“It’s better to burn out than fade away.”
Art:Burrowguard Mentor
by Dmitry Burmak
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Burrowguard Mentor is a brand new commander coming out of Bloomburrow who cares a lot about tokens and swinging hard. This deck kind of falls into a hybrid territory, combining a ton of token producers with some strong creatures like Celebrity Fencer
and Crusader of Odric
to dish out huge damage. Our commander essentially is a two-mana copy of Crusader with trample, and in my testing experience, that trample matters a ton. Being able to get big and hit hard decently quickly is pretty great, the one knock on this deck is that our commander needs other creatures or they will just die and we are pretty susceptible to removal. All of the negatives aside this deck is a ton of fun to pilot and is just some good old Selesnya fun. Without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Why Burrowguard Mentor?
Burrowguard Mentor is a payoff for the overall deck. A two-mana creature with trample is already pretty strong, but its snowballing and getting bigger and bigger helps a ton and allows us to do a ton of damage. Our commander is very simple but is still a huge part of our deck and a card that we want on the battlefield as much as we can; while they typically stay small in the early-mid game, they are able to get huge and hit hard as we transition into the late-game. Whether attacking or blocking, Burrowguard Mentor is a force to be reckoned with and is a great asset for the deck. We are entirely built around Burrowguard Mentor, and once we begin to amass a board in the early game, it is right to cast them.
Gameplan:
This deck plays like every other Selesnya deck out there; we cast our creatures on curve as much as we can and fill up the board, and turn our cards sideways whenever it is advantageous to do so. The game plan is very simple for this deck, and that is also one of the reasons why this deck is so easy to pick up for players of any skill level. For a starting hand for this deck, I like to keep two to three lands and some form of early-game creature so we can get our commander out on the second or third turn. Once we have a small board established, it’s all about taking combats, we can win and swinging hard!
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:
Queen Allenal of Ruadach
Record against Queen Allenal of Ruadach 6-1
Queen Allenal is the card our commander gets compared to the most, so of course, we had to test against them. The big advantage for our deck is our commander. While they can make more tokens and chump block a ton, we can go over almost all of them with our commander. Combine that with their not having a ton of removal, and this is a great matchup for us overall.
Hand of Honor
Record against Hand of Honor 4-1
Hand of Honor is a strong mono-white Voltron deck, but they lack speed compared to our deck, us hitting them for early damage and most of their big damage coming from creature allows us to safely go wide and tank a lot of their hits while we beat them down with all of our creatures, they have very little removal and card draw within many of their lists so we are able to take advantage of that as well.
Shrill Howler // Howling Chorus
Record against Shrill Howler 4-0
Shrill Howler is an extremely strong commander who can dish out quite a bit of damage; luckily for us we are set up to beat up on decks that focus heavily on their commander, and because of our commander we are typically quite faster than Shrill Howler, we absolutely do need to be wary about a one-shot because that can definitely happen but overall this is a good matchup, they don’t have much removal so we are quite hard to stop.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Noxious Ghoul
Record against Noxious Ghoul 0-4
This is a very tough matchup for us and arguably one of the worst we can face. This deck absolutely decimates our tokens and thus makes our commander unusable. This is such a hard matchup unless we all gang up on the Noxious Ghoul player this matchup is extremely hard to win.
Cunning Nightbonder
Record against Cunning Nightbonder 0-3
Cunning Nightbonder is another tough matchup as this deck is set to beat us, full of controlling elements like bounce, removal, and ways to stop us from casting all of our cards. We can be quite aggressive and whittle them down quite a bit in the early game, but once it transitions to the late game, this is a very tough matchup for us.
Loyal Guardian
Record against Loyal Guardian 2-5
Loyal Guardian scales a ton faster and just has naturally bigger creatures than us. Stompy can be a very tough matchup for us and is one we can certainly struggle with. This overall is a very tough matchup for us; while we can chip in some serious damage in the early game, we often get out-scaled and can’t do much against their huge board. Wins are possible if we have a strong starting hand, so I would recommend aggressively mulliganing. A strong six is always better than an ok seven.
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:
There are so many awesome creatures within our deck, like Celebrity Fencer, which is one of my favorites because it can get out of hand so quickly and, in a pinch, is a great extra damage dealer if we can’t keep our commander on the board. We are very well set up against more aggressive strategies since we have quite a bit of lifegain through cards like Anointer Priest
, Soul's Attendant
, Essence Warden
and Soul Warden
all of these are relatively cheap as well and allow us to increase our creature count early and be better off when opponents start turning their creatures sideways. We are a token-focused deck, so we have some awesome token producers like Carefree Swinemaster
, which is a great and repeatable way to generate more and more tokens. Eyeless Watcher
is another strong token producer and a great way to increase our creature count. Once we have a high creature count established we can generate a ton of value out of our commander as well as cards like Crusader of Odric and Scion of the Wild
, which both have the same effect as our commander and can hit super hard, even if we just block with them they can kill most things in the format if we have a high enough creature count.
Instants:
Blunt the Assault
is a card I love to have when there are aggressive strategies at the table but it works pretty well against every deck since most are creature-heavy, gaining life and having a Fog
effect for only four mana can be very strong and help keep us alive. When we are being a little more aggressive, we can hit hard with the help of cards like Chorus of Might
, which is a great way to one-shot an opponent, especially with our commander. We have a little bit of removal, which helps us stop opponents from getting too crazy and out of hand. We also have some protection for our creatures, which we mostly use on our commander, being able to protect our commander is key to us winning a game, so having cards like Gaea's Gift
and Tamiyo's Safekeeping
at our disposal is a great way to protect our overall gameplan.
Sorceries:
Our sorcery package features a ton of amazing token producers that allow us to make our commander huge and prepare to hit our opponents super hard; one of my personal favorites is Battle Screech
, which is a great token producer and a card we are easily able to flashback it and buff up our commander. We have a ton of different token producers, which is great for both offense and defense; in an extremely creature-heavy format like Pauper, EDH is being able to be effective at both is key. King Harald's Revenge
is one of my favorite cards in the deck; it just does so much for not that much mana investment; being able to buff our creature and force them to be blocked allows us to take out the best of the best our opponents have in combat. Another one of my favorites is Soul's Might
. While it does not require a big creature to get a ton of value, it is very good with our commander.
Artifacts:
Our artifact package doesn’t have a lot of noteworthy cards consisting entirely of mana rocks. These are great utility pieces that help us speed out some of our bigger creatures/spells, but there isn’t much to talk about here; they are an amazing way to get our colors established.
Enchantments:
Our commander is undoubtedly a huge part of our deck, and because of this, we are running Flaming Fist
. Even with only five or six creatures on the board we can get very close to the commander damage threshold and easily one-shot an opponent in just a couple turns, especially since our commander has trample, while this sis a card I debated on running in testing it is absolutely busted and necessary for the deck. It also works perfectly with Sigil of the Nayan Gods
because we are able to make our commander even bigger and on any creature this basically turns them into an additional copy of our commander, while we have a lot of damage within our enchantment package we do have some more defensive enchantments like Journey to Nowhere
and Oblivion Ring
which are great ways to remove the biggest threats our opponents have.
Land Base:
We have a pretty simple landbase but do have a lot of supplemental card draw through lands like The Hunter Maze
and The Fair Basilica
, which are great sources of supplemental card draw. We are also running Botanical Plaza
, which is a good way to get both of our colors established early; we are mostly running basics and don’t have a high focus on dual lands because many of them enter tapped, but having access to the botanical plaza is quite nice. By far my favorite non-basic in the deck is Khalni Garden
as it fits very well into our gameplan, being able to have a land and get a free token helps increase our creature count and make our commander better. Overall, I like our landbase a lot and, in testing, found it to be strong and effective for the deck.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Our commander has trample and typically gets very big very quickly allowing us to go for quick commander damage kills.
- We are well positioned against aggressive strategies since we have a mass of creatures most of the time.
- We are great at blocking and winning combat and we are pretty strong at chump blocking as well. In a creature-heavy format, this can matter a ton.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- This is very much a win-more deck, and if we don’t have a lot of creatures, our commander is much less effective.
- We don’t have very much supplemental card draw within the deck.
- We can struggle a lot against control strategies that focus on bouncing creatures and removing them. Control is, overall, a very tough matchup for us.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Burrowguard Mentor is most certainly not reinventing the wheel of what a Selesnya deck does, but it is a ton of fun to play and is a great deck for a player of any skill level. I think Bloomburrow is a great introduction set for new players and especially for PDH; this card is strong and can certainly have some huge games, but it is not a deck that is oppressive and puts other players off of the format. I think this deck is so much fun to pilot, and if you are a fan of other token commanders like Queen Allenal of Ruadach or any other token-based commanders, you will have a blast with this one. Thanks for reading to the end and for all of your support!