Flubs, the Fool Commander Deck Guide

Flubs, the Fool | Illustration by Adam Rex

Bloomburrow is out on shelves now, and for the first time in a while I'm excited for a Standard Magic set! There are tons of things I’m enjoying about it, from the lore to BLB drafts to the fun new typal strategies. But Bloomburrow also brought along something that I enjoy for very specific reasons: Flubs, the Fool.

One thing you should know is that I really like tarot cards. I don’t really believe in their “magical” and spiritual aspect, but I enjoy the way they represent archetypes and use art to convey those meanings. And let me tell you, I really like the way this card represents The Fool, the first of the major arcana cards.

I won’t go in-depth about the meaning of tarot cards, but it’s worth mentioning that some common interpretations given for The Fool include new beginnings, blank slates, wanderlust, and, on the flipside, foolish impulses and a disregard for consequence. This is all definitely represented through Flubs, the Fool’s abilities.

For now, let’s build a deck around this amazing Bloomburrow card.

The Deck

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath | Illustration by Vincent Proce

The Commander: Flubs, the Fool

Let’s start by looking at why I think this card represents the tarot’s Fool really well. Tarot cards usually have two interrelated meanings: upright and inverted.

The Fool’s upright archetypes include wanderlust, new beginnings, and impulsive action; these are represented in Flubs, the Fool through its extra land static ability as well as through letting you draw cards if you play a land or cast a spell with no other cards in hand.

On the flipside, The Fool represents a disregard for consequence and maintains the impulsive action angle, but this time as a bad thing. With Flubs, that’s represented through having to discard cards whenever you play a land or spell.

If your hand represents your mind, this card is asking you to leave it blank and start again. The problem is, since it embodies these archetypes all the time, it essentially wants you to keep your mind blank at every given time.

As your commander, Flubs requires you to embrace its foolishness: As soon as your Temur commander enters the field, you’re going to depend on your topdeck from then on. Your hand empties sooner rather than later, and from that point you’re simply playing and replacing that one card in your hand over and over.

There’s something about this frog scout that makes it feel like you’re playing into a sort of chaos strategy. Even though you play blue in your deck, you won’t be doing that many blue-style things like planning ahead, having a lot of responses, and things like that.

It’s worth mentioning that this card may be a bit hard to find since it’s a buy-a-box promo card. This means you can only get it by buying a Bloomburrow booster box from some select LGS. Of course, you can always buy it as a single through the secondary market, or you can proxy it if your playgroup is fine with that.

Extra Lands

Flubs’s first ability lets you play an extra land each turn. That’s cool, but the second ability makes you want to play any lands you draw as soon as possible so you can draw other things.

There are nine cards in this deck that let you play additional lands, with enchantments like Exploration, one-time spells like Summer Bloom, or repeatable effects like Kiora, the Crashing Wave’s second activated ability.

Mina and Denn, Wildborn can give trample to one of your creatures, while also returning a land to your hand that you can then play again for additional value. Druid Class and Case of the Locked Hothouse both give tons of additional value as the game goes on, making them great investments.

But the most important here is definitely Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. This card’s first ability is already solid, but let’s focus on the second ability. When this card is paired with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle (and other extra land cards), you can suddenly get an onslaught of Lightning Bolt-style effects as you drop one land after the other. This can easily become a win condition, especially if your opponents are already weakened.

Landfall

So, you’re playing tons of lands. Let’s get some value out of that!

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle provides undeniable value with the right set-up. This deck has obvious landfall cards like Lotus Cobra for early mana generation. Tireless Provisioner brings additional value by either ramping you up or creating Food to recover some life if you need to. Springheart Nantuko can provide an army of either copies or insects, and both can be extremely useful. Not to mention Scute Swarm. Anyone who lived through the Scute Swarm Standard era knows how terrifying this little insect can become.

Topdeck Control

Flubs, the Fool has you playing off your topdeck for most of the game. Having some kind of knowledge and control over it can be key.

Sensei's Divining Top is a great card here since it lets you reorder your cards to draw what you need.

This deck of course has Oracle of Mul Daya, Courser of Kruphix, and Augur of Autumn to play lands off the top, making it easy to dig through your cards until you get to what you need.

Another key card here is going to be Abundance. This card lets you pick and choose what you draw with your commander, ensuring you play as many lands as you can on each turn so you can then focus on drawing (and playing) nothing but spells.

Interaction

Interaction with this deck is weird. Since you can’t really stock your hand up, you also won’t have tons of responses available at all times.

The deck still runs Counterspell and Saw It Coming as well as Hydroblast and Pyroblast. To ensure you can have a bit more control over when and how you play these cards, Fblthp, Lost on the Range is here to plot them and keep them out of your hands until you need them. You'll only be able to cast the plotted cards at sorcery speed (which makes it pointless to plot Counterspell), and your opponents will see your removal coming, but it's still better than having to discard it and have no interaction.

Speaking of removal, Chaos Warp, Pongify and Rapid Hybridization can all take out serious threats for a low mana cost.

Wincons

This deck has plenty of ways to overrun its opponents. I’ve already mentioned the combo between Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, but there are other options.

Ominous Seas gains a ton of counters in this deck since you’re drawing tons of cards, which means tons of Kraken tokens to put pressure on your opponents. Scute Swarm is another obvious one here since it can make an almost infinite number of copies really quickly. Another option is Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, which can get absurdly large really fast.

Since you may be drawing way too many cards, more than you probably want, you have Laboratory Maniac to turn a massive risk into an alternative win condition.

Let’s not forget about Blackblade Reforged. Put this equipment onto one of your creatures, be it your commander or any other, use Mina and Denn, Wildborn to give it trample, and start punching.

As you may have guessed already, most of the wincons in this deck aim at winning during the combat phase with massive swings. But the deck also has a little something extra: Grapeshot. If you manage a really good turn with your commander on the field, you’ll build a huge storm count which you can use to take out an opponent.

The Mana Base

Pretty much all the lands in this deck are straightforward mana sources and not much more.

Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is a combo piece, but you also have Field of the Dead to build up an army of Zombies to help overrun your opponents. Mox Opal and Mox Amber are definitely useful mana rocks, but above all these 0-mana artifacts build up your storm count as well as keeping the Flubs, the Fool machine turning.

The Strategy

This deck wants to keep a “play a card, draw a card” engine running for as long as possible… and Flubs's strategy is that there really isn’t that much strategy.

You’ll have a few responses and interactions, which are obviously important, but you also have to use them while having this deck’s tarot theme in mind: impulsiveness. You need to be a complete fool as you play this deck, just flinging everything you can at the board, building a huge army of tokens or a massive stock of lands or maybe an enormous storm count.

This deck's different strategies synergize with each other, but a hyper-optimized deck that always plays the same things the same way just isn't the Way of the Fool.

Flubs, the Fool is about being absolutely ridiculous. It’ll net you some really explosive and fun wins, some of which can even come completely out of the blue as you snowball into cards that benefit each other. Or you can lose as your opponents counter and destroy everything you play, jamming your engine and leaving you out of mana, out of cards, and just utterly defeated.

But even if this happens, you’ll be forcing your opponents into wasting everything they have on any silly little spell you play, leaving them wide open to each other, or even to your own threats if you manage to recover.

All that to say, the strategy here is to embrace the foolishness of life. Be a bit silly and see what happens!

Combos and Interactions

The main combo here is Dryad of the Ilysian Grove + Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. Even so, it’s not a combo that’ll singlehandedly finish off an opponent in one turn. It can definitely do massive direct damage, and if you’re lucky it can absolutely win you the game, but for that to happen you also need a ton of moving parts on your battlefield, including your commander.

Other than that, you have a ton of synergies and powerful interactions, but no real combos.

Rule 0 Violation Check

I don’t honestly think this deck has any real Rule 0 violations. Cards like Cyclonic Rift and Laboratory Maniac may get a groan out of the other players, but they’re not really a Rule 0 violation.

Budget Options

Most of the expensive cards aren’t really key cards. Arguably the most important one is Exploration, which can be reasonably replaced with something like Hugs, Grisly Guardian. Lotus Petal, Mox Amber, and Mox Opal are all obviously useful thanks to their mana abilities, but might as well be replaced by other 0-mana cards like Ornithopter that’ll keep the engine going. And there's the fetch lands, which you can ultimately replace with cards like the Streets of New Capenna family lands.

Any other cards that go beyond your budget, you can ultimately replace by anything that puts a strong focus on a lands strategy or on playing a pseudo-storm strategy off the top of your deck.

Other Builds

I tried to make this build relatively balanced with maybe a stronger focus on the landfall aspect. You can choose to go all out on lands, or you can focus on low mana value spells and storm.

I’m sure there’s someone who’s found a way to make this a super-strong card-draw deck, but I’d honestly just go another route for one of those. I mean, we have like seven Niv-Mizzet cards already.

Commanding Conclusion

Dryad of the Ilysian Grove | Illustration by Scott Murphy

I absolutely adore Flubs, the Fool’s design. From the art to the tarot flavor to the mechanics, it’s just a really fun card. I sincerely hope this is only the first of a long list of tarot-based cards. I’m not kidding: WotC, please let me build a deck where all the creatures are references to the major arcana!

But enough about what I think (and what I want). Did you like this build for Flubs, the Fool? Would you build it differently? Would you want to see more cards that are based on tarot?

Leave a comment letting us know! And while you’re here, make sure to pay the Draftsim Discord server a visit. There you’ll find an amazing community of MTG fans to share your hobby with.

That’s all from me for now. Have a good one, and I’ll see you next time!