Upgrading Commander Precon - Scrappy Survivors (Dogmeat, Ever Loyal)

The newest Magic: The Gathering crossover is here! Universes Beyond: Fallout brought us 4 new precon Commander decks that are quite different from one another and from what we've seen before. Today, we'll explore Scrappy Survivors, a deck that focuses on auras and enchantments, and uses the incredibly Dogmeat, Ever Loyal as its commander!

Scrappy Survivors is a Naya deck, and its main theme is modifying creatures - which is, equipping or enchanting them with auras.

Dogmeat, Ever Loyal and Preston Garvey, Minuteman are the commander options we have. This time, we'll use Dogmeat, Ever Loyal as our commander.

Preston Garvey, Minuteman's mechanic is much better in a strategy that focuses entirely on auras; so, at the end of this article, we'll add a list entirely dedicated to him which focuses completely on enchantments and auras.

Dogmeat, Ever Loyal is quite versatile in several ways. It is cheap, has a good body for its cost, works with our graveyard and the theme of this deck, and brings us card advantage, considering it creates junk tokens. The fact it creates tokens when you declare any attacks, and not when you deal combat damage, makes it more viable.

A cool detail about junk tokens is that you can use them whenever you like, and you don't need to exile the top of your deck immediately until the end of the turn, such as Commander Liara Portyr. This allows us to hoard junk tokens and use them later on.

For all of this, it is the best commander for Scrappy Survivors!

Cards We Removed

The Bobblehead cycle represents incredible features of the Fallout franchise, and it is an interesting idea, but it wasn't well-executed. So, we removed it to open up space for our upgrades. There were 38 lands, so we lowered this number to 35 - particularly, it is a good number for Commander standards nowadays.

Some creatures may seem impactful when we look at them, but, in practice, they don't perform all that well. Cait, Cage Brawler, Ian the Reckless, and Veronica, Dissident Scribe are examples of these creatures.

We also removed equipment cards and enchantments that are too expensive or aren't very efficient, such as Explorer's Scope, Vault 21: House Gambit, Almost Perfect, and Squirrel Nest.

Interacting With Modifications

This deck offers us the theme of equipment cards and auras. So, bringing anything that interacts with these two features is essential to upgrade it.

We have two versions of the same character: Danitha Capashen, Paragon, to reduce the cost of auras and equipment, and Danitha, New Benalia's Light, to cast, from the graveyard, these same types of permanents.

Dogmeat, Ever Loyal mills cards when it enters the battlefield, and Danitha can retrieve these cards. Both are excellent targets to enchant or equip because they have several keywords.

We included Sram, Senior Edificer to draw several cards - after all, we have 28 auras and/or equipment. This same amount is useful for Chishiro, the Shattered Blade, to create spirit tokens, besides increasing the power and toughness of our modified creatures with +1/+1 counters.

Our modified creatures make Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar interesting, considering it prevents our opponents from casting spells during our turn, and because it possibly draws us 3 cards, if we decide to deal combat damage to 3 different enemies.

Now, let's talk about auras and equipment. Because Dogmeat, Ever Loyal will create several tokens for us, an equipment like Nettlecyst can be an excellent win condition if we use combat damage.

Nettlecyst also counts the total number of enchantments besides artifacts, so it is an excellent power and toughness buff for the creature we equip it with, whatever it is.

Hammer of Nazahn will help us cheat out the cost of our equipment, besides making the creature we equip it with indestructible, which will be challenging for our opponents to deal with. Sigarda's Aid has a similar role, but it gives flash to our equipment and aura spells as a bonus.

And, speaking of recursion, Forge Anew reanimates equipment and allows us to equip creatures at instant speed, which can be considered a combat trick. It also cheats out equip cost once a turn. The original list has Puresteel Paladin to cheat out equipment costs, but, the more ways we have to save up on mana like this, the better.

Finally, Bear Umbra, which guarantees the creature it enchants extra protection thanks to its armor token, also allows us to spend all our mana available on our first main phase, besides untapping all our lands when the creature we enchanted attacks. It does all of this and also increases our creature's toughness and power by +2/+2, which makes it a very versatile enchantment, and fits our build well.

Spells and Answers

The original list has good answers and removals, such as Chaos Warp, Heroic Intervention, and Path to Exile. So, we brought more cards like it.

We added Generous Gift, Beast Within, Boros Charm, and Swords to Plowshares to have more answers. And, with Generous Gift and Beast Within, we'll guarantee that the permanent in question will indeed be destroyed, and not only avoided indefinitely, like Chaos Warp.

We added Boros Charm because of its versatility, be it to save our creatures with indestructible or give double strike to a creature that is powerful enough to defeat an opponent all at once.

Kellan, the Fae-Blooded works really well as a creature and a spell. As a spell, it will search for us any aura or equipment we need, and, as a creature, it will buff the other creatures we control. Its built-in double strike makes it excellent when we need to be aggressive in the game. Targets like Nettlecyst or All That Glitters are great in Kellan.

This is our upgraded Scrappy Survivors! We changed approximately 15 cards, but we kept the essence of what this deck does and its game strategy.

We have cool interactions that were already in the original list, such as Three Dog, Galaxy News Dj, and Grim Reaper's Sprint, which allow us to have several extra combat phases, for instance.

Alternative List with Preston Garvey, Minuteman

Preston Garvey, Minuteman can combo with Aggravated Assault and its ability, considering it creates mana every combat and pays for the cost of the extra combat phase. It also works with Bear Umbra. Spirit Mantle, Unquestioned Authority, or Rogue's Passage gives us the evasion we need to guarantee our damage and finish the game with this combo.

However, this deck doesn't need this to win because it has several other auras to increase the power and toughness of our creatures, which makes it quite aggressive.

Several cards in this deck will bring a lot of consistency to many aura and equipment lists. Cass, Hand of Vengeance, Inventory Management, and Strong Back are a few of them, for instance. These archetypes already have a good selection of cards, but I believe Scrappy Survivors made this selection even more diverse for new decks.

What did you think of this list? Would you use Preston as a commander? Or focus on exile as a sub-theme? Comment down below!

See you next time!