Budget Commander: General Ferrous Rokiric | Boros Multicolor Matters! | $47, $100
Hey friends, welcome back to Budget Commander! This week I've got one of the toughest budget brews I've ever worked on, but the results are definitely worth it: let's talk about General Ferrous Rokiric!
This Deck Rokirics
General Ferrous Rokiric is a simple commander: this 3-drop says when you cast a multicolor spell, you make a 4/4 creature token. That rate is rocks! For comparison, another popular commander with a similar trigger, Talrand, Sky Summoner, is a 4-drop and the tokens there are measly 2/2's! And sure, Talrand has its own strengths, but the point is making 4/4's this easy is AMAZING!
So what cards will we be adding to General Ferrous Rokiric? A lot of multicolor spells, obviously, but since there's 210 options we'll have to be selective here. My policy is to run only multicolor spells that have a strong impact on the game: Ferrous is providing out all the muscle we need with a 4/4 stapled to every multicolor spell, so skip over those random beaters like Boros Recruits and Figure of Destinys, they ain't worth it! No, I'm most interested in spot removal (Duergar Hedge-Mage), board wipes (Solar Blaze), card draw (Commander Liara Portyr), recursion (Reconstruct History), and finishers (Balefire Liege)!
This is a midrange deck full of card draw, recursion, protection, and removal spells, passively building a lethal army as we cast impactful spells with our commander out!
We need to draw lots of cards to keep making golem buddies! Thankfully we have some all-star options: Losheel, Clockwork Scholar and Tocasia's Welcome are both 3-drops that draw us a card each turn we make a golem with Ferrous. Note that it's not just our turn, so we can potentially draw up to 4 cards per turn cycle if we're casting multicolor instants on opponents' turns! That's not all of our deck's draw engines of course: Idol of Oblivion, Tome of the Guildpact, Symmetry Matrix, Rumor Gatherer, and Commander Liara Portyr are all amazing efficient draw engines in this deck!
I've also added a small Equipment package to the deck, mostly because Sunforger is so good here. We're running Fighter Class and Forging the Tyrite Sword to find Sunforger or the other few utility equipment in the deck, plus Akiri, Fearless Voyager which is too good a source of draw + protection if we can find an equipment. I used to have a larger equipment theme but I whittled it down in testing as it was too inconsistent. Honestly though, Sunforger is just an amazing card here, as it's a repeatable multicolor casting engine.
Our game plan relies on General Ferrous Rokiric being on the battlefield. He's only 3 mana so we can reliably stick him early game and can recast him a few times if needed and he has hexproof from monocolor so he's immune to the most common spot removal spells like Swords to Plowshares, but if our commander gets shut down then the deck loses all its punching power. Our opponents are certainly going to figure that out, so we're going to need lots of ways to keep Ferrous protected. For multicolor options we've got Boros Charm and Lorehold Command for instant-speed protection, and on-board protection with Squee's Embrace, Legion's Initiative, and Akiri, Fearless Voyager if he's equipped. We can also fetch him out of the graveyard with Venerable Warsinger. I've also added additional protection with Rootborn Defenses (which can make an extra 4/4!), Bolt Bend, and Sun Titan, but if that's still not enough I'd recommend Loran's Escape and Blacksmith's Skill (two cards I eventually cut).
While our main win condition is just beating face with 4/4's, sometimes those aren't big enough to get the job done. Luckily we have no shortage of finishers in the deck: I prefer the multicolor anthems here Blade Historian, Tori D'Avenant, Fury Rider, Adriana, Captain of the Guard, Balefire Liege, and Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer. I also love the flexibility of Response // Resurgence for an extra round of punchies in case the first wasn't enough to finish things.
And that's the deck! Let's check out the sample list now:
$47 List
The cheapest list is currently $47, a bit cheaper than my standard $50 lists. The deck is loaded with removal, card draw, and protection, with a smattering of recursion and finishers to close things out. The goal is to stick our commander and police the board while slowly growing our golem army. Eventually we drop a finisher and swing for lethal!
$100 List
The $100 list sees a big upgrade in card draw with Bennie Bracks, Zoologist and some stronger finishers like Aurelia, the Warleader but not much has changed overall.
That's All, Folks!
Next week's commander is TBD. I want to do either Bell Borca, Spectral Sergeant or Commander Liara Portyr soon as I absolutely love Boros Exile Matters, but I'll wait at least a week since we just did a Boros deck. There's also Volrath the Fallen and Iname, Death Aspect, two decks I'm considering building in paper, both had super fun showings on stream/Clash before. But as always, suggestions in the comments section are always welcome! I'm doing this weekly again so odds are I'll get around to most of your requests at some point. Thanks for reading!
