The Infamous Cruelclaw Commander Deck Guide

The Infamous Cruelclaw | Illustration by Christina Kraus

I’ve done it! I’ve done it! I’ve solved Magic: The Gathering!

The problem all along was paying mana to cast spells! The solution was so simple: What if we stopped paying mana for them? Every other trading card game has figured out this one easy trick to start winning your Commander games!

I'd like to introduce you to The Infamous Cruelclaw. This weaselly little nuisance is the solution to all your problems. I’m serious. Get ready to never lose a game again. All it takes is about $400.

Let’s dig in!

The Deck

Archon of Cruelty | Illustration by Andrew Mar

This The Infamous Cruelclaw Commander deck wants to capitalize on your commander’s free casts whenever it deals combat damage to an opponent. Stack the top of your deck with tutors and scry effects, then swing in for as many instances of combat damage as you can. With luck, you’ll get enough double-strike damage and extra combats to cast a number of huge Eldrazi and powerful sorceries to obliterate your opponents for free!

All it takes is a little discard, which you can play around with by using madness cards and recursion.

The Commander: The Infamous Cruelclaw

Bloomburrow‘s The Infamous Cruelclaw is a 3/3 weasel mercenary for . This Rakdos commander‘s got menace to give it great evasion in the early game, which in turn helps it connect with an opponent as soon as possible – and start generating free casts off the top of your library.

With Cruelclaw being so cheap, you want to cast it from your command zone as early as turn 3. The first few hits from Cruelclaw rely mostly on your own luck to hit exciting and game-ending spells, but once you have a Crystal Ball or Sensei's Divining Top on the field, you’ll have this game wrapped up.

Stealing Bases and Stacking the Deck

Not really; you should always shuffle your deck sufficiently before the game begins. In-game, though, using scry effects to set up the top of your library isn’t just allowed; it’s encouraged!

The Infamous Cruelclaw’s ability to cast a free spell from the top of your library is great, and it’s even better if you can choose the spell you’re getting. In lieu of the traditional Demonic Tutor and Diabolic Tutor, I’m favoring tutors that put the card on top of your library. Vampiric Tutor, Insatiable Avarice, and Scheming Symmetry fetch whatever spell you’re looking for and put it on top for cheap.

In addition, you can use Crystal Ball and Sensei's Divining Top to filter the top cards of your library away to make sure you don’t waste your free cast on a Burnished Hart.

I don’t think enough people are playing Brainstone. Access to Brainstorm outside of blue is very good, and I don’t care that it’s three times as much mana to activate.

Bolas's Citadel, in addition to being an insanely valuable card, also helps you filter away the basic lands and cheap spells on top of your library so you can line up your Emrakul, the World Anew. Baneful Omen works similarly, revealing the top card of your library, causing some life loss to your foes, and giving you a peek at the top of your deck.

Remember if you can scry or otherwise peek at the top of your library, you can use a fetch land to shuffle away cards you don't want and try to hit something better! Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse stay winning as the cheapest re-shufflers you can get!

Extra Damage

You’re getting one free spell whenever The Infamous Cruelclaw connects with an opponent, but you can always do more. Since your commander’s ability triggers whenever it deals combat damage to a player, you can get two triggers from Cruelclaw for first strike and normal combat damage. This makes it the perfect target for Embercleave and Lizard Blades, and it makes your Berserkers' Onslaught just that much better. Fireshrieker is a cheap classic that makes for some extra insurance that you can put some double strike on the board. Should you end up with one too many double strike sources, don’t worry! These equipment go great with a Desolation Twin or two, as well!

Double strike is one way to get some extra combat damage triggers, but you can also always just do some extra combats, period. Bloodthirster and Aggravated Assault are brutal additional combat cards. Don’t be afraid of Bloodthirster’s high mana value; shoot to cast it off the top.

Cruelclaw’s ERA

The Infamous Cruelclaw pitches cards from your hand in exchange for free spells. What’s Cruelclaw’s Earned Run Average per game? Where does its fastball top out at? How’s its changeup looking? (editor’s note: Forget that. What’s Cruelclaw’s FIP, BABIP, and Stuff+?).

The madness ability lets you cast a card whenever you would discard it. Terminal Agony is Crueclaw’s fastball and From Under the Floorboards is its changeup, one that gets increasingly better as you have more mana available to dump into it.

You can force down Cruelclaw’s ERA by combining your discarded cards with some triggered effects. Bone Miser has a lot of utility, but note that any mana added as a part of Cruelclaw’s damage trigger drains from your pool at the end of combat. Archfiend of Ifnir is great for wiping an opponent’s token-heavy board.

Just in case, I’m running a handful of flashback spells that you can cast from the graveyard after you’ve discarded them. Seize the Day and Army of the Damned are your most exciting flashback spells, but Lidless Gaze, Faithless Looting, and Electric Revelation are all useful for generating card advantage.

Power Hitters

Now for the fun part. Your payoffs for dealing combat damage with The Infamous Cruelclaw make up most of this deck, and with good reason. You want multiple huge threats hitting the board each turn if you can help it.

I have a few broad categories of big spells you should look to cast for free in this Commander deck. The first and most exciting are all four Eldrazi battlecruisers. Kozilek, the Great Distortion and Emrakul, the World Anew are game-ending if they stick to the field, and they can usually pull you ahead enough in value that even if they die, the rest of the pod has no hope of catching you. I really like Kozilek in this deck since it refills your hand after you’ve discarded most of it for free creatures, and then has its own discard outlet to continue getting value off your Bone Miser and the like.

Also present are two excellent beaters in the form of It That Betrays and Desolation Twin. There are quite a few sleeper cards in this deck that have sacrificial effects; cards like Rakdos, Patron of Chaos and Archon of Cruelty synergize very well with It That Betrays.

Shard of the Nightbringer and Keeper of Secrets both hail from the Warhammer 40k Commander decks. The former is just another huge 8/8 flying threat, while the latter is a huge threat that turns the rest of your free spells into a ton of direct damage.

Prosper, Tome-Bound and Chainer, Nightmare Adept both synergize with casting spells from exile, as well. Prosper does some light ramping, while Chainer is mostly here as some much-needed creature recursion (its haste effect won’t often come into play unless you’ve got another combat step coming after Cruelclaw’s dealt its damage).

A lot of deck builders like to focus on big, exciting creatures for these sorts of decks. While I’m also a Timmy at heart, I think the community at large tends to neglect some of the more exciting nonpermanent spells available to this archetype. For example, casting Rise of the Eldrazi, From Under the Floorboards, Rise of the Dark Realms, or Breach the Multiverse for free potentially puts more power on your board than simply casting Bloodthirster for free does.

The Mana Base

I’m running just 35 lands in this The Infamous Cruelclaw deck’s mana base. That's a little low for a deck without access to green-level ramping, so I’ve doubled down on 2-mana ramp and mana rocks to make sure you can cast Cruelclaw and stick Swiftfoot Boots on it by turn 4 at the latest. This means not only Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, but also the whole suite of Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone, Rakdos Signet and Talisman of Indulgence.

There are a few utility lands I want to call out, as well. Casting your commander with Arena of Glory helps guarantee you’ll get a free spell the turn it comes down, and Shizo, Death's Storehouse helps Cruelclaw get around nonblack blockers. Rogue's Passage works similarly by making your weasel unblockable.

Finally, don’t forget you can use Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, and Maestros Theater to shuffle your library when you need to hit something besides the Solemn Simulacrum you see on top.

The Strategy

Like many a Rakdos () deck before it, this The Infamous Cruelclaw deck is all about getting into combat quickly and staying there. Broadly, you want to cast your commander as soon as possible and begin casting spells for free. You’ll cascade (not the mechanic) into more damage and more combats as you hit spells like Berserkers' Onslaught or Bloodthirster, keeping your weasel-shaped ball rolling until none can stand before you.

Paramount to your success is keeping an opening hand that lets you cast The Infamous Cruelclaw. If you can ramp on both turn 1 and 2, you could see your Kozilek, the Great Distortion as early as turn 3!

I repeat: huge Eldrazi, turn 3!!

Once Cruelclaw’s on the field, your next priority is to tutor up whatever you need to get extra damage out of it each turn. Whether that’s Berserkers' Onslaught or Aggravated Assault, Cruelclaw gets exponentially better once you can Insatiable Avarice for whatever card you need. If you see an opening, you can even grab Blightsteel Colossus and start removing players immediately.

Ideally, you’ve got this entire set-up on the board by turn 4 or 5. From then on, it’s a game of turn ‘em sideways until you’ve won. Use any additional tutors you find to grab Kozilek or Emrakul or Bloodthirster and just start obliterating your foes. There’s no special combo or big-brained interaction to worry about here. Just start swinging!

If the game goes long, perhaps because you’ve suffered one or two board wipes and lost all the progress you made on your free spells, you can always bank on a Rise of the Dark Realms to reconstitute your creatures (along with everyone else’s) to swing in for big damage.

Combos and Interactions

There are zero infinite combos in this deck! You should be proud to run a deck so traditional in this day and age of oppressive non-deterministic interactions and 25-minute turns.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Since there’s no infinite combos and this deck is resoundingly focused around the combat phase, I don’t foresee any Rule 0 problems arising from this The Infamous Cruelclaw Commander deck.

Budget Options

Yowch! This deck clocks in at just under $400. I guess that’s what running a ton of legendary Eldrazi does. Let’s look at some options for bringing that price down.

Vampiric Tutor is amazing, letting you tutor up a card at instant speed for Cruelclaw to hit… but it’s also about $40. While it might reduce the consistency of this EDH deck overall, you could just as easily drop in a Cruel Tutor for a few bucks less.

Another huge chunk of the actual dollar cost to build this deck comes from Blightsteel Colossus and Sensei's Divining Top. The Colossus is a staple game-ender in Commander and beyond, representing an insta-kill if it connects with a player. That said, its cousin Darksteel Colossus is still a very powerful and hard-to-remove creature for a fraction of the price.

Cutting Sensei’s Top is a lot harder on your strategy. To downgrade this repeatable filter effect, it could be worth it to just drop a Darksteel Pendant into the deck list instead.

Other Builds

The Infamous Cruelclaw really incentivizes you to manipulate the top card of your library to get the most valuable spells for free, but that’s not the only way you can build it. Despite the distinctive lack of weasel cards (there’s only one other weasel creature, and it’s not even in Cruelclaw’s colors), a completely weasels deck is possible if you build around the black and red changelings and focus on running out a Conspiracy. Cruelclaw won’t necessarily synergize with those weasels, but it still sounds gratifying to cast something like Door of Destinies and declare “weasels!”

Commanding Conclusion

Kozilek, the Great Distortion | Illustration by Aleksi Briclot

The Infamous Cruelclaw represents the latest exile-and-cast archetype that’s emerged around black and red in recent years. Ever since the printing of Act on Impulse, Magic players around the globe have been hankering for more and better ways to cast cards from exile. I’m a firm believer that Cruelclaw may be the best commander yet for such a strategy.

What do you think? Is The Infamous Cruelclaw one of the best Rakdos commanders in recent years? What are your favorite ways to stack the top of your library? What are the best spells to cast for free? Let me know in the comments, or over on Draftsim's Twitter/X.

Thanks for reading! Your opponents will never weasel their way out of this one!