Cause of Death: Trying to Not go Infinite
I look at Outlaws of Thunder Junction's Quick Draw Commander Precon deck list and I think to myself: ooh! I know just what card to put in here.. A Dualcaster Mage here… a Curiosity there… an Archaeomancer with an extra turn spell in this pile… oh look! It's every Red/Blue spell deck I’ve ever made: a poorly cobbled together disguise to mask the Izzet infinite combo card list that the voices in my head keep reminding me of. So against the better judgment of the whispers I hear at night, we are NOT going to blindly shove infinites into every opening this deck has. Instead we are going to make it spell-slinging beatdown.
As a base precon, this deck’s identity consists of mostly low cost, low impact instants and sorceries usually used for card draw, then taking advantage of them either staying in or being cast from the graveyard. The ability to chain together and cast multiple of these cheap spells takes advantage of the many different abilities that trigger off spell casts. Such as prowess and magecraft. And with cards that do direct damage and create tokens, it would be easy to engineer combo lines with infinite magecraft or storm count.
To take advantage of this, our upgrade plan for this deck is to lean into the spell triggers that benefit combat. And while there will undoubtedly be a few infinites in the deck, that is unfortunately the nature of the beast cough cough looking at you Storm-Kiln Artist. Add in some spell recursion which is great in a deck where you care about casting instants and sorceries (you normally only have one use out of them after all). Even without looking for optimized spell loops, we can find ways to cast and recast to accrue value, board state, and a sprinkle of direct damage.
But first we need to decide on the commander. This precon has 5 legendary creatures eligible to be the head of our red/blue deck, but not all are equally useful for how we want to build this deck.
First and foremost is the face commander of the precon: Stella Lee, Wild Card. Stella rewards you card advantage if you are able to cast two spells a turn, any turn, exiling the top card of your library and allowing it to be played until your next turn. This effect being a much more useful version of impulse, the “until your next turn” clause making lands and sorceries more feasible to play than if you only had one turn to play them. Her second ability lets her tap to copy one of your instants or sorceries, great value if you can cast three spells first. But this does mean you can have that third spell be the instant and sorcery you want to copy because 3 need to be cast, not fully resolved. Of course you can go infinite with an untap spell targeting her to win with infinite magecraft triggers, but where's the fun in that?
The second commander printed for this precon is Eris, Roar of the Storm. Eris has a steep cost of 10 converted mana, but it is discounted for each unique mana value of instants and sorceries in your graveyard. While a 4/4 with flying and prowess is nothing to scoff at, never mind the 4/4 dragon generation on your second spell per turn, the card is not the smoothest to get out. Not only does the deck not run the best mana curve to get the maximum discount on Eris, by the time you put those spells in the yard, your hand might be looking sparse. For this, Eris would fit better in the 99 of the list.
Next are the reprinted legendaries that could be commanders as well.
Out of these three, Veyran, Voice of Duality is the most appealing as a commander contender. Veyran supports our spell cast triggers, and also can be used for combat, but falls short in not being able to refill your hand and keep tempo. Niv-Mizzet Parun is strong in his own right. Throw in an Ophidian Eye or Curiosity and Niv can draw your deck and probably kill at least one of your opponents while he is at it. But not only is that boring and repetitive as a game plan, but the 3 blue 3 red cost to play him makes him a bit slow to play until mid game, and by then, half the time he just becomes a glorified combo piece rather than the commander of a deck. Kaza, Roil Chaser is…certainly a choice you can make. The cheap cost to get out and mana reduction ability are nice, but might fit better in a wizard tribal deck with higher average CMC for instants and sorceries. They just don't shine the brightest in this deck.
After an ironically slow introduction, we can move onto the Quick Draw precon upgrades, starting with the cuts.
Gotta be Quicker Than That!
Unfortunately, no precon is made perfect, and that's why we do upgrades. Pteramander, Bloodthirsty Adversary, Kaza, and Octavia, Living Thesis just feel a bit too slow and require a bit too much setup. Same goes for Smoldering Stagecoach. Epic Experiment just doesn't have the right spells to hit consistently for it to be worth including, and Tezzeret’s Gambit is just kind of pricey with not a lot of reason to proliferate. Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise give great card advantage, but I'm just not a fan of delving in a deck that cares about keeping spells in the graveyard. Forger’s Foundry is yet again another card that feels too slow and clunky in this particular deck. The lands were simply cut to make way for more useful lands and helpful mana rocks. Temple of the False God in particular just seemed a bit out of place with the high amount of colored mana pips.
Minimalism: Big Small Selling You More Less
To make sure we are able to cast multiple instants and sorceries without waiting till we have half our land base out, we can use cost reducers to make sure we can start the ball rolling by getting rid of those icky generic mana costs. Primal Amulet reduces the colorless mana needed to cast instants and sorceries by 1, after doing this 4 times you may transform it into a land that provides colored mana that copies any instant or sorcery it is used to pay for. Or, you know, you can just keep it untransformed, but mandatorily keep count of your spells cast or be disqualified for not keeping an accurate board state. Both are cool. Magnus the Red on the other hand discounts by 1 generic per creature token. While Magnus can make tokens by dealing combat damage, there are plenty of cards in this deck that will make creature tokens without getting in harm's way.
Ways to get Triggered
Talisman of Creativity and Command Sphere put in double work here. Not only do they ramp you, but they give you a return on investment in the form of one usable mana the turn you play them. If timed right, you can use your mana rock as the first spell on your turn, then use the mana it offers to trigger Stella’s abilities by casting more. Gitaxian Probe is also a nice inclusion, allowing you to pay 2 life instead of a blue mana, super useful early to start chaining spells, or even late game for the card draw and information it provides. Grinning Ignus is a surprisingly useful card in this deck. The ability to bounce itself for only 1 mana and refund you enough mana to cast itself again makes it fairly easy to consistently trigger your commander’s abilities. From hand, Ignus needs 4 mana to hit 2 casts, and 5 to hit 3. If Ignus is already on the field, it only takes 3 and 4 mana respectively.
Beyond the Grave(yard)
Lier, Disciple of the Drowned prevents spells from being countered. This works both ways, so it can come back to bite you. But, we aren't running too many counterspells, and our aim is to outvalue our opponents with our spells. We are playing less control and more aggro. More importantly, Lier gives instants and sorceries in your graveyard flashback. This effectively gives you an unlimited hand size in regards to instants and sorceries and lets you cast spells from the yard outside of the ones already with flashback. Synergizing nicely with this is Mizzix, Replica Rider. Spells cast from outside of your hand get copied. This includes flashback spells, spells exiled with Stella, and technically Stella from the command zone? I mean hey, if you want to take this down the Helm of the Host route, more power to you. We'll be using it mostly on draw spells and token generators here.
On Cast Return Policy
Casting spells out of our graveyard is good and all, we get double the mileage on normal spells with the use of flashback, but wouldn't it be better to be able to cast an instant and sorcery an indefinite amount of times? Introducing buyback! As an additional cost, generic mana reduction DOES in fact work and yes, enough reduction probably goes infinite with he who is a 2/2 dwarf shaman and shall not be named…moving on…Haze of Rage can pump your board full of tokens, Mystic Speculation can prime the top deck for your next Stella trigger, and Reiterate does good old fashioned copy spell shenanigans.
Manual Labor
The spell storm doesn't always propel itself. Sometimes you'll draw a dead hand or brick on playable cards. Here are some cards you can use to get things moving. Mystic Sanctuary, with requirements fulfilled, can bring back one of your draw spells or a flashback spell to get Stella’s triggers going again. Balmor, Battlemage Captain has a similar effect to Haze of Rage, but trample on a wide board is even more effective. Finally Lithoform Engine is there for when you just don't have another spell to trigger that ability twice, or cant hit the third spell for Stella. Lithoform will take your mana and do the hard work for you. Lithoform is a good friend.
Taking the Crown (No Conspiracies Required)
Court of Embereth is a card that can put you ahead in many ways. As a baseline, it provides you a consistent source of token generation. Block, attack, chump, do what you will. On the turn it is cast, it will also allow you to draw a card from being the monarch. This card can be very strong depending on how you present yourself. If you play it early, you can lose the monarch and allow everyone to fight amongst themselves for the crown while you amass a board full of token blockers. But if you play this card while you have an already large board, with the exception of trample creatures or a board wipe, you can reliably chump with small tokens and still have enough to start really dealing some damage to opponents while they continue their futile efforts to cut through a sea of tokens.
What to Aim for
At a glance, this deck may look like it wants you to burst out the gate slinging spells and swinging; I’m here to tell you to take it slow (by comparison). While not a slow blue control deck, this deck also isn’t a “head empty, red go face” deck either. This deck wants to play at a tempo. Sometimes that comes through with chaining low cost drop spells off the top of your deck, sometimes it’s ordering spells to scry first, then exile with Stella. Or maybe tempo comes through in waiting a turn to drop a mana rock to reliably trigger Stella. If you play a bit slower and more methodically, you can really unearth Stella’s hidden potential as opposed to blindly hitting her triggers every time. No matter how you find your tempo in a given game, remember to plan your next move with your various triggers in mind.
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