Commander Deck Of The Week: Seven Dwarves With Brudiclad

This year, we’re going back to Eldraine!  First, we’ll see it in March of the Machine, where Eldraine is one of the planes under siege by the invaders from New Phyrexia, as seen on some of the sneak-peek cards previewed recently, The Kenriths’ Royal Funeral and Thornwood Falls:

Then the second expansion set in Eldraine – Wilds of Eldraine – drops in the (Northern Hemisphere) autumn of this year.  So I thought it might be a good time to talk about a deck I built that was directly inspired by our first visit to the plane, helmed of course by Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer!

Brudiclad doesn’t exactly scream “Eldraine” but this deck came about from me falling in love with a particular card – or I guess, seven particular cards – Seven Dwarves!

I just loved the design here, drawing from the fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I loved that it breaks the rules of Magic the same way cards like Relentless Rats, Rat Colony, Shadowborn Apostle, Persistent Petitioners, and Dragon’s Approach. When building a Commander deck with these cards, you can run 40 or more copies, which makes for a fun deckbuilding exercise even though the play experience tends to be rather linear.

The Rule of Seven

Seven Dwarves is different, though: you can have no more than seven copies of the card in your deck.  When building a 60-card deck, having seven copies of Seven Dwarves means you have decent odds at getting two or possibly even three of them on the battlefield, which makes each of them bigger.  I had fun noodling around with Seven Dwarves while they were in Standard; while the card is super-cool and flavorful, it’s definitely lower on the power scale.

So what about Commander?  Seven copies will stretch pretty thin when you go from 60 to 100 card decks.  I briefly toyed with an idea of building a Dwarf tribal deck featuring Seven Dwarves, but the natural commanders for Dwarf tribal didn’t really have ways to feature the coolness of Seven Dwarves.

At the time, I was also pulling together a deck around Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer that very quickly felt like it was becoming just like every other Brudiclad deck I’d seen people build and play: artifact synergies, lots of ways to make token copies of other people’s cards, and the eventual end goal of making a non-legendary token copy of Brudiclad that you can turn all your other tokens into when you attack and things go bonkers.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate

So in true peanut butter and chocolate fashion, I realized I could solve my problems by folding Seven Dwarves and even some Dwarf synergies into the Brudiclad deck!  The primary goal is to transform a bunch of tokens into Seven Dwarves with Brudiclad and attack for a ton of damage. If my opponents keep killing off whatever copies of Seven Dwarves I try to keep on the battlefield, I can always go for the silly “make infinite Brudiclads” Plan B as revenge for ruining my Dwarf fun. Or at the very least, copy something cool an opponent has played and go bonkers with that.

Before we dive in, I’d like to point out that you should give each of your Seven Dwarves a cool name.  Here are the names of mine:

• Loopy
• Scoopy
• Salty
• Filthy
• Sketchy
• Durdly
• and Jank

Hi ho, let’s go!

Other Dwarves/Dwarves Matter

Magda, Brazen Outlaw is the perfect card for a Brudiclad Dwarf deck, generating Treasure tokens that can help ramp out Brudiclad or be extra tokens that can be transformed into something cool by Brudiclad. Vault Robber can make Treasure tokens too!  Dwarven Miner is here mostly as a lightning rod for removal spells to keep them from targeting Seven Dwarves, though if I can snipe something like Cabal Coffers or Gaea’s Cradle, I’ll happily do so. I will most definitely not be using it to cripple someone’s mana in the early game because that is not how I roll.

Mana Echoes helps the deck get a burst of mana for a big turn, and is certainly helpful sometimes in powering out Brudiclad a bit earlier. Kindred Charge is a fantastic way to make a copy of Seven Dwarves to prep for Brudiclad shenanigans!

Changelings

Maskwood Nexus makes a great tutor target for Magda’s activated ability, which lets Brudiclad or any other creatures you’ve targeted become Dwarf creatures to enjoy Dwarf synergies. Shapesharer has changeling, which makes it an honorary Dwarf that can become a copy of Seven Dwarves or any other sweet creature until your next turn.

Orvar, the All-Form also has changeling, but its other ability really supports this deck’s goal of making copies of Seven Dwarves. I have a lot of spells like Cackling Counterpart that I play to target Seven Dwarves with, and Orvar will let you make an additional copy of it. Perfect!

Seven Dwarves Matter

Mirror Box supports my main plan by making multiple copies of Seven Dwarves even bigger, and it also supports the backup plan of making a bunch of copies of Brudiclad. Sakashima of a Thousand Faces is another flexible card that plays well with whatever the game state dictates.

Makes Tokens – Spells

The heart of the deck is making tokens that copy something, either directly copying Seven Dwarves or copying something else that might later change with Brudiclad. I love how Mystic Reflection can be used to disrupt an opponent’s big turn, such as having an opponent’s Avacyn, Angel of Hope enter the battlefield as a copy of Seven Dwarves.  Ha!

I recently added Elminster’s Simulacrum, a super-cool card that scales nicely with the power level of the pod you’re playing in; depending on what you get to copy, you might want to shift Brudiclad away from the Seven Dwarves plan!

Makes Tokens – Permanents

Mirrorpool is one of my all-time favorite cards, and it does seriously good work here.  Of course, it can copy Seven Dwarves, but a better plan might be to copy a copy spell targeting Seven Dwarves if you have the mana. Also, it’s a great way to build a backup Brudiclad if an opponent tries to kill it before you go to your attack step; copy Brudiclad, and sacrifice your commander since it’s dying anyway. 

I recently picked up Blade of Shared Souls from Phyrexia: All Will Be One and slammed it into the deck, hoping for big things!

Tokens Matter

It’s neat that the “tokens matter” space has dipped into red in recent years, so I’ve put them in the deck to give them a try. Roar of Resistance giving copies of Seven Dwarves haste very much supports the main plan, and if there’s extra mana to spend, that triggered ability can really push the attack step to lethal levels with enough creatures.

I like Determined Iteration mostly when I’ve copied a creature an opponent controls that has a sweet enters-the-battlefield trigger, but even baseline making a temporary extra Seven Dwarves can still be good.

Removal

When building a deck like this that’s very focused on a theme, you quickly run out of room for other sorts of cards, but I tried my best to squeeze in some removal spells. I was excited to add Red Sun’s Twilight, since it can potentially make a bunch of tokens that can be transformed by Brudiclad for a huge turn, but depending on what nutty artifacts your opponents are playing, you can cobble together something awesome, and I fully expect this card to generate some epic stories in the years to come.

Interaction

I squeezed in some other interaction too, and definitely made room for the “commander free spells” Fierce Guardianship and Deflecting Swat.  Brudiclad costs a whopping six mana, and since its ability can be terrifying depending on the battlefield state, your opponents will be on high alert to remove it before you get to combat, which means you’ll have to pay eight mana next time. Both of these spells help you to have at least one chance to “do the thing” with ol’ Brudee.

Card Draw

The primary plan for the deck can be easily dashed by a battlefield sweeper, so it’s important to have ways to refuel with fresh cards; luckily for us, blue has plenty of ways to do just that.  Kindred Discovery is an insane card drawing engine for tribal decks that also want to attack, so I’m thrilled to have it here.

Mana Ramp

I’d ideally like a bit more mana ramp in the deck, but there’s not much room.  I’m hoping the card draw will help ensure I keep hitting my land drops each turn to develop my mana.

Spice

Some of the effects that make copy tokens are temporary, such as Kindred Charge and Red Sun’s Twilight, and the tokens go away before the end of the turn, so I’ve got Sundial of the Infinite to put that effect on the stack and then end the turn so I can keep the tokens!  True Polymorph is a bit of a pet card that fits with the themes of the deck and can sometimes just do hilarious stuff, such as turning an opponent’s Avacyn, Angel of Hope into a copy of Seven Dwarves.  Ha!

The Deck

Okay, here is the full decklist:

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

What must-have cards might I have missed including in this deck?  What do you think of the Seven Dwarves and general Dwarf tribal vibe of the deck?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and get conversations started about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews. 

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.