Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ Commander Deck Guide

Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ | Illustrated by Elizabeth Peiró

Yeah that’s right, it’s record-spinning time! Representing from the Universes Beyond Fallout Commander decks we’ve got Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ with the sickest beats this side of post-apocalyptic America.

Our resident disc jockey’s bringing you some enchanting tunes, courtesy of auras the whole dance floor can get down with. With Three Dog and a few auras in play, you’re a record scratch away from overloading that “enchant creature” text into “enchant everything,” beating your opponents down to the dulcet sound of a bunch of raving, hyped-up creatures. Pump up the jams? More like pump ‘em up and JAM!

Enough talk, let’s spit it!

The Deck

Katilda's Rising Dawn | Illustrated by Manuel Castañón

For all its bells and whistles, this is a aura deck at heart. I’m aiming for mid-power casual, with some decent format staples, but nothing inherently broken or super salty. It won’t hang with the cEDH crowd, but that’s not really my crowd to begin with.

The Commander: Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ

Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ is here to speak the truth and get the party bumping. It’s a Boros aura commander that takes a single aura and duplicates it for each other attacker you control. There are obviously extra steps involved—Three Dog has to be enchanted, the recipients have to be attacking, and there’s a small mana investment. That means you want to attack with as many creatures as possible, then pop an aura for some sort of huge effect across your board.

Full disclosure, I did my Fallout Three Dog character research after writing the main portion of this deck guide. It seems like his character is more of a political activist radio host figure than a full on funky-fresh DJ, but I’ve already used all the DJ puns and I’m not changing them now.

That being said, I love the way his card captures his character. Three Dog spreads a message to his listeners (giving them auras), does so through music and radio speech (the auras themselves), and encourages listeners to rise up and confront the oppressive forces of the wastelands (only affects attacking creatures). It’s an awesome blend of flavor and function resulting in a cool top-down design that does right by the Fallout character and produces an awesome MTG commander.

The Greatest Hits: The Auras

Auras are the lifeblood of the deck, and you’ll be slamming as many of these on Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ as humanly possible.

First up, the sheer power auras that are here just to push damage. You’ve got your mainstays like Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters, which go from baseline good to certifiably degenerate when you create a bunch of copies. Remember, each copy counts all the other copies too. Katilda's Rising Dawn does a good back-up impression.

A couple of protection auras help us in combat and against certain types of removal. Spirit Mantle helps slip past blockers, and Hyena Umbra gives us some wrath protection. Squee's Embrace gives a marginal bonus, but also rebuys all your non-token creatures when they die. Removing the protection ability from your commander can be awkward but protecting a built-up board is usually better than protecting just your commander.

The tag-team of Ordeal of Purphoros and Ordeal of Heliod can do some cute things. Transferring these from Three Dog to your other creatures won’t cause their attack trigger to happen right away, but it’ll set them up to grow over time. Note that Ordeals trigger when they’re sacrificed period, not just when the counters cause them to be sacrificed, so sacing one to Three Dog triggers those abilities.

Etali's Favor is an incredible aura to copy. With a wide enough board, it’s possible to discover every 1-3 mana value spell left in your deck, and the trample’s a worthy bonus. Dragon Mantle is another pure card-draw aura.

We have a couple removal auras here. Galvanic Arc costing 3 mana for 3 damage at sorcery speed is pretty janky, but sac this with something like four attackers on board and that’s 12 additional damage. With a wide enough board this can just finish players off. Iroas's Blessing does a good job of clearing out blockers and pumping our board.

Convenient Target and Sticky Fingers provide extra evasion via menace along with a few bonus perks. The Treasure from Sticky Fingers can really pop off, and the aura sets you up for mass card draw down the line. You have to be a little more careful with Convenient Target since it removes your ability to block. However, it’s an aura you can sac to Three Dog then recur to cast again.

We have several auras that also create creatures on ETB. They’re all generally under-powered on their own but end up being incredible when copied three or four times. Each one basically doubles your board presence while pumping your creatures mid-combat. These include: Cartouche of Solidarity, Squire's Devotion, Nurturing Presence and Knightly Valor. Nurturing Presence in particular can push a ton of damage mid-combat, since each enchanted creature will get +1/+1 for each Spirit entering the battlefield from those auras.

Finally, we have some non-enchantment cards that produce auras. There’s Eidolon of Countless Battles and Nyxborn Rollicker as bestow creatures. Spellbook Vendor, Charming Scoundrel, and Return Triumphant create Role tokens, with Return being a reason to let Three Dog go to the graveyard if it dies. And rounding this out we have a couple disturb cards attached to the back half of Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr and Twinblade Geist.

The Audience: The Creatures

Auras are only as good as your ability to stick them to creatures, so let’s see who’s jamming out with us here.

Three Dog scales with the number of creatures we control, so we have multi-body cards like Rally at the Hornburg, Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, and Legion Warboss. Note that these all produce bodies that attack right away, hastening our ability to use Three Dog effectively. Archon of Sun's Grace is especially potent in this deck.

We have quite a few creatures that bring an aura with them but aren’t auras themselves. Sun Titan, Brotherhood Outcast, Heliod's Pilgrim, Kellan, the Fae-Blooded, and Storm Herald all add an aura to your hand or battlefield.

Ramp is scarce in Boros decks. To compensate, we have a few cost reduction creatures: Transcendent Envoy, Hero of Iroas, and Starfield Mystic. Charming Scoundrel and Codsworth, Handy Helper give us some conditional ramp. Even better, all of these are eligible attackers that can pick up auras from Three Dog.

Card advantage shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Between Sram, Senior Edificer, Kor Spiritdancer, Armory Paladin, and Wyleth, Soul of Steel, we should maintain a stacked hand before accounting for any Three Dog shenanigans. Witch's Mark is a neat Thrill of Possibility variant that gives us flood protection and puts a Wicked Role on a creature.

Sram's Expertise is a fun one, since it produces three tokens, then lets you freeroll an aura into play.

The B-Sides: “Alternative Commanders”

Support pieces are important for a deck that’s built around what the commander does, but we have a number of “back-up commanders” at the ready in the off chance Three Dog calls in sick for the day.

Wyleth, Soul of Steel and Kor Spiritdancer are great recipients for auras. If the go-wide approach isn’t working out (maybe some sicko stuck Archfiend of Depravity), you can change plans and go tall instead. If going wide is working out but Three Dog’s locked down or too expensive, Kellan, the Fae-Blooded is a great place to stick auras as well.

Feather, Radiant Arbiter is a mana-hungry alternative to Three Dog, but it bounces auras around all the same, just for a -mana premium per target. Feather’s also just an amazing body as a 4/3 lifelinking flier that wears auras quite well.

The Light Show: Supporting Effects

The last major category here is interaction and lesser-known cards worth talking about.

Our point-and-click removal includes Swords to Plowshares, Chaos Warp, and a few auras that function like removal. Ossification is a nice addition since it’s a catch-all removal spell Heliod's Pilgrim or Kellan, the Fae-Blooded can tutor. Just be careful, because it’s also susceptible to enchantment removal.

Forgeborn Oreads is a neat little card that can send out a flurry of pings once we start producing aura copies.

We’re running Heliod's Intervention as a catch-all to problematic permanents, especially things like Ghostly Prison. We’re admittedly light on Disenchant effects in general, so you could add Mortal Obstinacy and Flamespeaker's Will to up these effects if you’d like.

We’re ostensibly a creature deck, so it doesn’t make too much sense to go overboard on wraths. We’re running Blasphemous Act as our emergency catch-all reset button, as well as Winds of Rath as a synergy-driven wrath. Er, rath.

However, we are ostensibly a creature deck, so we need some board protection. Teferi's Protection doesn’t really need explanation, but there’s also Boros Charm and Clever Concealment to brush off different types of board wipes. Spreading out a Hyena Umbra with Three Dog also nudges into this category. In all honesty, this deck will have a tough time recovering from a Farewell.

The Mana Base

I’m increasingly an advocate of starting off new decks with a high land count, so we have a full 38 here. That’s high compared to most decks, but I only cut back once I playtest and prove that my deck can operate on less. Remember, we’re not playing very much ramp outside four mana rocks and gimmicky cards like Shiny Impetus and Sticky Fingers.

Pretty much all of the best Boros dual lands are here, with an emphasis on untapped mana sources. There’s no Plateau because I’m not made of money, but your Sacred Foundry, Sunbaked Canyon, Arid Mesa and so on are all accounted for.

Being a 2-color deck means we have room for utility lands. I’m not a huge Reliquary Tower advocate, but it’s pretty safe here, and we actually have some potent card draw engines.

Axgard Armory is slow enough that I don’t really see it being activated often, but it’s a thematic fit for the deck. Hall of Heliod's Generosity similarly rewards us for being in an enchantment-based deck.

Kher Keep and Castle Ardenvale spit out extra tokens, though you won’t activate these often.

And finally, I am a Myriad Landscape and Temple of the False God believer, so I tend to include them in decks that don’t have many ramp options. Fight me Andy, I know you’re reading this.

The Strategy

Aura decks can be tricky to pilot. Auras are a volatile card type since they provide your opponents with easy 2-for-1 opportunities. With that in mind, we should try to stick our auras when our opponents are least likely to interact.

Here’s a general rule of thumb: If your opponents have tons of mana open, build out your board. If the coast seems clear and they're tapped out, go for your auras. Your commander is rather scary, so opponents probably will try to interact and prevent you from going off completely. Pick your spots and try to catch people off guard.

Notably, Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ doesn’t have to attack to trigger its ability. It does have to be enchanted, but this means you can build up a board first, then cast Three Dog, enchant it, and trigger the ability in combat all in one turn. If you developed your board enough, you can go from attacking with a few 1/1s to jamming with a bunch of 7/7s suited up with All That Glitters. What you shouldn’t do is cast Three Dog, play a threatening aura, then just pass the turn. Opponents will retaliate.

Going tall is the back-up plan; going wide and maximizing your commander is priority #1. In instances where opponents are preventing Three Dog from doing its thing, you can instead resort to suiting up one of the “alternative commanders” listed above. You’d be surprised just how much damage a Kor Spiritdancer can push with just a few auras attached to it.

My build is light on removal, so either add more to your own list or be very diligent casting the removal you do have. Consider whether you need to fire off a Chaos Warp on your opponent’s Smothering Tithe right now, or if you should hold it for something that completely bricks your strategy like Blazing Archon or Toxrill, the Corrosive.

Once you’ve established a board and your gameplan’s in motion, protecting your board becomes increasingly relevant. Keep Teferi's Protection or Boros Charm up at all times, because it can be very difficult to rebuild once a deck like this falls under a Farewell or Vanquish the Horde. You should be able to manage a free Clever Concealment most of the time.

Combos and Interactions

There are quite a few interactions to be aware of playing this deck. Some are just stack-ordering quirks, others are strange rules interactions that aren’t immediately apparent.

You might’ve noticed two bestow creatures in the list. Eidolon of Countless Battles is self-explanatory, but Nyxborn Rollicker looks pretty weak. However, it’s kind of interesting in this deck. If you create a token copy of a bestowed permanent, the token you create is just the normal version of that card. That means copying a Nyxborn Rollicker will not create an aura, but rather just make a 1/1 Rollicker token that’s not bestowed to anything.

In other words, if we bestow Three Dog with something and sac that aura, for each other attacking creature we control, we’ll make the base version of whatever bestow creature we sacrificed. That won’t pump our attackers for the turn but it will build out our board, which is huge with Eidolon of Countless Battles.

Also note that auras entering the battlefield without being cast do not require you to declare targets right away. If you reanimate an aura with Sun Titan or Retether, your opponents can interact, but they don’t know which creatures you’re planning to enchant. Once those spells/abilities resolve, the auras simply enter the battlefield attached to the creatures of your choice, with no window to interact in between.

Remember that phasing out a creature enchanted by an aura phases out those auras too! They’ll phase back in still attached to their respective targets. Clever Concealment and Teferi's Protection are leaps and bounds better than a mass blink or indestructible effect for this very reason.

Three Dog triggers on attacks, but so do cards like Rabble Rousing and Adeline, Resplendent Cathar. Three Dog simply affects creatures that are attacking, not creatures that declared an attack. That means anything that enters the battlefield tapped and attacking will receive the aura token copies. Just make sure you stack your triggers right: Resolve anything that makes an attacker first, then resolve Three Dog’s sacrifice trigger.

Rule 0 Violations

Nah, you should be good here, folks. Your deck is “combo-lite” in the sense that it does absurdly powerful things once it gets going, but you’re a disruptable A+B+C deck that needs to balance board presence, token generation, and auras. If you’re absolutely demolishing the table, you probably earned your way there. I’m not going to entertain anyone who’s mad at me playing a deck with Forgeborn Oreads in it.

Tracking this deck in paper requires some forethought. It’s not really a Rule 0 violation, more of an etiquette thing, but it’s one of those decks that makes a bunch of token copies of permanents. If you’ve ever played Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief or Orvar, the All-Form, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Between creature tokens, artifact tokens, and the aura copies you’ll be spreading around, you’re going to end up with a lot of cardboard in play. It’s your responsibility to track that in a way that’s clear to everyone at the table. Don’t expect to use a bunch of face-down basics as placeholder copies; bring something visible and clear to track these! InfiniTokens are amazing for proper visual upkeep.

Budget Options

The deck’s neither cheap nor blisteringly expensive, and it makes good use out of draft chaff commons like Squire's Devotion and Knightly Valor. But as usual, we can adjust the price and power level in both directions.

First off, the budget cuts. Esper Sentinel’s a cool $33, and really good in this deck, but no casual deck needs one, so nix it and save a tank of gas.

Expensive lands like Arid Mesa and Sacred Foundry can be downgraded to basic lands. I would caution against too many taplands like Wind-Scarred Crag and such, though work with what you’ve got. You could probably jam 19 Mountains and 19 Plains and be just fine most games.

Teferi's Protection is—checks notes–$42, and Clever Concealment is $13. These are the absolute best protection spells for an aura deck, but $50 is steep. A cheap mass-indestructible effect like Rootborn Defenses does the trick and even synergizes slightly. Just dodge all the Farewells and Sunfalls out there.

Adeline, Resplendent Cathar’s also a little pricey, somewhere around $10. There’s not a direct 1-for-1 swap that’s quite as good, but I’d recommend replacing it with another token-generation effect like Wedding Announcement. Note: After double-checking it turns out Wedding Announcement is even more expensive than Adeline, so, uh… Secure the Wastes or Hanweir Garrison, perhaps?

Now to make the deck even juicier if you’ve got the scratch (get it? DJ. Scratch?). I’d start with your free spells; Flawless Maneuver and Deflecting Swat are amazing with commanders that are trying to live through one big turn. Jeweled Lotus isn’t very good here, but it’s hard for Mana Crypt to not be amazing.

Enlightened Tutor’s always a fine option if you’ve got $20 to spend. I personally like Kellan, the Fae-Blooded and Heliod's Pilgrim as my tutors, since they’re at the appropriate power level I’m intending for the deck.

If you want to make the deck less fun and interesting, you can add that copy of Dockside Extortionist you surely don’t already have in another deck somewhere. That card basically makes every deck better at the expense of ingenuity.

Other Builds

No matter how you build Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ, you’re always going to be an aura deck, but we can go about it a bit differently.

It’s as much a token deck as it is an aura deck, so you could lean more heavily into the token-making elements. I excluded popular set-up cards like Anointed Procession or Warleader's Call, but those are totally viable options. Token doublers/triplers increase your creature token output and the number of aura tokens created by Three Dog.

You can take a combo approach instead, though that’s going to affect the “casualness” of the deck. I’m too small-brained to work it out, but it feels like there’s an infinite involving Breath of Fury and Three Dog. You could also run Splinter Twin, which kinda works with your commander. At that point it’d be pretty easy to run something like Zealous Conscripts and just have a true 2-card infinite with an easily tutorable piece floating around.

If you want to go completely off the deep end, you can build some sort of Mirror Box anti “legendary rule” contraption. Copying Three Dog is kind of sick since the auras you sac from one of them stick to the other, and they can just bounce back and forth between them. Cadric, Soul Kindler seems like a key piece for this sort of build.

And finally, you can do whatever you must to get Eldrazi Conscription in the deck. It’s a bit too expensive for my tastes, but don’t think I didn’t consider it for a minute.

Commanding Conclusion

Forgeborn Oreads | Illustrated by Ryan Yee

I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty excited to build this deck. Normally I just theory craft my Commander deck guides and never actually build or play the decks, but this one’s actually getting sleeved up. It’s such a cool strategy for Boros and I love commanders that give new meaning to otherwise unplayable cards. I mean c’mon, when was the last time you saw Galvanic Arc in a Commander deck?

Are you excited about Three Dog? Or any other Fallout legends? If so, let me know what you’re building or any awesome Three Dog tech you want to share over in the Draftsim Discord.

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