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Having no cards in your hand is one of the worst feelings inMagic: The Gathering. The hopelessness and helplessness of relying on a single drawn card to turn your game around is enough to ensure that most Commander decks have some sort of mechanic to refill their hand with as many cards as possible.
But every so often, a Commander comes around and completely trashes conventional wisdom. Flubs, the Fool is one such card. Flubs asks you to play with such reckless abandon that you’ll wonder why you were so concerned with having a hand at all.
The Commander: Flubs, The Fool
Flubs is a funny card from the latest expansion,Bloomburrow. Three mana for a 0/5 that lets you play an additional land every turn is already a pretty good deal, but the second ability puts Flubs over the top.Whenever you play a card(either a spell or a land),you draw a cardif you have no cards in hand. But if you do have cards in your hand, you discard a card.
Most Magic players would prefer to have a full hand of seven cards so they have as many options as possible.With Flubs, you actually want to have zero cards in hand. Then, every card played draws a new card that can also be played to draw another card. This keeps goinguntil you run out of your allowed land dropsper turn,or you run out of mana.
There’s alsoa fun random element to Flubs. Sometimes you’ll be able to go on runs of drawing and playing cards that last forever, and sometimes you’ll peter out after several land draws in a row.
Solving both these issues is simple: justplay with more cards that allow you to play more lands every turn. Being able to play more lands means drawing more cards, and having more lands provides more mana to play more spells.
There are a couple of other things you’re able to do with Flubs. In the early game, you’re necessarily going to be discarding cards until you reach the no-cards-in-hand state, socards that either take advantage of discard effectsor can be played from the graveyardare both primo.
Since you’ll be discarding a lot,anything that canretrieve cards from the graveyardis a big help.
The other thing you’re able to do is playcards that allow you to exile cards from your library and play them from outside of your hand. This lets you maintain the no-cards-in-hand state but still have access to a bunch of potential spells to cast (at least temporarily).
Building Your Flubs, The Fool Commander Deck
To reiterate, with Flubs, you want to be able toplay more lands than you’re normally allowed,take advantage of all the cards you’ll be forced to discard, and eventuallyuse that draw/play engine to win the game. And since this is Commander, you’ll always want to have some utility spells to keep your game plan safe.
Play More Lands
Playing more lands means drawing more cards with Flubs, and luckily, green and red are two colors that offer a ton of ways to play more lands.Exploration,Dryad of the Ilysian Grove,Wayward Swordtooth, Mina and Denn, Wildborn,Hugs, Grisly Guardian,Case of the Locked Hothouse, andDruid Classall let you play more lands per turn.
Having two of these cards in play at oncecan let you go on some pretty long runs of casting and drawing with Flubs.
Discard Helpers
Odds are,Flubs is going to force you to discardalmost as often as he lets you draw cards. Luckily, discarding a card doesn’t have to feel like a total waste.
First, there are the cards that actually want to be discarded.AngerandWonderare actually at their best in the graveyard, and flashback cards likeDeep Analysis,Ancient Grudge, andFaithless Lootingare all great cards that can be played from your graveyard.
Inti, Seneschal of the Sunlets you access new cards whenever you discard, and bothContainment ConstructandConspiracy Theoristsimply let you play discarded cards as though they were never discarded.Surly Badgersaurturns discarded cards into +1/+1 counters, Treasure tokens, or removal.
And then there’sCurrency ConverterandBag of Holding. The first artifact turns discarded cards into 2/2 Rogues or Treasures, while the second banks those cards and then returns them to your hand.
Play From Library/Exile/Graveyard
If you may’t have cards in your hand, then the next best thing is to play cards from not your hand.Courser of Kruphix,The Reality Chip, Eruth,Tormented Prophet, andWild Wastelandall let you look at your library to either play them directly or from exile.
And since you’ll be discarding a lot, it’s a good idea to have a lot of cards that look to your graveyard for play. We’ve already discussed the flashback cards, butSixprovides all nonland cards with retrace, whileRamunap Excavator,Perennial Behemoth,Ancient Greenwarden, andCrucible of Worldsall let you play lands directly from your graveyard.
We can also look to spells that return cards in your graveyard to either your hand or play.Eternal Witness,Savvy Trader,Aftermath Analyst,Wrenn and Six, andUnderworld Breachlet you access your graveyard with ease.
Win Conditions
With a little help, Flubs will be playing tons of spells and lands per turn, so your win condition will be tapping into that Flubs draw/discard/play engine. Landfall triggers onScute Swarm,Avenger of Zendikar, orValakut Explorationare obvious choices, orGlint-horn Buccaneerto deal direct damage whenever you discard.
Since you’ll be playing a ton of spells too, storm cards likeBrain FreezeorChatterstormare viable options. You could even build a deck full of zero and one-cost spells to generate a massive storm count, but these decks tend to be better suited for one-on-one duels rather than a casual multiplayer environment. For a storm card with a little more power, we’re turning toAeve, Progenitor Ooze.
It’s also possible Flubs may get going so fast that you’ll wind up running through your entire deck. In that case,Laboratory ManiacorJace, Wilder of Mysteriesprovide a surprise alternate win condition.
Utility Cards
Every Commander deck needs to be able to respond to threats as they arise. For removal,Ancient Grudge,Beast Within, andRavenformand good instant-speed answers, whileBlasphemous Act,Heaven/Earth, andEvacuationcan clear the board.
Evacuation can also be used to restart a stalled Flubs runtoo, while Heaven/Earth is okay with being tossed into the graveyard to be a slightly more expensive Earthquake.
As for artifacts,Phial of Galadriellets you draw two cards instead of one while you have no cards in hand, andEnsnaring Bridgeessentially prevents all attacks.Brass’s Tunnel-Grinderis almost guaranteed to flip, turning into a legendary land that provides discover triggers on every spell cast with it.
Tech Lands
A few lands worth mentioning for Flubs.Oboro, Palace in the Cloudscan bounce itself to your hand in order to play cards and keep Flubs churning.Simic Growth Chamber,Gruul Turf, andIzzet Boilerworkscan bounce another land to do the same.
Bala Ged Sanctuarycomes with a recovery spell on the other side, but perhaps the best utility land isShifting Woodland. This land can become a copy of any permanent in your graveyard once you satisfy the delirium condition, which shouldn’t be too hard to do with all those discards courtesy of Flubs.
Mina and Denn, Wildborn
Wrenn and Six
Mountains (4)
Budget Substitutions
Admittedly, there are a lot of expensive cards in the suggested decklist above. Here aresome alternativesthat area little less pricey.
Goblin Anarchomancer
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
Augur of Autumn,Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald,Oracle of Mul Daya,Azusa, Lost but Seeking
