allowing us to hold up counterspell mana and any other defensive spell.
- We are pretty good at dealing non-combat damage, while we are also pretty strong in combat, not having to engage really strong combat decks is great for us.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Straight-up Control decks can be really tough for us, we do have counterspells and other forms of disruption, but not nearly as many as most control strategies.
- We are quite slow in the early game while we get set up, and aggressive decks can really take advantage of us in the early game.
- We don’t have pretty much any recursion if we lose a big damage-dealer like Guttersnipe
, there really isn’t any way to recover.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I am super happy to be able to cater to our Izzet crowd during Rule Break Month two! It also feels great to do another multi-color deck, while I am a big fan of all of the mono-color decks we have been doing, it’s always fun to spellsling with Izzet! I had a blast with Boosted Sloop; they play a very nice support role within our deck, which can be really good against a ton of decks in the format. This deck is truly a lot of fun, and I had an absolute blast building it and playing it! Stay tuned and tap in!