The Izzet League on Ravnica established that blue and red are the colors of mad scientists who revel in their experiments. ButMagic: The Gathering’s color combinations don’t always fit a single archetype. Red and blue can also be the color of creativity, as artists and musicians explore their world through creation, or it can be the color combination for mischief, like the Otters of Bloomburrow represent.
Bria, Riptide Rogue is one such Otter, who delights in causing trouble in the city of Fountainport. Rewarding you for controlling a lot of creatures and playing a lot of spells, she’ll make your commander table as delightfully chaotic as her own antics.
Sample Decklist
Bria, Riptide Rogue gives prowess to all of your creatures, so you’ll want botha lot of creatures to capitalize on prowess and a lot of cheap, efficient spells to trigger itfrequently.
There are alsoseveral creatures that provide similar buffing effects, like Balmor, Battlemage Captain, and some witheffects superior to prowess, like Sprite Dragon, which gets +1/+1 counters instead of a temporary buff.
Training Center
The Commander
Bria, Riptide Rogue is a legendary 3/3 Otter Rogue with prowess. She alsogives all other creatures you control prowess, so that every noncreature spell you cast each turn makes them all bigger.
On top of that,she also gives your creatures evasion, making one unblockable each time you cast a noncreature spell.
Prowess is one of the few abilities that stacks, with each instance triggering separately. So, if you control Bria, Riptide Rogue and Monastery Swiftspear, Monastery Swiftspear will get +2/+2 for each noncreature spell you cast.
Bria’s three abilities make heran excellent commander for a spell-swinger deck, focusing on filling your board with creatures and then buffing them with noncreature spells before swinging tall and wide at the same time.
Providing prowess also incentivizes you to pack yourdeck full of cheap, efficient spells and token generators, so that you can buff your creatures every turn, even as you gain more creatures.
Bria’s final abilitydisincentivizes combat tricks: making your creatures unblockable is only useful before your opponent has an opportunity to declare blockers, so you shouldn’t feel bad about using lots of sorcery-speed effects during your precombat main phase.
On the other hand, Bria, Riptide Rogue has thepotential for explosive combat trick plays, tapping into blue’s efficient card draw to chain together a string of spells after blockers have been declared when your opponents were sure that the one or two cards in your hand weren’t anything to worry about.
Bria, Riptide Rogue isonly available in the Bloomburrow Starter Kit, so don’t overlook that product, even if you’re an advanced player.
How To Build The Deck
Bria, Riptide Rogue wants you toplay a lot of noncreature spells and control a lot of creaturesto get the prowess boosts from those spells. This makes for an interesting build strategy, since you want a lot oftwo conflicting types of spellsin your deck.
There are tricks you’re able to use tosqueeze more spells out of your deckwithout going above the 99 card limit. Noncreature spells that create creature tokens, like Krenko’s Command, trigger prowess while also providing you with bodies for more triggers.Creatures with Adventures can fit in both categories, and effects that return spells to your hand will make it easy to keep the pressure on.
While Bria, Riptide Rogue doesn’t care about creature type, decks built around hercan feel like Otter typal decks, since Bloomburrow introduces so many Otters that synergize well with her.This theme is not present enough to include expensive enablerslike Cavern of Souls, but there are enough Otters present to make niche spells like Pearl of Wisdom viable.
Ramp
Izzet doesn’t have a ton of mana acceleration available, butall of your standard mana rocks are available, along with a couple of extra tricks. Make sure you include your full package of Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone, and Thought Vessel.
Your Izzet Signet and Talisman of Creativity will also go a long way here.
Red is home to several rituals, instants or sorceries that provide a surge of mana straight from your hand. Not only do these give you a short-term mana boost,they also trigger your prowess and similar abilities.
Late in the game, Mana Geyser can provide an enormous mana pool. It checks for how manytapped lands your opponents control, and generates one red mana for each. The more opponents you have and the more tapped out they are, the better it gets. If you can combine it with one of the effects that taps all of your opponents' lands, even better!
WhileMana Geyser relies on your opponents' actions, Battle Hymn is more directly under your control.For one red and one generic mana, yougain one red mana for each creature that you control. This interacts well with token generators, especially with Stormsplitter after already casting several other spells for the turn.
Storm-Kiln artist keeps on giving, providing you witha Treasure token each time you cast or copy an instant or sorcery.
Since you’ll want tocast multiple spells each turn, they’ll often be inexpensive, so this can allow you tocast a lot of your spells for practically free. Or, if you hold onto the Treasure tokens, his attack will keep growing.
Retraced Image allows you toput a permanent into play for one blue mana,as long as it has the same name as another permanent in play. At a glance, this seems useless for commander, where the singleton format prevents you from running multiple copies of most spells, but itcan be used as a source of land ramp.
Using Retraced Image can allow you toplay an extra untapped Island or Mountainif you already control one, or a common nonbasic land like Command Tower if one of your opponents has already played one.
Draw
Blue is the color most associated with card draw, and it will provide the majority of your draw effects, while red focuses on buffs and tokens. Standardblue options include cards like Rhystic Study, Treasure Cruise, and Curiosity.
Case of the Ransacked Lab pulls double duty, bothspeeding up your deck and keeping cards in your hand. When you initially play it, it reduces the cost of all of your instant and sorcery spells by one generic mana. Then, after you cast four spells in a single turn, it will gain the ability todraw you a card each time you cast an instant or sorcery. Since your deck will be loaded with both, this will keep you drawing almost constantly, and turn cantrips like Opt into legitimate draw spells.
Archmage Emeratus hasan effect similar to Case of the Ransacked Lab’s solved ability, but since it’s Magecraftit also looks for copied spells. Without being a focus of the deck, this can provide synergies with creatures like Alania, Divergent Storm and Zada, Hedron Grinder, which both look to copy spells as you cast them.
If your decklist includes a lot of single-target buffs like Brute Force and Monstrous Rage, consider including Zada, Hedron Grinder to spread the buffs between all of your creatures. Not only will this improve magecraft abilities, it will also make cantrips like Expedite draw a huge pile of cards.
While not technically a draw effect,Thundertrap Trainer provides you with a miniature tutor for two mana, finding you any noncreature, nonland card from the top four cards of your library.
If you have four extra mana available, you can pay the offspring cost to get a second tutor after the first one resolves.
Modal double-faced cards like Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge count as whatever card type is on their front. Including some of these cards canprovide you some relief from land flooding, extra instants and sorceries, and allow you to find land cardsusing Thundertrap Trainer.
Growing Otter Control
Most of the Otters in print fit well with Bria, Riptide Rogue, either coming alreadyequipped with prowess or bringing other abilitiesto enable spell-slinging hijinks. There are a few Otters and related cards that really stand out, though.
Stormsplitter is like storm in Otter form.Each time you cast an instant or sorcery, you get a copy of Stormsplitter, which also has the copying ability. That means you get a single copy off of one spell, two more off of the next one, four from the next, and so on.
Additionally,each will get bigger with every extra spell you castwhile it’s out, if Bria is under your control. Combined with Sorcerer Class, this can turn one Otter into a huge mana source.
Ral, Crackling Wit is Otter-shapped while visiting Bloomburrow, much to his chagrin. But for just four mana, he provides you withthe ability to create a 1/1 Otter with prowess once per turnfor +1 loyalty. He also gains a loyalty counter each time you cast an instant or sorcery, allowing him toreach his -10 ultimate ability in just a couple of turnsand give all of your instants and sorceries storm.
Stormchaser’s Talent is an excellent early-game spell, which comes into play witha 1/1 Otter with prowess for only one blue mana. Even if you play it on turn one, you’re likely toget a couple of hits in before your opponents can get blockers up, and a few turns later you may level the class up to recover an important instant or sorcery from your graveyard.
Finally, once you have enough mana, you canlevel up to level three and make an Otter tokeneach time you cast an instant or sorcery.
There are also a handful of one-shot spells you can use tobuild up a board while also triggering prowessand similar effects. Otterball Antics is thematically appropriate, creating a 1/1 Otter with prowess for one blue and one generic mana. It also has flashback, soyou can cast it again for four mana, this time getting the same Otter with a +1/+1 counter on it.
For the same mana value, Ral’s Reinforcements, Dragon Fodder, Krenko’s Command, and Forbidden Friendship will eachcreate two 1/1 creatures, which Bria will give prowess. Meanwhile, these will alltrigger your collection of abilitiesthat check for instants, sorceries, or noncreature cards to be played.
Later in the game,Empty the Warrens can provide a huge surge of creaturesafter playing a few other spells. Including a few ways to reduce spell costs, like Case of the Ransacked Lab, can result in a chain of spells that are practically free, leading toa huge storm effect.
Spell-Slinging
Once you have a small army of small semiaquatic mammals,you need to cast lots of spells to power them up. Simple staples like Ponder and Brainstorm that cost one mana and replace themselves with an extra card are an excellent way to trigger prowess without spending much mana, but the real power comes frominexpensive buffs, like Monstrous Rage.
Each noncreature spell you cast willtrigger prowess, but other effects, like Balmor, Battlemage Captain’s effect, look forinstants and sorceries.By focusing on spells that increase your creatures' power or give them keyword bonuses you cantrigger three or four buffs with every spell.
Fist of Flame is an excellent addition to an Izzet prowess deck: For two mana you get todraw a card and give one creature +1/+0 for each card you’ve drawn that turn. On your own turn, before attacking, that can be four or five cards!
A+5/+0 for two manais a good deal even before you factor in the boosts from prowess and similar effects, which make it incredible value.
Rabid Gnaw serves as both buff and spot removal.One of your creatures gets +1/+0(before prowess and other abilities), and then has a one-sided fight with another creature.
On a large creature or with a few other boosts, this canallow one small creature to take out a major threat. As an instant you can also use it after attacking to kill a second creature on top of one that blocked yours, or to destroy the one that you knew was too important for your opponent to block with.
Finally,don’t be afraid to throw your creatures at an opponentor a threatening creature or planeswalker, especially if they’re about to die anyway. It’s always good tohave a Fling in your handto turn your biggest creature into a burn spell in response to an opponent’s Wrath of God, or as a last push to win after falling a little short on your attack.
There are a few variations of this classic, butstick to the instant formslike Fling and Kazuul’s Fury for the most effective uses.
