Dogmeat, Ever Loyal · Bracket 3 · Naya voltron

SCRAPPY SURVIVORS + Junk tokens.

Upgraded Fallout precon: Naya voltron on a 3/3 dog who is a token engine, not a beater.

Bracket 3 Upgraded

Game Changers 0 / 3

Main deck 100

Author estimate T6 to T8 · untested

At the table

Pod notes →

Keep: Castable Naya mana, cheap ramp or an Aura/Equipment, and a protection/recovery plan.
Develop: Build one useful attacker without spending every card; Junk is future selection, not immediate free mana.
Finish: Count commander damage, trample and blockers; use the second attacker when Dogmeat is taxed.
Watch out: Act kills unprotected Bastion first, then can kill Dogmeat. Exile/sacrifice need different answers.

Guide reviewed 2026-09-18List fda016a1

Rules and list review, not a playtest record. Turn windows and matchup advice are estimates. The list reference covers card quantities and the command zone; card changes require another guide and pod-note review.

Rules basis: Magic Comprehensive Rules, August 19, 2026. Bracket basis: Wizards’ October 2025 update and February 2026 follow-up.

Dogmeat, Ever Loyal is a Junk faucet glued to a recursion ETB.

Full gameplan

The deck pays him off by stacking equipment and auras onto him (or onto a stand-in legendary), attacking, and turning every enchanted-or-equipped attack into a Junk token. The Junk tokens then feed sac outlets like Junk Jet and pad the artifact count under Bronze Guardian's ward layer; Maximus, Knight Apparent earns his slot on the 4/4 trample body and the ETB Equipment search, not on his energy, which has no payoff in this 100. The win is commander damage, on a turn 6 to 8 clock. The grease is Junk.

Opening hands

Seven cards from this build. Commanders start in the command zone. In multiplayer Commander, the first mulligan is free. For later mulligans, draw seven again; once you keep, put one card on the bottom for each mulligan beyond the free one.

KeepShow the seven

Forest
Plains
Command Tower
Wild Growth
Rancor
Arcane Signet
Heroic Intervention

T1 Forest with Wild Growth accelerates; T2 Plains supports Arcane Signet; T3 Tower gives reliable Naya colors for Dogmeat and a choice of Aura or protection. Wild Growth adds green, not a missing red pip.

BorderlineShow the seven

Forest
Plains
Arcane Signet
Rancor
Bastion Protector
Idolized
Path to Exile

T2 Signet fixes red for Dogmeat, but missing land three restricts protection. Keep in a slower pod; avoid exposing Dogmeat and Bastion to a damage wipe as though the pair is safe.

MulliganShow the seven

Mountain
Arcane Signet
Almost Perfect
Mantle of the Ancients
Bronze Guardian
Blasphemous Act
Strong Back

One Mountain cannot cast Signet and supplies none of the needed green/white early action. The wipe does not fix development.

Pace and examples. Turn windows below are author estimates and illustrative sequences, not measured multiplayer results or guarantees. A first opponent eliminated is not a whole-table win. In multiplayer the first mulligan is free; later mulligans follow the London procedure. The commander starts in the command zone, outside the seven-card examples.

Read Dogmeat once.

{R}{G}{W}, 3/3, Legendary Creature, Dog.
ETBShort for 'enters the battlefield'. Any triggered ability that fires when a permanent enters play is an ETB trigger.: mill five, then return an Aura or Equipment card from your graveyard to your hand.
Combat: whenever a creature you control that’s enchanted or equipped attacks, create a Junk token.

Three things to internalize.

The Junk trigger fires on attack, not on combat damage. A chumped attacker still makes a Junk. A blocked attacker still makes a Junk. The deck does not need to connect to generate tokens. It needs to swing with an enchanted or equipped creature.
The trigger keys off enchanted OR equipped. A naked attacker triggers nothing. Dogmeat himself swinging with no kit on him is a 3/3 that makes zero Junk.
Dogmeat is a 3/3 base body. He does not kill on his own. The voltronThe strategy of stacking equipment, auras, and counters onto a single creature (usually the commander) to one-shot opponents through commander damage. kit is mandatory, not optional. Until the kit lands on him, his job is to ETB, recur a sword or an aura, and be the legend that the auras and equipment plug into.

Junk text matters too. {T}, sacrifice this token: exile the top card of your library. You may play that card this turn. Activate only as a sorcery. Impulse drawExile a card, you may play it until end of turn. Treats the exiled card like a one-shot draw., not card draw, gated to your turn, and it eats a tap plus a sac. Float Junk on your end step at your own risk; they want to come down with mana up to cast the flip.

You don’t lock a wincon at the mulligan. You pick at the point of attack based on which kit hit the table.

Win conditions

Wincon 1 Voltron commander damage

Primary line. Stack two to three pieces of kit on Dogmeat, find evasion, swing to 21 over two or three turns. Lightning Greaves on T3 lets Dogmeat attack T4 with haste and shroud.

Wincon 2 Junk snowball into Bronze Guardian plus Maximus

Junk is gas, not a kill. Every enchanted-or-equipped attack makes one. Duchess, Wayward Tavernkeep turns combat damage into quest counters, then spends {1} plus a counter to make another Junk. Veronica, Dissident Scribe mints one the first time you discard a nonland card each turn, and she has three outlets: her own attack loot, Pip-Boy 3000’s Sort Inventory, and Cait, Cage Brawler’s attack loot. Maximus, Knight Apparent can eat Junk with his {1}-plus-a-sac ability, but the {E}{E} it pays out has zero sinks in this 100, so treat that line as incidental; his real value is the 4/4 trample body and the ETB search for a mana-value-2 Equipment. Bronze Guardian sits on top of the Junk pile as a 5-toughness double-strike body whose power equals your artifact count; once the Junk faucet runs, he becomes a credible second-axis beater.

Wincon 3 Stacked-aura solo swing via Idolized

Idolized reads “Whenever this creature attacks alone, it gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of nonland permanents you control.” Not a copy effect. Solo attacks only. At eleven nonland permanents (Sol Ring, Signet, three equipment, three auras, two utility legends, the commander) that is +11/+11 on a solo swing. Plan the turn around attacking alone.

Wincon 4 Strong Back, Vorrac, Rancor trample push

Strong Back is +2/+2 per Aura and Equipment attached to enchanted creature. It counts itself. With Strong Back, Vorrac, and Rancor on Dogmeat, that is three attached pieces = +6/+6 power on a frame that already has trample from Vorrac and Rancor. Strong Back does not grant trample on its own; Vorrac or Rancor does. The closing math is in Line A below.

Bastion Protector is the load-bearing pick.

For {2}{W}, Bastion Protector gives commander creatures you control +2/+2 and indestructible. Dogmeat becomes a 5/5 and survives a simultaneous destroy-all-creatures effect even if Bastion is destroyed in that event. Blasphemous Act is different: it marks 13 damage on both creatures. Bastion dies, Dogmeat loses the bonus and indestructible, and the next state-based-action check kills Dogmeat if that damage is lethal. Protect Bastion with Heroic Intervention, give Dogmeat independent indestructibility through Almost Perfect, or make sure his remaining toughness exceeds 13 before treating Act as safe. Cait on your turn has her own protection. Indestructible does not stop exile, sacrifice, toughness reduction, or Chaos Warp; Generous Gift does destroy, so indestructible stops that destruction.

Replaces Brotherhood Outcast from the precon. Outcast was a 3/2 with a choose-one ETB: return an Aura or Equipment card with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, or put a shield counter on target creature. On-plan for this deck, but a one-shot. Bastion Protector is a permanent stat anthem plus indestructible on every commander creature you control. With Dogmeat as your sole commander, that’s a +2/+2 indestructible Dogmeat. Dogmeat, Constant Companion (the Yoshimaru reskin) sits in the 99, not the command zone, because Dogmeat, Ever Loyal doesn’t have Partner.

Catch. Bastion Protector itself is a 3/3 Human Soldier with no protection. If the table sees the trigger and answers Bastion Protector, the bubble pops. Protect him the same way you protect Dogmeat: land him into open mana for Heroic Intervention, or land him after a wipe when the table is tapped out.

Runner-up: Sylvan Library for raw card advantage. Draw three each turn, keep extras at 4 life apiece. Replaces Abundant Growth. A two-mana card-selection enchantment and the cleanest fix for the deck’s shallow draw count. Pick Bastion Protector first because resilience scales the voltron plan; pick Sylvan Library second because card draw scales every plan.

NayaNaya = red/green/white. The three colors this deck plays in. needs three colors. Decisions.

Snap keep

Two or three lands plus Sol Ring or Arcane Signet plus a 1- or 2-CMC enabler. Enabler means Steelshaper’s Gift, Sylvan Library, Rancor, Sticky Fingers, Pip-Boy 3000, or Lightning Greaves.
Steelshaper’s Gift in hand on the play. One mana, tutor any equipment, including Lightning Greaves. Fixes a borderline hand by itself.
Moira Brown, Guide Author or Puresteel Paladin plus a way to cast on T2. Puresteel is a card draw engine for the rest of the game. Moira draws nothing; she is a quest-counter engine whose Book token grows with every quest counter among your permanents. Note the trade with Duchess, Wayward Tavernkeep: her Junk ability removes a quest counter, so every Junk she mints shrinks the Book by 1/1.
One piece of kit plus a path to {R}{G}{W} on T3, with Dogmeat waiting in the command zone. Cleanest curve the deck has.

Ship back

One-land hand. Three colors, hard mulligan.
All 4-plus CMC. You get run over before T5.
Zero kit plus zero ramp plus zero draw. Dogmeat is always on time from the command zone; casting him into a hand like this is wasted mana.
All interaction, no threats. The deck does not control its way to a win.
No green source by T3. Most of the aura package costs green.

Turn plan

T1 Setup

Land plus Sol Ring or a 1-mana enabler. One land pays for one spell, so pick the best one. Sol Ring is the premium play; its {C}{C} even pays for a same-turn Pip-Boy 3000 cast (the {2} equip waits for a body and spare mana). No Ring, the honest T1 plays are Pip-Boy 3000 for {1} or Wild Growth on the land. Steelshaper’s Gift tutoring Lightning Greaves follows on T2 off the Ring, and Sticky Fingers needs a creature to enchant, so its earliest window is T2 onto Constant Companion or another early body.

T2 Ramp or 2-drop

Second land plus a 2-drop or signet. Cait, Cage Brawler at {R}{G} is the cleanest 2-drop. Arcane Signet bridges to a T3 commander. Constant Companion at {W} is fine as a 1-drop legendary body in the 99; he starts as a 1/1 and gets a +1/+1 counter each time another legendary permanent you control enters, so play him early; legends already on board when he lands give him nothing. He stays in the 99 because Dogmeat, Ever Loyal does not have Partner, so the two cannot share the command zone.

T3 Commander

Cast Dogmeat. ETB mills 5 then recurs an aura or equipment to hand. If hand has zero kit, skip Dogmeat here and drop Sylvan Library, Puresteel Paladin, or Codsworth, Handy Helper instead; Codsworth taps for {W}{W} restricted to Aura and Equipment spells, which is close to unrestricted ramp in a deck with 27 of them, and he puts ward {2} on Dogmeat. A commander on board with nothing to suit him is a clock starting against you.

The mill is upside, not cost. The deck runs Mantle of the Ancients for aura + equipment recursion plus Armiger Unleashed and Buried Ruin for equipment recursion, all of which want the yard seeded.

T4 Equip and swing

Lightning Greaves on Dogmeat first if removal is on the table. Otherwise lead with the highest-impact piece. Pip-Boy 3000 gives a choose-one trigger on each attack: a loot (draw then discard, net zero cards), a +1/+1 counter, or untapping two lands. Utility, not raw card draw. Vorrac Battlehorns gives trample plus can’t-be-blocked-by-more-than-one. The first swing with any kit on him makes a Junk, blocked or not.

T5+ Threat density

Layer auras on top of equipment. Spirit Mantle for protection from creatures (unblockable by creatures, dodges damage from creature sources, dodges every “target creature” effect from a creature source). Rancor for trample plus self-recursion; late game, put Rancor on Three Dog, Galaxy News DJ instead, because his attack trigger can only sacrifice an Aura attached to Three Dog himself. Pay {2}, sacrifice Rancor, and a copy lands on each other attacking creature you control while the real Rancor bounces back to hand. Recasting it is another {G}, so the loop runs three mana a combat, not two (the copies land after Dogmeat’s attack trigger has checked, so they add no Junk that combat). All That Glitters for +N/+N off your artifact + enchantment count. Strong Back for +2/+2 per attached piece, and its riders are the real engine: Aura spells and equip activations targeting the enchanted creature cost {3} less, so Almost Perfect becomes a 3-mana base 9/10 indestructible, Mantle of the Ancients drops to two, and every equip cost in the 99 is free. Bastion Protector for the indestructible bubble. Samut, Voice of Dissent at flash speed for the team haste anthem (her static is “Other creatures you control have haste”; she does not grant double strike to anyone else).

The deck loses to a clean wipe. Hold Heroic Intervention open whenever you have an untapped green source.

Dogmeat base 3 / 3.

Line A: Strong Back + Vorrac + Rancor, two-swing kill

Dogmeat 3 / 3
+ Vorrac Battlehorns trample, can’t be blocked by more than one creature
+ Rancor +2 / +0, trample, recurs from yard
+ Strong Back +2 / +2 per Aura and Equipment attached

Strong Back counts itself. Three attached pieces (Vorrac, Rancor, Strong Back) = +6 / +6.
Dogmeat at 3+2+6 / 3+0+6 = 11 / 9 trampler.
One swing = 11 commander damageDamage dealt by a commander tracks separately. 21 commander damage from a single source kills a player regardless of life total.. Two swings = 22 commander damage, lethal on a single opponent.
Strong Back does not grant trample. Trample comes from Vorrac and Rancor.
One-swing upgrade: attach Junk Jet as a fourth piece. Strong Back now reads +8 / +8, Dogmeat is a 13 / 11, and Junk Jet’s {3}, sacrifice-another-artifact doubles him to 26 power. A Junk pays the sac. Lethal in one swing.

Line B: All That Glitters scaling

Dogmeat 3 / 3
+ All That Glitters +N / +N where N = artifacts + enchantments you control
At seven artifacts and enchantments (Sol Ring, Signet, two equipment, two auras, one Junk by T6) = +7 / +7
Dogmeat at 10 / 10
+ Bastion Protector anthem = 12 / 12 indestructible
+ Vorrac trample = 12 commander damage per swing. Two swings to lethal.

Line C: Bloodforged Battle-Axe snowball

Bloodforged Battle-Axe equipped to Dogmeat is +2 / +0. No first strike. No anthem. Just a flat power bump and a self-copy trigger.
Whenever the equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, create a token copy of Bloodforged. The token enters unattached. EquipAttach an Equipment to a creature you control by paying its equip cost. Sorcery-speed only, unless an effect says otherwise. cost is {2}, or free off Armiger Unleashed’s first-equip-per-turn or off Puresteel Paladin’s metalcraftA card has metalcraft as long as you control three or more artifacts..
First connection: original +2/+0.
Second connection (token copy now attached): +4/+0.
Third connection: +6/+0 plus another loose copy ready to attach.
Every token copy entering also triggers Puresteel Paladin’s draw, along with the Masterwork of Ingenuity copy and Moira’s Book token.
The card is a multi-turn snowball that needs the first hit to land. It pays out best when paired with a trample or unblockable source so the hits go through.

Line D: Idolized solo-attack burst

Idolized is an aura on a creature. The creature “has ‘Whenever this creature attacks alone, it gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of nonland permanents you control.’”
Not a copy effect. Solo-attack trigger only.
Realistic T5 to T6 board: Dogmeat plus nine other nonland permanents (Sol Ring, Signet, three equipment, three auras, one utility legend) = 10 nonland permanents. Idolized fires for +10 / +10. Dogmeat swings solo as a 13 / 13.
With Vorrac for trample, a single Idolized swing is 13 commander damage. Two solo swings is the kill.

Closing a turn early

Three cards turn any two-swing line above into a one-turn kill. Junk Jet: {3}, sacrifice another artifact, double equipped creature’s power until end of turn; the Junk pile pays the cost. Brass Knuckles: the cast-copy is the second Equipment, so it grants double strike by itself. Grim Reaper’s Sprint: when it enters, untap each creature you control, and if it is your main phase you get an additional combat phase after this one; morbid drops it from {4}{R} to {1}{R} if a creature died this turn. Disclose the extra combat at rule zero; the pod notes cover the wording.

On Samut

Samut is 3/4 with flash, double strike, vigilance, and haste on her own body. Her static reads “Other creatures you control have haste.” She lets Dogmeat attack the turn she lands (the haste grant is continuous; her flash means she can land before attackers are declared on your own turn or as a surprise blocker on opponents’ turns), but she does not grant Dogmeat double strike. The kill comes from stacking the kit, not from a granted double strike.

Common mistakes

Naked Dogmeat doesn’t trigger. Junk fires on enchanted-or-equipped attackers only. Dogmeat swinging bare is a 3/3 that makes zero tokens. Slap Rancor, a Pip-Boy, or any 1-mana aura on him before declaring attackers.

Junk fires on attack, not on damage. Blocked or chumped attackers still make a token. Opponents know this and will sometimes chump a kitted attacker on purpose to deny the swing-through; the Junk is still real value.

Mass artifact and enchantment removal is the deck’s worst fear. With 20 artifact permanents (including 3 artifact creatures) and 14 auras across the 99, Vandalblast, Bane of Progress, and Farewell crater the board. Heroic Intervention answers Vandalblast and Bane of Progress (the mass modes don’t target: overloaded Vandalblast hits each artifact you don’t control and Bane’s ETB destroys all artifacts and enchantments, but both say destroy, so the indestructible half of Intervention blanks them). Farewell is unconditional exile and Intervention does nothing against it. The protection against Farewell is reading the table: don’t dump every piece of kit into play on the turn the Esper deck has six mana up. Cass, Hand of Vengeance is not the rebuild here. Her trigger needs a creature you control to die with kit on it, and taking the artifacts and enchantments off the table does not kill Dogmeat; the kit leaves, the dog stands there, and she has nothing to trigger on. Her window against these wipes is narrow: Bane of Progress, or an opponent’s overloaded Vandalblast, killing one of the three artifact creatures (Codsworth, Handy Helper, Mister Gutsy, Bronze Guardian) while it wears a kit. The rebuild after Vandalblast or Bane is Mantle of the Ancients, Armiger Unleashed, Buried Ruin and Vault 101: Birthday Party chapters II and III pulling the kit back out of the graveyard, plus Rancor returning itself to hand when Bane destroys it. Farewell exiles, so none of that list reaches what it took.

Vandalblast overload reading. Overload destroys all artifacts your opponents control. It does not hit your artifacts. Cast at non-overload cost it targets one opponent’s artifact only. The trap is the other side: when an opponent fires overloaded Vandalblast at you, your Sol Ring, Signet, every equipment, every Junk, every Bloodforged token all go. Plan around it; don’t over-extend artifacts past the point where one Vandalblast cleans you out.

Bronze Guardian is a ward layer, not an anthem. He grants ward {2} to your other artifacts. He does not grant +1/+1. His own power is *, equal to your artifact count, and he has double strike. Read the card before you start mathing Junk tokens as stat-bumped; they are not.

Strong Back does not grant trample. Use Vorrac or Rancor for trample. Strong Back is purely a stat scaler plus a cost reduction on auras and equip targeting the enchanted creature.

Idolized only fires on solo attacks. If anyone else swings on the same combat, the +X/+X trigger doesn’t fire. Plan the solo-attack turn around it.

Single Combat keeps one creature per player. Pick Dogmeat. You also lose every other body on your side, including Bastion Protector. Don’t fire Single Combat when Bastion Protector is the only thing keeping Dogmeat indestructible. This is where Cass, Hand of Vengeance pays off. Single Combat and Blasphemous Act are the two wipes in the 99 that kill creatures, so each kitted body you lose fires her trigger: the Auras come back from the graveyard onto a target creature and the surviving Equipment follows. She needs a creature still standing to target, which is one more reason to keep Dogmeat through the Act.

Brotherhood Regalia equip cost reads twice. Equip legendary creature {1}. Equip {3} on anything else. The deck has thirteen legendary creatures including Dogmeat. Equip on legends.

Brass Knuckles is a known cut, but read it right. Real text: when you cast it, copy it (the copy becomes a token), and the equipped creature has double strike while two or more Equipment are attached, with equip {1}. The copy is the second Equipment, so one cast self-enables it: equip both for {1} plus {1} (free under Strong Back’s reduction, Puresteel metalcraft, or Armiger Unleashed’s first equip) and Dogmeat has double strike off Brass Knuckles alone, which halves the commander-damage clock. The cut argument is rate, not function: four mana for a piece that adds zero stats. The decklist download flags it as the cut candidate. If you’re swapping in any Sram-tier upgrade later, Brass Knuckles is still the first slot to take, on rate alone.

Perception Bobblehead is the weak one; Agility is not. Both are three-mana rocks that tap for any color, each with a {3}, {T} activation stapled on. Perception impulse-casts a spell with mana value 3 or less off the top X cards, where X is your Bobblehead count (usually one, with only two in the 99); that genuinely does nothing for a kitted Dogmeat. Agility gives up to X creatures haste plus can’t-be-blocked-except-by-creatures-with-haste. That is a repeatable evasion button for the kill turn and it belongs in the unblockable list next to Rogue’s Passage. The rate critique only lands on the haste half: Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots do that job for less and add protection on top.

Squirrel Nest is cute but slow. Three mana ({1}{G}{G}) for a tap-a-land token factory. The squirrels feed Junk (they swing equipped or enchanted off something else’s aura) and chump-block, but they don’t pressure damage and they tie up a land each turn. Keep it for flavor and the grind plan; don’t expect it to close.

Hierarchy. Best to worst.

Bastion Protector. +2/+2 plus indestructible on every commander creature you control. With Dogmeat as the sole commander, that’s Dogmeat at +2/+2 indestructible. Constant Companion in the 99 doesn’t share the bubble.
Lightning Greaves. Shroud plus haste, equip 0. Auto-include. The shroud is wider than hexproof: opponents can’t target Dogmeat at all. Caveat: shroud also blocks your targeted spells on Dogmeat, which means you can’t equip a second piece on him while Greaves is attached. Swap Greaves off (equip onto another creature) on the turn you want to load Brotherhood Regalia or attach a new aura, or route around the shroud: Inventory Management and Vault 101: Birthday Party chapters II and III attach without targeting, so they load a shrouded Dogmeat. Codsworth’s re-attach targets, so it does not.
Spirit Mantle. +1/+1 plus protection from creatures. Unblockable by creatures, dodges all damage from creature sources, dodges every “target creature” effect from a creature source. Vorrac adds nothing here; protection from creatures already makes him unblockable. Pair Spirit Mantle with a power scaler like Strong Back or All That Glitters instead.
Silver Shroud Costume. Flash. ETB attachAttach an Aura or Equipment by an effect that places it directly. Used for ETB or trigger-based placements rather than the equip action.. Equipped creature can’t be blocked plus gains shroud until end of turn on the entry trigger. The shroud is the entry-turn bubble; the unblockable persists while equipped. Equip {3} to move it after the flash-attach turn.
Heroic Intervention plus Bastion Protector for board-wide wrath insurance. {1}{G} for permanents-you-control gain hexproof plus indestructible until end of turn. Hold the green up whenever the table looks wipe-loaded.
Brotherhood Regalia. Ward {2} plus Assassin plus can’t-be-blocked. Equip legendary {1}, equip {3} otherwise. The ward tax forces opponents to pay {2} extra to remove Dogmeat, which often turns a one-mana Path into a three-mana Path that gets held.
Bronze Guardian. Ward {2} for your other artifacts. Protects the equipment pile, not Dogmeat himself. Bronze Guardian also has double strike and his power equals your artifact count; he’s a credible second-axis beater on a Junk-heavy board.
Swiftfoot Boots. Hexproof plus haste, equip 1. Costs one more to move than Greaves, but hexproof lets you target your own creature with Auras and equip abilities.

Junk artifact (5 to 10). The engine output. You float multiple per turn cycle. Sacrificed Junk hits the graveyard and evaporates like any token; the exile in its text is the top card of your library.
Settlement Aura (1 to 3). Preston Garvey, Minuteman makes one at each of your combats, attached to a land you control; the enchanted land taps for any color, and his attack trigger untaps each enchanted permanent you control, so an attack doubles as a ramp turn. The same untap fires Well Rested mid-combat (two +1/+1 counters, 2 life, a card) and re-arms Squirrel Nest’s land.
Soldier 1/1 white (1 per Saga run). Vault 101: Birthday Party chapter I. One Soldier plus one Food each time the Saga runs.
Food (1 per Saga run). Chapter I of Vault 101: Birthday Party again. {2}, {T}, sacrifice: gain 3 life.
Wasteland Survival Guide (1). Moira Brown, Guide Author’s ETB Book Equipment token: +1/+1 per quest counter among your permanents, equip {1}.
Treasure (1 to 3). Sticky Fingers mints one whenever the enchanted creature deals combat damage to a player.
Squirrel 1/1 green (3 to 5). Squirrel Nest output, plus Animal Friend’s attack trigger. Junk feeders and chump fodder.
Bloodforged Battle-Axe copies (3 to 5). Token copies of the Equipment, not creature tokens. Use generic equipment markers or extra printed copies of the card.
Energy counters. Maximus gets {E}{E} when he eats an artifact, but nothing in the 100 spends energy, so the counters are incidental; he earns the slot on the 4/4 trample body and the ETB Equipment search.

09 // Glossary

MTG terms that show up above.

Open glossary

Game Changer: A specific card on Wizards' published Game Changer list. Bracket 3 allows up to 3. Bracket 4 has no published cap but a higher count weights rule-zero conversations.
Bracket: Wizards' Commander conversation framework: 1 Exhibition, 2 Core, 3 Upgraded, 4 Optimized, 5 cEDH. A stock precon is not automatically a particular bracket. Discuss deck intent, speed, consistency, and play patterns as well as card restrictions.
Voltron: The strategy of stacking equipment, auras, and counters onto a single creature (usually the commander) to one-shot opponents through commander damage.
Commander damage: A player who has been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander over the game loses. Track each commander separately, including partners. Noncombat damage does not count, and gaining life does not erase this total.
ETB: Short for 'enters the battlefield'. Any triggered ability that fires when a permanent enters play is an ETB trigger.
Equip: An Equipment's activated ability: pay its equip cost to attach it to a target creature you control. Normally activate only during your main phase with an empty stack and priority. A separate attach effect follows its own timing and restrictions.
Attach: The keyword action for putting an Equipment or Aura onto a creature. ETB triggers that attach an equipment for free bypass both the equip cost and the sorcery-speed limit.
Free equip: Attaching without paying the printed equip cost. Sigarda's Aid supplies a triggered attach effect. Puresteel Paladin with metalcraft grants equip 0, which still uses normal equip timing unless another effect changes it.
Treasure: Sacrificial colorless artifact token. Tap, sacrifice it, add one mana of any color. Counts as an artifact for triggers and metalcraft.
Phase Out: A phased-out permanent is treated as though it does not exist, with limited exceptions. Phasing is not a zone change, destruction, or exile. It normally phases in during its controller's untap step, but effects such as Out of Time specify a different duration.
Cascade: A cast trigger: exile cards until you exile a nonland card with lower mana value than the cascade spell. You may cast it without paying its mana cost only if the resulting spell also has lower mana value. Put the other exiled cards on the bottom in a random order.
Affinity: A cost-reduction keyword. 'Affinity for artifacts' means the spell costs 1 less to cast for each artifact you control.
Modified: A creature is modified if it has a counter, is equipped, or is enchanted by an Aura controlled by that creature's controller. The Equipment's controller does not matter; the Aura's controller does.
Vigilance: Attacking does not cause a creature with vigilance to tap. It still needs to be untapped and otherwise eligible to attack. Brave the Sands grants vigilance; Shadowspear grants trample and lifelink instead.
Lifelink: Damage dealt by a source with lifelink also causes its controller to gain that much life at the same time. Shadowspear grants lifelink. Vampiric Link instead uses a triggered life-gain ability that resolves later and is not lifelink.
Mindslaver: A 'Mindslaver effect' lets you control an opponent's next turn: their draws, plays, and attacks. Named for the Mindslaver artifact; some commander-specific triggers replicate the effect.
Metalcraft: An ability word marking effects that care whether you control three or more artifacts. Read the individual card: metalcraft is not itself an activated ability or a shared rules ability.
Impulse draw: Exile cards from the top of your library, then you may play them this turn (sometimes longer). Strong in red and red-adjacent decks; common examples include Light Up the Stage, Outpost Siege, and Reckless Impulse.
Mulligan: Under the London mulligan, shuffle and draw seven each time, then put cards on the bottom after choosing to keep. In multiplayer Commander the first mulligan is free; a keep after the second mulligan puts one card back, the third puts two back, and so on.
Drain: A trigger that makes an opponent lose life and gains you that much, Blood Artist style. Life loss is not damage, so it goes through protection and prevention that only stop damage.
Rule-zero: The pre-game conversation about deck power, combos, tutors and table expectations, held before the first shuffle so nobody is surprised by what the deck does.
Summoning sickness: A creature cannot attack, and cannot activate an ability with the tap or untap symbol in its cost, unless it has been under its controller's control continuously since their most recent turn began (CR 302.6). Haste turns it off, and it never applies to other permanent types.
Replacement effect: A continuous effect that watches for an event and replaces it with a different one as it happens, rather than triggering afterwards (CR 614.1). When several would apply to the same event, the affected object's controller or the affected player picks the order (CR 616.1).
Storm: A triggered ability that functions on the stack: when you cast the spell, copy it for each other spell cast before it this turn (CR 702.40a). The copies are not cast, so they never add to the storm count themselves.