One of my favorite things in Magic is the fun of opening up booster cards and letting the fates determine what Commander deck I'll be building next. I've been excited about Bloomburrow but I hadn't figured out what my first Bloomburrow deck would be until I started opening packs and came across my first ever raised gold foil, variant art legendary creature. I've opened raised foil cards before, but they were always uncommons and commons that I had no real use for.

Finally I had a gold foil card that could lead an EDH deck!

Finneas, Ace Archer is a 2/2 legendary Rabbit Archer with vigilance, reach, and a cool party trick. Whenever he attacks, I'll put a +1/+1 counter on each other creature I control that's a token or a Rabbit. Then if I control total power 10 or greater I'll draw a card.

That last card draw trigger is huge, but it's also something I'm likely to forget until I've played Finneas and gotten used to him. I know myself and I know I'll remember the counters but it'll take me a while to remember his second trigger.

While I could have gotten luckier, it didn't take me long to decide that I was going to build bunnies. My only concern is that I'm not sure Finneas has a very high ceiling, but I'm OK with having a fun casual Rabbits deck that looks good and plays a generally fair game. I'm fine with combos and whatnot, but my first draft is going to just focus on rabbits and token generators.

The reason I think Finneas isn't all that strong is simple - his ability only puts a counter on each of my creatures, not on him, and it's an attack trigger. In Selesnya you aren't about to start piling up extra combat steps or extra turns to generate more triggers. There are ways to try to get extra triggers but my focus is going to start with simple things... like bunnies.

Duck Season

While I will never alter my raised foil Finneas, Ace Archer, my first thought when building this deck would be to paint an assortment of Bugs Bunny alters onto my rabbits. If you don't understand my Duck Season reference, you should go watch some old Chuck Jones cartoons until you do. You'll thank me, I promise.

My first step in building this deck was to assemble my rabbit army. A more powerful Finneas deck might focus solely on token generators, but I wanted to have fun with this deck and that meant leaning into the bit.

Being in two colors limits the number of pre-Bloomburrow rabbits available to me, but I was able to find a few cards that were worth running. I build my decks in paper with the cards I have available and there are three that I didn't have: Preston, the Vanisher, Regal Bunnicorn, and Claim Jumper. They're all great, and I might pick them up if this list proves to be fun enough to keep together, but there are three others I had in paper.

Cadira, Caller of the Small is an Orc Ranger with a fantastic combat damage trigger. When this trampling 3/3 deals combat damage to a player I'll create a 1/1 White Rabbit creature token for each token I control. My other two older cards are actual rabbits. Placid Rottentail is a decent 1 drop that will hopefully get bigger once Finneas starts attacking. If it's in the graveyard I can exile it at sorcery speed for two and a green and put two +1/+1 counters on target creature. Pollen-Shield Hare can be cast as an adventure to pump a creature +X/+X and give it vigilance where X is the number of creatures I control. I can cast it for two mana either from my hand or from its adventure as a 2/2 rabbit that gives my creature tokens +1/+1.

There are a ton of great rabbits from Bloomburrow, and I was able to assemble a good number for this build.

Harvestrite Host is a 3/3 Rabbit citizen with an interesting card draw ability. When it or another Rabbit I control enters, target creature I control gets +1/+0 until end of turn and if I can do that twice I'll draw a card. Burrowguard Mentor may not have card draw but he's a trampling big/big with a power and toughness equal to the number of creatures I control. This deck is meant to go wide, so that could work out nicely.

Jacked Rabbit is another potential big beater. He's got X in his casting cost and he'll enter with X +1/+1 counters. If X is five or more I'll draw a card and whenever he attacks I'll create a number of 1/1 White Rabbit creature tokens equal to his power. He's the one creature that was so good I had to pull him out of a precon to put him into this list.

Token Generators

My guess is that your most powerful Finneas, Ace Archer build is going to focus very heavily on token generators. I didn't have enough rabbits to focus solely on that creature type and there are a lot of great token makers so it was an easy decision to run a few. My favorites are the ones that aren't seen as often in EDH. Avenger of Zendikar, Scute Swarm, and Rampaging Baloths will earn their keep, but those cards don't need a spotlight on them.

Iridescent Hornbeetle is a fantastic match for what Finneas wants to do. If I've got eight creatures (rabbits and/or tokens) in play and I attack with Finneas, I'll put a +1/+1 counter on each of them. On my end steep I'll make eight 1/1 green Insects, and next turn I should be making even more. The ceiling for Iridescent Hornbeetle is very high, and it will work wonderfully with a card like Doubling Season in play, but this is still a relatively slow game plan. If I win, I won't be winning games out of nowhere.

Curious Herd and Fresh Meat are wonderful token generators. The former is an army-in-a-can and will play great when there's an artifact or treasure deck in the game. The latter is a way to recover from a boardwipe - often leaving me with bigger creatures than the ones I lost. Either should set me up to use Finneas to put counters on them and try to push for a win.

Token generators are great, but leaning into the bit means I'm going to be running as many rabbits that make tokens as possible. I'm running every Rabbit with offspring that I could get my hands on. Offspring lets me make a 1/1 token version of the nontoken creature if I pay an additional cost.

Head of the Homestead is a five mana Rabbit Citizen who will have me create two 1/1 White Rabbit creature tokens when it enters. It's not amazing, but it will look a lot better when I'm able to start putting counters on them. Hop to It and Tempt with Bunnies are additional token generators and a build solely focused on tokens would make the most of these with Anointed Procession or Parallel Lives in play. I'm not running either of those enchantments - my copies are in other decks. Removing a few Rabbit creature cards from today's list would make room for them if you had those token doublers available.

I've Got a Theory

It could be bunnies... Bunnies aren't just cute like everyone supposes. They've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses. And what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyways? Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies! Or maybe Scute Swarms.

The choice to lean into bunnies, or to be technical, the Rabbit creature type, did a lot of things for this first draft. It gave me a place to run a bunch of those new Bloomburrow cards. It helped make this a deck I can play against precons and lower powered decks. It even gave me a chance to quote Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that doesn't happen every day. This list has glaring omissions like Heroic Intervention and Sol Ring, but you should always view these as starting points. Take the cards you have, the lists you see online that you like, and brew up your own Finneas, Ace Archer list that leans into what you like and plays at the power level and in the playstyle that you enjoy most.

Finneas EDH | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Finneas, Ace Archer

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Armorcraft Judge
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Brave-Kin Duo
• 1 Burrowguard Mentor
• 1 Cadira, Caller of the Small
• 1 Champion of Lambholt
• 1 Druid of the Spade
• 1 Esper Sentinel
• 1 Harvestrite Host
• 1 Hazardroot Herbalist
• 1 Head of the Homestead
• 1 Intrepid Rabbit
• 1 Iridescent Hornbeetle
• 1 Jacked Rabbit
• 1 Moonshaker Cavalry
• 1 Pawpatch Recruit
• 1 Placid Rottentail
• 1 Pollen-Shield Hare
• 1 Rampaging Baloths
• 1 Scute Swarm
• 1 Silverwing Squadron
• 1 Valley Questcaller
• 1 Voice of Many
• 1 Warren Elder

• Instants (13)
• 1 Akroma's Will
• 1 Arachnogenesis
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Curious Herd
• 1 Eladamri's Call
• 1 Flare of Fortitude
• 1 Fresh Meat
• 1 Moment's Peace
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Rabbit Response
• 1 Return to Nature
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (13)
• 1 Camaraderie
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Deploy to the Front
• 1 Ezuri's Predation
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Fell the Mighty
• 1 Hop to It
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Tempt with Bunnies
• 1 Three Visits

• Enchantments (9)
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Felidar Retreat
• 1 Guardian Project
• 1 Hardened Scales
• 1 Reconnaissance
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Unquestioned Authority
• 1 Zendikar Resurgent

• Artifacts (2)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Maskwood Nexus

• Lands (37)
• 13 Forest
• 13 Plains
• 1 Bountiful Promenade
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Castle Garenbrig
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Overgrown Farmland
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Gardenfoil
• 1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Buy This Deck Export text

To power this down and drop the budget, you might drop out Esper Sentinel, Doubling Season and Smothering Tithe, and you could even drop out some of the heavy hitters among the token generators. I don't see any need to make this deck weaker because the commander is already putting you behind most other commanders in terms of what he brings to a game. Finneas may be adorable, and he may look great in gold foil, but he's not exactly the next Nadu, Winged Wisdom.

If you wanted to push this deck up in power, there are lots of bunnies you can drop out for better cards. In higher powered games more removal is very important, so more removal, boardwipes and ways to protect your team from boardwipes would make sense. You might throw in token doublers and Cathars' Crusade, but you may still have trouble pushing up into high powered play. You can forget about cEDH entirely. That doesn't mean this can't be a fun deck, and there are plenty of powerful cards you could throw into Finneas to get more out of him.

Early Results

I was able to play a Finneas brew very close to this list last Tuesday night at my favorite LGS. My results were mixed and while I won't try to recap every game I can share a few takeaways.

I had a few games where my lands were clumped or where I had trouble keeping up with the rest of the table. Finneas has no colorless mana in his casting cost so I took the hipster route and left out Sol Ring. I've been experimenting lately with lists that don't include Sol Ring and so far I haven't missed it all that much. Missing land drops and not drawing any ramp in early turns definitely hurt my games, but my sample size was small enough (3 games) that I don't yet blame my land count (37). I've run roughly 37 lands in a lot of decks and I'm still comfortable with that number as I'm also running a decent number of ramp spells.

I saw a lot of Rabbits. Anya would have been horrified.

I didn't expect to have quite so many games where I was playing Rabbits so often in the early turns, but that's very much what happened. Maybe I was seeing those cards clumped up from the initial build process, but it seemed notable. I also played a few token generators (Fresh Meat, Ezuri's Predation) and the games were mostly competitive and fun.

Competitive and fun doesn't mean that I won any of them. One game was a clear power level mismatch and I joined a tablemate in just getting crushed by two other decks that were way more than either of us could deal with. That happens now more than ever as the format ages and we see more of a gap between low power and high power than we saw five or ten years ago. It wasn't fun to get stomped but it happens.

The games that I was close in came down to little things in the end game. In one match I was a card off from drawing Flare of Fortitude, which could have protected my army of Rabbits and set me up to probably notch a win. In another game I made a call between playing Shamanic Revelation and Fell the Mighty when I had nine 4/4 Beasts on board. The former card would have drawn me cards, gained me a bunch of life, but the latter was what I chose to go with. I was hoping to clear my last remaining tablemate's board so I could swing in for the kill, but he removed the target of my Fell the Mighty, it fizzled, and he was able to finish me off. Sometimes a win or loss hinges on a single choice, and in that moment I chose poorly.

My final takeaway was that this deck runs a lot of Fog effects and while they didn't help me win any games, I still enjoy them very much. I'll eventually catch someone being overly aggressive and I'll be able to crack back and win a game. Maybe I'll save the table and together we'll be able to overcome someone on a much more powerful aggro deck. Fogs don't always do enough, and they are basically dead cards when you're up against blue players with open mana and dozens of cards in hand. That happened in one of those games as well, but it was the pubstomp game where even if I had managed to prevent one turn's combat damage, I don't think any of us had a chance.

Final Thoughts

Commander is an amazing format, but it is also a deeply frustrating one sometimes. If you try to put together a deck for lower powered games and someone comes in too hot, or has great luck with a relatively fair deck, you can get what amount to a non-game. Today's list is one that I think will be fun, but I also think it will need to play at the right tables for you to have a chance.

Powering a list up can certainly make it play better against mid-powered decks but variance in EDH is always at play. Decks can punch well above their weight with a little luck and some good piloting, and they can also have games where you find yourself questioning yourself as to why you tried to build a lower powered deck at all.

My next column is looking like it's going to be about a very odd Frog - Clement, the Worrywort. He's going to be a real puzzle as a deckbuilding project and I hope I can find a way to make him work. I've got a few ideas, but we'll see how things sort out.

My hope had been to get a list together and play it a few times. I like to have actual gameplay to inform these columns, but I came home from work last week feeling under the weather and it's looking like I've caught COVID for the second time. The first time wasn't fun, but I did OK. Here's to hoping the second time isn't that bad either. The virus isn't gone, and while most of us are no longer wearing masks (when we're feeling healthy), this was a reminder that we do need to take it seriously. If you're feeling unwell, skip the LGS. I just thought I had allergies, which is often true, but this time it was more than just allergies.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!