You know what I loved doing all the time when I was a kid? Watch cartoons, of course! Just about every day growing up I'd spend a couple hours watching several shows on channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. One series I'd see frequently come up on the former was the various runs of the classic Scooby-Doo - something that still prevails as a favorite to this day among kid-friendly properties! I'd spend hours watching the crew driving around in their Mystery Machine getting up to all kinds of shenanigans over a period of several years.

As such, once they announced a mystery-themed Magic set in Murders at Karlov Manor, everyone just knew there had to be a reference to this classic series. We got one on the very first day of previews in the form of Meddling Youths (the name Meddling Kids was unfortunately used in Unhinged) but everyone wanted to know: where was the big dog? It wasn't the same without the Scooby analogue, after all! Once the Commander previews started rolling in, though, we finally got one.

The instant Sophia, Dogged Detective was finally revealed and hit the internet, everyone got incredibly excited. That large brown dog was unmistakable, and the love for Tiny - essentially Magic's version of Scooby-Doo - came through in an instant. The more Tiny attacks, the more clues (perhaps a Blue's Clue, if you will) and Scooby Snacks (food tokens) you find, and the more of both you sacrifice (feed to Tiny) the bigger Tiny gets! About the only thing the card lacks from a flavor perspective is the ability to run and hide in some way.

I knew from the moment I saw this card I wanted to create a deck around Sophia and her Tiny companion. So today, we're going to assemble a crew of good puppers and go on an investigation. Will it be something fun? We'll just have to find out soon! It's a mystery, after all! Let's check out a list and hunt for some clues.

Ruh Roh Rophia! | Commander | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Sophia, Dogged Detective

• Creatures (36)
• 1 Abzan Battle Priest
• 1 Abzan Falconer
• 1 Academy Manufactor
• 1 Abzan Beastmaster
• 1 Ainok Bond-Kin
• 1 Ainok Survivalist
• 1 Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth
• 1 Blink Dog
• 1 Bygone Bishop
• 1 Chameleon Colossus
• 1 Ethereal Investigator
• 1 Floodhound
• 1 Gilded Goose
• 1 Greater Tanuki
• 1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
• 1 Jaheira, Friend of the Forest
• 1 Karlov Watchdog
• 1 Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy
• 1 Longshot Squad
• 1 Lonis, Cryptozoologist
• 1 Loyal Warhound
• 1 Masked Vandal
• 1 Mowu, Loyal Companion
• 1 Pack Leader
• 1 Peregrin Took
• 1 Rambunctious Mutt
• 1 Samwise Gamgee
• 1 Selfless Savior
• 1 Spirited Companion
• 1 Supply Runners
• 1 Tanuki Transplanter
• 1 Tireless Provisioner
• 1 Tireless Tracker
• 1 Unsettled Mariner
• 1 Wojek Investigator
• 1 Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful

• Instants (7)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Disruption Protocol
• 1 Flawless Maneuver
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Release the Dogs

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Armed with Proof
• 1 Fae Offering
• 1 Hardened Scales
• 1 Ongoing Investigation
• 1 Search the Premises
• 1 Ulvenwald Mysteries

• Artifacts (6)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Krovod Haunch
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Tamiyo's Journal
• 1 Vanquisher's Banner

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Mordenkainen
• 1 Oko, Thief of Crowns

• Lands (39)
• 3 Island
• 5 Forest
• 5 Plains
• 1 Adarkar Wastes
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Animal Sanctuary
• 1 Bountiful Promenade
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Brushland
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Conservatory
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Kitchen
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Sea of Clouds
• 1 Seaside Citadel
• 1 Study
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 The Shire
• 1 Windbrisk Heights
• 1 Yavimaya Coast

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The first thing to do was to find some more dogs for Sophia to utilize. Your various artifact tokens are important to the overall strategy as well, but you get plenty of those just by dealing damage with your dogs, so the dogs come first. I think what surprised me the most was just how many quality dogs there actually are out there. I knew that people liked doing the cats and dogs strategy based on Rin and Seri, Inseparable as well as the popularity of the recent Secret Lair deck around such things, but I didn't realize there were so many to go around!

Some were pretty easy to jump on. Isamaru and Yoshimaru were basically no-brainers, and Mowu, Loyal Companion gets absolutely massive fast. Then you go through the list of options and find yourself realizing all of the Ainok creatures from Tarkir are dogs too. Thanks to this, you get both Ainok Bond-Kin and Longshot Guard, both of which work wonders alongside all of the counters you're dishing out. You also get access to Ainok Survivalist, which provides an on-theme means of artifact and enchantment removal, as can Rambunctious Mutt. Oh, and Abzan Beastmaster will draw you tons of cards too since sacrificing all your tokens will easily enable you to have the biggest creatures around.

One card that I found really surprised me was Floodhound. When you played it in Modern Horizons 2 drafts, it was often cute but not backbreaking. Here it benefits your strategy perfectly, both giving you Clues and being a dog if you can get in for a solid attack. Speaking of solid value, I have to mention Tanuki Transplanter for the extra mana it gives you the bigger it gets. The deeper into the game you go, the more mana it generates for you to sacrifice more of your tokens or make big splashy plays. I haven't even talked about some cards like Blink Dog being a dog that gets big and can evade removal, or the likes of Karlov Watchdog and Supply Runners making all of your doggos bigger. It's honestly astounding the quality at play here.

I used a couple of changelings to help round out the rest of the pool here, even if they're not quite the furry puppers everyone loves so much. Unsettled Mariner respects how adorable the actual dogs are and how much people adore them - so much so that the card protects them with what's basically Ward 1! Masked Vandal provides another bit of artifact/enchantment hate and Chameleon Colossus brings the beats - especially when you start putting +1/+1 counters onto it! I considered Moritte of the Frost but opted for other choices instead this time around.

Most of the remaining deck-building centered around trying to better utilize the two artifact tokens you make in both food and clues. Now, I'll admit here: I didn't realize during the majority of the deck-building process that Sophia actually made food as well as clues when dogs dealt damage! Given that, I focused a lot less of the card choice on food, but when you think of some of the critical food-related cards like Trail of Crumbs, you already have so much card draw going on that it feels a bit unnecessary. Heck, just utilizing Peregrin Took on his own will enable you to do something similar.

Several cards - like the aforementioned Peregrin Took - allow you to generate even more artifact tokens of all kinds. Some are pretty obvious, like Academy Manufactor and Fae Offering to generate you all the tokens. The obligatory Tireless Tracker and Tireless Provisioner make sure you're never in short supply whether you have dogs on the battlefield or not. And, of course, Shadows Over Innistrad favorites in the form of Ongoing Investigation, Bygone Bishop, and Ulvenwald Mysteries will fill your board up with tokens in no time flat.

While amassing so many tokens alone can utterly drown your opponents in value by themselves, there's also a few helpful payoffs to use alongside these tokens. Both Tamiyo's Journal and Lonis, Cryptozoologist allow you to sacrifice clue tokens to find whatever you need for any given situation. If you want a little more quantity over quality, Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth will turn your clues into Sphinx's Revelations all day. With how many tokens you'll have too, you can use Jaheira, Friend of the Forest to turn all of them into mana rocks, which snowballs your mana access absolutely out of control fast.

Through all of this, though, I've also failed to mention the lands at all. Most of the card choices here are fairly standard. I think most people expect the likes of shock lands, check lands, pain lands, and the Battlebond lands. What you might not have noticed, though, are the dual lands from Ravnica: Clue Edition. Each of these three lands that fit the colors of this deck (Conservatory, Kitchen, and Study) are comparable to guildgates with one major difference: each one can investigate! That fills your board up with tons of clues if you need extras and have a little mana to spare, which is always helpful to have access to in a deck like this.

One thing I do love about this deck is how it falls into a similar camp to my Morska deck I wrote about a few weeks ago. What I mean by that is how it doesn't quite just do "haha, Simic deck go brrrr" in how much value you generate. Yes, it can get out of control eventually, but you have to work for it. Not every card is going to give you a land and card draw the way Simic decks tend to, which often bleeds into how Bant decks perform in general as well. You could even say it's like you're slowly going on an investigation and then once you crack the case, it all comes together for one heck of a big finish!

This is definitely a deck I think will only get better as the years go on. Dogs coming to Magic is a fairly recent innovation, after all. Up until the middle of 2020, dogs were just hounds, and they were far and few between. They've gotten a bit more of a spotlight in the couple years since, and it's clear Wizards is taking notice, so I'd put decent odds on getting even more tools to build upon this foundation as time passes. For now, though, what's here is almost certainly going to provide you with an awesome time at your next Commander night! Just remember to pack your Mystery Machine with plenty of Tiny Snacks for when you show up with it.

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

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