(Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes | Art by Andreas Zafiratos)

Since When Do You Have Tentacles, Boo?

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Recross the Paths, the series that gives commander a typal twist.

Today I'm going to talk about Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes, a pair of extremely good friends who, during their countless adventures, encountered some weird new pals with enormous bodies and tentacles.

Stage One: The Deck

Step One: Your Friendly Neighborhood Eldrazi

Apparently, our pair is very persuasive and managed to convince a number of deep-space monsters to work with them; even more so, they are willing to be thrown at their opponents in order to win the game: for this reason, the higher the power, the more qualified for this role they are. In particular, we can take advantage of those high-power creatures that don't really do much once they've hit the battlefield. For example, cards like Breaker of Armies, Artisan of Kozilek and Desolation Twin aren't really game-changing presences on the board, so, being able to sacrifice them to deal 10 points of damage to an opponent seems a sweet deal.

Of course, we are even happier if our creatures are something more than sacrifice fodder and actually have a relevant impact on the game. In this regard the so-called "titans" are those that shine the most: Kozilek, Butcher of Truth will grant us four fresh cards, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre pairs being indestructible with the ability to pick off the most problematic permanent on the board and Emrakul, the Promised End straight-up steals another player's turn. And if all of this wasn't enough, the first two are also going to be re-shuffled in our library once we decide to use them to annihilate a huge portion of an opponent's life total.

Lastly, we also get a lot of powerful effects attached to creatures we want to stick around as long as possible. First, Barrage Tyrant allows us to sacrifice even more creatures (at instant speed as well) to deal damage to our opponents, representing a true force to reckon with. Then, Zhulodok, Void Gorger grants a double instance of cascade to almost all the creatures we are playing and thus functioning as an obviously extremely powerful value engine. Third, Void Winnower is an oldie but a goodie, as it shuts down a ton of plays from our opponents just by existing.

Step Two: Mathematics

All in all, our plan is pretty straightforward: deploying big creatures and sacrifice them to deal big chunks of damage as soon as we don't need them any longer. Yet, our strategy is obviously limited by Minsc's loyalty counters: our commander starts with three of them and the sacrifice ability uses two of them. Hence, we would be able to activate it only once before having to take two turns off to get back to a number of loyalty counters high enough to allow us to throw a creature without sacrificing our beloved planeswalker. For this reason, we want to make every activation count, which means, dealing the most damage possible every time we tick down our commander. To do so, we can use the several damage multipliers available in red: Isengard Unleashed, City on Fire and Fiery Emancipation are the true heavy hitters, as they triplicate the damage that would be dealt to an opponent. To put it in perspective, it means that, if we were to sacrifice Emrakul, the Promised End, we would inflict 39 points of damage damage!

Then, we also run more peculiar ways to amplify damage. For example, Curse of Bloodletting and Fiendish Duo don't check who is dealing damage, instead they just double it if it is dealt to an opponent; Furnace of Rath and Dictate of the Twin Gods go a step even further, straight-up doubling every point of damage dealt, so we should be playing them only if we are actually taking advantage of them. Lastly, we can count on some non-traditional sources of damage: Chandra's Ignition transforms our creatures in boardwipes while also reducing our opponents' life totals and Overwhelming Stampede is another old staple that will most likely double the attack of all of our creatures.

Step Three: Synergies

There aren't actually a lot of typal synergies between Eldrazi, yet we can put our hands on some goodies.

Emrakul's Influence will repay our big mana investments with two fresh cards, making sure we never run out of big bodies to deploy. From Beyond will grant us access to additional mana during each of every turns but, most of all, will function as a cheap tutor for our best Eldrazi creature. Lastly, Gruesome Slaughter is yet another way we can count on to deal direct damage to our opponents.

In addition, we can also rely on other synergies: for example, Sarkhan's Unsealing will trigger with literally every creature we run in our list and often times it will also be dealing with our opponents' board state. On the same note, Ugin's Mastery will be triggering a lot of times, allowing us to cheat into play a lot of big creatures and all in all granting us additional value with every colorless creature we cast. Finally, Forsaken Monumentis a Swiss Army knife for colorless-heavy decks, pumping our creatures, adding additional mana and netting us some lifegain.

Step Four: The Complete Decklist

Stage Two: The Data Room

We’re now on to the last part of this deck tech: the data room. Was this deck idea actually unique? Let's compare the list against both the average Minsc deck and the average Eldrazi deck to see what we gained (and lost) in the process.

Step One: The Average Minsc Deck

All in all, Minsc is a pretty popular commander, with 4313 decks registered on EDHREC, which ranks it as the 9^th most-built Gruul commander and 4,313rd overall. Since Eldrazi are really not played in decks led by today's commander, let's see how much people rely on damage multiplying effects when building them.

Clearly, there isn't much of an interest in structuring the gameplan around this kind of effects: the only card that sees consistent play is Chandra's Ignition, which is most likely present for its synergy with Boo and how easily it can grow in stats. Other than that, Fiery Emancipation's inclusion rate is probably inflated by its status as a staple in extremely aggressive red decks, considering that a pretty similar card printed some years after it, aka City on Fire, is only present in less than 4% of the decks.

Overwhelming Stampede is more or less in the same situation, as it functions as a classic green finisher that benefits from having big creatures on the battlefield; on the other hand, it's pretty striking to see Solphim being included so frequently in these lists as, if we look at Minsc lists that use it through EDHREC's advanced filters, we can see that the only true synergy it has is with the commander's ability to fling Boo at an opponent's face, while the rest of the deck is built around +1/+1 counters.

Step Two: The Average Eldrazi Deck

The most popular commander for this creature type is Kozilek, the Great Distortion, which is ranked 99^th overall on EDHREC with 6,620 registered decks. Hence, let's see how popular are the creatures we play in this context.

Takeaways from Today's Article

• Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes has a lot of potential as a fun commander to build around! In fact, its first ability is a perfect utility one, as it provides constant threat and the possibility to pump whatever creature we may deploy. Then, the second half can be either used aggresively to deal damage, like in the list we talked about today, but also in a more control-ish way, sacrificing Boo to draw cards and keep the deck flowing in the later stages of the game.
• Eldrazi are always fun to play, with their big stat lines and backbreaking abilities, but they lack actual synergies within them. All in all, they are more of a value-type typal strategies, where you aim at overrunning opponent with the brute force of each singular creature. It would be nice to have more tools at our disposal to create an actual synergic deck that cares about this creature type, but hey, who has never laughed while casting an Emrakul, the Promised End?
• Lastly, it is worth pointing out how this deck really benefits from slower environments: as it was mentioned before, the sacrifice ability on Minsc can only be used once every three turns, so it is pivotal to create a perfect board state before starting using our commander. Specifically, we should handle the earlier stages of the game using Boo and its ever-growing stats to threaten and protect our general, before starting throwing big creatures at our opponents, perhaps with a damage multiplying effect on the board!

That’s all from me for the moment. I hope you enjoyed this deck tech, but now it’s on to you! What do you think of it? Would you have changed anything? Is there something you particularly liked? Most importantly, do you believe this was a true innovation? Let me know in the comments below!

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