Magic: The Gatheringjust got its rootinest tootinest expansion inOutlaws Of Thunder Junction, and the Quick Draw Commander deck aims to get your spell slingin' finger on the trigger. This deck is all about waiting for just the right moment to unleash a stagecoach-worth of instants and sorceries to blow your opponents away.
With Outlaws of Thunder Junction revealing its commander decklists, we know Quick Draw will come with almost a dozen new cards to stack alongside old red and blue standbys. After careful consideration, these ten cards are the ones you should really be taking aim at.
10Leyline Dowser
Let lady luck guide your hand
There’s a common problem in Commander decks: you need to have a healthy percentage of land cards to ensure you give your deck a decent start, butafter you’ve got 14lands on the board,you probably don’t want to draw any more lands. Enter Leyline Dowser.
Leyline Dowser willmake sure you get to those precious instants and sorceries in the late game. If you draw anything else, it goes in the yard, hopefully setting up an instant or sorcery to be drawn the next time you activate it. And since you’re able to tap your commander to untap Leyline Dowser, that can happen whenever your commander doesn’t attack for the turn (or do anything else that requires tapping).
9Smoldering Stagecoach
A hot rod in an age of horses
Cascadeis one of those keywords that hasn’t come up very often in Magic because it’s extremely powerful. Getting to cast cards for free—even if you don’t know what that card might be—is just too goodto be a common mechanic.
Smoldering Stagecoach doesn’t make that cascade trigger easy, requiring a crew of two, but it provides you withcascade on both your next instant and your next sorceryfor the rest of the turn. And given how easy it can be to plot your way to a turn where both spell types resolve, Smolder Stagecoach could represent incredible value.
8Pyretic Charge
Go all in
Pyretic Charge offers an interesting tradeoff.Ideally, you’d have fewer than four cards in your handto gain some card advantage, but not so many fewer that you don’t get a decent power boost for your creatures. A hand size of three would give your token army (courtesy of Talrand, Third Path Iconoclast, Murmuring Mystic, and Young Pyromancer) a decent power boost while still giving you an extra card once all is said and done.
The real boot to the nethers is theplotcost, whichcan bank this cardfor whenever your token army materializes when you’ve also got the right number of cards in hand.
7Stella Lee, Wild Card
You never know what she’ll do
Stella offers anescalating benefit based on the number of spells you’ve cast. The second spell gives you access to the top card of your library, while the third spell lets you copy an instant or sorcery. With some careful planning and a bit of luck, Stella can set up some truly explosive turns where you’re slinging spells like it’s going out of style.
The problem with Stella is that she’snot always offering a benefit. If you don’t have the spells to cast, she’s just a 2/4 for three mana. Still, opponents will overlook Stella’s potential at their own peril.
6Kaza, Roil Chaser
Surfin' those wizardly vibes
Kaza wants to be the center of a Wizard deckso that she can make instants and sorceries cost a lot less. Quick Draw unfortunately doesn’t have quite enough Wizards to truly justify Kaza’s presence, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t throw her in her own Wizard-themed Commander deck.
And if you do, you’ll be quite happy with Kaza’s efficiency. She’s a two-mana Commander that can be used the turn she arrives, and with some Wizardly backing, she’llget some big-mana bombshell instants and sorcerieson the table faster than your opponents can blink.
5Crackling Spellslinger
What a showstopper
Crackling Spellslingerrequires a significant amount of mana to be effective. She’s already pricey at five mana, and gaining a significant storm count even with a bunch of cantrips will make her effectively a seven or eight-mana card at least.
But if you’ve got the mana, Crackling Spellslinger willset off a storm surge that’ll rip your table asunder. Try setting her up with Rousing Refrain and then following her up with a bomb such as Volcanic Torrent or Elemental Eruption. Even Pongify can be a decent follow-up if it has a storm trigger.
4Elemental Eruption
Nothin' a few more fiery dragons won’t fix
If there’s a card you want to copy in Quick Draw, it’s Elemental Eruption. This cardalready copies itself thanks to the storm keyword, and so long as you’ve chained a few cantrips together beforehand, Elemental Eruption will give youan army of 4/4 flying Dragon Elementalsthat get bigger with every non-creature spell cast.
As far as kill cards go, you really can’t go wrongwith Elemental Eruption. About the only thing that’d make this card better would be somehow giving all those Dragon Elementals haste.
3Thunderclap Drake
There’s value, and then there’s this thing
Let’s compare Thunderclap Drake to Mindsplice Apparatus, Jace’s Sanctum, or even Mocking Sprite.Thunderclap Drake costs just two manacompared to all these other cards for the same “make your instants and sorceries cost one mana less” effect. Plus on top of that, Thunderclap Drake also lets youturn your next instant or sorcery into a bombat the cost of its very cheap life.
Thunderclap Drake issuch incredible valuethat you’re likely to see it in any deck that focuses on instants and sorceries for the foreseeable future. One might go so far as to call it a mandatory pick.
2Forger’s Foundry
Who needs Isochron Scepter?
Three mana for a mana rock is pretty standard, but Forger’s Foundry is no ordinary mana rock.For every instant or sorcery cast with this thing, you get to bank it. Later on, you get tocast each and every one of these banked spellsfor five mana. And on the next turn, you can do it again. And again. And again.
Even a relatively tame set of instants or sorceries like Pongify, Serum Visions, and Faithless Looting can completely lock down a game while searching your deck for whatever card you need. Forger’s Foundry isan incredibly powerful artifactthat isn’t likely to survive for long if your opponents bother reading what it does.
1Eris, Roar of the Storm
A commander-in-waiting
Just a few cards will bring Eris’s unreasonably high mana cost down to something manageable, and in the late game, she’s practically free. And then you get tostart making 4/4 Dragon Elementals with flying and prowessevery time you manage to get two cards cast on a single turn. That’s undeniable power.
Honestly,Eris might make a better commander for Quick Draw than Stellaeven though Stella is the boxtopper. Definitely try giving Eris the lead role in Quick Draw once Outlaws of Thunder Junction drops later this month.
