SCRAPPY SURVIVORS+ Junk tokens.

Dogmeat, Ever Loyal strategy guide

Read Dogmeat once.

• {R}{G}{W}, 3/3, Legendary Creature, Dog.
• ETB: 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Dogmeat is a 3/3 base body. He does not kill on his own. The voltron 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 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.

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. Maximus, Knight Apparent turns {1} plus an artifact sac into {E}{E}; Junk tokens are valid sac fodder, but each activation still costs one mana on top of the sacrifice. He also brought a 2-mana equipment tutor to the table on ETB. 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 ten nonland permanents (Sol Ring, Signet, three equipment, three auras, two utility legends, the commander) that is +10/+10 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 section 05.

Bastion Protector is the load-bearing pick.

For {2}{W}, a 3/3 body whose static reads “Commander creatures you control get +2/+2 and have indestructible.” On Dogmeat that is a 5/5 indestructible. Indestructible is the upgrade that turns Voltron from “punching bag for Path to Exile” into “actually survives a turn cycle.” Destroy effects bounce, combat does not kill him, and board wipes that say destroy whiff entirely. Spot exile (Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, Generous Gift) and Chaos Warp still answer him, but those are a much narrower set of cards.

Replaces Brotherhood Outcast from the precon. Outcast was a conditional 2/2 with no payoff for the voltron plan. 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 for 4 life. Replaces Abundant Growth. Best 1-mana card draw enchantment in green 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.

Naya 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. Both are card draw engines for the rest of the game.
• Dogmeat in hand plus one piece of kit plus a path to {R}{G}{W} on T3. Cleanest curve the deck has.

Ship back

• One-land hand. Three colors, hard mulligan.
• All 4-plus CMC. You get run over before T5.
• Dogmeat plus zero kit plus zero ramp plus zero draw. A naked commander 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.

Dogmeat base 3 / 3. Verified Scryfall numbers.

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

Line B: All That Glitters scaling

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. Equip cost is {2}, or free off Armiger Unleashed’s first-equip-per-turn or off Puresteel Paladin’s metalcraft.
• First connection: original +2/+0.
• Second connection (token copy now attached): +4/+0.
• Third connection: +6/+0 plus another loose copy ready to attach.
• 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.

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.

Hierarchy. Best to worst.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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. Combine with Vorrac for full evasion.
4. Silver Shroud Costume. Flash. ETB attach. 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.
5. Bastion Protector plus Heroic Intervention 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Swiftfoot Boots. Hexproof plus haste, equip 1. Cheaper to move than Greaves but hexproof is weaker than shroud against your own targeting.

• Junk artifact (5 to 10). The engine output. You float multiple per turn cycle. Junk goes to exile when sac’d, not the graveyard.
• Soldier 1/1 white (3 to 5). Preston Garvey, Minuteman makes Settlement aura tokens on each combat that enchant lands you control. His attack trigger also untaps each enchanted permanent you control, so an enchanted attacker doubles as a ramp turn.
• Squirrel 1/1 green (3 to 5). Squirrel Nest output. 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 generates {E} on sac. Glass beads or a tracker.