Marut is a piece of spice that people have been brewing with since Commander Masters: Battle for Baldur's Gate, myself included. Early on I felt that an all in build Marut was too clunky and Marut was too expensive. Since then I've been waiting for new pieces to get printed and WOTC has delivered. Mirkwood Bats, Nadier's Nightblade, Greedy Freebooter, and Fanatical Offering have been piecing this deck together.
We finally have enough payoffs beyond just Reckless Fireweaver. Nadier's Nightblade is the best of these in my opinion. Fireweaver is cheaper and Bats is the most explosive, but Nightblade graining life is a huge at keeping us alive. Mirkwood Bats is the most powerful because it triggers when tokens come and when they go out. With enough payoffs this deck is finally able to consistantly do its thing.
The deck is composed of payoffs, card draw, and the fodder to inable it all. Deadly Dispute is the best card in the deck. Pairing it with Greedy Freebooter and Prized Statue feels broken. We're running a split of Fanatical Offering and Reckoner's Bargain becasue they both have their uses. Offering is the better option in a vacuum with the Map token that it leaves behind. You can use that Map to trigger our payoffs and Explore helps us dig for action. Reckoner's Bargain is necessary with Burn still prominant in the meta. Big Score lets us pop off. Two cards and two treasures leads to some chains that let us kill the opponent. Having all of this card draw gives us resiliance to interaction and makes the deck super consistant.
To enable our Deadly Dispute and the likes we need fodder. You'll notice that my selection differs from other lists. No Shambling Ghast and no Impulsive Pilferer. During my testing I felt that 8 copies of Greedy Freebooter and Prized Statue was enough to make the deck run smooth. Running 12 copies of Greedy Freebooter makes the early game super consistant, but I found Chromatic Star and Candy Trail to be better. Although we have tons of card draw, the deck can't afford to fizzle out. We need action every turn and I found that sacing Star to draw three cards helps you push through flood and interaction. Candy Trail lets you find the right cards with the scry 2 and you can pop it for a card and some life. All of these can be mana sinks if we have extra mana from a Name Sticker Goblin. I do believe that the 8 copies of Freedbooter and Statue are enough treasure makers, so I'd prefer to run these other pieces of fodder with more utility.
I'd also like to say that Greedy Freebooter is much better than Shambling Ghast. Ghast has the utility of sniping Arbor Elf and Gingerbrute, but you have to choose between making the treasure or the -1/-1. Freebooter always scys 1 and makes a treasure. Turning your Deadly Dispute in and free Divination with a scy 1 attached is busted.
Name Sticker Goblin and Big Score is a powerful pairing. Hitting a 5 or 6 mana off of the goblin and then the two treasure from Big Score leads to explosive turns on T3. Name Sticker Goblin is a broken card and it makes the deck much faster. Like we said earlier, you can use this mana to pop Chromatic Star and Candy Trail, we can also use the mana to cast Marut.
I love this goofy robot. The earlist veersions of the deck was going all in on Marut. When we eventually got enough payoffs with [[Mirkwood Bats]] and then [[Naider's Nightblade]] shortly after, Marut felt win-more. I recently added it back in as a one of for fun and it can be an instant win if we have a payoff in play. This could be replaced with something else but for now it has performed fine.
Sideboarding
I'm currently very happy with this sideboard. For Terror we have Nihil Spellbomb and Tithing Blade, which is an upgrade over Diabolic Edict with the artifact synergies. Pyroblast for combating counterspells and Cast into the Fire for other artifact decks. For Burn we have Weather the Storm and Breath Weapon. Weather is essential for any of the Burn variants and our Treasures allow us to splash for it efficiently. The Kuldotha Burn decks are becoming more creature based with Goblin Tomb Raider and Breath Weapon is our best tool for the job. This is a deck that I've been cooking in the background for months. It's kind of funny that Marut became less and less necessary as we got more payoffs with Bats and Blade. The deck evolved from a Marut meme deck to a real archetype with real pieces and payoffs. Greedy Freebooter and Fanatical Offering are what I thought brought the deck to completion. We've been brewing a lot this season so if you like what we're doing we'd appreciate if you browse the website for more. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel for some League action. We have a Discord, something, something, call to actions. Thanks so much for reading and joining the Fellowship!
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