“In the shadows under cover of the nighttime”
Art:Goliath Truck
by Diego Gisbert
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
After a whole week of amazing articles as we prepare for rule break month two, we have finally reached our finale! And we finish really strong with a giant truck that has all of the huge Eldrazi and equipment to hit opponents like a truck, hop in, we are going smashing. While we have all of the weaknesses that are typically present in colorless decks, we make up for that by being really strong in combat. While our matchup against creature-heavy strategies is quite good, we can absolutely struggle against control decks. There is no doubt that colorless has some innate weaknesses, but overall, this is a really strong deck with a commander who can provide a ton of extra damage for the deck, which interacts perfectly with our combat-focused deck. Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Goliath Truck Voltron!
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Why Goliath Truck?
Goliath Truck is a great asset for our deck, while they cant really be the recipient of Voltron since equipment will fall off of them when they stop being a creature they are a great card to attack our opponents with since the two +1/+1 counters can increase our damage quite a bit and works really well with cards in the deck like Iron Bully
and Iron Apprentice
it really doesn’t matter what we end up putting the buff on, buffing up our creatures is pretty much good, if opponents start getting squirrely about the truck and kill it a ton and you cant keep it on the board it really doesn’t affect the gameplan that much, in those cases I’m just happy they used a lot of their control elements on our commander and not our other creatures!
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:
Adelbert Steiner
Record against Adelbert Steiner 4-1
Wow, this feels like a mirror match! Another deck that has almost as little removal as we do! All jokes aside, I didn’t have much trouble with this deck. We have a lot of ramp through our mana rocks, and they just can’t keep up. In one of the games, I did use Scour from Existence
against their commander and then swung to finish them off, but overall, we are just bigger and better than them in combat and Voltron.
Rubblebelt Rioters
Record against Rubblebelt Rioters 3-2
This matchup is pretty much nothing more than a race for our deck. However, overall i still find it favorable, they are a little bit better at ramping than we are but oftentimes it is comparable between the two, the biggest problem with Rioters is that without their commander they arent super great in combat and if they stumble we can easily take advantage, this matchup certainly is loseable. Still, overall, I think it is favorable for Goliath Truck.
Gamekeeper
Record against Gamekeeper 4-1
In this deck Eldrazi Devastator
even a little early really doesn’t scare us, in essence that is pretty much what Gamekeeper does, i did drop a game after they were able to cast and kill their commander on turn three but besides a true highrroll game I had no trouble with this matchup, keep your head down and just keep swinging its just one big creature.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Shao Jun
Record against Shao Jun 0-3
This is a true double whammy against us, sadly they can really easily shoot down our early-game stuff and when we start getting closer to our big stuff they are able to counter them with their control elements, this is just a deck that is set up to beat us and in testing i had no success against them.
Juri, Master of the Revue
Record against Juri, Master of the Revue 0-3
If you have been following along with my other vehicle-focused articles, you will know that Juri has been beating up on me this whole week! We had a little bit of a chance against this deck with some of our other commanders, but the colorless Goliath Truck truly stands no chance here. We very rarely are able to even keep things on the board, and we really struggle in this matchup.
Khenra Spellspear // Gitaxian Spellstalker
Record against Khenra Spellspear 0-5
I’m sure this comes as no surprise because we are in colorless, but we have absolutely no chance against this deck. I tried hard to solely focus on the Khenra player, but no luck; they are just better. They have protection, and they can hit like a truck in combat very quickly. This is an extremely terrible matchup for our deck. If you sit down at a table with them, just try to stay out of their way!
Strategy Overview:
Swing Early, Swing Often:
We try to be as aggressive as we can, since we are colorless and don’t waste our time with many fancy instants and sorceries. This is pretty much all we have; we need to put pressure and deal damage to our opponents as much as we can!
Ignore all opponents, for the most part:
We don’t have really many ways to interact with our opponents, because of that, I just attack people when it’s open, not much more thought needs to go into it, you can’t do much to them anyway, besides attack, continue to turn those cards sideways, and you should be good!
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 a really nice creature package in the early game and the late game. For the early game, prioritizing creatures like Alloy Myr
, Ornithopter of Paradise
, and Manakin
allows us to get ahead early and cast some of our big bombs like Maelstrom Colossus
, Eldrazi Devastator, and Ulamog's Crusher
. We have some other strong early-game creatures like Iron Apprentice and Iron Bully. Both of these are really nice with the Goliath Truck and are great recipients for the counters. I especially like early-game menace, as opponents can often take damage from it. Some early-mid game creatures that can really help the deck include Scaretiller
, which is a great cheap way for us to ramp, and Skyscanner
, which can allow us to chump block flyers and also gives us some card draw, which is something we pretty much always want. Sojourner's Companion
does have a high mana cost, but for the most part, is really cheap because of all of our artifacts, and also is a really nice body for us to have on the board. We’ve worked up the late-game and are ready to drop our big boys, like Maelstrom Colossus, which gives an insane tempo advantage since we get to cascade off of it. We also have the Eldrazi trifecta in Ulamog's Crusher, Eldrazi Devastator, and Hand of Emrakul
. If any of these drop, we can dominantly win in most combat situations and really take over the game.
Instants:
Our instant package is huge! We have Scour from Existence and that’s it! While it is sad that we only have instant in the deck, it is pretty nice that it exiles and can target any permanent. While it is a little pricey at seven mana, we can actually cast it pretty easily, and it will certainly take our opponents by surprise.
Sorceries:
We have certainly upgraded from our instant package, we have four sorceries! All of them are actually pretty helpful for the deck, we start off with Environmental Sciences
, which is a great way to grab a Wastes
and get some life, while it’s certainly not a very efficient spell, it can be easily cast off of our mana rocks and is pretty good for an early turn. Introduction to Annihilation
is another pretty strong removal spell (one of two), and while it sadly does give our opponent a card, it is pretty good to take out pesky commanders or a combo piece. A lot of people like to claim that colorless doesn’t have much card draw, and while they mostly are right, we do have Introduction to Prophecy
, which gives us scry and a card draw, a nice card to use when we have excess mana, which is pretty often. We finish out our sorcery package with Expanded Anatomy
, which essentially is just an additional activation of our commander with some extra temporary vigilance on top, really nice when we get one of our big late-game creatures like Eldrazi Devastator, also really nice if an opponent is just a little bit bigger than us in combat.
Artifacts:
We have a lot of artifacts in this deck, which should come as no surprise since we are in colorless and artifacts are pretty much what we do! We also have a really nice Voltron package in the deck with cards like Darksteel Axe
, Bonesplitter
and Goldvein Pick
giving us extra damage on our big and small creatures, being able to follow that up with cards like Brass Knuckles
and Whispersilk Cloak
can allow us to be a true menace in combat and make us really tough to deal with overall, putting these on any creature is quite strong but its really good when we are able to put them on our late-game creatures. Our artifact package is a huge part of our deck and we cant get to our late game creatures without it which is why we are running mana rocks like Sisay's Ring
, Arcane Signet
, Mind Stone
and Commander's Sphere
, mana acceleration is really important in this deck and being able to accelerate out our gameplan is often key for us getting a win and getting the upper hand on our opponent. We round out our artifact package with some really nice support cards like Bumbleflower's Sharepot
, which is a piece of removal for the deck, albeit a bit slow and kind of weak, but hey, in colorless, we take what we can get. Against more aggressive decks, I’m a really big fan of Campfire
. The lifegain is nice, and we typically have a decent amount of mana leftover on each turn, and being able to get our commander from the command zone if we have been having trouble resolving them is really good.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We can be a really strong force in combat.
- Cards like Whispersilk Cloak
allow us to hit no matter what. Being able to skip through combat and not have any worries about our creatures dying. - We actually have a shocking amount of card draw through artifacts, while it’s nothing compared to something like a blue deck, we have more than you would expect.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We are pretty weak to artifact hate and have almost no ways to protect our creatures.
- We have next to no removal, we have a couple of pieces, but we don’t interact with our opponents well at all.
- We are good at other combats but have an extremely hard time winning against control strategies.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this one as much as I did! Even though colorless decks are certainly a little weaker than their colorful counterparts it still is a really fun deck, I love “driving” the truck and putting counters on our creatures and swinging hard, combining that with our strong Voltron package allows us to output a decent amount of damage and put a lot of pressure on our opponents. I had a blast with this deck! Stay tuned and TAP IN!