Commander Deck Tech: Loot, the Pathfinder

While everyone else was trying to win the race to get The Aetherspark, Loot just wanted to come back to Vraska's arms. If he wins this race, will he be able to come home?

In this article, we'll show you two Commander lists with Loot, the Pathfinder. The first one focuses on clones so you can get the most out of Exhaust, and the second is a classic blink deck, but in Temur colors.

Let's go!

Like any great legendary Temur creature, Loot is a deckbuilding challenge. To get the most out of all three of his Exhaust abilities, we need to find balance.

If you're not familiar with it, Exhaust was released in Aetherdrift. You can only use each Exhaust ability once per permanent, even if your opponent counters it.

For instance, if you activate Loot's first ability to get three mana, you won't be able to use it again. If your opponent counters it with a spell like Disallow, you still can't use it again.

If you'd like to use Loot's abilities again, you'll have to make Loot a new permanent on your board. To do that, you can blink it, or, as we'll do with this first list, clone him so we can have more Loots in play and more Exhausts to use.

A Loot list is a toolbox, and Loot himself will make it work, not the other way around. Here's our main list:

As we mentioned above, an important part of this strategy is cloning cards, particularly Loot. So, let's start by going over the cards that interact with that.

Creating Copies

Loot's first and second abilities, that is, the one that creates mana and the one that draws cards, will progress our game plan a lot faster. And remember, the more Loots in play, the better!

Besides disabling the legendary rule for your permanents, Mirror Box also buffs your creatures.

We've also added a few cards that create nonlegendary copies of other cards, like Impostor Syndrome, Irenicus's Vile Duplication, Helm of the Host, and Spark Double.

Sakashima of a Thousand Faces, Sakashima the Impostor, Phyrexian Metamorph, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, and Delina, Wild Mage also create clones.

Please note that we added this card for Loot, but you can still use them on other valuable creatures, like Hullbreaker Horror, Consecrated Sphinx, or Etali, Primal Conqueror.

Boosts

To get ahead in this race, we added a few cards that give us more mana, more power, more cards, you name it. In terms of abilities, we added:

Battlemage's Bracers and Illusionist's Bracers are perfect for a deck centered around activated abilities. Marvin, Murderous Mimic is a small, fearsome creature that has the activated abilities of all the creatures you control, as long as they don't have the same name as him.

Elvish Refueler lets you activate Exhaust abilities another time, but only on your turn. It also gives itself +1/+1 counters.

We added City on Fire to deal more damage. After all, one of Loot's abilities deals 3 damage to any target.

Despite expensive, this card has Convoke, so you won't struggle as much to cast it.

To get more mana, we added Leyline of Abundance and Nyxbloom Ancient.

Leyline of Abundance's ability also puts +1/+1 counters on a creature you control.

With Consecrated Sphinx in play, you'll create value even when your opponents are drawing cards on their turn. As such, this creature is a popular, consistent way to hoard more cards in your hand.

Ramp and Mana Rocks

Loot costs five mana, which is relatively expensive. Furthermore, we all know that, because of the commander tax, he'll become more expensive whenever we return him to the command zone.

That's why we'll need to create as much mana as possible with this list. Ideally, we should try to get mana faster than our opponents so we can put Loot in play as fast as possible.

Another version of our commander, Loot, Exuberant Explorer, lets us play an extra land each turn. Its activated ability also lets us look at the top 6 cards in our deck and put in play any creature from there as long as it costs the same or less than the number of lands we control.

If you like Loot, Exuberant Explorer, check out this Commander deck tech with him!

Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Birds of Paradise, Bloom Tender, Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Cultivate, and Farseek need no introduction. They're in every green Commander list.

Enduring Vitality turns all your creatures into mana dorks. Redshift, Rocketeer Chief, in turn, creates mana equal to its power, and its Exhaust ability lets you put in play any number of permanents from your hand.

Untapping Permanents

We want to use Loot's abilities as often as possible. Luckily, we added many cards that untap permanents and will thus let us use Loot's Exhaust abilities again and again.

Unstoppable Plan and Seedborn Muse are similar. But Muse works in other players' steps as well.

Retreat to Coralhelm, Kiora's Follower, Magewright's Stone, and Ioreth of the Healing House are more specific, as they untap a certain card in play.

Intruder Alarm affects the entire board. This means it also affects enemy creatures.

It prevents creatures from untapping in their untapping steps, but it also untaps them whenever a creature enters the battlefield. As such, it interacts really nicely with Loot.

Our alternative list focuses on blinks and multiple triggered abilities. It is better for casual pods and ideal for anyone who enjoys casting several spells at the same time and isn't afraid of the stack!

We added many cards that burn opponents when creatures enter our board or when we cast blink spells.

Out of these ones, we can highlight Purphoros, God of the Forge, which deals 2 damage, and Terror of the Peaks, which deals damage to any target. As such, we can use it to remove creatures, planeswalkers, or players.

To exile permanents and return them to the board, we added:

We must also highlight Conjurer's Closet, which blinks our commander for free in our end step.

Finally, we also added a few removals so we can protect ourselves from enemy attacks:

Loot, the Pathfinder has a lot of potential and could command powerful or casual decks - it's up to you. This commander is quite fun and strong!

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!