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Even on the cozy plane ofMagic: The Gathering’s Bloomburrow, ambition can lead to the downfall of the mightiest of monarchs. When King Glarb hatched a plot to steal a calamity beast’s egg to raise his own living weapon, it led to the destruction of several villages, and almost to the decimation of his own city of Fountainport.
The Direshade Mercenaries he hired were remarkably effective, with their leader, Cruelclaw, proving a near match for the hero Mabel. Cruelclaw is vicious, effective, and a terrible cheat, all traits that he can bring to your Commander table.
Sample Decklist
The Infamous Cruelclaw has two abilities: menace, to make him harder to block, and an ability that allows you to dig through your library and cast the first spell that you find for free. Combined with his low casting cost, this can allow you to cheat out huge bombs early enough that your opponents won’t have a response, creating an insurmountable obstacle for your opponents in just a few turns. Here’s a sample build to work off of.
Call to the Netherworld
Rise of the Eldrazi
Swamp (15)
Terramorphic Expanse
This deck list contains significantly more land than most. This is to cut down on the possible spells that The Infamous Cruelclaw can hit, increasing your chances of hitting one of your big bombs. It also helps to reduce the impact of permanently exiling your lands.
The Meme Decklist
Another popular way to build The Infamous Cruelclaw is to include 98 lands and one spell: Worldfire. This glass cannon buildreliably casts Worldfire on turn 4, exiling all hands, graveyards, and permanents in play. By including a lot of lands that can turn into creatures, create creature tokens, or deal damage to opponents, you’re likely to have a win condition in play before they can even cast their next spell.
Cradle of the Accursed
Den of the Bugbear
Field of the Dead
Foundry of the Consuls
Zoetic Cavern
The Commander
The Infamous Cruelclaw is a Rakdos (red/black) legendary 3/3 Weasel Mercenary built to earnfree casts of a random spell from your deck whenever he deals combat damage, discarding a single card instead of paying the mana cost. He also has menace to enable that combat damage by requiring at least two creatures to block him.
The free spell that you get can be anything from a Shock to a Plague Wind, with no way of choosing unless you have a way to manipulate your deck or build so that there are only one or two viable spells to find. Alternatively,you can use The Infamous Cruelclaw as a value generator, loading your deck with big expensive spells that you’ll always be happy to see hit the stack. After all, you’ll be happy with Plague Wind, Kozilek, or just a Gilded Lotus on turn four.
The Infamous Cruelclaw doesn’t come with haste or any built-in protection,so the deck can be a glass cannon, especially if your opponents have experienced the build before and plan to remove Cruelclaw as soon as he hits the battlefield.
Building The Deck
The InfamousCruelclaw is an excellent commander for either a chaos deckthat shifts the game in wild, unexpected ways,or for a goodstuff deckthat lets you play all the big stinky spells that you love but can never justify throwing into another deck because of the cost. He can also work as a combo enabler with a little setup, and is a popular meme deck commander.
For this guide we’ll touch on all three categories, with a focus on the best cards to include in a goodstuff deck and ways to empower Cruelclaw’s abilities.
Ramp
Ideally, Cruelclaw should be out on turn three and attack turn three or four, starting your value engine right out of the gate. In Rakdos colorsthere aren’t many ramp options to accelerate you past this strategy, and the rituals in both red and black will be practically worthless if Cruelclaw digs them up through combat damage.
A first-turn Sol Ring will allow you toget The Infamous Cruelclaw out on your second turn, but adding in an Arcane Signet or Mind Stone won’t accelerate it any further. Arcane Signet does work as a mana fixer, however, in case you come up short on colored mana.
Mind Stone is a decent addition just becauseit offers a little card drawlater in the game, which can be important for keeping cards in your hand to discard for Cruelclaw’s combat damage ability.
Jeweled Lotus is an option to play Cruelclaw on turn one, and can still be useful later if you need to recast him with a commander tax applied.
Another way to accelerate the deck without ramp is by selecting lands that can be used tocast The Infamous Cruelclaw while also giving him haste, allowing you to attack immediately when he comes into play before your opponents have a chance to react. Hall of the Bandit Lord allows you to pay three life points to give a creature haste, while Arena of Glory filters one red mana into two for the same effect, at the cost of not untapping on your next turn.
Deck Manipulation
Rather than focus on drawing cards,look for ways to manipulate the top of your deck. This eliminates a lot of the variance of exiling a bunch of lands to find a card and minimizes the chances that the card you find is something you don’t really want, like a late-game mana rock. It also minimizes the chances of drawing the big bombs that you would prefer to dig out of your deck.
Sensei’s Divining Top allows you to rearrange the top three cards of your library for one mana. So, if your big Eldrazi titan is the third card down, but you’re able to’t reach it because Anger is in the way, you can move the Eldrazi to the top of your deck before attacking.
Similarly, Scroll Rack allows you to trade cards in your hand for the same number of cards off the top of your deck, arranging the order of your hand cards as you add them to the library. This allows you toput the cards that you want to cheat out back into your deckif you accidentally drew them.
Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire has the same mana value as The Infamous Cruelclaw and benefits from the same combat enablers, making hima good partner for the little Weasel. Once per turn when you attack with him you can pay one generic and one black mana to put any card in your library on top. Since this can be activated as soon as he attacks and before combat damage, this allows you toset your top card each turnfor Cruelclaw to find.
For one black mana, there are also two tutors thatplace any card of your choice on top of your library. Vampiric Tutor does it as an instant, while Imperial Seal does it at sorcery speed. You can include both, but Vampiric Tutor is both the better option and significantly less expensive.
Second Chances
If you come up a few cards short in your deck, one of the best additions is cards that give you an extra combat phase when The Infamous Cruelclaw’s second ability finds them. In more combat damage-focused decks, these provide an opportunity to get another attack in, but with Cruelclaw they providea second chance to find one of the big spellsyou’re looking for.
If The Infamous Cruelclaw deals combat damage and the first nonland card that you exile is Savage Beating, you’llimmediately untap all of your creatures and get a second combat phase. Since Cruelclaw was able to get through in the first combat phase, most likely he’ll get through the second time, giving you an extra chance to dig for your bomb spell. If you cast it from your hand, you can pay the entwine cost to give Cruelclaw double strike, earning you a total of four triggers.
Despite similar wording,cards like Relentless Assault will not grant an additional combat phase if cast through Cruelclaw. The way most of these spells are worded, you’ll only untap your creatures unless you play them during your main phase.
The only other red spell with a similar effect is World at War. Similar to Savage Beating, World at War alsountaps your creatures and provides a second combat phase,but only after your first post-combat main phase. However, it only untaps creatures that attacked. A big difference is the rebound keyword, which will allow you to cast it a second time for free, but only if you cast it from your hand. Similar to Savage Beating, this gives you a bonus if you draw it and need to hard cast instead of hitting it with The Infamous Cruelclaw.
you may also squeeze out additional combat phases with Moraug, Fury of Akoum if you play your cards right. If you find him using The Infamous Cruelclaw, you won’t get an extra combat phase immediately, but if you haven’t played your land for the turn, you can drop it in your second main phase and get another combat phase immediately after. If you include fetch lands such as Evolving Wilds or Escape Tunnel, you can potentiallyget multiple landfall triggers and combat phases.
On top of extra combat phases, why notinclude some extra turns, as well? Red has several inexpensive spells to give you an extra turn, with the drawback that you lose at the end of that turn. Rise of the Eldrazi has no such drawback, giving you an extra turn, four cards, and destroying a permanent for free if cast with Cruelclaw.
Hit the Mother Lode isone more way to get another chance at your big spells. If you trigger The Infamous Cruelclaw and run into Hit the Mother Lode, you’ll go right back into revealing cards until you hit another spell that costs ten or less mana and cast it for free. If you hit one that costs less, like Savage Beating, you’ll get treasure tokens on top of the free cast.
Da Bombs
The last category to include are the big stinky spells you love but can never play because they’re too expensive for most decks. With The Infamous Cruelclaw, you can get them out as early as the second turn, or more reliably around turn four, before your opponents can do anything to stop you.
All the Eldrazi titans work well here, butthe ones with Annihilator, likeKozilek, Butcher of Truth, can really shine. Getting them out as early as turn two means that your opponents will almost never have a chance to deal with them before they’re forced to sacrifice all of their lands. Kozilek, the Great Distortion is also an excellent addition since it will refill your hand after discarding to cast it.
Annihilator four early in the game also means thatyour opponents won’t be able to keep anything on the battlefieldwhile you beat them to death one-by-one, and the final ability that forces you to shuffle your graveyard into your library when Kozilek, Butcher of Truth enters it means that you candiscard it to pay for The Infamous Cruelclaw’s ability and get it back in the library for another try.
In Garruk’s Wake and its little sibling, Plague Wind,destroy every creature that you don’t control, giving your opponents only one turn to get a board presence back before you swing again. Most likely that means you’ll get to attack unopposed again on your next turn, thanks to menace.
If you hit a split spell like Boom // Bust, you’ll get tochoose which side you cast, which makes them reasonably flexible. If you draw Boom // Bust, you can cast the Boom side to destroy a problematic land that an opponent controls along with one you don’t need, while triggering Cruelclaw into it will allow you to use Bust for free. Since you’ve already got your value engine commander in play, destroying all lands won’t affect you nearly as much as your opponents.
A popular Cruelclaw build involves playing98 lands and one Worldfire, so that when The Infamous Cruelclaw attacks for the first time, it removes everything from the game, including each player’s hand and graveyard, and sets them to one life. If you’re the only player expecting this, you should be able to recover more quickly than your opponents by filling your library with lands that turn into or produce creatures, virtually guaranteeing that you’ll be able to swing for lethal before your opponents can get a land into play.
The more nonland cards your deck includes, the less viable this strategy will be.
