Streets of New Capenna: Riveteer’s Rampage Review and Upgrade
By Kendra Duff aka Tinstreet_Egg
“Only his mama calls him Henzie”
OVERVIEW
Special thanks to our amazing partners, Unplug Yourself, for supplying us with these decks to play and test with.
The Riveteers Rampage precon relies massively on our valiant commander: Henzie “Toolbox” Torre who gives all the enormous dudes (mana value 4 or greater) in your hand Blitz. Blitz is a brand-new mechanic, introduced in Streets of New Capenna, that gives your creature haste but does have the drawback of having to sacrifice it in your End Step. While it does let you draw a card when the creature dies, we explore other avenues to benefit from our creatures’ inevitable demise.
Henzie also provides a neat cost reduction for your Blitz costs, so people removing our boy only helps us. (Lowering the Blitz cost by 1 colourless mana per time he’s been cast this game.)
NOTABLE INCLUSIONS AND REPRINTS
Coming in at $69.14 (or R1 110.84 at the time of writing this article), this precon seems to be a monetary profit with its value sitting slightly above the average R1 000 you’d likely end up paying for it at your LGS. (Support local, peeps) With cards like Avenger of Zendikar, Arcane Signet, Blasphemous Act and Farseek the overall value is bound to increase.
Note: With Arcane Signet and Blasphemous Act being reprinted in Commander Legends: Baldur’s Gate their value will drop at first before returning to their average price.
Some notable new cards include Jolene, the Plunder Queen, Protection Racket and a card that has massively spiked since release Rain of Riches. With there being so much Treasure support in recent sets Rain of Riches has jumped a whopping $10 in price OVERNIGHT in its first week of release. This card is definitely the Golden Egg in this deck. Although it’s a weird inclusion in the Riveteers Rampage precon it will be fantastic in just about any deck that cares about Treasure Tokens; Prosper Tome Bound, Magda, Brazen Outlaw or Kalain, Reclusive Painter to mention but a few.
ANALYSIS
39 Lands – With a Curve quite as high as ours this is invaluable. The hideaway lands Mosswort Bridge and Spinerock Knoll are fantastic, as it’s card advantage and ramp that is easy to activate in this deck.
15 Ramp – Old faithful rocks Arcane Signet and Fellwar Stone are back, as well as Explore and Kodama’s Reach. There is also the questionable inclusion of Overgrown Battlement in a deck with two Defenders.
16 Card Draw – There is a ton of high-synergy card advantage engines in the deck that allow us to achieve the deck’s main objective
Get enough mana fast + Play Henzie and Blitz out our big boys = Profit
For a lot of the draw the beaters you Blitzed in come in handy as sac fodder, for instance Disciple of Bolas requires you to sac a creature when it e.t.b’s Now the drawback of having to sac your creature in your end step suddenly isn’t as much of a drawback anymore.
9 Targeted Removal – The targeted removal in the deck is great. Turf War is a bit of a weird one, but with solid options like Riveteers Charm and Warstorm Surge we’re geared for war.
5 Boardwipes – As mentioned previously Blasphemous Act is back in our arsenal, with the new Riveteers Confluence and Blitz-able beat-stick Deathbringer Regent
5 Recursion – With a deck this good at putting big beaters into our graveyard, I wish there had been a few more recursion pieces. We do have a heavy hitter in Greenwarden of Murasa though, and it almost stole the Golden Egg spot.
2 Graveyard Hate – Riveteers Charm is such a cool card, and I was supremely happy when I opened the Gilded Foil version in my two card Collector’s Booster
2 Finishers – Warstorm Surge is an old favourite of mine and has a home in just about each of my red decks. Stalking Vengeance is a bit of redundancy that can never go to waste.
UPGRADE
With the upgrade we looked at getting more mana out faster to be able to afford the large blitz costs and reduce the amount of inefficient cards that felt out of place, or were stuck in my hand for long periods of time.
Adds:
Mana – Llanowar Elves, Karametra’s Acolyte , Gyre Sage , Tangleroot , Nissa’s Pilgrimage
Draw – Moldervine Reclamation, Garruk’s Packleader , Genesis Storm
Recursion/Protection – Cauldron Dance, Chainer, Nightmare Adept, Garna, the Bloodflame, Living Death, Fake Your Own Death
Sac Payoffs – Ruthless Knave, Mayhem Devil
Cuts:
Overgrown Battlement and Weathered Sentinels were cut since the deck doesn’t have any support for Defenders. They felt like a very strange include from the start. Perhaps they considered a Defenders sub-theme and decided against it.
Caldaia Guardian. While this is a decent payoff for deaths on our side of the board, we replaced it with a better payoff.
Jolene, the Plunder Queen, Glittering Stockpile and Rain of Riches are very cool cards but sadly without a lot of support in the deck.
Dodgy Jalopy, Mezzio Mugger, Mitotic Slime and Wave of Rats were either stuck in our hand or stuck on the battlefield while we had better things to do. We replaced these with cards better suited to what our deck wants to do with better payoffs.
Turf War is a weird card that felt a bit too much like land destruction for my liking. We replaced it with a piece of recursion instead as I felt that was what the deck needed.
Aether Snap, Victimize and Temple of the False God were too situational for my liking.
TO SUMMARISE
I’ll admit, I initially misjudged this deck. When I first played it I almost always had beaters in hand but no mana, or I had things that made little to no sense in the deck. However after some very minor tuning Riveteers Rampage turned into a force to be reckoned with. Time to gear up and fight for my move-fast-and-break-things crime family, The Riveteers.
Until next time, I’ll see you on the battlefield!
