Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers Big Mana Stompy

Commander Overview

Raph & Mikey are truly a Gruul commander, I don’t think they could be any more Gruul than they truly are. They have all of the elements of a true Gruul commander: expensive, has a ridiculous effect, and allows us to throw huge creatures on the board! Raph & Mikey may have a high mana cost, but it is extremely easy for our deck to get there. Raph & Mikey are in an interesting hybrid role for our deck, we need them to be explosive but if they keep getting countered or killed we can easily just switch to a ramp filled stompy gameplan and “slow-cast” our creatures we go with the pace of the game and take what our opponents give us, since we are in Gruul there isn’t a ton of ways for us to stop our opponents from removing our countering our stuff but hopefully they are already dead before they can do that!

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is extremely easy, and this is a deck that can be piloted by pretty much anyone. This is a deck I would hand to a newer player, probably not for their first game, but if they have a few games under their belt, this deck is extremely easy to play. Pretty much all we do in the deck is ramp and attack, and the most complicated thing we do in the deck is Raph & Mikey’s ability, which, for a player with a few games under their belt, should not be a problem for them to do. Playing this deck is quite easy and a boatload of fun!

Synergy’s in the deck

The biggest synergy in our deck is our big creatures and our ramp, like any good Gruul deck! We are a one-trick pony in a lot of ways, and our only synergies are our ramp cards, and we have a ton of sources of them. Some notable synergies are Last March of the Ents or hard-casting something like Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant, which are great ways to swing the game in our favor. We have a ton of Gruul synergies in this deck!

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: The only focus of the early-game is to ramp as much as we possibly can, whether its Explore, Cultivate or Utopia Sprawl getting our mana up and attempting to cast Raph & Mikey as soon as we can is the best thing we can do in our deck.

Mid-Game: Things start to get crazy for us and very bad for our opponents, obviously there is a bit of randomness to it since we don’t now what we are gonna flip but we do have cards like Reclaim and Noxious Revival that can put cards from our graveyard to the top so we can flip them with Raph & Mikey. The Mid-game is all about swinging with our commander and overwhelming our opponents with our commander and the big creatures we flip off the top.

Late-Game: The late-game is pretty good for us, since we have a ton of huge creatures, and if we are able to keep Raph & Mikey on the board, we can have a great board presence and a ton of power on the board, making us very difficult to attack into and making us very good at attacking. The late game is a great time for us.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

As I’ve already mentioned ramp is a huge part of our deck and we do it as much as we can, whether its Wild Growth or Utopia Sprawl or spells like Cultivate or Kodama’s Reach we are great at ramping, casting Raph & Mikey is the most important thing we can do, they are a huge part of our deck and one of the way main ways we gain momentum and establish a strong board presence within the game. Cards like Entish Restoration can get turned on extremely early and be a huge and cheap source of ramp. We are great at ramping and casting our commander many turns early, and if we can’t get them to resolve, we can use all of our ramp to hard-cast our best creatures.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

We have a lot of card draw in the deck, especially from our enchantment package. Cards like Garruk’s Uprising and Elemental Bond can allow us to draw multiple cards in a turn and synergize extremely well with our commander, since they only care about bigger creatures entering. Big Score and Unexpected Windfall are not only great draw spells, but we can easily ramp into them, and the treasure tokens can help us speed out some of our biggest creatures and our commander. Truly a best of both worlds situation for our deck.

Removal

This is one of our weakest portions of the deck, but in all of my testing games, I didn’t care much what my opponents were doing. We are very much a selfish deck in this way. We are great at removal through combat as we can be extraordinarily hard to attack into since we have so many huge creatures but our only true piece of removal outside of combat is Beast Within which is a great way to deal with a problematic permanent an opponent plays but it is our only source so i always try to use it very wisely and not haphazardly. We are not great at removal.

Protection

This is another rough section of our deck. We are very creature-focused and focus a lot more on our game plan than our opponents, but we do have Tamiyo’s Safekeeping as a source to protect our creatures from our opponents’ removal. We don’t have a ton of these effects, but this is a great option.

Utility / Support

Let’s go over some of the biggest and baddest creatures we have in our deck! Whether we hard cast them or flip them off of Raph & Mikey, they can swing the game in our favor easily. Cards like Blighsteel Colossus are extreme threats that our opponents need to deal with immediately, and luckily for us, they have indestructible, which makes them considerably harder to deal with. Just a great option to flip off the top. I also love Void Winnower. While it is a good attacker, its abilities are what matter to us a lot more. Being able to stop opponents from casting even spells and blocking with even creatures makes us insanely hard to deal with in combat and disrupts opponents’ game plan a ton. You don’t realize how many even cards are in the deck until you put this on the field, and the best part is that it doesn’t affect us. Summon: Bahamut is another insane creature. Not only is it a 9/9 with flying, which can be quite tough to deal with when it enters, but we also get to destroy a nonland permanent, whether we do that to a blocker or take out the best thing an opponent has, it is very strong. The other saga abilities are pretty great, too. Summon:Bahamut is also quite easy for us to hard cast as well because of all of our ramp. Getting more and more stuff with Raph & Mikey is very strong, so cards like Port Razer and [[Bloodthirster] give us extra combats pretty easily and allow us to continue to trigger Raph & Mikey and make our board state even crazier.

Mana Base

We don’t have a ton of interesting stuff in our mana base. Being in two colors, there aren’t a ton of great options, but I do love Mosswort Bridge. It works tremendously with the deck, and getting to ten power is extremely easy in the deck. Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth is nothing more than mass mana fixing for the deck, but it is pretty great.

Win Conditions

Our only win condition in the deck is combat

Strengths of the Deck

We are great at building up quickly and hitting hard, because of all of our ramp, our speed is one of our biggest assets.

Even amongst other stompy decks, we can dominate them because we are a lot quicker than they are and get a lot of free creatures.

Weaknesses of the Deck

Since we are a one-trick pony style of deck we can have a very tough time if we get board wiped after we our built up, we can be slow to recover. Raph & Mikey does help but it still can be quite slow.

We can be weak to control decks since they can just remove even our best

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Kona, Rescue Beastie. Matchup Record: 4-1

This is a true stompy vs stompy matchup, and we are just a bit better. While Kona is great at getting out one creature early, they can’t compete with all of the creatures we put into play. I had very little trouble in this matchup except for a game where I got next to no ramp, and they dropped a Worldspine Wurm on turn four.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:

Game 2: Vs Vren, the Relentless. Matchup Record: 0-3

Vren is just a horrendous matchup for our deck. They are great at killing creatures, have a ton of board wipes, and, since they are in Dimir, have access to a ton of removal and counterspells. This is a terrible matchup for our deck. Vren is basically built to beat us.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Tamiyo’s Safekeeping, Beast Within and Kogla, the Titan Ape.

Game 3: Vs Ghalta, Primal Hunger. Matchup Record: 2-2

A true split matchup for our deck, just like our deck Ghalta is pretty reliant on their commander and a 12/12 with trample who can come down crazy early can be tough for us, they can also eat their commander tax by just playing more creatures, this matchup really comes down to who has more ramp or in the case of Ghalta more creatures. Overall, a tough but winnable matchup.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Cultivate, Fanatic of Rhonas and Chaos Warp.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers are one of the most discussed commanders from the TMNT set, and after testing this deck, I totally understand why. This is a very amazing Gruul deck, and it can get huge really quickly. I love how Gruul this deck feels, and it always feels great to do some free-casting of our creatures.