EDH Deck Tech: Raffine, Scheming Seer

When it comes to building commander decks I tend to cling to green. I'll splash it with the other colors but in my playgroup meta if you don't ramp early you're typically fighting a losing battle. I began to think of how I could get out of my comfort zone and make it work. I have been increasingly playing with lower converted mana cost commanders that can get their strategy going early. Many games that I play are ending around turn 5 or 6, sometimes even turn 4. I looked at commanders that were cheap to cast but had a specific theme to build around. That's when I came across Raffine, Scheming Seer.

I immediately like how there were a few different ways to build this deck. You could go for a reanimator strategy, +1/+1 counter strategy, wheels, discard, etc. I ended up going for a cheap flyers aggro deck that puts out several low cost flying creatures to multiply the connive triggers and dig deep into the deck for the cards I need. I want to put early pressure on my opponents to force them to adjust their gameplan, and then cast powerful enchantments to win the game.

The deck was built and I began playing it. Overall it didn't perform very well. Only 2 wins and 8 losses over its first 10 games played. Yikes. I could tell that their was a basis for a successful deck there but it wasn't getting the results I hoped for. I enjoyed piloting the deck so I decided it was time for a re-tooling. I broke the deck down to analyze its flaws and made substantial changes to bolster it.

The deck wasn't putting the pressure on early enough so the first thing I wanted to do was to lower the average converted mana cost (cmc). I noticed that I would often skip casting artifact mana rocks in favor of creatures. I would wish that the dimir signet that I drew was something like cloud of faeries instead. I had a few cards like stitch together and victimize sprinkled in the deck but again wished they were just more cheap flyers. Reanimating a cheap flying creature doesn't feel good. Lastly, higher cmc creatures, and creatures with graveyard abilities didn't seem to have an impact on the games I was playing so they had to go as well. In all, I replaced 20 non-land cards in the deck.

The original version had an average cmc of 2.7. The revised deck was slightly lowered to 2.55. This wasn't a substantial overall decrease but when isolating just the creatures I found that I went from 31 creatures with an average cmc of 3.13 to 36 creatures with an average cmc of 2.22. This what will fuel the deck. I don't need a lot of ramp when I'm drawing into creatures that are this cheap. It's now gone from semi-automatic full auto. Conniving +1/+1 counters onto the correct creatures and putting out finishers like knowledge is power is the a clear path to victory. To round out the deck I made sure to protect myself from board removal with cheap spells like swan song, an offer you can't refuse and flawless maneuver. Put pressure on my opponents, dig deep into the deck, protect, then conquer. I wanted to highlight the following cards to show that cheap flyers can be more than just bodies.

I'm looking forward to piloting this revamped version of Raffine. I hope that this can kickstart a break away from my crutch with green mana. Modern Magic allows for strategies to be built outside of their normal colors. This deck combines aggro, card draw, and mid-range finishers. I will be playing this deck as often as I can over the next few months and will be publishing an update on the decks stats and progress so stay tuned. This is the second deck journey I'm going on so if you want to see the journey of my Myrkul, Lord of Bones deck, check out the deck tech and deck analysis. Below is the updated decklist for Rafinne, scheming seer. To see the original list, click here