Commander Overview
Pizza Face, Gastromancer is a very interesting commander to come out of TMNT. At the same time, we have awesome food-focused commanders in the format like Greta, Sweettooth Scourge. We have never seen a commander quite like this. Pizza Face will turn our food into attackers if we have a permanent hit the graveyard during our turn, which is criminally easy to do since we are in Golgari. We are very good at sacrificing our stuff to not only trigger Pizza Face but to support our overall game plan, and cards like Bloodbriar help us to be stronger in combat, and a have a much better position on the board. Pizza Face is a very interesting commander and is quite strong, allowing us to turn our foods into creatures, which is especially interesting since we absolutely don’t care if they die and can attack and block with them with reckless abandon. Pizza Face has been a blast to test and play, and it is going to be a very popular choice in the format for years to come.
How to Play the Deck
Playing this deck is like running a restaurant; we keep bringing food to the table, and we are pretty good at it. We are great at producing food and, more importantly, triggering our commander on pretty much every one of our turns and triggering Pizza Face, not only giving us many sources of life gain but a bunch of 3/3 creatures that we can attack or block with reckless abandon. This deck is good for an intermediate player. It does have some complicated triggers and a lot of stuff to track, so a newer player may struggle with this one.
Synergy’s in the deck
We have a ton of synergies with food and sacrificing, one of my favorite cards in the deck is by far Bloodbriar, which can get huge quickly and is a great attacker and blocker for the deck. Even just a few turns with this on the field allows us to have a huge board presence. Cauldron Familiar is the true gift that keeps on giving in this deck since we can use them as an easy way to trigger our commander, and they can come back a lot. A food/token-filled deck obviously wouldn’t be complete without Nadier's Nightblade and Mirkwood Bats, so of course, we have both. These are both cheap and easy ways for us to get some damage in and make our combat gameplan a lot easier. We have a ton of synergies around food, token creation, and sacrificing stuff to trigger Pizza Face.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: We do have some cheap stuff in our deck, and we spend a majority of the early-game just setting up, playing out some cards that make food early is great for the deck since having cards that we can immediately sacrifice and buff up when Pizza Face comes out is helpful. We can attack with some of our early creatures if our opponents are open, but we aren’t very aggressive overall.
Mid-Game: The mid-game is when we are able to be a lot more aggressive. We typically have Pizza Face and some great support cards like Bloodbriar on the battlefield that allow us to dominate combat and be a big threat to our opponent. If we are in a game with aggressive decks, don’t forget that we can easily sac our foods just for the life, so we don’t die. The mid-game is a fine time for us; we just stick to our gameplan and take what the game gives us. There’s no reason to do anything but attempt to trigger Pizza Face as much as we can.
Late-Game: Unlike many decks in the format we are perfectly ok with going to the late-game, we have a slight advantage over our opponents since we can passively gain life and keep our life total higher than many of our opponents, by the late-game we can also always activate Pizza Faces ability and gain fifteen at anytime which is pretty powerful ability to hold up before combat. We are perfectly ok with going slow and just slowly bleeding down our opponents.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
Being in Golgari leans us into having a ramp in the deck, not only to play our five mana commander but to play out the rest of our game plan and have the mana to sac our food whenever we want. In contrast, our foods are great attackers and blockers. We do like to sacrifice them before they die, so we are able to get some of that life back, especially in matchups with aggressive decks. We have quite a few sources of ramp with cards like Cultivate, which can be a great piece of mana fixing for the deck. I also really like Harrow and Primal Growth since they can trigger our commander and provide some ramp. We round out our ramp package with some strong mana rocks like Arcane Signet and Golgari Signet, which are cheap mana outlets and can help us ramp out Pizza Face. While we certainly aren’t ramping as much as the stompy deck, we are quite good at getting our stuff out early.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
We have a ton of awesome card draw in this deck! We also have some card draw that helps with the overall game plan, like Foreboding Fruit, which is a great, cheap draw source that can also give us food. Getting a food off of Foreboding Fruit is completely optional, but can be helpful if we are just getting started. Almost all of our card draw synergizes with our commander, which is that we are running cards like Deadly Dispute, Corrupted Conviction, and Village Rites, which all trigger Pizza Face and help to fill up our hand. In all of my testing games, I had no trouble keeping my hand full in this deck.
Removal
This is another instance where being in Golgari feels good. Removal is a very strong aspect of our deck and something we do a lot. While we have a lot of good creatures in the deck, it is good to be able to clear our opponents’ best stuff and hit them with our army of 3/3 foods. Cards like Cast Down, Breathe your Last, and Feed the Cauldron are all great options to remove our opponents’ best stuff. We also have some removal that synergizes directly with Pizza Face, like Bake into a Pie. We are good at removal, and it is a big strength of the deck. While not a huge part of our deck, we do have some artifact/enchantment removal like Spider Food, which is a perfect removal spell for the deck since we also make a food.
Protection
Protection isn’t a big strong suit of our deck. Still, we do have a couple of ways to protect our creatures. Cards like Not Dead After All, Snakeskin Veil, and Tamiyo's Safekeeping are all great ways to protect our commander. More importantly, some of our best creatures like Nadier's Nightblade and Mirkwood Bats are two of the best creatures in our deck, and opponents target them a ton; being able to protect them allows us to continue our game plan and whittle down our opponents passively. When we use these cards is entirely situational, but I always try to keep either Nadier's Nightblade or Mirkwood Bats on the field for as long as we can.
Utility / Support
Let’s focus on some of the best creatures in the deck! Cirith Ungol Patro is a very interesting card for the deck, as it allows us to guarantee a trigger on Pizza Face, an additional food, and card draw. This card truly is the whole package for our deck. Fangren Marauder is another card that is a little pricey, but being able to gain five life every time we sacrifice a food is truly insane, making a food become pay two gain eight allows us to become near untouchable in terms of life total, and will allow us to survive a lot of late-game attacks. Michelangelo, Game Master is another cool card since it functions just like our commander, and we can passively build them up every turn and get a formidable attacker/blocker after just a few turns. We have a couple of great sac outlets in the deck, like Ashnod's Altar, which we can also use to free sac a food, which is a great option to have. I’m also a huge fan of Ice Cream Kitty, which is another TMNT card. Ice Cream Kitty is a card draw source and sac outlet for the deck, and is essentially a food token for our deck as well.
Mana Base
We have a good mana base, but overall, it is quite simple. A lot of the Pauper EDH decks I build have a very similar land base, as they work really well. We have a lot of card draw in this deck, so being able to cycle away our lands for other cards is great since we don’t always need to play them out. Some of my favorite utility lands in the deck are Gingerbread Cabin, which is just an extra source of food production for the deck, and Khalni Garden, which provides either a chump blocker or a sacrifice to trigger Pizza Face.
Win Conditions
Combat is our primary win condition; the only other way we can close out games is if our opponents are low and we use Nadier's Nightblade or Mirkwood Bats, but this only happened a couple of times in my testing games.
Strengths of the Deck
We are great at keeping our life total decently high; we don’t get as high as a deck with lifegain, but can almost always outpace our opponents.
Pizza Face gives us a consistent source of 3/3’s for the deck, which we can use for anything we want.
Weaknesses of the Deck
Pizza Face is a huge removal target for the deck since they turn a lot of our food into formidable attackers for the deck.
While we can get a lot of the life back later, we do have a rough matchup against more aggressive decks, and if they have a very strong start, we can just die.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Gut, True Soul Zealot and Inspiring Leader. Matchup Record: 1-3
This was a very bad matchup for our deck, and they are truly set up to beat us. Gut is a big enough problem, but Inspiring Leader is truly terrible for us; our 3/3 foods stop being chump blockers, and they simply die. Removing Inspiring Leader is a key to making this matchup work.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Spider Food, Bake into a Pie and Mirkwood Bats.
Game 2: Vs Gran-Gran. Matchup Record: 3-1
While it can be annoying to deal with a lot of Gran-Gran’s control elements, we are a lot better than they are in combat, and if we can get some of our best stuff to stick, we should have no trouble. No deviation from the overall game plan here, although they don’t have a ton of creatures all the time, so I do try to be more aggressive than I normally would.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Longshot Squad, Cranial Plating and Unearth.
Game 3: Vs SP//dr, Piloted by Peni. Matchup Record: 2-2
This is firmly an ok matchup for the deck; they aren’t great at removal, but we’re better at countering. Cards like Longshot Squad put in extra work here since they tend to have quite a few flyers; it’s really all about who gets built up quicker, and our lifegain is very important in this matchup. Make your food, make your 3/3’s, and be aggressive!
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Longshot Squad, Fangren Marauder and Infuse with Vitality.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! This deck has been a blast to play, and Pizza Face is a real deal commander, and with foods seemingly going nowhere within the game, will likely get some more support cards as time goes on. But as it stands, Pizza Face is a very strong commander who already has a ton of support, and making a an army of foods is so much fun, thematically and within the game.