Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser Commander Deck Guide

Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser | Illustration by James Ryman

It’s getting hot in here, so sleeve up all your cards. Little Nelly throwback to get you in the spirit.

Time to exercise those index fingers, friends. Today we’re pointing at everyone but ourselves, casting suspicion on our opponents and goading them into combat. Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser’s slinging blame left and right, so good luck blocking, opponents!

This casual EDH deck fuses goad abilities with effects that punish your opponents should they ever think about attacking in your direction. Let’s make some accusations!

The Deck

Taunt from the Rampart | Illustration by Lorenzo Mastroianni

This is a Boros () goad deck, looking to combine political elements with an overall emphasis on goading opponents’ creatures to do your dirty work for you. The suspect mechanic is weaved into the commander and a few other cards, but it’s a tiny subtheme of the deck, mostly due to the small number of cards that actually have this ability. There are some minor suspected interactions, but don’t focus too much on that part of the deck.

The Commander: Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser

The art and name alone should tell you everything you need to know about who Nelly is. Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser is loud, aggressive, and confrontational. The character comes from Murders at Karlov Manor Commander, where killers were hiding in plain sight, and everyone was a suspect. However, with no good leads, Nelly simply accuses everyone, illustrated by the card’s use of the set’s suspect mechanic.

Suspecting a creature gives it menace and removes its ability to block as long as it remains on the battlefield. The idea with Nelly is to continue attacking, suspecting additional creatures, and goading more threats into combat against your opponents. It already works well with additional goad support, but the suspect wrinkle juices these effects since more creatures will have menace and fewer will be able to play defense.

Nelly’s not all angry accusations though; it extends a card draw ability to all players, assuming they’re hitting people other than yourself. It’s kind of like a once-per-turn Edric, Spymaster of Trest in that regard. That means there’s some opportunity for politicking even without the need to goad creatures. Of course, if your opponents won’t play ball, you can take matters into your own hands.

Goad Effects

The whole point of this deck is to turn your opponents’ creatures against them. Hopefully there will be someone at the table scarier than you already, so opponents will naturally want to attack someone else, but a nudge in the right direction never hurts. Your plentiful goad effects are the lifeblood of the deck, forcing uncooperative players to raise their arms against your other opponents.

The best goad effects are the ones that don’t give your opponent a say in the matter. That’s goaded, now swing with it. Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer and Vengeful Ancestor are some of your best cards in this vein, since they don’t give your opponents options.

Something like Agitator Ant, on the other hand, can be effective in the early game, but players will simply opt out of its ability once it becomes correct to start attacking you.

The two mass-goad sorceries often play the role of a finisher for you, depending on the boardstate. Disrupt Decorum and Taunt from the Rampart goad everything that matters, with Taunt being especially nasty since it strips away your opponents’ ability to block. With enough suspected creatures on board, Disrupt Decorum can do the same.

Bloodthirsty Blade, Shiny Impetus, and Redemption Arc all enhance an opponent’s creature but keep it off your back. Just be cognizant of what you put these on; you don’t really want to make an opponent’s commander indestructible if you can avoid it.

Life of the Party and the goad-lite Rite of the Raging Storm give your opponents creature tokens that must attack, which can add up damage quickly. That said, these cards play quite poorly against sacrifice decks, since you’ll just be giving them easy fodder for their sac outlets.

Punishment Cards

What’s that? You don’t want to play ball? Alright then, take a little bit of this!

That’s what you’ll be saying when your opponents decide to disrupt the status quo and start attacking you instead. Your deck is loaded with ways to punish attackers, though you can hopefully hold out on using them if your opponents are focusing all their attention on someone else.

Settle the Wreckage can completely decimate someone’s board mid-combat, and Comeuppance rebounds all incoming damage from creatures directed at you. The latter also has the “hidden” mode of blanking a damage-based removal spell or sweeper. Using it in response to an opponent’s Blasphemous Act probably just kills that opponent straight up.

Take the Bait keeps you safe from combat damage for the turn and bestows a generous second combat phase to an attacking opponent. If you can time this right against someone with a scary enough board, they might just end up wiping out all your other opponents that turn.

Windshaper Planetar can rearrange attackers in a way that’s ideal for you, and Angel of the Dire Hour can obliterate all tapped creatures if you’re not happy with the way they’re attacking.

Don't Move’s a clever board wipe that destroys all tapped creatures, albeit at sorcery speed. It also soft-prevents attacks for another turn cycle, or allows you to goad creatures and send them to their deaths.

The New Blood

First is Magda, the Hoardmaster. I was already on the hunt for Treasure generation to add to this deck for some much-needed Boros ramp, and landed on Magda, Brazen Outlaw as well as this new version. Committing a crime should be fairly easy, considering your commander targets a creature whenever it attacks, and your goading auras also commit crimes. Magda 2.0 should give you a steady stream of Treasures, and you could also make some 4/4 Scorpion Dragons if you need to!

This deck’s already interested in Beast Within-style removal, hence the inclusion of Generous Gift and the new Bovine Intervention (great name). These let you pop important permanents at instant speed and leave behind a body you can suspect and goad with Nelly. I swear to you all, the Ox token did it!

Requisition Raid also looks neat for combat-oriented decks. I usually run at least one card like Wear / Tear or Crush Contraband in my casual decks, something that can remove multiple non-creature permanents. This new spree card is a sorcery, but for 3 mana you can snipe two permanents, and paying 1 more mana puts a +1/+1 counter on all your creatures. If you want to get really tricksy, you can put counters on another target player’s creatures instead!

Play Ball, Get Rewarded

Remember, Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser has a soft side, granting players cards as long as they’re not hitting you. You can goad creatures and force the action, but you can also play a number of other incentives that naturally persuade your opponents to beat each other up anyway.

Curse of Opulence and Curse of Hospitality provide ramp and card draw, respectively, to anyone attacking the cursed player.

Duelist's Heritage and Roar of Resistance can pump up opposing attackers at your discretion and also work perfectly fine with your own attackers.

Jailbreak and Your Temple Is Under Attack play into the light political side of the deck, but make sure you’ve fostered some good will with someone at the table before you fire these off.

Combat Calligrapher, Agitator Ant, and Skyboon Evangelist also help to grow your opponents’ boards and make it more likely they can take each other out.

The Mana Base

The majority of your mana base is the standard Boros fare, with an emphasis on untapped dual lands and a few utility lands. Boros needs the mana acceleration where possible, so I’m running Temple of the False God and Myriad Landscape. I find Landscape plays very well in reactive decks like this since it gives you something productive to do with your mana if you don’t end up needing to cast an instant on your opponents’ turns.

Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire and Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep give you small amounts of utility in your mana base, and both influence combat in different ways. Shinka’s a bit cutesy, since the primary use is giving your opponents’ goaded legends first strike. That can be especially useful on suspected creatures, since they’ll need to be double blocked if blocked at all.

Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion’s also here mostly to be cheeky. It presents opportunities to make a lethal threat out of a goaded attacker.

Maze of Ith is present in case you want to play politics, though it’s also useful in the 1-on-1 scenario where your goad effects can backfire. It does hurt that this doesn’t tap for mana, though.

Forbidden Orchard is also maybe a bit too cute for its own good. It hands out 1/1s to your opponents with the intention of giving them extra fodder for a big Taunt from the Rampart. It’s also pretty sinister with Repercussion.

Aside from lands, you have five 1- or 2-drop mana rocks, as well as Laser Screwdriver at 3 mana, mostly because it says the word goad on it.

Your mana generation is rounded out with some Treasure makers, and a few cards like Deep Gnome Terramancer and Land Tax to make hitting land drops smoother for your Boros deck.

The Strategy

This is a goad deck through-and-through, which means your primary gameplan is using your opponents’ creatures against one another. That’s not to say you can’t put the beatdown on someone yourself, just that you’d rather see your enemies scrapping.

As with just about any deck, your early turns are all about set-up. Ideally you can get at least one piece of acceleration into play, whether that be a mana rock, a Treasure generator like Magda, Brazen Outlaw, or a ramp trigger from Knight of the White Orchid or Loyal Warhound. Most of the cheap creatures in this deck are dedicated to making mana.

From there, you want to deploy as many of your enchantments as you can. As long as your opponents are still in the set-up phase, you can spend your turns casting cards like Duelist's Heritage and Roar of Resistance to prepare for the more combat-oriented turns. Basically, as soon as an actual threat hits the battlefield, it’s time to cast Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser or another goad effect and start watching life totals plummet.

Also be on the lookout for opportunities to goad annoying utility creatures. If an opponent leads off with an early Esper Sentinel, see if you can goad it into your other opponents’ blockers; odds are they’ll want it off the table, too.

Once you hit the mid-game and combat’s happening pretty regularly each turn, you want to make sure to keep yourself protected. Nelly tends to do a good job of keeping creatures from coming your way, but it doesn’t hurt to have a spell like Settle the Wreckage or Windshaper Planetar at the ready.

If you manage to maneuver the game into a position where it’s just you vs. one other opponent, your deck takes on a new role entirely. Goading is no longer effective in this position, so it’s time to go on the offense and hit as hard and fast as possible. Your punisher effects like Comeuppance come in quite handy at this point.

There’s also something you need to be thinking about from the very start of the game. A goad-based strategy is only as good as the creatures your opponents are playing. Sometimes you’ll be paired up against sacrifice-heavy decks or spellslinger commanders that either don’t play to the board much or have ways to circumvent being goaded. If you have a clear indication that you’re playing against a deck like this, that would be the player I focus all my early attention on. Your curses should enchant that player, and you should be goading the other players’ creatures as much as possible to try and get that one specific player dead. It might seem mean-spirited, but they’re kind of at odds with how your deck needs to operate to win.

Combos and Interactions

There aren’t any infinite combos, but there’s one very strong 2-card combo to be aware of and tons of niche interactions worth mentioning.

Your potent 2-card combo is Repercussion and Blasphemous Act. With the enchantment in play, Blasphemous Act deals 13 damage to each player for each creature they control, which usually ends the game. Be warned though, that includes you! These are individually powerful cards for the deck, they just so happen to combine into a game-ending combo. Bear in mind most players will expect something like this when you resolve Repercussion.

Now for niche combos. You’re playing a couple Treasure-makers plus Magda, Brazen Outlaw. The 5-Treasure text won’t matter very often, but you do have Blast-Furnace Hellkite in your deck, which is a hell of a creature to put into play at flash speed, mid-combat.

Agrus Kos, Spirit of Justice and Nelly are a match made in heaven. Nelly can suspect a creature, after which Agrus Kos can exile it. Two clunky 4-drops working in perfect harmony. Notably, Convenient Target is an additional repeatable way to keep suspecting creatures.

War's Toll can be a complete nightmare for some decks to work around. It’s generally very good against control decks, since it forces them to tap all their mana if they want to cast a counterspell or something along those lines. This red enchantment’s also a gnarly combo with goad. Since goad forces an attack to happen, your opponent can’t just opt out, and must instead attack with all their creatures thanks to War’s Toll.

Let’s talk about goad for just a moment. Goad forces creatures to attack someone other than you if possible. If you’re the only person they can attack, that means they must attack you instead. Goad effects drop off significantly in a 1-on-1 situation, so you should always be thinking about what your plan is once it’s down to just you and one other opponent.

Goad also interacts strangely with effects like Ghostly Prison. As a rule in Magic, you can’t be forced to pay a tax effect like the one on Ghostly Prison. This means if you goad a creature, and their only other opponent besides you controls Ghostly Prison, they don’t have to attack that player at all. However, if they choose not to, they must attack you instead.

Rule 0 Violations

The only thing I’d feel compelled to mention in a Rule 0 conversation is the existence of a 2-card wincon in the deck. Repercussion plus Blasphemous Act is a known combo, but it takes some maneuvering to ensure you don’t die to it. I wouldn’t even feel compelled to tell my opponents what those two cards are, as long as they’re aware there’s an “end-game” button in my deck.

The only other card I could see getting some heat is Slicer, Hired Muscle, a card that can turbo-kill the table if left unchecked. It’s not the commander though, so it’s less of a problem here than it usually is.

Quick sidenote: As a courtesy to your pods, I recommend bringing a way to mark suspected creatures, since that’s something that needs to be tracked in-game. You can use the suspected tokens that came in Karlov Manor pre-release kits, but I’d suggest using Skittles (with permission), then eating them as those creatures leave the battlefield.

Budget Options

The decklist I’ve presented is very casual and forgoes almost all the big-name Commander staples you’d expect for these colors. Still, you can always find budget adjustments in both directions, whether you want to make it cheaper or invest more into it.

Let’s talk about lowering the price first. Bothersome Quasit’s over $10 (apparently?), and Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer’s around $7. Both can be replaced by additional goad auras like Acquired Mutation and The Sound of Drums for less than $1 combined.

Don't Move is just over $5 and somewhat hard to find. Sunblast Angel fits the deck well enough to replace it, or you might try a political sweeper like Promise of Loyalty or Fortunate Few. Tragic Arrogance is basically always great, too.

Land Tax is the most expensive card in the deck, but you could sub it out for another way to consistently hit your land drops. Something like Verge Rangers should work just fine.

For more expensive options, you have access to all the usual cards that make Boros () decks better. Dockside Extortionist, Esper Sentinel, Deflecting Swat, Teferi's Protection, and so on. Trust me, if you want to make the deck better, the tools are there to do it.

The One Ring providing protection for a turn can help in that dreaded 1-on-1 situation.

Smothering Tithe and fast mana like Mana Crypt and Ancient Tomb will help this deck out a significant amount at the expense of putting it in a different power bracket altogether. That choice is completely up to you, but I was aiming this deck for a mid-tier power level myself.

Other Builds

Whoa, Nelly! You don’t have to go all in on goad with this commander, even though Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser maintains some amount of that element of the deck regardless.

You could lean heavily into the political aspects of this commander, with some more wheeling and dealing at your disposal. I touched on this briefly with cards like Your Temple Is Under Attack, Jailbreak, and Curse of Hospitality, but you could step it up a notch. Wedding Ring would be a strong fit for this alternative style of deck, as would cards like Cut a Deal. What you don’t want to do is play universal group hug cards that help everyone equally. You want control over who you’re helping and when, so this isn’t the deck for Howling Mine and friends.

You can also get much more aggressive. You are a Boros () deck, after all. Take out a bunch of the cheeky top-end stuff, load up on aggressive plays, and use your commander to remove blockers and throw around menace. Nelly functions as your card draw for this style of deck, so you can be more comfortable emptying your hand out early. Maybe don’t play Forbidden Orchard if you’re going to go this route.

Commanding Conclusion

Convenient Target | Illustration by Gaboleps

Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuser’s a funny little Boros () card. It’s not exactly unique, given how many goad commanders we’ve seen over the last few years, but the suspected angle adds just the right twist to make it interesting. If nothing else, I like the idea of a detective who just goes around shouting and accusing anyone and everyone of murder. Can you imagine Nelly pointing at a Plant token and suspecting it of murder? Well, I guess the Karlov Manor murderer was technically a plant….

I’m always in the market for a Boros commander that does something besides just attacking. Nelly kind of skirts that, insofar as it’s making your opponents attack. It’s a fun approach to the color pair either way. How’s Nelly been working out for you? Any interesting tech you want to share? Let me know in the Draftsim Discord or on Twitter/X.

As always, thanks for making Draftsim your #1 stop for all things Magic!