ISB Raffine

[pokken]

I have to put Raffine back together, was my favorite deck for a while, but a bit too good. It jusr goes brrrrrrrr

Cards I remember liking were

Healer's Hawk
[Triton Shorestalker
Lurrus of the Dream-Den
Remorseful Cleric

One card I did not personally play but I wanted too when saw
Ayara's Oathsworn

Card I remember always being underwhelming for me was, surprisingly, Sol Ring Id rather play a dork. Also didnt need much generic mana

Much like Edric, Spymaster of Trest I think most of these builds should really not be on Sol Ring. Springleaf Drum has filled that spot in Varina, Lich Queen for me and it's really good. You don't want to attack until Raffine, Scheming Seer comes out anyway so it's OK to have one guy tapped to bring him out a turn early potentially.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Card I remember always being underwhelming for me was, surprisingly, Sol Ring Id rather play a dork. Also didnt need much generic mana

Yeah, this is probably one of the worst decks for sol ring out there, right next to Dirk's Phelddagrif. The ceiling for it here is basically t2 Buried Alive, playing two 2 drops t2, or playing a finisher slightly ahead of curve. I've cut it and put it back in a few times now. The brutality of colored costs, amiright?

Edit: Springleaf Drum is a hell of an idea. I will try that!

[kirkusjones]

@TheAmericanSpirit I want to figure out an augmented reality alter for Skyhunter Strike Force that pulls up this when you hover a phone over the card.

Thinking about it, I could make a QR code for the gif, print it and tape it to a perfect fit, but there has got to be a more elegant solution.

[kirkusjones]

Played my updated Raffine list tonight. 3 player game against Hidetsugu and Kairi and Shorikai, Genesis Engine. Two goons and a turn three Raffine, followed up by Skyhunter Strike Force ate everybody's lunch. Shadowstorm Vizier was an all-star goon.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Played my updated Raffine list tonight. 3 player game against Hidetsugu and Kairi and Shorikai, Genesis Engine. Two goons and a turn three Raffine, followed up by Skyhunter Strike Force ate everybody's lunch. Shadowstorm Vizier was an all-star goon.

Ah, what a beautiful tale. Behold, ye mighty and despair! Aggro is viable in EDH and may every permadurdling ramp control player tremble at the mention of its name.

[Arebennian]

What are peoples thoughts about Starscream, Power Hungry // Starscream, Seeker Leader in the 99 of this deck?

[pokken]

I don't think you really are interested in monarchy in this deck, since it encourages people to attack you when you'd rather they not, and it's in the premium 3 cmc spot, but that's just my take.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I don't think you really are interested in monarchy in this deck, since it encourages people to attack you when you'd rather they not, and it's in the premium 3 cmc spot, but that's just my take.

Agreed. 3 mana is a huge premium and Starscream is a little behind the value represented by other better 3 drops.

[duducrash]

What do yo all think of Crashing Drawbridge in this deck?

[ISBPathfinder]

What do yo all think of Crashing Drawbridge in this deck?

I think its giving up on tempo on 2cmc to try to accelarate you later. The problem is it gives a non attacker at the cost of a card and potentially important play time. Its true that it does accelerate Raffine into attacking sooner which can mean commander damage faster but I don't think its as big of a deal as getting some sort of utility attacker set up on the same turn. I also think that outside of the turn 2 play I like it a lot less than most other two drops.

It feels to me like spending mana / a card on something to accelerate me later on at the cost of up front utility / defense / attackers. I will be honest though I don't think I have ever seen a case that I have felt that wall has been relevant enough to run.

[pokken]

What do yo all think of Crashing Drawbridge in this deck?

In Breena, the Demagogue I just run Lightning Greaves for this effect, since the odds of me wanting to deploy more than 1 new attacker in a turn that I really want to attack with are fairly low. Raffine is a little lower to the ground...but I still think it's rare for you to want to deploy 2 creatures in a turn after Raffine, but not being willing to just slap the zap pants on one of them and call it a day.

Breena doesn't scale as much from having multiple attackers before she drops though, so I think Raffine suffers from really wanting:
1) a higher density of 1 drops
2) a higher density of creatures in general

On reflection I don't think you want any of these effects in Raffine. You have counterspells to discourage removal and you would almost always rather run another creature out than run drawbridge out. And you're not going to get lethal that often by jamming drawbridge then 3-4 creatures and then winning...you almost always need a force multiplier like Akroma's Will to suddenly kill people.

If you want a "haste enabler" play more Time Warps

[duducrash]

I see, I kind of agree but keep thinking if we do actually lose tempo? Because on T4, you will be atracking with the same number of creatures, maybe more, since the 2+ you will deploy will he hasty attackers. Because I dont think its rare to deploy 2+ t4 and so on

I think its something that I would have to test, and above all else see how it performs on different scenarios. I think it rocks on t2, but unsure how good it is later

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Drawbridge is a hard no for me. Everybody has to pull weight and defender is the keyword antithesis of our plan. I think greaves is probably the best haste enabler we can get because it doesn't choke our mana by equipping and gives some relevant protection, albeit at the cost of losing the ability to target the equipped creature with Raffine. I also think greaves has a lot of value in metas with abnormally high quantities of removal, which can make it a solid play even late in the game whereas drawbridge is decidedly not.

[Arebennian]

I don't think you really are interested in monarchy in this deck, since it encourages people to attack you when you'd rather they not, and it's in the premium 3 cmc spot, but that's just my take.

Oh it wasn't the monarchy I was interested in, It was being able to drain people for 2 life for every card you draw when you connive. I think that would take 3 turns to actually happen though.

[kirkusjones]

I don't think you really are interested in monarchy in this deck, since it encourages people to attack you when you'd rather they not, and it's in the premium 3 cmc spot, but that's just my take.

Oh it wasn't the monarchy I was interested in, It was being able to drain people for 2 life for every card you draw when you connive. I think that would take 3 turns to actually happen though.

I play Raffine with Satva, Devilish Lettuce as the companion, so Starscream is too many hoops to jump through. Here's my typical turn: draw card, take bite of opponent's lunch, draw, discard, play new goon. Pass turn.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Finally got another copy of Reconnaissance. Good golly, that card is insane.

[kirkusjones]

Finally got another copy of Reconnaissance. Good golly, that card is insane.

I haven't drawn my copy since adding in a couple of weeks ago. Excited to see it do work.

Managed to outpace a non-optimized Kaalia of the Vast last night. Breena, the Demagogue only encouraged the other players to see Kaalia as the archenemy and between her and Sygg, River Cutthroat I was able to keep up a steady stream of chump blockers while beating down with Raffine. It was beautiful. The deck just hums.

Sadly my The Beamtown Bullies deck is nowhere close to Raffine's level of flow. It's more like a bagpiper and a keytarist trying to play Bach's Cello suite No. 1 in the middle of a Chuck E. Cheese ballpit.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Finally got another copy of Reconnaissance. Good golly, that card is insane.

I haven't drawn my copy since adding in a couple of weeks ago. Excited to see it do work.

Managed to outpace a non-optimized Kaalia of the Vast last night. Breena, the Demagogue only encouraged the other players to see Kaalia as the archenemy and between her and Sygg, River Cutthroat I was able to keep up a steady stream of chump blockers while beating down with Raffine. It was beautiful. The deck just hums.

Sadly my The Beamtown Bullies deck is nowhere close to Raffine's level of flow. It's more like a bagpiper and a keytarist trying to play Bach's Cello suite No. 1 in the middle of a Chuck E. Cheese ballpit.

Ah, Sygg and Breena is a hell of CA engine. I love it! Someday I'll see that combo's power for myself.

As for comparing other decks to Raffine, that's just unfair. Raffine is Ella Fitzgerald and everyone else sounds like Tom Waits in comparison. You've tasted the forbidden fruit and all other flavor is lessened for having done so. C'est la vie, you will have to learn to live with it like I have.

[ISBPathfinder]

I have done a few other super fast aggro decks that had some similar vibe to Raffine. They all have pros and cons and play a touch differently obviously but some of the others that had some similar vibes having been:

• Sai, Master Thopterist - This deck was pure gasoline of cheap artifacts and heavy draw. It wasn't that unreasonable for me to kill a table of 4 with a good hand by turns 5-7. That is assuming a good hand goldfish kind of experience but it was heavy on fast ramp and draw so it felt like it performed quite well. It technically had a lot of solutions to it as opponents could hate on tokens, hate on artifacts, or deal with my commander a bunch but it was really good for a commander centric proactive deck. It goes wide easily and there are a lot of versions of Coastal Piracy these days.
• Edgar Markov - The value added of free bodies is huge and Edgar makes for a good finisher. I nicknamed this deck tutor Necropotence because it felt like that was always its goal. Last time I counted I think the total mana cost of the entire deck was only like 130 mana for everything in the list I ran which was super low to the ground. It was somewhat vulnerable to counter magic on its card draw but otherwise I felt it was extremely resilient to disruption. I remember a game offhand where I forced my opponents to wrath the board 3 turns in a row because of my boardstate and still ended up killing them all.
• Ghalta, Primal Hunger - The idea behind this deck was really to play my commander and then jam him into Greater Good level of cards repeatedly. I ran a lot of stat efficient beaters and would just get to the point of 2 mana commanders into big card draw effects. This was probably the slowest and fairest of my OP decks I retired.
• Kozilek, the Great Distortion - Run every reasonable mana stone in the game and dump your hand into new hands. Kozilek can then play counter magic mind games with your opponents as he goes voltron. If he gets answered play out your hand and play him again. You get a unique voltron concept with this one and I found it very reasonable to play him first on turns 4-6 with some wise mulligans.

There have been some other busted commanders I have either not built or immediately put away but these were the ones that were aggro focused and I felt worth mentioning from a similar to Raffine standpoint. Not to try to derail this thread I just thought I would mention some of my experience with some other similar concept commanders.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

There was a pretty brutal Sai deck floating around my meta for a hot second. In one memorable game he went:
t1 Island, Mana Crypt, Sai, Ornithopter, Memnite, Welding Jar
t2 Seat of the Synod, Thought Monitor, convoke out Obelisk of Urd naming Thopters
t3 Island, Coat of Arms, murder the player to my left.

Thankfully I was playing Dirk's Phelddagrif at the time so I was able to wrath his board back into the stone age on my t4, but it felt like if I had been playing anything else I would have surely been roadkill. It also seemed like one of the sweetest Skullclamp decks of all time, which is always a plus. One of these days. I should see how much damage Sai can do on a budget of $100 or so, just to change things up a bit.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I had a game last night I just have to report. I was playing 4p against Jetmir, Nexus of Revels, Yarok, the Desecrated, and Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes. Game started a little slow for me, but by t5 I'm into the swing of things and damage is getting dealt. Yarok is screwed for green and is getting nowhere. Minsc ramped hard but some timely removal on Boo screwed him out of a fresh grip. Jetmir is slowly amassing tokens and helping with the general violence, but my lack of blockers is making me sweat a little when I look at his board. T7 rolls around and I rip an Archfiend of Ifnir. Perfect. I slam the archfiend and swing in, conniving 6 on my mutavault. Everything except Yarok's 11/11 Tishana, Voice of Thunder dies, and tishana is shrunk to a 5/5. I pass at 30 life. Yarok swings tishana at me after playing a land, I go to 25. Yarok then attempts to Big Game Hunter Raffine, so I cast Clever Concealment in response. Definitely no blockers now. Jetmir draws some cards and passes. Minsc is out for blood however. I bounced his Moraug, Fury of Akoum earlier in the game and now that thing is back to eat my lunch. He plays Moraug, enchants it with rancor, equips lightning greaves to it. He then plays Shivan Devastator X=1 with his remaining mana. He plays a land. Oh boy, here it comes. Swing for 11 on the first combat. Swing for 13 on the second. Holy %$#%, I'm alive! Minsc realizes his combat math error, sighs, and passes. I untap, rip Time Warp off the top and with that have just enough oompf to kill Minsc on my first turn with an all out attack, and then kill Yarok and Jetmir on the extra turn with commander damage and an alpha goon strike respectively, thus winning the game at 1 life.

I dare say that's one of my finest wins ever in a game of magic. One for the books, as they say.

[PrimevalCommander]

I bounced his Moraug, Fury of Akoum earlier in the game and now that thing is back to eat my lunch. He plays Moraug, enchants it with rancor, equips lightning greaves to it. He then plays Shivan Devastator X=1 with his remaining mana. He plays a land. Oh boy, here it comes. Swing for 11 on the first combat. Swing for 13 on the second. Holy %$#%, I'm alive! Minsc realizes his combat math error, sighs, and passes.

Bold for emphasis. This is a sequencing error by the opponent. Very common with Moraug, Fury of Akoum as it is worded oddly for an extra combat card. But it is important. If you play a land on your pre-combat main phase, the extra combat untap trigger will happen before your creatures have attacked for the first time. So you will untap your already untapped creatures, then swing. You will move to the second combat step, but your creatures will not untap because Moraug trigger already resolved. One must play the land in the post-combat main phase to get the untap trigger. Also there is no additional main phase, so no casting stuff after Moraug extra combats. Go from combat straight to end phase. Cast your stuff and play your lands post-combat main and then do your extra attacks before end phase.

[kirkusjones]

I had a game last night I just have to report. I was playing 4p against Jetmir, Nexus of Revels, Yarok, the Desecrated, and Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes. Game started a little slow for me, but by t5 I'm into the swing of things and damage is getting dealt. Yarok is screwed for green and is getting nowhere. Minsc ramped hard but some timely removal on Boo screwed him out of a fresh grip. Jetmir is slowly amassing tokens and helping with the general violence, but my lack of blockers is making me sweat a little when I look at his board. T7 rolls around and I rip an Archfiend of Ifnir. Perfect. I slam the archfiend and swing in, conniving 6 on my mutavault. Everything except Yarok's 11/11 Tishana, Voice of Thunder dies, and tishana is shrunk to a 5/5. I pass at 30 life. Yarok swings tishana at me after playing a land, I go to 25. Yarok then attempts to Big Game Hunter Raffine, so I cast Clever Concealment in response. Definitely no blockers now. Jetmir draws some cards and passes. Minsc is out for blood however. I bounced his Moraug, Fury of Akoum earlier in the game and now that thing is back to eat my lunch. He plays Moraug, enchants it with rancor, equips lightning greaves to it. He then plays Shivan Devastator X=1 with his remaining mana. He plays a land. Oh boy, here it comes. Swing for 11 on the first combat. Swing for 13 on the second. Holy %$#%, I'm alive! Minsc realizes his combat math error, sighs, and passes. I untap, rip Time Warp off the top and with that have just enough oompf to kill Minsc on my first turn with an all out attack, and then kill Yarok and Jetmir on the extra turn with commander damage and an alpha goon strike respectively, thus winning the game at 1 life.

I dare say that's one of my finest wins ever in a game of magic. One for the books, as they say.

I must not fear, fear is the mind killer. It is the tiny death that brings total obliteration. I will untap my lands, draw my card and turn Raffine and the goons sideways. And when the connive triggers have resolved and the combat step has passed, I will turn my eyes to see its path. And where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only Raffine will remain.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@kirkusjones Amen, brother. Preach it!

[TheAmericanSpirit]

At the risk of double posting, I thought I'd do a little LOTR set review. There's really not much here we can use, but let's take a look:

Frodo, Sauron's Bane - It's a one drop that isn't really a one drop. Generally we want to spend our early mana casting dudes, not leveling up Frodo, so realistically he's gonna be 1/2 until t4 or so when we're already set up. By that point, he's gonna need quite a bit of hand holding to get through blockers and I just can't justify spending the mana, the evasion support, or the connive triggers to ensure he survives long enough to start one shotting folks. Also he involves carrying around yet another token, and this deck has enough tokens for my liking. Final judgement: I'd rather just play Isamaru, Hound of Konda and cut to the chase.

Pippin, Guard of the Citadel - I think it's about level with Cliffside Rescuer. They both have their advantages: pippin is reusable, whereas rescuer can get Raffine out from under tree effects like Imprisoned in the Moon after the fact because it targets permanents, not just creatures. I think it's a meta call. If you're worried about your commander getting stuck under a miserable enchantment, go rescuer. If you're worried about more conventional instant/sorcery removal, go Pippin. Final judgement: solid as a rock.

Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff - a solid goodstuff 2 drop, but I honestly wonder if we can really use the treasure that effectively. I usually don't start double spelling until t4 or so and I'm pretty fast. By t4, the extra mana is just a way to power out more finishers, not necessarily to ramp into a boardstate as I'd prefer. Eh, it's probably still good enough, but I can't say what I'd cut for it. Final judgement: it glitters, but is it gold?

Orcish Bowmasters - the elephant in the room. At base level, it's basically another Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia, a 2 drop that immediately provides another body. At its ceiling, it's nuking people with wheel effects and creating kaiju level threats. Obviously a great card, but what I worry about is its propensity to be an attractive target for clones. See, Bowmasters is good for us, but it's an absolute thrashing when played against us (look at all the x/1 creatures! Look at them!). Simply by including it in our list we open ourselves up to the possibility of it being cloned by an opponent and used to wipe our board out when we go to connive. It isn't a super common scenario admittedly, but it is a bit of attack surface for our opponents that wouldn't exist if we don't provide the means. I'm on the fence about this one. Final judgement: draped over the fence like a rug set out to dry. Also $35 for real? There's a lot of cards I'd rather have for 35 bones than this thing tbh, raw power be damned.