“In a secret place, I’ve been a warlord And a surf instructor.”
Art:Samut, Tyrant Smasher
by Aleksi Briclot
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
We are here to stomp our opponents out and do it quickly! With Samut giving all of our creatures haste, we can be really strong in the early-mid game and hit like a truck. Combine that with a ton of hasty mana dorks that allow us to produce mana at a ridiculous speed, and this deck can be really fast, sure we don’t have a lot of removal or the glitz and glamour that come with some of the decks within the format but we do have huge creatures that can hit quick and deal a ton of damage. This feels like truly pure Gruul magic and a deck I have been enjoying a lot, at first glance I felt underwhelmed by Samuts ability but after testing haste on everything is extremely nice and allows us to execute our gameplan super quick. There are no brakes on this one! Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Samut, Tyrant Smasher Stompy!
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Why Samut, Tyrant Smasher?
Samut is a huge part of our deck; they can come down really early, especially if we have some early-game ramp, which we almost always do, and the haste on everything can help a ton with subsequent mana dorks we drop or pretty much any creature. Samuts buff can be super nice, and while the haste doesn’t really matter, the buff is always nice. Samut pairs super nicely with a stompy deck and allows us to be super good in our game plan.
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:
Craig Boone, Novac Guard
Record against Craig Boone, Novac Guard 4-0
Craig Boone is a very good matchup for our deck. We are just quite a bit faster than them, and we typically end up running them over, I like to use our fight cards against Craig and just swing like a truck beyond that.
Killer Bees
Record against Killer Bees 3-0
While their commander is a flyer and can get big pretty quickly, we are typically much more rampier than them, and if we find or have an early fight card in our opening hand and can keep their commander off of the board, it usually goes pretty good, while it didn’t happen to me in any of my testing games they absolutely can one-shot you so definitely be careful.
Losheel, Clockwork Scholar
Record against Losheel 3-0
We are just bigger and better in this matchup; while their artifact creatures can’t take damage in combat, and that can be pretty strong, we are just faster, bigger, and better than them in combat. In this matchup, I tend to just overtake the game and swing overwhelm them, and with a decent amount of creatures with trample, we can just swing through their board and win pretty easily.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Cactusfolk Sureshot
Record against Cactusfolk Sureshot 2-3
While haste is nice, it’s nothing compared to trample, and since Cactusfolk can give their creatures trample very easily while being in the same Gruul shell makes this matchup is much harder. This matchup is absolutely winnable but can be rough. We play pretty much the same cards in our deck so the game is decided through combat.
Queza, Augur of Agonies
Record against Queza, Augur of Agonies 0-3
This is a rough one. While we don’t really care about their drain and gain, they are in a control and removal heavy shell, and that can be really rough for us. We don’t have much recourse against them when they are countering or stuff or destroying our creatures. This can be a very tough matchup for our deck.
Juri, Master of the Revue
Record against Juri, Master of the Revue 0-5
I tried in this matchup, I really did; we played five games, and they were just not great for us; too much removal combined with a bunch of sacrifice effects makes a stompy deck that wants to do nothing but swing big feel really bad. This is just a rough matchup for our deck and one I had no success in.
Strategy Overview:
Speed, I am Speed:
Leaning into our commander’s ability and being quick with our ramp and our game plan allows us to get ahead much faster than our opponents; if we are able to drop eight or nine mana cards three or four turns early, we can overwhelm even the best decks.
Never let them through:
We have so many creatures in our deck, and because of that, we are quite good at blocking. This allows us to avoid a ton of damage from opponents and increases our survivability greatly.
Take advantage of any situation:
If an opponent stumbles, committing creatures to the board, or is slow to ramp, we need to take advantage of our speed and hit them as hard as we can while we can. Early damage allows us to close out games really quickly, and once we get into our late-gam,e there isn’t much other creature decks can do to us.
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 are hasty and ready to get going quickly! Because of that we have some strong early-game ramp like Elvish Mystic
, Llanowar Elves
and Boreal Druid
while we don’t have Samut this early in the game these can help lead us to an early Samut and get to some of our better mana dorks like Whisperer of the Wilds
and Ilysian Caryatid
. We have some cool discount and ramp cards that are a little different but still have a big effect, like Goblin Anarchomancer
and Zhur-Taa Druid
, Zhur-Taa tends to stick around for quite a while, and one damage guaranteed on every turn is absolutely worth a two mana investment. Moving on from our ramp, we have so many creatures that can cause a ton of problems for our opponents, like Entourage of Trest
, which is an amazing blocker and can really shut down aggressive decks if we are able to get them out a couple of turns early. Dinotomaton
is a card that has been very impressive to me, it’s a great turn three or four play, and even if we don’t have a great target for the menace, having a decent attacker/blocker, pretty early in the game can be quite strong. We transition to the late-game quite quickly with all of our ramp, so being able to drop bombs like Seismic Monstrosaur
and Annoyed Altisaur
on turns five or six can really change the game. It’s not too much later that we drop the real end-game creatures like Rust Goliath
, Ulamog's Crusher
, and Hand of Emrakul
drop these early enough and it’s pretty much over for our opponents.
Instants:
We play a lot of really big and truthfully really scary creatures, and because of that, opponents really like to try to remove them, we cannot let that happen, so we have a couple of protection spells that can help us keep the best of the best around, I really like Avoid Fate
, the main reason I like this is that our opponents almost never expect us to do anything with only one-green mana and they are awesome that our defenses are down. Snakeskin Veil
, Tamiyo's Safekeeping
and Gaea's Gift
are all awesome options as well. The surprises don’t stop as well also have Pyroblast
and Red Elemental Blast
, which can be great gotchas against those pesky blue decks! We are still a stompy deck and want to be very aggressive and hit hard, so we have both Uncaged Fury
and Temur Battle Rage
, which can easily one-shot opponents and cause a ton of panic amongst the table, both are great options for dishing out a ton of damage.
Sorceries:
Since we commit so many creatures to the board, we want them to hit as much as possible, due to the large amount of creature-based strategies in the format, it can be quite difficult to get through sometimes, which is why we are running Cosmotronic Wave
and Coronation of Chaos
both of these are great ways to clear the way for our creatures and allow us to hit for big damage. Turning combat on its head and taking out our opponent’s best blockers can really flip the momentum of the game. We have some sorcery speed ramps in Cultivate
and Kodama's Reach
, and I also love both Explore
and Scale the Heights
. Scale the Heights is really impactful in this deck, and the counter can help a creature be a better blocker/attacker. More ramp is something the deck is always looking to do so we can cast bigger creatures, and since we almost always have a creature with four or more power, we can get a ton of value out of Ent's Fury
, which is awesome for the deck, a fight spell and a buff for our creature for only two mana is a true win-win for the deck. Since we ramp and produce so much mana, we can cast Fireball
with a crazy amount of mana; this is great for the deck in so many ways, whether we aim it at an opponent’s face or kill a big creature this card is very impactful.
Artifacts:
Would it even be a TNT deck without Wedding Invitation
? In my opinion, no! Wedding Invitation is just an amazing card; whether you use it for an early-card draw or for early damage, this card is absolutely worth the two-mana investment, and since we ramp so hard, two mana is absolutely nothing in this deck. We round out our artifact package with some additional mana rocks in Arcane Signet
, Gruul Signet
, and Gruul Locket
all of these are great ramp pieces for the deck, and I love getting them out off of a hasty mana dork which happens way more often than you might think.
Enchantments:
I really like Snake Umbra
in this deck; the buff is always nice, and the card draw is absolute money for this deck; being able to fill up our hand consistently makes us extremely deadly to our opponents. Three mana is also nothing to this deck with the large amount of ramp we have, especially with cards like Wild Growth
and Utopia Sprawl
, which are all super awesome early-plays and can help us bring out Samut super quickly.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Our haste allows our mana dorks to come out and be ready which can be really nice in ramping out our bigger permanents.
- Since we are in Gruul, we actually have a decent amount of supplemental card draw, which is super nice since we tend to run through our hand really quickly.
- Besides other Stompy decks, there aren’t many other decks that are better than us in combat.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We have really bad matchups against control decks; they can counter our commander and our best stuff and leave us with not much.
- We don’t really have much removal outside of us fighting creatures it can get tough against other stompy decks.
- Voltron decks or decks that like to one-shot can be tough matchups, especially if they have access to a lot of protection spells. Mono-Color Voltron decks are typically not too bad as they don’t have access to the same stuff that the multi-color strategies do but these decks can still be quite good against us.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! Samut is a pretty cool commander, and as a long-time enjoyer of stompy decks, this one has been a ton of fun to test and play. I like that this deck doesn’t do anything too fancy, and for people who just love going to combat and swinging hard this is the perfect deck. We are coming close to the end of Planeswalker month, and I hope you all have been enjoying them as much as I have! Stay tuned and TAP IN!