Riveteer Rampage is one of five new preconstructed Commander decks released alongside Streets of New Capenna. This red, black, and green deck focuses on a new ability called blitz. Although a blitzed creature dies at the end of your turn, in exchange, it gains haste and draws a card when it dies.
This deck is playable directly out of the box. But there are key cards that seriously improve the deck. This guide will break down the best upgrades for Riveteer Rampage.
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Henzie “Toolbox” Torre
If you like the blitz mechanic, then good news, Henzie gives blitz to every creature with a mana value of 4 or greater. This slightly skews the mana curve of your deck toward the higher side, but Henzie has another ability that reduces the blitz costs of your creatures for each time you cast Henzie.
Riveteer Rampage plays a fusion of big creatures with powerful death triggers, sacrifice synergies, and reanimation spells.
Powerful Death Triggers
The legendary Dragon Spirits from Kamigawa are known for their powerful abilities that trigger when they die. When Junji dies, it can reanimate previously blitzed creatures from your graveyard. And Kokusho steals a chunk of each opponent’s life total when it dies.
Things won’t turn out too well for you if you pack your deck full of 5+ mana spells. It is vital to include some four-mana creatures right on the border of Henzie’s blitz-giving ability, to maintain a low mana curve. Vindictive Lich is a perfect example. It’s four mana, but Henzie can reduce it to as little as one mana. And when it dies, your opponents will face a variety of backbreaking abilities.
Protean Hulk Combos
Protean Hulk is known as a combo starter. But it has to die in order to do anything. With Blitz, it will die in your endstep and you can immediately perform an infinite damage combo by finding the following cards:
If Lesser Masticore dies, persist lets it comes back into play with a -1/-1 counter if it didn’t already have one. But with Melira in play, creatures can’t have -1/-1 counters. So, if Lesser Masticore would come back into play via persist, it does so without the counter, effectively reseting its persist death trigger.
Throw in a sacrifice outlet like Viscera Seer and you can infinitely sacrifice and return Lesser Masticore to play. The final piece of the combo is Disciple of the Vault, which will damage an opponent for every time your perform this loop, resulting in infinite damage.
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Reanimation
Because blitz makes you sacrifice your creature at the end of the turn, and because Henzie specifically plays big creatures and puts them in the graveyard, it makes sense to play a few reanimation spells to bring your creatures back once they die.
Phyrexian Delver and Puppeteer Clique are reanimation spells in creature-form, which means you can blitz them into play with Henzie at a reduced mana cost. Puppeteer Clique is especially good at this because it has persist. So, when it would die at the end of turn because of blitz, it returns to play and reanimates another creature.
Because Riveteer Rampage puts a lot of creatures in the graveyard over the course of a game, it is important to include some mass-reanimation spells like Living Death to bring everything back.
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Sacrifice Synergies
Since blitzed creatures are sacrificed at the end of the turn, you can capitalize this by playing a variety of sacfrice synergies, or killing your own creatures for benefit.
Sacrifice Payoffs
Whenever one of your blitzed creatures is sacrificed, Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact will make all of your opponents sacrifice one of their own creatures. And if you enchant one of you blitzed creatures with Journey to Eternity, when it dies at the end of your turn, the Aura will transform into Atzal, Cave of Eternity, a land that can reanimate your sacrificed creatures.
Sacrificing Outlets
If you’re going to sacrifice your blitzed creatures at the end of the turn, you can sacrifice them before then to gain additional benefits. Phyrexian Tower can sacrifice a creature to make extra mana. You can use Goblin Bombardment to sacrifice your creatures and kill opposing creatures. And Birthing Pod sacrifices creatures to tutor your deck for even bigger creatures, like turning Puppeteer Clique into Protean Hulk.
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Upgrade Your Riveteer Rampage Mana Base
Preconstructed Commander decks generally have terrible mana bases. Fetch lands like Wooded Foothills and shock lands like Overgrown Tomb are useful in any Commander deck. But there are a bunch of dual-colored lands that help ensure you have access to all the colored mana you need.
Here are a few more lands to add to Riveteers Rampage:
- Rootbound Crag | Buy At TCGPlayer
- Deathcap Glade | Buy At TCGPlayer
- Haunted Ridge | Buy At TCGPlayer
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Best Upgrades From New Capenna
Blitz is a brand new mechanic from Streets of New Capenna, so there is a lot of support for Henzie and Riveteer Rampage within the main set. Here are a few cards from the main set that are worthwhile inclusions in the Riveteer Rampage deck.
Riveteer Ascendancy
Riveteers Ascendancy can reanimate something once per turn, triggering whenever you sacrifice a creature. This works hand-in-hand with blitzed creatures which are sacrificed at the end of the turn. And with a sacrifice outlet such as Viscera Seer, you can even trigger Riveteer Ascendancy on your opponents’ turns.
Jaxis, the Troublemaker
Jaxis’s ability is reminiscent of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker in that it makes a temporary copy of a creature you control. But when that creature dies, you draw a card. This works perfectly with the powerful death triggers of creatures in Riveteer Rampage.
You can even use Jaxis’s ability to target legendary creatures like Junji, the Midnight Sky and Kokusho, the Evening Star. They’ll die to the “legend rule”, immediately drawing you a card and triggering their own abilities.
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Ziatora, the Incinorator
In your end step, before a blitzed creature kills itself, Ziatora can sacrifice it to its own ability. In doing so, the Demon Dragon will deal damage to any target and create three Treasure tokens. And you still get to draw a card when the blitzed creature dies.
Ognis
All blitzed creatures have haste. With Ognis on the battlefield, every time you attack with a blitzed creature you’ll generate a Treasure.
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